Chapter 4

Now we're ready to take a long look up Charmane Pervis' rear end, just like hubby Nick did the night he got home from the massage parlor. It was dark in there for Nick, dark as a dungeon, but true to form, instead of striking a match and shedding any light on the subject, he blew a fuse once again, and went into a cold-blooded kind of psychopathia. Fortunately, it only lasted about twelve hours, and we have the tapes that he made of his wife's "confession," but for Nick, it was the last act in a short, sick career-a career that was on the rocks the minute Shitty Dick first socked a tubesteak up a suburban shitter. Nick just happened to be the first male casualty in a long line of mind wrenching rapes.

I'm not implying that Nick was raped, physically. No, he just got the spiritual spear up the asshole, or, if you object to that figure of speech, he got the shitty dick in the ear, and in the process, lost quite a few ounces of grey matter.

We know all about Charmane and Shitty Dick because Nick's last act as an enforcer of the law was to force his wife to make a tape of her tale. He found her in the head, apparently went into a frozen stance of professional cool, marched out to the den and got his cassette machine, and then went back into the toilet and pulled his revolver out, inserted the snub nose in Charmane's exhaust port and told her not to leave out any of the details.

At the station the next morning, Nick arrived at eight-thirty, marched me up to Milhaud's office, set the machine on "play," and this is what we heard, blow by blow.

"Who did it?" Nick asked. We could hear the faint squishing noise as the snub nose twisted deep in bruised crack. She blubbered a bit, and complained.

"Nickypooh," she whispered, "Take that thing out of my butt, dear, I'm tender here. You've got no idea what it's like, having to endure such brutality, such an animal."

Here the tape is interrupted by the sound of Nick's zipper being lowered, and there is a long pause, containing much dull grunting and moaning. Evidently, the officer was priming the victim, loosening up her vocal chords in preparation for the confession.

"MMMMmmmmmmmm, that's sweet meat, Nicky. Tastes like green peppers and Italian sausages" Charmane hummed, evidently slightly warped from her experiences of the afternoon.

"Let it out, bitch. Tell me, who was it? How did it happen?"

She hemmed and hawed a bit more, smacking her lips and moaning for Nick to let her have another teensie-weensie taste before she told her tale, sort of a before dinner aperitif. We could hear Nick snarling, and then the sound of him thrashing his enraged pork across her jaws. She was ready to spill the beans.

"Christ, Nick," she started, "It all happened so fast. It was exactly like you described it to me so many times before. I couldn't believe it really was happening. I never really felt much of anything for all those other girls who'd had it done to them. I figured they were tramps anyway. You know what I mean, don't you, honey?"

Here there is another brief pause, perhaps a partial erasure, and then more chewing noises, some squishing, and a few feeble moans from Charmane. Evidently, she needed sustenance to carry on her confession, or report, or tall tale, however you want to look at it, and in between bursts of lucid aural hardcore renderings, she was busy suckling Nick's formidable tool.

"Go on. Go on, give me the whole story."

"All right! You know what I meant, though, about those other girls. I thought they were cheap, that they had asked for it, and probably got just what they deserved. Flipping beaver shots, wearing those see-through clothes, Christ, what do they expect from men anyway? I guess I was wrong in a lotta ways, though.

"All I was doing was sunning myself out in the backyard. You know the six foot redwood fence we put up last year? Hell, it's high enough so that the only person who can see in is someone who happens to be in a helicoptor. I thought it was safe. And it was. I was in the folding chaise lounge, doing my tummy when I decided, what the fuck, why not brown the old cleavage? It was hotter than hell, no one was watching, so I popped the top of my bikini off, and just let tits fry for awhile, like Mother Nature intended them to be fried.

"I had stewed up a pitcher of Daquiri mix, and was sipping intermitently at my tall glass as I baked out there, and after a while, it was just like heaven. I was a little high, hot as a burner, and woozy from the icy booze. You know what that combination does to me, don't you Honey? You remember what happened when we went to Vegas last Summer? That's when I gave you your first rim job. I still can taste that one!

"It was a day just like today, out by the pool. I had been drinking, the sun was like a blow torch, and all of the sudden, I had the urge real bad. Remember that?"

Nick grunted inarticulately, and then there was more slurping and sloshing noises. Charmane's story was keeping Milhaud's interest. He didn't twitch or move a muscle. It was the first time I'd seen him remain quiet and attentive in over six years of daily contact. Something about taped hardcore that increases the ability to concentrate, to listen for detail, to give each word its proper due.

Charmane clicked on, inch by inch on the cassette, revealing the most intimate, and interesting of marital sidelights to her attentive audience.

"Well you know how that ended, with me dragging you back into the room, and without even a shower or any preparation, just going at it full steam, with you on your hands and knees on the carpet? Well, that's exactly the way I felt this afternoon, except you were at work. What was I supposed to do?

"I was going plumb out of my mind, grinding my butt into the hot nylon netting of the chair, pinching and squeezing my nips like a mad women. God, was I horny. After about ten minutes, I stood up and said to hell with it, I'm going to go inside and jack off. That's all there was for me to do. Hell, there's nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly normal and sometimes it's the only way out of a tight situation when hubby is out smoking the bacon.

"I stretched, and walked into the house, using the sliding glass door. I left my top outside, and just strutted into the bathroom in my panties and got a jar of vasoline out of the cabinet, and then I went out to the living room to get the new copy of Snatch that had arrived in the morning. I opened it up to the centerfold to see if there was anything dreamy I could get off on while I stretched my flaps, and believe me, there was.

"Joe Beef was the centerfold boy, and there were no staples on his significant spot-just twelve inches of rancid, limp fire hose. Christ almighty, Nick, I was cumming and dripping without even having touched myself, just thinking about that foot of slippery pork. I'd have given my right arm and my Sears charge card just to take a look at that tool in its erect state. Fuck, that's the trouble with Snatch and all the rest of the new beefcake magazines-they just tease a girl to the point where she's almost out of her mind, sucking and licking the pages, but never any stiff ones. They must use Masters and Johnson rejects for the models, or else they just have no idea of what they're doing. A girl wants stiff meat, honey, everybody knows that a limp one is about as useless as not having one at all. I had another knee-wobbling heat flash, and ran to the bedroom and stretched out on the carpet.

"I opened up the jar of gook, took a fingerfull and spread it out on my flaps and clit, and then, holding the centerfold over my face, I began to tease and tickly myself, dreaming of Joe Beef and his porterhouse, his T-bone, his slinky Spencer steak. I stirred my pot very gently for about five minutes, dryhumping my ass on the carpets, slobbering my tongue all over my face Sensuous Woman style, and trying to prolong the agony for as long as possible.

"It wasn't much use, however, because the second my finger hit my clit, I went into a grinchy little cum that kept on building and building, and fuck, with ten seconds I was totally out of my mind, sucking on the rolled up magazine and whirling my entire fist in my honey pot. The panzer divisions could have been rolling through the tract just then, and I wouldn't even have blinked an eye, or twitched an ear. The blood was pounding in my head, thinned out as it was by a pint of icy Daquiri and the ninety degree heat-I couldn't hear anything except for my heart and the faint squish of my flaps juicing around my finger.

"I knew I was headed for a multiple run. I could feel all of the orgasms lining up behind each other, waiting for their turn to splash around in my crotch. I clenched my teeth, and brought myself over the first hump with ease-just a little grinding cum. Not much, but it left me relaxed and ready for the big one, Number Two, the critical link in the chain. I tell you, Nicky, once you get past Number Two, you can keep 'em coming as long as your wrist holds out. That's the truth, dear. It's too bad that boys don't have the, ahh, ability. I think that's basically the whole problem between the sexes. If only the poor boys could have a nice chain reaction like the girls, they wouldn't guard their feeble, nasty little squirts so carefully. After all, you take your average man, get him to squirt, and Christ, there he is, either sound asleep, or wheezing against the headboard with a cigarette in his mouth, praying that he hasn't just shot his final load of a lifetime."

Nick wasn't about to let that kind of Lib bullshit go by him without a suitable reaction. We could clearly hear him truncheoning her cheeks with his wet and slobber coated dick as he laid into the bitch with full frontal-lobe hostility.

"Goddam it to hell with your stinkin' multiple cums, you shameless hussy," he hissed at her, "just give me the fuckin' details, the fuckin' facts, I don't need to hear your goddam fruit-commie philosophy. 'Nasty little squirts,' huh? You don't know what your talkin about, you slimy whore. How the hell could you? You ever fired a gun? You ever parachuted out of a plane forty miles behind enemy lines? You ever whacked off in the shower after a sixty-five yard drive in the fading minutes of the fourth Quarter? Ever caught a hockey puck between your teeth and spit it back at the bastard who fired the shot? What the fuck do you know about cums? Go on, out with it!"

He gave her a couple of teasing inches, and then it popped aback out, Charmane wiped her bruised gums and continued.

"Take it easy, Attila!" she snarled, "Jesus Christ, I was only trying to be helpful! Where was I?"

"Jacking off."

"That's right. So I got into second gear. It was great, I got so excited when I double-clutched and went into the shift that I bit through the magazine. Lucky you weren't there, honey, or you'd be in County General right now, in Intensive Care, waiting for the transplant that'll never come. I stepped on the accelerator, brought my knees up, and out and touched my tits with my knee caps to get the penetration I need for the upshift into Third. I revved up, looked in the rearview mirror, and snapped my clit between my thumb and forefinger, and presto, I was shivering from the top of my head to my toes, deep into Number Three, when all of the sudden, I could perceive faintly that the room had darkened.

"I opened my eyes, almost losing Number Three in the process, and I nearly gagged with excitement. It was a hallucination, I thought, a gift of the gods, money from home, what the hell. There, dangling in front of my mouth, about two inches away from my dried out lips was a scrotum torn fresh from the pages of Snatch-big eggs, grade triple A cholesteral cuties they were. Round, hairy, moist with smegma and sweat, emmmmmmm, heavenly, just the way I like 'em.

"I was so far into my trip that I thought nothing of it, except how wonderful it was going to feel to have those scrambled eggs in my mouth as I went into Fourth Gear. I just licked my lips, reached out with my hand, and began to finger the balls. They were real. My heart almost jumped out of my chest. The second I made contact with them, they started to swivel around in their bag. I gave them a nice pinching and a little squeeze just to see if they were full, and shit, the second I squeezed them, I got a big drop of clear goo right on the end of the nose. I opened my eyes a little wider, and there it hung-semi-erect, heavy equipment, Nick. I went into Number Four just on visual stimulation."

Nick was understandably outraged that his wife had not yet even betrayed the slightest hint of fear, after all he had told her about Shitty Dick, and his method of operation. She should have known better, and he let her know it.

"You tryin' ta tell me that you just went ahead and started to suck a strange dick? You tryin' to tell me you didn't even think to ask who the fuck it might be, in my house, in the bedroom, standing there naked, dripping into your face?"

Charmane giggled. You could almost see her shrugging from the sound she made on the tape.

"Nick," she said, "I told you how I felt. How hot it was, how I was ripe for it, just like when I gave you the rim job. Really, Nicky, I'm surprised at you. You ought to know how I get when I'm on Number Four."

There were more slapping noises, then she went on.

"I didn't think. I just did what comes naturally when a healthy young woman is confronted with half a pound of semi-erect steak and the hunger is burning holes in her belly. I closed my eyes, raised my head off the carpet, and began to suck like a vacuum cleaner. It went crazy in my mouth, like a snake with jumper cables fastened to its tail. In less than two seconds, it was full length, and it was being pushed down my throat. I gagged, and began to moan for him to stop, and that's when it hit me. I knew, this is it. I'm in trouble, and I'm in deep.

"All I heard was a short, blunt snicker of laughter, and then I felt a pair of big, rough hands grabbing hunks of my hair, pulling my head forward, and presto, instantly I was doing Linda Lovelace on him, with the end of his pecker buried somewhere in my gorge, about level with my tits. I thought I was going to die right there, of asphyxiation.

"I didn't, though. I just started to naturally breath through my nose. It was amazing, Nick, really amazing. I mean, here I was, on the floor with at least nine inches of red hot pecker jammed in my throat and a good half pound of balls smashed into my chin, doing something I've tried with you maybe a thousand times, failing every time, sometimes even barfing under the strain, and I was doing it!"

This was one of the additional straws that no doubt helped send Pervis to the rubber room. How do you like them apples, sports fans? A man comes home after a hard day's work, chasing down a rapist, stops off at the massage parlor and does an imitation of the very rapist he is out after, then steps through the doors of his castle to find out that his wife has just overcome a lifetime of nauseous rebellion against the practice of larynx love, and she's done it with none other than the fucking rapist her hubby's been chasing unsuccessfully for over half a year. Irony? Sounds more like conspiracy, doesn't it?

Hell, any man resents being denied certain favorite practices by his mate, and he resents even more having that mate criticize his genetic orgasmic limitations. But when out of the same mate's mouth comes the revelation that she's been having encounter group therapy with a total maniac, well that would tend to settle one's hash in a very nasty, bitter style.

We heard the first signs of Pervis' collapse right on the tape. Instead of giving her eight inches into the sternum, we heard him blubbering like a Gerber baby. Charmane was appropriately merciless.

"Nickypooh!" she whispered, "Don't let it bother you! It's wonderful. From now on, I'm sure I'll be able to do the same for you. I guess I just needed a little forcing, you know. That's it, dry those eyes, and I'll tell you the rest.

"Let's see. After I had it all the way in, and even had some of his short hairs up my nose, I heard him grunt, and he began to pump it back and forth. That's something else. You've got to try it sometime, honey, maybe you can pick up a sailor, or maybe go up to Hollywood and hire one of those glitter boys to help out. You can't believe the sensations-its just like your head comes a giant cunt, and your voicebox turns into a clit. I made Number Five after only ten or fifteen thrusts.

"I could tell this guy really knew his moves when he pulled all the way out, pried open my jaws and started to stuff his balls in my mouth with his fingers. You know how much I gag and whine whenever you try and do that with me? Well I just sucked those orbs down like they were the freshest pair of oysters I'd ever seen. I pulled my teeth back, leaned my neck out and up, jammed my tongue against the bottom of my mouth, and low and behold, I had both of them in my cheeks. I must have looked like a squirrel on the last day of summer the way my cheeks were puffed out. I couldn't very well use my tongue on them, so I just kind of hummed, and twisted my head around a lot. He dug it, and started to twist my earlobes in perfect rhythm. We'll have to try that sometime, sweetie, now that I know I can do it.

"Things got nasty quick after that ball sucking action. I guess it really lit his fuse, because he started to huff and puff like he was going to squirt, and the hell if I wanted him to squirt all over my hair. I wanted that dick buried in my snatch, and to signal that it was time, I started to grind his balls with my molars. You should have seen how quick he pulled them out when I started that routine! Evidently he didn't like that so much, because before I even had a chance to get a look at him, wham, he spun me by the ears over on my belly, and then slapped my rump with his palm.

"I raised my ass, lowered my face into the carpet, and then he did it. No fingering, no tenderness, not even a scoop of grease, just bam, right up the asshole with all that bloated meat. Let me tell you, if I hadn't been jacking myself off and hadn't had quite a bit of hot slop running out of my pussy down into my asshole, I'd be in the emergency ward right now, hooked up to the kidney machines.

"Want to talk about pain for a while, Nick? Having your cherry popped is one thing, this was something else. God made all little girls with juicy cherries, just so that they can be popped tastefully, and rather painlessly. God did not make the asshole juicy, and he didn't make it stretch either. It was like having a tree trunk rammed up my asshole. I screamed like a banshee, and pounded my fists against the carpet. I tried to reach underneath me to grab his balls and twist them off. I filled my mouth with carpeting to try and squelch the pain and the tears. It was no use. He had me pinned in position, and he was strong as a bear. He pushed it in without hesitating for a second, and once it was grinding against my intestines, buried up to the balls in my asshole, he started that awful pumping.

He was an expert, and I was a complete novice, an anal virgin. I wasn't getting any pleasure from it at all, not until he started in twittering with my clit.

"That was what got me confused. That was when I really started to get scared. He started to twang my nub between his beefy thumb and forefinger, and began pumping in my butt in time to his pinchings. I was feeling pain, orgasm, humiliation and fear at the same time. I couldn't tell what was going on, so many different things were happening to my tenderest parts. I started to yammer like an ape in need of a heating pad, and he laughed at me, and doubled the speed of his fingers on my nub. I went into Numbers Five through Nine right then, mouth full of carpet, ears ringing, asshole stuffed with hot pork. I was being totally dominated, and Christ, I was loving every nasty, degrading minute of it.

"I knew that he wasn't they type to just leave it at that. All the pleasure and pain being mine to enjoy. You never did let me in on the details of your rapist's way of finishing off, and I'm glad you didn't, because I don't think I could have lived through the experience if I knew what was coming up next. If I had to wait for that, and know it was coming, I would have probably just puked and died right there.

"I knew it had to extra specially nauseating, that was for sure, but I've got a clean mind, and I couldn't ever have fantasized in a million years the kind of climax that Shitty Dick was going to have. That's strictly for the Male Chauvanist Pig mind. It's got to be.

"I felt him swelling up inside my asshole like a ballooon bursting with ninety weight motor oil, and I was ready to get my first anal creaming. I knew that it would soothe my sore ass, and I could dig that it was the proper conclusion to a bizarre sequence of events. I was ready for that, but not what I got.

"What I got was a brutal pop of his dick out of ass on a swift backstroke, and then he flipped me over on my backside and hobbled up across my thighs and chest on his knees, and with wicked movements of his fingers on my jaws, he pried me open again, and gave it to me right in the face. I got a mouth full of shitty dick, and a faceful of grotesque kumquats, the thickness and copiousness of which had to be equal to a fucking bull in heat. It was the worst mess I'd ever entertained in my whole life. I was drenched with the stuff, Nicky, all over my hair, up my nose, dribbling off my chin-I felt like a garbage pail."

That's where the cassette stopped. There wasn't a word or a grunt more on it.

We sat in Milhaud's office, staring at the floor, our shoes, at each others mugs. Milhaud raised his eyebrows, glanced at the whirring machine, and reached out to shut it off. I was about to console Nick, give him a few words of encouragement before the Lieutenant lashed out at us for not getting a good description of the assailant, when Nick Pervis went totally apeshit.

He went into a low, building wail of utter degradation and self-loathing. It built up and up, growing in pitch and tone till it was a scream of Neanderthal deprivation lust and frustration agony. Milhaud stared at him, and picked at his own nose as lie punched buttons on the intercom unit. I stared bugeyed at my partner, my hand creeping slowly up to my vest holster, just in case he should have to be dealt with quickly, like a horse with a busted kneecap. I fingered the trigger of my gun beneath my sleek paisley dotted doubleknit lapel, and Pervis rolled out of his chair on to the carpeted floor, still whining like some kind of stricken animal, and gradually, his limbs began to fold and contract as he assumed the classic "too much too soon" fetal position of complete and sometimes permanent withdrawal from the Vale of Tears.

The uniformed boys from downstairs burst into Milhaud's office and glanced over to where their leader sat behind his desk, chuckling, with one finger sealing his lips to signal silence to the rest of the disbelieving horde of fellow officers.

"This is tasty," he whispered, now pointing at Pervis and beaming like a brain surgeon at Auswitch, relishing the display of inner-directed self-destruction. "Relax a second boys, and watch the dignity drain out of him."

Lizard Milhaud. Reptilian consciousness at its nadir of evolutionary development. Lots of citizens probably would not believe that such a cold-blooded creature, hatched from a rubbery, greasy egg in the basement of an experimental laboratory, could actually climb the bureaucratic ladder to a position of such force and influence in the field of law enforcement. Lots of citizens would probably like to see Milhaud drawn and quartered, and they would equally find satisfaction in seeing Nick Pervis immortalized in a made for TV movie about the decline and fall of a loyal, but frustrated officer.

Citizens are free to express whatever opinions they might have, as long as they don't interfere with the business of law enforcement. That's what the citizen fails to understand when confronted with the likes of Milhaud, when confronted with the contrast between rattlesnake consciousness and the basic smarmy sympathies evoked by Pervis and his type.

That's because citizens only see things as they relate to their own neurotic fears and hostilities they have no appreciation of the need for men like Milhaud-men who can keep a rapist on the streets for months, even years at a time, and keep the tax cash flowing into Depart mental coffers the whole time-they have no idea of how important solid business sense is to the maintenance of an efficiently self-sustaining law enforcement entity. The citizen may have his likes and dislikes, and he may have his opinions, and his latent mammal sensitivities may flow outward in the direction of the irony stricken Nick Pervis, but the citizen shall never grasp the essential kernel of crassness that maintains our system of one way give-and-take and provides the basic adrenalin that keeps all of our flabby hearts pumping healthy doses of hatred through our clogged and choked tubing.

Milhaud continued to pick at his broad, dark nostrils, now swivelling to and fro in his desk chair, one beefy palm raised against the uniformed officers standing in the doorway, delaying their mission of mercy so that he, Milhaud the malevolent, could bask uninterrupted for a few more moments before the sight of his labor in full fruition.

No doubt he was thinking about the gross quantities of public money that would be required to rehabilitate Pervis, the months, and maybe even years that Pervis would be housed in a quiet country sanatorium, being spoon fed tranquilizers and baby food as he made the slow crawl back to alert, hostile adulthood from the cringing state of infantile psychic implosion he was now writing in on the station floor.

I continued to fondle the trigger and muzzle of my revolver, watching, waiting, steeling myself for the moment when Pervis might need to be put out of his miseries pronto. Milhaud was adept at prolonging the agony, however, and I should have known that with his talents at the Western male high Art of kicking 'em while they're down would save the day, and put my fears of having to blast my buddy back to the pre-natal condition into the wastebasket of transitory hysteria. Milhaud was now showing his brown teeth in a display of utter bliss and satisfaction. It was time for me to make a move with the goal of self-preservation in mind.

I replaced my revolver into the shoulder holster, and made a quick survey of the room. Then I stood up and stretched, yawning loudly to show all concerned that I was above being affected by the scene of the floor, that it had not effected me emotionally, that I wasn't going to over-react in a melodramatic made for TV style, showering my superiors with the hot, crusty barf of human kindness and occupational cameraderie.

"Well," I started, vibrating my hand over my mouth to emphasize my boredom and to modulate my voice so that no quiver of latent wimpo hysteria might be detected by my peers and superiors, "I think I'll hit the street. You boys take it easy with Pervis, now, you hear me. I think a nice stretch in the rubber room's what the boy needs."

I began to strut across the room to the doorway, hitching up my slacks butch style and glowering menacingly at anyone who dared make eye-contact with me. Milhaud signalled with one finger of one hand for the uniformed lads to approach the fetalized Pervis, while with the middle finger of his other hand, he urged me to approach his desk.

Great choking waves of nausea and panic swept up from my crotch and pounded at my diaphrahm like boxing gloves against a tympani drum. Milhaud was going to give me one of his parting shots. Lord have mercy.

"Narsky," he wheezed between his reeking teeth, "See what incompetence hath wrought? Look at him, Narsky. Don't shy away from it, boy, show some balls. You've got to learn to feast on sights like this. You've got to learn from every experience, unless you want to remain a goddamn rookie all your life. You're partly responsible for this, you know. Take a good look at it. Think about what the average taxpayer might have to say about it, and what he might think of you. That's right Narsky, the average taxpayer'd say to himself, 'One less knight in shining polyester out on the streets, serving and protecting. And why? Because of Steve Narsky. Incompetent, unfocused, ineffectual Steve Narsky. He let his buddy down. He cheated at the weekly poker game. He's a scum bag. If Steve Narsky had done his job, Nick Pervis wouldn't be going to the rubber room.' That'a what the average citizen would say. And he'd be right. His previous taxes are now going to be funneled out of efficient law enforcement work on the streets and into the sticky grasp of psychiatric social workers who are going to give Pervis a thorough overhaul. Money that could have gone into dum-dum shells, flare guns; tear gas and countless suburban shoot outs is now going into the fists of malarky spewing creeps with kinky hair who are going to dawdle over Pervis' nauseating sensitivities for god know how long. How do you like them apples, Narsky? What the fuck are you going to do about it?"

High pressure. Milhaud reached out and began to toy with my hand with his snot and nicotine stained fingers. I recoiled like a rat on a conditioning grid. I began to yammer for mercy.

"Cut it out Lieutenant. Christ almighty, you think I wanted that to happen to Pervis?"

The old answer a question with a question routine. It never failed to bring Milhaud's kettle to boil, smacking of greasy middle European dialectic hair-splitting.

"Snartahargh," he grunted through his smogplugged nostrils, "And why the fuck not, Narsky? It fits your nauseating character like a glove. Burn your partner, and then go out and nab Shitty Dick by yourself, taking all the glory, and maybe even getting a forty-five second spot on the local news to boot. Fits you to a tee, Narsky."

"I'm gonna hit the street, Lieutenant."

I was almost whining now. It was time for Milhaud to let me go after a final subtle threat. His timing was always impeccable.

"That's right, Narsky, avoid confronting the truth at all costs. Go out on the street, by all means. Spend the rest of the week out there, doing your thing at the Sultan's Helmet. Why not even give Pervis' wife a visit while you're at it-you owe her the fucking courtesy. Tell her what's left of her hubby, and maybe she'll break down and throw you a quick hand job. In the meantime, just remember, on Monday, you'll be in your dress blues, out on the corner of Figueroa and Chingata, dodging the scrape racers and the pimpmobiles. Think about that while you're out there today, looking for your friend with the smelly penis. Think about it, Narsky."

The uniformed boys rushed by me at that moment, bearing their straight jacketed comrade. I could hear the low grumbling of Milhaud's nasal laughter, and all I could think of was how much I wanted a drink....