MOONLIGHTING MEXICAN MAIDS MAKE FOR MISCHIEVOUS–
Ben noshed my napkin note and blew me a big bicarbonate kiss.
2
The Luau:
A tiki-torchlit restaurant rendezvous on Rodeo Drive. A mecca for movie-biz mavens and Beverly Hills business boys.
Big booths and baroque backlighting. Tricked-up tropical trappings. Rambunctious rum drinks and rumaki sticks at the bamboo bar.
A polyurethane Polynesian paradise–with peekaboo posts perched behind wall panels by the bar and the ladies’ too.
Steve Crane owned the Luau. Steve loved to lurk and look. He voyeur-vamped the joint every night.
Steve owed me. I bought him out of a blow-job beef back in ’54. Ben Luboff tried to trap him with a 16-year-old San Quentin quail. Steve let me lurk in peeper perpetuity.
I was lurked out behind the ladies’ lay. My peephole post provided a prime view. I saw Helen Hayes hitch up her hose. I saw the Misty June Christy crimp a crisp twenty and crib coke up her nose. I ducked down a dark panel passage and peeped out a peephole right behind the bar.
Dreamy drunks adrift in demerara rum. Don Jordan fretting a frosted fruit frappe. Demonic Don from the Dominican Republic–a maladroit mulatto now in moonlight mode with a melange of Mexican maids.
Donkey Don: rumored to reach twelve inches. Devil Don: rumored to run a right-wing death squad back in the D.R. A ripe recent rumor: Mickey Cohen owned a prime piece of Don’s prizefighting percentage.
I bored my eyes in on the bar. Don downed his daiquiri and doodled up his napkin. Three wetback wenches wiggled up to him.
Luscious Latinas pulling out va-va-va-voom volts. A stellar stable too starkly dark to strike up biz in Steve Crane’s lily-white Luau.
Steve stuck to a strict B-girl Bill of Race Rights. Negro: Nyet, nein, no, not at my place. White: Welcome, what will you have? Latin: Light-skinned Lupes and Lucitas only.
Something was twisted two twirls off.
It hit me:
Two twists in twin frocks fresh out of Frederick’s of Hollywood. Pulchritudinous–but not pulsingly so. The supreme señorita: languidly lissome in Lana Turner’s light blue gown from last month’s Oscar show.
Lana Turner:
Steve Crane’s ex. Movie-star mama to Steve’s starstruck daughter, Cheryl. Steve was still starved for Lana’s lewd love. Steve couldn’t stomach thoughts of Johnny Stompanato sticking it to her.
I panted and peeped out my peephole. A methamphetamine breath mist glazed up the glass. I wiped it off and watched a waiter walk up to the mass magnifica mama.
He passed her a piece of paper. Don Jordan passed his other prosties Mickey Mouse–size Minox minicameras.
What the fuck–
The main mamacita mainlined her way out of the bar. I peephole-patched a path through the main passageway and kept her within peeping range. She walked out to the back parking lot and stepped over to Steve Crane. Steve was poised by a powder blue Packard Caribbean.
I pushed out a passageway panel and pulled myself into a storeroom. I pushed aside some rum crates and pried open a window. Whisper-close: Steve and the stark dark stunner.
I loitered. I lurked. I lolled my head below the window ledge and listened.
Steve said, “–come on, you know the deal. Don can run you and the other girls out of here, but only–”
The girl said, “Pleeeese, Mr. Crane. I don’t know what joo want me to say.”
Steve said, “Don’t play coy, Yolanda. We’ve been through this before.”
Yolanda said, “Well, all right, but joo should say exactly what joo–”
“Does Johnny ever hit Lana or Cheryl?”
“No, he just yells at them. It eeesn’t very nice, but–”
“Are you still mailing the letters that Lana writes him?”
“Well, yes . . .”
“Love letters, right?”
“Well . . . I don’t . . .”
“Yolanda, you told me that she dips the letters in perfume, and you saw her drop in curly little hairs when she sealed the envelopes.”
Man-o-Manischewitz! What a pussy-whipped provocateur and masochism-mangled motherfucker!
Yolanda said, “Please, Mr. Crane. I don’t like to–”
“Yolanda, I want you to give me the next letter that Lana gives you.”
“No. No, no, no, no no. I cannot do that to Miss Lana.”