The Glitter Dome (34 page)

Al Mackey, who was caught up in all of it cried, “That's swell! Thanks!” And only while he was walking away did it occur to him:
What
fucking script?

There was only one way to straighten out his head: Have another drink. He found some actors at the bar. They were of course the most recognizable, and although the Famous Male Actors mingled among all groups, the Famous Female Actors seemed to withdraw into entourages.

Al Mackey preferred the younger up-and-comers. They had only three things to talk about: movies, drugs, and sex. Movies they almost got, exotic drugs that prolonged orgasm for days and days, and sex which was almost as good as the drugs that prolonged the sex. It was the conversation Al Mackey found most educational. He wished he'd brought his pencil.

He was all agog over a young actress he'd seen several times on television. She was talking about a private club where you could play backgammon and do dope, and Al Mackey learned that acid was back and the latest fad was sniffing Persian heroin. And in the private club's disco they had slide projectors synchronized by computers, and two motion picture systems, and an all-enveloping sound system, not to mention a multitude of lights and effects, and two machines, one for fog, one for multicolored bubbles.

A blond young actor, built like a running back, one they said was sure to be the next television superstar, jumped up with eyes like fiery hibiscus and yelled, “Focus, focus, you asshole!”

Nobody but Al Mackey paid any attention to him so he sat back down. Somebody stuffed something under his nose and he shook his head, the bleached blond locks flying all over his face. He smiled. Apparently he was satisfied that they'd focused.

Then another actress, who Al Mackey was almost
sure
was the co-star of a series, said, “That putz wanted me … get
this!
to play a part in his feature where I'm fucking my fourteen-year-old
son
and his estranged father is on the phone telling him how to make his mommy happy!”

“You see, that's how agents are!” another actress cried. “Take your fucking spleen for ten percent. Who needs a spleen? You can live without a spleen!”

“Fucking your own son,” a young actor said, and then he grinned cagily. Would she?

“Focus, you son of a bitch!” the blond kid yelled again.

And somebody said, “Call this little freak's manager and get him outa here or he'll be back to being butt-fucked by those bogus producers out front of Schwab's Drugstore.”

Then the outraged actress said, “This movie, by the way, is supposed to slide by with a soft R rating.”

“Oooooooohhhhhhh!” they cried, sounding like the detective bureau the day Fuzznuts Francis “impacted” for the twelfth time.

“Yeah, then the kid's daddy, according to this artful script, is supposed to ask the kid on the phone if he's playing with himself. All
that
kind of wonderful dialogue.”

“Jesus!” another actress cried. “Are you going to
do
the film?”

“Are you crazy? I'm not
old
enough to have a fourteen-year-old son fucking me, you dumb cunt!”

The conversation was now so hot that Al Mackey was startled when Herman III tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Al, I'd like you to meet somebody.”

He turned and was face to face with a twenty-four-year-old girl in the craziest onion-shaped pullover sweater he'd ever seen. It went clear to her thighs and hugged them. In fact it was worn like pants. How did she get in and out? Her matching green hat looked like a graduation cap. She wore tights underneath all of it. Funfinger was absolutely out. It was all or nothing in
this
costume.

“My name's Billie,” she said. “Hi, Al. I hear you're a cop.”

“Hi, Billie.” The enchanted detective leered.

“I love cops. Before I got in The Business I wanted to
be
a cop,” she said.

“You kids make nice.” Herman III winked as he left them.

“What do you like best about cops?” Al Mackey was weaving like a punch-em doll.

“Gee, you're really bombed, Al.”

“Not that … that bombed,” he belched.

“Party's breaking up soon, Al,” she said. “Wanna go for a walk out by the pool?”

“Do I? Do I? Do …”

“Let's go, Al,” she said. “I used to go with a cop. Before I left Topeka.”

Al Mackey and Billie from Topeka were on their way for the garden stroll when Martin Welborn caught him by the arm and said, “Al, I have to drive a lady home. She lives in West L.A. so I should be back pretty soon. Will you …”

“Yeah yeah yeah. Go ahead, Marty. Have a good one. Catch you later. Take your time. I'll be around. I'll …”

* * *

While Al Mackey was chasing after the sunflower in the onion suit, Martin Welborn delighted Deedra Briggs with the ride in the detective car.

“I love all that police talk on the radio,” she said as they drove toward Westwood Village.

“We usually turn it off. Detectives don't get that many radio calls.”

“Don't. I love it,” she said, and then she slid over close to him and put her head on his shoulder and said, “Well, Sergeant Elbowpatches, I want you to know I had a very nice evening. And I was dreading this night.”

“Why did you come?”

“My manager insisted. Herman the Third needed some extra jesters, female type.” Then she touched the graying sideburns of the detective and said, “I don't think I'll ever do that again.”

“Would you like to have dinner … sometime?” Martin Welborn asked.

“When?”

“Whenever you like. I'm very free and …”

“When?” she challenged. The champagne had made her voice torchy, and sweetened her breath on his face.

“Sunday?” he asked. “Sunday evening?”

“Eight o'clock,” she said. “I'll make pasta and a salad.”

“I didn't mean for you to …”

“Drive right over there and park in front of the door,” she said.

It was a high-rise condo, not far from the village. She kissed him on the right cheek twice and when he turned she kissed him on the mouth.

“Sunday. Eight o'clock. Number eight-three-nine. I'll buzz the door for you.” A flash of thigh, a hiss of satin undergarments as she slid across the seat, and she was gone.

Martin Welborn tried to think about Paula Welborn on the ride back to Holmby Hills. He switched off the radio, but that didn't help. He
couldn't
think about Paula for the first time in months. He didn't think about Elliott Robles or even Danny Meadows. He simply free-floated and thought of Deedra Briggs.

Meanwhile, Al Mackey was a rapt audience for Billie from Topeka.

“I was in a film with him,” she said. “What a shit, I can tell you.”

“I'll bet!” Al Mackey said, almost falling off the chaise longue which was perilously close to the lighted Olympic-sized swimming pool.

“He's
always
loaded, Al. He's
such
a lude freak. You probably think he's in real good shape from seeing him in movies, right? Well, he also uses Mexican brown. And Persian by the
bead
! He whiffs it.”

Al Mackey had grabbed half a bottle of bourbon on the way out and was gulping it. Billie didn't drink, but she had spooned two loads of coke into her raw and dripping little nose while they talked.

“I didn't know he was a doper,” Al Mackey belched, without the faintest idea who was a doper or what they were talking about. He was too busy trying to figure how anybody could get out of that onion suit once they got into it.

“He can be an on-time guy sometimes. This was a German picture. Lots of tax shelter money there. We always said he was flying over Germany more than the Red Baron. And horny? We always said he'd eat anything before it ate him.”

“Really?” Al Mackey liked that. The conversation was getting off movies and drugs and onto sex where it belonged.

“You married, Al?”

“Not anymore.”

“I don't think I'll ever get married,” she said. “I live with a guy now. You're married, everyone starts to get all bothered about everything. Was your wife jealous?”

“The first one was,” he belched. “Caught me with a collapsible container once, and almost killed me over it.”

“What's a collapsible container?”

“A rubber. That's what we called them when we worked vice. In any police report when you refer to a collapsible container, it's a rubber.”

“Really? Did vice cops fuck girls for evidence?”

“Of course not, Billie! We used the collapsible container to put illegal booze in when we were working liquor violators. Better than balloons. Big opening. You can stash them easily in your pocket.” He took another pull of the whiskey, thinking of the bad old days. “That bitch. She finds one in my pocket one night and instead of giving me a chance to explain, she gets my gun. And God or
something
wakes me up just in time to roll off the bed while she fires one for effect. Right in the pillow where my head was!”

“Gosh, she
was
jealous. All for finding one little collapsible container! Imagine that!” She took another hit from her tiny gold coke spoon and imagined it.

“Of course we'd been having problems before that.”

“Dipped your dick in a few stray dishes, eh, Al?” Billie said, wiggling her inflamed nostrils, sniffling back the mucus.

Beware the devil's dandruff, he'd heard an actress warn. Stick some Tampax up your nose, honey, or you'll leave here a coke freak. “Just a few stray dishes, Billie.” Al Mackey leered. Not any more, God knows!

“Gosh, that musta been the old old days. I never even fucked a guy with a rubber.”

“You haven't?” Al Mackey felt a magnificent semi beginning to engorge!

“No way. My doctor keeps me on an IUD. I don't like the pill, cancer and all. You can get an IUD from a goddamn ophthalmologist around here. It's not like Topeka. All the doctors around here're pussy probers, seems to me. You go in with a tennis elbow, they stick their fingers up there looking for your phone number.”

“Uh huh,” the detective sighed. He loved this! Hollywood dirty talk!

Then she said, “Al, when Herman told me you were a cop, I just
had
to meet you. You're nice. And you're not too old, neither.”

“Not at all!” He was swelling like a pigeon. This girl knew how to talk to a man!

“Al, let's go in that dressing room for a while. I'm feeling, a little … you know?”

It almost ended then and there when Al Mackey jumped up and pitched forward several feet. She saved him from going for a swim, and later he wondered if he was always being spared or
tortured
by a whimsical God.

The dressing room was almost as large as Al Mackey's apartment. It had a carpeted floor, a separate bath, and a dressing table. Billie from Topeka showed Al Mackey how she got in and out of the green onion suit. She undressed much quicker than he did.

As Al Mackey heaped blessings on Herman III and struggled out of his suit and shirt and gunbelt and necktie and underwear, and sat on the carpet trying desperately to pull his pants over his shoes, she said, “Wow, Al, it's stiff as a bat already!”

And it was! “Help me outa these freaking pants, Billie!” Al Mackey cried.

And the girl, flying at the Red Baron's altitude by now, easily slipped off Al Mackey's shoes and socks and pants, and finally the bony detective was as naked as she.

“Stiff as a bat! You don't mess around, Al! Where's your gun?”

“On the floor!” Al Mackey said, kissing Billie on the neck and shoulders and arm and fingers, getting the preliminaries moving while he worried about the terrible thing that happened at The Red Valentine Massage Parlor.

“Where's your handcuffs, Al?”

“On the floor!” he cried, running his face down her hip and feeling the fuzz on her delicious young thigh.

“Get your handcuffs, Al,” she said.

That stopped him. “What for?”

“You gotta handcuff me to something.”

Al Mackey raised up, got dizzy, caught himself, but still fell back on his ass. “Why should I handcuff you?”

“Al, for chrissake, ever since Herman told me to … told me that you were a cop, I been looking forward to this. Get the fucking handcuffs, will ya?”

“Okay, okay,” Al Mackey mumbled, feeling around the floor in the dark until he found them. He hoped his keys hadn't gotten lost. Houdini couldn't get back into that onion suit while handcuffed.

“Put them on me, quick!” she panted.

“Lemme see,” he said, fumbling with the ratchets.

“Gimme the fucking things!” she commanded, expertly slipping into the cuffs and tightening them down, handling them better than a twenty-year cop.

“Now,” she cried. “Handcuff me to something!”

“Like what?” he said. The room was starting to spin.

“That stool! The little stool!” she cried. “Lift it up and slip the chain around the leg. Make me feel helpless!”

“Yeah, but Billie,” he said, picking up the stool. “This stool only weighs about a pound and a half. You could easily pull away from …”

“Get something for my face! Quick!” She was really whiffing wind now. He'd never heard such panting.

“What can I
get
you for your face, Billie?” Al Mackey was holding his dizzy head in both hands.

“Anything! A towel! Get a fucking towel!”

“A towel,” he said. “Will my T-shirt do?”

“Yeah, quick! Put it over my face!”

God, he hoped his T-shirt wasn't too rancid. Then he looked at his erection. He was starting to lose it! “Okay, how do you want me to do it? What am I supposed to do?”

“Over my face. Wrap it around. Fold it under my head. Quick!”

But while he was fumbling, she couldn't wait, and lifted her chained hands from under the stool and wrapped the T-shirt around her face like a blindfold. Then she lifted the stool and placed her manacled hands back in place.