Joi greased Holly-weird with my handouts. Scores of scurrilous scamsters licked up my largesse. We were buying potentially profitable dirt.
I worked LAPD. I got an off-duty gig as security boss at the Hollywood Ranch Market. It was licentiously legendary and open-all-nite. I bagged shoplifters and check kiters. I lived within my means and never gave Bill Parker’s goons a hook to entrap me. I took Joi to Ciro’s and the Mocambo. I saw intelligence-squad cops dead-eying the scene. I braced them as a brother and ballyhooed my big nights financed by big days at the track.
I sold guns, I sold pills, I brokered abortions. I mail-order-hawked a filthy film called Mae West’s Menagerie. Shack jobs were verboten for LAPD men. Joi and I trysted at her mom’s pad in Redondo Beach. She said the word was moving out and metastasizing: Fred O.’s the man to see.
Assignments rolled in. I pounded a perv who’d whipped out his whang on Duke Wayne’s wife. Duke paid me five yards and gave me the skinny on Red Hollywood. Dino Martin called me. That’s amore: he knocked up his Mex maid with soon-to-hatch triplets. I bribed a customs official and got Dolorous Dolores deported to Mexico. Dino paid me two G’s and dished the dirt on a stunning string of starlets. They bounced on my bed two at a time and dug up dirt on my regular retainer. Want C-notes and riotous ruts in the hay? Call Mr. Nine Inches.
I got Lana Turner a scrape. She banged an alto sax named Art Pepper in a bout of bebop abandon. Putzy Pepper wanted her to keep the kid and threatened exposure. I planted two reefers in his sax case and got him six months at Wayside Honor Rancho.
Joi knew a classy clique of Hancock Park housewives. They were unbearably unbodied and entrenched in ennui. They needed furtive fucking. She saw money in it.
Franchot Tone’s girlfriend was banging a boogie. It was something out of Ramar of the Jungle. I covered the Congo and caught the cat in a gassed-hair joint on Slauson. I kicked his black ass back to Biloxi.
That Fred Otash — he baaaaaaaaaaad!
Joi said Liberace had a job for me. We were in the sack at her mom’s place. Her eyes twinkled and twirled me some all-new way. She drew dollar signs in the air.
The moment vibrates in VistaVision and fabulous Fag-O-Scope. There’s calendar pages and sheet music. A piano noodles a nocturne and pounds a polonaise.
Liberace’s Swank Swish Pad
Coldwater Canyon
4/29/53
A fairy factotum met me. The yard was tropically tricked out and football-field size.
Flamingos flitted. Toucans tooled and bit at bugs. A path cut through ten-foot-high fronds and floral explosions. Everything was green, purple, and pink.
We hit a clearing. It was paved with stones embossed with musical clefs. The pool was shaped like a piano. Liberace sat in a deck chair. A leopard with a mink collar was snoozing at his feet.
The factotum sashayed off. I pulled up a deck chair. The leopard stirred and snarled at me. I scratched his neck. He went back to sleep.
Liberace said, “You’re fearless. You’re the kind of man I need.”
“I’m here to help you out, sir. Joi said you’ve got a guy bugging you.”
The factotum sashayed back with cocktails. Two highball glasses emitted nuclear pink foam. The guy served us and skedaddled. My drink tasted like high-test bubble gum.
Liberace said, “Bottoms up.” Pederast patter — yuk, yuk.
“A kid’s putting the boots to you, right? Pay up or he’ll rat you to the Legion of Decency. All those dago mob guys that book your act in Vegas will hightail it. Your TV show will be canceled if word gets out you go Greek.”
Liberace sighed. “Inimitably candid, and so, so true. He’s a dishwasher at Perino’s. What was I thinking?”
I sipped my pink drink. “Pictures?”
“Of course, dear heart. He lured me to a motel with a wall peek.”
A hi-fi speaker by the pool kicked on. Judy Garland belted, “Someday he’ll come along, the man I love.” The leopard woke up and licked his balls. Liberace goo-goo-talked him.
“Five thou, sir. You get the pictures and negatives, along with my assurance that it won’t happen again.”
Liberace pouted. His chest heaved. Sequins popped off his toga, caught the light, and shined. The leopard ambled to the pool and hung his ass over the edge. A giant shit ensued.
The factotum ran up with a scoop device. Liberace reached under his chair and pulled out a scrapbook.
“Ex-convicts are a weakness of mine, I’m chagrined to say. I’ve got mug shots of him and quite a few other rough-trade conquests. It’s my new hobby. I paste pictures when I’m not wowing my fans or practicing Chopin.”
I grabbed the book and leafed through it. It was the fucking lavender lodestone. I counted 26 KY cowboys wearing neck boards. Names, dates, penal-code numbers. A smutty smorgasbord of malignant maleness. Parole holds and prosty beefs galore.
Liberace jabbed a pic of one Manolo Sanchez. The guy was a Filipino flathead.
“He broke my heart while his evil lezzie sister took snapshots. Feel free to get tough.”
I nodded and flipped ahead. Three glum glamour boys beamed baleful off the page. Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don Eversall. All booked for possession of pornography.
I pointed to the pics. “Blue movie actors, right? They peddle it on the side. You see the movies, you get a yen, you make a phone call.”
“That’s correct. I went to a screening at Michael Wilding and Liz Taylor’s house. Michael screened Locker Room Lust and Jailhouse Heat and supplied the referral.”
“Referral” buzz-bombed me. “Could these guys get it up for women?”
Liberace whooped. “Could, can, and do, sweetheart. And Donkey Don is the eighth wonder of the world, if you follow my drift.”
I tingled. I thought parlay. I saw dollar signs and movie-star movement on my Landing Strip.
“So, Michael Wilding’s a gay caballero?”
“In spades, love. His house is known as the ‘Fruit Stand,’ which perturbs lovely Liz no end.”
I yukked. “And Liz wants a divorce so she can move on to her next husband and break the all-time world record?”
Liberace slapped his knees. “Yes, and she’s pulling ahead of your girlfriend in that department.”
I cracked my knuckles. Liberace swooned. The fey fucker almost creamed in his jeans.
“Tell Liz to meet me at the Beverly Hills Hotel tomorrow night. Fill her in on my résumé.”
Liberace re-swooned. The leopard snarled and shooed a toucan up a tree.
Perino’s was high swank and old money. It catered to sterile stiffs and dotty dowagers who lived with 45 cats. I drove over at close-up time and parked by the back kitchen door. It was propped open. Manolo Sanchez and a fat beaner were scrubbing pots.
I got out of the car and hunkered low. I noted a row of lockers by a walk-in freezer. Fats opened his locker, grabbed a coat, and hit the road. I had the filthy Filipino alone.
He minced to his locker and primped. A mirror covered the inside door and threw his image back at me. I cop-read him: vicious little prick.
I squinted. Aaaaaaaah, the top locker shelf. A stack of photo sheaths.
He picked his teeth, he squeezed blackheads, he de-waxed his ears. I walked in. I crept up behind him. I pulled my beavertail sap. I saw his neck hairs bristle. He wheeled and pulled a shiv.