Heroin Chronicles (21 page)

Fleming folded her arms. “And she's the one playing Madam Satan in those two pornos he produced?”

“Yep. Jackie Salvo, but that's an alias.”

Fleming frowned. “Okay, let's say you find out her real name, which isn't hard, then what?”

“Get our shit back.”

She put a hand on his. “Darling, we go see action-adventure movies and read comic books. But unfortunately, I'm not Wonder Woman and you aren't the Punisher.”

He winked. “But we've role-played them.”

“I'm serious, Chuck. This woman ain't playing.”

“We've handled guns,” he countered.

“Shooting targets at a firing range isn't the same thing as blasting a human being, and you know it. We might be geekazoids but we're solid citizens, baby. We pay taxes, have businesses, homes—in other words, unless you're willing to give all that up, I say drop this.”

“Let me just identify her. Just that, for my own satisfaction.”

She folded her arms again, a questioning look to her. “Don't think you're slick.”

“Me? Never.”

Finding out the real name of a woman who starred in two X-rated cult movies from the '70s was easier than buttoning a shirt. Once he had that information, Grayson was able to document the up-and-down career of Pilar Ortega Renaud De La Fontana. She'd gained notoriety back then from the Madam Satan films and graduated to starring in a few grade-C horror and sci-fi movies. She had some TV roles too, and in the '90s hosted a cable access show where she made smart-ass remarks and one-liners throughout whatever turkey she was showing.

Naturally, there were a couple of fan clubs devoted to her among nerd-dom, and getting an address for the woman wasn't too tough either, given Grayson knew who to ask what. At a coffee shop on Olympic Boulevard, he met with a man who De La Fontana twice had imposed a restraining order against.

“It's not like I meant her any harm,” said Fred Summerville, an underemployed box store clerk. He nibbled on the second Rice Krispies treat Grayson had bought him.

Grayson sized up Summerville as the type who got off on some peep action, and heaven would be sniffing De La Fontana's panties. But he said, “I feel you, man, where would these celebs be if it wasn't for us keeping their names out there?”

“Exactly,” Summerville agreed happily, bits of his treat exploding from his mouth.

More commiserating included Summerville warning Grayson about a fifty-some-odd-old boyfriend of De La Fontana named Boris who'd done time for strong arm robbery. He didn't know the last name of this bruiser, but what the restraining orders couldn't do, Boris had done when he'd come into Summerville's store and calmly broken his hand.

“I stayed away after that,” the former stalker stated flatly, looking down.

The $150 in cash Grayson offered elevated the man's mood and produced an address. She lived in a modest Craftsman in East Hollywood not too far from the large Kaiser medical facility on Sunset and Vermont.

On the second night of his stakeout in his Leaf, Grayson saw the Mustang arrive and a stocky man in his fifties exit the vehicle and enter the house.

Fleming was right. Grayson wasn't about to storm in there armed with an AK, a bandanna tied around his head, demanding the gold and his car back. But he'd be damned if he was going to get taken advantage of and not do something. Driving back to Santa Monica, he came up with a plan and discussed it with his girlfriend the next day in her office.

“Oh, man,” she said finally. “That's a shitty idea, Chuck.”

“It could work.”

“Or we could spend several years in prison, if we don't get killed. And if it's the former, I couldn't stand the thought of a booty bandit wearing out that fine ass of yours.”

“Good to know,” he said. “Anyway, it's not we, just me.”

“Bullshit. He's my patient and you're not doing this without my help. Besides, I don't want you going to the next con talking about how I pussied out on you.”

They both grinned broadly.

Grayson wanted to obtain a kilo of black tar heroin—those tense opening teasers of many a
Miami Vice
of cool crooks and sweating undercover cops flashing through his mind. He owned the complete box set on DVD. But trying to buy that kind of weight also meant making connections beyond Fleming's patient. And this meant gaining the acquaintance of certain individuals who'd cut out your intestines and sell them back to you as a scarf. So he settled for two small glassine packets with a blue devil head stenciled on them.

The patient Fleming was treating for back alignment problems was very much into holistic health and organic foods, which he gladly talked about extensively. Yet when you work on a person's body up close and personal like she did, the conversing invariably covered a lot of territory—like one's past.

Todd Jessup, the patient, had been a pharmacist who got hooked on the drugs he dispensed. He lost his license and in his descent, encountered various unsavory individuals. He'd subsequently rebuilt his life, and it took some coaxing but he came up with a few contacts from the bad old days. Thereafter, Grayson and Fleming bought the blue devil packets from a hard-ass runaway teenager working for her pusher-pimp boyfriend in the Valley. The one-time pharmacist verified the authenticity of the packets' contents.

Staging the accident came next. Boris no-last-name was driving the Mustang back to De La Fontana's house from the Vons supermarket, blasting the Eagles on the aftermarket CD unit. Grayson almost cried as he purposely bashed his Leaf into the left front fender of the classic vehicle. Boris was out in a shot, yelling.

“The fuck is wrong with you, man? You blind or something? Hey, it's you,” he said, recognizing Grayson.

“Your mama's blind, bitch,” Grayson responded.

Boris rushed over and Grayson jabbed him in the face without hesitation. This earned him a left to the stomach and a right to the chin. He was younger than Boris by more than twenty years, but the other man was far more experienced with his fists.

“What, figured you'd try and get your car back, punk? Well come on.”

He laughed and again hit Grayson, who rocked back; he ducked the next blow but the inevitable was upon him. A crowd gathered, cheering the combatants. By the time the motorcycle cop arrived, there was a cell phone video of Grayson getting his ass kicked up on YouTube. Though at one point, down on all fours, Grayson had managed to get ahold of his tormentor's calf and bite through his pant leg. A couple of people watching clapped at that.

As Boris Stallings had no paperwork for the Mustang, nor proof of insurance, the car was impounded and searched. Stallings was arrested for possession of heroin, planted under the floor mat on the passenger side by Mora Fleming as her boyfriend took his beatdown. The door had been locked, but when Grayson got the car he'd been given two sets of keys. She'd argued she should be the one to plow into the Mustang as she felt she could handle herself better against Stallings.

“Dammit, woman, you've already seen me piss myself. What pride do I have left?” Grayson had said.

She'd kissed him. “A man must do what he must do.”

It took a week to recuperate at home from his encounter with Stallings. His face was still tender. The Santa Monica PD notified Grayson about his car once LAPD contacted them. Grayson told the police he had been in the area to shop at Skylight Books and was shocked to see the Mustang that had been jacked from him the week before. He'd lost control of the car and that's when this horrible Stallings person went wild on him.

He also saw on the news that De La Fontana had been found shotgunned to death in her house, though no ingots were mentioned. A known associate of Stallings was said to be a person of interest.

Among the online fan club there was talk that De La Fontana had family ties to one of Frank Matthews's South American financiers. It was speculated that she and Mathews had been romantically linked at one point. There was also a rumor about her being the mistress at age seventeen of a general who'd absconded with treasures from his country's coffers.

In a chat room, Grayson read the suggestion that maybe she'd done Matthews in after he ripped her off, and that she must have been on the hunt for the gold for a long time. But her killing him didn't make sense, since she would have needed him alive to reveal where the gold was hidden. Though could be she got carried away having him worked over, someone else offered, and so it went, back and forth. All this merely conjecture among her fans.

Grayson got the Mustang repaired and painted a sedate color. Now and then behind the wheel, Mora Fleming humming to an oldie on the radio beside him, he wondered whatever became of Black Caesar's gold.

A
NTONIA
C
RANE
is the only person from Humboldt County who doesn't smoke or grow weed. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in the
Rumpus, Black Clock, Slake, PANK
, the
Los Angeles Review of Books, ZYZZYVA
, and elsewhere. She wrote a memoir about her mother's illness and the sex industry,
SPENT
, and is currently seeking representation for that memoir. She teaches incarcerated teenage girls creative writing in Los Angeles. For more information, visit
antoniacrane.com.

sunshine for adrienne

by antonia crane

T
he first man who raped her went blind. Her mom called with the news.

“That handsome football player you dated got eye cancer in both eyes,” she said.

Adrienne heard chewing and the wet slurp of Nicorette gum. Her ma chewed two or three pieces at a time and when they lost flavor, she rolled the spit stones into gray balls and stuck them to the kitchen counter. The orange cat knocked them onto the floor and batted them around.

“You mean Terry?” Adrienne's asshole clenched. Ma didn't know. All the girls at St. Julian's High School swooned over Terry's tanned wide receiver chest and tennis legs. She heard something being chopped on a cutting board with a steady
whack, whack, whack
.

“He's blind as a bat. His poor mother.” The chopping got faster and faster and more precise. She could slice a carrot into paper-thin pieces in less than thirty seconds. She hated cooking.

“She's a nut job, Amy!” her father hollered in the background. A cupboard door slammed shut. She heard the refrigerator door make a sucking sound as it opened.

Adrienne found her prework hit and bent spoon in the top drawer of her dresser, but no lighter. She rummaged around in another drawer where she last saw it and found ticket stubs from a show her father took her to when she graduated high school. It was the Della Davidson Dance Company's
Ten p.m. Dream
, an interpretation of
Alice in Wonderland
. They'd nibbled calamari beforehand next door. Her football-watching, beer-drinking father even sported a silky burgundy tie that matched her favorite red skirt. She'd taken her father's elbow as he led her to the front row, so close she felt the dancers' abdominal muscles vibrate and their snaky necks glisten and strain. She watched them as he watched the music pulse through her skin.

He liked to look at her pictures of birds too. She'd started drawing turkeys, doves, and chickens when she was six years old with accidental skill. Her father couldn't draw an Easter egg if there was a gun to his head. Where he lacked imagination, she swelled with it. Her talents delighted him and he bragged about her to his roofing buddies. “My daughter's a genius,” he'd say while ripping off grubby tiles. He collected her bird drawings and stuck them to the refrigerator door, where they were held in place by 49er magnets.

“Her only son. Can you imagine?” Ma's voice matched the sucking thud the refrigerator door made when it closed.

The thing being chopped was gone and in its place, her father's voice: “Her loser son, still living at home at twenty-nine?” He grunted, which was the same as his laugh.

Adrienne pictured him in his stretched white gym socks with a spaghetti noodle dangling from a fork, daring Ma to slap his hand away from her butt, which he pinched when he wasn't yelling at the TV, drinking Coors Light, with their orange cat on the footstool. The skin on his hands matched his face: tanned, calloused, and flaking off from working outside in the wind, rain, and dense fog that made roofs wet and slippery. He fell off a ladder and sprained his ankle last year. It swelled like a grapefruit so he managed the office and bid jobs, and farmed out the labor to his friends.

It was at St. Julian's High School where Adrienne got sneaky. She'd tiptoe behind him on her way upstairs to her room. She'd been meeting Terry and getting high, staying out past curfew.

“Where the hell you been?” Her father had stopped looking at her. He held the TV remote in one hand, raised like an arrow, in the other, a beer. He was a channel surfer. There had been a steadily growing gulf between them. Her curves brought popularity, lip gloss, tampons, and boys, but also self-righteousness and danger. She became reckless and reticent. He'd hear her whispering on the phone well after midnight. He'd smell alcohol on her breath. She'd become too pretty for her own good, he sensed.