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  "Just the ones over there," she said.

  "Over where?"

  She knew I had to look at her, and when I did, she took the finger that had been playing with her lower lip and languidly pointed it to the bookcase closest to the screen. Her other hand was playing with the top of her bikini bottom.

  "Right there?" I nodded. Not at the bookcase, but at the lower hand.

  "Uh-huh," she said again. The other hand started back toward her mouth, but got distracted by the rounded slope of her breasts. The bikini top was really struggling to keep all of her covered.

  "I might have to charge Matty extra for keeping me here this afternoon," I said. "When I should be working for him."

  "Oh . . . ?"

  "Hazard pay," I explained as I returned my attention to the bookcases and wandered farther away from the squirming woman on the couch.

  She let out a noise that was part sigh, part throaty growl, and I almost turned around to check if she was choking on an air bubble or something. I could do the Heimlich, if necessary, and I could manage a chest massage too, especially if that wasn't medically necessary. She would probably prefer the latter to the former, which would lead to other hands-on applications.

  I sighed, too. Mostly because I recognized a number of the titles on the VHS tapes. I plucked one of them off the shelf. Lordship and Bondage 3. Still wrapped in plastic. I looked at the cast on the back of the case, and spotted a younger version of myself. Shirtless. That ridiculous hairdo and mustache. A brunette wearing a silk nightie that didn't quite cover her ass had her hands on my chest, but not so you couldn't see her breasts, straining against the fabric of the nightie. We both looked like we were half-asleep instead of going in for a passionate kiss.

  Ah, the good old days.

  "That's vintage stuff," Babs said. "Matty says it'll be worth something someday."

  "Does he?" I put the tape back. "Well, we'll just have to be patient then, won't we?"

  She pouted. "I'm not very good at patience."

  I wandered back to the couch and sat down. She immediately threw one of her legs across my lap and scooted closer to me. "I can see that," I said.

  I could also see her nipples.

  I took one final swig from the near-empty rum bottle and then carefully put it next to my leg, between her legs. "Matty said to get money from you," I said. "I have work to do for him."

  "Now?" she asked. She pouted. She was pretty good at it.

  "Yeah."

  Her leg tightened across my lap. "But I'm not ready for you to go. And besides, you've been drinking."

  "This is LA," I said. "Everyone's been drinking. And besides, the drive is all downhill from here."

  She started to sit up, pulling herself closer to me, but then someone dropped several bundles of bills on her smooth stomach. A female hand snatched the rum bottle away from between her legs, and nearly brained me with it.

  "Matty wants a report from you in three days." Babs' twin glared at her sister for a moment and then stomped off, swinging her hips.

  I gently extricated myself from Babs' leg. "Looks like I have to go to work," I said. I started to gather the money bundles from the couch.

  Babs grabbed one stack of twenties and held it tight.

  "One kiss?"

  "Okay," I said. "One kiss."

  "With tongue."

  I plucked the last bundle from her hands. "You must do all his negotiating."

  Babs smiled, and when she realized my hands were full, she grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me close.

  I got caught in mid-afternoon traffic coming back from Malibu, and the boardwalk along the beach was starting to fill up with the post-work crowd by the time I got off the freeway. My little bungalow was tucked back behind a mid-century rambler which was part of a neighborhood caught in a transitional phase. The throaty growl of the Mustang's engines reverberated between the houses as I slid the car up the driveway and around to the back, and when I shut off the car, I could hear the urgent bark of Mrs. Chow's Pekingese.

  The dog didn't like my car. It was the sort of small dog who suffered from being a small dog in a big world, though why it fixated on my car as the source of all its canine frustration, I could never figure out.

  Dogs. They make us look smart.

  I collected the money-filled duffel and got out of the car.

  Mrs. Chow was standing on the back porch of the rambler, smoking a cigarette. Baby Baby—always terrified, always letting everyone know—crouched behind her, growling and letting go with the occasional yip.

  I nodded and smiled. Offered some small talk about the weather, which was always the same here—a half-mile from the beach in Venice. She made a face and waved a hand at the sky. I tried not to give her an excuse to regale me with the latest manner in which the sky was trying to poison her. We had enough time during our bi-weekly excursions to her favorite seafood market in Long Beach for her to catch me up on every ache and imaginary pain vexing her.

  Of course, the real root cause of all her imagined afflictions was loneliness. The salons ran themselves. Her husband had taken care of the other businesses before he had been incarcerated, and now, her sons were in charge. Her daughter was finishing up a law degree at UCLA, which meant no one saw much of her. And I didn't talk much about how I kept myself busy. That left Mrs. Chow with an empty house and a high-strung dog as her constant companion—two things that are no comfort for a widow.

  The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had mitigated the remainder of Mr. Chow's sentence when he had been diagnosed with colon cancer. The paperwork took awhile, but he had managed to spend the last few months at home, instead of in a cell at the Colony. CMC.

  We had met at Tehachapi. CCI.

  CDCR was all about the acronyms.

  Chow had been doing ten to twenty for money laundering, wire fraud, and tax evasion. I was doing five for possession and intent to distribute, which turned into ten by the time it was all said and done. We were innocent of all the crimes stapled to our sheets, of course, but the State of California was happy to assume there were other crimes it hadn't listed. Chow was an old man on the outs with his friends from across the Pacific, and I was a dumbass kid who had been popped for drugs. We found reasons to trust each other, and figured out a mutually beneficial relationship.

  Six months after I got out, he got transferred to the Colony. A year later, he was at home, waiting for the cancer to take him. After he was gone, his son told me that the old man had wanted me to have the bungalow out back. Rent-free, as long as Mrs. Chow owned the rambler, and she was the very definition of stubborn. They were going to need a earthmover to dig her out of the house after she died.

  The first night I had stayed at the bungalow, Mrs. Chow had come out and knocked on the door. She was like a fragile bird, a long-limbed heron with her pale neck and wide eyes. She had stood in the doorway of the bungalow, peering inside. "Mr. Chow says you took care of him," she had said.

  I hadn't disagreed.

  "He says I should take care of you," she had said.

  "I'm a grown man," I had protested.

  "All grown, huh? Maybe you should take care of me too?" She had laughed at the expression on my face. "No guns. No drugs," she had said.

  "No guns. No drugs," I had repeated. That was easy to promise.

  "You can take me shopping once in a while," she had said.

  "I can do that."

  "Keep your hands off my daughter, or I'll have them cut off."

  I had nodded. Happy to oblige.

  But then I hadn't met Angel yet.

  As I walked away from the car, Baby Baby came bounding off the back porch of the house. The small dog reached the midway point in the yard, and lowered himself against the grass. He growled and snapped at the steel leviathan in the driveway, as if his earnest ferocity could somehow
frighten my car and make it run away.

  I keyed the alarm on the car, which made it beep once, and the noise sent the dog into a barking frenzy. I glanced back at Mrs. Chow and shrugged. What else could you do about a small dog with an inferiority complex?

  She exhaled a long plume of cigarette smoke—in that way that only passive-aggressive older women can.

  Hey, maybe the dog would bark himself into a heart attack. A man can dream, can't he?

  I went into the bungalow and shut the door behind me, and the frenzied sounds from the yard became a distant chirrup of noise. The place was tiny; the square footage wasn't much more than the movie room at Matesson's, and it was divided up into a central living space and kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and an equally tiny bedroom. I kicked off my shoes, dropped the duffel on the couch, and was at the refrigerator in three more steps. Modern efficiency living.

  Mrs. Chow opened the door before I managed three sips from the beer I pulled out of the fridge. She was prone to walking in without knocking—social etiquette gleaned from some network comedy. I locked the door at night, when there was no reason for her to be wandering around the yard, but otherwise, I didn't bother. It was like Tehachapi in that sense: during daylight, you had no privacy; at night, you were locked in—for your own protection.

  Baby Baby darted in with Mrs. Chow, and bounced up onto the couch. He barked at the duffel bag once, and then grabbed the corner with his teeth and started wrestling with it.

  I opened the refrigerator for Mrs. Chow, and she made a noise with her lips as she examined the sad state of affairs inside. "Nothing but beer," she said.

  "And condiments," I pointed out.

  "You need more leafy greens. And vegetables."

  "I ate them all yesterday," I said. "And I haven't had a chance to go to the store today."

  She took one of the beers, and held it out for me to twist the top off. Her hands were too delicate. Not made for opening bottles or jars. Or handling tools.

  She had been a hand model, once upon a time. For one of the major national chains. She still wore a lot of jewelry, but most of it was gaudy stuff picked up on the cheap from estate sales in the valley.

  "This is not very good beer," she said after taking a tiny sip.

  "I wasn't planning on entertaining this afternoon," I said.

  "You shouldn't cheat yourself," she said, waving the mouth of the bottle at me.

  I didn't see any reason to argue with that point.

  On the couch, Baby Baby was still wrestling with the duffel. He had managed to pull it closer to the edge of the cushion.

  "Making movies again?" Mrs. Chow asked.

  The bag had the logo of Matesson's production company on it. She knew it wasn't my bag. For all her hypochondria, very little escaped her notice.

  "No," I said. "Just doing someone a favor."

  "How much of a favor?" she asked.

  When I didn't say anything, she looked me in the eye and sniffed loudly. "He can smell it," she said, nodding toward the fussing dog.

  "Smell what?"

  "What's in the bag."

  "What is in the bag?"

  She gave me a look. "How much?" she asked.

  I took a long pull from my beer before answering. "It's just a favor," I said.

  "How much?" she asked again.

  I shrugged. "Ask the dog."

  "Baby Baby doesn't know how to count. He's a dog."

  "And yet, him being able to smell money doesn't seem like a stretch."

  She gave me that stare.

  "It's just a favor," I reiterated. "I'll be gone for a few days. That's all. It's nothing."

  "Where are you going?"

  "North. Not far."

  "Into the mountains?"

  "Maybe."

  "There are mountain lions. You should be careful."

  "There aren't any mountain lions."

  "There are. I heard about one on Channel 7 this morning. Out in Pasadena. It's eaten four dogs already." She glanced over at the dog on the couch. "My Baby Baby could be next."

  "We're an hour and a half from Pasadena. Like, what? Fifty miles? No mountain lion is going to come all the way here—especially through downtown and Central—to eat your dog."

  "You can't be sure of that." Her rings clicked against the bottle in her hand. "You can't be sure of anything."

  I kept myself from rolling my eyes. I knew where this was going.

  "I'm going to pack," I said, pushing away from the kitchen counter and heading for the bedroom.

  The drive up north wasn't going to take more than an hour or two, but I figured I should throw an overnight bag together, just in case this favor for Matesson turned into more than a drive up and back. He hadn't told me anything of substance about why Gloria was at the retreat, and the five grand I had gotten from the twins wasn't the sort of money thrown around for retrieving an errant child. Well, for Matesson, maybe it was. But the fact that he had called me—had called in an old debt that wasn't actually a debt owed—said he wanted someone he knew and trusted to step and fetch for him. The fact that I knew Gloria—and her background—suggested he wanted to keep the whole thing hush-hush and private.

  I had lots of questions, and I was sure that a reconnoiter of the retreat was going to raise a whole bunch more. I wanted to be better informed before I saw Matesson again.

  I heard Mrs. Chow's voice from the other room. "Baby Baby! Bad dog! Naughty dog!"

  With a sigh, I wandered back to the main room. Mrs. Chow had gathered up Baby Baby in her arms, and she was halfway out the front door. "Must run," she called over her shoulder when she spotted me. "So much to do. Can't stay. Have a good trip." She waved and hurried out, shutting the door quickly behind her.

  The dog hadn't made a noise during their exodus.

  Her beer bottle, barely touched, sat on the counter next to the sink. The duffel bag was still on the couch, though it looked like it had been opened. Curious, I wandered closer to the bag, and I smelled what the dog had done before I laid eyes on the wet bills.

  The little bastard had peed on my money.

  CHAPTER 3

  I got a later start than I wanted.

  After dumping the duffel bag in the sink, and running water over the stacks of bills, I had laid them out on towels and tried to use a hair dryer, but I was going to be there all night, hand-drying each bill. I settled for running them through the dryer—perma press, lowest heat setting possible—which took an hour, but at least they were dry.

  I wrapped bricks of five hundred dollars in paper towels and sprayed them with some cheap cologne I kept in the bottom drawer in the bathroom. It wasn't going to entirely mask the faint, but persistence, whiff of dog urine, but it would hide the stink well enough. I dumped the bricks in a plastic sack, and put it in the trunk of my car. The duffel bag, which reeked of dog piss, went into Mrs. Chow's trash can.

  And finally, at a quarter past seven, I started up the Mustang and backed it noisily out of the driveway, and headed for PCH.

  I kept the windows rolled down, letting the warm air off the ocean flow through the car. The sun burned as it set, sending streamers of pink and orange fire scuttling across the pale sky. There was a storm coming, and the wind whipped waves along the shore. The air smelt of salt and sand, and for awhile, I forgot about punting Baby Baby across the lawn the next time he came out and barked at my car.

  State Route 1, also known as the Pacific Coast Highway, is the scenic route up the coast from Los Angeles to all points north. The 101 is faster, but it's also miles of concrete through miles of city. Driving along the PCH lets you watch the sunset out across the Pacific Ocean. You can pretend you're not driving out of a desert basin not meant to support millions of people hustling and cursing and fucking and trying their damnedest to claw higher on their respective social ladders. You can look at a
ll the million-dollar houses perched along the verge of the coast and daydream that one of them might be yours someday.

  If the right producer noticed you and gave you that starring role in the next big studio blockbuster, that house over there with the steel shutters and the red roof could be your private hideaway from the paparazzi. If some forward-thinking record exec heard your demo, and gave you that multi-album deal, the balcony on that house that looked like a bunch of giant toilet paper tubes wrapped with Christmas lights might be where you could be puking champagne and pills on the night your first single hits the number-one spot on the Billboard charts.

  I passed the turn for Matesson's house, and noticed that the view—even from the road—was impressive.

  I wasn't prone to melancholic reflection on what might have been had things gone differently twenty-odd years ago. I had done enough of that during the first few years at Tehachapi, and after Mr. Chow had gotten my head screwed the right way round, I hadn't felt much urge to play the ‘What if?' game. It didn't matter; what had happened had permanently altered whatever future that dumb kid might have had in porn. For some, Butch Bliss was just a dumb alliteration-loving motherfucker with a promising pecker, who got popped and probably pounded a few times in prison.

  If I had cut a demo record after I had come out, I probably would have been one of those idiots puking off the balcony of his Malibu home. The narrative was perfect for VH-1. Popped and pounded. Maybe that could even be the title of the Behind the Scenes episode.

  Somewhere near Oxnard, I finally had that fabled bowel movement Matesson had assured me I would be the lucky recipient of. The rum Babs had put in the drink she had originally planned for herself softened the experience. So to speak. If I had wiped my ass with one of the twenties Matesson had given me, it would have perfectly summed up the day.

  I only thought about that a half-hour later. By then, it was too late.

  But it was the sort of re-jiggering of events that would play well for the discerning cable crowd, in the event of a made-for-TV special.