I opened my eyes. Ben Luboff bopped in front of my binoculars. He slid the sweaty swish a C-note and slid into the shack alone. The swish sashayed up to a lavender Lincoln and leaned in.

Ben bribed the too-tall brunser. That meant he didn't want to roust his racket. The gig developed different dimensions--maybe divinely deigned.

I latched my lenses on the Lincoln and locked my eyes in hard. I saw hunky Rock Hudson hand up a handful of hard cash.

All praise to Allah! Joy to Jesus! Hush-Hush hosannahs to the Hebrew G.o.d!

Rock locked his Lincoln, ditched the drive-in, and joyfully jaywalked straight across Wilshire. He walked up to the front of the Fine Arts movie house and made with a wicked wolf whistle.

A winsome wolf whistle whisked back his way. A muscular manchild meandered out of a moonbeam and leaned in the lobby doorway.

Rock, you rambunctious rump ranger-- Rock loped into the lobby. The kid locked them in. They disappeared near a dark candy counter.

I blew out of my Buick and flew around the Fine Arts fast-footed. I saw blue lights blink at the back of the building upstairs. I shimmied up a shaky drainpipe and s.h.a.gged myself onto a ledge. I undulated through an unlocked window and heard Rock ululating.

I landed on a lopsided pile of film cans. I pitched forward and pulled myself up. I peeped through a pebble-gla.s.s door and saw shadows shifting down a short hallway.

I fast-footed it out of the film-storage room. I saw flickery flits of light flick out from below two doorways. I ducked down the dark hall. Shifty shadows shot up from the door slits. I crept up on them and got down in a crab-crawl crouch. I slid one eye up against the door slits.

I saw a punk cameraman with a Panflex porta-cam packed into a pod-shaped peephole. Next door: Rock and the monster-hung man-child making meat-mangling motions on a light-colored couch with the lights on. Motherf.u.c.ker: minuscule mini-mikes taped to a tall table lamp!

I flew back to the film-storage room. I rapidly reshimmied down that drainpipe. I whizzed across Wilshire, looped around La Cienega, and ducked down an alley behind Delores's Drive-In. I vaulted a vine-covered fence, veered past Vance Vanning's van, and vibrated up to that s.h.i.tty little shack that the sweaty swish had swayed by.

The drive-in was deep in a late-nite lull. I spotted six sleds snouted into snack-serving slots. I looked left and wrapped my eyeb.a.l.l.s right. I didn't see the sweaty swish or Ben Luboff. I saw Vance Vanning and Buddy Berkow buzzing logs in their bug vans.

I fearlessly faced the shack door. I nervously knocked and locked my loins to fight a scandal-s.k.a.n.k war of some scope. n.o.body answered. I wiggled the door open and walked in uninvited.

A lousy little all-linoleum office. Disinfectant stench, a dirty desk, and a doily-covered chair.

A closet.

A preciously apropos prop and a prime hideout hole.

I hid in the closet. I hunched myself up and heaved for breath. Methedrine-mad minutes marched by. I sweated and swore out a warrant on Ben Luboff's hide.

I heard the outer door open and shut. Furtive footsteps and vague voices. I peered through a pint-size pinhole in the closet door. I saw Ben Luboff and the sweaty swish.

Perspiration poured over the pinhole and voided my view. I locked my eyes shut and listened.

Ben said, "You know, it's ironic. I've been hearing about your service for years, but it took a tip from f.u.c.king Danny Getch.e.l.l to get me to contact you."

The sweaty swish said, "Choice chicken, doll. The best boys in the West, and a good rep for discretion."

Ben said, "Yeah, and that's why the Rock buys all his extracurricular tail from you."

The sweaty swish said, "The Rock ain't nothin' but a hound dog. He's got a perfectly gorgeous lover at home--an art director at Metro--but he's got to roll around with every Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harriet he can find--with the emphasis on d.i.c.k."

Ben said, "You've never forgiven him, have you? He broke your heart, and that's what makes this deal so sweet for you."

The sweaty swish said, "Truer words never spoken, doll. And G.o.dddd, it was torture selling boys to him."

Ben said, "Vengeance is sweet, baby-cakes. You get your shot at the Rock, I get mine at the schmendrick Getch.e.l.l."

In your faigeleh-finagling dreams, you f.u.c.king-- The sweaty swish said, "You're sure we can't get hurt on this?"

Ben said, "Nix. My camera guy set up a breakaway set at the Fine Arts. If the Rock takes the fuzz back there, they won't find the room he told them about. It was all strictly clandestine. My camera guy let your boy in the theater, and none of the theater chumps know that any of this happened."

The sweaty swish said, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth both of us."

Ben said, "Especially me. See, I gave Getch.e.l.l that tip on Don Jordan's wh.o.r.e racket, and I called Don and clued him in that Getch.e.l.l was onto his biz. Now, Don Jordan is a bad hombre to flick with. He killed lots of guys in the Dominican Republic, and he's tight with this spic gang--the Apaches--out in Boyle Heights. I think it's safe to say that Danny Getch.e.l.l's days are numbered."

I swirled sweat off my face and popped an eye up to the pintsize pinhole. Ben said, "And look, call it penance. I've done a s.h.i.tty thing by exposing our kind of people, but now I'm doing all of us a mitzvah by taking Getch.e.l.l out."

"Penance"? "Our people--"?

Ben leaned in and kissed the sweaty swish on the lips. He said, "Later, Lover," and languidly loped out the door.

I crashed out of the closet--crazily out of control. The sweaty swish saw me. He swirled and swung a switchblade out of his pocket.

He pirouetted and pounced. I closed the closet door, swiveled, and swung it at him. His switchblade swiped wood. He swung off balance. I swatted at his knife hand and kicked him in the kidneys and the cojones.

He clipped the closet door. I clotheslined him and claimed his knife off the floor. I clamped down on his neck and kicked out his legs and laid him out on the linoleum.

I pinned him p.r.o.ne and swicked sweat beads off his beak with my blade. I said, "Sing, s.h.i.tbird."

He coughed and caught some breath. He hemmed, hawed, and hummed in hyperventilation. He stopped and stared at me. He got hip to the hard hophead hate I had for him and put it all out prestissimo.

"It all went down today. You tipped off Ben to my operation, which he'd heard rumors about for years. Ben told me you'd ratted me out, but why blow a potentially sweet partnership when we could work breakaway-bedroom jobs and snag some big people? I wanted to put some hurt on Rock, and Ben and I both wanted to nail you for all the gay folk you've messed with."

I leaned in laceratingly low. "So this was a scandal squeeze on the Rock. Pay, or see yourself in Whisper."

The sweaty swish said, "Yes." I said, "How much were you going to squeeze him for?" The sweaty swish said, "Twentyfive G's."

I leaned in lower and laughed. "Rock doesn't have it. I heard he took a bath on a real estate deal."

The sweaty swish swung a sweet smile at me. "Then look for the Rock on the cover of the June 1958 issue of Whisper."

WHISPER WINS WICKED WAR OF WORDS! THE HUSH-HUSH HEGEMONY WIPED OUT WITH A WHIMPER!.

I blinked. The sweaty swish blindsided me blindingly fast.

He landed a left on my lips. He ratched a right to my chin. A knee bit my b.a.l.l.s and bounced me backward.

The sweaty swish swung to his feet. I flattened myself to the floor, grabbed his two fat Florsheims and watched him fly back where he'd been. He landed on linoleum, lurched upright, and laughed. I lobbed my knife and lanced him in the larynx.

4.

I punked out and panicked. I left the sweaty swish larynx-lashed and laid out in lurid state. I ran from the h.e.l.lacious h.o.m.o-cide.

I popped up to my pad off Pico. I saw a pack of pachucos parked outside. Mean Mexicans in mohair shirts and mohawk haircuts. Machismo-mangled minions. Don Jordan's homicidal hermanos.

I hauled to the Hush-Hush office. I hit on a horrific scene out of Hieronymus Bosch.

Heaps of Hush-Hush dirt files tossed and torched to Cinder City. Scandal skinny scorched and dumped into dust piles. Art sheets shivved and shorn to s.h.i.t. Type trays trashed and chairs chopped into chop suey.

My crew: Bruised, contused, confused, and ripped from a raid on Dave Dockweiler's dope stash.

Dawn.

I dashed back to Delores's Drive-In and dipped by at a safe distance. I drove one-handed and drilled the dive with my Bausch binoculars.

Cops--a bevy of bulls from the Beverly Hills PD. Two guys swinging the sweaty swish onto a sheet-shrouded stretcher. A biiiig bull bracing Ben Luboff--nellyingly nervous and limpwristedly lily-white now. s.h.i.t shaking inside the shack--drones dripping print powder on the symbiotically symbolic closed closet door. Checking it out: Chief Clinton Anderson.

I fought a fit of foul flicking fear: I fondled that door and forgot to wipe my prints.

I buzzed by the BHPD Building. By the back door: two bulls and Buddy "Bug King" Berkow. Buddy looked beat on. I knew the bulls had bopped him with beaver-tail saps.

I bombed my Buick out of Beverly Hills. I ran my radio for random newscasts. KMPC coughed up c.r.a.p on Croatian commies and switched to a swift bit on the sweaty swish.

A commentator called it a suicide. Clinton Anderson confirmed the call conclusively.

I was prespiringly perplexed and pulsatingly puzzled. I sent up guarded thanx to my guardian angel and dipped the dial to the BHPD band.

"All BHPD units only, APB on Daniel Douglas Getch.e.l.l, G-E-T-C-H-E-L-L, white male, 28, 61, 18o, brown and brown, driving a 1953 Buick Skylark, license G-B-D, 88z. Be advised, BHPD units only, approach and bring to station."

What?--a pristinely private bulletin to bag me. A BHPD exclusive--to swing with the sweaty swish "suicide."

I felt bad boogie bopping my way. I bombed to Burbank and breezed by Brad's Auto Dump. I boosted fresh plates off an old Oldsmobile and placed them over my plates. I plowed back to L.A. and mainlined myself to the L.A. Times morgue.

I felt intertwined intrigues interdicting me. I played a Hush-Hush hunch and read reports on recent Beverly Hills burglaries.

Six--slickly slotted from late '57 to last week. Ulceratingly unsolved. Salivatingly similar stats: bedroom boosts while Mama and Papa went out to separate parties. Large losses and no standard talk of stakeouts to bag the B&E bad boys.

Bad BHPD boogie bopping my way? Twisted twirls and circles circ.u.mscribing me-- I popped to a pay phone and called Steve Crane. I told him to light out to the Luau lickety-split.

I beelined to Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. I Bausch & Lomb'd Lana Turner's backyard. I saw Johnny Stompanato jump on Lana and lash out with limitlessly lewd language. Lana lashed back. She julienned Johnny with jive on his jilt-happy gigolo ways. She spritzed spite. She shot s.h.i.t at him shamelessly. She pounced on his pint-sized p.e.n.i.s and his wicked welterweight dupe Don Jordan. She called him a guinea gangster and said he poured the pork to her Mexican maid with his poquito pee-pee. She said he pandered and pimped her and got her gussied up in her own Givenchy gown.

Some show: A bracing breakfast bash on beautiful Bedford. Dig the all-star audience, perched on their porches with pancakes and poached eggs: Dino, Duke Wayne, Walt Disney, wolfing Wheaties. That white-haired wimp on The Webster Webfoot Show.

Steve Crane said, "So I'm letting Don Jordan run girls out of here. So Yolanda Paez brings me back the latest on Lana and Johnny. So what? You want to write the story up, great. But it's the last you'll ever peep out of my peepholes."

The Luau was listlessly still. Steve opened up early to meet me. My meth jolt was melting down. I mixed a mammoth martini to remagnetize it.

"I think Johnny crashed Jordan's wh.o.r.e racket and lured Yolanda into it. And I think the girls are the advance team for a burglary angle thatJohnny and Jordan are working."

Steve stirred his planter's punch and braced his back into the bar. "I'm sure there's lots of angles in this thing. Yolanda told me the girls are hooking so they can bring their families up from Mexico and that Jordan will smuggle them across the border, get them kitchen jobs, and take a cut of their pay. I can't complain. He's promised me three dishwashers off his next run."

I said, "Don's a flicking sweetheart."

"Yeah, and he may be the next welterweight champ. I heard he's fighting Honeybear Akins in the fall."

"And Mickey Cohen's got a piece of his contract."

"Right, which is not exactly a news flash."

"Does Mickey have some truck with Don?"

"He can calm him down and get him to call off some of his crazier stunts. Why?"

I gulped Gilbey's and Vermouth. "Nothing, but let me run some names by you. Jack Hanson, Chick Nadell, James B. Harris, Ted Jaffe, Russ Pearce--"

Steve stopped me. "All Luau regulars, all men with big f.u.c.king money."

I said, "All burglary victims that Don and Johnny's girls picked up here, all married men too embarra.s.sed to cop to the fact that they let wh.o.r.es into their pads and got B&E'd as a result."

Steve said, "Jesus f.u.c.king Christ." I said, "No--Daniel Douglas Getch.e.l.l. And listen--Johnny and Don are operating a bit too freely in Beverly Hills. Can you throw some light on that?"

Steve drained his drink and munched a Maraschino cherry. "Clinton Anderson's got a regular john thing going with Yolanda. He met her here, and she told me thatJohnny knows all about it."

Circling circles. Puzzle pieces popping into place.

Chief Anderson chewed up Ben Luboff at Delores's Drive-In. Ben blew the word: He'd dished me dirt on Don Jordan's doings. The Chief charged him to silence. The print pros took my prints off the closet door. The Chief chewed things over and decided not to swear out a warrant on the sweaty swish h.o.m.o-cide. The Chief wanted to check me out up close and clip me--I might be Hush-Hush hip to his yen for Yolanda. I might make him as a Mexican wh.o.r.emonger and Stompanato stooge.

Steve made himself a ma.s.sive mai-tai. He said, "Lana, it was so goooooooood with you, baby."

I said, "Call Yolanda. Tell her I can get her a permanent green card, if she beds a guy who doesn't like girls."

I was Hush-Hush hot. I was warrant-wanted and baited by a BHPD bounty. I traded my boss Buick for a busboy's boogied-out wheels. A real congo coach: c.o.o.n maroon paint matched to matted mink seats. I left the Luau in lieu of a new hideout hut.

I rocked up to the Rock's pad on Roscomare Road and rang the bell. Rock opened up--regal and righteously razzed off in a royal blue kimono. I caught sight of a kimono-clad cutie behind him--a pretty punk pouting into page two of today's paper.

Rock ripped into me. "You're getting bold, Danny. I usually find you going through my garbage or trying to crawl in my bedroom window."

The playmate flipped me the finger. I blew him a b.i.t.c.hy kiss and latched a look on his Herald-Express. Wow! A sharp shot of the sweaty swish sheet-shrouded and dead.

Rock reripped me. "An old friend of mine killed himself last night, and I'm in no mood to f.u.c.k around with a lowlife like you."

I deflated his diatribe. "I'm moving in with you. You're going to hide me out, so I can flick Ben Luboff for f.u.c.king me, and f.u.c.k him for f.u.c.king you with that kid you flicked at the Fine Arts last night."

Rock rocked, rolled, listed, lurched, and landed in my arms.

I moved in. I moved out of my Methedrine mode with Miltown and Macallan scotch. I made machinations to save myself and rescue the Rock.

I called Mickey Cohen. I tipped him to Candy Barr's barrage of s.h.i.t behind his back and begged him to call off Don Jordan. Mickey tossed a tantrum and told me he'd try. I called in a cautiously coded note to Clinton Anderson. I told the Chief's chief chump to check this: I chomp at the chance to be the Chief's chief informant--and I need to stay alluringly alive. Let's talk later-- I've got lots of lovely dirt to drop on the BHPD.

Steve Crane did his duty and duped Yolanda Paez into my plan to play out here at Rock's playpen. Said plan: to plant Yolanda and Rock in the sack and sock in a prank prowler call to my plant with the LAPD. The plant plants calls to his private press contacts-- prowler prowls at Rock's Roscomare rancho right now! Blackand-whites bomb to Bel-Air! Reporters run to Rock's ranch! I fire shots out a back bedroom! Cops kick the door in and find Rock and his Mex mama flicking feverishly! Reporters find them and flood them with flashbulb flares! I sell my pre-shot s.e.x shots to Randy Rothstein at Rave and Terry Tompkins at Tattle. Ben Luboff gets skinned alive and scooped by the scoop of the scopophiliac century: ROCK HUDSON IS STRAIGHT!

I yanked Yolanda to the playpen and played her through rehearsals with the richly reluctant Rock. The Rock's live-in lover took it all horrifically hard. He drank himself into dramatic hysterics and hurled hate hexes at me in a slithery and scintillating silence. I had constellated his self-contempt and crisply crystallized it. He hated himself for his love for hunky hound dog Hudson. He'd sweated the sweaty swish story out of the Rock. Rock's call-boy carousing blistered and blackened his heart. He was afraid that Rock would renounce his rump-happy ways with a real revisionistic yen for Yolanda. He blamed all this multiplied mishigaas dead on me.