I smelled her perfume. I recognized it. Joi said she wore it to funerals.
Matchabelli’s Mourning Madness.
Viv said, “Wash my car before you return it.”
9
I walked in on the Sheriff’s arm. Chief Parker almost shit on his living-room floor.
I said, “What’s shakin’, Daddy-O?”
Daddy-O went raging red and pulmonary purple. His veins bulged blue and vibrated violet.
The Sheriff sat him down in front of his TV set. He drilled me with Draculean eyes and hexed me from the heart. I knew he couldn’t talk. I knew a catatonic cat captured his tongue.
I shut the door. I said, “Nice pad, baby doll. Those plaid drapes and that wall flag are so you.”
Parker sputtered and spit split syllables. His tortured tongue and paralyzed palate could not connect.
The Sheriff said, “This won’t be fun, Bill. But I can promise you we won’t prolong things.”
I grabbed a spot by the TV set. The Sheriff stood beside me. Parker sat two feet behind us.
I checked my watch. I counted down. The TV blipped on, black-magic-style.
Jack Webb in close-up. Duh-duh-duh-duh/duh-duh-duh-duhduuuuh–the Dragnet theme on the sound track. Jack’s toking a big stick of tea. He’s giggling and goofing on his craaaaazy existence.
He says, “My name’s Friday. I carry a badge. I use it to coerce hookers into blow jobs. My name used to be Webb, but I got lucky and met this tight-assed chump Bill Parker, who got laid once in 1924, decided he preferred power to pussy, and took over the Los Angeles Police Department. Duh-duh-duh-duh!”
I turned around. I looked at Parker. I couldn’t count the colors he turned.
Jack says, “Bill hitched his badge to me, or maybe it’s the other way around, but who gives a shit when you’re making all this money? And if you think Dragnet is all that I’m talking about, you’re wrong, ’cause we’ve got some biiiiiiiiig plans with a Cuban guy names Batista–off-the-record, on the q.t., and very hushhush, and Bill’s the number one cop in America, not that faggot Gay Edgar Hoover, and boy do we have some dirt to fuck him with if he ever gets uppity! Duh-duh-duh-duh. Duh-duh-duhduh-duuuh!”
I turned around. I looked at Parker. I couldn’t peg all the pastel pallors he passed through.
Jack Webb laughed. A man laughed offscreen. It sounded like Fred O. Jack Webb flipped out a fat middle finger.
“Hey, Bill, fuck you! This is for that time you humiliated me at the Jonathan Club, you frigid cocksucker! Hey, Bill, your mother fucks the mule down in Tj.! Hey, Bill, you better be nice to me or I’ll tell Mayor Bowron your boys set him up with that Filipino whore! Hey, Bill–”
I heard a shot. The TV screen imploded. Glass blew out the back of the set and took out the window behind it.
Diodes decomposed. Wires whipped and wiggled. The console cracked and popped into pieces.
I turned around. I looked at Parker. I kicked the gun out of his hand.
The Sheriff said, “No slaves. No work farms and no debtors’ prisons. No reprisals on Contino, Levant, or their families. No shakedowns on my men and no more attempts to steal money off my budget.”
Parker couldn’t talk. The catatonic cat had his tongue. The Sheriff said, “We’re hooked into J. Edgar Hoover and Mayor Bowron’s set, and 8,ooo random sets in Los Angeles. Nod to signal your compliance.”
Parker nervously-nellingly nodded and turned six sheets of seraphim white.
The TV debris ignited. It sparked and sputtered and metamorphosed into a mushroom cloud.
I drove back to Harvey’s repair shop. I found the whole block leveled and torched to a trash-heap hell.
Fire trucks. Rubberneckers. Cop cars.
Soot. Smoke. Ash-afflicted air. A wiped-out wasteland with a single scorched skeleton standing.
The gas-chamber chair.
I saw Oscar and Joi. I ditched my car and ran up to them. They wore black executioner’s robes. They lit cigarettes off a piece of red timber and looked at me.
I said, “What the fuck happened?”
Joi said, “Harvey tricked us. He crossed three or four wires and blew himself out a fake wall panel. One of the arson cops said he probably created a sonic boom and controlled the downdraft. The fire started about a minute later.”