[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Page 137 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlNow that he thought about it, had Alex ever been deterred? Milo couldn'tremember a single instance.Alex did exactly what Alex wanted to do.And Robin.Milo'd offered his smoothest reassurances.And he supposed he'ddone a decent job of keeping Alex out of harm's way.But there were limits.Everyone stood alone.He got up, poured himself a vodka and pink-grapefruit juice, rationalizingthat the vitamin C counteracted the oxidation, but wondering how closely hisliver resembled that medical journal photo Rick had shown him last month.Erosion of hepatic tissue and replacement with fatty globules due to advancedcirrhosis.Rick never pushed either, but Milo knew he wasn't happy with the fresh bottleof Stoli in the freezer.Switch channels: back to Alex.Other people's problems were so much more engaging.He walked half a mile to a Budget Rent-a-Car on La Cienega and got himself afresh blue Taurus.Driving east on Santa Monica, he crossed into BeverlyHills, then West Hollywood.Not much traffic past Doheny Drive, but at theWest Hollywood border the boulevard had been narrowed to one lane in eitherdirection and the few cars in sight were crawling.West Hollywood, The City That Never Stopped Decorating, had been digging upthe streets for years, plunging businesses into bankruptcy and accomplishinglittle Milo could see other than a yawning stretch of dirt piles and ditches.Last year, the ribbon had been cut on a spanking new West Hollywood firestation.One of those architectural fancies - peaks and troughs and gimcracksand weird-shaped windows.Cute, except the doors had proved too narrow for thefire engines to squeeze through, and the poles didn't allow the firefightersto slide down.This year, West Hollywood had embarked on a sister-city dealwith Havana.Milo doubted Fidel would approve of Boystown nightlife.Among the few businesses the roadwork couldn't kill were the all-night marketsand the gay bars.A guy had to eat and a guy had to party.Milo and Rickstayed in most nights - how long had it been since he'd cruised? And now, herehe was.He found himself smiling, but it felt like someone else's mirth.Because whatthe hell was there to be happy about? Pierce Schwinn and/or a confederate hadmanipulated him into warming up Ingalls, he'd accomplished nothing but hadmanaged to screw up royally.Attracting attention.Playa del Sol.That toothy putz Paris Bartlett.First thing he did afterditching Alex was to check city records for a business registration on Playa.Nothing.Then he ran Bartlett through every database he could think of.Likethat could be a real name.Taking a giant risk because what he'd told Alex had been true: as a civilianhe was forbidden to use departmental resources, he was treading feloniouswater.He'd put up a firewall by using the ID numbers of other cops for therequests.Half a dozen IDs of cops he didn't care for, jumping arounddifferent divisions.His version of identity theft; he'd been collecting dataPage 138 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlfor years, stashing loose bitsof paper in his home safe because you never knew when your back was gonna beagainst the wall.But if someone tried hard enough, the calls could be tracedback to him.Clever boy, but the search had been futile: no such person as Paris Bartlett.Which he supposed he'd known right away - apart from the moniker having aphony ring, Bartlett, all hair and teeth and eagerness, had had that actorthing going on.In L.A.that didn't necessarily mean a SAG card and aportfolio full of headshots.LAPD liked guys who were good at pretending, too.Channeled them into undercover work.Nowadays, that meant mostly Narcotics,occasionally Vice when the word came down to run yet another week or two ofhooker rousts for public relations.Years ago undercover had meant another Vice game, a regularly scheduledweekend production: Friday and Saturday night operations put together withmilitary lust.Staking out targets and delineating the enemy and moving in forthe attack.Bust the queers.Not naked aggression, the way it had been back before Christopher Street, whengay bars were ripe for routine, big-time head-breaking.Most of that ended bythe early seventies, but Milo had caught the tail end of the department'sfag-bashing fervor: LAPD masked the raids as drug busts, as if hetero clubsweren't fueled by the same dope.During his first month at West L.A.he'd beenassigned to a Saturday night bivouac against a private club on Sepulveda nearVenice.Out-of-the-way dive in a former auto-painting barn where a hundred orso well-heeled men, believing themselves to be secure, went to talk and danceand smoke grass and gobble Quaaludes and enjoy the bathroom stalls.LAPD had adifferent notion of security.The way the supervisor - a hypermacho DII namedReisan who Milo was certain was tucked deeply in the closet - laid out theplan, you'da thought it was a swoop on some Cong hamlet.Squinty eyes,military lingo, triangulated diagrams scrawled on the board, give me a break.Milo sat through the orientation, struggling not to succumb to a full-bodysweat.Reisan going on about coming down hard on resisters, don't be shy aboutusing your batons.Then, leering, and warning the troops not to kiss anyonebecause you didn't know where those lips had been.Looking straight at Milowhen he'dcracked wise, Milo laughing along with the others and wondering: Why the hellis he doing that? Fighting to convince himself he'd imagined it.The day of the raid, he called in sick with the flu, stayed in bed for threedays.Perfectly healthy, but he worked hard at degrading himself by notsleeping or eating, just sucking on gin and vodka and rye and peach brandy andwhatever else he found in the cupboard.Figuring if the department checked onhim, he'd look like death warmed over.VN combat vet, now a real-life working detective, but he was still thinkinglike a truant high school kid.Over the three days, he lost eight pounds, and when he stood his legs shookand his kidneys ached and he wondered if that yellow tinge in his eyes wasreal or just bad lighting - his place was a dingy hovel, the few windows itoffered looked out to airshafts, and no matter how many bulbs he used, hecould never get the illumination above tomb-strength.Page 139 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlThe first time in three days that he tried food - a barely warmed can ofHearty Man chili - what he didn't heave whooshed out the other end.He smelledlike a goat pen, his hair felt brittle, and his fingernails were getting soft.For a full week later, his ears rang and his back hurt and he drank gallons ofwater a day just in case he'd damaged something.The day he returned to thestation, a transfer slip - Vice to Auto Theft, signed by Reisan - was in hisbox.That seemed a fine state of affairs.Two days later, someone slipped anote through the door of his locker.How's your bunghole, faggot?He pulled into the Healthy Foods lot, stayed in the Taurus, scanned theparking lot for anything out of the ordinary.During the drive from his houseto the station, then from Budget to the market, he'd been on alert for a tail.Hadn't picked up any, but this wasn't the movies, and the hard truth was, in acity built around the combustion engine, you could never be sure.He watched shoppers enter the market, finally satisfied himself that he hadn'tbeen followed, and crossed over to the row of small stores - rehabbed shacks,really - that sat across from HealthyFoods.Locksmith, dry cleaners, cobbler, West Hollywood Easy Mail Center [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Page 137 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlNow that he thought about it, had Alex ever been deterred? Milo couldn'tremember a single instance.Alex did exactly what Alex wanted to do.And Robin.Milo'd offered his smoothest reassurances.And he supposed he'ddone a decent job of keeping Alex out of harm's way.But there were limits.Everyone stood alone.He got up, poured himself a vodka and pink-grapefruit juice, rationalizingthat the vitamin C counteracted the oxidation, but wondering how closely hisliver resembled that medical journal photo Rick had shown him last month.Erosion of hepatic tissue and replacement with fatty globules due to advancedcirrhosis.Rick never pushed either, but Milo knew he wasn't happy with the fresh bottleof Stoli in the freezer.Switch channels: back to Alex.Other people's problems were so much more engaging.He walked half a mile to a Budget Rent-a-Car on La Cienega and got himself afresh blue Taurus.Driving east on Santa Monica, he crossed into BeverlyHills, then West Hollywood.Not much traffic past Doheny Drive, but at theWest Hollywood border the boulevard had been narrowed to one lane in eitherdirection and the few cars in sight were crawling.West Hollywood, The City That Never Stopped Decorating, had been digging upthe streets for years, plunging businesses into bankruptcy and accomplishinglittle Milo could see other than a yawning stretch of dirt piles and ditches.Last year, the ribbon had been cut on a spanking new West Hollywood firestation.One of those architectural fancies - peaks and troughs and gimcracksand weird-shaped windows.Cute, except the doors had proved too narrow for thefire engines to squeeze through, and the poles didn't allow the firefightersto slide down.This year, West Hollywood had embarked on a sister-city dealwith Havana.Milo doubted Fidel would approve of Boystown nightlife.Among the few businesses the roadwork couldn't kill were the all-night marketsand the gay bars.A guy had to eat and a guy had to party.Milo and Rickstayed in most nights - how long had it been since he'd cruised? And now, herehe was.He found himself smiling, but it felt like someone else's mirth.Because whatthe hell was there to be happy about? Pierce Schwinn and/or a confederate hadmanipulated him into warming up Ingalls, he'd accomplished nothing but hadmanaged to screw up royally.Attracting attention.Playa del Sol.That toothy putz Paris Bartlett.First thing he did afterditching Alex was to check city records for a business registration on Playa.Nothing.Then he ran Bartlett through every database he could think of.Likethat could be a real name.Taking a giant risk because what he'd told Alex had been true: as a civilianhe was forbidden to use departmental resources, he was treading feloniouswater.He'd put up a firewall by using the ID numbers of other cops for therequests.Half a dozen IDs of cops he didn't care for, jumping arounddifferent divisions.His version of identity theft; he'd been collecting dataPage 138 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlfor years, stashing loose bitsof paper in his home safe because you never knew when your back was gonna beagainst the wall.But if someone tried hard enough, the calls could be tracedback to him.Clever boy, but the search had been futile: no such person as Paris Bartlett.Which he supposed he'd known right away - apart from the moniker having aphony ring, Bartlett, all hair and teeth and eagerness, had had that actorthing going on.In L.A.that didn't necessarily mean a SAG card and aportfolio full of headshots.LAPD liked guys who were good at pretending, too.Channeled them into undercover work.Nowadays, that meant mostly Narcotics,occasionally Vice when the word came down to run yet another week or two ofhooker rousts for public relations.Years ago undercover had meant another Vice game, a regularly scheduledweekend production: Friday and Saturday night operations put together withmilitary lust.Staking out targets and delineating the enemy and moving in forthe attack.Bust the queers.Not naked aggression, the way it had been back before Christopher Street, whengay bars were ripe for routine, big-time head-breaking.Most of that ended bythe early seventies, but Milo had caught the tail end of the department'sfag-bashing fervor: LAPD masked the raids as drug busts, as if hetero clubsweren't fueled by the same dope.During his first month at West L.A.he'd beenassigned to a Saturday night bivouac against a private club on Sepulveda nearVenice.Out-of-the-way dive in a former auto-painting barn where a hundred orso well-heeled men, believing themselves to be secure, went to talk and danceand smoke grass and gobble Quaaludes and enjoy the bathroom stalls.LAPD had adifferent notion of security.The way the supervisor - a hypermacho DII namedReisan who Milo was certain was tucked deeply in the closet - laid out theplan, you'da thought it was a swoop on some Cong hamlet.Squinty eyes,military lingo, triangulated diagrams scrawled on the board, give me a break.Milo sat through the orientation, struggling not to succumb to a full-bodysweat.Reisan going on about coming down hard on resisters, don't be shy aboutusing your batons.Then, leering, and warning the troops not to kiss anyonebecause you didn't know where those lips had been.Looking straight at Milowhen he'dcracked wise, Milo laughing along with the others and wondering: Why the hellis he doing that? Fighting to convince himself he'd imagined it.The day of the raid, he called in sick with the flu, stayed in bed for threedays.Perfectly healthy, but he worked hard at degrading himself by notsleeping or eating, just sucking on gin and vodka and rye and peach brandy andwhatever else he found in the cupboard.Figuring if the department checked onhim, he'd look like death warmed over.VN combat vet, now a real-life working detective, but he was still thinkinglike a truant high school kid.Over the three days, he lost eight pounds, and when he stood his legs shookand his kidneys ached and he wondered if that yellow tinge in his eyes wasreal or just bad lighting - his place was a dingy hovel, the few windows itoffered looked out to airshafts, and no matter how many bulbs he used, hecould never get the illumination above tomb-strength.Page 139 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlThe first time in three days that he tried food - a barely warmed can ofHearty Man chili - what he didn't heave whooshed out the other end.He smelledlike a goat pen, his hair felt brittle, and his fingernails were getting soft.For a full week later, his ears rang and his back hurt and he drank gallons ofwater a day just in case he'd damaged something.The day he returned to thestation, a transfer slip - Vice to Auto Theft, signed by Reisan - was in hisbox.That seemed a fine state of affairs.Two days later, someone slipped anote through the door of his locker.How's your bunghole, faggot?He pulled into the Healthy Foods lot, stayed in the Taurus, scanned theparking lot for anything out of the ordinary.During the drive from his houseto the station, then from Budget to the market, he'd been on alert for a tail.Hadn't picked up any, but this wasn't the movies, and the hard truth was, in acity built around the combustion engine, you could never be sure.He watched shoppers enter the market, finally satisfied himself that he hadn'tbeen followed, and crossed over to the row of small stores - rehabbed shacks,really - that sat across from HealthyFoods.Locksmith, dry cleaners, cobbler, West Hollywood Easy Mail Center [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]