Fubar (27 page)

“None of your business.”

He looked up at me and rubbed his nose. “You say you saw him another time, too?”

“Yeah. The next night he delivered another telegram. He was wearing one of those thick, white collars like what you wear after you're rear-ended in a car accident. The motorcycle guy said the lawyer told him to wear it even though he didn‘t need it but it would help him get more money from the insurance company.”

“He say he ever found the Honda?”

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. He said he located it, I don't remember how or where, but he scratched some paint on the Honda from the motorcycle.”

By now the cop was nodding at O'Neill, like I just confirmed O'Neill's stupid alibi. He looked over at me again. “Anybody else hear the same as you heard?”

“I don't think so,” I said slowly.

“You told me others heard it too,” O'Neill snapped. “Who were they?”

“What I just told you, it wasn't one single conversation. Just parts here and there. But everything I said is the truth.”

As O'Neill started to say something else, the cop spoke first. “I heard enough.” He looked over at O'Neill. “You're off the hook now. I'm writing this up as filing a false police report.
Maybe we'll file charges against the motorcycle guy.” The cop looked at me again. “Thanks for your help. I'll need your personal information now.”

“Always happy to cooperate with the police.”

_____

2:15 P.M.

“Police! Open up!” barked a deep, guff voice, followed by three loud banging noises slamming against the front door.

This fraternity house was getting to be a police department annex.

Grossberg opened the door. Dirty Harriet and three uniformed men cops were standing there with facial expressions so grim that you'd have thought they were staring at Jack-the-Ripper's latest victim.

That too-often feeling of nausea that rises immediately before puking which never fully left me in months, instantly returned. I didn't dare run to the toilet since these cops might've shot me, claiming I was an escaping rapist. I walked a few steps over to the side wall, leaning against it for support, hoping my twitching right knee wasn't too obvious.

The lady detective took charge. Her eyes scanned the room, slowly looking at each of the two dozen guys there, one-at-a-time, finally stopping at Watson. She pointed to him. He froze.

The three uniformed cops had enough shit on their gunbelts to successfully defend the Alamo. Each of them unsnapped the strap over their holsters. The biggest one, chewing a toothpick in the corner of his mouth trying to look tough, was about six-six and weighed around two-fifty. He walked over to Watson's left side. Another cop, a husky Jap, removed his silver handcuffs from the case on the back of his belt as he approached Watson's right side. Then, expertly, the Jap gently pulled Watson's wrists behind his back and snapped the cuffs over them.

“What is this?” Watson pleaded pathetically in a cracking, breaking voice. “I didn't do anything!”

“Statutory rape,” the lady cop growled. “Got a warrant for
your arrest. Heather was only seventeen.”

“So what?” Watson said choking. “She consented! You told me she said she consented!”

“You'd better get a lawyer,” the big cop with the toothpick said sympathetically. “And keep your mouth shut. You could go to prison for this.”

Tears flowed down Watson's cheeks.

Dirty Harriet, who hadn't moved since she entered the house, then turned her expressionless face toward me! I would've fallen down if I wasn't still leaning on the wall. My lips pressed together like Crazy Glue sealed them shut and I gritted my teeth. My vocal chords were paralyzed again.

This bitch could see that she scared the shit out of me. “Stafford,” she said, doing a lousy job of hiding her prejudice, “I'll get you next time.” Then clear as hell, she mouthed the word ASSHOLE.

I stood still, not daring to speak.

“Let's go,” she said to the Jap holding on to Watson's arm. “Let's get him to the station in time for the jail bus to ship him down to the County Jail where he'll meet more guys who can't count past seventeen.”

_____

For the next fifteen minutes the mood around the house following Watson's arrest was like being at a funeral. I must've been the only guy there who was thrilled by this unexpected good turn of events. One more guy gone, lowering the pledge list to thirteen, even though I was barely still one of them.

“Pledges,” Adams suddenly announced, breaking the morbid silence in the living room. “You got the rest of the afternoon off. Be back here at 7:30 tonight. We're having an autograph party.”

7:30
P.M.

“
T
ONIGHT YOUR DICKS ARE GOING TO GET AUTOGRAPHED,
” Adams said between fits of laughter. “By a girl between eighteen and thirty.”

He looked around at the rest of us gathered upstairs in the pledge dorm, all with the same surprised look on our faces. If he was trying to change the gloomy mood that everybody but me felt from Watson's arrest earlier, he was succeeding.

“Anybody know how you're going to prove you did it?”

Nobody answered.

“You're going to have a partner tonight. Each guy is going to take a Polaroid of the girl signing his partner's dick.”

“You got enough cameras?” Dung asked.

“Yeah, and a roll of color film for each camera. And that reminds me, take good care of the cameras since we're returning them Monday to K-mart. And don't bend the boxes or lose any of the papers it comes with. Otherwise you're going to pay us for it. The list of partners is posted on the bulletin board.”

“Where we supposed go for this autographing?” Grossberg asked.

“Santa Monica Pier,” Adams answered. “We're taking you there now. You'll start at eight. You'll have two hours from when we drop you off to be back at the entrance where we'll pick you up at ten. If you're a minute late or your dick isn't autographed, don't come back.”

“What if we go somewhere else other than the pier?” Rickshaw Boy asked.

“Then you're out of here. Stovepipe will be standing at the pier entrance. He'll see you if you leave.”

“Who's going to sign the autograph?” Rainey asked.

The murmur of laughter and snickering continued.

“I told you. Any girl between eighteen and thirty.”

Castle couldn't seem to comprehend this or almost anything else for that matter. “Tell us again, what're we suppose to do?”

Adams took a deep breath and explained patiently like he was talking to young, retarded children. “Find a girl on the pier who's between eighteen and thirty. Give her the black, felt-tip pen you'll carry. Using the black pen, have the girl print your name on your dick while your partner takes a Polaroid of the girl doing it. Then reverse the procedure. The girl prints the partner's name on his dick and you take a Polaroid of it.” He looked around and shrugged his shoulders innocently. “It's that simple. You guys all can't be that stupid. Anybody got any more dumb questions?”

“What girl would do this?” Dung asked like an idiot.

Adams snickered. “Princess Di or Jackie Kennedy. But since they're both dead, you've got to find somebody else. Sooner or later some girl will do it.”

“But what if nobody will?” Lyman asked.

“Then if your mother is under thirty, have her meet you on the pier in the next two hours and photograph her doing it.”

I got stuck with Lyman while Batman had Froggy, and Vysell was with No-Wood. As soon as we saw the pairings, me and Batman and Vysell agreed that we needed to thin down the pledge class to our advantage so we came up with a good plan: if any of us found a girl to give the autograph, we'd call the other two on our cell phones and that guy would ditch his partner
and join whoever found the girl. That way, the two pledges that got ditched would be aced out. Meanwhile, I kept calling every place that I thought I could find Tiffany or Amber to have them meet us on the pier and do the autographing for us.

_____

It seemed like there were thousands of people walking around on the pier; especially a lot of girls between eighteen and thirty. And mostly every one of them was all bundled up from the sharp, breezy chill blowing off the ocean. The heavy smell of salt was in the air and the waves were pretty high, crashing onto the surf. Lyman carried the camera and I had the pen.

We were wandering around aimlessly like gypsies. The crowd was so big that after the first fifteen minutes we didn't see any of the other pledge teams.

As if we weren't five million dollar competitors, Lyman and I talked a little, mostly about Watson's arrest, and how unfair Lyman thought it was. I had to admit, since Lyman located his mother around the first of the year, he was a little friendlier to me than when we started pledging.

The swelling, pressing crowd made it impossible to take more than a half-step at a time, making me feel like a salmon fighting against the current to swim upstream. By nine o'clock, with half the allotted time gone, I asked four girls and Lyman asked three. All their answers, by word or gesture, unmistakably meant fuck you! Even for me, asking a girl to do this was pretty awkward. And not getting a phone call from either Batman or Vysell meant they were shooting with blanks too. We continued moving around aimlessly, hunting for any possible handwriting candidate. Finally we stopped near the railing, just watching the human wall inch along in opposite directions.

“Shit,” Lyman said, shaking his head sadly as he leaned against a lamppost. “No girl is going to do this. What're we going to do?”

“I don't know but you're probably right. But we got to try.”

“Wow,” he said suddenly. “Look what's coming!”

He was looking at a cute, dimpled girl walking towards us
about twenty feet away totally dressed in black with a pink crew cut and a piercing over each eye. She was carrying a furry pink cat that she must've used the rest of the bottle of hair dye on.

I nodded towards her. “Ask her. Maybe she'll do it.”

He stopped. “Like hell. Nobody would.”

“You know her?”

“No.”

“That's the point.”

“What?”

“If she says no, you'll never see her again anyway.”

“OK,” he answered, surprising me. “You're probably right. What do I have to lose?”

By now the girl, who was clearly alone, was only a few feet away from us. Lyman took a step towards her, blocking her forward motion.

“Excuse me,” he said smiling politely. “Can I ask you for a personal favor?”

She had a sour expression on her face as she looked at him, then at me, then back at him again. It was obvious that she wasn't impressed with either of us.

“What?”

I held up the pen.

Lyman continued: “Will you use that pen and write my name on my penis?”

I guess this girl couldn't think and see at the same time. Like she was trying to digest Lyman's preposterous request, she closed her eyes and her dark-blue eye shadow covered them like a blue window shade being rolled down. Seconds later she opened her eyes again. “What the hell did you say?”

Lyman repeated it. The girl laughed, then smiled, and finally nodded her head. “This is unbelievable,” she said in a flat, Midwestern accent. She laughed again, showing little teeth the size of split peas. “I can't fucking believe it. In the four months that I've been on the streets, this is the most perverted thing any guy ever asked me to do.”

Lyman was entranced. “Then you'll do it?”

She smiled and stroked the cat. “Sure. I love weird shit. But
why do you want it?”

“For the fraternity scrapbook.”

She shrugged. “I don't know what you're talking about but so what?”

Lyman pointed to me. “Can he take a picture of you doing it? We need it to prove we didn't do it to each other.”

“Sure. But where? Not out here. I'm not going back to Juvy.”

“What's that?”

She snickered. “Juvenile Hall.”

I looked around. We were standing near the entrance to the Ferris wheel. I pointed to a pathway that turned a corner behind a hamburger joint.

“What about behind there?”

She looked where I pointed and shrugged. “OK I guess.”

“I'm Lyman,” he said to the girl. “What's your name?”

“Rainbow.”

“I'm Kurt,” I mumbled as she looked disinterestedly over my right shoulder.

While Lyman led the way with Rainbow following him, I lingered behind a little and quickly punched the speed-dial on my phone; first for Batman and then for Vysell. I hurriedly whispered our intended location to both guys and hung up.

Suddenly Rainbow's words hit me; that she wouldn't go back to Juvenile Hall! Instantly, I thought of Watson in jail for fucking Frizzhead who was only seventeen. I don't know if there's a law against an underage girl autographing some guy's dick or not but I wasn't taking any chances. Especially since there's so many undercover cops wandering around on the pier looking for dopers and molesters. I caught up with the girl.

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

I shot a fast look at Lyman. “Now what?”

He looked around. We were standing directly against the pier railing, looking down over the black, white-capped waves. There was a wall behind us and one on the right. We were against a corner. The walkway that we took to get here provided the only way anybody could see us.