Pain:
Lavishly localized. Bopping off my bit bone to my balls. Pillaging my pill-headed haze.
Dot said, “Did you kill her?”
I blotted blood on my blue blazer. “No, did you?”
Dot handed me a hankie. “I loved her, sweet cakes. We had an occasional thing going, and we were making money together.”
I hankied up my hurt hand. “How?”
“I was pimping her to some politicians who could do the Sheriff’s Department some good.”
My pain pianissimoed. The Miltown mix was melting it mellifluously.
Dot said, “She was shaking down Frank Sinatra. She shot him some sex, then threatened to turn him off if he didn’t get her song some big play.”
Nix, nyet, and no way. Liz Scott shared some shakedown shit with me and laid it out large on Linda. Viably verbatim:
“She’d put in some innings with Frank, going back to ’52.”/”She had some dirt on him, and she used it.”
Dot stared at me–stock still and stoic. “Care to tell me what you were thinking? And what you know about all this?”
I shrugged like I didn’t know shit from Shinola. Dot said, “They killed the wrong woman. That’s Joi in the living room. I know Linda’s body on an intimate level, and that isn’t her. Joi always ran chubbier than Linda, and she had a key to the place. And if Linda’s smart, which she is, she’ll gorge herself on hot fudge sundaes and impersonate her sister until all this blows over.”
My synapses snapped to attentive attention. A theory threaded through my head.
Juan Pimentel–the parking lot pincushion/piñata. P. Pimentel–the piñata’s padre or partner or hellacious hermano? Liz Scott, volubly verbatim: “Linda was making a run to Tijuana for Al Teitelbaum.”
Teitelbaum: pornographically portrayed in Linda Lansing’s love pix. Tijuana: sinfully situated a beat below the border. Joi Lansing: luridly lashed to linguine by Mexican marauders–bad-boy bandidos who botched their job and bagged the wrong bitch– because they only spoke Spanish.
Dot said, “Your wheels are turning. You’re thinking up some kind of angle, and you’re wondering where I fit in.”
I shot her a shit-eating grin. “I’m wondering what you know about a cop named Bob Duhamel, and a run to T.J. that Linda might be making for Al Teitelbaum.”
“Duhamel,” ditzed Dot–she dipped her shoulders disingenuously.
“I don’t know that cop you mentioned, but I do know that you were there when they took out that spic this morning, and I know that Al T.’s broke, and he’s staging a fake fur heist to get some insurance money, and Linda was going to run the furs down to TJ. for him.”
My wheels whizzed, shirled, whipped, and–
“Look, Danny. We’re both in this, but you’re in it bad. That said, I have to say that fifty Gs to the right people and some smear jobs in Hush-Hush could set you right.”
–wiggled like a whacked-out whirlybird.
I said, “Give it to me. Straight, no chaser.”
Dot delivered. “Teitelbaum doesn’t know who the fake heist guys will be. Linda set the scam up, and all Al knows is the time and date–6:oo P.M. on the twenty-seventh. All you have to do is beat the heist guys to the punch, move the furs to Tj., and bring me the money. Linda will be too busy playing her big sister to flick with you.”
SCANDAL SCRIBE SCRAPS CAREER AND CAREENS INTO CRIME! BOFFO BURGLAR SAYS, “MAKE MINE MINK!” AND MOVES TO MEXICO!
I said, “Who do I dump the furs on?”
Dot said, “The Chief of Police in Tj. His name’s Pedro Pimentel.”
4
I hid out at a hip hutch in Santa Monica Canyon. I crawled to Crazy Chris Isherwood and begged for a bed.
Christlike Chris shot me shelter at his shitty little Shinto shrine. Crafty Chris issued the invite and predicated it on a promise:
Don’t hump me in Hush-Hush. Don’t spin your spotlight on my homo hijinx. Don’t condemn my combination kick-pad/ashram and ridicule the residents. Don’t publish that picture of me with a lip lock on Liberace.
I smiled smug. I crossed my heart to Chris and Christ Himself and issued an insincere promise. I hauled in my Hudson Hornet and my hop from Ben Hong’s herb hut.