I looked around the office. A dry drunk dropped a cigarette and scorched a scalding shot primed for pasteup: Lezzie Lizabeth Scott with a loin-lapping look at Linda's Little Log Cabin on Lankershim Boulevard.

s.h.i.t-- It was time to pound the pavement proactive. I walked down the hall and wiggled into Dr. Dave Dockweiler's chair.

Dave said, "How long?" I said, "Forty-eight hours straight." Dave jacked joy juice into a spike and found a vividly viable vein in my left arm.

He said, "Three good ones too hot to print. I'm going to an American Legion smoker tonight." I concocted a commie conspirator's clique and twisted a fist to tw.a.n.g my target vein.

"Paul Robeson is pouring the pork to Pat Nixon. I swear this is no s.h.i.t. He's got her hooked on that big roll of tar paper he's packing, and she's leaking him all of Tricky d.i.c.k's secrets, and Robeson's feeding them to the Kremlin, and they're feeding them to Senator John F. Kennedy, who's going to run against d.i.c.k in '6o. This is no s.h.i.t, I swear to you. Oh, and Sammy Davis Jr. is flicking Mamie Eisenhower. I swear to you, Dave, this is no f.u.c.king s.h.i.t."

Dave spanked his spike on my vividly violet vein. "You swear this is no s.h.i.t?"

"This is no s.h.i.t, Dave, I swear to you."

Dave bit the bait and shook his head and let my s.h.i.t sift into his system. He shot me up with his s.h.i.t and watched me shift up to the stars.

I went into o.r.g.a.s.mic orbit. I spun past Sputnik and jived with Jesus himself. I jumped back to Earth and jumped out of the chair like a jacked-up jungle bunny.

I fly on methamphetamine moored in male hormones and a multivitamin mix. Here's why scandal sheets fly: People are ambivalently amped up on celebrities. They wildly worship them. They aim their adolescent adulation at them and get bupkis back. It's depressingly disa.s.sociative. It's idiotic idolatry. Fan magazines fan the flames of fatuous fancy and reinforce the fact that your favorite stars will never f.u.c.k you. Scandal rags rip that reinforcement and deliriously deconstruct and deidolize the idols who ignore you. It's revisionistic revenge. It reduces your unrequited lovers to your own low level of erratic erotics. It rips the rich and regal and guns them into the gutter beside you. It fractiously frees you to love them as one of your own.

I was flying on high-grade meth and a high-faluting head full of Hush-Hush homilies. I hit Hollywood hopped-up to dish dirt and dig my way out of debt.

Every bartender, bouncer, B-girl, busboy, and B-movie bimbo in town has his hand out to Hush-Hush or whispers to Whisper or tattles their tails off to Tattle. I tripped a path through my tipsters and said, "How's tricks?" I locked in the following lowdown: Howard Hughes had a hard-on for a high-yellow hooker named Dusky Deelite. Rin Tin Tin ripped La.s.sie into renal distress at a recent kiddie roundup. Mickey Cohen can't afford to keep Candy Barr. Candy's starring in stag flux and moving a mountain of Mary Jane. Mickey's tapped out and tapping his old legbreakers for loans. Johnny Stompanato stood Mickey up at the Statler and stiffed him on a long-term debt. Lana Turner was lamenting the loss of Lex Barker. Stompanato stomped into her life. He bullies her and beguiles her into long bouts of bury the brisket. Lana now lisps, "Lex who?"

Bob Mitchum mauled a mulatto mama at a n.i.g.g.e.rtown niteclub. Porfirio Rubirosa pulled out his pud at a Bel-Air bash for Bill Bendix. Rock Hudson humps prodigiously pretty call-service boys. He gets them from a sweaty swish carhop at Delores's Drive-In. Lenny Bruce is handing up hopheads to the Sheriff's Narco Squad.

The Rin Tin Tin riff rated zero. The Mitchum mishigaas might be milkable and make for a good miscegenation piece. Stompanato was stale stuff--Confidential cornholed him three months back. I'd played up Porfirio's pud and Howard Hughes's hooker hungries already. Ben Luboff wouldn't bite for that batch.

But he'd bite for the boffo bit on Rock Hudson.

Ben wanted to ram Rock out of the closet. He wanted to push him past the Pink Curtain and parade him around in a purple peignoir. Every scandal scribe wanted to skewer and scupper the Rock. He was the hunky height of the h.o.m.o heap. Hush-Hush, Whisper, Rave--we all got cloyingly close to the clasp on the closet door. But pugnacious publicists grabbed at our greed, bought our stories back, and heaped us with heat on their other h.o.m.o clients. The Rock remained ramrod erect--just past the Purple Pa.s.sage.

Ben Luboff hogged a back booth at Googie's twenty hours a day. Tipsters trucked in and tossed him tidbits. I bopped back to his booth and blew out a blast of bravado.

"I owe your brother two Gs. Take care of it and slip me an item for the May issue, and I'll give you the Rock."

Ben belched bicarbonate of soda. Bubbles bipped off his lips. He looked disturbingly drawn and dyspeptic. The dirt drought had drained him dry.

He nudged me a napkin. I pulled out my pen and wrote down my rap on Rock and the sweaty swish. Ben Scripto scrawled his own napkin note. We noodled our notes across the table simultaneously.

His read: "Don Jordan (top welterweight contender) running string of wetback maids as hookers out of the Luau."

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. .h.i.tch up her hose. I saw the Misty June Christy crimp a crisp twenty and crib c.o.ke up her nose. I ducked down a dark panel pa.s.sage 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 senorita: 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 gla.s.s. I wiped it off and watched a waiter walk up to the ma.s.s magnifica mama.

He pa.s.sed her a piece of paper. Don Jordan pa.s.sed his other prosties Mickey Mouse--size Minox minicameras.

What the f.u.c.k-- The main mamacita mainlined her way out of the bar. I peephole-patched a path through the main pa.s.sageway 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 pa.s.sageway 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 p.u.s.s.y-whipped provocateur and masochism-mangled motherf.u.c.ker!

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."

Steve--stern, strong, and strident-voiced now: "I only let you and the others work out of here because you give me information. Don wouldn't like it if I eighty-sixed you."

Yolanda, fetchingly firm and faultlessly focused: "I cannot betray Miss Lana, as long as Mr. Johnny does not hurt her or Miss Cheryl."

Steve, resoundingly resigned and ripped with regret. "Well... s.h.i.t. . . okay. . . for now, at least. But I just want to protect Lana from herself, and I want you to promise me that you'll let me know if Johnny ever puts a hand on her or Cheryl. You see, I've got a gangster buddy who hates the son of a b.i.t.c.h."

Yolanda, a mellifluous madonna: "Oh, yes, I will. I care about Miss Lana and Miss Cheryl just as much as joo do."

Mickey Cohen hated Johnny Stompanato. Mickey was the meshugenah mouseketeer on the L.A. mob scene. Mickey had a minor cut of Don Jordan's contract and not much else. Mickey was too Minnie Mouse to stand up for Steve and stomp out Stompanato--and I started to smell money in the mix.

I could steal the steamy Lana letters. I could sell them to Steve or some lascivious Lanaphile. I could lube-job Ben Luboff and lay a few lackl.u.s.ter excerpts on him for big bread. I could proudly print the whole tumescent text in Hush-Hush.

The truth is my moral mandate. Dirt digs define my devotion to that difficult discipline. "Disillusionment Is Enlightenment"-- some pundit popped that plat.i.tude and clipped a clear chord in my soul. I live to edify, entertain, enlighten, and enforce moral standards. It all entails enterprising entrapment. I'm a zealous First Amendment zealot. I contentiously contend that scandal s.k.a.n.k scores free free speech to its fullest extension. I set tricky traps to track down the truth. My methedrine-mapped mandate makes it all morally sound.

I got Stompanato's stats from the West L.A. White Pages. I called his number and nailed a n.i.g.g.e.r maid. She said, "Mr. Johnny be back soon," and, "I just be leavin' myself." She sounded like some shine in Song of the South.

I bopped up to Benedict Canyon and buried my Buick coupe behind some bushes off Beverly Drive. I beat feet a block to Johnny's boss bunker: a big all-gla.s.s A-frame.

Lavishly landscaped and lit up light at i:oo A.M. Wide windows to wiggle your eyes at and high hedges to hide behind. Peeper Paradise and Voyeur Valhalla.

Motherf.u.c.k-- The mail slot slid straight into the front French doors. I couldn't lift a latch and liberate Lana's love letters.

I hid behind a hydrangea hedge. I bored my beady browns into a big picture window ten feet away. Johnny Stomp stomped into sight. Don Jordan jiggled up and joined him.

They yelled and yowled at each other. They paced paths around the parlor and poked themselves in the pecs. Popped Ps popped off the plate-gla.s.s window--but I couldn't pick out particular words.

Jordan pulled a pa.s.sel of pix out of his pockets and fanned them full. I popped up and peered through the plate-gla.s.s powerfully hard. I saw darkroom-dipped photos still wet with developing doo. Interior shots: bountiful bedroom suites with balconies and wide walk-in closets.

My brain went bim, bango, bingo: Don Jordan's moonlight maids with Minox minicams. Wetback women hooked in as hookers. Luau-lounging B-girls brought to Brentwood and Beverly Hills. Papa pops the girls to the pad while Mama meanders in Miami or mingles at her Monday mah-jongg club. The girls pop perspective pix and juke them back to Jordan. Jordan jukes them to some big bad burglary man. Jordan juked Yolanda into the plan. Johnny yanked Yolanda's chain, scammed the skinny on Demon Don's designs and demanded a cut. Yolanda lounged around the Luau in Lana Turner's low-cut gown. Stilltorching Steve Crane recognized it. He yipped, yelled, and yodeled at Yolanda. He demanded that she double-agent for him. Yolanda agreed to dump domestic dirt on Lana and Johnny.

Stompanato stamped his feet. Jordan jabbed his chest. They stepped back and countermanded the course of a counterproductive contretemps. They smiled. They commandeered a couch. They pored over their pix and penciled a map on a piece of paper.

I hunched down and hunkered back to my hedge. I smelled Methedrine popping out of my pores--mixed with the musk of MONEY.

I needed names. I could B&E Johnny's pad and boost a burglary list. I could bug the pad and bug Demon Don's digs. I could tap their telephones and tape their talks and wire up the wetback wenches. I could impersonate an Immigration agent and intimidate them. I could contact the f.e.c.kless fools that they flicked and feed them an ultimatum: Feed me in five figures, or I'll tell your wife who you f.u.c.ked one freaky Friday night.

Oooooh, Daddy-o!!!!! I was digging it all, delirious!

I hauled back to the Hush-Hush office. I had to hook my hands on a boss batch of bug s.h.i.t.

The office was occupied. My crew was c.r.a.pped out on the floor. They were blasted, blitzed, blotto, zilched, zorched, and zombifled. They'd gone off the wagon en ma.s.se.

They got tanked on Tokay and T-Bird. They got stinko on Sterno and got wiped out on White Port. Short-dog bottles shifted and shimmied on every spare inch of floor s.p.a.ce.

I checked my equipment chest. All my bug mikes were bunched up, broken, frayed, frazzled, and f.u.c.ked. My condenser cords were stripped and striated down to mere strips. My diode dials were ripped, rusted, and ratched to s.h.i.t.

f.u.c.k--.

I had to find a freelance bug freak and co-opt him into my conspiracy. That meant pitching him a prime piece of my potential payout.

f.u.c.k--.

I called Freaky Fred Turentine. His wife said he was working for Whisper tonight. I buzzed Buddy "Bug King" Berkow. His wife said Ben Luboff just brought him in on a big bug job. I called Voyeur Vance Vanning. His wife said he was out on a wire job for Whisper. He left her a late-nite number: a pay phone at Wilshire and La Cienega.

It all congealed and constellated.

My tip to trap h.o.m.o hunk Rock Hudson. The sweaty swish at Delores's Drive-In. Ben Luboff poised to scale the Purple Parthenon.

3.

It had to be huge. Three bug boys at twenty bucks an hour boded big. My bet: Ben wanted bug bits on the bun-boy biz--to b.u.t.tress his. .h.i.t on hunky Rock Hudson. He'd set some phone-tap traps and bug baits on the sweaty swish carhop and develop some derogatory dish on Delores's Drive-In. A p.r.i.c.k-tease prelude to priapic Rock and some p.r.i.c.k-happy call boy.

I had to see it. It beckoned as big as the Bikini Atoll atom-bomb blast. A bifurcated motive bolstered my urge to merge with the moment. I wanted to boost a batch of Buddy Berkow's bug gear for my gig.

I whizzed down to Wilshire and La Cienega at warp speed. I whipped by Delores's Drive-In and dug all the dirty details.

The 2:00 A.M. tumult. Late-nite L.A. out for burgers, borscht, and bagels. Beatniks and beaten-down benny-heads in battered Bonnevilles. Cholos in chopped-down Chevys riding on cheater slicks.

Carhops rolling roisterous on roller stakes. All mincy males laid out in lacy lounge wear. Buddy Berkow's bugmobile back by the men's room. Beside it: Voyeur Vance Vanning's van. Freaky Fred Turentine wolflng french fries at an inside counter.

I whipped back to Wilshire and parked. I brought my beady browns up against my Bausch & Lombs and went into ocular orbit.

Dig: Sweat beads bipping off the brow of that too-tall carhop topping off the tape toward 68". A sweaty swish with the shakes: His tray twitched and twisted and almost toppled two twincheeseburger plates.

He fed the food to two Filipinos in a Ford Fairlane. He flitted back to a little shack lit by floodlights. He stood by the door and chain-smoked two Chesterfield Kings.

Envy entered my heart. An enlightened sense of ent.i.tlement entered my soul. A cosmic course of covetousness covered my whole being.

This gig should be MINE. I was the scandal-scamming, skinny-skimming scopophiliac king. The scopophiliacal scope of this gig screamed GETCh.e.l.l!

I alakazammed to Allah, genuflected to Jesus, and called out to that cat the kikes call G.o.d. I said I'd keester communists and bash ban-the-bombers, and dig up dirt on that dowager d.y.k.e Eleanor Roosevelt. I'd donate dough to a Moslem mosque. I'd put in with Pat Boone, wear white buck shoes, and warble at a Billy Graham Crusade. I wouldn't print my piece on Rabbi R. R. Ravitz and that Hebrew-school Hannah he humped last Hanukkah.

I shut my eyes. I gave the G.o.d guys time to get together and go for my deal. I could feel them finagling the fine points. Divine deals demand deliberation.