We restlessly reconnoitered Rodeo Drive. We learned the layout. We laid lazy eyes on the fur shop and watched two lowlifes in a late-model Lincoln loop around it themselves.
They looked larcenous. They looked lizardlike. They loop-thelooped and licked their lips and surveilled every surface in sight.
They surveilled serpentlike. We surveilled them serviceably. They lizard-lunched at Lmnny's Delicatessen. We noshed knockwurst at the next table and tallied their talk for two days.
The lizards loved liver and onions. They ordered it and ooh-lala'd and went over their plans plenty loud. They conclusively confirmed Demon Dot: the heist would hatch at 6:oo P.M. -- 12/27.
We suspended our surveillance on Christmas Eve. Christlike Chris threw a party to praise the Prince of Peace.
Bogie got bombed on his peach-pit potion and peppermint schnapps. He chugalugged it and chanted Chinese chants to beat the Big C. Huxley hooked down hallucinogens. He held forth and heaped judgment on Jesus. He praised that prize prick Pontius Pilate and his "Paranoid Paradigm." It pissed off Oscar Levant. Oscar opted to ossify some "Existential Eggnog." He tossed in herbs, hash hunks, and Hungarian wine. The shit sheared Crazy Chris. He spouted aphorisms and spun around aphrodisiacal. The marines lurched from his libidinous assaults and went AWOL.
Sammy stayed stone sober and steamed over satanic Sinatra. He reissued his old indignities in insistently intimate detail and insisted that I listen. He flogged and flayed his own flesh bare. He catalogued catastrophic cruelties and cringed at his own compliance. He christened his crucifier the "Christmas Anti-Christ" and called him on Chris's phone.
Sammy crawled to the creep. He cradled the phone and crossed himself. He would have waved wolfsbane if he'd had it.
He said, "Frank says he'll meet you. You pick the time and place."
I said, "The motel by the Club Diablo. Midnight on the twentyseventh."
Sammy mumbled into the mouthpiece. I mused on my moment to meet Satan on his own torrid turf.
5
We went in well armed. We masqueraded as marines and made it a military maneuver.
The marines marked for molestation left some shit at the shrine. We draped ourselves in their dress blues and packed their PX-pilfered pistols. I hid my Hudson Hornet and hot-wired a Vauxhall van. Monster masks made us menacing and marked us as men not to mess with.
I went in as the Wolfman. Sammy crept in as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. We moved our minkmobile into the back lot and barged in the back door.
5:46 P.M.
Fourteen minutes to filch furs and fill up the van. Fourteen minutes to fuck the fur-filchers already assigned to the job.
We monster-minced down a mink-lined hallway. We froze by the freezer vault. Al Teitelbaum latched eyes on us and laughed long and loud.
He howled and heaved for breath. He broke a sweat and swatted his legs. He swayed and pointed to a pile of pelts on the freezer floor.
He hocked into a hanky. He said, "Go, you fershtunkener furmeisters. Go, before I die of a fucking coronary."
Sammy popped the pelts into a large laundry bag. I shot my eyes into the showroom. I scanned scads of sensational sables and choice chinchillas and magnificent minks. Our paltry pile of pelts paled in considered contrast.
Teitelbaum said, "Hit me once, tie me up, and get out of here. Your theatrics are wearing me thin."
I pulled my piece and pistol-whipped him to pulp. I decimated his dentures. Blood dripped on my dress blues.
Teitelbaum tipped into dreamland. I dropped him in the freezer and gagged him with a gorgeous gaggle of furs. Sammy gloated and glared at the ofay oppressor. He muttered mau-mau musings and metamorphosed into the Creature from the Coon Lagoon.
5:51 P.M.
Sammy lugged the laundry bag back to the Vauxhall van. I shifted into overdrive and shot through the shop.
I manhandled minks and moved them out fast. I stole stellar stacks of stoles. I glommed glorious globs of glistening fur and furnished the van tip to tailpipes. I made myself a millionaire in one machination and emancipated Sambofied Sammy.
5:57 P.M.
I lashed up a last stack of stoles. The real robbers ripped through the front door--rápidamente.
I froze. Sammy froze by the freezer. The real robbers shared a "Shit" look. They shook their eyes around the showroom--shabbily shorn and sacked.
They whipped out Walter PPK's and popped me point-blank. My stack of stoles absorbed their ammo. The Creature from the Coon Lagoon crouched and pulled his piece. Six rounds ripped the real robbers and ratched them into a raccoon-coat rack.
We wrapped the bodies in raccoon and rolled them under a rug. Sammy dug the scene and dubbed it a "Massacre in Mink."
We moved our minkmobile to Mexico--mucho fast. Sammy negrofied Sinatra songs and arced them out a cappella.
He verse-vilified Sinatra and lynched him with licentious lyrics. He sang scatological scat and scoffed at Frank the freewheeling freak. He excoriated and exorcised his ex-slavemaster extemporaneously.
"Fly me to the moon, with my guinea goons, I ejaculate a little quick, some say I come too soon! In other words, hold my gland!"
"It's a quarter to three, all I feel is hate and bad self-pity. So set 'em up, Joe, 'cause Ava left me for a well-hung Negro."
"Come fly with me, come fly, come fly away! We'll abuse some squares in our Vegas lairs and pretend that we're not gay!"
Sammy ripped, rocked, roiled, rolled, and resurrected his nappy-headed niggerhood. We sidled south as psychopathic sidekicks.
We rolled into a rest stop and stripped to our Street clothes. We cruised south, crossed the border, and tipped into Tijuana.
Dig:
Sweaty swarms of tattered toddlers tackling tourists and latching onto them leechlike. Syphilitic sailors cliqued up outside clap clinics. Punks peddling pot and peyote plants in plain sight. Vandals vending vibrating dildos and donkey show tix. Starving peons stretched out on the Street from stark starvation. Punks picking their pockets and plucking their teeth out with penknives. Hermaphroditic he-shes huddled in haphazard hordes. A chain of chancre-sored chiquitas chipping by a chop suey joint. Spiffy spic cops in natty Nazi jackboots and jet-black outfits on every corner.
Oooooh, Daddy-o! I was digging it all, desensitized!
We dipped by the Club Diablo. Dig the nifty neon sign: a little Lucifer with high horns and a trident-trimmed dick.
11:37 P.M.
We checked into the cheesy Chinchinagua Motel and chatted up the manager. He was one choice cholo. I fed him some chump change and scammed some scalding skinny.
A "Mr. Duhamel" called and confirmed his room reservation. He and his "friend Frank" would be by and bop to their back bungalow by midnight.
I laid a mink coat on the Mex motherfucker. He muttered "Madre mIa" and groveled ground-low. Sammy grabbed him and laid down the law: pass us your passkey to the back bungalow and let the chumps check in. Don't mention the boss banditos who just bought you off.
The Mex murmured, "Si, sí" and passed us a passkey. We bipped to the back bungalow and bopped in unbidden. I wiggled a wall switch. Light leaped on and launched cockroach convoys out of control.
They bug-scuttled, buzzed, and bounced off the bed. They flipflopped and flew off the floor. They crawled and crunched like ripe Rice Krispies under our feet.
11:48 P.M.
We reloaded our revolvers. Sammy syphoned a syringe full of Lysol-like lysergic acid. I juked out to the van and juked back with jumper cables.
We clipped the lights off and climbed into a closet. Cockroaches flipped off the floor and flew into our mouths. We gagged and hacked ourselves hoarse. We reflex-retched and bit the bastards into puslike pulp. We spat out roach residue and heard a rumble--right by the bungalow door.
A V-8 voom. Tire treads grinding gravel. Vigorous voices. A key-in-door cacophony. THE Voice: "Some fucking dump. And check those bugs on the dresser."
A barrel-chesty baritone: "I'll check the closet. Maybe
there's some spray."
I scooped up a scad of roaches and got ready to rock. Sammy popped into a pile-driver pose. The closet door swung and swept outward.
I bug-bombed Bob Duhamel. Bugs buzzed into his mouth and dive-bombed down his throat and crawled all over his crew cut. Sammy slammed him in the slats and slipped his gun from his hip holster.
Bad Bob flailed and flapped his hands. He belched bug bile and gurgled goo. He hit the floor hard. Sammy slipped a beavertail sap off his belt and bopped him in the balls. I unhooked his handcuffs and hitched his hands behind his back.
Sinatra watched it all wicked wise. He swirled a martini and swayed sweet to some bedazzled beat. He blew smug smoke rings coooooolly concurrent. Frigidaire Frank--the hip hero and ad for greasy grace under pressure.
He said, "What have we got here, the Lone Ranger and Tonto? What's shakin', kemo sabe?"
Bugs bopped out of Bad Bob's mouth. Sammy slapped slivers of tape across it and muffled him mute. I slipped the syringe out of Sammy's shirt pocket and watched shimmering shit shoot up the shaft.
Sinatra said, "Are you clowns on the junk? Sambo, I'm shocked, and I may just have to snitch you off to the NAACP."
I laughed and lunged at him. We collided. I got martinimottled and smoke-smacked. I grabbed a grip of greasy hair and tore off Frank's toupee. Frank squealed. I squeezed his neck and nailed my needle into a vibrating vein. I pushed the plunger and jacked jungle juice in his jugular.
Sammy said, "You're in for a wild ride, Paisan."
I tossed Freon Frank on the frayed bedspread. Bugs sidled on his Sy Devore suit. Frank was fricasseed, french-fried, and fresh out of cool. I froze the moment in my mind.
Sammy juked the jumper cable cords out to Frank's Lincoln and whipped the hood wide. He leaned on the gas. He bolted the blue hooks to the battery box. Sparks spit out. I slid the cords under the door slit and shut us in torture-tight. Sammy tore the tape off Bad Bob's mouth. I ran the red hooks right under his eyes.
Sparks spun out and spanked him. They sizzled and singed and browned his brows.
Frank said, "I am personal friends with many well-placed men in La Cosa Nostra."
Bad Bob said, "You wouldn't dare."
I hitched the hooks to his hands and hurled him some horsepower. He vibrated to V-8 volts and flapped on the floor.
I unhitched the hooks and watched him undulate. I said, "All of it. No lies and no omissions."
Bad Bob shook with the shimmy-shimmy shock-induced shakes--and flew with a flinty, "Fuck you."
I anchored the hooks to his ankles. Bad Bob buckled and bent back and did a spectacular spine-spin.
I unhooked the hooks. I heard him ululate. His pelvis popped. His legs lashed. He spasm-spun and spit sparks.
Sammy said, "Dig it!" He was hopped up on honky hate. He looked like that jigabooJomo Kenyatta.
Freon Frank was frazzled in fright. The acid was assimilating assiduously.
Bad Bob yipped and yelled, "All right!"
I bent low. Bad Bob blurted and blubbered at me. His tongue and teeth palpitated off his palate and pried out words prestissimo:
"Linda blew everything when she shook down Frank to get her song some play--then Skip Towne got hip to it and tipped you off--and you wrote your piece in Hush-Hush--and Miller Leavy read it and figured that Frank's name would give him some flicking marquee value--and he could get a probe going--but then he learned what Linda really had on Frank and got fucking scared-- and I don't know what that was, but. . ."
Leavy and Bad Bob bopped back to the Barbara Graham case. Dot Rothstein ran with them. Liz Scott scoffed at the skinny that Linda and Frank were fresh stuff. She tattled the truth to me. She said, "Linda and Frank had innings going back to '52"/"Linda had some dirt on him, and she used it."
Barbaric Barb murdered Mabel Monahan. The date of doom: 3/9/53.
?????
I bent down to Bad Bob's level. I waved my cable hooks. I caught a wiff of scorched skin.
"Does the dirt that Linda has on Frank pertain to the Barbara Graham case?"
Bad Bob nodded No and went knock-kneed. My internal lie detector measured him as mendacious. I hitched my hooks to his nose.
He danced. He did the Voltage Voom and the Convoluted Convulsion. He did the Stultified Stomp and the Sinful Sizzle and the Gyroscope Gyration. He did the Tijuana Termination Tango--
I unhitched the hooks.
Bad Bob blubbered, blathered, and bled. I renamed him Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Sammy said, "Dig it!"
Frank squirmed and squealed, "Mommy!"
Bad Bob almost bought it. I couldn't kill him yet. He played into my Pedro Pimentel plan.
I said, "Lay out the rest of it."
Bad Bob noodled his nose on the floor and fluffed out a follical flame. He ffipped away from me and laid it out largo:
"Linda Lansing runs shakedowns on politicians in L.A. with Dot Rothstein. Pedro Pimentel--the Police Chief down here-- he bankrolls them. The spic we shot in the parking lot was Pedro's kid brother--he was a plant at the Dining Car--but I didn't know that. Lots of lawyers and politicians eat at the Car and talked around him because they thought he didn't speak English--and Miller Leavy picked up lots of tips that way. Getchell you fuck-- you pulled that fucking reefer number and flicked things up--and Frank fucked things up by insisting that we kick your ass at the Car--and I don't know where Linda is--and her and Dot are into all kinds of shady shit--and all this started because we didn't want Linda to spill what she had on Frank--and I came down here to frost you out and frost things out with Pedro 'cause we killed his fucking brother by accident and. . . and. . . we.. . tr-tr-tr . . ."
His traumatized transmission trailed off into trills. He passed out from aftershock affliction.
He didn't know that Linda Lansing slid off to Slice City. He didn't label Linda as an heistress hot to move millions in mink. He refused to reveal the ripe revelation now ripping me:
Frantic Frank and Barbaric Barb.
?????
Frantic Frank squirmed and squealed, "Mommy!" His eyes: blurred blue and dialated from diethylamide.
Sammy said, "Dig it!"
Frank Sinatra:
Uncontrollably uncool. Umbilically unattached and hopelessly unhip from here to Hoboken.
He moaned for his mama. He mewed for his Mafia mentor "Momo" Giancana. He pounded his pillows and petitioned Raymond L. S. Patriarca--the prize prick with the Providence Mob.
Sammy tortured and tormented him. Sammy shanked him for the shit he shot his way. Sammy shucked him on his wives and the way they wanted it wild and blasphemously black. Frank moaned for mama and made mea culpa motions and put out papist pleas to Pope Pius.
I dipped over to the Diablo Club. I downed some Dos Equis and bought some boss burro act artifacts. A cook cooked me up some cat-meat carnitas to go. A burro handler hipped me to Pedro Pimentel's private number.
I called the taco-phile Tojo of T.J. and told him I had Teitelbaum's furs. I tantalized him and told him I took down ten times Linda Lansing's take. Tojo told me to meet him tomorrow. I said I'd slide by his slave camp and move in my mountain of mink. Tojo told me he'd measure the mound and meet me with mucho money.
I moseyed back to the motel. Frank was moaning for mama. Sammy was making like the Marquis De Mau-Mau. I booted Bad Bob into the bathroom and fed him the cat-meat carnitas. He went at it carnivorously. I didn't want him to die. I had to toss him to Tojo before he purchased a pass on Pancho the Pedophile.
I loped out to the lilac Lincoln and ran the radio. I latched onto an L.A. station and lucked out on a late-nite newscast. No news: nothing on the massacre in mink or lashed Linda Lansing. My bet: Bad Bob's boys in the BHPD buried it all. I could buy out of my bind and wave bye-bye with a big bundle of cash.
Noxious night air noodled my noggin. Some thread in my theories thrashed and threatened to lash my logic on the Linda Lansing end. My brain broiled. My mind misfired. I couldn't cook a contradiction up in conte
xt.
I noxiously night-dreamed. I ran the radio dial and got reverential with Rachmaninoff. I pictured a perfect world.
I deliver the dough to Dot Rothstein and pay off my perfidies. I pop down to Paraguay and purchase a palace and some peons. I instigate indentured servitude. I install myself as El Jefe. I spawn the spic Hush-Hush--Husho-Husho en Espaflol. El Presidente Strongman Stroessner stridently defends me. I defame the democratic-minded devils out to oust him. I slather slander in a land with no libel laws. I lance libidinous Latins and lynch leftist losers in print. I pride myself as a prime anticommie. I hobnob with nervous Nazis assimilated in Asunción. I hump their halfspic/half-nordic, radically race-mixed and ravishing daughters. I spot a special Hush-Hush Hilda. She hatches a hole in my heart. I build the Berchtesgaden West as our love lair. We breed a brood of bright little Getchellites. I give them thick thesauruses on their first birthdays.
Oooooh, Daddy-o! I was digging it all, dystopian!
I bopped back to the bungalow. I freeze-framed Frigidaire Frank--
He was beaming bemused and be-bop beatific. His blue eyes blazed and blended with fabric flecks on his shiny sharkskin suit. He bowed and bestowed a benediction.
"I forgive you your transgressions, for I have been to the high mountaintop. I am the way and the truth and the life. Walk with me and you shall not walk alone."
Sammy said, "That acid shit misfired. The motherfucker thinks he's Jesus."
6
Tojo's burritofied Buchenwald:
Five football fields under a tortilla-tamped tin roof. A sunken sun magnet in the middle of a massive mesa. Nine hundred niflos broiled brown. Bright-eyed brats brought in to sew serapes and loom lacework and shear sheet metal into shiny souvenirs for burro show sharpies. Labor by lathe, loom, and laundry press. Stoop work at standing stations. Slaves slotted down fifty rows roamed by rough boys with bullwhips and Bulgarian machine guns.
Kiddie casas off cattycorner. Corrugated cardboard--courtesy of Carl's TV in Carlsbad, California.