“You’re exposing yourself indecently,” she said.
“No, Officer,” he said. “I’m all covered, if you’ll notice. The hole in my shorts is only an inch and one eighth in diameter to fit snugly over the metal post. So you see, I’m not indecent at all.”
Viv said patiently, “If I don’t write you a ticket for riding on the sidewalk, will you promise me to go home and get yourself a bike seat and never ride like this again, even if it gives you greater control of your bike?”
His mouth turned down at the corners. No mean feat with all the lip rings and studs, and he sighed and said, “If you say so, Officer. I want to always obey the law.”
“Okay,” Viv said. “Walk your bike home, sew up your shorts, and buy a bike seat ASAP.”
When they got back in the car, Georgie Adams said, “We should get a pay bump for dealing with Hollywood weirdness.”
Viv said, “The next time you go for a bike ride…”
“Please don’t clown me, sis,” Georgie said. “I’m feeling queasy. There’s stuff out here that you people with X chromosomes can handle but us Ys can’t. This is definitely one of them.”
That evening started out on an annoying note. There was a disturbance at a house just off Franklin near Bronson Avenue where there had been any number of disturbances in recent years. A Goth family who played their role to the hilt occupied an old two-story house. Every family member, including children under the age of ten, was always clothed in black. And their parents, a pair of scarecrows in their late forties, usually wore theatrical makeup with their hair dyed black, parted in the middle, and combed down to their shoulders. It was said that the wife had a trust account that provided the money for the spooky games they played, as well as for their toys and exhibits. The cops referred to them as Mr. Goth and Mrs. Goth.
In their large living room were three coffins and an antique embalming table. In two of the coffins there were mannequins that popped up and scared the hell out of anyone who had never been to the house before. The Goths had drug parties in that living room, which detectives had tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate. The couple would probably be chosen as the area’s most despised householders by the cops at Hollywood Station because they were Addams Family wannabes. And in their efforts to be “authentic Goths,” they sometimes invited what they considered to be interesting party guests to their home, who often ended up being more than troublesome to their hosts.
Six-X-Sixty-six was called to the Goth residence just after midnight, and Mrs. Goth was waiting on the sidewalk in front. She was in her Morticia costume: a straight, black, floor-length, form-fitting gown with a neckline plunging almost to her naval. Her lashes were an inch long and her eye shadow was so black and heavy, it looked like patches of corduroy.
Hollywood Nate and Snuffy Salcedo followed her into the residence, and Snuffy paused to gape at the coffins with mannequins lying in repose. The candelabras, which contained not wax candles but electric fixtures, were lit, and baskets of plastic flowers surrounded the coffins. The antique embalming table was in a spotlight and made to look like a medical surgery in Victorian times, and the sound of an organ playing a funereal dirge was coming from stereo speakers in the walls.
Mrs. Goth said to them, “One of our guests won’t leave and go home. We don’t really know him very well. He’s a friend of a friend, and, well, he’s a bit frightening.”
Hollywood Nate, who had twice been called to the Goth house for similar disturbances and thought they were about the lamest of Hollywood’s present crop of attention getters, said, “Upstaging you, is he? When you’re supposed to be the weird and scary ones.”
Mrs. Goth was trying to decide how to respond to that impertinence when Snuffy Salcedo said, “Did you tell him to go home?”
“A dozen times,” she said. “He’s a very difficult and very strange man.”
They could hear a television going, and Snuffy said, “What’s he doing in there?”
“Watching porn,” she said.
Hollywood Nate asked, “Where’d he get it?”
“My husband gave it to him,” she said. “A mistake. My husband sometimes gets enthusiastic when he’s with barbarians, and he tends to indulge them.”
“Where’s your husband?” Snuffy asked.
“With our children.”
“In the house?”
“No, he took them for a hamburger until it’s over. He always leaves me to deal with the party detritus.”
“Until what’s over?” Snuffy Salcedo asked.
“Whatever happens between you and him,” she said. “He claims his name is Rolf Thunder. That’s all I know.”
“Let’s have a look at your barbarian,” Snuffy said.
Mrs. Goth just gestured down a darkened hallway.
Snuffy Salcedo led the way to a lighted sitting room and quietly pushed the door open a few inches to take a peek inside. Rolf Thunder sat in a La-Z-Boy recliner in the lamp-lit room eating potato chips and watching porn. They could hear the heavy breathing and orgasmic moans coming from the video. One hand was holding an object on his lap.
Snuffy Salcedo came back into the corridor and said to Mrs. Goth, “What’s that on his lap?”
“A penis pump,” she said.
“Where did he get it?” Nate asked.
“My husband lent it to him,” she said. “We didn’t know he’d fall in love with it and decide to spend the night playing with it.”
Snuffy Salcedo turned to Nate, who had not yet had a look at Rolf Thunder, and said, “Let’s get some backup here.”
“Any particular reason I should know about?” Nate said.
“About two hundred eighty of them,” Snuffy said. “That’s about how many pounds he weighs. And I’d guess it’s spread over about six and a half feet of very large and heavy bones. And on his shoulder he’s got some White Power jailhouse tatts, so I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like Mexicans. And he won’t like Jews either, so hide your nameplate.”
Nate said, “Are you sure we’ll need backup? He’s only one guy.”
Snuffy said, “Partner, I got a real bad feeling about this one. He’s only slightly smaller than a bulldozer and he’s ready to tear things down. Take my word for it. I’m older and wiser than you.”
Hollywood Nate walked back to the living room with Snuffy to make the backup request on his rover. Like all male cops with sufficient machismo, Hollywood Nate was reluctant to request code 2 assistance, and only once or twice in his entire career had he resorted to a code 3 “officers need help” request. He just spoke into the rover and subtly requested “a unit to assist” at the Goth family address.
He got two units: 6-X-46, with Della Ravelle and Britney Small, and 6-X-32, with Flotsam and Jetsam. Mrs. Goth walked to the street to meet the arriving radio cars, and she looked decidedly uncomfortable to see Flotsam and Jetsam get out of their black-and-white. They had been called to the Goth house on other occasions.
“Dude, I truly hate these Goth show-offs,” Flotsam said to Jetsam. “They are mega-phony.”
When the surfer cops entered the living room of the house, Snuffy said to them, “I got a bad vibe going here. An acquaintance of this lady and her husband does not want to leave their premises and I think he ain’t gonna listen to reason.”
“Have you talked to him yet?” Flotsam asked.
“Not yet,” Snuffy Salcedo said.
“Why not?” Jetsam asked.
“He’s busy pumping his penis,” Snuffy Salcedo said. “I figured it’s best to wait till he’s finished.”
“What?” said Flotsam.
Just then Della Ravelle and Britney Small entered the house to join the other cops, and Snuffy said to them, “I’m glad to see you have your regular batons with you and not those cheesey expandable ones. I would prefer we had Louisville sluggers for this gig. I suggest you be ready with Tasers and pepper spray. And an M-sixteen if you got one.”
“Who’re we evicting this time?” Della asked. “King Kong?”
“Pretty close,” Snuffy Salcedo said. “If King Kong was a skinhead with jailhouse swastikas on his twenty-two-inch neck and a pentagram inked on the side of his shaved melon. And if King Kong liked penis pumps.”