Sex and Violence in Hollywood Read online

  Quietly, sheepishly, Billy had refused to give them directions to Diz’s place unless they agreed to take him along. “S’really for your own good,” he had said.

  Adam looked in the rearview and said, “Hey, Billy, why would Diz be upset if we showed up without you?”

  “Come on, Adam,” Carter said, rolling his eyes. “The guy sells drugs and guns and explosives and God knows what else. I think I’d be a little tense, too, in his position.”

  “Oh, no, it’s not just Diz,” Billy said. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the backs of the seats. “It’s his parents, too.”

  “What do they do?” Adam said.

  “Uh, well...” He chuckled. “They just do, like...stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Carter asked.

  “The, um...well, the illegal kind.”

  “Sounds like a wonderful family,” Adam said.

  “They’re all real nice folks,” Billy said. “Well, um...Diz is kinda moody these days. But his parents’re real nice. His mom, anyways.”

  “Why is Diz moody these days?” Adam asked.

  “Oh, that, well...he got hurt. ’Bout a year and a half ago, he was workin’ with explosives, y’know? I mean, um, it’s what he does, right? Anyways, somethin’ went wrong an’ the thing went off. Right in Diz’s face. He lost some of his fingers and, um...some of his face. He’s pretty self-conscious about it. Been kinda moody ever since. For a long time, he wouldn’t leave the compound, not even on a job, or nothin’. He’s gettin’ better, though.”

  Adam’s eyebrows popped up. “Compound? What are they, a militia?”

  Billy grinned. “Thass what they call it. To be funny, I think. Just jokin’. Alls that’s out there is a buncha trailers.”

  “They live in a trailer park?” Carter asked.

  “Oh, no, just a buncha trailers. All theirs.”

  Adam asked, “Why all the trailers?”

  “Uh, well...” He got that sheepish look on his face again, ducked his head. “They got some businesses they run out there.”

  “Businesses?” Carter asked.

  “What kind of businesses?” Adam said.

  “Oh, I...I’m not supposed to talk about it. I promised.”

  Adam and Carter exchanged a worried look. Adam said, “Billy, if you don’t want to tell us, that’s fine, but...I really need to know if we’re going to get in some kind of trouble by going out to Diz’s house.”

  “Not as long as you’re with me.” He smiled into the rearview. “Mostly it’s just, like, Internet stuff. Y’know, websites with illegal porn, an’ stuff. Except for Mrs. C.’s. She’s a...um, whaddaya call it? A doma...dominatrix. That’s legal. But, um, just don’t tell ’em I told ya ’bout it.”

  That was not the reassurance Adam was looking for. He was tired of walking into the unknown—the party at Monty’s, those awful trips to the liquor store and the hospital—and wanted to know what he was getting into for a change. He did not like the sound of what Billy had said. But where else would he get explosives? Rain probably knew people who could build a bomb blindfolded, but he wanted nothing more to do with any of her friends. Or Rain, if he could help it. It was Diz or nothing.

  “Is ‘Diz’ short for something?” Adam asked.

  “Short for Dizzy. I don’t know if anybody knows his real name.”

  “Why Dizzy?” Carter asked. “Because of the accident?”

  “Oh, um, ’cause he’s...well, he’s dizzy. He choked on a vodka bottle cap when he was a little kid. They said he died, then, um, they were able to bring him back. But, well, he got a little brain damage. Not enough oxygen, y’know? Hasn’t been right ever since. He’s always just a little...dizzy. Sometimes it’s worse than others, but mosta th’time he’s just a little dizzy.”

  “Oh, my God,” Adam muttered, slumping in his seat. “This is Hell, we’re in Hell.”

  “What’s the matter?” Carter asked.

  “Did you hear that? They sound like the mutant family from The Hills Have Eyes!”

  Billy cleared his throat. “Oh, um, y’know...y’might not wanna say that in, um...in front of ’em. Y’know?”

  “I’m sorry, Billy,” Adam said. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do that.”

  “No prob.” Billy smiled and leaned back into the seat. Carter turned to Adam and asked quietly, “You changing your mind?”

  “No, I’m losing it.”

  “Why? What’s the matter all of a sudden?”

  “All of a sudden? Where the hell have you been all week?”

  Billy leaned forward again. “So what’re you guys gonna blow up?”

  Carter turned to him uncomfortably. “Well, Billy, we really didn’t want to talk about that, you know? That’s why we asked you not to ask us that question.”

  Billy’s droopy eyes slowly widened. “Oh, yeah, y’did, dincha? Okay, sorry ’bout that.” Again he smiled and settled into the seat.

  Adam sighed, spoke quietly to Carter. “This Diz guy will want to know that, too.”

  “Maybe not,” Carter said. “He probably deals with lots of people who don’t want anybody to know what they’re up to.”

  “You think?” Adam said. “A one-eyed maimed guy with chronic dizziness who handles explosives, you think he gets a lot of business?”

  Carter rolled his eyes. “Okay, so maybe to make up for the dizziness, he sells his explosives at a discount.”

  Billy leaned forward again. “Well, um, Diz doesn’t exactly sell explosives. He just, um, y’know, works with ’em. I...I thought you guys knew that.”

  “Works with them?” Adam said, his voice getting louder. “I’m driving a hundred and fifty miles into the desert to buy explosives, and he doesn’t sell them?”

  “He was selling them at that party,” Carter said. “Wasn’t he?”

  “He only did that back then ’cause he needed some fast money. He don’t do it anymore. If you got somethin’ you need t’blow up, he’ll do it for ya. Y’know, for a fee. That’s what he’s best at.”

  “Charging a fee?” Adam asked.

  “No, blowin’ things up.”

  Adam sighed and said no more. Mentally threw up his arms and hoped everything went at least as well as could be expected under the circumstances.

  * * *

  Like a deadly cancer steadily consuming healthy cells in a human body, Los Angeles continued to spread over the earth, eating up the desert along the way. It pushed the edge of the wilderness farther and farther from the city’s glimmering center. Soon, Adam feared, there would be no desert, and all of California would be Los Angeles. Then all of the west coast. The city would continue to spread until it reached the east coast and had swallowed the entire country, then the continent, and beyond. It had long been Adam’s opinion that Los Angeles should be surgically excised from the earth, like a giant infected cyst filled with pus and hair before it rendered the rest of the planet septic.

  “Okay, um, you’re gonna wanna take your next right,” Billy said.

  “My next right?” Adam asked. “I haven’t seen a right or a left since we got off the freeway.”

  It had been a long trip. They had made only one stop, at a convenience store in the small town of Baker, to get something to drink and use the restrooms.

  The desert surrounding Baker was humped with a scattering of large dunes in the distance on either side of the road. Wildflowers and the blooms on several different kinds of cacti and bushes provided bright colors in the shade of ironwood and yucca trees, and the occasional screwbean mesquite and desert willow. Creosote shrubs were everywhere, rising up in dark green clumps as high as ten feet.

  After Baker, Billy had directed Adam to take a right off the freeway. They’d gone miles and miles, seeing nothing but desert. The road’s rough pavement ended abruptly, and they went miles more along a dirt road. Adam had bought a bottle of cranberry juice at the convenience store and finished it quickly. By the time they reached the dirt road, he had to go to the bathroom.

&nbs
p; After a good twelve, maybe fifteen miles, the dirt road dwindled to no more than two ruts worn into the ground and meandered for miles more, going around hillocks and between trees, on through the desert toward a large hill.

  “Dammit, I need an SUV,” Adam said. “This car isn’t even mine!”

  “And for that,” Carter said, “you should be thankful.”

  The ruts led them around the hill, and what Billy had referred to earlier as a “compound” appeared as if from nowhere. It was difficult from Adam’s point of view to tell how many trailers were grouped together in an especially lush part of the desert. A dozen, maybe fifteen. They were all a sandy brown, and probably blended well with the landscape when viewed from the air. A tall Cyclone fence enclosed the block of trailers, with barbed wire stretched around the top. Just beyond the trailers stood a long, tan, metal building with no windows. It was all nestled in the crook of a U-shaped crop of hills.

  A small guard booth stood just inside the fence on the right side of the gate. Someone sat slumped inside.

  “Stop at, um, th’gate,” Billy said, “and I’ll get us in.” He rolled down his window when Adam stopped, leaned out. “Jesus!” he shouted. “Jesus!” Billy sounded like he was taking the Lord’s name in vain.

  The figure in the booth stood and stepped out. A muscular shirtless Mexican guy in cutoffs, no older than twenty, squinted at Billy.

  “It’s me! Billy! I’m here t’see Diz. Let us in.” Jesus nodded, satisfied, stepped back into the booth. The gate slid open slowly. “Checkpoint Charlie,” Carter said.

  Adam looked over his shoulder at Billy. “Shouldn’t that be pronounced, Hay-soos instead of Je-zus?”

  “Yeah, s’posed to be,” Billy said with another of his almost embarrassed smiles. “But Jesus likes everybody t’call him...um, well, Jesus. ’Cause it pisses off his mom.”

  As he drove past, Adam glanced into the booth. Several rifles were on racks on the back wall.

  “Okay, um, just go along there,” Billy said, pointing.

  Adam drove along one side of the block of trailers. They were in mint condition and stood on concrete foundations, but were closer together than they would be in a legitimate trailer park.

  “Jus’ park in front of th’house,” Billy said.

  Adam asked, “What house?”

  Past the trailers, a large ranch-style house appeared, cozy at the foot of the hill. The desert was its yard, and a natural-looking path of flat desert rocks led to the front door from a crude circular driveway made of ruts driven into the ground.

  “This is unreal,” Carter mumbled as Adam killed the engine in front of the house.

  Adam looked at Billy very seriously. “Okay, Billy, now think. Is there anything else we should know before we go in there?”

  “Um...” Billy bowed his head for a moment, shook it. “No. Juss, um...well, y’know, don’t mention Diz’s, um, face or hands, okay? Or eyebrows.”

  “Eyebrows?” Adam said.

  Carter cleared his throat and asked, “What would he do if we were to accidentally mention his face or hands or eyebrows?”

  Billy’s face darkened with a frown. “Oh, he don’t take it too well, not Diz, no. ’Specially the eyebrows.”

  Adam looked at Carter and said quickly, “I think we can handle that, don’t you?”

  “You won’t hear about it from me,” Carter said.

  As he emerged from the car, the heat burned his lungs, dried up his mouth and throat. The car had grown a skin of dust.

  Billy led them along the stone path. Halfway to the door, Adam heard unsettling sounds behind him. Quick, heavy padding sounds on the ground. Adam turned and cried, “Shit!”

  One, two...three...four pit bulls ran through an open gate in the Cyclone fence, toward them. Squat legs kicked up clouds of dust as thick muscles rippled. Pink tongues lolled between glimmering sets of bared fangs. All four dogs silent as death.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Certain they were about to sustain serious physical injuries and possible permanent disfigurement, Adam and Carter ran for the house. Adam cried, “Holy shit, holy shit!” as Carter cried, “Fuck me! Fuck me!” They ran with arms stretched out rigidly ahead of them, like characters in a Scooby-Doo cartoon running from a mummy. Together, they slammed into the heavy dark oak door and pounded it with their fists as they screamed.

  Adam: “Openthedoor openthedoor openthe—”

  Carter: “Fuck me fuck me fuck me—”

  Adam glanced over his shoulder. Stopped shouting and did a double take.

  The pit bulls jumped up on Billy, paws leaving dusty tracks on his clothes as he talked to them cheerfully. “Hey, guys, how’s it goin’, huh? Huh?” Grinning, he roughed them up, let them chew playfully on his hands.

  “Hey,” Adam said as he poked Carter with a knuckle.

  Carter stopped screaming, turned. He and Adam watched the playful dogs for a moment. Caught their breath, waited for panic to recede.

  Billy shook his head and laughed at them. “Y’know, I like you guys. But you’re, like, way big pussies.”

  The oak door opened as a few harsh, wet coughs sounded from behind it. Wheezy, rattling coughs. A man’s voice said, “What in theeee fuck is going on out here?”

  A narrow head peered around the edge of the door wearing what appeared, at first, to be a furry cap. It was, in fact, a black toupee sparkling with a few strands of silver. The face beneath it was in its late sixties, but the voice was older. Strings of smoke rose from a long cigarette in a short, shiny black holder clenched between his teeth. His gray eyes moved up and down their bodies one at a time.

  “You all right?” he asked. “Sounded like somebody was bein’ circumcised out here, Jeez-iz.” He stepped out from behind the door wearing only a white towel around his waist. Beneath it, an erection pushed willfully at the terry cloth.

  Oh, terrific, wonderful, Adam thought. We’re never gonna be seen again.

  Adam said, “Sorry to drag you out of the shower, but we—”

  “Nah, I wasn’t in the shower,” he said, wheezing with asthma or emphysema. “I was workin’. I’m always workin’. Well, come on in.”

  Adam looked back at Billy, who was still romping with the pit bulls. “Hey, Billy?” he called. Billy had forgotten all about them. He was remarkably talented at making masks and prosthetics, but he did not give the impression of being one who engaged in a great deal of critical thought.

  The man held his cigarette holder between two knuckles as he stepped back and waved them into the house. He was short and wiry, but his pasty complexion gave him a look of ill health. The nicotine-yellowed silver hair on his sagging chest and belly did not match his toupee.

  Adam and Carter looked at one another. Carter shrugged. Adam gestured for him to go first.

  “You been here before, or what?” the man asked.

  Adam replied, “Well, we just came with—”

  “I got so many comin’ in and out now—you know, this bidness has just gone through the roof. I got six websites, I can do two-three videos a day, every day if I so fucking choose. I could do a lot more, but my doctor tells me to slow down a little ’cause of my pump. But still I got boys comin’ and goin’, I can’t keep up with all the boys around here.” He closed the door and turned to them in the foyer, laughing. “But we can always use some more!”

  The foyer walls were bare. A small surveillance camera watched from an overhead corner. Looked directly at Adam.

  The man stepped between them, put his arms across their backs, cigarette holder clamped between his teeth like Franklin Roosevelt. Led them around a corner and down a hall, his erection pointing the way. He smelled of gin.

  Another camera watched the hallway.

  The man said, “I seen you boys around here before? Who sent you?”

  Adam gulped before saying, “We came here with—”

  “You want something to eat?” the man asked. “I got all kindsa sammiches and snacks in the kitchen. Beer, soda, milk, wha
tever you want.”

  Adam said, “Uh-uh.”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Carter said. His voice was dry and coarse. Neither of them had recovered yet from the pit bulls.

  “Right in here.” He pushed them through a door.

  It was a long room, and a camera high in the corner kept an eye on it. A wall had been knocked out between two bedrooms. Four digital cameras stood on tripods facing four small, spare sets, one in each corner. The first was a sofa with an end table and lamp at one end, a simple wooden coffee table in front of it, and a velvet painting of John Wayne in cowboy hat and kerchief on the wall. A half-empty fifth of gin stood on the end table. The next set looked like an adolescent boy’s bedroom, then a Jacuzzi, a weight room, all separated by cheap divider screens. Near the Jacuzzi, two naked boys—fourteen, maybe fifteen—shared a fat beanbag chair, leaned on each other as they passed a joint between them. They sat up when the man walked in.

  He puffed on the cigarette compulsively and a cloud of smoke encircled his head. “Dougie and Brandon,” he said, gesturing to the naked boys as he went to the end table and retrieved the bottle of gin. Took a healthy swig. “They just finished a live show on the ’net. You boys ever done anything like this?”

  “That’s illegal,” Adam muttered, frowning at the underage boys. He had not intended to speak the thought out loud and regretted it instantly.

  “Illegal,” the man said, voice hard as steel. “Did you just say ‘illegal?’ That’s what I just heard you say, right? ‘Illegal?’ In my house you said that?”

  This is really bad, Adam thought. He and Carter stammered over each other a moment. “This is a mistake,” Adam said, “a terrible, awful mistake, we came with Billy, we’re here to see—” His mind blanked and he turned to Carter, snapped his fingers rapidly. “What’s his name, what’s his name?”

  Billy hurried into the room. “Sorry ’bout that, guys,” he said. “Hey, Mr. C.”

  “Billy.” Mr. C.’s suspicious eyes never left Adam. He took a couple more swallows of the gin, nearly finished it. Clamped the cigarette holder between his teeth. “I can’t believe you brought somebody into my house who’d say the word ‘illegal,’ Billy. And in my fucking presence!”