29. Dismemberment for Dummies

When you're being haunted by someone dead, it's important you be the one to set the ground rules. For one thing, Rita was only allowed to visit me in my dreams, and they were not to involve any kind of freaky three-way lesbian sex. She had to be in one piece, and there was no sneaking up and scaring the bejesus out of me. No foggy images in the bathroom mirror, no twins at the end of the hallway, no messages spoken in tongues I would be found repeating years later after waking up from another round of shock treatments in some asylum.

"I'm on morning watch tomorrow, so if you have something to say, just say it," I warned her ghost late one night. She was sitting on the edge of my bed helping herself to my new lipstick as I slept. "And don't even think about writing something weird in the mirror."

"Are you really this stupid?" she asked.

"I'm not the one who got myself killed and dismembered in two unrelated incidents," I said.

"Unrelated? Wake up, dumbass."

"If I wake up, you're gone. I mean it, Rita, I'm counting to five."

"Mexico," she whispered urgently in my ear. "You and me with the top down."

Okay, so we'd spent some time together in Mexico -- shopping, tanning, smuggling diet pills. What was the big freaking deal already? "Look, I know you probably have rules of your own wherever you are," I said, "but you can't swoop in at all hours talking dead chick to me and expect me to get it." 

She picked up my granny's locket -- a sparkly piece of costume jewelry from JC Penney -- and dangled it in front of me.

"The meaningful family heirloom that wasn't where I left it the night before?" I scoffed. "You're better than that." She started rifling through my dresser drawers -- which she often did all night as I slept. I could never tell if she was focusing on the lingerie or I just had a disproportionate amount of the crap, having inherited her entire stripper wardrobe after she died. I only wore any of it when I hadn't done laundry in way too long, since a tassled sequin bra paired with a crotchless rhinestone thong wasn't the most comfortable workplace ensemble.  "I'm only trying to help you," she sighed. "You do know you're next?"

"I'm not in this," I told her, rolling over with the pillow over my head. "Never was."

She laughed. "You're in it right now. Go check the laundry."

I sat up in bed, wide awake. She was gone, of course, having broken the rule about not saying anything creepy to me -- and really, how much creepier can you get than sending a girl alone to a deserted laundry room at three o'clock in the morning?

Then again, the last thing I ever asked her was if she had anything for the wash, tiptoeing around her room to grab a few things. She may or may not have been alive at the time, depending on whether or not you believed the freak who freely admitted to dismembering her dead body -- but only after happening upon it that way. I was hoping he wasn't going to start haunting me, too, now that he'd hung himself -- especially after I couldn't get back to sleep.

I finally gave in and got up to retrieve a load I'd been doing before falling asleep -- jumping into a pair of Juicy sweat pants. Now living in a small complex on Fountain, I shuffled across a fenced courtyard shaded by palm trees and overrun by generations of possums awake all night scaling the roofs. The familiar, all-night traffic sounds just outside the gates made me feel safe -- even when I found the dryer running and poor dead Rita sitting on top of it wearing nothing but a pair of rhinestone stilettos. "Let me guess," I said. "The real murder weapon?"

"Don't be so old school." I reached inside the dryer, pulling out a sparkling rainbow of delicates that really should have been hung dry. "Now look what you've done," she added. I held up the remains of a mangled bikini top, pulling out its ropey matching bottoms. It was one of the many bejeweled suits we had treated ourselves to in Mexico -- wearing little else as we crossed back over the border blowing kisses at the distracted guards who waved us through. "Good times," I said to my old friend's naked ghost. "Night-night."

"Ba-bup," she clucked. "Clean the lint trap." I pulled out the clogged screen, removing a tuft of lint encrusted with gemstones, shimmering in the moonlight. "Diamonds?" I asked.

"Well, duh," she said. "What kind of a candy-ass little smuggling operation did you think I was running?

30. Die Young, Stay Witty

I know what you're thinking. I should take my bag of smuggled diamonds and get out of town. Hightail it back to Petaluma, marry the local pastor, use the ill-gotten gains from my sordid Hollywood adventure to produce an online interactive bible -- or some such good clean pursuit meant to wash my hands of the whole bloody mess.

The problem is, once you've made it to Hollywood there really is no easy way out. You either make it big or you keep waitressing at some hip WeHo diner until your ankles swell so much you can only pick up a quirky character role here and there. I guess there's always dying young and staying pretty, like Marilyn Monroe, but what fun is that? What I'm getting at is there is no Hollywood ending -- and diamonds are most definitely not your friend.

As for who to turn to now, I hadn't heard a peep out of my paparazzo friend Atti since he'd taken off for the relative safety of Sierra Leone, where he was reporting from the actual front instead of the mess out in front of The Ivy, according to his dormant Facebook page.

"Would you happen to know anything about gemstones?" I whispered to the dumb bunny bank teller with the second key to my safe deposit box. In the movie version, she'd have a Swiss accent and a tattooed boyfriend with underworld connections. "Not really," she said, twirling a fresh piercing in her nostril that looked a little infected. "I was born in January so I think I'm a garnet. Anyway, something red. Okay, we're supposed to leave you alone now."

She trotted off, hopefully to fetch some antibiotics, and I stood there considering the contents of the box -- the flash drive concealed as a car key, lipstick doubling as a camera, a gun that looked like a pen. Suddenly it hit me. Here I was in the heart of Hollywood, in plain view of the sign.  If I wanted to know what happened next, all I had to do was picture the movie poster. Was this a tragic love story? A madcap buddy comedy? Was it a fish out of water story about a lone records clerk taking on the entire Los Angeles Police Department with nothing but her good looks and dim wits?

My cast of supporting characters featured a pair of lesbian FBI agents with big career aspirations and messed up personal lives.
Two local cops, one good, one bad, were among my own love interests -- or disinterests, as it were. Since the only warning that I was in serious danger had come from the ghost of a dead stripper with an attitude problem, I figured my chances were less than average with the stiffs at Internal Affairs.

Just in case someone was following me, after locking up the diamonds with the rest of my life insurance policy, I walked out of the bank as though I hadn't a care in the world.
Jumping from star to star on the Walk of Fame, I got stuck in front of a "Don't Walk" signal on a star honoring "Barbara Stanwyck." Though I had no idea who she was, convinced all of this must be a sign, I looked her up on Wikipedia. After starring in some of the biggest deal crime thrillers of all time, she got old right out in the open -- on horseback firing a rifle, no less -- in some TV show about the old West. A blonde with balls, imagine that. Sure, she was savvier than me, and Hollywood was simpler back then -- but I had the advantage of being alive, with a brand new smart phone.

I sucked in a breath, opened my phone and hammered in a number. "I'm sorry to bother you at work," I said, "but I could really use a cowboy right now. Are you down for a road trip to Mexico?"

31. El Capitan y la Ditzy Blonde

This isn't the one about the two lesbians on the run with a bag of loot, so don't even go there. Special Agent Jane Hyatt and I didn't steal anything, so there was no reason to go losing our heads and driving over the Grand Canyon. Okay, so we made out once in an S&M club, but in my case that was about hallucinogenics, and being twenty-six and a really good sport. As far as Jane was concerned, I was her new assignment -- and she was my protection.

"There are certain things I don't even want to know," she warned me. We were lying on chaise lounges on a waterfront balcony down in Baja, listening to the sounds of the Pacific. "Like why you don't trust the captain, for example. This thing you say the two of you cooked up after Hollister was arrested -- all that's between you and him."

"I think it might be a felony, though."

"What did I just say?" She took a weak slug of tequila from the bottle we were passing back and forth. She could pretend she was a man all she wanted but she drank like a little boy. "You don't know about the blue line yet, I'm not here to be your teacher. The doer is dead, case closed. At least until after the election."


"The election, right," I said sarcastically. "Blondes with big mouths are so inconvenient this time of year."

"You think I like all the lies, and the posturing, and the politics? I've got a career going here, so if you want my help getting you out of this alive, you're going to have to play by my rules."

"Rita gave me those diamonds," I said, snatching back the tequila to show her how the big girls do it. "Well, I mean her ghost did, in a naked sleepwalking dream. Repeat any of that and I'll call you a liar."

"That's called receipt of stolen goods. Especially if they're blood diamonds and you were helping her smuggle them in."

"I told you I wasn't in that. She'd bring me another shiny string bikini and I'd put it on. How was I supposed to know I was crossing the border with a million bucks up my butt crack?"

"The point is they weren't hers to give. Sounds to me like that's exactly what got her killed."

"Finally!" I said, raising my arms in victory. "Somebody believes there's more to the story!"

"A.K. always believed you," she said. "You came to the right place. There's a lot you don't know and I'm not at liberty to tell you."

"Unless I get you drunk again and coax it out of you. Oldest story in the book, even if I am too dumb to sit down and read one of those."

She wrinkled her freckled nose and giggled like a schoolboy. You don't hear a lot of giggling out of your average G-man. "Come on," she said, "let's go for a swim." She stepped inside the open sliding glass door to change into her suit.

I got up and poked around the captain's condo, decorated like a page out of the Crate & Barrel catalog. Even with his closeted wife's private blessing, I'd never be what he needed. I'd had enough of a dress rehearsal to know what the press would do if "El Capitan y la Ditzy Blonde" ever took center stage. "Last time they shipped me down here it was to keep me quiet when the fireworks went off." I called out to Jane. "Here I thought it was because he wanted me."

"Maybe he does. You should know this was his idea -- well before you called us." I could see her skinny, half-dressed reflection, posturing in front of the mirror. If she were a boy, she'd be super cute. Then again, I was drunk. "Doesn't matter any more," I lied. Jane came back outside wearing a backwards cap and a pair of knee length swim trunks. I laughed, licking salt and lime from my hand before knocking back another slug. "You look like Justin Bieber."

"It's all I have," she said, self-consciously. I slipped out of my own clothes, flinging them piece by piece over the balcony -- then stood there completely naked, silently challenging her. "You're a little tease, aren't you?" she said.

"It's a living." I grabbed her hat and ran off with it across the sand. "Come on," I called back. "It's just us girls." If only that were true. When you're being stalked south of the border by someone with more reason than ever to want you dead, the trouble with skinny dipping -- alongside the federal agent sent to protect you -- is there's no place to hide the gun.

32. Not The Brightest Blonde in the Bottle

I could have gone my whole life without shooting a gun. I'd never even seen one up close before I started working at Hollywood Division. I couldn't imagine a scenario where I'd actually pick one up and cock, aim and fire at a live human person. It was the power behind it that I didn't expect, that crazy feeling of being completely in charge and totally out of control all at once. There's also the possibility, when you're not the brightest blonde in the bottle, that you've chosen the wrong target.

"Did you hear something?" I asked Jane the night on the beach after we went skinny dipping. Whether we were in hiding or on a fact finding mission, we should have been alone. "Over there, by the palm trees."

"You're just naked," she slurred. "People tend to get clervous with their nothes off." Giggling, she took another huge swig of tequila.

"Okay, you're done." I grabbed the nearly drained bottle, twirling her around to wrap her in a towel. Here I was being stalked by a roving band of perverts, real or imagined, only to discover that my personal federal agent was a freaking lightweight. "Does the entire Justice Department suffer from alcohol abuse, or is it just you?"

"One in three of us," she said, as I hooked an arm around her shoulder and helped her back into the condo. "We're also at above average risk for ulcers, arthritis, depression and suicide. Don't tell A.K."  

"I'm guessing she knows," I said, "since she's the world's foremost authority on abnormal psychiatry and all." I tucked my comatose bodyguard into bed.

"Who you calling abnormal?" she said. "All I did was fall in love with the wrong woman, could have happened to anybody."

"I know. I fell in love with her wrong husband."

She flopped over, tugging at my towel. "Hey. You wanna fuck?"

"If I were into girls and you weren't drunk out of your mind right now," I whispered, "I'd be all over that."

"Yes!" she said, raising her arms in victory. "I knew it!" Just for sport, I ran a finger up her bare leg.  She grabbed my hand. "I'm sorry for what we're doing to you. It's for your own protection."

My own protection? From what -- and who? Part of me wanted to slap her back to consciousness and shove her in a cold shower to smack it out of her. The other part already knew. All that hooey about helping me find the truth when what they really wanted was to keep me from it. "You have to start looking past the big bad uniform, Blondie," Atti kept saying before he ran off. "A gun and a badge never made a good guy out of a bad one." 

Had he been trying to warn me about Mark Muñoz, the L.A.P.D. patrolman and national hero I started dating after Rita's murder? Suddenly seized by one horrible thought after the next, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. The gum wrapper I found in Atti's apartment after he was beaten had to have been Mark's calling card.  But why would he be involved in any of it after he'd been the one to catch Hollister in the act of disposing of Rita's body? Had all of that been staged? Maybe Hollister was supposed to get off on a technicality any idiot working records that night would have caught -- even me. Maybe I was supposed to blow the whistle -- then up and decided not to.  Maybe I was the loose end nobody needed around any more.

Pacing the terrace, I could barely breathe. Given the bizarre, rock solid marriage of convenience between the captain and Agent Knowles -- if I'd stumbled upon some dirty little secret inside his department, why would I trust hers with my life?

I tiptoed to the snoring traitor's bedside and grabbed her gun. I don' know how long I sat under a blanket of stars with the growing certainty that someone was there -- waiting, watching, ready to pounce.

Another sickening rustle from the bushes. I saw a shadowy figure and screamed. I don't remember pulling the trigger. I just remember the ear-splitting sound.

33. Pop Goes the Cherry

If you ever smell gunpowder and lighter fluid at the same time, you can be pretty sure things are not going well in your life. Only after I fired a round in the general direction of the hibiscus bush did I make out the form of the captain, standing there in the shadows, clutching his chest. "You just shot me," he said. 

"Captain?" I still had the gun raised. "What are you doing here?"

"It's my house. What are you doing here?" Wincing in pain, he pulled that trusty, old Zippo lighter -- embedded with a smoking slug -- from his bullet-seared front pocket. "This thing made it through both Gulf Wars and sixteen years on the job but couldn't survive one night in Mexico with Cherry Culpepper."

"Why are you following me?" I said, my mind reeling. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry I shot you."

"You wouldn't be the first," he said, ripping off his tattered shirt to reveal a muscular chest -- glistening with lighter fluid and marbled with a roadmap of scars. "I was dodging friendly fire when you were out selling Girl Scout cookies."

"Hands up. Come any closer and you're a goner." No idea where that came from, or how I came to be starring in my own gangster film as I reached out to pat him down. My guess is there's something about sexual interest and accidental gun play that turns you into Bonnie Parker.

Blasted out of her drunken stupor, Jane came running outside stark naked. She backed it up when I pointed her own weapon, which was starting to feel really good in my hand. "Cherry, I need you to give me the gun," she said. "This is how things go bad."

"They're already bad. Get back or you're next."  She smiled weakly, hands up, covering herself in the curtain.

"I'm guessing Muñoz isn't here yet," the captain said, cool as a cucumber -- despite his having more and more trouble breathing as he sank on top of a cooler.

"Bad-Ass Muñoz?" I asked. "I knew it."

"You knew the boys were going wahoo fishing this weekend?" he said, wryly. "You're way smarter than you're looking right now." He tapped his crushed cigarette pack and put a fluid-dampened smoke in his mouth. "Anybody got a light?"

I looked at Jane, narrowing my eyes.  "You told me he knew we were here. You claimed it was his idea."

"I, I, I can explain," she stuttered.

"I should probably get to a hospital," the captain said. "If there's a lot of internal bleeding, you've already killed me and we just don't know it yet."

"Sir, I am so sorry about how all of this is going down," Jane apologized. "Surely you realize I'm not the one calling the shots in this operation and whatever happens I hope we can can find a way to keep all of it out of my file."

"Your file? Seriously?" I said. "You people are out of your freaking minds."

"Yeah, about that," the captain repeated, "we're looking at a possibly armed Los Angeles police officer due on the scene right along now. We miss our two thousand dollar charter and it's on you."

"Shut up. Start talking."


"Okay, but those are two different things." I fired the gun in the air. BOOM! "Alright!" he said. "It's pretty obvious I don't know what the hell is going on here any more than you do. This is the Federal Bureau of Investigations we're dealing with, very difficult folks by nature. Trust me, I'm married to one."

Since he brought that up, I sucked in a breath and demanded the only thing a girl ever really wants from a guy, even if she has to get it at gunpoint.  "Admit you're in love with me." He chuckled. "Oh, grow up. Of course I'm in love with you."

"Ditto," Jane said.

"What? I thought you were in love with his wife!"

"Yeah, I guess I just think you're really hot," she waffled. "Lesbians get attached when we make out with someone."

"You two made out?" the captain asked.

"What's it to you if I make out with a lesbian, you big married jerk?" I shot back. "I want the truth about what happened to Rita. I want to know who killed her, what the cops had to do with it and why everybody's been trying to shut me up."

"Is that all?" Jane said. "Let me make a call."

"Wait. I also want the diamonds, free and clear. I want a dinner date with him -- plus his so-called wife's public blessing -- and I want to keep my job," I said. "Is any of that going to be a problem?"

"Police, drop the gun." Matt Muñoz calmly ordered. He had sneaked up behind me with a twelve-pack of Corona in one hand and his service revolver in the other. "I mean it now, Cherry. Don't think I won't blow your head off just because we used to date."

"Well, this is awkward," the captain said, with the crumpled cigarette still dangling from his dry, bluish lips. His face had grown so pale it glowed like a newly discovered planet in the stubborn light of the lingering moon. "Will somebody please give me a goddamn match before things get ugly?"

34. Love Means Never Having to Say I'm Sorry for Putting a Bullet in Your Chest

I'm not trying to make excuses, but my interest in doing any time in a Mexican prison was not high. That's the reason why I did pretty much what they told me from that point forward. Don't ask how I got to be the bad guy, what with them framing a dead homicide suspect. Then they tried to cover it up so the captain could be elected city attorney after his wife finally nailed herself a serial killer.

Crazy as it sounds, that's the story I was sort of starting to piece together from snippets I overheard in the secret, back alley sala de emergencias on the outskirts of Tijuana. Those guys do an awesome job treating suspicious gunshot wounds for a price, what with the drug wars and all.

None of it mattered to me anyway if I'd managed to kill the one true love of my life just when I finally got the lying rat bastard to admit his true feelings. I never have been lucky in love.

"Apparently the rib splintered and punctured a lung," Jane whispered, taking a seat beside me on a rickety metal bench outside surgery. She covered the mouthpiece of her cell phone. "A.K. wants me to be very clear we won't be abandoning you down here, even if he dies." She offered me a slug of tequila from a flask.

I wondered how bad their so-called marriage must have gotten for Agent Knowles to be so unflaggingly supportive of the gal who'd just up and shot the hubs. "It's eight o'clock in the morning," I informed Jane. "Mix in some orange juice and get back to me." She nodded and got up, still listening in on her clandestine conference call.

"Perdón, hay alguna noticia?" Muñoz asked a passing nurse. She shrugged an apology and kept walking. "Quit acting like you're in charge just because you speak Spanish," I told him. Out of uniform he looked like just another big hairy jerk with an overbuilt torso you'd never talk to at the gym. He checked out the nurse's ass, which was extra gross considering she was also a nun. "How come you never tried to sleep with me?"

"Chain of command," he said. "Seemed like the captain had dibs."

"You never wanted to date me," I said as the obvious finally hit me like a smack in the head. "You just wanted to control me."

"Let me ask you something," he queried with all the sincerity the big ass could muster. "Are you really this stupid?"

"I'm stupid? You can't even give a deaf guy his Miranda rights!" I shot back. "I know you botched the arrest and I know you beat up the reporter who was onto you. I also know you and the captain were way closer to Rita than you wanted to let on. Were you both having sex with her, is that it? Did you let her get killed by some psycho when she turned out to be more trouble than she was worth?"

"Me gusta un poco de espicia," he offered in lieu of an apology -- cupping a seriously plump imaginary ass in his hand. "Your stripper friend had it coming and going. You're just another skinny little runaway on Hollywood Boulevard wearing her underwear on the outside." He looked at me with the infuriating bemusement of a cop who's nabbed you in a speed trap you should have seen coming for miles. I opened my palm to receive that disgusting wad of Big Red he was always working between his teeth. "You're a lousy kisser," I lied.

"Okay, here's how it's going to go." Jane clicked off her cell to provide an update, emitting a strong odor of alcohol and conspiracy about her breath and person -- forgiving the cop talk I was getting way too good at slinging around.

She waved Muñoz toward the exit. "You, go fishing. Catch something big, take a lot of pictures." She turned to me. "You and me are on extended leave. Girls just want to have fun and all that, also with plenty of pictures." Adding another splash of booze, she refreshed her morning cocktail with a wooden coffee stick. "If the captain pulls through, we quietly nurse him back to health in plenty of time to ship him back to L.A. after some unscheduled but much-needed pre-election R&R. Any questions?"

What if he doesn't pull through? I would have asked -- if I hadn't noticed a large pair of sweaty, jack-booted federales arriving at the reception desk.

The hot Mexican nurse slash nun pointed at the three of us. "Que es el tirador?" she inquired of the dimwitted blonde, the bad cop and the drunk federal agent. "Which one of you is the shooter?"