Steve stirred his planter’s punch and braced his back into the bar. “I’m sure there’s lots of angles in this thing. Yolanda told me the girls are hooking so they can bring their families up from Mexico and that Jordan will smuggle them across the border, get them kitchen jobs, and take a cut of their pay. I can’t complain. He’s promised me three dishwashers off his next run.”
I said, “Don’s a flicking sweetheart.”
“Yeah, and he may be the next welterweight champ. I heard he’s fighting Honeybear Akins in the fall.”
“And Mickey Cohen’s got a piece of his contract.”
“Right, which is not exactly a news flash.”
“Does Mickey have some truck with Don?”
“He can calm him down and get him to call off some of his crazier stunts. Why?”
I gulped Gilbey’s and Vermouth. “Nothing, but let me run some names by you. Jack Hanson, Chick Nadell, James B. Harris, Ted Jaffe, Russ Pearce–”
Steve stopped me. “All Luau regulars, all men with big fucking money.”
I said, “All burglary victims that Don and Johnny’s girls picked up here, all married men too embarrassed to cop to the fact that they let whores into their pads and got B&E’d as a result.”
Steve said, “Jesus fucking Christ.” I said, “No–Daniel Douglas Getchell. And listen–Johnny and Don are operating a bit too freely in Beverly Hills. Can you throw some light on that?”
Steve drained his drink and munched a Maraschino cherry. “Clinton Anderson’s got a regular john thing going with Yolanda. He met her here, and she told me thatJohnny knows all about it.”
Circling circles. Puzzle pieces popping into place.
Chief Anderson chewed up Ben Luboff at Delores’s Drive-In. Ben blew the word: He’d dished me dirt on Don Jordan’s doings. The Chief charged him to silence. The print pros took my prints off the closet door. The Chief chewed things over and decided not to swear out a warrant on the sweaty swish homo-cide. The Chief wanted to check me out up close and clip me–I might be Hush-Hush hip to his yen for Yolanda. I might make him as a Mexican whoremonger and Stompanato stooge.
Steve made himself a massive mai-tai. He said, “Lana, it was so goooooooood with you, baby.”
I said, “Call Yolanda. Tell her I can get her a permanent green card, if she beds a guy who doesn’t like girls.”
I was Hush-Hush hot. I was warrant-wanted and baited by a BHPD bounty. I traded my boss Buick for a busboy’s boogied-out wheels. A real congo coach: coon maroon paint matched to matted mink seats. I left the Luau in lieu of a new hideout hut.
I rocked up to the Rock’s pad on Roscomare Road and rang the bell. Rock opened up–regal and righteously razzed off in a royal blue kimono. I caught sight of a kimono-clad cutie behind him–a pretty punk pouting into page two of today’s paper.
Rock ripped into me. “You’re getting bold, Danny. I usually find you going through my garbage or trying to crawl in my bedroom window.”
The playmate flipped me the finger. I blew him a bitchy kiss and latched a look on his Herald-Express. Wow! A sharp shot of the sweaty swish sheet-shrouded and dead.
Rock reripped me. “An old friend of mine killed himself last night, and I’m in no mood to fuck around with a lowlife like you.”
I deflated his diatribe. “I’m moving in with you. You’re going to hide me out, so I can flick Ben Luboff for fucking me, and fuck him for fucking you with that kid you flicked at the Fine Arts last night.”
Rock rocked, rolled, listed, lurched, and landed in my arms.
I moved in. I moved out of my Methedrine mode with Miltown and Macallan scotch. I made machinations to save myself and rescue the Rock.
I called Mickey Cohen. I tipped him to Candy Barr’s barrage of shit behind his back and begged him to call off Don Jordan. Mickey tossed a tantrum and told me he’d try. I called in a cautiously coded note to Clinton Anderson. I told the Chief’s chief chump to check this: I chomp at the chance to be the Chief’s chief informant–and I need to stay alluringly alive. Let’s talk later– I’ve got lots of lovely dirt to drop on the BHPD.