California Rimshot!

Finally, I got Ron, told him my sad tale and got a curt "fuck you" for all my trouble. So I jumped into some clothes and headed down Santa Monica as fast as my pocket rocket could carry me. Jamal was subbing for Tony "The Cannibal" Donner that night, and I asked him for a place to crash awhile, adding I was desperate.

"Yeah... you look desperate."

"It won't be for long - just until the cops can hide me in Barbados or Majorca while this blows over."

"And during that time, the Irish mafia could bust a cap up the black man's ass just because I'm in my own place at the wrong time."

"Uh... Russian mafia, I think."

"What am I? ...An Atlas? Look... Chip... I'd help, I guess... if I could. I can't. Bye."

Wheeling out of the Bottom Out, I thanked heaven for friends I could count on. Then I saw Budo. He was standing across the street, trying to light a cigarette with a surprisingly shaky hand when our eyes met. Some smoke blew out his nose in a way that left him a dead ringer for a crazy-with-rage Spanish bull, and he came across the street as fast as air-breathing granite could move. Needless to say, I headed in the opposite direction.

As I was racing down the street, the sun was setting, casting everything in long shadows and red-orange light. Now it had gone to tops of the buildings, and street-level was dropping into twilight. Looking around, I realized I was lucky to live in this town. The cool of evening was just whistling past my ears when I felt Budo's fingertips brush the scruff of my neck. This overactive gland case could move faster than I'd expected.

I zipped into an alley, and in that way my quick reflexes react to everything around me, realized it dead-ended a few yards away. There was no need to whine about it. Slowly, I turned to face Budo, and found myself staring into the small of his stomach. He looked down at me with an expression like I was a pet rabbit; a tear was in his eye. His big bear paws wrapped around my head and pulled me close.

I ran my hands into his coat and around his waist. Smiling up at him, I squirmed my hips into him and ran a hand down his fly, then unzipped it. Budo's dick sprang out like a fat man tripping off a stair. Taking it quickly, I cupped its huge head in my mouth and slowly began inching up its length, now growing in size and hardness. Finally, when it was as far down my throat as I could take it without chucking my lunch all over him, I began to stroke his dick in and out.

Budo shuddered and suddenly arched back his body, almost bouncing me off. I kept up the stroking until, out of nowhere, and without warning, he suddenly blew his come into my mouth. It felt like a gallon. Mouthing my way back down his dick, I'd just released it when he shot another load into my face.

When I looked up, I could see his face was red -- apple red - and his hands were raised to his neck. Oh, my God, I thought. He's having a heart attack. I've fuckin' BLOWN him to death. Then I saw another face, just behind his. This guy was grimacing and holding the ends of a belt that soon I realized was bound tightly around Budo's neck. Ah... that explained his raised hands; it wasn't a coronary, after all. At that moment, when I'd finally overcome shock of the jizz-bomb in my face and gathered what was happening, Budo suddenly bent forward and the guy behind him flipped over his back, missing me by inches.

In an instant, I was up and out of the alley. I flashed down the street and jumped into my car through the driver's side window - thankfully open. My shoulder jammed painfully into the console, but I didn't care; I was up in an instant and starting the car.

Out of nowhere, patrol cars appeared in front and behind, jammed brakes leaving burnt-rubber clouds of blue. Then a car pulled up beside mine, trapping it against the curb. Pulling myself out of my car window, I stepped along the hood and jumped to the sidewalk, as every car door surrounding me opened and started dumping out uniforms and suits, all seemingly furious. ...At me.

A couple of cops blocked the path of my initial run, so I turned just in time to see Det. Cender's teeth as he thundered up, grabbed me, and - using momentum of his charge - whirled my body and launched me like a catapult down the street. Bashing cockeyed a newspaper rack, I slammed into the sidewalk. Somewhere a woman screamed.

Luckily, my fall was broken by my head.

Cenders hauled me up and slammed me against the wall.

"Well, howdy, donut butt," I popped off unwisely. "How's that Black Dahlia case workin' out?"

Cenders cocked an arm to let me have it, when squealing tires jerked everyone's attention to the alley I'd just vacated. A huge hayseed muscle car roared out in a wide, smoky curve. Budo was at the wheel and the would-be strangler was hanging on the roof. He made a high-pitched wailing sound, very much like a war movie air-raid siren. Budo's car sideswiped a taco wagon and roared off down the street, jostling loose the roof surfer. Cartwheeling across the pavement, he wrapped himself around a lamp post. The Mexican caterers ran after Budo's car, howling in Spanish and throwing plastic cups of salsa.

"Nice to see an undercover job run so quietly," I said to no one.

Now there was general screaming, and I think voices included my own. Cender's sidekick looked at him and jerked a thumb toward the mess. Maintaining my foolish interjections, I said, "Let the uniforms handle it." Cenders threw me into a small alcove formed by the entranceway of a store, encased in back by a steel security curtain. For a moment, we all watched the caterers, now chased back up the street by a guy whose shaved head was covered in salsa.

"You're getting a little cocky, aren't you, officer," I said dusting myself off. Cenders thrust something at me again, and I flinched; this time it was a small tape recorder. On it, in very nice modulation, were my fuck-grunts and yelps from the baby antelope mishaps a few nights before.

"But..."

"His building superintendent bugged him."

"Fahim?" (I almost followed with, "My Fahim?")

"He turned everything over to us. He's in witness protection with a real banshee wife after you ratted him out." Cenders paused to squeeze my mouth into a vertical figure-eight. "OK, here's the story. Since a little birdie told him about us, Mig pulled all Fahim's bugs. Some of his own people are trying to kill him now, since they think he's going down. And so you're gonna wear a wire to his place tonight and get everything we need on tape. And we can button this up real fast."

"I can't do that."

"You WILL do that."

"He peels me like an onion up there. He'll see the mike and blow my head off."

"Not my problem," Cenders said, leaning in close. "I couldn't give a shit. See... I just don't like fudge-packers."

"You know, detective..."

"Call me, Lou."

"The more I get to know you, Lou, the more I'm convinced you're something of a gaping asshole."

Cenders... Lou... put his arm on my shoulder. I was expecting a fist to follow and tried to relax into the blow.

"Chip... Can I call you Chip? Chip, the world is an asshole. I just live here."

They wired me up right there. At one point, they brought in the rooftop wrangler, to see if I could name him. At first, I didn't recognize him, since he was wearing a turban.

"Who's Sabu?" I asked.

"That's a bandage, you idiot."

In a very little while, I was sitting outside Mig's office building in an unmarked car, with a bored young detective.

I was thinking about prison. About the kind of men who went there, and how many of them had been inside repeatedly over the years, to the point the place was a second home -- familiar, comfortable, even. And I thought about what they'd done to get there, and I thought about the things of which they were guilty and for which were never punished. I shuddered at the vastness of criminal activity that represented. The violence component so integral to "inside" I didn't like at all.

"You're one dead fag," the young officer stated simply and quietly. "You don't stand a chance up there."

I ignored him. The imagined prison my mind was constructing was too formidable, to secure to be breached by an asshole with a toothpick.

"What's it like?"

"What?" I asked.

"...The homo life. How do you get through it?"

"You don't know?"

"What the fuck do you mean by that?" His voice was real low now, and scruffy around the edges as growls always are.

"C'mon," I replied. "It's like sitting in a car with Liberace."

I was ready for the backhand and blocked it off, but not easily. The radio crackled to life. It was Cenders: "What the fuck is going on up there?"

"Nothing," the young cop spat into the mike and hung it up. "You better watch you're fucking mouth, cocksucker."

"Look... officer. ...Didn't mean to be malicious. But I've been sniffing out gays since I was a teenager. You don't want to talk about it? Fine... It's dropped."

He burned a glare into me and a long, excruciating moment died and rotted around us. I went back to prison. There'd probably be guys with ironic nicknames inside. Tiny would be a rhino. Sweets would be the sadistic psychopath. They would have little in common except a determination -- a drive -- to commit mayhem. ...And, of course, a deep, deep hatred for homosexuals. The system had made them de facto queer, so their murderous contempt for the real thing was multiplied a thousand-fold by being forced to engage in such filthy perversity.

"So everyone knows..."

I looked at the detective beside me. "Only other gays on the force... I promise you that. ...No one else. You're quite the macho..." I locked the officer's eyes. "I mean it..."

Another long, dreary moment went by.

"It's just so hard... so lonely..." he began, his eyes half-closed, staring out the window.

Good gawd, I thought to myself. Here it comes -- soulful, semi-literary confessional. Why don't you just come out? Perhaps you haven't heard about Y2K -- the 21st century? 'Course, it occurred to me, there IS the queer ceiling. Nobody like us gets too high, really. Maybe he wants to be chief someday. Maybe he thinks the other guys will be self-conscious in the locker room and shun him. Maybe he just can't bear the prospect of ending those little snappy-towel moments.

The steam from the shower was a thick cloud. Through it, I could see Tiny's face, getting closer. Was he going to kill me? Rape me? Tiny didn't show up for serious networking about job possibilities on the outside. Tiny didn't show up for anything but brute fucks and bloodletting.

The young cop had been droning on all by himself, when suddenly, he pushed a photo into my hand. It was him, stark naked on a picnic table, blowing a guy and jerking off two others, while a cornholed him in manical glee.

"You were in the priesthood?" I popped out.

His face went sour and I jumped out. "Better get this done," I said,waving. He flipped me the finger and away I strolled down the street. Someday, my smarty-mouth is going to get me in more trouble than I can talk my way out of.

At the door to Mig's office building, I paused. I could be walking to my death, I thought. Maybe now I just take off running. They'll catch me. Then prison. Far away, something clanged -- a metal plate hitting the pavement... something. In my mind, a long row of cells clanged shut all at once, stacked atop each other, human shelves, as far as the eye could see. From the dark corner of my cell came Tiny again. Then from under the blanket of my bed, another goon emerged. I turned to run through the cell door -- mine was the only one open. And through it stepped Sweets, naked, and on his erect penis was a doggie sock-puppet, a small pink tongue dangling from its mouth.

Quickly, I pushed through the door and went to the elevator. In the last moment, onboard hopped the cleaning lady. She scowled at me all the way up. In the hallway, she went down to a door a few feet away -- I supposed a service entrance. She gave me one last damning look and went in, loudly jangling her keys.

Stepping up to Mig's door, I got off one knock before the door swayed open. Opening it all the way, I stepped in. Illuminated by the shaft of light from the hallway, I could see Mig at his desk and I could tell he was pissed, staring at me with an ugly grimace. He looked more than angry; he looked terrible. ...Funny about him just sitting there in the dark, too. ...Just sitting at his desk looking awful, and I decided the reason for his bad appearance must be that large and rather ornate knife buried in his stomach.

(This sordid tale will go on...)