My Gun Has Bullets (27 page)

She stopped for a moment, so he glanced down to take an admiring gander at himself, and was not disappointed. It was a landmark in its own right, the leaning tower of Los Angeles in all its engorged glory.

He was so entranced by his own erection, he didn't notice Esther reaching under the bed until it was too late.

In one swift motion, she whipped out a pair of hedge shears and pinched his giant boner between the gleaming, razor-sharp blades. He gasped in utter tenor, unable to speak, unable to breathe, his eyes locked on his throbbing, hostage penis.

"It's a shame we don't have the cameras running, lover boy, because this would be a keeper. My best performance yet and your last." She grinned with malicious delight, her lips wet, her arms braced to Bobbitt. "AfterI cut it off, I'm gonna smoke it."

Esther was about to chop when her breast exploded in a sickening burst of silicone and blood. She jerked back, her hands still clinging to the shears, and then the top of her head flew off, knocking her to the floor and freeing Flint from the shears.

Unable to breathe, he watched his penis shrivel up like the Wicked Witch of the West, perhaps never to rise again.

Delbert Skaggs casually unscrewed the silencer from his gun and strode into the bedroom to glance at Esther. She was heaped in a clump on the floor, covered in blood and brains, her hands still gripping the hedge shears. He had planned to kill her, but he hadn't expected to find her with Flint, and he certainly didn't expect to find her about to chop his prick off.

"Don't worry about cleaning up the mess," Delbert said. "Leave that to me."

No problem at all, Flint Westwood would have said, if he'd been able to speak. He was still staring at his groin and still wondering if he'd remember how to breathe again. There was so much to comprehend. Esther with the shears. Delbert with the gun. Esther dead on the floor. His prick dead between his legs. How did she know about the pictures?

"Does anyone know you're here?" Delbert asked.

Flint tried to speak, but nothing came out. Delbert tossed Flint his pants and asked again. "This is very important, Flint. Does anyone know you're here?"

Flint shook his head no.

"Good," Delbert said. ''That makes things much easier."

For a moment, Flint thought Delbert was going to kill him, too, and so did Delbert, who never let anyone witness a killing and survive.

Yet he let Flint live. It went against everything he believed in, but there was no way around it. He needed Flint alive at least until they had enough episodes of
Frankencop
for strip syndication. Then Delbert would kill Flint and, as the villains on
Frankencop
always said, make it look like an accident. He couldn't let a witness live, even if it was a member of Daddy Crofoot's family. In the meantime, Delbert had to make sure Flint got away clean.

There was nothing UBC could program against
Frankencop
now that could pose a serious threat. With Esther Radcliffe dead,
Miss Agatha
was finished. And with Boo Boo dead, UBC lost the one show they had that could provide a strong enough lead-in to a new series and make it a formidable competitor to
Frankencop.
Pinstripe Productions' dominance of Thursday nights, and soon the entire Nielsen rating, was assured. There were just a few more, final details to take care of first.

''There's a plainclothes police officer parked outside your house," Delbert said. "I want you to go home, change your clothes, and go to a movie or something. Can you do that?"

Flint slowly pulled on his pants and nodded.

"The cop is going to follow you, so obey the speed limit and make sure he doesn't lose you," Delbert said, watching Flint slip into his loafers and button up his shirt. "Enjoy the show, have a nice dinner, and when you get back home, all your troubles will be over."

We'll see if that's true next time I'm in bed, Flint thought, hurrying out the door without bothering to thank his guardian angel, or to ask himself what Delbert was doing there in the first place.

# # #

Charlie and Sabrina spent the night making love, hungrily, desperately, like two starving people given a shopping spree at Safeway.

They moved through Sabrina's condo like two Tasmanian devils, their wild, unrestrained lust upending tables, knocking over couch cushions, toppling chairs, and wiping dishes off the kitchen countertops. They finally ended up in her bed, clawing the sheets off the mattress as they writhed, wrestled, wriggled.

For the first time in months, Charlie felt he actually had some control over his life, even while completely letting go of his pent-up passions. Making love to Sabrina felt great, and not just physically. It made him feel he had come back to life, returning to the real world from that different dimension he'd been inhabiting since he was shot. Maybe even
before
he was shot.

Only now did he realize that losing Connie had hurt him far more deeply than he was willing to admit. Fact was, the day she walked out on him was the day he lost control of his life. All it took to get a grip on it again was an insane old woman, a bullet in the stomach, premature ejaculation, and pretending to be a man he wasn't. Not exactly a therapy he'd recommend to the lovelorn. But hey, it worked.

Charlie still had his problems, but at least he felt he was fighting back, maybe even winning a couple of battles along the way.

It was different for Sabrina. Being with Charlie, she felt secure for the first time since coming to Los Angeles. More than that, she didn't feel alone against it all anymore.

Ever since she arrived in Hollywood, she had been surrounded by mercenaries, lechers, sharks, and pigs. The only person that she could depend on, that she could trust, that she could
stand
to be with, was herself. Now she had Charlie. And she was going to hold on tight.

And that's what she did, wrapping herself around him in a myriad of different ways, in several different rooms, until they finally, ultimately lay exhausted in her bed, entwined in each other's arms, sticky with each other's sweat.

They stayed that way for that long, sweet hour between their last simultaneous orgasm and the moment when her alarm clock jangled at four a.m. Sabrina had an hour to shower and make a feeble attempt to study her script before the limo arrived to take her to the studio.

While she did that, Charlie lay tangled in the sheets, the room thick with the smell of sex and sweat. If Glade could bottle the aroma, he thought, they'd make a fortune.

The limo arrived promptly at five o'clock and whisked her away to Pinnacle Studios, where she'd have another hour or so for makeup and wardrobe before she was expected on the set for a thrilling episode of
Miss Agatha.

Charlie figured she'd be safe from Esther on the lot, as long as Sabrina checked out her prop gun and any weapon a guest star might use against her. He also warned her to keep an eye open for runaway cars, falling lights, or unstable scenery. When shooting wrapped, he'd be waiting for her at her place. In the meantime, he had some work to do.

As soon as she was gone, he dressed and straggled out of the house, figuring he'd shower and shave when he got home, then knock off some copies of Flint's cassettes. He wanted to be prepared for a mass mailing tomorrow—he had very little faith that Esther would suddenly do the right thing.

The freeway heading north into the valley was practically empty, while the southbound lanes were already packed with puffy-eyed commuters heading into the city from the suburbs, jerking themselves into consciousness with cranked-up radios and jumbo jugs of coffee.

The sun was beginning to shine through the airborne sludge, which was churned by the spinning blades of countless helicopters as radio stations, police, and TV channels all vied for the best view of the awakening city.

Charlie tuned in KNX news radio to see if the world had changed drastically overnight. Boo Boo was still missing, but was sighted running down the aisles at a WaI-Mart in Sacramento, chewing on a bone in Yosemite, pissing on a shrub in New Jersey, and eating cherry pie with Jimmy Hoffa at a truck stop in North Platte. The less important news of the day—a presidential summit, a devastating earthquake in China, and a cure for the common cold—was promised after the commercials.

But by then Charlie was already pulling into his driveway. He snatched up his sprinkler-soaked edition of the
Los Angeles Times
and trudged to his door.

When he stepped inside, his mind was on breakfast, and whether or not he should have stopped for a McMuffin. So his first thought when he was slammed against the wall, and felt the gun jammed in his back, was that he should have eaten something before getting killed by Esther.

"Don't move," said a gruff, male voice behind him. Suddenly a half-dozen cops spilled in through the front and back doors, kneeing aside McGarrett in their rush to get in. Bringing up the rear was Spinoza, the forensics expert.

Charlie felt his arms being pulled behind his back, and a pair of handcuffs closed around his wrists. Then he was spun around to face Sergeant Emil Grubb.

"You're under arrest," Grubb said.

"What's the charge?"

"Murder," Grubb replied, holstering his gun and turning to the cops around the room. "Toss the place, catalog and note everything you find." The cops pulled on rubber gloves and got to work. Charlie glanced at the TV. The videocassettes were gone.

Grubb turned back to Charlie.

"You got the right to remain silent, and all that stuff," Grubb said. "Do I need to do the whole number'?"

"No," Charlie replied. "Who did I kill?"

"You mean besides that actor?"

"There's someone else?" Charlie asked incredulously.

"Esther Radcliffe."

Whatever control Charlie fleetingly fell over his life abruptly disappeared.

T
he situation was achingly familiar. A recalcitrant murder suspect questioned by the hard-nosed cop. It might as well have been a scene out of
My Gun Has Bullets.
In fact, Charlie was certain it was.

The interrogation room was just like the set, and the dialogue sounded like half a dozen scripts that still kicked around in his head. Only in those scripts, Charlie was Derek Thorne, supercop, crusader for justice, quick with a quip or a right hook. Now Charlie was playing the villain.

He heard actors say playing the bad guy was more fun than the hero, but Charlie wasn't enjoying the chance to stretch as an actor. Hands cuffed behind his back, Charlie was intentionally paraded down every corridor in the station before they finally took him into interrogation. For a cop, for a man who believed in the badge, there was nothing more humiliating. And Grubb knew it.

"Last time you killed someone, we had you, we had the gun, we even had the murder on film. All that was missing was the motive," Grubb said. "This time, you made it easy. All that's missing is the film."

Grubb held up an evidence bag containing a gun. "You recognize this?"

"It's a plastic bag," Charlie said, stealing a line from a bad guy in episode three. Or was it episode four?

"This is your gun. We found it in a storm drain a mile from Esther Radcliffe's house," Grubb said. "Your prints are all over it."

Grubb handed the bag to the silent, stone-faced cop standing by the door. Cop #1. That's what he would be called in a
My Gun Has Bullets
script. He was significant enough to be a presence, but not enough to actually deserve a name.

"Obviously, someone stole my gun and killed her with it," Charlie said, glancing at Cop #1. He even looked like the extra from episode three.

"Funny, I thought the obvious explanation was that
you
killed her." Grubb responded.

"That's why you're still in the North Hollywood division," Charlie said. "If I killed Esther, and was dumb enough not to wear gloves, why didn't you find any powder burns on me?"

"Because you were smart enough to wash your hands with Ajax before you came home."

"I was smart enough to do that, but so stupid I left my prints on the murder weapon and tossed it in a gutter a mile from the crime scene."

Grubb shrugged. "Maybe you underestimated my intelligence."

Charlie sighed. "I doubt it."

Grubb paced back and forth, collecting his thoughts. "You know what we found in your house?"

"The six hundred pairs of socks I've lost?"

"Fifty grand in cash," Grubb said. Charlie didn't have to look too far ahead to see where this clumsy frame was going and who was behind it. Flint Westwood.

He never figured the guy for a killer, then again, he wouldn't have thought Esther was one, either. The only thing Charlie couldn't figure out was how the whole thing went down.

Maybe Esther was planning on killing Flint with Charlie's gun, and things went bad, and Esther ended up dead. Perhaps Flint framed Charlie as an afterthought. Or maybe a frame was Flint's idea all along, to get back at Charlie for ruining his little blackmail operation.

Whatever the explanation, Flint was at the center of it and Charlie was the fall guy.

"It's not my money," Charlie said.

"So you're telling me someone took your gun and left behind fifty grand to cover the loss?"

"I'm telling you someone stole the gun and planted the money," Charlie said.

"There you go, underestimating me again," Grubb said. "I got another theory, you want to hear it?"

"I don't know," Charlie said, turning to Cop #1. "Do you?"

Cop #1 said nothing. Of course he didn't. Extras usually don't, otherwise their price jumps from $50 to $500 a day, plus pension, health, and residuals. The show could only afford seven or eight speaking parts an episode. If Cop #1 had any lines, he'd have a name. So Grubb was probably getting that guy's dialogue, too. If Charlie's life was a TV show, he hoped Grubb was a recurring character who'd get written out real soon.