NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 1 - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith

Six women crowded the honeymoon suite of the Coastal Motel. The buxom 'groom' patiently waited on the bed for her 'bride', while the brutish camerawoman glanced at the director and tapped her watch.

"Lena, are you ready yet?" A bead of sweat trickled down the wiry director's spine, as she knocked on the bathroom door.

"One more minute," the female lead shouted from inside the tiled room.

“That’s fine as long as it’s sixty seconds.” Sherri Conti signaled the camerawoman to prepare for the money shot, acutely aware that the different segments of a movie set operated at contradicting speeds within the same time frames.

The technicians were habitually fast, except they were had nothing to do, and the talent was traditionally slow, especially when they were being rushed by the producer.

A director's job was to ensure the contrasting sides of the camera meshed during the actual shooting and Sherri checked the equipment for any potential miscue. Everything was in place, except for the girl in the bathroom.

There was no way that Lena was suffering stage fright. The young starlet had performed sex before a camera over fifty times and had not once gone up or blown her scene. Lena was simply dropping into her persona. Sherri had undergone the identical transformation in hundreds of hotels, condos, and ranch houses over her twenty-year career in XXX films.

The extra time had been worth the wait, because once Sherri had heard the word ‘action’, her body had exhibited a tangible hunger for sex and the camera never lied in an industry with no special effects.

Sherri’s name had once blazed on marquee lights in Times Square and her body had filled a millions of TV screens for audiences of one. A devoted fan had amassed a list of her on-screen lovers. The number ran into the thousands. The handful of stand-outs had vanished from the Valley like animals scourged into extinction. Sherri could have easily joined them, but her near-miraculous survival granted the forty-five year-old director the status of living legend.

The accolades, setbacks, or sins were meaningless to Sherri, for porno was still a business and time was money and she turned to the black woman on the queen-sized bed.

"Josie, give us a sound check."

"You got it, boss lady."

Big Josie Cane had worked for Sherri ten times.

The ex-actress’ production company paid better than the standard daily of $500 and the director had never blindsided the actresses with bizarre requests, so Josie gladly saved her best performances for Sherri. These girl-on-girl scenes were especially easy with Lena, for the Spanish girl shone in a business where most actresses were lightbulbs.

Rising off the mattress Josie spoke into the overhead boom.

"Testing, one, two, three." Josie cinched the belt of the strap-on dildo, which she didn't want to slip out of place during the shoot. This was going to be one long take and she meant to make the most of it.

"How clean is it?” Sherri asked the soundwoman.

Even with the taped windows and heavily blanketed door the microphone picked up the wet sizzle of 18-wheelers on the rain-drenched Ventura Freeway.

"Nothing I can't fix in the sound studio." The soundwoman had heard worst background noise.

The battery of Soft Ks, 10Ks, and Mighty Mole lights around the room pushed the temperature into the 90s. Sherri surveyed the sheen of sweat on Josie and figured that the male audience would appreciate the glistening ebony skin.

"It’s a go, once the 'jig inky' is in focus." The stocky gaffer in jeans studied the bed. Not a single shadow was visible on the sheets.

"Okay, we'll deal with that when Lena is in place." This scene needed to be shot and Sherri nervously pushed back her brown shag-cut hair. “Lena, that minute is up.”

“Ready or not here I come.” The raven-haired actress emerged from the bathroom and struck a provocative pose before the crew. The muscles of her girlish body were taut from dance classes without any deformation by gym training. A neutral-toned blush heightened the smoothness of her olive skin. Mascara accented the Oriental cant of her green eyes and her coal-black hair was cut to mimic Cleopatra.

She was more exotic than beautiful and this attribute converted into star quality. Her DVDs sold out every first run and the critics had nominated her ‘best new starlet’ for the upcoming XXX awards in Las Vegas.

“Finally.” Sharon clapped her hands and the crew snapped to attention.

Lena crossed the room to her off-screen lover.

The actress was an inch shorter than Sherri and her pouting pelvis grazed the director's thigh. The older woman stiffened, wishing that she was on the bed, instead of Josie, however the director had retired from that side of the camera five years ago.

"Nervous?"

"Nervous? I was made for this." The younger woman glided out of reach and every woman in the room studied her nakedness. Lena wouldn't have it any other way, for she was as much an exhibitionist as a voyeur.

Lena lay on the bed with her legs apart.

Her character in the film was called Desiree.

A runaway who had never been with a woman before.

Lena had run away from her home at the age of 14 and knew every aspect of this role inside out.

The gaffer adjusted the 'jig inky', as the make-up artist feathered the final touches on Lena's metamorphosis into a white trash virgin's first meeting with a bull dyke.

The market for most adult entertainment was predominantly male. Lena’s audience was evenly split between men and women, despite purely lesbian content of her films. Part of her appeal had to do with Lena's youth. She was new meat.

Sherri's first film had been a 8mm loop filmed in a Times Square studio. She had played a pizza girl delivering an order of pepperoni pies to a stag party. The invulnerability of her youth hadn’t lasted long in the meat grinder of adult film industry and Sherri was determined to protect Lena from such damage, but no one could survive forever without losing their soul.

Lena deserved to be in real films and Sherri had a plan to get the young girl on the silver screen, but now was not the time.

“Everyone set?” Sherri asked the crew.

“Ready, when you are, boss lady.” The gaffer retreated from the lights and Lena's hand dropped to her shaved vagina. Soon it would be replaced by that of another woman. The old Jefferson Airplane song SALLY GOES ROUND THE ROSES popped into Sherri’s head and the chorus repeated in her mind.

“Saddest thing in the whole wide world is to see your baby with another girl.”

“Josie, take your position.” Filming Lena with another woman was becoming increasingly difficult, but Sherri waved the make-up woman from the bed. In the end she was a professional.

“Places.”

Big Josie Cane assumed the 'top' position for the classic 'cowgirl reverse' shot and the Super 8mm video camera transmitted a pixilated image of Lena speaking her lines onto the video monitor. The picture was a little fuzzy.

“Sharpen it a little,” Sherri ordered the crouching camerawoman.

“Got it.” The camerawoman crystallized the focus with the deftness of a safecracker.

The image on the screen looked real and Sherri prayed a technical failure would halt the filming, except the words, "Lights, camera, action" transported the crew and actresses into the magic world of movie-making.

While the camera wasn’t 35mm and the budget was less than $20,000, every woman in the room prayed today’s filming guiding was a magic carpet them to Hollywood, that most promised of Californian lands, and no one was refusing a shot at the silver screen matter how big or small the stage.

Any god or goddess would have known the truth.

Not everyone gets a shot at fame and fortune.

Only the very lucky and the very good and sometimes the very bad reached the promised land and one look through the viewfinder was proof that Lena de Gama was destined for that heaven, for the camera never lies about the truth.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 3 - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith

THREE

The twentieth-floor suite's view of the Las Vegas Strip framed the expansive desert horizon. Most tourists considered this vista spectacular, however its occupant was transfixed by his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Louie Sinreich looked good for 35. His sandy hair was a tribute to the technological advanced in salon coloring and his smile gleamed like the keys of a new Steinway piano thanks to monthly visits to a Hollywood dentist.

Five hours a week at a Hollywood gym maintained his body's Adonis musculature. The effect was all natural, which was more than he could say for his overnight guest, a surgically-altered blonde sprawled atop the king-sized bed’s satin sheets.

Her name drew a blank, but she couldn't have been born with which she had introduced herself at the casino bar last night. Two drinks into her come-on she had commented on his resemblance to James Wood. Louie had heard the line before.

"He's my 3rd cousin."

It was a lie used so many times he almost believed it himself.

"What's a 3rd cousin?"

"The son of my uncle's nephew."

"That's funny." $1500 had persuaded the blonde bombshell to join him for a nightcap. He had dropped a Blue Boy on the elevator and inhaled a rail of meth inside the suite. Erect and awake he exacted his money's worth from his guest; five happy endings in 8 hours. She negotiated another $500 during this marathon. Louie had gladly paid it, but now was time for her to go and he slapped the showgirl hard on the ass.

The blonde whelped awake and raked back her Malibu-blonde hair with lacquered fingernails.

"I hate Viagra."

"Don't worry, honey, party time’s over." Louie waved for her to get out of the giant bed. "I have guests in five minutes, so you gotta go."

"I understand business before pleasure." The curvy showgirl jumped to her feet and into her form-fitting leather sheath in less than ten seconds, then strapped on her high heels, as if they had materialized from thin air.

"You need a date for later?"

"I know where to find you, if I do." Louie hid his erection, since he disliked any woman, especially a hooker, thinking she had any power over him.

"Then I'll be seeing you around." The blonde blew him a kiss.

"I'll be around too."

The door shut without a noise and Louie ventured over to the double-paned window overlooking the canyon of casinos. Across the street a fake volcano's fiery eruption magnetically drew hick tourists into the gambling hall like the ants to a picnic and Louie's mind crunched the numbers.

"$600,000,000 makes someone a player in this town. When I build my casino, it'll cost a billion, maybe even more. The biggest and the best. A regular Tenth Wonder of the World."

Louie Sinreich's grandest scheme was to construct a casino catering to the wicked of this world far from family-oriented Vegas. Deep in the desert BABYLON would crown his five-year plan to dominate the adult-film industry and the buzz at the hotel room's door was a small step in the right direction.

"One second." Louie slipped into a silk robe and opened the door to a middle-aged couple in matching purple jogging suits. The redheaded woman's massacred eyes grazed down his torso and her slightly overweight husband grasped Louie's hand.

"Sorry, if we're a little early."

"Nothing to be sorry about." Louie released the handshake and led the woman inside the room. "Please sit down. Can I get you a drink? Some coffee maybe?"

"Just some water.” The older man settled onto the sofa next to his wife and patted her thigh. "Dorrine and I have given up caffeine."

"Nothing like living healthy."

>"We agree, Mr. Sinreich." Dorrine unzipped her warm-up jacket.

She wasn't wearing a bra and her breasts sagged onto her ribcage.

>"On the West Coast we go on a first name basis.” Louie handed them two glasses of water. "Call me Louie, please."

"Sure, Louie, I want to thank you for flying us out here, but I don't really see how you can help us."

"Henry, why are you always so negative?" Dorrine planted herself on her husband's lap.

In Rockford, Illinois Dorrine Johns stopped cars.

In Vegas she was an over-sexed woman vainly struggling to fight off the overflow of years.

"Kids, it's love not war." Louie signaled a time-out with his hands. "Henry's right to wonder why I flew you two out here. Sure, there's the computer convention, the awards ceremony, gambling, and shows, but when I said, "Business." I meant business."

"What kind of business?” Henry put down his water.

"Ten years ago if anyone had told me amateur videos would grab 15% percent of the market, I would have told them that they were nuts. That’s how big the home videos are now and whether you like it or not you are on the cutting edge of the porno industry."

"Dorrine and I never intended to sell videos. They were just a way for people like us to get in touch with each other. With themselves."

"Henry thinks of 'Swinging' as a religion to free both body and soul." Dorrine tapped her husband's face.

"However it started, now you find yourselves the head of America's biggest swinging network. 150,000 couples coast to coast happy to pay you $150 per year to join a swinging network. Pretty good money any way you cut it, but I can increase your earnings."

"I'm quite happy where I am," Henry fidgeted under his wife.

"I know you are, but you have obligations to the public now. The viewers were tired of Barbie Doll starlets faking orgasms. They started buying your videos. When you have a 'product' people want, money comes to you. No one's asking you to betray your members or beliefs and I respect protecting your members by HIV tests. I do the same for my actors and actresses. Every twenty-one days they’re tested for diseases. You and I may have different goals, but when it comes time to defending our freedom, you, me, and Dorrine all get naked on the same side of the bed."

"I guess so." The years of harassment by the various anti-porno prosecutors had proven allies in the battle for a free libido were few and far between.

"Henry has trouble accepting being 'King of the Swingers' makes him a millionaire, right, Henry?"

"Swinging isn't about the money. You may see hundreds of starlets a week, but I see Dorrine with another man, I see her alive with his desire. Almost like the first time I saw her."

"I was 19. You were married, but this isn't about us, honey, listen to what the man says."

"Thanks you, Dorrine."

Louie sat on the sofa and stared into Henry's eyes.

"I understand your feeling for Dorrine. I felt the same way the first time I saw her in that badly cut video. And I saw that she wanted more excitement than any small town can give her," Louie Sinreich seamlessly explained how the Johns could expand their access to swingers by having his production company professionally edit and license their catalogue of amateur videos for online access. "Not only will you make millions, you'll be stars of the internet."

"Just say yes, darling, just say the word." The redhead bounced on her husband’s lap.

"When have I ever been able to tell you no?" Henry smiled like a little dog and his wife and she kissed her husband with a conspiratorial wink at Louie.

"You won't regret this, Henry. Not one bit." Louie derived zero thrills from watching regular John and Jane Does mimicking porno films.

Still snaring a major share of a multi-billion dollar industry was good morning's work for a man just out of bed and he reached over to free Dorrine's breasts from her track suit. The 42 longs were not a pretty sight either, but this part of the game never was until you signed a contract.

Then it was all happy faces to the bank.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 2 - A novel by Peter Nolan Smith

A baby's plaintive cry bounced down the air shaft into the pitch-black bedroom. The middle-aged man on the mattress opened his eyes. The upstairs neighbors had brought their infant home from the hospital. Sean Collan swung out of bed. The bawling ceased as soon as his feet touched the bare wooden floor. Sleep belonged to another day.

"Damn." Sean stumbled from his tomb into the sunlight flooding the living room.

>The blinding brightness indicated another beautiful spring day for January, although Sean wished the city had been buried by a blizzard. At least then he would have an excuse for staying in his apartment since New Year's Day.

Celebrating the First Night at his best friends' loft had been a time-honored tradition. Soul-kissing their angelic daughter at the stroke of twelve was a drastic detour from previous parties. While he had zero reservations about sleeping with someone less than half his age, Sean had known Allee, since she was three, and he fled without wishing "Happy New Year.” to either parent.

Union Square had glowed with thousands of revelers’ high expectations for the infant millennium. Everyone was with someone. None noticed the tuxedoed man walking into the East Village and Sean arrived home with a resolution to not die an old person in New York.

A fast accompanied by a vow of silence should have birthed revelations, except the days of starvation unearthed visions of pork satay, French toast, bacon and fried eggs in bacon grease, chicken pots pies, fried clams and finally this morning corn flakes with bananas drowning in cold milk.

Hunger had him in the submission hold, yet six days in a New York apartment were no forty days in the desert.

Stretching his stocky body, he surveyed the damage. His left knee popped from thirty-five years of basketball, his right torn shoulder was torn after pitching relief in a fastball game at age 40, and his crackling knuckles had busted too many heads.

Thankfully his face had lost its beer bloat and Sean fit into 34 Levis, although not today and he dressed in khaki trousers, Irish sweater, and black leather coat.

On the stairs he passed two neighbors without saying a word.

As safe as New York had become under the law-and-order mayor, the city was packed with people firmly intent on remaining strangers.

Outside on the sidewalk he weaved through the discarded Christmas trees to his motorcycle. A handful of parking tickets fluttered from the 1970 Yamaha 650cc XS. No parts had been stolen and he continued to the corner, which was under siege by a dozen RVs and scores of burly film technicians. Their walkie-talkies squawked out orders from the director and the cameraman across the street was focusing a camera on two diminutive actors.

The stars' names escaped Sean, for his love of the movies had been ruined by over-bloated budgets, gun ballets, parking lot car chases, and Barbie Doll love scenes. Even sitting in a theater had become a chore.

A PA tried to bar him from crossing the street.

"We're filming."

"Great." Sean stepped back onto the pavement rather than start an altercation.

Two policemen eyed him as if he might be trouble, then went back to drinking their coffees.

Upon reaching Veselka's Diner, Sean sat at his usual corner stool. A discarded NY Times lay on the counter and he scanned the front pages without registering the headlines. Nothing had happened during his absence from reality.

A short Ukrainian counterman came over with a glass of water.

"Happy New Year, where you been?"

>Sean shrugged to indicate nowhere.

"The usual?" Anton was accustomed to his long-time customer's vow of silence.

Sean nodded and Anton stuck his order above the grill.

Across the counter three French tourists studied the diner, as if they were on an anthropological expedition.

Back in the late-70s these foreign gawkers would have been plundered for their last franc by junkies. That era’s thieves were dead, imprisoned or burnt out. Junior execs paid good money to live on the Lower East Side. Sean was an anachronism and a quick read of the Help Wanted Ads reinforced his stranglehold on true meaninglessness. No one would hire him for a sales person, cook, or tugboat captain and a rescue from ruin appeared uncertain at best.

>Anton delivered his coffee and buttered bagel.

Sean wrapped his hands around the ceramic mug and thanked the stars for having left him that one last move to save his soul.

"That's not much of a breakfast for a grown man."

Sean turned his head.

Frank deRocco was five years younger than Sean. He looked older by ten. Drinking had spread a lace of red veins across the Ninth Precinct detective's face, tobacco had yellowed his stumpy teeth, and his scalp gleamed under his thin white hair. "Been callin' you the last couple of days, but you ain't been answerin' the phone. You sick?"

Sean shook his head glumly, for the two men weren't friends.

"What's the matter, Seano? You lose your voice?" deRocco spoke out of the side of his mouth, so no one else could hear them. "No matter, you only gotta listen. You know, it's funny, but the other day I'm up in Midtown South, readin' some bulletins to kill time, when I find this Identikit picture of that skinny French bitch you were runnin' with last year. A blonde, no tits, no ass. Just like a boy."

deRocco opened the complimentary notebook from an off-shore Cayman Island bank, then paused, as if he had forgotten how to speak. The stalling ploy played as badly in real life as it did on TV.

"Seems a year ago there was a series of robberies in Midtown and East Side hotels. I'm from the Ninth Precinct and normally don't give a shit for what goes on outside my territory, but this set-up was cute. A skinny French broad shows up at a hotel bar and she's a piece of ass. Now your typical out-of-town businessman hits on her, though he's not typical, since he's wearin' a gold Rolex or Cartier or somethin' foreign. They talk, have a few drinks, get touchy-feeley. He invites her upstairs. She agrees, and, like friggin' magic, once in the room she gets naked and the guy's lickin' her breasts like ice cream, because she says drives her nuts. Then the lights go out for the guy. Wakes up eight hours later with a killer headache and no gold watch, cause here comes the cute part. The French broad coated her nipples and tits with a very strong knockout drug. I can't remember what. Anyway she works this scam fifteen times we hear about, probably another ten where the suckers are too embarrassed to tell the police. The watches run for ten to twenty thou each. Definitely Grand Larceny. Midtown stakes out the hotels, only gettin' a nibble from some whores workin' the hotels, but no blonde French broad. She made her nut and bolted."

Mira Lachelle had been a fashion model before a heroin habit banished her from the runways. The Frenchwoman said that she was here on holiday. Sean gave her a place to stay. Resistance to the wasted princess’ advances was impossible. Mira said the watches were presents. Sean didn’t ask from whom and for the six months after she had left New York, he had come to view Mira as a failed morality test.

He reached into his pocket to pay the bill.

"I ain't got to the story's happy ending yet.” The cop gripped his forearm. “Anyway I put one and one together with her being the 'perp' and you fencin' the 'swag' through your Jew friends in the Diamond District."

he chances of Mira ratting him out were nil. She barely spoke English.

"The way I figure it, those out-of-town suckers got what they deserved.” The cops can claim how much DNA, fingerprints, and evidence help their investigations, however 95% of the crimes are solved by informers and the other 5% from dumb luck. “I mean, New York's not New York without a few hicks gettin' ripped off. That's how you rationalized it, right? Rob from the rich and give to the poor. Anyway I reckon you and the broad grabbed maybe like a hundred thou and out of that you owe us ten grand."

>deRocco was rousting him on a long shot uncomfortably close to the truth and Sean speechlessly moved his head from left to right. The only real score had been a platinum Audermars-Picat Royal Oak, otherwise the bands, cases, and movements of limited edition watches were etched with corresponding numbers and no fence on 47th Street would give more than ten cents on the dollar.

"Stop shakin' your head like a dog that's gonna get beat.” deRocco's bloodshot eyes regarded Sean, as if he was a pet turtle on his back. “I know you're busted, but you still owe me and my ex-partner. You remember Kev, right?"

Kevin Driscoll had been invalided off NYPD after a Dominican dealer holding out on their cut had popped off a lucky shot into his knee. Driscoll had succeeded with an even luckier shot and the perp had arrived DOA at Bellevue, forestalling any departmental investigation into the bagman's errant ways.

"You should thank your stars, that you're talkin' to me and not him, because Kev's real pissed, but me I like you. I mean we go back to when? 1980. The National Club. You never spoke to Internal Affairs and I respect you for keeping your mouth shut."

Due to a juvenile belief in the criminal code of honor, Sean had not informed Internal Affairs about the precinct cops accepting bribes for turning a blind eye to an after-hours nightclub, thereby adding one more chip to his leaning tower of wrong turns.

"A long time ago, but it has to count for something, which I'm giving you an out to get straight with us. You're goin' to whack a stranger." Frank deRocco's lips barely moved, as the words crackled like old leaves off his nicotine-stained tongue. "Do it and we're quits."

>Sean blinked in disbelief.

"What are you lookin' at, you fuckin' frogs.” DeRocco sneered at the French tourists across the counter. “This ain't no Martin Scorcese film. You want a free show. Go to friggin' Mickey Mouse Times Square, you Frog bastards."

The tourists retreated into the restaurant's dining area and Frank deRocco demanded, "So what do you say?"

>If Sean refused the cop's offer, Frank deRocco would drag him out to 2nd Avenue and shoot him dead. One by one the jumbled syllables crawled onto his atrophied tongue. "First, that I owe you 10K is bullshit. Second, you want someone to killed for free, then go up to St. Patrick's Cathedral and pray for God to strike him dead with lightning. Otherwise it's ten thousand."

"Balls, lotsa balls. I thought it'd come to this, but ten thou's a lot, considering we weren't gonna to pay you squat."

"That's the deal," Sean took a bite from the bagel. His demand for money would buy time, which is always a valuable commodity, when your moves are down to none.

"Okay, you get the five up front." The burly detective had counted on Sean's being greedy. "And you get the other five, when the 'vic's' history."

"I do?" Sean didn't have any time to ponder why the cop had accepted his counter-offer. deRocco yanked Sean off the stool. "C'mon, we're out of here."

The early morning passers-by on the sidewalk thanked their stars that they weren't being stuffed into an unmarked Chevy Caprice. "Relax, Seano, you're going to Las Vegas, not the Meadowlands. America West out of JFK at 9:30."

"That's an hour from now."

"Plenty of time."

The cop stepped on the gas and the Chevy lurched into the Second Avenue traffic. "I got your getaway bag from the apartment. Always ready to go, right?"

"I try." Sean breathed a little easier spotting the old leather bag inside which everything he needed to affect a getaway. Everything other than money and deRocco seemed willing to take care of that problem. Five thou was good for a half-year in Asia.

"You always talked about writing a big story." The cop lit a cigarette. "This is as big as it gets as only as you change the names to protect the guilty."

"Thanks for the inspiration." Sean had given up on writing years ago. There were already too many words being scribbled for television, movies, books, greeting cards, and ads without another writer adding the tower of babble about events better left secret.

"I mean you got Vegas, a murder, two dirty cops, a loser, maybe a hooker and an Elvis imitator thrown in for a little color."

"This isn't going a kamikaze job?" You had to ask, whether or not you intended to commit the murder.

"Hey, you get to ride into the sunset. Up ten thou. Can't do better than that." Frank deRocco knew his passenger’s fate.

"No, I guess I can't," Sean replied with the reggae chorus 'Murder, she wrote." repeating in his head.

Over the years he had broken more than a few laws starting with joy-riding in the 1960s, pot-dealing in the 70s, and illegal after-hour clubs and money laundering in the 80s, yet he had never killed anyone and he had no intention of breaking that streak.

Somewhere between New York and Las Vegas he would find the chance to vanish into the crowd and avoid being the executioner of a faceless stranger. Sean would have take advantage of that moment, but thankfully Las Vegas was all about luck, unfortunately sometimes more bad than good. Sean could only bet on the latter, because he didn’t need to crap out again in this lifetime or the next.