“Okay” Baxter grinned, pushing his umber hair back from his forehead. “I’m just going to shine it on.”
But Baxter Slate wasn’t sure what in his life he should shine on, unless it was Foxy Farrell. And anyone with an ounce of sense should know that. But the more despondent he had become lately, the more he wanted Foxy Farrell. The five foot two inch, ninety-eight pound, copper haired nude dancer somehow scratched deep and bewildering itches in Baxter’s soul.
And no other girl would do though there were many possibilities. Baxter Slate’s imposing figure, penetrating green eyes, heavy lashes and wide boyish grin made him quite popular with the clerk typists around the station as well as with the single girls in his apartment building. He tried to enjoy other women and made it a point to stay away from Foxy for days at a time. But he would always go back and despise her as she laughed and talked obscenely about what she didn’t do to other men in his absence, while she did it to him. And afterward she would chatter about a flashy boyfriend of one of the dancers and talk of how cute and sexy he was and why didn’t Baxter dress in a white jump suit with a fur collar instead of a stupid woolly herringbone sport coat and a dumb striped necktie like a fucking schoolteacher.
Spermwhale had persuaded Baxter to take him to the Sunset Strip once after work to meet Foxy and the two policemen were taken backstage by a burly assistant manager. Foxy was standing nude in her dressing room combing her pubic hair and pushing the vaginal lips back inside before the second show.
“Flops out once in a while,” she smiled, upon seeing the two men standing there. “Hi, you must be Spermwhale. I’m Foxy.”
“Yes, you are! You are!” cried Spermwhale Whalen. Spermwhale found that Foxy Farrell made him itch all over- to throw her down and bury his face in the burnished thatch of pubic hair which had been shaved to the shape of a heart, and dyed by squatting in a dish of hair color twice a month and brushing it carefully.
“Jesus, Foxy,” Baxter said, “can’t you occasionally act like a… oh what’s the use?”
“He’s a prude,” Foxy laughed, throwing her coppery hair over her shoulder and slipping into a sheer peignoir. “Baxter’s such a prude. That’s why we love each other.”
And she stepped over to the disgusted young policeman and rubbed her naked body against him and pulled his face down to hers, holding him by the ears.
Spermwhale watched and swallowed twice and developed a diamond cutter which delighted Foxy Farrell.
Baxter Slate despised Foxy Farrell. Which was why he wanted to be with her every moment he was off duty and even dared to drive the black and white up to the Sunset Strip in full uniform and leave Spermwhale in the car while he sneaked in the back door of the nightclub and listened at the door, catching Foxy Farrell blowing some fat cat in the dressing room.
Baxter had actually done this twice and each time he had the presence of mind to leave without being seen and wait to deal with Foxy Farrell when he was off duty. The way he dealt with her the last time was to accuse and rage and finally slap her, which she didn’t mind as long as he didn’t raise lumps or make her so black and blue that it would show on the stage.
When his anger was spent and he fell in her arms she smiled. Peppermint breath. Perfumed. Overripe. “Baxter, sweetie, it’s okay, it’s okay. Mama understands her baby. Honest, honey, I didn’t do nothing to that guy. Only fooled around with him a little. I wasn’t Frenching him. It sounded like that because you were all upset and playing vice cop and your imagination ran away with you.”
Baxter smiled grimly and said, “You disgusting bitch. You’re worthless, you know that? Irredeemably worthless. Without honor. Without humanity And someday somebody’ll kill you. But really, what good would that do?”
Foxy smiled slant eyed and licked Baxter on the cheek. “Honest, honey,” she purred, “I wouldn’t go down there and kiss that rich man’s cock and suck his balls like I’m gonna do to you right now. You know I wouldn’t do that to no other man, don’t you, honey?”
And while she did it, Baxter Slate clenched his teeth and whispered, “You worthless slut. You worthless slut. I hate you.”
He whispered it again and again. She gave him the most sensual and agonizing moments of his entire life and this time even she enjoyed it and laughed excitedly all the way, her cheek throbbing where he had struck her.
Baxter seldom talked to Foxy Farrell cruelly Usually he treated her like a perfect lady which she hated. And took her to intimate French restaurants which bored her. And brought her bottles of Bordeaux wines he really couldn’t afford, which she served to other friends over icecubes. In fact she rather disliked everything about Baxter except that he was unquestionably good looking, and being a cop could get her out of minor scrapes with the law or at least might help if she were ever picked up by vice cops for going too far during her nude dancing routine. She sometimes did go too far and once was taken from the stage by a vice officer for pulling a customer’s face into her bumping groin. A phone call to Baxter Slate saved Foxy from going to jail because the vice cop was an academy classmate of Baxter’s and liked him very much, as did all other policemen with the exception of Roscoe Rules.
Eventually, Foxy Farrell found Baxter Slate a terrible bore and was starting to hate him as much as Spermwhale found Foxy Farrell exciting and was starting to love her. But she found a twenty-five year old pimp named Goldie Grant irresistible. He saw her whenever she could ditch Baxter and eventually he became her real old man instead of her play old man and moved in with her and let her support him and go down on lots of fat cats and high rollers for lots of money and beat her up maybe twice a month whether she needed it or not. They were very happy together and everyone said made a handsome couple.
When Baxter did not appear unhappy enough one night Foxy told a story of how a cute and sexy player had taken her out for a drink after work and tried to give her a hundred dollars just to let him push her face in his lap and only stopped when she told him how her boyfriend was a cop. And what a hard on the player had!
Then Foxy feigned hurt and shock when Baxter grinned crookedly and said, “What a cheap stupid little animal you are.”
She pouted and said, “Honest, Baxter, I didn’t do this to him.” And she began the little charade which would end in his passionate moaning and her excited laughter.
But no matter how much she despised Baxter Slate, Foxy Farrell could not have begun to fathom how much he was starting to despise the same young man.
The relationship with Foxy Farrell had begun after Baxter’s tour of duty at Wilshire Juvenile where he felt he failed miserably as a kiddy cop and had not prevented the demise of Tommy Rivers, age six and a half.
Of course no one guessed that Baxter Slate somehow felt responsible for the fate of Tommy Rivers.
What made Baxter think he could have prevented Tommy Rivers’ death was that he had, before transferring to Juvenile, received the very first radio call to the home of Lena Rivers shortly after she was reunited with her then five year old son Tommy who in his blue sailor suit looked like little Shirley Temple with a haircut.
Lena Rivers had three children by the husband who preceded Tommy’s father who was a petty officer in the U.S. Navy. Lena had farmed the boy out to her mother six months after his birth when the sailor shipped out for good and never returned. Lena Rivers had undergone shock treatments after that and had hated the sailor relentlessly and never wanted the child he spawned. Now, five years later, with Lena’s mother ill, Lena had been forced to drive to the Greyhound Depot in downtown Los Angeles and pick up the little sailor who had traveled several hundred miles alone without a whimper, the darling of the bus.