Supposedly I was the only witness in the history of jurisprudence to be prepped for a deposition by the paparazzi. Why did I need some fancy lawyer? My newfound celebrity photographer friend Atti was no Larry H. Parker, but he seemed to know all the right questions. "Tell me, Miss Culpepper, would you trust this boyfriend of yours with your very life?" Atti asked. "Well, he is a police officer," I insisted. "So no."
"Excellent. The last thing you want is the defense team thinking you're pro-prosecution." Immediately recognizing me -- me! -- if only from the evening news, the snooty little hostess at the ultra hip Formosa Cafe escorted us past a nest of dimly lit red vinyl banquettes to the coveted u-shaped corner booth. Right next to the old United Artists Studios, this was once the only place for an up and coming starlet to see and be seen. Nowadays it was more for frustrated B-listers secretly meeting with new representation -- but still. If I was finally arriving, I owed it to Rita to make the most of it.
Giving in to another fantasy, I imagined closing down the joint back in the day alone with my big, strong, uniformed police captain. His hand creeping under the table, he turned over the flickering red glass candle to pour droplets of hot wax up my thigh -- daring me to make a sound. His finger brushed around the lace top of my thigh highs -- circling its way inside my panties -- as a lone saxophonist blew a high note. 
I snapped out of it when Atti clapped his menu shut, ordering us some Mai Tais and two plates of chicken chop suey. "Just keep your answers short and sweet," he concluded. "Withhold nothing or they'll smell it." "I'm withholding all kinds of stuff," I whispered, looking around. "You want them to think I was a drug runner?"
"You were a drug runner."
"That could have happened to anybody." What was the point of volunteering what I knew and didn't know about Rita's schemes, legal or otherwise?
"I recovered more than two thousand images of you when I cracked that flash drive of hers," Atti informed me. "She did things to you when you were asleep. Candy was involved, mostly gummy. Either that or you were on the toilet.""So she liked to sell smutty pictures on the internet," I said, crunching on Chinese noodles. "It's called the First Amendment. Or is it the Fifth? I don't want to sound like a boob when invoking them under oath."
"You should call Larry H. Parker."
"Why does everyone keeping tell me that?" The captain had his own selfish reasons for throwing me under the bus. But Atti had always been more of a do-it-yourself man. Wear a wire, watch your back, say nothing to nobody who isn't waving a warrant. "I also found some kind of a financial spreadsheet," he told me. "Any idea why she'd want to keep tabs on six million bucks?""Rita didn't have six million cents. She was a coupon clipper. She paid the light bill the day it was due with a wad of dollar bills she found in her underpants."
"She was running around recording people for a reason. That's the kind of thing that gets you dead in this town." I glanced at the cocktail waitress -- a fresh-faced new arrival with a big, white smile and a strawberry red pony tail. She could have been Rita's little sister, if she had one. Setting down my screaming red umbrella drink, she seemed nervous to be serving someone who was out there fighting back. Girls like us usually take our lumps here and scram once they're done with us. "Hi, Cherry. I gave you some extra cherries since you're you." I grabbed her hand. "You hang in there." I picked up my drink and clinked Atti's glass. "See that? We got the guy. I know you're after a story and all, but you can't go making one up."
So what if I couldn't corroborate the crazy defense theory the TV lawyers were calling "S.O.D. -- Some Other Dude." It was still no reason to go blowing the whistle on Officer Matt "Bad-Ass" Muñoz. For one thing, he was a really good kisser. For another, he was dumb as a box of hair. The more I got to know him, the more I realized he had no idea he'd messed up -- and that I'd been the one to cover his ass. What was the point of bursting his bubble when that freak was in custody and the two of us were fast becoming media darlings for putting him there? "Did you hear Nancy Grace is calling us 'Bad-Ass and the Blonde'?"
"Yeah, about that -- there's something I have to ask," he said, sucking down the rest of his drink and getting down to business. "You and I are friends, right?"
"I guess you're starting to grow on me.""This is serious, blondie."
"More serious than homicide?"
"In my line of work you could say that." He clicked the record button on his dictaphone. "Like it or not, you're a celebrity now. And I think you're involved in a sex scandal.
