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.

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 8 - by Peter Nolan Smith

By 10PM everyone in Las Vegas was gambling in the casinos or sleeping under TV's warm glow. The rear lot of the Desert Winds Inn was deserted, as the Mustang parked amongst the out-of-state cars. Sean and Driscoll got out of the car and walked to the back entrance, where the ex-cop opened the stairwell door, saying, "This is the place.”

“Here?”

“No, one flight up. The old man doesn't take elevators. No one uses these stairs. No closed-circuit camera either.”

Driscoll screwed a long silencer onto plastic-gripped .357 revolver. “The casino security is too interested in catching skimmers and card-counters to worry about some stupid stairs. When you see him, stick the gun about three inches from the back of his head and pull the trigger. The silencer will make it real quiet. He drops to the ground and you steal his wallet, and then meet me outside. One more thing, don't stick the gun into the back of his neck, because he could whip around and you'd have a fight with an old man on your hands. You got it?"

"Yeah." Sean listlessly accepted the revolver and Driscoll tapped the stairwell's window. "I'll be watching from out here."

“What if___” Sean turned on Driscoll.

"Does 409 Seaview Road mean anything to you?” Driscoll beat him to the punch. “Mom and Dad Land, right? You hit me and Frank will take out your Wonderbread family in Boston. You got that, Seano?"

Sean lowered the gun to his side and Driscoll shoved him inside the stairwell.

"It'll be over before you know it, Seano." Driscoll left him to climb the stairs.

Sean's knees buckled on the second-floor landing and he leaned against the concrete wall for support. His killing someone was an act which hundreds of all around the world committed everyday in scores of different ways, yet this collective globalism didn't slow his heart’s non-stop tattoo and he realized he wasn't killing any stranger, not for money or the threat of death.

The ex-cop was expecting a free show and Sean was fully intent on giving him one. His finger hooked around the trigger and he pressed the cold steel circle of the silencer's extended barrel to his temple. The suicidal twist of the killer killing himself would screw up Driscoll's and deRocco's plans, yet he couldn't gut up the nerve to find out waited behind death. His life was precious. Another man's existence was unimportant.

A man was slowly climbing the stairs. It had to be his victim. Sean lowered the muzzle from his skull and aimed the revolver where his target's head would appear.

Two seconds later the old man from the photo stepped into the gun’s sights.

Sean's index finger tightened on the steel.

A little more pressure and the trigger would flick the hammer down onto the bullet.

Sean stopped breathing, as the old man's brown eyes focused on him rather than the silencer's black hole.

"You don't look like a murderer." The old man calmly arched his left eyebrow.

"And what does a killer look like?" Sean's finger stalled on the trigger.

"Like he's killed more than once," the old man stated matter-of-factly without fear.

"You want to bet?" Sean centered the red-dotted gunsight on his victim's forehead.

"I'm already gambling."

"Then you lose, cause I have to kill you."

"Nobody has to do anything they don't want to, but if you 'got' to, then do it already. In the meanwhile I'm going to close my eyes, because I don't want to watch."

The old man's wrinkled lids shut, signaling that he was resigned to either of his assassin’s options.

Sean would have done the same and this situational synchonicity forged an unforeseen link between the two.

The old man opened his eyes.

"See, you don't have a killer inside you."

"Maybe not, but someone in the parking lot does and he'll kill us both now, if I don't kill you."

The old man lifted his hands higher and contorted his creased face into a parodied plea for mercy.

"You ever play 'Cops and Robbers', when you were a kid?"

"Yeah,” Sean replied, although coming from the suburbs he was more into ‘cowboys and Indians’.

"Then we fake this killing."

"Fake it?"

"Yes, you pull the trigger. I fall down like I've been shot. You walk out. I lay low for a couple of weeks. You get lost. No one gets hurt. How's that sound for a plan?"

"Like one I'd make up?" Sean told himself, though the only question was whether he could trust this stranger. He had no other choice and he pulled the trigger.

The silencer reduced the explosion to a metallic spit.

The revolver recoiled up and away.

The old man slammed against the wall and slumped heavily to the floor.

Bitter cordite fumes snaked into Sean's nostrils, and he knelt to rifle the pants' pockets for the wallet.

Standing up Sean pulled the trigger. The second shot seemed quieter than the first and he leapfrogged down the stairs two at a time, while clumsily sticking the gun into his jacket.

Reaching the Mustang he jumped inside and slammed the door shut.

"Where's the piece?" Driscoll demanded, as the car squealed from the parking lot to merge with the 25mph traffic on Fremont.

Sean grabbed the gun inside his jacket and his fingers dipped into the busted ketchup packet among the cold French fries he had stashed earlier.

"Here." He handed the gun to the ex-cop, who spotted the red stain on Sean's hand.

"First blood, Seano. Way to go. But get rid of it, cause blood is evidence."

"Sure." Sean wiped off the red condiment with the paper towel.

"So what'd the old man say?" Driscoll licked his lips like a lizard on concaine.

"He begged for his life." Sean half-expected the cop to high-five him.

"A lot of them do that." Driscoll had been deaf to his share of plea for mercy. "Frank would be real proud of you. Not for nothin', but you came through like a pro. Showed no mercy. Where’s the wallet?”

"I have it." Sean flipped the ex-cop the stolen wallet.

"A stone-cold killer." Driscoll checked the IDs. "Damnit, you got the right guy too. You'd be surprised how many killers screw that up. We're out of here, Seano."

The Mustang broke free of traffic and the two men rode in silence past the futuristic casino's fluorescent facades.

Crossing Tropicana Wash's dry riverbed south out of town Sean reflected on this evening's miracle and lifted his eyes to the millions of stars overhead. He was up $10,000 and hadn't killed anyone. Tomorrow he would be in California and fly to Panama. Once Driscoll and deRocco discovered how he had fooled them, they would be pissed, but would never find him on the San Blas Archipelago.

Some god in the stars had to like him and Sean dispatched his prayers to a nameless and faceless entity for fear of angering the one he didn't choose, and then sat back, his body relaxed with his new freedom, laughing inside, for he should have had more trust in his luck, but then everyone should when they can't count on anything else.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 9 - by Peter Nolan Smith

Not one of 273 Louie Sinreich's video productions had been recognized by his peers at AVFA awards and none of his video were in the final selection of the evening, Best New Starlet.

"Fuck it." He shrugged off the rejection, satisfied that Steven Spielberg must have felt the same at the Oscars.

"Excuse me." Bob Olsen's droned from his left.

"Nothing. What were you saying?" Louie had been humoring the hippie blob by nodding his head, as if he really was listening.

"Now most of the people working on Virtual Reality are interested in the visual stimulation. Just like we were nothing, but eyes. They think that VR will be a movie we can only watch, instead of feel. You know the first VR we programmed at Livermore labs was an interactive sex dream and we used hypnotic brain wave patterns and the proper hertz levels to lower the senses' defenses. Once the Pentagon figured out I was trying to make love, not war, they pulled me off the project. For about one day, because____"

'B-b-bob." Ur Bell admonished his partner with a withering glance. "You're talking t-t-too much."

"About what?" Bob had a beer in his hand. Half the bottle was gone. He talked too much to drink too fast.

"Ur’s right." Louie was good at keeping his mouth shut. "The only good secret is the one you never tell."

Before he could continue, the emcee announced Lena de Gama as the winner for the Best New Starlet award. Everyone in the auditorium rose to their feet to applaud the young actress, as she stepped up to the podium.

"I want to thank you all for this honor. I don't know whether I deserve it, but I sure earned it and I couldn't have done it without help. I'll make it short."

Bob Olsen and Ur Bell were spellbound, while Che Chasta gazed on the young vixen, as if her heart was melting. The Johns stood with their mouths open and the rest of the audience wore expressions of desire, longing, and hope.

Louie had underestimated her sexual allure, for even he was drawn into this gathering's cult of worship and telling himself she was just another woman couldn't break her hold.

Luckily his cell phone silently vibrated against his ribs and Louie lifted it from his jacket. "So?"

"Your itch has been scratched," the ex-cop from New York informed him.

"Great." Louie had eliminated another barrier to his future and he leaned over to Che. "I want you to get her coming off the stage, so no one else can grab her."

Lena finished her speech and the crowd cheered, as if she had discovered a cure for AIDS.

The young actress curtsied with a ballerina's grace and descended from the stage to a mob of admirers.

Hands groped at her breasts, pinched her ass, and tore at her clothes. Bodies pressed closer and held off her feet. As a child she had gone swimming in a crowded pool. The lifeguard had whistled for everyone to leave the pool. She had been knocked under water by the rush. She couldn’t breathe then and was out of breath trouble now.

A hand snatched her away from the maelstrom. It was Che Chasta.

The surging throng stepped back in anticipation of the two putting on a show. They groaned with disappointment, as Che led Lena from the hall. It was time to call it a night.

Louie Sinreich was more pleased with the evening's events. All charges had been dropped against Che, the Johns were ecstatic to meet these stars, Che had Lena, and once the geeks learned that old man had been whacked, they would have to work with him.

All in all today had been as good as it gets and Louie smiled, "How sweet it is."

The truth was that it was very sweet and promised to only get sweeter.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 12 - by Peter Nolan Smith

A pale streak of dawn slithered below the charcoal black storm clouds impaled on the city's tallest buildings, as the streetlights dimmed one by one up Fifth Avenue. Traffic on the icy avenue was sparse and only a few dog-walkers braved the snow-clogged sidewalks in front of the Plaza Hotel. This morning most of New York would stay in bed except for those who had yet to go to sleep.

"C'mon, ring, you bastard." Frank deRocco glared at the telephone for the hundredth time since 3am.

Something was fucked up and the detective poured himself another glass of whiskey, which he downed it in one go. When the empty glass fell from his hand, he realized he was in no condition to show up for his precinct 8AM roster.

Derocco dialed the station house and told the desk sergeant he was sick.

With only seven months to go until his 'twenty and out', none of the white shirts at the 9th Precinct was going to bust his hump for taking and the detective flopped onto the mattress, his head drowning in a sea of swirls.

A half-hour later the telephone rang and his hand groped for the handset on the night table. The plastic was cold on his ear.

"It's me." His partner sounded high on cocaine.

"Of course it's you. Who else is gonna call me here. My ex-wives?" deRocco slurred with the wind shuddering against the windows.

"I been waitin' all night for you to call. What's wrong?"

"Nothin' really, but...."

"I hate hearin' the word 'but.'" deRocco sat up too fast and keeled over onto the pillow. "Get it over with. But what?"

"He did it. I saw it with my own eyes."

"And?"

"I took him out to the desert like planned."

"And?"

Static interference answered deRocco.

"You still there?"

"Yeah, I'm calling you from a payphone."

"I don't want to know where. I'm gonna ask you one question, and I'm not wantin' to hear you say, "No." Ready?” deRocco was sobering up fast. “Did you take him out?"

"Yes and no."

"Whatcha mean, yes and no?"

His partner explained about the shooting and Sean escaping into the desert with the wallets along with the car stuck in sand and his bad knee.

"Shit."

"So what do I do now?"

"You mean, "Now you fucked up." This news had ruined his day and it was only seven hours old.

"Sorry." Kev’s voice was as contrite as that of an altar boy caught drinking the sacramental wine.

"Save your 'Sorrys' for Judgment Day." deRocco rubbed his unshaven face and spoke deliberately, "This is what I want you to do.”

”What?”

”Nothing.”

”Yeah,. do nothing till dawn. When it's light, go back to where you were and follow his tracks like you were an Indian. Maybe there's a God and you did hit 'im. If so, look for the vultures overhead. Got it?"

"I think so. Anything else?"

"Yeah, you better spend some quality time on your knees prayin' you did kill 'im."

"I already been doin' that."

"Well don't stop, cuz his those wallets are a death warrant." deRocco stopped his harangue, for Kev needed reassurance everything between them was as before. "Everythin' gonna work out."

"What if I can't find him? I mean I might have hit him, but it's a big desert out here."

"Forget about it."

"What about them wallets?"

"Screw them too. We go to plan B. You head to LA and pick up the money for the hit." They had stashed around $400,000 in a Cayman account. That cache plus their pensions should keep them going for years, if not till death parted one of them from the other.

"I'll meet you and we'll head anywhere in the world we want."

"You comin' out?" Kev sounded like he had won Lotto.

"Yeah, I have some vacation time I gotta take or lose." DeRocco was already visualizing his trip cross-country. "Not for nothin', but everythin' is gonna will be fine. Trust me."

"Who else can I trust?"

"Me and no one else, partner. If you find the body, call me. The last thing I want is go out to L friggin' A."

"I know, I know. Maybe I'll be lucky like you said."

"Yeah, right, it's always darkest before the dawn" What worried deRocco most was that bad things usually came in threes.

Even worst somehow that stupid song CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME popped into his head. Not getting rid of it had to be number two. He only prayed number three wouldn't be as bad as the first two, but the way his luck was breaking he couldn’t count on anything other than the worst and thankfully he always knew how to handle that end of the business.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 13 - by Peter Nolan Smith

Lena’s passenger remained unconscious the entire ride to Hollywood. An hour before dawn no one was on the streets and Che suggested dumping the stranger on the Church of Scientology lawn.

"They know how to take care of people like him."

"I'll take care of him." Lena had plans for 'the man from nowhere'.

"Suit yourself, just drop me at my house." Che didn't say another word

Upon arriving at her bungalow she got out of the car and slammed the door, as if to wake the man in the back seat.

His breathing was the only sign of his not being dead.

Che cleared the blonde mane from her face and asked Lena, "When will I see you again?"

"Here's my number." Lena scrawled the info on a fast food wrapper.

"Sherri won't mind me calling?"

"You and me. We're just friends?"

"So far." Che kissed the young actress through the window of the LeMans. Their lips melted whatever faults they possessed between them. "You be careful of that man."

"I can handle men." Lena looked over her shoulder. The man was dead to the world and almost dead men weren't trouble. "Call me."

Lena drove over to the freeway. Traffic was light, but a heavy rain lengthened the drive over the Hollywood Hills.

Lena shut her eyes. It had been a long drive from Las Vegas.

Car horns woke her and she opened the window. The cold wet air revived her long enough to get home, where she parked the LeMans in the sheltered garage and got out of the car.

"Mister?"

The man was out cold.

"Mister, I can't carry you." She shook his arm for several seconds, then slapped him in the face.

"Where are we?" His hands covered his face.

"LA." To Lena he seemed a million years old. She figured his age for 40. "Can you walk a little?"

"Maybe." The man pulled himself off the seat and Lean helped him out of the car.

He smelled of dust and old clothes. His blonde hair rubbed stiff against her skin and felt, as if it had been stolen from a brush. She picked up her bag and led him to the elevator. without locking the car. It was safe. No one else lived in the condo building which had been condemned after an earthquake.

"Don't fall down," Lena told the man.

"Where we going?" His words stuck like mush in his mouth..

"Someplace safe." The elevator stopped on the 4th floor and the man in the black suit sagged against the wall.

He wasn't drunk.

He wasn't on drugs.

Someone had beat him into this state.

Lena knocked on the door to her apartment.

"Sherri, open up. It's me."

"Did you forget your keys?" Sherri asked opening the door.

"No."

"Who is he?"

I'll tell you later. Help me carry him into the guest bedroom?"

"Are you crazy?"

No, just do it."

The two women dragged the man to the back bedroom and dumped him on the single mattress. For all intent purposes he was dead to the world.

Lena stripped off his bloodstained clothes and bundled them in a ball. The swelling bruises to his head suggested that he might be suffering from a concussion and Sherri checked the unconscious man's pulse. It was strong and steady. Lena went out into the bathroom and returned with their medicine kit.

"He's going to live."

"Good." Lena tended to the naked man's cuts. "Because I have plans for him."

"What kind of plans?" Sherri surveyed the pale stranger's body and pointed to the ancient tracks from a needle. The older woman wore the same tattoo. "You don't get these for graduating from a seminary."

"I know, I know.” Lena threw the covers over him and explained about finding the blonde man on the highway without mentioning Che Chasta. "I wanted you to see him."

"Why?” This stranger didn’t belong inside their home. No man did.

"You don’t see what I see.”

"No, I don’t.” Sherri could only see a man. “Plus this wasn’t the deal.”

”What deal?”


”What you and me? I said ‘no men’.”

"I didn't sleep with him and I have no intentions to sleep with him." Lena cleansed the wound on the man's neck. He was too far gone to feel the sting of alcohol. "But you said I could bring home strays."

"I meant a cat not men?"

"I couldn’t leave him to die in the desert?"

"A dead man in the desert sounds better than a dead man in my house."

"He asked for my help." Lena reached up to stroke her lover's hair.

Sherri pushed away the gesture.

"I can understand that, but why didn't you dump him on the sidewalk like he asked? Plenty of people get their start out here like that. I want the truth."

"I told you I had plans for him."

"Like what?"

"I see this man in the desert and I think SIMON OF THE DESERT.”

”He looks nothing like the saint.”

”Shave the saint." Lena pointed to the man. "Now you see what I see?"

"You’re kidding." Sherri had to admit the man on the bed met the physical requirements for her road film’s lead.

"Not at all. This is the Man from Nowhere. Look at him. He has been screen-tested by the road. When I saw him, I saw the last man on Earth."

"He's a complete stranger." At this point in Sherri’s life most men were little else.

"ADAM AND TWO EVES will never be completed, unless we find a man for this role and who better to play a man from nowhere than a man from nowhere.”

”They are actors.”

“And you’ve rejected them all.”

"I hate men."

"I know you do. I've heard you and your friends talk about a world without men. -50% one of them called machocide. I respect your beliefs, but we'll never finish ADAM AND TWO EVES without a man. This is our 'Adam'." Lena could sense Sherri’s wilting to her suggestion. The final push had to come with cautious reason. "We do not have to love him or even like him. All we have to do is act in a few scenes with him. Maybe you are a little jealous of this man?"

Not jealous, but he could be a rapist or a murderer."

"He does not look the type." Lena stood over him with a bemused smile.

”What’s so funny?”

”If I drove past that spot in the desert two seconds earlier and I wouldn’t have seen him.”

”And a second later you would have killed him.”

”Life’s a question of timing.”

”He still could be a killer.

”Not him.”

"And how can you tell?"

I have been with enough men in my life to know the difference between the good and the bad." She searched his pockets, uncovering a stack of hundred-dollar bills, five wallets, cold French fries, and an Irish passport..

"What are you doing?" Sherri half-expected the man to wake during this frisking.

"You want to know who he is." Lena opened the wallets and examined their IDs. Only the passport matched the man’s face. She handed it to Sherri.

"Sean Collan of New York."

"At least now he has a name."

"That doesn't prove whether or not he's dangerous." Sherri flipped the passport onto the suit in the corner.

"Maybe to himself, but not us," Lena stated defiantly, yet she had to demonstrate that she wasn't buying this 100% and examined the wallets. "He might not be a killer. A pickpocket. A thief. But that doesn't change his looks?"

"Are you sure you want to use this man?" Sherri dropped the wallets on the floor.

"Yes, he is better than some stupid actor pretending to be the real thing."

"Everything in my body says get rid of him.”

”And everything in mine says he’s perfect.”

”This is crazy, we don't even have any money to shoot the film."

"Yes, we do."

Reaching into her backpack, Lena poured Isaac Conti's money from an envelope.

Seeing the banded stacks of $100 bills, Sherri asked, "And where'd this come from?"

"Your uncle gave it to me last night at the award ceremony. He wanted you to use it to finish ADAM AND TWO EVES."

"My uncle."

"Another man."

"I can't keep them out of my life." Sherri started to cry, until Lena caressed her cheek.

"Don't be scared, baby. You’re the one always saying we have to do this film. How ADAM AND TWO EVES can save me from whatever happened to you. It would be easy for me to keep thinking it was a dream and nothing else. I have had a lot of those in my life, but I believe in you and believe in this film. I think ADAM AND TWO EVES can be something great, but we need a man to finish it. If not him, then nobody.’ Lena stared at the still form on the bed. No man was harmless other than in this condition and even unconsciousness was no guarantee of safety. “You got me, remember that and nothing else."

"How can I forget? Without you I'd be like everyone else in LA. Wake up, drive my car to work, come back home, watch TV, sleep alone."

"You might have a lover sometimes."

"Strictly for sex."

"And what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing."

"So let's finish the film.” Lena pulled Sherri out of the back bedroom into the living room, where they lay on the sofa. The young girl's jade eyes gazed up at her lover, as she arched her back to get closer.

“You have the money. You have the actor. You have me. What else do you need?"

"Nothing."

ADAM AND TWO EVES could bring Lena and her to another world away from having sex on film. She could visualize them film on-screen with the man in the distant background. Sherri wrapped her arms around Lena, as if to protect the young actress from all the harm she had ever experienced as a woman. A last fear arose and she asked, "What if he refuses?"

Lena trembled with anticipation of her lover's caressing her secret places.

"Everyone wants to be in the movies."

And that was no lie.

NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 20 -by Peter Nolan Smith

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