SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #31

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #31

BATFISH

LOS ANGELES

Jon’s battered Mustang was chugging up Wonderland Avenue. Fucking thing must not have had a tune up since it had rolled out of the factory and it was belching out oily, blue smoke.

“We’re sure as shit not going to sneak up on them in this piece of crap, Jon.” He didn’t say a word. Just sat there licking his lips nervously.

The night hadn’t ended well for him. Couple of the broads at the party had wanted to screw him. I imagine so that down the road they could tell their grandkids about how they had once had been drilled by a famous “movie” star. But his pecker once more had let him down.

Lost out on a couple of hundred bucks. But I suspect he had gotten used to that. I also suspected that he had been smoking or snorting something. That pissed me off. I didn’t like to do a job while anyone was high or had been drinking.

He parked his wreck at the curb in front of a small apartment building. We just sat there.

“Well what’s up Jon?” Are we going to do this thing or what?”

He turned to look at me. “I think it’s already done.” In his eyes I could see pure fear and he was putting off this nervous smell that reminded me of the locker room in gym class.

“What in the fuck are you talking about? If it’s done what am I doing here?”

“I just had to make sure that I was in the clear. He said that if I didn’t tell them who did it that he was going to kill me. And after that he was going to find my family and have their eyes ripped out.”

My skin was crawling. “Shit! What you have you gotten me into?”

He was out the door and walking up to the sidewalk to one of the apartments. I got out and followed him like a stupid shit. The door was closed but when Jon grabbed the knob, the door swung open.

There were four bodies in the living room and they were beat to a pulp. Worse than what Rose had looked like. Way beyond that. There was blood everywhere and pieces of what I guess were bones or skull was spattered across the tile floor. I could actually see the brains of one of the bodies. The stereo was on. Warren Zevon was singing about Werewolves in London. I now knew for a fact that there was a fucking soundtrack to my life.

“Oh my God, Jon.” I gasped. “Who did this?”

His voice was monotone.

“Dewald.”

“Dewald?” Oh, Jesus Christ! Not that Dewald! “How in the hell did you get involved with him?”

Dewald was one of the biggest cocaine dealers in the whole fucking country. He had reached untouchable status. Los Angeles cops wouldn’t even think of pulling him over for traffic violations. He came to “The Slippery Tit” every once in a while when he felt like slumming.

Big tipper. You felt like you needed a shower after just talking to him.

“About a month ago I set him up. I had been up there to do a private show for his old lady so I knew the lay of the place. You wouldn’t believe the amount of drugs he keeps up there. These guys went up to his mansion in Beverly Hills and robbed his ass. I really needed the fucking cash. Somehow he suspected me and I had to roll over on them.”

“Somehow? How goddamn stupid do you think the guy is? You go up there and do your routine and a couple of days later he gets robbed? And now you’ve dragged me into this shit. Why?”

He had tears in his eyes but was laughing at the same time. “I was scared to come alone.”

I took my shirt off and rubbed the door knob clean. “Come on, we’ve got to get the hell out of here.” I think I screamed that.

Jon dropped me off in front in the club. I didn’t hear a thing from him for about a month. But I heard about it on the news and in the papers.

Jon was famous again. Just in the wrong way. I kept waiting for the news channels to run some old clips of his movies. The dead dudes were known associates of his and it didn’t take the cops long to figure out who the missing link was in this sordid mess.

The police kicked in the door at a cheap motel outside of Jacksonville, Florida and found Jon sleeping off a heroin high with a fourteen year old girl. Turns out that the girl was actually a porn star who went by the stage name of Anal Annesha, who had been working in the industry for over a year. Porn industry is slipshod on background and reference checks.

Annesha thought Jon could steer her towards the big show. The two had been wanted on an unrelated felony charge of grand theft. Annesha had a wealthy, elderly aunt who lived in Palm Beach and who loved her prize bitch Pekinese with all of her heart. The two desperadoes had stolen the pooch while she was out taking her morning crap and her mommy was in the house making her dog food omelet.

Jon was being brought back to Los Angeles for questioning on the Wonderland Murders, as the newspapers had dubbed the crime.

I knew as sure as there is shit in a goose that Jon was going to spill his guts out and my name was going to be brought up. I didn’t know which would be worse. Having the police after me and then the shit in Hawaii would be discovered. Or have one of the biggest cocaine kingpins in the country wanting to rub me out as a material witness to a crime.

Either way I was busting ass out of there.