A Big Start, Part 7 (Finale)

The guy at the reception desk had a checkerboard on the counter. His nose was deep in a book of chess problems. He said, wait a minute. I slammed the bell until he understood that having me wait a minute wouldn’t help him work out a new opening gambit or endgame. He muttered something that included “Ofay.” I flashed a C-note. A fifth of it was his, if he’d buzz my room to let me know if two middle-aged women with sweet-sounding names checked in.

The room had a TV set. Adult entertainment was available on closed circuit.

Holmes knew how to treat a lady, at least on-screen. His co-stars were all smiles when the act was done.

The chess wizard in the lobby called to say a couple white chicks just checked into the Matrimonial Suite as Kitty Moisten and Mary Widow. The ladies were regulars. He wanted his $20 before he knocked off and the night man took over.

I doused porn-o-vision, walked down the hall past an ice machine and a room with a Do Not Disturb sign permanently painted under the doorknob as a matrimonial touch. I put my ear to the door and heard rushing water.

I exited the motel from a side staircase without passing reception, got twenties from the Sea Gull’s cashier. No good handing an unbroken C-note to a guy who probably practiced magic tricks between solo chess games.

I snapped the bill. “What do the ladies look like?”

“White girls,” he said, and made a grab for the dough. He might’ve been good at chess, but wasn’t quick with his hands. “Both of ‘em tall, with dark hair.”

“That ain’t much.”

“You just said to call your room.”

“I mean, did you notice anything else about them?”

“They got your same taste in movies.”

He sniggered. I gave him twenty bucks.

I loitered in the lobby, crossed the street for dinner and a beer at the Sea Gull. At 10 o’clock, I retrieved the John Holmes nametag from my car, pinned it back on and knocked on the Matrimonial Suite’s door.

“What is it?” Kitty Moisten or Mary Widow sounded displeased at being disturbed despite the sign.

“Pizza delivery.”

Whispers. “Someone says we ordered pizza.”

“Tell them to go away.”

“But it’s like…” Unintelligible.

The door opened on mature women wrapped in towel togas. Background TV glare bathed the scene in blue light. The sound was off. A dresser mirror reflected adult entertainment.

“So where’s the pizza?”

“Look at his name tag!”

“Get in here, stupid.”

The lady standing closest made a grab. The other lady shut the door on her friend’s towel. The towel got stuck.

The lady who pulled me in punched my chest. “Say the line,” she said. “If you’re going to do this, do it right.”

The nude woman behind me twittered. “It worked! I can’t believe it.”

The woman who punched me wheeled and slugged her shower buddy on the arm. Her towel hit the ground too. “Shut up! How do we know he’s for real?”

They looked expectant.

I fumbled. “Uh well, I gues there ain’t no pizza after all.”

The air was steamy. Everything was out in the open all too soon.

The punchy one said, “It’s not him.”

“But he’s here.”

Motel life turned metaphysical. A glowing woman emerged on a cloud of steam from the bathroom. I would’ve been scared, but she seemed friendly. Her smile was familiar.

The client, Mr Johnson, said his mother was dead, but there she was. She looked as happy a she did on TV. Honey and Sadie didn’t look up, didn’t seem to know she was there, but they moved aside when she knelt down between them.

After an eon or two, the waifish wraith said, “How do you feel?”

Deadly porn dialogue seemed appropriate, but I felt like crying. “Havin’ the time of my life.”

She beamed forgiveness. She’d heard all those lines before.

“Talk like a human being,” she said. “Go on, try.”

I tried. “You ladies are a dream.”

“These two are ladies, not me. And I’m not even a dream. Just here and there and gone. But do you like what you’re doing?”

 “A man hired me to find out who his father was, or wasn’t. He said you’re his mother. He showed me a scene where you and John Holmes were together, at least on film.”

“His story’s true,” she said, and moved aside so Sadie could cut in. Sadie’s eyes stayed closed.

The mystery brunette watched. “Johnson’s my son,” she said, “and John’s. But he wants to be sure, for the wrong reasons.”

“What wrong reason could there be for wanting to know who your father is?”

She looked sad that I couldn’t figure it out. “He just wants to turn a buck. He wants legal proof so his story will hold up in court. He wants the name, the rights, and royalties.”

“Maybe so, but I took the job. Would you tell me where John Holmes is buried? I got a feeling these two don’t know.”

“Nobody knows. These two girls come here together to conjure the spirit of love.”

“I thought love was different.”

“You don’t feel the love here now?”

Her smile faded. I almost yelled a line from a disco hit that was popular then. “I do,” I said. Sadie and Honey either couldn’t hear, or didn’t let on. It wasn’t a wedding, after all.

“Love is love,” the spirit said. “Even if you do it for money. Money isn’t real.”

She said it as though she were revealing a deep secret. “My son might’ve hired you, but from now on you work for me.”

I couldn’t tell her Johnson’s money was real enough. Couldn’t explain the man retained people who’d deal with me if I screwed him. She took me into another world, and then I couldn’t see her any more.

There was another man behind the reception desk when I checked out. He said a pretty lady had dropped something off for me. He’d tried to buzz my room.

He slid a manila envelope across the counter.

I opened it in the car. Inside was a plastic bag printed LAPD and EVIDENCE. The bag was full of smaller bags with case numbers written on in blue ballpoint. “Hair specimen, pubic.” “Poss. blood sample.” Another bag contained a stained scrap of towel: “Semen sample: AB-/secretor”.

The package looked hideously genuine. The client would believe it’d been obtained it through private investigator skulduggery.

Back at Mr Johnson’s Hollywood Hills home, I accepted final payment. He would’ve been suspicious if I hadn’t. In exchange, he got the Bag from Beyond. When he asked how I got it, I said, “Don’t ask.”

Johnson smirked. He probably owned a private DNA lab.

Everything would come back negative. Justice of a kind would be done.

On my way out, I asked Johnson what his mother’s real name was and if he knew where she was buried.

John Holmes was cremated, his ashes scattered at sea. He’d made charitable donations towards dolphin welfare.

Nancy Ebbett Johnson’s last wish was to lie beside her show biz colleagues in Hollywood’s hallowed ground. The graveyard’s caretaker took five bucks and a pint bottle for a grave number, even though he would’ve given the information free. I left flowers, chocolates and a heart-shaped note that said, “Love is love.”

A Big Star, Part 1
A Big Star, Part 2
A Big Star, Part 3
A Big Star, Part 4
A Big Star, Part 5
A Big Star, Part 6

A Big Star, Part 6

A gibbous moon silvered the waves off Redondo Beach. Ship lights flickered in the distance, blinked out over the horizon. I tried some Morse code semaphore with my car’s brights, but got no answers.

An arrow aimed at nothing in the dark had missed, or hit the wrong target.

A bonfire blazed further down the strand.

There was a luau in progress, a possible taste of the beach lifestyle Los Angeles advertises lavishly and doles out so sparingly.

Surfers are a friendly crowd. The kids who stared into the driftwood pyre called me dude when I showed them a paper bag with a bottle inside.

A surf-bunny in a sheepskin jacket and sheepskin boots noticed the John Holmes nametag and flicked at it with a chipped black fingernail. “Oh hey, my Mom goes to your meetings.”

“You mean, like AA?”

She shook her head. “It’s funny, because my Dad used to go to John Birch meetings. After they got divorced, Mom started going to John Holmes meetings with her friend Honey.”

Honey. Holmes’ co-stars in the Johnson film went by Sugar and Candy. “What’s your name, kitten?”

“It’s not Kitten, it’s Amy.”

“What’s your Mom’s name, Amy? When does she attend these meetings, and where are they held?”

“That’s too many questions. My mom is Sadie, but how come you don’t know where the meetings are if you’re wearing the badge? I don’t think I should talk to you any more, ‘cause you’re a stranger.”

A surfer with major muscles under his sheepskin detected alarm in Amy’s voice. He could’ve made me eat a surfboard in a fair fight.

To preserve the luau spirit, I said, “Mellow out, Amy. John Holmes is…was…he died, unfortunately…a movie star. Well, a kind of movie star, but a big one for sure. Your mother and her friend Honey must belong to his fan club. I’m in Redondo ‘cause they’re making a movie about him. We’re shooting not far from here. The nametag’s so they’ll let me on the set.”

Amy stared. “That’s cool,” she said, as though nothing could be less so.

Waves crashed and surf music oozed from a battery-operated beatbox.

These coastal kids were in diapers when the Reaper took John Holmes. Pre-video porn’s largest male star had become a brand name. Brands are imprinted, like the rule against talking to strangers, on infant American brains. The Girl Talk’s stag films were product for smut consumers of the near future. Mister Johnson wanted to make his presence legal in a potential mega-million licensing market. Genetic proof of his legitimacy meant he could have the Feds bust scams like Deek’s without messing a manicure.

“So Amy, when does your mom go to meetings with her friend, and where do they go? Maybe I could convince the producer to hire them as extras.”

There were no stars in Amy’s eyes. They were red, and her pupils were as wide as the moon seen from the Earth. She wouldn’t remember our conversation in the morning.

“Mom and Honey go to Huntington Beach on the last Sunday of every month.”

That was tomorrow, or later, since it was after midnight.

“They meet up at a motel called the Zag-Nut,” she went on. “I listen in on the phone in the den whenever Honey calls. Honey’s got tons of boyfriends and she and my mom talk dirty to each other.”

***

There was a lonely, lit-up phone booth just off Redondo Beach. An operator named Dolores said there was a motel called the Ziggurat on Grabber Blvd in Huntington Beach.

Grabber Boulevard runs along the coastline. There was no early morning traffic, and only waves and seagulls for a soundtrack. The Ziggurat Motel was a faded two-story longhouse. Mock balconies faced the parking lot, decorated with Babylonian motif glazed ceramic tiles stolen from the set of “Intolerance.” An Orange County Persepolis of men in pleated skirts and spit-curled beards, wingèd cows, lions with Shirley Temple manes. The entire cast looked to the west.

There was nothing going on at the Zig. Someone inside or an automatic timer turned off the neon sign framed by naked bulbs.

The dashboard clock said 10:08 when I awoke, but that’s what it always says. The clock in the Sea Gull Diner down the street said it was nearly noon. The redhead waitress’ nametag said Brenda.

Brenda hadn’t noticed anything unusual about the Ziggurat Motel. She couldn’t say whether Masons or Shriners or bored OC housewives gathered there on Sunday nights. She only worked breakfast and lunch, she said, but if I wanted to find out what happened at the Ziggurat after sunset, I could park on the stool, drink coffee and stare out the picture window till kingdom come.

The Sea Gull Diner looked even older than the Ziggurat Motel. There was a wooden phone booth in the back.

The client’s girl Friday said Mr Johnson was on a lunch date, he’d have to call me back. He needn’t bother, I said, but if someone could deliver emergency expenses cash, I’d be able to have a lunch date too, and continue surveillance of a possible lead. Mr Johnson had told her about the case. She asked where and how much. She laughed when I sheepishly asked for a hundred, so I said OK, make it two hundred.

Not much later, a brown Plymouth Valiant parked just outside the Sea Gull. A brown dude in a non-descript brown suit got out and stretched like he’d been driving around selling encyclopedias all morning. He entered the diner and sat two stools away. He spoke to waitress Brenda as though he’d known her for years, ordered a chicken sandwich, coffee and pie. He ate quickly. When he reached for his wallet to pay the check, he knocked his brown briefcase off the stool. When I bent over to pick it up, we koko-bonked each other. “Ouch, thanks,” he said, and reached into his breast pocket. “Just the kind of thing people need insurance for.” He gave me his card.

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a whole bunch.”

He left waitress Brenda a generous tip, and drove away.

His card was two cards, with a pair of folded mint-condition C-notes taped in-between. The cards weren’t from an insurance brokerage, but from Mr Johnson’s film production company. One of them had green ink scribble on the back: “Glad you’re on the case. I need to know.” The phone number was a direct line to the client, not the one he’d used to call Mrs John Holmes. Gladys.

Mr Johnson worked fast, and employed a far-reaching network of skilled professionals.

After sunset, the diner stakeout turned into a Ziggurat Motel hole-up.

***

A Big Star, Part 1
A Big Star, Part 2
A Big Star, Part 3
A Big Star, Part 4
A Big Star, Part 5

Coyote Woman

A starless winter sky above Pojoaque Valley, it felt like snow. I walked into Jake’s Dirty Shorts Laundromat. It was around 8 p.m. Two people washing clothes; a woman with her six-year old daughter telling her: “Don’t try to blackmail me with Santa Claus mommy,” and a tall guy with long black hair, dropping quarters into a dryer.

I loaded a washer and sat down to read a magazine. The big guy came over and sat beside me.

“How are you doing?”

“Good. How are you?”

“My name’s Lucy Flowers.”

“Dwayne Evans.”

Lucy Flowers? I was shocked. Lucy had bulging biceps, stood about 6’5”, weighing in at about 235. She wore a New York Yankees baseball cap, a sleeveless black t-shirt with San Diego State in gold lettering and tattered blue jeans.

For a moment I wondered why she sat next to me and aggressively introduced herself. That moment didn’t last long.

“Tomorrow night,” Lucy said, “I’m going to commit suicide on stage at the El Farol Theatre. I’d like you to shoot the video and believe me it will go viral. I want you to memorialize me forever. But first you need you to design a web-site: suicide.com.

“Wait a minute. How do you know I make videos?”

“I watch you on YouTube,” she said. “I liked your last one, Coyote Woman Sings the Blues. I’ve created a design for the site. I’ve even written the advertising text for you.

“Basically, here’s the deal,” she said, “suicide.com will give anyone $1,000 for the video of their suicide. One-thousand dollars may not sound like much, but if you’re committing suicide you’re a loser, so forget about it. If you’re interested in learning more about our offer please go to suicide.com and we’ll have a counselor guide you through the process.

“After you get the suicide videos put them on your site and charge $5.00 to log on. You’ll become a millionaire within three months and then you can sell the movie rights to Hollywood.”

“And I go to jail and someone makes a movie about suicide. com and I’ll quote Lacan from behind bars and become famous and I’m still be in jail. Sorry Lucy, I can’t help you out. I’m busy tomorrow night.”

“It’s your choice. I’m committing suicide whether you video it or not. I just thought you might like to make some easy money.”

Lucy asked me if I’d like to hear about her last performance piece. I didn’t have anything better to do so I listened.

“I called the piece “Frozen Blood,” she says. “I collected eight pints of my blood, it took me over a year. I froze the blood and carved and ice sculpture of myself. Then I sat my frozen self at a computer with the icy fingers on the keys. The room was refrigerated but the blood slowly melted, leaving nothing but bloody fingerprints on the computer’s keyboard.”

***

Lights up. Bare stage, except for a full length mirror next to a small round table. Black flats enclose the actor in a 12’x12’ space.

Lucy dances to the Future of Radio, a Noise piece by Khlebnikov. The music is mechanical, a cacophony of cars, bombs, trains, honking, screaming, guns and machine orgasms sans melody, just a hint of rhythm.

“Have you ever heard the noise of a butterfly’s wing? The noise of a dying sunflower makes me cry.” Lucy chanted as she danced. She entered into a trance.

“I am giving birth to the dark waters of time…” She picked up a pistol from the table, aimed the gun at her image in the mirror. Held that pose for ten seconds then continued to dance, the gun like a magic wand.

“I am Kali, Isis, Persephone…” She holds the .45 to her head, her stomach, pauses and aims at her image in the mirror. “I am crow, cloud, demon, saint, virgin, mother, whore. I am trans-sexual and I am tired.”

She aims the pistol at her image, holds the position. Lights down. Five beats of silence. Loud gunshot blast. Future of Radio goes silent. Lights up. Lucy’s body splayed on the floor, blood leaks from her head. Lights down. One minute later, lights up. Lucy’s body’s not there. An empty stage. “Future of Radio” heard at a deafening level.

Dwayne caught it all on video. On his way driving back home to Pojoaque Valley he thinks about erasing Lucy’s suicide video. He doesn’t.