Lapdog #1 said, "We're working an inter-agency gig. Mr. Sinatra's gotten some death threats because of that payola thing, and we're bodyguarding him."

Lapdog #2 said, "Uh. . . yeah, and Pancho there tried to sell Mr. Sinatra some weed, but Mr. Sinatra said no, so Pancho planted the s.h.i.t in my car, 'cause. . . uh. . . he thought it was Mr. Sinatra's car."

Pancho popped puddles of sweat. It poured off his pompadour. He stood there stunned and stamped himself with the Stations of the Cross. He dribbled and drizzled sweat. He dropped his tray. It popped to the pavement pulse-poundingly LOUD. Instantaneous instinct: four cops reached for their revolvers and ripped off short-range shots.

They pincushioned Pancho and poured through him. They powderburned him and poleaxed him and parted his pompadour down to his palate. Bullets bounced off his bones and belt buckle and shot back at the shooters. Richochets ripped the paunchy partner and notched his nose off his face. I cringed, crawled, c.r.a.pped my pants, and ran-- 2.

I stashed my Studebaker at a storage garage. I walked to Wilshire and Western and hot-wired a Hudson Hornet straight off the street. I had to hide out. I watched the cops whack that wetback and wipe out one of their own. I sp.a.w.ned a spectacular f.u.c.kup and got a cop killed. I mandated my own murder--and maybe much more.

The fuzz would flick me to cover up their snuff snafu. Sinatra would seek to silence me and humble Hush-Hush. Payola played in and percolated at the periphery.

I humped my Hudson Hornet to Hollywood. I hauled by Hal's Auto Dump and traded plates with a Triumph TR2. I tripped through Trancas Canyon and tricked a path through the trouble I was in.

Skip Towne shot me the s.h.i.t on Flash Flood. I flaunted it in Hush-Hush. My prize prose prompted the payola probe and p.i.s.sed off priapic Sinatra.

Sinful Sinatra sought the scent of s.e.x citywide. His loyal lapdogs doubled as blasphemous bloodhounds. They sniffed for s.n.a.t.c.h and snagged willing wenches out of waitress gigs and whathave-you. They latched onto Linda Lansing at a lezbo cathouse.

Luscious Linda--Joi Lansing's curvy kid sister. Lounge Lizard Linda--a low-rent lollapalooza living off lesbian love. A mercenary mama now in moonlight mode in mink-coat TV ads.

Linda switch-hit and once swung with lip-smacking lez Lizabeth Scott. Late-breaking lowdown: Liz still torched for their torrid love. Linda's pay-for-play delight: delirious and delectable 3-ways. The latest late-breaking lowdown: s.e.x-sational Sinatra--the thrill-seeking Three-Way King. He finds Linda Lansing and lures her to his lair. She throws him into the throes of three-way ecstasy. Mama mia--one man and two women waxing way out and wicked! Linda la.s.sos Frank's libido and lays down the law: no more triad tricks until you make me a star! The King cons Sammy Cahn and has him hatch "Baby, It's Cold Inside." The tune tantalizes and t.i.tillates and ties in to Teitelbaum Furs. The King corners Flash Flood and flimfiams him and flips him a flotilla of cash. Flash is floored. He flips a tepid tune and leads Linda Lansing into the Payola Pantheon.

Skip Towne skimmed me that scandal s.k.a.n.k. It b.u.t.tressed a boss back story--but left me with big questions: Bob Duhamel--BHPD. A cop co-opted to the payola probe. His BHPD buddy and some Sheriff's shill. Three cops caught up in shady and shameful s.h.i.t with shaky Frank Sinatra.

I flew by Flash Flood's flat in Flintridge. f.u.c.k--Flood's Fleetwood sedan and a fleet of cop cars framed out front.

Look--the lapdogs last seen popping shots at Pancho the Pinata. Beside them--Bob Duhamel, BHPD.

Call it a Cop Conspiracy. Cop to the cost of the contretemps you created. Crawl out of the c.r.a.p crashing down on you and live to launch libel again.

I chanted that malevolent mantra. I charted a course to charm, cheat, chisel, and THRIVE.

Laura's Little Log Cabin: A Mecca for mannish m.u.f.f-munchers and fawnlike femmes as fair game. A rustic rendezvous for rapacious diesel d.y.k.es.

Loin-lapping Liz Scott's happy hunting grounds.

I walked in wary. She-wolves shot me s.h.i.tty looks. My rabid rep preceded me and pried a pack of boss babes off of bar stools. I devastated and decimated the room.

I located Liz. She was waxing weepy into a whiskey sour. I nudged into her naugahyde booth and nabbed some c.o.c.ktail nuts.

Liz said, "Help yourself. They're free."

I lit a Lucky out of Liz's pack. Liz laughed low and languid.

"You're sc.u.m, Danny. You're a tidal wave of karmic filth and dissension. I wouldn't f.u.c.k you if I was desperate and you were a beautiful woman."

Liz looked luscious on her last cover shot: LEZBOS LOLL AT LOG CABIN, LAPD TELLS HUSH-HUSH.

I popped a pineapple piece out of her drink and poured it down my parched throat. Liz lit a Lucky and laid a lungful of smoke in my face. I coughed up c.o.c.ktail nuts and pineapple pulp.

"You're a disease that they haven't invented a name for, Danny. You're lower than cancer."

I tingled. t.i.tillation tickled me. I groaned and grew a hard-on.

I said, "I always thought we might have clicked and had a swinging thing, if you had different predilections."

Liz laughed light and lilting. "On the planet Pluto, baby. Sometime around the twelfth of never, but only if you dressed in drag."

Ooooh, Daddy-o! She was turning me on, tumescent!

I sucked my cigarette down to a cinder. Liz laughed licentious. A jukebox jerked on. Linda Lansing lilted out: "Baby, It's Cold Inside."

Liz lowered her head and laid out a lake of tears. I said, "Linda's headed for s.h.i.tsville, Sweetie. You know the drill on payola. Sinatra's too big to prosecute, and Flash Flood will turn State's. They'll make it look like Linda paid him to play her song, and she'll take the fall."

Lonely Liz looked at me. Bar light lit up her tear tracks and tributaries. I knew she had a handle on some hot stuff to help me--very Hush-Hush.

She winced and wiped her face. She whipped down the rest of her drink and chewed the cherry. She sucked the stem and stared at me. Her orbs sent me into o.r.g.a.s.mic orbit.

She said, "You want information on Linda. You'll pay for it if you have to, and you're going to try to convince me that anything I tell you won't hurt her. You know that I'll give it to you if you're convincing, so be convincing and get out, or I'll send a 300 pound butch with bra.s.s knuckles over to kick your a.s.s out of my life."

Astoundingly astute. Breathtaking brevity and bravado.

I said, "I'll plant a piece that you're straight in Hush-Hush. I'll leave you alone forever. I'm in trouble with the payola thing myself, and I won't write a f.u.c.king word about Linda."

Liz looked me over looooooooong. She lit another Lucky and licked a loose leaf off her lip.

Oooooh, Daddy-o! Save me from this sapphic siren!

"All right, Danny. One time and one time only. Linda told me she'd put in some innings with Frank, going back to '52. She said she had some dirt on him, and she used it to get him to bribe Flash Flood into playing her song."

The '52 bit bit a big hole in Skip Towne's skinny. He laid Linda and Frank out as a fresh item.

I said, "Where's Linda now?"

Liz said, "I don't know. I saw her a week ago, right after they announced the probe, and she said something about making a run to Tijuana for Al Teitelbaum."

I liberated a Lucky and lit it. Liz lifted a leather key fob and let it list on one long finger.

"2104 Berendo, off of Los Feliz. She was renting the place, and I made duplicates on the sly."

I snared the keys and snapped my fingers. I winked and whistled a whiff of "One for My Baby." Liz laughed loud and let me know I was a loser.

"You're not Frank, Danny, so don't even try. And I wouldn't flick you if you had a s.e.x change and came out Rita Hayworth."

I looped back to Los Feliz and ran my radio dial en route. Ring-ading--a ripe news report.

". . . and here's more on the shootout at the Pacific Dining Car parking lot, which left a marijuana-peddling Mexican busboy and one LAPD officer dead."

Static stung my ears. I ditzed the dial and diminished it. The newsman said, "The busboy was identified as Juan Ramon Pimentel, age 24, an illegal alien. He was the number one supplier of marijuana in the Los Angeles area and was the focus of an interagency investigation involving the LAPD, the Beverly Hills PD, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Pimentel was cornered in the parking lot, pulled a gun, and fired at four officers. He killed LAPD Sergeant Richard D. Jackson, was fatally wounded by the officer's return fire, and. .

Static browned out the broadcast. I breezed by Brewster's Newsstand on Bronson and bought a Herald-Express. Huge headlines: HEROIC COPS IN GUN BATTLE! TWO DEAD!

I pored over the piece. It was officious obfuscation--doggedly dissembled with a profoundly p.r.o.nounced pro-cop prejudice. Page 2 pix: John O'Grady posed with BHPD bimbo Bob Duhamel and the two police pitdogs.

Jive on the "Joint Police Venture." Delirious demonization: "Dope Kingpin Pimentel." Obviously and ominously omitted in his omnipresence: wicked witness Frank Sinatra.

Two cloyingly close and collusive columns down: DA TO DROP PAYOLA PROBE.

A dozen desultory lines. A perfunctory paragraph. "Lack of Evidence" and "Deemed Insufficient"--insinuating innuendo in my book. Unconscionably unmentioned: Lewd Linda Lansing and triad trick Sinatra. One paltry pic: Demon DA J. Miller Leavy--leaning into Bad Bob Duhamel. A captivating caption: "Deputy DA Leavy and Sgt. Duhamel also worked together on the celebrated Barbara Graham case."

No mention of ME.

My payola piece prompted the probe. My marijuana machinations mandated a ma.s.sacre. I was undeniably uniquitous and ignominiously ignored.

I shivered, shook, and almost s.h.i.t my pants. My pulse pounded paranoically hard. I'd crusaded for truth in a Christlike fashion and crossed some invisible line. Call me crucifiable. The newspaper neglected to name my name and thus nailed me now for negation. The world wanted me dead. I violated the venal and vindicated their victims. I sodomized silly celebrities and fragged and framed them as frail. I vandalized their vulturelike souls and sold them as soulless on newsstands nationwide. I modeled myself on Mahatma Gandhi and moved beyond that motherf.u.c.ker in my quixotic quest for the truth. I triumphed over trials that would mash most men to mush. I delivered disillusionment as dystopian dish and entertained, edified, and enlightened. I was a spiritual spearhead--like that spook who sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Hush-Hush outhustles the Bible--at least in L.A.

I was the journalistic Jesus about to get justifiably Judas'd.

3.

I bought a bottle of bonded bourbon. I bombed myself out of my martyrdom mode and looped by Linda Lansing's lair lickety-split.

I rapidly reconnoitered. I bipped around Berendo and cruised cross streets. I noted no cop cars. I hid my Hudson Hornet behind a hydrangea hedge and popped up to the pad.

It was a mock Moorish mosque in miniature. Minarets, mauve awnings, and mesquite fronds out front. I let myself in. I slipped a light switch, slammed the door, and slid into a slaughterhouse.

The stomach-stinging stench of flayed flesh. Matted hair and maggot mounds on a mauve rug. Blood blips on white walls and windowpanes.

Linda Lansing laid out flat on the floor. Slashed and sliced in a slit-leg gown. Sharp shiv marks and sheared tissue torn out in striated strips. Blonde hair blossomed into a blood slick.

Ten fingertips torn to the tendons and burned to the bone. A hot plate hooked into a wall switch. Scorched skin caught in the coils.

I rocked, rolled, reeled, and retched on the rug. I made myself memorize the murder scene.

Overturned ottomans and sofas stabbed into stuffing. Paintings pulled off walls and cut to confetti. Bookcases b.u.mped to the floor and stomped to a stack of stale sticks.

Bad burns on the body. Scorch-scarred skin. Cigarette circles. A batch of b.u.t.ts blended into a blood pool.

Torment-inducing torture. Infernally inflicted. My inference: the inflictors intended to induce Linda Lansing into laying out something of interest. She rigorously resisted and refused to give IT up. IT was not information. Call IT concealable. The inflictors invaded the house with the intent to find where IT was. They went at it impulsively and impetuously. The implosive implication: IT was still here.

I looked at Linda Lansing. I blew the corpse a kiss. My memory snapped me snapshots of Linda alive and alluring and announced an anomaly. The live Linda ran lithe. The corpse ran reduced Rabelaisian.

I nudged my noggin out of necrophile notions. I bopped to a back bathroom and made for the medicine chest. I pillaged pills and concocted a chemical c.o.c.ktail.

s.e.xy Secobarbital and devilish Dexedrine. Miltown to mellow them out. A bracing Bromo-Seltzer to bring the brew to a boil.

I licked up my elixir and chased it with a Chesterfield King. It chugged into me and detonated a depth charge. I deliberately and determinedly deep-sixed the house.

I tore up ten rooms. I upended umpteen underwear drawers. I whipped up wall-to-wall carpets and filleted fine furniture down to fabric debris. I deconstructed daybeds, divans, and doilydraped dressers. I drained drainpipes and cleaned out clothes closets and shivved behind shelves. I beat the bas.e.m.e.nt walls with a baseball bat and bored into a hot little hidey-hole.

Inserted inside: A packet of pix. Glorious glossies surrept.i.tiously shot in Sinemascope.

Linda Lansing boffing boss butch Barbara Stanwyck. Steamy Stanny--still hot stuff.

Linda loin-locked with Lana Turner. Woo! Woo! Salivatingly sapphic!

Linda tasting tough Tallulah Bankhead. Tallulah--too much!

Linda limb-linked on a lavender bedspread. Buck naked beside Barbara Graham and Al Teitelbaum.

Sinful synergy. Pervasive perversion. A tricky trio trapped on filthy film.

A confounding connection.

A furtive fur merchant. A murder victim and a murderess who graced the green room at San Quentin. A connection to confront: Bob Duhamel did duty on the Barbara Graham case.

I pored over the pix. I stared at them and steamed them up. I dripped drool on Linda Lansing--lezzed out and lithe. A d.y.k.echotomy: her corpse ran corpulent.

Perched by the pix: A loose-leaf ledger. Latin names listed in left-hand columns. Five-figure moneymakings mapped to the right.

Martinez, Madragon, Marquez--Mex monickers. Tostado, Trejo, Tarquez--taco-heads all. Pellicar, Peja, P. Pimentel-- Whoa now, wait-- Juan Pimentel--the pincushion/pinata at the parking lot. The make-believe marijuana maven. The bad-luck busboy and scandal scapegoat.

I packed the pix behind some pipes and laid the ledgers under a layer of loose linoleum. I beat feet to the back bedroom and bored through a bunch of books I'd flung to the floor. Va-va-voom--the Variety Directory for 1954.

I leafed to the Ls and found "Lansing, Joi."

"Actress. B. 416/2 8, Salt Lake City."

I leafed to "Lansing, Linda."

"Singer. B. 5/2 1/30, Salt Lake City."

I looked at the Lansing listings. I perused two publicity pix. They blended blonde. They blurred and blossomed blissfully as near-identical twins.

"Nice stuff. I had the better one, so I should know."

A vivid voice--low and lezlike.

My hackles hopped. I hurled myself around and hoped for the best. I hitched eyes with Deputy Dot Rothstein.

d.i.l.d.o d.y.k.e. Sheba the Sheriff's She-Dog at the Women's Jail downtown. A yenta with a yen for young cooze. A Large Marge in a man's suit.

I came on cooooool. "You look good, Dot. You make me wish I was a woman."