So they were in no mood for bullshit while cruising up La Brea on the way back from Gibson Hand's favorite barbecue grill, when they spotted two drunks having it out on the sidewalk in the presence of three other winos and a moaning basset hound.

  The lackluster combatants, who were pounding each other wearily with a length of two-by-four and a piece of lead pipe, didn't even notice the cops gliding up in the black-and-white. Finally one of the winos in the gallery saw the street monsters.

  "Uh oh," he said, elbowing the wino who was sitting next to him on the curb, who elbowed the next wino, who elbowed the moaning basset hound and said, "Shut the fuck up, dog."

  When the street fighters finally saw the street monsters, each dropped his weapon and waited meekly for the bracelets. However, Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand were out of their divisional boundaries and full of ribs and black-eyed peas. They weren't about to get out of their car. The basset hound moaned even louder when all the yelling and fighting ceased.

  "Why is that dog groanin like that?" Gibson Hand asked lazily.

  "Got hit by a car bout a hour ago," a wino answered.

  "Country dog," another wino added. "Jist brought him in from a farm. Not used to cars. Jist stood there and watched the car run over hisself."

  "Either shoot him or shut him up," Gibson Hand said.

  "You kin shoot him, you want to," a wino said. "Course he was jumpin around a minute ago. I think he jist liked the attention he got when he was run over."

  "Why are you two beatin on your heads with that two-by-four and piece a pipe?"

  Buckmore Phipps asked wearily, as Gibson Hand leaned back on the headrest and picked his teeth with a matchbook.

  "Motherfucker went to git some wine and chicken goblets and ate it all fore he got back," one fighter said.

  The other one made a terrible mistake. He said to the cops, "I know my rights. I ain't got nothin to say to you."

  Gibson Hand rolled his head slowly toward Buckmore Phipps, wondering if he should take the shotgun out of the rack and turn it into a pistol by busting the stock across the fighter's noodle, but decided he'd eaten too many ribs for all that.

  Buckmore Phipps said "You!" to the fighter who had made the big mistake. "Get in the car. We're bookin you for ADW."

  "What's that?"

  "Assault with a deadly weapon."

  "Deadly weapon? Shee-it! I on'y hit the motherfucker with a pipe!"

  Gibson Hand knew they were not going to book the wino for ADW or anything else, because when the drunk got in the car they headed out of the city and into the jurisdiction of the county sheriff.

  Buckmore Phipps, driving leisurely, looked at the surly combatant and said, "Maybe we oughtta just book him for drunk instead?"

  "I ain't drunk either," the fighter said, adding insult to injury. "We're gonna let our sergeant check you," said Buckmore Phipps. "He's a qualified expert.Drinks a fifth a day. He says you're drunk, you're drunk. He says you ain't, you ain't."

  Gibson Hand was getting curious when they pulled up in front of the West Hollywood Sheriff's Station. Buckmore Phipps jotted something in laboriously disguised handwriting. He folded it carefully, but the fighter was so bagged he couldn't have read it anyway, and after sobering up he said he wouldn't know those two cops from Cheech and Chong.

  Buckmore Phipps said, "Take this note and your lead pipe inside and hand the note to the desk officer. If the sergeant thinks you're sober enough and wants to let you go, it's up to him. I explained everything on the note as I saw it. We'll wait here."

  The wino staggered around the sidewalk, tucked his shirt in, zipped up his fly, rehearsed walking a straight line. When he was convinced he could pull it off, he weaved his way up the steps and into the sheriff's station with his note and lead pipe.

  The deputy on the desk was reading a Penthouse magazine and was pissed off at being interrupted. The length of pipe in the asshole's hand got his attention, however. The fighter handed the deputy the note and said, "Lemme see the sergeant right away."

  The deputy unfolded the note. It said: "This pipe is loaded with plastic explosives. I want twenty thousand dollars, a helicopter, and the Big Sheriff himself as a hostage or I'm blowing this fucking place into the ocean." The street monsters waited until they heard the terrified shouts and running feet and frantic deputies whomping on the fighter with sticks before they sped back to Hollywood. It made their day a little more tolerable, all in all.

  But while the day of Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand had improved somewhat, the Weasel and the Ferret had nothing to be thankful for except that low brassy clouds made the rooftop more bearable. The Ferret was getting irritated because the Weasel was catching a nap up there, lying on the air-conditioning unit, using his battered cowboy hat as a pillow.

  "Goddamn! I gotta wear out my peepers with these freaking binoculars while you sleep," the Ferret whined.

  "I wouldn't know the dink if I saw him," the Weasel mumbled. "One of us might as well stack a few Z's."

  "Least you could do is run down and buy a couple six packs," the Ferret said.

  "Maybe you hadn't a drank a couple six packs, you wouldn't a fallen down that night and you'd a put one right in that gook's ten ring and we wouldn't be here," the Weasel said, closing his eyes and rolling over.

  Maybe he was right. That grinning face. The Ferret thought about looking for an old Vietcong poster, the kind he carried as a war protestor before he was drafted. He'd pin it to a silhouette on the target range. Maybe he'd practice with a couple of boxes of rounds. The gook grinned when he pulled that trigger in the Ferret's face.

  "Do you suppose they still have any old Ho Chi Minh posters around anywhere?" he asked the Weasel.

  "Call Jane Fonda and ask her," the Weasel mumbled, and within seconds he was snoring.

  But the street monsters weren't snoring. They were about to meet the man who died with his boots on.

  It was too close to end of watch to be getting a bullshit radio call about somebody disturbing the peace. Especially at a motel on Sunset Boulevard that everyone knew was alive with pimps and whores, and probably nobody ever spent the whole night there since it was built. Or changed the sheets, for that matter.

  When they arrived the ambulance was still twenty blocks away. The motel manager, a seventy-year-old Cambodian hired hand, was guarding a door. His fifteen-year-old grandson was beside him guarding a window. Inside the motel room were two bodies, one very hot and bothered and screaming, the other getting cooler by the minute.

  "Okay, what's the problem?" Buckmore Phipps sighed, as both street monsters emerged lazily from the radio car, leaving their hats but taking their sticks.

  "Who's that screamin?" Gibson Hand wanted to know.

  "A lady's screaming," the boy said. "We won't let her out."

  "Why won't you let her out?" Buckmore Phipps asked, belching up some barbecue.

  He had to cool it with this soul kitchen safari. His GI tract was getting full of little holes. He belched again.

  The boy said something to the old man in Cambodian and then answered, "Because she killed a man in there and we thought you might like to talk to her."

  "She what?" Gibson Hand came to life.

  "I didn't kill nobody!" the whore wailed, when they got her quieted down and sitting in the only chair in the motel bedroom.

  The walls were mirrored and so was the ceiling. There was a mirrored headboard, and a mirrored door to the closet as well as to the bathroom.

  "Talk about a wilderness a mirrors!" Buckmore Phipps exclaimed.

  "Ever a good-sized earthquake, you'd be a plate a ground round, is what you'd be," Gibson Hand noted, looking at the ceiling full of glass.

  "I didn't kill nobodyl" the whore screamed.

  She was twenty years old, and almost honky white, Gibson Hand noted. She had a medium Afro, very frazzled at the moment, and black mascara streaming from her eyes to her lips to her pips, as Buckmore Phipps noted.

  Her pips were hanging there because she was naked to the waist. She didn't even know her wraparound skirt was the only piece of clothing on her body. The only reason it was still on her body is that the trick had said he liked it better when they "hiked them up." It reminded him of when he was a kid in the drive-in movies during the '50s. When the girls always "hiked them up" in case the ushers came along with flashlights. Hiked-up skirts made him as hard as a frozen cod, he had said.

  Roland Whipple had aptly selected as his last metaphor a frigid fish, which is what he was starting to resemble. He lay on his back with his dead eyes looking up at the mirrored ceiling that reflected back to his dead eyes a lifeless love muscle, which oddly enough had ceased operation more reluctantly than his overworked heart muscle. When that one stopped banging, so did he. And suddenly.

  The massive cardiac arrest struck with a seismic jolt. He ran his final mile with a world-class finishing kick. When he convulsed, the whore, who was riding on top, flew two feet off his rigid member and came down on his belly with a squishy plop.

  "Talk about a slam dunk!" she exclaimed. "Baby, that was a motherfucking ex-plosion!"

  But Roland Whipple never heard the applause. He was creaking like a bellows. The last of his air was wafting up toward his reflection on the ceiling. The mirrored headboard was wet from their thrashing, but Roland Whipple had fogged his last mirror.

  "You could say a lot a last words about a guy checking out like that," Buckmore Phipps said, looking down at Roland Whipple's corpse.

  "Can I go home now?" the whore wailed, still hysterical and unaware that her tits were bobbing around loose, and neither street monster was about to tell her.

  The corpse still wore a prophylactic. It was a fancy green one with little red rubber tentacles. He'd bought it in a dirty-book store on Hollywood Boulevard. The girls just loved them, the salesclerk had said.

  The whore was about to tell him it felt like she was being screwed with a can opener and she wanted an extra ten bucks for this shit, when he convulsed.

  "How do those funny things work?" Buckmore Phipps asked the whore. "I always ride bareback myself. Take a chance my way, though. Lots a..."

  "I wanna go home!" wailed the whore. "I didn't mean to cause a orgasm like that"

  "You have to say that cowboy died with his boots on, so to speak," Gibson Hand observed.

  "Lots a worse ways to go," Buckmore Phipps clucked. "It ain't real sad. More like a gunfighter on the streets a Laredo."

  "I didn't kill him!" wailed the whore.

  "Well, in a manner a speakin you did," Gibson Hand said. "But nobody's blamin you for it."

  Then the ambulance came and went. The paramedics took one look at the stiff and one of them said, "You have to admit, the man died with his boots on."

  Five minutes later the homicide team had taken charge and the whore was fully dressed, sitting in the back seat of the detective car with Al Mackey while they all waited for the coroner's meat wagon.

  The street monsters were pissed off because Martin Welborn had told them to hang around and try to keep the crowd of curious pimps, whores, tricks and hustlers down to a hundred or so.

  The cause of death went unquestioned by the detectives. It was not an uncommon way to die around these parts.

  "Okay, give us a phone number where we can reach you," said Al Mackey, writing a cursory death report. "And I don't want the number of some other motel or a massage parlor where you don't work, or the goddamn phone booth on the corner. I want a real phone number where you can be reached if we have any more questions."

  "Okay, okay," the whore cried. She was pulling everything out of her purse looking for the phone number of her mother, who had two out of three of her kids to raise. The last one she'd hustled off to her aunt.

  The whore was leafing through her trick book with quivering lip and shaking hands. She couldn't think. She started dropping things from her purse. There were phone numbers of good tricks to look for, bad tricks to avoid, high rollers and fat cats, good pimps who let you keep some money and bought you nice presents with part of the money they took from you, bad pimps who poured lighter fluid on your clothes and played with un-lighted matches when you weren't behaving. There were dozens of telephone numbers in that purse. Al Mackey amused himself by looking through them, hoping to find some movie star names, which most whores wrote in their trick books for prestige whether they banged the celebrities or not.

  Then he saw a familiar number. "Look at this, Marty. It's that number again." Then to the whore, "Where did you get this?"

  The whore looked at the scrap of paper. She screwed and unscrewed her brow. She put both hands on her Afro and tamped it down. She couldn't think. "Lessee, lessee," she said. "A trick? I don't know! I'm still shakin! I don't know my mother's phone number, even!"

  Martin Welborn looked at the studio telephone number and said, "How well did you know... Nigel St. Claire?"

  "Never heard that name," the whore said, and she seemed truthful enough. She was on one track only: momma's phone number. She was too rattled to be telling lies.

  "Whose number is this?" Martin Welborn asked.

  The whore looked at it again. "I don't know! Gud-damn! It ain't even my writin, Officer. It's probably some trick's number, is all it is. Prob'ly some other girl give it to me. I can't find momma's number!"

  She started crying and Martin Welborn said, "Calm down. I think we can get along without your mother's number if you can remember who gave you this number. Do you think you can do that?"

  "Am I gonna git to go home? I'm sorry that man's dead. I'll give you back his money. You kin give it to his wife. I never had nothin like this go wrong before!"

  "You can go home. Just as soon as you remember who gave you that telephone number."

  The whore looked at the scrap of paper again. She fumbled with a cigarette, and Al Mackey struck a match and lit it. She took a puff, another, and said, "This here's... I think this here's Lulu's writin... no... it ain't Lulu." She smoked for a few seconds and stared and then she said, "I know! It's Jill's handwritin! Yeah! Jill gimme this number. Sure!"

  "Is it a trick's number?" Al Mackey asked.

  "It ain't no trick. It's a... a... it's a movie studio. Whadda ya call them offices you go to to get in a movie? As an extra?"

  "A casting office," Martin Welborn said.

  "Yeah! You got to ask for a certain company. And a certain guy. I forget his name now. Jill knows his name."

  "Are you trying to get in the movies?" Martin Welborn asked.

  "Honey, everybody's tryin to git in the movies," the whore said, and that was true enough. "Jill said this dude in a big black car liked her looks and asked would she like to play in a movie. Course all the tricks say bullshit like that, but this one, this one give her twenny dollars. For nothin. Jist to call the number and make an appointment. Didn't want his dick sucked. Nothin. Said he liked her looks, is all. He was legit, she figgered. Drove one a those 'spensive cars."

  "A Rolls?" Al Mackey asked. Nigel St. Claire drove a blue Rolls. It might pass for black.

  "No," she said. "Not a Rolls. The other one. Same thing almost."

  "A Bentley?" Martin Welborn asked.

  "That's it. Guy drove a big black Bentley. The kind with mink floormats, all that. Said she thought he was a pimp at first, 'cept he was a white guy. She gimme the number in case I wanted to try to get in the movie too. I forgot the name a the movie company though."

  "Did Jill call him?" Al Mackey asked.

  "I dunno," the whore said. "Kin I go home now?"

  "Just as soon as you tell us where we can find Jill," Martin Welborn said calmly.

  "Gud-damn!" the whore cried. "You keep on sayin yes I kin go, no I can't go!"

  "This is almost the last question," Martin Welborn said. "What's Jill's last name, what's she look like, and where can we find her? Just to talk. She's not in trouble."

  "Well, in the first place, no whore got a last name. She's white. About my age, maybe younger. Long stringy blond hair. Does a lot a dope. Kind of a pretty girl though. Sometimes gives massages up to The Red Valentine on the Strip. But I don't want nobody to know I told you. Promise?"

  "We promise," said Martin Welborn.

  And now the whore, realizing she was indeed going home, started getting her shit together.

  "Listen, about that money the dead guy gimme? I earned it, right? I mean, he drove a big car. I bet his old lady don't need it no worse'n I do, right?

  Business is business."

  "You earned it all right," Martin Welborn said.

  Just then Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand came to the car, griping as usual.

  "Look, Mackey, it's gettin dark," Buckmore Phipps whined, which caused the Cambodian kid to nudge his grandfather and tell him in their mother tongue that the huge cop was afraid of the dark! And here they worked every night at the motel among pimps and prostitutes and cutthroats and never gave nightfall a thought!

  "We're almost finished," said Al Mackey. "A couple more minutes."

  "Couple more minutes," Gibson Hand moaned. "I got a date down in The Glitter Dome with a lady."

  "A lady at The Glitter Dome," Al Mackey muttered.

  "This one could fuck three tricks to death like that one in there," Gibson Hand bragged. "Calls herself Amazin Grace."

  Which caused Al Mackey's head to swivel. The Great Chain!

  Martin Welborn stepped out of the detective car to mollify the two street monsters. "Just keep the crowd contained for another minute," he urged. "She'll get scared if any pimps or whores start roaming around back here. We might be getting a lead on a very important murder case."

  "Murder case," Buckmore Phipps snorted. Sure. He figured the two detectives were just trying to line up a hot head job with the foxy little chippie.

  Gibson Hand didn't believe the likely story either.

  "What's the big murder case, Sarge?" he challenged.

  "The one where the movie big shot got murdered," Martin Welborn said. "Nigel St. Claire."

  "Nigel St. Claire!" Both street monsters exclaimed simultaneously.

  "That's the name!" Buckmore Phipps said.

  "I had it on the tip a my motherfuckin tongue all the time!" Gibson Hand said.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31