Deuces Down

The next morning he put in a call to the Myth Patrol. He knew he needed help, and he didn’t know who else to ask. They met at Dupar’s, and Fi

“So tell me again how all us wild cards are brothers under the skin, and how I ought to spend my free time rescuing an ace,” Goathead mumbled around his double bacon cheeseburger.

Fi

“He’s a seventy year old man who can make woman look young,” Goathead argued. “If that’s not a sure means to unlimited sex I don’t know what is.”

“I wish you wouldn’t always put your head in the gutter,” Clops said. He rolled his eye at Cleo.

“She can’t understand a fucking thing I say.” Goathead leered at her. “Hey baby, want to fuck like frenzied ferrets?”

” Cleo dumped her chocolate malt in Goathead’s lap.

Clops gri

“Guys, could we focus here,” Fi

“ Hollywood and Cahuenga,” Clops said confidently.

The Myths were standing beneath an old brownstone building on the corner. The dark upper windows threw back the sunlight in sharp jagged glints. Cleo was glaring at a drunk who stood swaying and leering at her from across the street. Goathead was leering at a couple of female hookers just down the block. Fi

“Okay. We’re here. Why are we here?” Fi

Clops pointed to a corner window. “That was Philip Marlowe’s office.”

Fi

Okay, Fi

Surprisingly it was Goathead who came to the big joker’s defense. “No, he’s right. We’ve got to get in the space. Think like a detective. Find the character.”

Wonderful, beneath Goathead’s hairy chest beats the heart of a method actor, Fi

“I think a tough, no nonsense Bogart approach,” Clops began, only to be interrupted by Goathead.

“Well, that leaves you right out.” replied Goatboy. “Whoever plays our detective, you’re destined to be the loyal sidekick. You’re not leading man material.”

Cleo glared at Goathead, and all the snakes hissed at him. The joker jumped back. Cleo laid a hand on Clops’s arm, and gave him a blazing smile. Fi

“Gorgeous,” Cleo said, and smiled up at the Cyclops again.

A tide of red swept from the base of Clop’s throat to the top of his ears. “You really think so?” he asked the joker girl. She nodded vigorously. “Would you like to have di

“Gee, isn’t that just… swell,” muttered Goathead. “I’m going home.”

“Wait,” Fi

But Clops and Cleo were strolling off with her arm tucked through his, while tourists on a bus gawked out the window and shot photos. Goathead went clattering off around the corner. Fi

In the old days the Boulevard had been a magical, glamorous place. Now it had fallen on hard times. The street was lined with cheap tourist shops selling tee shirts, tacky memorabilia and maps to stars houses. Hookers, male, female and joker, worked the corners, fading down side streets when an L.A.P.D. cruiser would roll past. Down those side streets the robbers waited. They generally left the hookers alone. Tourists were easier targets.

Fi

“Tanya.” He looked around, but he didn’t see any evidence of a boyfriend or even one or two of the Bimbo Battalion. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah.”

“This is not a good part of town for you to be in.” She laughed. “No, I’m serious.”

“So escort me,” she demanded.

Fi

“I was going to Musso and Franks. Have you eaten?”

Banishing the thought of the short stack of pancakes, egg and sausage he had consumed only two hours before, Fi

Tanya nodded. “But only in Chinatown.”

“Do you know Hop Li’s?” She shook her head. “Come on, you’re in for a treat. I’m parked over by Gruma

Tanya did have a pretty good location. Off Melrose on the fringes of Beverly Hills. Lunch had been terrific, and he didn’t mean the food. They had talked for two hours, and by the second hour Tanya kept laying her fingers gently on his wrist. Once she had even brushed a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. Fi

Tanya directed him up a quiet street off Melrose, and Fi

“Wow, you’re an incredible gardener. You could do this professionally,” Fi

She gave him a smile, and it was the first one Fi

The duplex was sparsely furnished, something which he suspected had more to do with poverty then design. But it was clean and almost obsessively neat and the spicy scent of incense gave it an exotic feeling.

Tanya walked backwards down the short hallway, unbuttoning his shirt as they went. Fi