If you don't have a friend in law enforcement, I definitely recommend you get one -- especially in the event that you may or may not have witnessed a murder by someone who may or may not be on the loose. The captain and I were over, and though his wife had her own badge, for obvious reasons I couldn't exactly see her as a gal pal. As for my big, bad cop boyfriend, things had kind of cooled off after we stopped being media darlings. When my mysterious photographer friend went missing, along with any real evidence that he ever existed, I was left with only one candidate.
"Are you into bondage at all?" Special Agent Jane Hyatt whispered over the phone from work."No, thanks," I said. "I have enough problems."
She convinced me to grab a drink at Voyeur, the big deal celebrity S&M club in WeHo. I wasn't so sure about the naked chick in a gas mask crouched on the bar with her ass in my face. "Why do you like it here?" I asked, doing my best to ignore the gyrating anus between us.
There wasn't much of a crowd, other than a handful of balding conventioneers, wearing loosened ties and nervous grins. "Republican National Committee," Jane said, miming a pair of zipped lips. "Poor bastards can't get enough of this place." They huddled by a glass case to watch two dancers wearing nothing but frizzy rainbow wigs and over-sized clown shoes simulating oral sex on each other. "You really think that's hot?" I asked.
"You're missing the point," she explained, teacher to student. "What's fun about voyeurism is you're not in it." A flat-chested girl -- clothed only in three stick-on stars -- lassoed some guy in vinyl cheeky shorts with the umbilical cord of a double-headed plastic baby. Was this just a Hollywood thing, or were Federal Agents all over the country relaxing this way after work? "Have another, I'm buying," Jane said brightly, beckoning a girl overhead. Our topless cocktail waitress wrested herself from the others writhing in ceiling nets like spiders in some hellish yoga class."This isn't a date," I said. "Really, I just wanted to talk."
She giggled like a little boy, wrinkling her freckled nose. "Can you keep a secret? I'm in love with A.K."
"Special Agent Knowles? Your boss? My boss's wife?""That's the one."
I took a minute to let that sink in. "I'm in love with her husband," I said.
"So she really knows?"
"A.K. knows everything. Every. Thing. Except how good we could be together." She sighed. You don't hear a lot of sighing in an S&M bar -- but I realized we had an awful lot in common. I let the butthole on the bar crawl out of earshot before blurting out the rest. "I told Agent Knowles I think there's more to the story behind Rita's murder -- and she just ignored me. Now my freelance journalist friend disappeared with the proof -- and I don't know why."
"She's on it," Jane assured me. "She just really wanted it to be the serial killer because that was the theory. The last thing you want to hear is you had the whole thing wrong, while some little blonde in the local P.D. -- who's also after your husband -- was onto the truth all along."Wow. How did everything get so twisted? Here we were just a couple of girls in the big city pursuing our dreams and, boom, we're all messed up in marital issues and serial murder. A parade of naked villagers masked in burlap hoods carried bright green bottles of flaming Absinthe like raised torches. "Courtesy of the fat guys," one of them told me, gesturing to the Republicans.
"Is this even legal?" I asked the Fed by my side.
"I promise not to arrest you," she said. She lit a shot afire with a blazing sugar cube, dousing it with water before knocking back the milky elixir. She thought she was tough, what with all the weapons training, but she weighed like ninety-five pounds -- and a corn-fed farm girl from Petaluma like me could drink her under the table. "You and I should sit here and make out," she slurred, "show them both what they're missing.""Why not?" I replied, slugging a wicked bitter mouthful directly from the green genie bottle. I leaned in for that forbidden kiss -- which turned out to feel like any other, warm and lovely. I'd never kissed a girl before, nor a fat Republican or a burlap masked villager -- but it was hard to tell one mouth from the other as the evening wore on.
I don't remember many details after that, not Jane and me stumbling out to the valet, nor one of us driving down Sunset while the other puked out the window.
I saw a flash of colored lights in the rear view mirror, and hoped that I knew the cop, but not too well. I thought I heard the captain's voice, telling me I was seriously out of control, young lady. I felt equal parts total terror and sweet relief, like when you're in trouble with your dad, but it's way better than the other trouble you were in. I might remember him later, standing there in my bedroom taking off his holster, and wondering whether that was actually happening or if it was all just another delicious dream. Maybe I did have a friend in law enforcement. Maybe it was him all along.
