"Come fly with me, come fly, come fly away! We'll abuse some squares in our Vegas lairs and pretend that we're not gay!"

Sammy ripped, rocked, roiled, rolled, and resurrected his nappy-headed n.i.g.g.e.rhood. We sidled south as psychopathic sidekicks.

We rolled into a rest stop and stripped to our Street clothes. We cruised south, crossed the border, and tipped into Tijuana.

Dig: Sweaty swarms of tattered toddlers tackling tourists and latching onto them leechlike. Syphilitic sailors cliqued up outside clap clinics. Punks peddling pot and peyote plants in plain sight. Vandals vending vibrating d.i.l.d.os and donkey show tix. Starving peons stretched out on the Street from stark starvation. Punks picking their pockets and plucking their teeth out with penknives. Hermaphroditic he-shes huddled in haphazard hordes. A chain of chancre-sored chiquitas chipping by a chop suey joint. Spiffy spic cops in natty n.a.z.i jackboots and jet-black outfits on every corner.

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

We dipped by the Club Diablo. Dig the nifty neon sign: a little Lucifer with high horns and a trident-trimmed d.i.c.k.

11:37 P.M.

We checked into the cheesy Chinchinagua Motel and chatted up the manager. He was one choice cholo. I fed him some chump change and scammed some scalding skinny.

A "Mr. Duhamel" called and confirmed his room reservation. He and his "friend Frank" would be by and bop to their back bungalow by midnight.

I laid a mink coat on the Mex motherf.u.c.ker. He muttered "Madre mIa" and groveled ground-low. Sammy grabbed him and laid down the law: pa.s.s us your pa.s.skey to the back bungalow and let the chumps check in. Don't mention the boss banditos who just bought you off.

The Mex murmured, "Si, si" and pa.s.sed us a pa.s.skey. We bipped to the back bungalow and bopped in unbidden. I wiggled a wall switch. Light leaped on and launched c.o.c.kroach convoys out of control.

They bug-scuttled, buzzed, and bounced off the bed. They flipflopped and flew off the floor. They crawled and crunched like ripe Rice Krispies under our feet.

11:48 P.M.

We reloaded our revolvers. Sammy syphoned a syringe full of Lysol-like lysergic acid. I juked out to the van and juked back with jumper cables.

We clipped the lights off and climbed into a closet. c.o.c.kroaches flipped off the floor and flew into our mouths. We gagged and hacked ourselves hoa.r.s.e. We reflex-retched and bit the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds into puslike pulp. We spat out roach residue and heard a rumble--right by the bungalow door.

A V-8 voom. Tire treads grinding gravel. Vigorous voices. A key-in-door cacophony. THE Voice: "Some f.u.c.king dump. And check those bugs on the dresser."

A barrel-chesty baritone: "I'll check the closet. Maybe there's some spray."

I scooped up a scad of roaches and got ready to rock. Sammy popped into a pile-driver pose. The closet door swung and swept outward.

I bug-bombed Bob Duhamel. Bugs buzzed into his mouth and dive-bombed down his throat and crawled all over his crew cut. Sammy slammed him in the slats and slipped his gun from his hip holster.

Bad Bob flailed and flapped his hands. He belched bug bile and gurgled goo. He hit the floor hard. Sammy slipped a beavertail sap off his belt and bopped him in the b.a.l.l.s. I unhooked his handcuffs and hitched his hands behind his back.

Sinatra watched it all wicked wise. He swirled a martini and swayed sweet to some bedazzled beat. He blew smug smoke rings coooooolly concurrent. Frigidaire Frank--the hip hero and ad for greasy grace under pressure.

He said, "What have we got here, the Lone Ranger and Tonto? What's shakin', kemo sabe?"

Bugs bopped out of Bad Bob's mouth. Sammy slapped slivers of tape across it and m.u.f.fled him mute. I slipped the syringe out of Sammy's shirt pocket and watched shimmering s.h.i.t shoot up the shaft.

Sinatra said, "Are you clowns on the junk? Sambo, I'm shocked, and I may just have to snitch you off to the NAACP."

I laughed and lunged at him. We collided. I got martinimottled and smoke-smacked. I grabbed a grip of greasy hair and tore off Frank's toupee. Frank squealed. I squeezed his neck and nailed my needle into a vibrating vein. I pushed the plunger and jacked jungle juice in his jugular.

Sammy said, "You're in for a wild ride, Paisan."

I tossed Freon Frank on the frayed bedspread. Bugs sidled on his Sy Devore suit. Frank was frica.s.seed, french-fried, and fresh out of cool. I froze the moment in my mind.

Sammy juked the jumper cable cords out to Frank's Lincoln and whipped the hood wide. He leaned on the gas. He bolted the blue hooks to the battery box. Sparks spit out. I slid the cords under the door slit and shut us in torture-tight. Sammy tore the tape off Bad Bob's mouth. I ran the red hooks right under his eyes.

Sparks spun out and spanked him. They sizzled and singed and browned his brows.

Frank said, "I am personal friends with many well-placed men in La Cosa Nostra."

Bad Bob said, "You wouldn't dare."

I hitched the hooks to his hands and hurled him some horsepower. He vibrated to V-8 volts and flapped on the floor.

I unhitched the hooks and watched him undulate. I said, "All of it. No lies and no omissions."

Bad Bob shook with the shimmy-shimmy shock-induced shakes--and flew with a flinty, "f.u.c.k you."

I anch.o.r.ed the hooks to his ankles. Bad Bob buckled and bent back and did a spectacular spine-spin.

I unhooked the hooks. I heard him ululate. His pelvis popped. His legs lashed. He spasm-spun and spit sparks.

Sammy said, "Dig it!" He was hopped up on honky hate. He looked like that jigabooJomo Kenyatta.

Freon Frank was frazzled in fright. The acid was a.s.similating a.s.siduously.

Bad Bob yipped and yelled, "All right!"

I bent low. Bad Bob blurted and blubbered at me. His tongue and teeth palpitated off his palate and pried out words prestissimo: "Linda blew everything when she shook down Frank to get her song some play--then Skip Towne got hip to it and tipped you off--and you wrote your piece in Hush-Hush--and Miller Leavy read it and figured that Frank's name would give him some flicking marquee value--and he could get a probe going--but then he learned what Linda really had on Frank and got f.u.c.king scared-- and I don't know what that was, but. . ."

Leavy and Bad Bob bopped back to the Barbara Graham case. Dot Rothstein ran with them. Liz Scott scoffed at the skinny that Linda and Frank were fresh stuff. She tattled the truth to me. She said, "Linda and Frank had innings going back to '52"/"Linda had some dirt on him, and she used it."

Barbaric Barb murdered Mabel Monahan. The date of doom: 3/9/53.

I bent down to Bad Bob's level. I waved my cable hooks. I caught a wiff of scorched skin.

"Does the dirt that Linda has on Frank pertain to the Barbara Graham case?"

Bad Bob nodded No and went knock-kneed. My internal lie detector measured him as mendacious. I hitched my hooks to his nose.

He danced. He did the Voltage Voom and the Convoluted Convulsion. He did the Stultified Stomp and the Sinful Sizzle and the Gyroscope Gyration. He did the Tijuana Termination Tango-- I unhitched the hooks.

Bad Bob blubbered, blathered, and bled. I renamed him Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Sammy said, "Dig it!"

Frank squirmed and squealed, "Mommy!"

Bad Bob almost bought it. I couldn't kill him yet. He played into my Pedro Pimentel plan.

I said, "Lay out the rest of it."

Bad Bob noodled his nose on the floor and fluffed out a follical flame. He ffipped away from me and laid it out largo: "Linda Lansing runs shakedowns on politicians in L.A. with Dot Rothstein. Pedro Pimentel--the Police Chief down here-- he bankrolls them. The spic we shot in the parking lot was Pedro's kid brother--he was a plant at the Dining Car--but I didn't know that. Lots of lawyers and politicians eat at the Car and talked around him because they thought he didn't speak English--and Miller Leavy picked up lots of tips that way. Getch.e.l.l you f.u.c.k-- you pulled that f.u.c.king reefer number and flicked things up--and Frank f.u.c.ked things up by insisting that we kick your a.s.s at the Car--and I don't know where Linda is--and her and Dot are into all kinds of shady s.h.i.t--and all this started because we didn't want Linda to spill what she had on Frank--and I came down here to frost you out and frost things out with Pedro 'cause we killed his f.u.c.king brother by accident and. . . and. . . we.. . tr-tr-tr . . ."

His traumatized transmission trailed off into trills. He pa.s.sed out from aftershock affliction.

He didn't know that Linda Lansing slid off to Slice City. He didn't label Linda as an heistress hot to move millions in mink. He refused to reveal the ripe revelation now ripping me: Frantic Frank and Barbaric Barb.

Frantic Frank squirmed and squealed, "Mommy!" His eyes: blurred blue and dialated from diethylamide.

Sammy said, "Dig it!"

Frank Sinatra: Uncontrollably uncool. Umbilically unattached and hopelessly unhip from here to Hoboken.

He moaned for his mama. He mewed for his Mafia mentor "Momo" Giancana. He pounded his pillows and pet.i.tioned Raymond L. S. Patriarca--the prize p.r.i.c.k with the Providence Mob.

Sammy tortured and tormented him. Sammy shanked him for the s.h.i.t he shot his way. Sammy shucked him on his wives and the way they wanted it wild and blasphemously black. Frank moaned for mama and made mea culpa motions and put out papist pleas to Pope Pius.

I dipped over to the Diablo Club. I downed some Dos Equis and bought some boss burro act artifacts. A cook cooked me up some cat-meat carnitas to go. A burro handler hipped me to Pedro Pimentel's private number.

I called the taco-phile Tojo of T.J. and told him I had Teitelbaum's furs. I tantalized him and told him I took down ten times Linda Lansing's take. Tojo told me to meet him tomorrow. I said I'd slide by his slave camp and move in my mountain of mink. Tojo told me he'd measure the mound and meet me with mucho money.

I moseyed back to the motel. Frank was moaning for mama. Sammy was making like the Marquis De Mau-Mau. I booted Bad Bob into the bathroom and fed him the cat-meat carnitas. He went at it carnivorously. I didn't want him to die. I had to toss him to Tojo before he purchased a pa.s.s on Pancho the Pedophile.

I loped out to the lilac Lincoln and ran the radio. I latched onto an L.A. station and lucked out on a late-nite newscast. No news: nothing on the ma.s.sacre in mink or lashed Linda Lansing. My bet: Bad Bob's boys in the BHPD buried it all. I could buy out of my bind and wave bye-bye with a big bundle of cash.

Noxious night air noodled my noggin. Some thread in my theories thrashed and threatened to lash my logic on the Linda Lansing end. My brain broiled. My mind misfired. I couldn't cook a contradiction up in context.

I noxiously night-dreamed. I ran the radio dial and got reverential with Rachmaninoff. I pictured a perfect world.

I deliver the dough to Dot Rothstein and pay off my perfidies. I pop down to Paraguay and purchase a palace and some peons. I instigate indentured servitude. I install myself as El Jefe. I sp.a.w.n the spic Hush-Hush--Husho-Husho en Espaflol. El Presidente Strongman Stroessner stridently defends me. I defame the democratic-minded devils out to oust him. I slather slander in a land with no libel laws. I lance libidinous Latins and lynch leftist losers in print. I pride myself as a prime anticommie. I hobn.o.b with nervous n.a.z.is a.s.similated in Asuncion. I hump their halfspic/half-nordic, radically race-mixed and ravishing daughters. I spot a special Hush-Hush Hilda. She hatches a hole in my heart. I build the Berchtesgaden West as our love lair. We breed a brood of bright little Getch.e.l.lites. I give them thick thesauruses on their first birthdays.

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

I bopped back to the bungalow. I freeze-framed Frigidaire Frank-- He was beaming bemused and be-bop beatific. His blue eyes blazed and blended with fabric flecks on his shiny sharkskin suit. He bowed and bestowed a benediction.

"I forgive you your transgressions, for I have been to the high mountaintop. I am the way and the truth and the life. Walk with me and you shall not walk alone."

Sammy said, "That acid s.h.i.t misfired. The motherf.u.c.ker thinks he's Jesus."

6.

Tojo's burritofied Buchenwald: Five football fields under a tortilla-tamped tin roof. A sunken sun magnet in the middle of a ma.s.sive mesa. Nine hundred niflos broiled brown. Bright-eyed brats brought in to sew serapes and loom lacework and shear sheet metal into shiny souvenirs for burro show sharpies. Labor by lathe, loom, and laundry press. Stoop work at standing stations. Slaves slotted down fifty rows roamed by rough boys with bullwhips and Bulgarian machine guns.

Kiddie casas off cattycorner. Corrugated cardboard--courtesy of Carl's TV in Carlsbad, California.

Facing Maladroit Mesa: A barbed-wire bordered baby White House built to 1/10 scale.

Righteous replication. Exquisite external detail. A lush lawn that led down to Slave City.

The lawn did double duty as an unpaved parking lot. I pulled up behind a beanerized Buick and a frijolified Ford., I felt felicitously fit and joyfully jingoistic. Tojo was flying a flag. His l.u.s.ty little Lucifer was trimmed in tricolored lace. I flipped him a salacious salute.

The joint was jumping jackrabbit high.

A bonaroo buffet boded by the barbed-wire boundary. Bullwhips bit bullet-loud. Mangled muchachos moaned and mewed, "Mamacita!" Blackshirted blowhards lounged on the lawn and swicked switchblades into the gra.s.s.

I vipped out of the van. I hauled Bad Bob out by the hair. Sammy made a mountain of mink and moved it onto the lawn. The Juke Box Jesus was rope-wrapped and mouth-muted and mummified in mink. He could suffer and suffocate. He could vegetate in the van. He didn't play in my plan.

Sammy sealed him in safe and soundless. A blackshirt blizzard hit the Mink Matterhorn.

They reveled and rolled like dogs in the dirt. They mauled mink and salivated on sable. They grabbed and gra.s.s-stained and chewed up choice chinchilla.

A shadow shot over Mink Mountain and shaded in shiveringly. Pedro Pimentel--the tostadofied Tojo and menudoized Mussolini.

A spiffy spic. A blackshirted blackguard with blackhead pits and bad teeth. A jackbooted jackal not to jive with.

He said, "Stop."

The blowsy blackshirts stopped and stood at attention.

He turned to me. "Mr. Getch.e.l.l?"

I said, "In the flesh." I hair-hauled Bad Bob over to him.

"He killed your kid brother. I'm giving him to you as a getacquainted bonus."

Bad Bob boohooed and begged for his life. Pimentel pulled a pistol and popped him in the pineal gland. He sheared off six more shots and shaved his crew cut down to a crease.

Sammy said, "Dig it!"

Pimentel reholstered his heater. "You look like the American entertainer, Sammy Davis, Jr."

I said, "That's 'El Negrito.' He's a torpedo for a n.i.g.g.e.r mob in South L.A."

Sammy said, "What's shakin',Jefe?"

Pimentel patted his paunch. "Quite a remarkable resemblance. Come, I will give you a tour before we eat."

We whipped through the White House. The facade was fetching and faithful to our founding fathers' design. The inside was lusciously Latinate and refreshingly revisionistic.

The rooms resembled rat-traps on Route 66. Jefe housed his hermanos herd-style. They bunked in six-bed bunkers hung with burro act artwork. Dingo dogs and Dobermans dashed down the halls and defecated dolorously.

They lived in the Lincoln Bedroom. The Lincoln portraits were painted by Pedro Pimentel. El Jefe altered Abe and changed him to a cholo in a '52 Chevy.

The dog den opened into the Oval Office. The lewd little Lucifer leered on a lusciously loomed lavender rug. A heavy-hung hound was humping a chewed-up Chihuahua. A Pekingese was p.i.s.sing on Pedro Pimentel's papers.