The Glitter Dome (2 page)

“Say, listen …” He didn't remember her name. “Listen … Miss.”

“That's nice,” she said. “I told you my name's Grace. You'd rather call me Miss. You don't hear such politeness from those young bluecoats. I think that's awful sweet, Art.”

“Al.”

“That's sweet, Al.”

“Grace, how about I take you home?”

“I got a car.”

“Okay, you take
me
home.” Al Mackey touched her hand.

“Where you live, Al?” She stroked his finger. It was getting hotter by the minute. Wing sidled by, nicking two quarters with utter impunity.

“I don't live far, Grace,” Al Mackey murmured. Their faces were inches apart.

“Where you live, Al?” she belched.

“The Chinatown Motel.”

“Oh, Al!” she squealed. “That's funny!” Grace pushed him playfully, which caused him to pitch backwards, stool and all. Only the return of Buckmore Phipps kept him from crashing to the floor on his head.

“Hold on there, Aloysius.” Buckmore Phipps easily caught the frail detective in midflight. “Kee-rist, Mackey, I got a water ski bigger than you. You get any skinnier you're gonna
disappear
.”

When Al Mackey was safely back on his stool and Amazing Grace was sending frantic signals by sucking air through the empty straw, Buckmore Phipps said, “It's this Glitter Dome piss you're drinkin. Irish whiskey, my dick. Wing has it brewed on the shores a Lake Mojave by a gang a bootleggers. Stuff they can't ferment they use for moorings.”

“My right eye just slammed shut. I'm getting bored,” said Buckmore Phipps' vulture, now clinging to the huge shoulder of the cop. “We cutting out or not?”

“We sure are, Babycakes,” the big cop cooed. “Daddy's gonna take his Babycakes home and we're gonna … Let's see, first we're gonna …
fight!
”

“Oh, Daddy! Daddy!” she squealed, and Al Mackey's depression worsened. Talk about father surrogates!

“Babycakes gives Daddy a bust in the mouth and a crack in the teeth and the fight's aaaaalllll over. Then it's
piece
, Babycakes.” He made a peace sign with fingers as thick as shotgun shells.

“What a hunk!” The vulture ran her claws down the big cop's chest, raking the plunging nylon shirt.

“Listen, Grace,” Al Mackey said, “what say you and me …”

But it was no use. The rum-filled operator was staring at Buck-more Phipps' mean and massive body as the other vulture bit his shoulder and said, “Will Daddy tell Babycakes cops 'n' robbers stories?”

Buckmore Phipps had been here a time or two. “Sure I will, Babycakes. Tell you about how I got shot last year. Had a slug in my bladder floatin in piss for a week till they got it out. Gave me
all
new plumbin, though. Now I fire
tracers!
Burny, burny, burny!”

And so forth. Babycakes couldn't keep her hands off him as they pushed through the crowd. Al Mackey heard Buckmore Phipps' superfluous parting shot. The big cop said to his vulture: “I'm the
best
man in this saloon.”

Amazing Grace sighed and watched Buckmore Phipps all the way through the beaded curtains. Crab ranch and all.

“Well, she can have him,” Amazing Grace announced after they were gone. “The way he talks to ladies. Calls her every kind a douche bag from full to empty. Still, she'd go along if he said he was driving to Hawaii. Huh! Best man in this saloon. Sure.”

“I'm about the seventeenth best man in this saloon,” Al Mackey said earnestly. Honesty
might
win the day.

But honesty had nothing to do with it, finally. Economics decided things. He wasn't as skinny as he looked before her fifth Mai Tai. And he was actually pretty young. No more than forty-six, forty-seven, maybe. One of those guys that probably looked old in high school. Probably no ass at all, but a nice guy. This Art Mackey was reeeeel-ly a nice guy. Economics. Supply and demand.

Ten minutes later they held each other upright and pushed through the madding crowd, much to the sorrow of Wing, who hated to see rummies get away with a few bucks left in their kick.

Perhaps the second saddest moment of the evening for Al Mackey was the snatch of conversation he heard at the far end of the long bar as he swayed past poor old Cal Greenberg, a thirty-five-year detective from his own division, who was desperately trying to make his point over the din of snaky hard rock to a lethargic young cop from Newton Street Station who couldn't care less.

“I wouldn't mind,” poor old Cal Greenberg shouted. “If it was music, I wouldn't mind. You call this music?”

“You know that record clerk works the Badcat Detail,” the young cop answered. “Maggie something? Tits from here to San Diego? That one?”

“Well, do you? Do you call it music?”

“Tits from here to Texas? Maggie I think it is?”

“Tits! That's all you want out of life? Would you rather have brains or tits?” poor old Cal Greenberg demanded.

“Shit,” the young cop said drily. “If I had brains I could
buy
the tits.”

“But you call this music?” poor old Cal Greenberg insisted. “This is
not
music. You ever heard of Glenn Miller?
He
made music. Glenn Miller. You ever
heard
of him?”

Wing ended poor old Cal Greenberg's imminent crying jag by pouring him a double. He let his furtive emerald sleeve slither across the pile of bills in front of the old detective. Wing managed to steal two bucks along with the price of the double to add to the box of mad money.

“Tell him, Wing,” poor old Cal Greenberg pleaded. “Tell this kid. Glenn Miller was a hero!”

‘Hero, my tush,” Wing giggled, turning the hard rock two decibels louder. “He couldn't even
fly
.”

Wing dropped the booty in the box made of monkeypod, gave the abacus a sprightly fingering, and hopped down the bar toward a bombed-out kiddy cop from Hollenbeck who had at least thirty bucks in front of him.

Perhaps Al Mackey's misfire at the Chinatown motel was inevitable. Her flesh collapsed when she took off the bra and panty girdle. She fell out in sections: gelatinous thighs, varicosed greenish calves, stomach crisscrossed by a network of wrinkles and stretch marks. The gray belly of an aged seal.

“Well, goddamn!” she said finally, sweat-drenched and panting, not from lust but exhaustion. “You a fag or what? I suck my goddamn teeth loose! For what?”

“I'm sorry,” he belched. The combination of booze and tension had him incredibly flatulent.

“It takes a stiff rod to catch the
big
fish, boy!”

“I know. I
know!
”

“Just my goddamn luck! A bar full a real men and I get some kind a
fag
.”

“Maybe we should leave.” He tried to sit up but the ceiling spun. Not in the same direction that it had when he lay down. It was the first time he could remember the ceiling ever spinning in different directions. Amazing Grace. He needed a Saving Grace!

“Okay, okay,” she said soothingly. “I didn't mean that. That was wrong for me to say. Lord, what's the matter with me? You're havin a little trouble and I call you a fag? Lord, what's wrong with me? I should be
helpin
you.”

“It's my fault. It's not you.”

“No, no, sweetie. Here, come to Mama.” She pulled the skinny detective to her soft sagging breasts and shoved one in his mouth. “There, there. You'll be okay in a minute. It was wrong of Mama to scold and call nasty names. There, there.”

Spittle was drooling from the corner of Al Mackey's mouth. His right eye was closed, the left nearly so. He was unaware of her fondling his flaccid whanger. He was unaware that he had fallen asleep.
She
was unaware that he had fallen asleep. Then she noticed.

Al Mackey's elbow cracked against the night table when his body hit the floor like a bag of sticks.

“I suck my teeth loose!” Amazing Grace shrieked. “For what? A fuckin
FAG
!”

Al Mackey didn't know if she had taken him back to The Glitter Dome. He didn't know what time it was. He didn't know
where
he was, except that he was driving his five-year-old Pinto on the Hollywood Freeway. The next thing he
did
know was that a very strange thing happened: A California Highway Patrol motor cop was traveling beside him on the driver's side, motioning for Al Mackey to come his way.

Al Mackey thought it exceedingly dangerous for the motor cop to be cruising so close to his car, so he held the steering wheel firmly in his right hand and with the left tried in vain to roll down the window. He couldn't understand what the Chippy wanted. Maybe he'd better pull over.

Then an extraordinary thing happened. The Chip yelled at him so loudly it hurt. The motor cop said: “Get outa that fuckin wreck, asshole!”

Al Mackey decided to pull over. He could hardly see the freeway in front of him. Where were his headlights? He was suddenly aware that cars were passing him as though he was standing still.

He
was
standing still.

The door was opened by the enraged Chip, who grabbed the detective by the torn coat sleeve and jerked him out of the car. Al Mackey bumped his head. The roof seemed lower.

The roof
was
lower.

Al Mackey was standing on the freeway. There was a flare pattern behind him and several rubberneckers slowed to see what happened. The motor cop waved them past, holding Al Mackey erect by the scruff of the neck. An L.A.P.D. radio car rolled up behind them. Two cops came forward with flashlights.

“Need some help?” the younger one asked the motor cop, who at last released his hold and let Al Mackey slump against the demolished Pinto.

“I was tooling along when I see this drunk run up on the embankment,” the Chip said. “His Pinto climbs the embankment
after
crossing three traffic lanes. Then he rolls over a hundred and eighty degrees and comes back down on the wheels. He thinks he's still driving when I walk up to the car!”

Al Mackey was starting to come around a bit and sensed he was in some trouble. He stepped back from the Pinto and examined it. The roof was six inches lower all the way around. The entire car was more than a
foot
lower since all four tires were flat. Every window was shattered and the windshield was gone. The right passenger door was lying in the lush ice plant beside the freeway. Al Mackey was unmarked except for the bump on the head he got when the motor cop pulled him out.

“Hey! It's Sergeant Mackey!” the younger cop said. He turned to his partner. “Ron, it's Mackey from the dicks bureau!”

“Oh shit. A cop.” The motor cop's eyeballs rolled back under his helmet. He'd been here before.
Déjà vu
.

Al Mackey just couldn't quite fit it all together. It was like the first moment of dream awakening. Things made sense and yet they didn't. The truth was more elusive than usual at those moments.

“I think I can explain,” Al Mackey began, but he had to stop. Each step he took made him rattle. He tinkled and crunched as he walked. Windshield glass was falling from his clothing like snow. His hair was full of shattered glass. It was even in his pockets.

“Look here,” the young bluecoat said to the Chip, “we'll call tow service for the car and get him home. He's an okay guy. Give him a break?”

“Asshole!” the motor cop said to Al Mackey, as he stormed back to his bike, kicking up sparks with his cleated boots. He drove his fist into his saddle before climbing on and roaring away.

Al Mackey was absolutely certain that this could be explained, given a few moments to put it all together.

He stroked it again. This was the
real
whanger. This one he held in his hand, not the one that misfired in the Chinatown motel. And look at it, the cylinder so crusty with powder rings it could hardly turn. He couldn't even remember the last time he had cleaned his unfailing surrogate cock. Yet this baby
never
misfired. If he treated the other one like this, what? Terminal scabies? More likely, treatment from some unlicensed Chinese croaker (compliments of Wing after a finder's fee) so the Department wouldn't charge him with Conduct Unbecoming an Officer for coming up with some kind of venereal Red Death. But it couldn't happen. He regularly cleaned and lubricated and pampered the one that misfired.

The glass was empty. He didn't even remember draining it. He put the six-inch Smith & Wesson service revolver on the table in front of him. Lots of people are scared of their cocks. He was only afraid of the one that
didn't
work. Marty Welborn confessed that occasionally his didn't work these days. With Marty it was probably not booze but religion. Maybe they were one and the same? In any case, he was not afraid of the surrogate on the table. He'd carried it too long.

Al Mackey staggered to his feet. The bump on his head was now marble-sized. He weaved his way across the kitchen and through the cramped boxy living room. He kicked his way through the litter: newspapers, magazines, an empty bottle of Tullamore Dew on the three-legged coffee table, which sagged whimsically, propped up by a stack of useless books on criminal law, criminal evidence, and criminal procedure. Books he had never been able to bring himself to study in all the years he had never troubled to take the lieutenant's exam.

He looked at those books, performing their first useful function, supporting the table he had broken two weeks ago when, even drunker than tonight, he had tripped over the goddamn cat.

How he hated that ugly table. How he hated those books he'd never studied. How he would have hated being a lieutenant and sitting at a desk and sucking some captain's ass. How he'd have hated the humilation of failing the lieutenant's exam. God, how he hated that fucking
cat
.

The tomcat was standing on top of the couch hissing at him, as mean and spiteful as ever—unblinking, glaring. Then the no-name cat turned away and began sharpening his claws on top of the already shredded sofa back, just as he had every day since that rainy night five months ago when the detective took in this nasty, skulking alley cat during a bout of drunken Yuletide sentimentality.