Hard Case Crime: Money Shot (11 page)

“I called ahead,” Malloy said. “He’s expecting us.”

Inside, the shop smelled like the air had been sealed in a jar since 1947. Cigarettes and pomade and Clubman shaving talc and that blue stuff the combs sit in to kill germs. The barber himself was an ancient brown gnome with a face like a dried apple and a shiny bald head. He wore an immaculate white short-sleeved
guayabera
and white shorts that showed off bandy little rooster legs with large knobby knees. I wondered briefly about the wisdom of trusting a bald barber, but Malloy seemed to think the guy was all right.

“Jarocho’s been cutting my hair for twenty years,” Malloy said, patting the barber’s stooped shoulder. “He’s solid.”

The barber grinned, flashing a set of dazzlingly fake white choppers and said something to Malloy in rapid-fire Spanish. Malloy replied and the two of them went back and forth for a few minutes. I had no idea what they were talking about. I studied a large faded travel poster for Veracruz, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. I noticed another even older guy snoring softly in a cheap kitchen chair in the far corner of the shop. He looked like a mummy, but he had a full, luxurious head of snow-white hair done up in a mile-high 50’s era pompadour that probably hadn’t changed since it was invented.

The barber leaned over and fingered my hair, shaking his head. I figured he was telling Malloy it was a shame to cut such pretty hair. Didn’t I know it.

“I told him you were hiding out from an abusive boyfriend,” Malloy told me. “He’ll take good care of you.”

I nodded, still unable to calm a chilly electric anxiety that wouldn’t leave me alone.

“I’m gonna hit the thrift store across the street and get you some clothes,” Malloy said, not waiting for an answer before he turned to leave.

I shook my head. After the initial surprise of the nice jeans, I was starting to get a little tired of having Malloy as my personal shopper.

The barber sat me down in one of two ancient red vinyl barber chairs, whipping a blue plastic cape around my shoulders with dramatic flair.

“You no worry,” he told me with a wink.

“Right,” I said.

Jarocho made with the scissors and when my thick dark tresses started falling to the scuffed green linoleum I had a moment of irrational panic. I wanted to call the whole thing off. Wasn’t I already ugly enough? But it was too late. The barber thumbed on a bulky old electric clipper that looked like something they’d use to shave dogs before neutering and started running it up the back of my head. Before I knew it I had a buzz cut identical to Malloy’s. All of the dyed chocolate-cherry curls were gone, leaving behind only a quarter inch of natural salt and pepper roots. I was horrified by how much gray I had.

Malloy returned then with two cheap plastic shopping bags. I was almost afraid to look inside.

I guess I had been hoping for some kind of classy, androgynous Marlene Dietrich sort of suit or something, but Malloy had other ideas.

The first bag contained several extra large t-shirts, including a Lakers shirt, and a pair of baggy men’s jeans. I hadn’t told Malloy that Lia had been wearing a Lakers shirt the last time I saw her and although this one was a different style, it made me feel a little weird. I decided I would wear one of the other ones.

“The big mistake people make when they do drag is going too far.” Malloy said. “Overcompensating. Too girly. Too macho. If you want to be believable, you have to keep it simple. Nothing for the eye to catch on.”

I wondered if Malloy had ever done drag. I tried to imagine some elaborate Ed Wood-style sting operation that would require him to go undercover in angora, but somehow I just couldn’t picture it. He handed me the other bag. It contained two large Ace bandages.

“Use one of those bandages to bind your chest,” Malloy told me. “And wrap the other loosely around your waist.”

“Around my waist?” I asked. “What for?”

“You’ve got a very small waist,” he told me. “You need to bulk it up and make it closer to the size of your hips and chest. Make your shape less feminine.” He looked down at my feet. “Your sneakers are fine.”

I ducked into the closet-sized john, skinned out of my tank top and bra, and went to work battening down the twins. It was uncomfortable and I started sweating right away. I wrapped the other bandage around my waist until I wound up with a sort of dumpy sausage shape from the armpits to the hips.

Was it possible to make me feel less attractive? I knew being attractive was a liability on the lam but I missed it like a dry drunk misses that warm, happy Saturday night buzz. I was so used to the appreciative glances of men that I felt lost without that constant validation. I hardly knew who I was anymore.

When I was dressed, I came out of the tiny bathroom and glanced in the wall of mirrors at the boy I had become.

It almost worked. The hair was perfect, the silhouette unobtrusive beneath the loose clothing. The double shiner helped, too, and so did the broken nose. The big problem was my eyebrows.

I normally go through a good amount of monthly suffering in the ongoing war against my hairy Mediterranean genes. In addition to lip waxing (to keep me from sporting a mustache like Nonna Vincenza) and bikini waxing (I get the Playboy, not the Brazilian, since I know you’re wondering), I also regularly wax my heavy eyebrows into slender, delicate arches. Very femme and very not-a-boy.

“I could try filling my eyebrows in thicker with an eye pencil,” I said.

Malloy looked at my reflection in the mirror and shrugged.

“I’ll just tell people you’re gay,” he said. “That you’re my nephew who just moved out to L.A. and got bashed by a bunch of douchebags right in front of his apartment. I’ll tell ’em I promised my sister I’d let you stay with me until they catch the guys who did it. That you’re scared to be alone so I let you tag along.”

Jarocho said something in Spanish to Malloy that got them both laughing.

“What?” I asked, feeling irritable and annoyed and left out.

“He says he would go gay for you,” Malloy said.

I rolled my eyes.

“Great,” I said.

Jarocho flashed his dentures and gave me two thumbs up.

The next order of business was to translate the note. Malloy gave me a wad of cash and then checked in with Didi by phone while I ducked into a nearby beauty supply store for some cheap non-prescription color contacts to disguise my black coffee eyes.

On impulse, I also bought a bleaching kit for my hair. Just because I was a boy didn’t mean I had to put up with gray hair. I figured bleached blond would be about as far from my normal look as I could get and would be still reasonably believable for a gay guy my age.

Born actress that I was, I started imagining details about my new character. I figured I used to be a hot little twink ten years ago, but now I was getting older and thicker in the middle. My boyfriend of five years had just dumped me so I was overcompensating with the blond hair. I did a drag show on the weekends using the name Ivana Mandalay, which would explain the girly eyebrows. Of course, coming up with a believable real name was a little harder. I didn’t want anything too butch, too silly, or over the top. I needed something generic and easy to remember.

“Daniel,” I told Malloy when I got back in the car. “That’s my new name.”

Daniel was the name of the first guy who ever put his finger inside me. Danny Zawadski. He was big and blond, and stuttered when he was nervous. I think he’s married now and owns a restaurant in the old neighborhood. Not a drag queen by any stretch of the imagination.

“Daniel?” Malloy said, looking me up and down. “That works.” He looked down at the bag in my lap. “What else did you buy?”

“Bleach,” I said. “I figured I should have blond hair to go with my new blue eyes.”

“Right,” Malloy said.

I wondered if he was pissed at me for improvising. I don’t know why, but I got a peculiar thrill from being off Malloy’s script. I was really counting on him way too much. It felt good to make decisions for myself.

“Didi said that Romanian broad is on a shoot today,” Malloy said. “But that we can meet her on the set at three when they break for lunch. In the meantime, we can go back to my place. You can do your hair and get those contacts in.”

I wondered how many more different people I would need to be before I could be me again.

Tabitha Moore’s shoot was for Rawkus. They were set up in their dusty, cavernous studio on Stagg Ave. I never shot for Rawkus, since they don’t pay for shit and I don’t care for their creepy, misogynistic and insulting titles.
Filthy Fuckpigs. Whores Can’t Say No.
Or their most popular series,
She Needs the Money.
I was actually a little surprised that Tabby was shooting for them, but she had always been one of the most cheerfully rowdy girls I’d ever met. She loved doing things just for the shock value and was famous for enthusiastic dirty talk that would make Max Hardcore blush. With her triple D implants and her voracious sexual stamina, Tabby was the Gonzo Queen of Over-The-Top town and didn’t care who knew it.

Unsurprisingly, they were shooting a gang bang scene. The set was a half-assed mock-up of a locker room and a few of the guys had on random, contradictory pieces of athletic gear and various mismatched team uniforms. The parts of Tabby I could see between the seething tangle of male bodies seemed to be half dressed in a torn cheerleader outfit. I remembered Malloy’s comment the night before about
Teenage Nympho Cheerleaders
and statutory rape. Cheerleader costume notwithstanding, nobody was ever going to mistake Tabby for a teenager. She had been in the business for seven years. Years in porn are like a lot like dog years. They tend to age the girls much quicker than normal human years. Tabby was only twenty-four but she already had more surgical enhancement than a Beverly Hills divorcee twice her age. She was a legendary party girl too, with a pill habit the size of Nevada, and whenever she started to run low on painkillers she’d just pop in for another procedure. Still, underneath it all, she was a good kid. I don’t know if I would call her completely trustworthy, but she was all we had.

There were maybe five guys actively working the various stations of Tabby’s anatomy while another six or seven stood back on standby, keeping their pumps primed and waiting to be rotated in. One funny thing about working in porn is how quickly you get used to seeing guys jack off. When I first started out, I couldn’t stop staring. It gave me a nasty kind of thrill I can’t quite explain, seeing something that was supposed to be this shameful secret done in such a public, nonchalant sort of way. I was fascinated by the wide variety of techniques and the odd, individual quirks each guy seemed to have to get the job done. But that didn’t last. By my fifth or sixth film, I barely even noticed it anymore, unless the shoot was on standby, waiting for wood. Veteran cops and paramedics are unfazed by the sight of sucking chest wounds or decomposed babies. Porn pros don’t bat an eye at the sight of six guys standing around yanking their cranks.

Malloy only had two months in country and was clearly not quite used to it yet. As we stood on the sidelines, waiting for them to finish up and call lunch, I could see in his body language that all this wanking made him itchingly uncomfortable. A lot of guys imagine that it would be this big turn-on to visit a porn set. My advice is, unless you really love watching other men jack off, don’t bother.

Malloy turned away from the action and from me and walked quietly over to stand near the director. The director was young and morose with a large shaved head and a scruffy, chinless face like a strung-out fetus. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the action. He sat alone and hunched over by the monitor, picking at a large scab on the back of his hand.

The cameraman was the one running the show. He was older, fat and beery with a backwards baseball hat and an oily little ponytail. Sweating profusely as he hovered around the fleshy jumble like a woozy fly, he droned on and on in a wet, nasal voice about how great everything was.

“Tito,” the cameraman said. “Grab her hair. Great. Keep going. Now Tabby, can you raise your left leg up a little higher? Great. Keep going. Nick, trade places with Drew. Great. Keep going.”

I felt sorry for the editor who was going to have to replace all that audio. I also felt sorry for Tabby, who was giving it 110 percent and would probably wind up with dreary stock music over all her saucy, creative dialog because that asshole camera guy wouldn’t shut up.

A very deep man’s voice spoke softly to my left, startling me.

“Hey.”

I turned and saw that it was Dick Dallas. He had debuted just as I was getting out and we had never worked together, but we knew a lot of the same people. He was bigger than ever, shredded muscle on top of muscle and his formerly handsome face was becoming distorted and caveman-craggy from excessive use of steroids and Human Growth Hormone. He had a deep, leathery tan the color of barbeque sauce and had dyed his hair a dull, monochrome black. It kind of looked like he had gotten those hair implants, but I didn’t want to look closely enough to be sure. He was wearing nothing but sneakers and was very happy to see me. I didn’t take it personally. I knew it was just the Caverject. My breath caught as I waited for him to recognize me. Amazingly, he didn’t.

“Are you okay?” he asked instead.

That was not at all what I had been expecting. The genuine concern in his face and voice seemed almost funny coming from a big hunky guy standing there naked with a hard-on.

“I’m fine,” I replied, trying to pitch my voice as low as possible.

“Did he do this to you?” Dick asked, frowning as he gestured with his chin toward Malloy.

“Oh,” I said. “Uh... no.” I dug around in my brain for my cover story. “Some guys beat me up in front of my apartment, so I’m staying with my uncle until they get caught. He used to be a cop, my uncle. I was, y’know, scared to be alone so...”

“Son of a bitch,” Dick said, shaking his blocky head. “Those spineless fucks don’t dare try shit like that with me. Instead they gang up on a little guy like you to prove they’re real men. Bastards.” He put a hand on my shoulder, leaving a greasy lube spot on my t-shirt. “What’s your name?”