I shut the door. He saw the gore-dead gook and the maggot majorettes. He screamed. I rang up the reaction. Unfaked fear/ unlikely killer/don’t make him for Murder One yet.
The smell smacked him. His yellow skin grew green. He projectile-puked. I dodged food flecks. He brought up broiled eel cooked in kimchi.
I dragged him to the kitchen. I stood him by the sink. I coursed on some cold water. I dunked him and doused him and saw his skin grow back from gray-green.
He sputtered. He shook and shaked. I patted his pockets. I pulled out pills. He possessed Percodan sans prescription. I knew he knew something. I knew he’d snitch.
I pulled my beavertail sap. I patted my palms. I let him hear the weight whip.
“You know something. You know something happened here, so you thought you’d check it out. Come clean, and you walk. Fuck with me and I pop you for the perks.”
He shuddered. I patted my palms. I sap-slapped the side of my legs.
He shook. He moved away from a maggot mound. His voice vibratoed. He sounded off soprano. He came on like a queer and a quiff.
“Four days ago, maybe. I see narcs who bust me. They follow Jack. They get him in lobby and bring him up here. Then I hear screams.”
I poked him hard. I bounced my beavertail on my knees. He shivered. Shakedown Rick scared him.
“Who were the narcs? You know their names, because they popped you.”
The gook gulped. “Berchem and Mosher. They bad. They plant dope on me.”
Flashbacks floored me. Lauter. His hinky hard-on for Hush-Hush. Megan More with Gary Getchell. The funeral. Berchem and Mosher. Surreptitious surveillance. Two goons taking Megan More pix.
I walked to a wall phone. I called the Cold Case Unit. Dave picked up.
“Slatkin.”
I said, “It’s me. I need you to do something, no questions asked.”
“Well . . . O.K.”
Maggots tripped up my trouser legs. I beavertail-beat them and drove them down.
“There’s a homicide. It’s Narco and Lauter-connected. Cal Eggers is probably the only up-and-up guy in the division. I need you to call Tierney and get his O.K. to pull Eggers and hold him.”
Dave said, “O.K., but this sounds—”
I hung up. I passed the punk his pills. He ran out. I cultivated connections.
Narco goons. Linus and Leotis Lauter. Gary G. Megan More. Jack Jen-kin—the maggot-munched Meganphile.
Nyet—nothing clicked conclusive.
I walked to the door. I saw a panty pile atop a TV. I was sailing on the sex-violence nexus. I stopped and took three good sniffs.
COOL CAL EGGERS— couched in a cat box—an 8 by 12 interview room.
We watched through a 2-way. The mirror made Cal wiggle and weave. He was drip-dry and freon frosty. He vibed no guilt.
I thought so. Ditto Dave and Tim. We watched. We waited. We killed the air-conditioning and hitched up the heat. Cool Cal kept his coat on—you can’t sweat me.
Dave talked to Tierney. The mad mick sent a SID team out. They reconnoitered and ran through room 14. The pad—professionally print-wiped. The suicide note—a felonious fake. The maggot multitude made the man a full four days dead. The queer called it correct. Bill Berchem and Bob Mosher—not there at Narco—“out in the field.”
Cal wiggled and weaved. Cal winked at the mirror. We shared a look and walked in.
We chose chairs. We tilted them tableside. Cal slid his seat closer in.
I said, “It’s about Narco, and maybe Captain Lauter.”
Cal said, “You’re putting me to sleep.”
Tim said, “Nobody thinks you’re dirty.”
Cal said, “Wake me when it’s over.”
Dave said, “You weren’t in the unit when Lauter pulled those stunts with his son.”
Cal said, “Hit me with some new stuff I haven’t read in Hush-Hush.”
Tim tapped the table. “Bill Berchem and Bob Mosher. An actress named Megan More, and a dead slant named Jack Jen-kin.”
Cal craned his neck. Cal cracked his knuckles. Cal said, “Oh, shit.”
Dave drummed the table. “You’ve got interdepartmental immunity. That’s straight from Tierney. Beyond that, it’s chilled. We’re giving Jen-kin to the media as a suicide. We’ll make it stick.”
Cal called up some chutzpah. “Tell Tierney to jump me to captain and I’ll give up Berchem and Mosher. Tell him I want a done deal.”
I slid out my cell phone. Tim tapped Tierney’s number. Tierney took the call two rings in. Dave coughed up Cal’s chutzpah sotto voce. Tierney yelled, “Fuck it, O.K.!”
I filched my phone back. Cal shot me a shit-eater grin.
“So, Linus Lauter craves white lady and white snatch. He gets jacked on coke every night, sees Megan More on TV, and gets a jones. He contacts her through her Web site and gets a sick thing going with her. He thought he was seducing her, but she was seducing him. She knew the late Danny Getchell, she knew Linus was a cop who did snitch deals with him, she pumped him for information and got the word on his money-laundering deals before the Feds and the fucking L.A. Times did. Linus learned she was tight with Gary Getchell, and that she was going to leak shit on his deals and their affair to Gary, and he’d publish it in Hush-Hush.”
Megan More—miscegenist mama. Multicultural malfeasance coonfidential.
Now cut to Koreatown, now jump to Jack Jen-kin.
I said, “The homicide, Cal. The pad at 12th and Berendo.”
Cal coughed. “I got this from Linus. He’s wacked on coke and spilling all this paranoia. It seems that Megan More did Berchem, Mosher, and him, so now you’ve got three motivated fuckers out to get her. They heard about the gook’s ‘Master’s Thesis,’ learned that he’d sold practically zilch copies, but that it was full of so-called embarrassing shit. So, Linus tells me that Berchem and Mosher were going out to lean on the gook, and I guess things got out of hand.”
A flashback flamed me. Gary Getchell, per Donna D.:
“I hate that cooze, ’cause a friend of mine does, but there’s this avenging angel out there.”
“Avenging angel” Megan More—maybe. Lez-leched on Donna—her motive, maybe.
Captain Cal stood up. Tim said, “We’ve got to grab Berchem and Mosher.”
Dave said, “I’ll tell Tierney what we’ve got, but we’re on the hot-prowl case.”
Connections clicked and stopped stillborn. The Donna Diaspora, the Hot-Prowl Holocaust—shit shoved itself at me.
Cal said, “Rhino looks distracted. Want to bet he’s thinking about a certain actress?”
Dave said, “Yeah, I know that look.”
Tim said, “My kid’s a Megan More fan. This shit will fucking destroy him.”
I PLAYED HOT- PROWL hooky. Those connections clicked too close to Donna. I hopped by Holmby Hills. She was home. I rhino-riffed on contained coincidence. Donna dug my morbid Megan More tale. I said, let’s find her. She said, I’ll go.
I called R&I. They ran Megan More for rap sheets. Bam— Megan More, minor misdemeanant. Four Beverly Hills beefs. Heavy hooking at high-line hotels.
I called the DMV. I dunned them for Megan More’s address. They delivered: 8542 Charleville, Beverly Hills.
We rolled. Lack of sleep slapped me. An anxious undercurrent uncoiled underneath. My Donna deprivation diminished. That sex-violence nexus tipped to sex straight.
We found the pad: a prime provincial four-flat. We parked and dipped up to the door. Four rings, two knocks—no answer. Donna diddled the doorknob. The door popped in.
The living room: bleak, blank-walled, and bereft of furnishings. The kitchen: cleaned out completely. The bathroom and bedroom: bug-sprayed, Lysol-lapped, and furniture-free.
Donna dumped a clothes hamper. Soiled panties sailed out. Premium price tags were clipped to the crotch.
Donna said, “Ugh.”
I still stood on that nexus. I stopped and took three good sniffs.
THE BHPD BODED. I felt rhino-revived
and ready to rock. Those sniffs snared me. Sex scents as mainline meth.
We hit the cop shop. Cops recognized Donna. They winged out wolf whistles and lighthearted leers. A clerk clued us: The Vice guy’s Vic Vartanian. Find him by the files. He’s hard to miss.
We walked back. Cops caught sight of Donna. They called out TV titles. Donna called back, curtsied, and came on cute. There’s Vice cop Vic. He’s fucking with a file stack. He’s swarthy and sweaty and acne-addled. Blackheads bloomed on his big beak.
He saw us. He scoped my belt badge. Donna dinged him. He salaamed, sucked in his gut, and slapped himself dandruff-free.
He said, “So?”
I said, “Megan More. Ring a bell? I thought you might have a sheet on her.”
“I do. Crime reports, dispo reports, known haunts, the whole shmear. That said, I got to say I got something better.”
I whipped to his wavelength. Call him coy. Praise him and say pretty please.
Donna tapped me telepathic. “Could we see your paperwork, Detective? It would be a big help.”
Vic V. veered to a file bank. He draped over the drawers and pulled paper. He came back with some cardboard-bound sheets.
“Some clown wrote a half-assed book about Megan. I bought a copy to squeeze her with, if she ever tried hooking in my jurisdiction again.”
Chills churned through me. It was one wild nexus nudge. Donna held a hand out. Vic tossed her the text.
“You can sit at my desk and read it. You might enjoy it especially, Ms. Donahue.”
TORRID TEXT. The Mephistophelian Megan More Movie. Megan, crazed on crack-cocaine and fulsome full disclosure. Megan’s mea culpa and Mein Kampf. Jack Jen-kin—her barroom bard and bothersome Boswell. Her un-Christian Korean konfessor.
We read together. We sat chair to chair, cheek to cheek. Donna’s scents soared and socked me. Honeysuckle hair and sandalwood soap and full-bore pheromones. All our lopsided love Meganized and poured back onto the page.
Dig:
MEGAN MORE WAS A MAN!!!!! He was born a big-dick bohunk in Billings, Montana. Mikhail Metrovich was his name. He looped to L.A., age eighteen. His shvantz topped the tape at sixteen sizzling inches. Mikhail male-prostied. He called himself Mighty Man, Mikey Man, Magnum Man. He serviced surly studio studs and tamed them with his tapeworm-long appendage. They took his tapeworm in to their tonsils. They bounced as bottoms to his top. He mulched men at MGM, he popped poofs at Paramount, he cornholed cats at Columbia. Fruits freed themselves and climbed from the closet to cloister with him. He outed outrageous numbers. His clients cliqued up and shared notes. Paranoia ran pandemic. These Hollywood hellions hated themselves. Mikhail turned studio studs into quivering queers and simpering sissies. Their self-hatred sizzled. They vowed revenge.
The studio studettes got some gelt and hired an A-rab assassin. The cat was a cold camel-fucker. He had terrorist ties. He was movie-mad and one mean Muslim. He said, “You give me role as action hero, and I cut off his dick. Better to maim than to kill.”
The unctuous studio un-studs underwrote his plan. Khalid Khareem cornered Mikhail and cut off his dick. The studio stupes commissioned a script. Catch this: Khalid Khareem as Israeli agent Israel Bonds. Soon to star in Jerusalem Jihad and Tel Aviv Terror.
THEN—SEPTEMBER 11!!!!!
A dragnet dragged in Khalid Khareem. The Feds found him and filleted him and fucked him fundamental. He got the big bone to hop heavenward and hail Allah. He sat in his cell. He mauled his wrists with a mattress spring. He hurtled to heaven or hell.
Mikhail viciously vowed revenge. He set sail on the sex-violence nexus. He decided to disguise himself as a woman. He stormed to Stockholm. He hooked down hormone shots. Surgeons altered his Adam’s apple and shaved his big bones bare. He caught cutting-edge technology. Doctors plowed him the best plumbing. He became a woman—intractably indistinguishable.
SHE shot back to Hollywood. She sought soft-core porn gigs and got them. She met Danny Getchell. She met Gary G. They dug the amazing Amazon. She urged them to dig dirt on the studio stupettes. They sucked up to the soaring sorceress and agreed. She continued as their consort. She hid her boldly big-dicked and positively pestilent past. She became a lascivious lipstick lezzie. She laid siege to lezbo nitespots. She munched muff in Malibu and boffed bush in Bel-Air. She took on TV roles. She met Donna Donahue on Murder Most Gently. She shot her crazy crush Donna’s way. Donna said, “Back off, Butch—it’s not my scene.” Megan More moped off miffed and bid Donna bye-bye, bereft.
BUT:
The rejection rankled and reawakened her. She refined and reinvented her revenge. The studio gonifs gelded her. She made them whimper womanlike. They begged for her beef torpedo. They suffered postcoital remorse and regret en masse. They made her a for-real woman. She’d woman-whip them and coldly castrate them and wrap up her revenge.
The manuscript ended. The climactic cliffhanger: no more demon details on revenge.
I tingled. I looked at Donna. Her hurricane-hurled hazel eyes hit me.
She said, “Brave new fucking world.”
I said, “Yes. It’s that time again.”
WE NABBED THE known-haunt list. We knew Megan More lit out on the lam. We mapped out our meshugina mission. We crazy crisscrossed L.A.
We ducked by dyke dens. We hit Linda’s Little Log Cabin, Biff’s Boiler Room, Mary’s Munchbox, and Florence’s Flame. Fuck— no murderous man-woman Megan More, ratched up on revenge.
We hit Helen’s Hideout, Claire’s Clam Club, Brenda’s Brig, and Sapphic Sal’s. No six-foot succubus, no mogul-mauled monster within.
We hit June’s Jungle Room. Wacs and Waves and Marine Corps mamas moved in on fawnlike femmes. We hit Shondrika’s Shangri-La. Mau-Mau music metastasized. Soul sisters slow-danced and slipped tongues. No white wench Megan More here.
We popped to Pacific Palisades. We nailed a non sequitur. Megan made time at Guru Guraji’s Ashanti Ashram.
Wow—a whitewashed old adobe. Two floors flared around a calm courtyard. Fountains and floating flamingos. Parrots perched in palm trees. A trumped-up tropical scene.
A paved parking lot. Non sequitur number 2: Mucho movie vans. What’s this—Sam’s Sound, Lee’s Lighting, Ken’s Camera.
I parked by a purple Pontiac. The plates read “PRN STR.” Donna said, “I’m getting this feeling.”
We beat feet to the building. We perused the perimeter. We wrapped our reconnaissance to the back. We watched window light leap. We heard salacious sex noise. It was nihilistic and nasty and amplified apocalyptically.
We barged in a back door. We heaved down a hallway. We slid side doors ajar and perv-peeped the cracks. We saw lurid lighting and big boom mikes and cameras catching close-ups. We saw full-bore fucking and filthy fellating and groovy group gropes. We saw ashramites in turquoise turbans. They laid lights and moved mikes and hauled Handycams.
We dipped doors. We saw double-digit dicks and bravura breasts augmented out to here. We saw daisy chains and dalmatian dogs doing women. We lunged to the last left-hand door. Donna dipped it deep. There’s Megan More lez-locked and loving it lewd.
It’s a four-on-one fever. It’s torrid tongue-kissing and beavers bushwhacked. It’s major muff miscegenation. There’s Nettie Negress, Lola Latina, Charlotte the Chinkess. It’s a mountainous Megan More cluster fuck.
I barged in. The scene got me sex-sizzling and hopping homo-phobic. I was apoplectically ambivalent and turgidly turned on.
I lashed down light poles. I brought down boom mikes. I tripped tripods and crashed cameras—kerrack! Turquoise turban-heads tore out, tearful. The climactic cluster fuck climbed off the mattress. The multicultural mound made for the hallway. Only Megan More held back.
The room was rhino-wrecked. Capsized cameras, mangled mikes, laid-out lighting. There’s a pulverizing postsex silence. There’s Megan, there’s Donna, there’s me.
Donna shut the door. I heard a post-roust rampage outside. The porno parasites poured down the hallway. Vans vamoosed outsid
e.
Megan moved off the mattress. Megan got into a mauve muumuu. Megan said, “Hi, Donna dear.”
Donna deadpanned her. I said, “LAPD.”
The horrible he-she harrumphed. “Your Rodney King number did not go unnoticed. I’ve been dealing with you fascists for years.”
I said, “Like Captain Lauter?” Donna said, “Why did you run?”
Megan mewed at me. “Making erotic films is not illegal. The ashram people can sue LAPD.”
I rhino-raked her. “They won’t. They’ll blow their ‘alternate lifestyle’ clout if they do.”
Megan moped to the mattress. She fluttered, flounced, and flung herself down. She sulked sissified. She boded borderline bored.
“Tell me why I should talk to you. Give me one good reason.”
Donna dinged her. “I’ve got a good shot at a series next season. I’ll make sure you get work.”
Megan milked the moment. “Oooh, dearest, that’s wonderful. Can I do love scenes with you?”
Donna flipped her-him the finger. Get bent and butt out, Butch!
I said, “We read Jack Jen-kin’s manuscript. Jack’s dead, by the way. Your old Narco pals chilled him.”
Megan mewed. Megan muttered. Megan made the sign of the cross.
Donna said, “Lay it all out. I’ll be needing a female sidekick.”
The “female” flattered and floored the hip he-she. Megan lolled back and laid her legs out. Goooooood gams—some certified surgeon’s art.
“O.K., so I ran. I saw these Narco cops I fucked at Danny Getchell’s funeral. Believe me, this girl knows when it’s time to cut her losses.”
He-she boned Bill Berchem and Bob Mosher. She gender-bent them bad. It french-fried and freaked them out.
I said, “Keep going.”
Megan tossed her tresses. Her blondness bloomed—some cool colorist’s art.
“So I fucked those guys and Linus Lauter. They used to tap all my Web sites, and somehow they got ahold of Jack Jen-kin’s thesis. Weeeeel, you can just guess how it made them feel. They dallied with a former man, they couldn’t live with it, so I guess they had to pressure Jack to get his copies back. Something happened, and Jack wound up dead.”