Excitement daubed his pale cheeks crimson as he ripped off his shoes and hooked his eyes to her lure. He tore off his shirt and pants. He threw them on the couch. He uttered a guttural cry and crawled on his hands and knees to bury his head between her thighs.
She seized the back of his head and held it tightly against her. She fucked his face and moaned.
Pee Wee eased from the closet on her belly. She wiggled her way to the back of the couch. She got to her knees and hand-swept the couch for his pants. She located them. She peeped over the top of the couch for an instant to see precisely how they lay before she took them.
Her fingers worked rapidly to unfasten the four safety pins that secured the flap of the payoff pocket. She took a bundle of C-notes from the wallet. She rolled the bills into a fat suppository. She used spit to lube it before she shoved it up her vaginal stash.
She replaced the wallet’s cash with a wad of Kleenex before she replaced it and refastened the safety pins.
She returned the pants to their original spot and position on the couch. She moved toward the bathroom in a crouch below the level of the couch.
Bianca’s moaning stopped. Pee Wee froze in Bianca’s plain view. The trick had lifted his head to catch his breath.
“Oh, shit, Franz, don’t stop now!” Bianca said as she looked into the trick’s upturned face.
Still frozen like a statue, Pee Wee spewed sweat. Her heart was beating crazily. She couldn’t stand there another moment. She crept like a cat toward the half-opened bathroom door.
The trick started to lower his head between Bianca’s yellow thighs. At that instant, the trick caught Pee Wee’s movement reflected in a brass bedpost.
He spun around on his knees and drew a hunting knife from a scabbard strapped to his leg. He cocked his head as he stared at the bathroom door.
Bianca managed to say calmly, “Sweetie, why you actin’ like this? Come on and finish doin’ your baby.”
He leapt to his feet and bulled into the bathroom. He whirled back into the bedroom. Bianca was snatching up her shorts and shoes. She streaked for the door.
“You goddamn bitch!” he hollered as he lunged to block the door. He grabbed her wrist and hurled her across the room, onto the couch. He sat on her while he discovered his looted wallet.
“You and your lousy pimp set me up. Right? Take me to him now or I’ll kill you,” he screamed into her terrified face.
“All right. You’ll get your money back. Don’t kill me. I’ll take you to him,” she said in a fear-choked whisper.
He raised his bulk to free her body. He pressed the knife point against her throat as he tried to slip on his pants. “Don’t you move!” he warned as he pulled up his pants with both hands.
In that instant, she leapt over the back of the couch and scrambled for the bathroom. He kicked over the couch and chased her with knife in hand. He tripped and fell heavily near the bathroom door. He stabbed her deeply into the flesh behind her kneecap as she darted inside and locked the door.
Crippled, she vainly tried to step up on the commode and escape through the window. The trick started to kick in the door. She stood in a widening pool of blood and screamed up at the open window.
“Wee! Wee! Help me!”
Pee Wee was just exiting the far end of the alley when she heard Bianca screaming. She stopped and stood still for a long moment, to make a very difficult decision.
Suddenly she kicked off her shoes. She took her gun from her bosom and raced to help Bianca.
The trick smashed in the door. In a frenzy of rage, he hacked and stabbed Bianca, who cowered in shock in a corner.
Pee Wee burst into the bedroom. The blood-spattered trick staggered into the room. Exhausted, he panted as he halted to stare balefully at Pee Wee.
“Bianca! Say something!” Pee Wee shouted.
“You’re da fucking nigger dat took my money. Right?”
Pee Wee gritted her teeth and leveled the automatic on him. “Right, motherfucker! Now, drop that blade and get away from that door so I can check out my friend.”
He grinned obscenely. “She’s had it. Fuck your peashooter.” He lunged for Pee Wee. The automatic spat sparklets of blue fire as she emptied it into his head and chest.
He crashed on his face a mere foot away from her. She went into the bathroom. She threw herself down on the bathroom floor beside Bianca’s limp form. She opened her eyes. “Wee, call an ambulance and get in the wind. Send my mama my end of the score.”
Pee Wee rushed to a telephone at the corner. She called the ambulance and went to her pad to pack her things. She had left the city within an hour.
—
At that moment, in Hollywood, Rucker watched Crane through binoculars. Crane nervously paced the drugstore parking lot where he frequently rendezvoused with Petra. He looked at his watch for the dozenth time. It was 10:15 p.m. She was fifteen minutes late with his bag of coke and his weekly payoff. After he soothed his nerves with coke, he would also need her body tonight, he thought.
Paranoid because of his restaurant ordeal with Rucker earlier in the day, he eye-swept passing vehicles and people on Sunset.
Rucker was parked on the crowded lot of a fast-food place across the street. He tensed inside his undercover Buick when Petra, adazzle in a gold minidress, entered the drugstore lot. She and Crane got into the squad’s red Toyota. They went west on Sunset, followed by Rucker.
Crane made a right turn off Sunset onto the freeway on-ramp. He proceeded to a quiet motel in North Hollywood.
Rucker parked across the street. He watched Crane register before he took Petra into a ground-floor unit. Rucker sat immobile for several minutes. Anger and the shock of the situation maimed his cop’s common sense. He was certain a coke banger like Crane wouldn’t take Petra to a motel unless he or she was coke-dirty. He was also 90 percent sure that Crane was responsible for the Shetani stable’s immunity to arrest by his squad.
He swung out of the Buick and actually crossed the street. He took two steps into the motel lot before common sense jolted him. He turned and hurried back to sit in the car.
Anger and the humid night made him feel red-hot. He mopped perspiration from his brow with a sleeve of his seersucker suit coat. He realized that he could have busted them with a ton of cocaine, and the possession charge couldn’t stand past the preliminary hearing. He couldn’t prove probable cause for an invasion of the room. Also, without a search warrant, illegal search and seizure would be a likely ruling.
No, he decided, he would have to alter his strategy with the Crane problem. Ninety-percent certainty that Crane was a squad traitor wasn’t enough. He would devise a trap for Crane to prove him 100 percent guilty or innocent.
He pulled away for the station to brief the 11:00-p.m.-to-8:00-a.m. shift on Shetani.
Inside the motel room, shirtless Crane finished shooting coke into a vein. Petra sat fully clothed on the bed beside him.
“Don’t you want me to hit you with a light one?” he said as he stroked the bluish veins on her forearm.
She jerked her arm away. She, the stone H-junkie, enjoyed an interior chuckle. “Hell, no! I just snort a little. I don’t want to be a fuckin’ dope fiend.”
He said, “You forgot to give me something.”
She took a five-hundred-dollar roll of bills from her bosom and held it in her fist. He held out his palm.
“I didn’t really forget. Listen, baby, your candy account is almost four grand in the red. I’ve got orders from the boss to start deducting a grand a week from the payoff until it’s paid.”
He glared at her as he took the money. He shrugged his shoulders. “Massa’s word is de law.”
Her face flushed scarlet. “That’s nasty cute, you racist prick,” she hissed.
His fingers crawled up her inner thigh toward her sex nest.
“Leo, what is the important matter that you wanted to talk about?” she said as she clamped her thighs together.
He got to his feet and strolled t
he carpet for a moment. “Well, uh, we’re going to have to tighten up the security of our relationship…I, uh…”
His hesitancy made her paranoid. She crossed her legs and leaned back on her elbows before she cut him off.
“Say what! Why? What’s going down, Leo?”
He stood in the blue heat of her eyes for several heartbeats. “Doll, nothing went down. I just think we should be more careful. Believe me, everything is super-normal.”
She grimaced. “Hey, copper, what the fuck is super-normal?”
He forced a grin and sat down beside her. “All right. Here it is. I heard a rumor—I repeat, a rumor—that a citizens’ group has hired a firm of private investigators to look into the vice situation in Hollywood.” He paused to try for a lighthearted laugh that bombed her ears.
“So how do we deal with that shit, Leo?”
He went on. “We stop meeting every night. I’ll tape any new squad license numbers and other info under the middle phone ledge inside the drugstore. I’ll meet you every Saturday night, around eleven, at different motels to get my coke and payoff. What motel or any other item will be with the squad info. The main thing is to be always alerted for a tail anytime you’re in the street. Got it?”
She studied him. She was certain he wasn’t leveling with her. “Yeah. I got it,” she said softly.
He leaned to suck her earlobe. “Take off your clothes, doll,” he whispered.
She moved her head away. “Leo, I don’t want to fuck tonight. How about settling for a blow job?”
He unzipped his pants and lay back on the bed. She knelt and attacked his organ with oral ferocity until he ejaculated.
Fearful and distrustful of Crane, Petra called Shetani to get permission to bring the stable home at 1:00 a.m. This was several hours earlier than usual. All the girls had been given bedtime shots of skag by 2:00 a.m. Shetani and Petra sat on a sofa in the redwood den of the mansion. She had just finished a detailed rundown of her motel tryst with Crane. She nervously watched purple-robed Shetani’s face harden as she waited for his response.
Finally, he fractured the silence with a rumble of his basso-profundo voice. “Girl, it was a mistake to let you play me into pulling the girls off the track early. I see at least a couple grand blown away by bullshit.”
He rumbled on, with his nightmare eyes mesmerizing her. “Bitch, you sounded so motherfucking shaky on the phone, I knew we had a legit problem. But, shit, it turns out you reacted like a dumb turnout with some cunt vibes off that sucker pig. If all you ho’s get busted, I got the bankroll to raise everybody.”
He leaned his brutish face close to hers. “You’re supposed to be the toughest and strongest ho in the family. Don’t you know, bitch, that they ain’t gonna have no more guts than you got. When you shit your pants, they shit with you. We got a three-way hook in that pig’s ass. Don’t waste your time trying to read his mind, bitch. Read the license-plate numbers he gives you. I’ll know you’re hot when you get busted.”
He stood up. He took a length of chain and a padlock off the fireplace ledge. He slapped the chain against his thigh. “Follow me. I’m gonna lock you up until noon tomorrow.”
She fell to her knees and clasped her arms around his legs. She shrieked, “Oh, please, Master! Whip my ass, anything. I can’t stand that tight place and that darkness! Please!”
He stooped and jerked her to her feet. “Follow me or I’ll lock you up for the rest of the week.”
Sobbing, she followed him down a hallway to a mahogany door. He swung it open. He flipped a light switch. They descended a stairway to the musky basement. A small cell with silver-and-red-painted bars shone eerily in the pale light. It had been constructed by a prior occupant of the mansion with a passion for bondage-and-discipline sex play.
“Please, Master, don’t put me in there!” she wailed as he hooked an arm around her waist to half carry her into the cell.
He stepped out and slammed the door. He locked it with the chain and padlock. He stood staring at her. She moved close to the cell door. Her eyes were dry now, and her voice was clear and calm. “Master, I’m taking this from you. But I know this is unfair and you’ll know when you think about it. I don’t deserve this, after all I’ve endured for you. Think about it, Master.”
He turned away and went up the staircase. She squatted to pee into a hole in the floor. Then she went to sit down on her bed, a slab of thick steel jutting from the concrete wall.
When Shetani reached the top of the stairs, he heard the ringing of the den phone. He hurried and picked up, to Pee Wee’s troubled voice.
“Daddy, I’m in Chicago, at the airport. I took a nice order from a customer, but got a big hassle behind it…”
He cut in. “Say, girl, run it down. You—”
She cut him off: “I can’t run it down on the phone. Daddy, I’m on the way to L.A. Bye!”
He stood in the middle of the floor, glaring at the receiver in his fist.
“Master, can I come in?” a sugary voice purred behind him.
He whirled around to tongue-lash the intruder. It was Tuta in the doorway, gazing at him with dreamy eyes. She wore see-through pink bikini panties and top.
He constructed a smile. “Hi, sugar, come in and listen to some music.”
She smiled wickedly and came to him. He cradled the phone and hugged her. He froze as her fingertips stroked across his ass and then his testicles. He disengaged.
She gave him a look before she went to an old Seeburg jukebox. She pushed in the coin slot and punched on “You’ll Never Find” by Lou Rawls. She sat down beside him and dropped her head into his lap. He squirmed, for he was naked beneath the robe. He could feel the pressure of her head against his scrotum. Her green eyes sparkled with guile and hot mischief as she looked up into his tense face.
“Master, do you think I’m sexy?” she said in a contralto whisper.
He nodded.
“Master, you won’t get salty if I ask you something personal?”
“No,” he croaked.
“Have you got a dick?”
He frowned. “Don’t ask silly questions.”
She rose out of his lap to press her shoulder against him. She giggled. “I’m serious. I touched your balls. I mean, I’m a curious bitch. I want to know whether my man’s dick is sweet or sour, long or short, fat or skinny, ugly or pretty, or whatever. Is that unreasonable?”
His left cheek twitched. “Shut up, girl. You can’t see or have my dick yet.”
She moved away, her cute mouth petulant. “I’ll work after the other girls come home. Please, let me suck it for just a couple of minutes,” she begged.
He shook his head. “No, Tuta, not tonight.”
She sprang to her feet. Her high-yellow cheeks were rosy with angry frustration. “If I had the right paint job, like Petra, I’m sure I could get it.”
He stared at her until she averted her eyes. In a painful silence, he, the wizard rapper, discovered for the first time that he couldn’t rap himself into control.
He fought against confiding in her the secret fact that she was his blood baby sister, returned to life—she’d think he was crazy, he thought.
He stood and kissed her forehead. “We’re gonna have lots of fun together, Tuta. Now, go to bed and wake up sweet.”
She brushed her lips against his mouth and giggled as she turned to leave.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “What’s so funny, girl?” he asked sternly.
She smiled. “You won’t get salty?” He shook his head as they locked eyes. “I was thinkin’, if you don’t get me off soon, I’ll find a nice street mailbox. I’ll drop my bread in it and rub my pussy ’ginst it till I get off. Master, ain’t that funny?”
He dropped his arms from around her waist. She wasn’t smiling when she broke away and left the room.
Rucker dressed for work several mornings after he discovered Crane’s intimate connection to Petra. He hadn’t taken a drink since he left New York and had resumed a
ttending AA meetings. He hadn’t yet thought of a way to trap Crane. His difficulty in devising a plan of entrapment was due to his reluctance to use other cops in a plan. However, he was certain that very soon he would solve the problem, since his mind addressed it for most of his waking hours.
He left the house and drove down Sunset. He frowned to see a parade of half-naked hookers. They strutted beneath the bright early-September sun like vulgar birds with painted faces.
At a stoplight, he heard a familiar voice.
“Hi, Sergeant.”
He turned his head toward Leon, under the wheel of his gold Caddie, stopped adjacent to his Lincoln. He was irritated that Leon had spoken to him with a passenger in his car. Unsmilingly, Rucker nodded at Leon as the light turned green.
Inside the Caddie, Leon turned off Sunset onto Western Avenue. “Rainbow, that was Sergeant Rucker, the only good cop I’ve ever knowed. He’s the boss of the special ho squad in Hollywood,” Leon said to his dwarfish companion.
“Well, bro, I guess you must know the only good cop alive,” Rainbow said as he hunched bony shoulders inside his shocking-pink sports coat.
Leon pulled into a supermarket parking lot. Rainbow flashed his gold choppers in his flat black face as he tipped his sky-blue hat to an Arab woman pushing a grocery cart. She gave him a venomous look.
Leon parked. They got out and split up. They had fake Cartier wristwatches and phony diamond rings. They hustled the grocery shoppers for nearly a hundred bucks apiece net, in less than an hour. They got in the Caddie and emptied a pint bottle of 100-proof vodka.
As Leon drove down Sunset, Rainbow said, “Bro, downin’ slum is great, but I ain’t goin’ to stop tryin’ to cop a ho and pimp my ass off before I die.”
A half-block away, Leon parked near a cluster of hookers. They sat there, watching and wishing for a chance or cue to take a shot.
At that moment, high in his Hollywood Hills mansion, Shetani was refusing a Pee Wee Smith request.
“Girl, I’m still hurtin’, too, about the cruel way that customer hurt Bianca. I can understand why you want to send a piece of the sting to her mama for the plastic-surgery nut…”