Dot shot me a boot to the b.a.l.l.s. I belched bile and bounced to my knees. Pain pounded me.

Dot said, "Stay there. I like my women in that position."

I stood up straight and strong. I flipped Dot the finger. She bent it back and bit itto the bone.

Pain: Lavishly localized. Bopping off my bit bone to my b.a.l.l.s. 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 s.e.x, 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 s.h.i.t 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 s.h.i.t 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/pinata. P. Pimentel--the pinata's padre or partner or h.e.l.lacious hermano? Liz Scott, volubly verbatim: "Linda was making a run to Tijuana for Al Teitelbaum."

Teitelbaum: p.o.r.nographically 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 b.i.t.c.h-- 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 s.h.i.t-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 Sc.r.a.pS 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 s.h.i.tty 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 h.o.m.o 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.

The ashram was a dope den and a lavender lovenest. My rambunctious roommates: Aldous Huxley--addled on absinthe, pickled on peyote, and looped on a loony Lysol called lysergic acid diethylamide.

Bogie Bogart--battling the Big C with voodoo vows and peach-pit potions.

Oscar Levant--levitatingly lost in laudanum and Lowenbrau lager.

Sammy Davis Jr.--jigaboo-juked for pouring the pork to a white wench who went out with Walter Winch.e.l.l. Winsomely c.o.o.nfidential: Winch.e.l.l sent some wops out to whack Sammy.

Last--but not loin-longingly least: Three masochism-mauled marines marked for molestation. Deserters seeking shelter from the Sh.o.r.e Patrol. Prime prey for Creepy Chris.

I moved in and made time to map out my mink misadventure. I lounged around in limbo.

I lapped up laud anum with Levant and got high on hashish with Huxley. Chris crystallized Ben Hong's herbs and cooked up anticancer c.o.c.ktails for Bogie. I watched nightly newscasts and notched nerve-wracking news.

Skip Towne and Flash Flood--flattened by a fly-by-night who flipped a two-ton truck. Flash Flood's Fleetwood: torched to toast in Topanga Canyon. Rival DJs riding together? Make that murder in my magazine.

No news on lush Linda Lansing and the Moorish Mosque Ma.s.sacre. No p.o.o.p on the payola probe and priapic Sinatra. Call that collective collusion.

I called my cop contacts. I picked up p.o.o.p on Pedro Pimentel.

One baaaad beaner. The taco-phile Tojo of Tj.

He controlled the corrupt cop corps. His cops copped coin off incarcerated inmates run in on random charges. Pedro pried their property loose. He violated their virgin daughters and made them vice vixens at the Va-Va-Voom Club. He kicked their less comely kids into cardboard casas and coerced them to work in his sweatshops. They moonlighted as wistful waifs and charmed chump change out of cheerful gringos.

Pedro Pimentel owned a clap clinic and the Club Diablo--an adoringly adorned adobe hut that housed hermaphrodites and the best burro act in Baja. Pedro Pimentel smuggled s.m.u.t. Pedro Pimentel pummeled pinkos and castrated Castroites out of Cuba. Pedro Pimental made nice to n.a.z.is named at Nuremburg and a.s.sured them asylum.

Pedro Pimentel fenced furs.

My cop contacts dispensed more dish.

Juan Pimentel was Pedro's pedophile brother. Juan bopped out of Baja behind some child-snuff snafu. Pedro put him in touch with Bad Bob Duhamel--BHPD. Bad Bob made Wicked Juan his sneaky snitch. Wicked Juan worked at the Pacific Dining Car--a front to frame his sniveling snitchwork. Bad Bob went way back with delightful d.y.k.e Dot Rothstein. They engaged in an entrapment scheme to screw Barbara Graham--wigged out in the women's jail.

Barbarous Barb was gorgeous gash and one good actress. She maintained that she didn't murder Mabel Monahan. Demon DA Miller Leavy found her fetching. He feared that she'd move the men on the jury to mush. Leavy dished up a plan to discredit her and divvied it out to Dot and Bad Bob.

They went underground. They unearthed some underworld untermenschen and unleashed them on Barbarous Barb. They handed her handy alibis for 3/9/53. She bit and said she'd buy them if they bought her out of the s.h.i.t. The untermenschen shot her the shaft and strode straight to Miller Leavy. Leavy levied the alibi bit against Barb. It chewed her up and helped him chalk up a convincing conviction.

My cop contacts contradicted Diabolical Dot. She'd dissembled and said she didn't know Duhamel. The Barbarous Barb bit bit my brain and ditzed me to distraction. Did it play in to payola and sin-tillating Sinatra?

The riddle wracked my dope-diddled head. It lanced me as I laid iow and lived it up in limbo.

I ran reefer-ripped ripostes with Sammy Davis. Sammy was one sick Sambo. Maryjane made him mean-minded. He ran race riffs like a mau-mau motherf.u.c.ker. He teed off on ofay oppression and segued to sepia self-hate and slick slavemaster Sinatra.

Annihilating anecdotes: Frank frags Sammy at a Mob meet in Miami. Sammy sings for made Mafia men. They make him step like Stepin Fetchit and feed him fettuccine with the Cuban kitchen crew. Frank frees Sammy and eggs him into an encore: "No-Count n.i.g.g.e.r Me."

Sammy slips the schnitzel to Miss Schlitz Beer at a backstage bash for Sinatra. Sissified Sinatra sincerely thinks that he had first dibs. His chauffeur shanghais Sammy. He shunts him to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and snouts him into a snowstorm in his snapbrim hat and skintight skivvies.

Sinatra stomps onstage as Sammy creams the crowd at the Crescendo. Sammy blows a bluesy ballad and lights an L&M to look cool. The crowd cracks up. Sinatra signals a waiter. The waiter wings a watermelon up onstage. The crowd c.r.a.ps its pants. Sammy laughs to look like he's loving it. Frank freezes him out and wilts the room with "Willow Weep for Me."

I spritzed my spin on Sinatra. Sammy succ.u.mbed to its succulence and sucked up to me. We sulked ourselves silly and sunk into a Sinatra-phobe Abyss.

We hexed him with h.e.l.lish hate. We shivved him with a Shinto curse that Crazy Chris cooked up. We defaced and dart-boarded all his alb.u.m covers and ratched the records inside. We worked ourselves into a frenzy--frankly frantic and Francophiliacal. The fragrance of Frankincense froze us--and freed me to act.

I said, "Help me steal some furs and run them down to Tj."

Sammy said, "Yes, Big White Bwana."

I said, "Call Frank. Make like you don't hate him, and put out some peace feelers for me."

Sammy said, "Yes, Sahib."

We surrept.i.tiously surveilled Teitelbaum Furs. We sat in Chris's Chrysler and sunk down to the dash. We wore distinct disguises.

I played a Shinto shaman. Dig it: a multicolored monk's robe and sharp shades to shield my eyes. Sammy posed as a pachuco in peg pants and a cheap cholo chirt.

We restlessly reconnoitered Rodeo Drive. We learned the layout. We laid lazy eyes on the fur shop and watched two lowlifes in a late-model Lincoln loop around it themselves.

They looked larcenous. They looked lizardlike. They loop-thelooped and licked their lips and surveilled every surface in sight.

They surveilled serpentlike. We surveilled them serviceably. They lizard-lunched at Lmnny's Delicatessen. We noshed knockwurst at the next table and tallied their talk for two days.

The lizards loved liver and onions. They ordered it and ooh-lala'd and went over their plans plenty loud. They conclusively confirmed Demon Dot: the heist would hatch at 6:oo P.M. -- 12/27.

We suspended our surveillance on Christmas Eve. Christlike Chris threw a party to praise the Prince of Peace.

Bogie got bombed on his peach-pit potion and peppermint schnapps. He chugalugged it and chanted Chinese chants to beat the Big C. Huxley hooked down hallucinogens. He held forth and heaped judgment on Jesus. He praised that prize p.r.i.c.k Pontius Pilate and his "Paranoid Paradigm." It p.i.s.sed off Oscar Levant. Oscar opted to ossify some "Existential Eggnog." He tossed in herbs, hash hunks, and Hungarian wine. The s.h.i.t sheared Crazy Chris. He spouted aphorisms and spun around aphrodisiacal. The marines lurched from his libidinous a.s.saults and went AWOL.

Sammy stayed stone sober and steamed over satanic Sinatra. He reissued his old indignities in insistently intimate detail and insisted that I listen. He flogged and flayed his own flesh bare. He catalogued catastrophic cruelties and cringed at his own compliance. He christened his crucifier the "Christmas Anti-Christ" and called him on Chris's phone.

Sammy crawled to the creep. He cradled the phone and crossed himself. He would have waved wolfsbane if he'd had it.

He said, "Frank says he'll meet you. You pick the time and place."

I said, "The motel by the Club Diablo. Midnight on the twentyseventh."

Sammy mumbled into the mouthpiece. I mused on my moment to meet Satan on his own torrid turf.

5.

We went in well armed. We masqueraded as marines and made it a military maneuver.

The marines marked for molestation left some s.h.i.t at the shrine. We draped ourselves in their dress blues and packed their PX-pilfered pistols. I hid my Hudson Hornet and hot-wired a Vauxhall van. Monster masks made us menacing and marked us as men not to mess with.

I went in as the Wolfman. Sammy crept in as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. We moved our minkmobile into the back lot and barged in the back door.

5:46 P.M.

Fourteen minutes to filch furs and fill up the van. Fourteen minutes to f.u.c.k the fur-filchers already a.s.signed to the job.

We monster-minced down a mink-lined hallway. We froze by the freezer vault. Al Teitelbaum latched eyes on us and laughed long and loud.

He howled and heaved for breath. He broke a sweat and swatted his legs. He swayed and pointed to a pile of pelts on the freezer floor.

He hocked into a hanky. He said, "Go, you fershtunkener furmeisters. Go, before I die of a f.u.c.king coronary."

Sammy popped the pelts into a large laundry bag. I shot my eyes into the showroom. I scanned scads of sensational sables and choice chinchillas and magnificent minks. Our paltry pile of pelts paled in considered contrast.

Teitelbaum said, "Hit me once, tie me up, and get out of here. Your theatrics are wearing me thin."

I pulled my piece and pistol-whipped him to pulp. I decimated his dentures. Blood dripped on my dress blues.

Teitelbaum tipped into dreamland. I dropped him in the freezer and gagged him with a gorgeous gaggle of furs. Sammy gloated and glared at the ofay oppressor. He muttered mau-mau musings and metamorphosed into the Creature from the c.o.o.n Lagoon.

5:51 P.M.

Sammy lugged the laundry bag back to the Vauxhall van. I shifted into overdrive and shot through the shop.

I manhandled minks and moved them out fast. I stole stellar stacks of stoles. I glommed glorious globs of glistening fur and furnished the van tip to tailpipes. I made myself a millionaire in one machination and emanc.i.p.ated Sambofied Sammy.

5:57 P.M.

I lashed up a last stack of stoles. The real robbers ripped through the front door--rapidamente.

I froze. Sammy froze by the freezer. The real robbers shared a "s.h.i.t" look. They shook their eyes around the showroom--shabbily shorn and sacked.

They whipped out Walter PPK's and popped me point-blank. My stack of stoles absorbed their ammo. The Creature from the c.o.o.n Lagoon crouched and pulled his piece. Six rounds ripped the real robbers and ratched them into a racc.o.o.n-coat rack.

We wrapped the bodies in racc.o.o.n and rolled them under a rug. Sammy dug the scene and dubbed it a "Ma.s.sacre in Mink."

We moved our minkmobile to Mexico--mucho fast. Sammy negrofied Sinatra songs and arced them out a cappella.

He verse-vilified Sinatra and lynched him with licentious lyrics. He sang scatological scat and scoffed at Frank the freewheeling freak. He excoriated and exorcised his ex-slavemaster extemporaneously.

"Fly me to the moon, with my guinea goons, I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e a little quick, some say I come too soon! In other words, hold my gland!"

"It's a quarter to three, all I feel is hate and bad self-pity. So set 'em up, Joe, 'cause Ava left me for a well-hung Negro."