Rock promised to drop some graft gelt and glom Yolanda a green card. Yolanda laid out some lurid Lana-Johnny tales of late. Lana and Johnny were wrapped in a ripe roundelay of s.e.x and self-hatred. Brazen brawls and licentious language. Lana was ready to cut the cord and juke Johnny out of her life. Yolanda said she'd pay prime pop to liberate her love letters. I called Lana and laid out a deal. I said I'd latch onto the letters. She said she'd lure Johnny to her lair and call Yolanda at Rock's rancho. I'd run to Johnny's pad and pounce on her packet of purple prose then.

I set the date for the prowler-prowl press gig: 4/4/58.

Good Friday. A good day to crucify and crush the rumor that Rock ran the Greek way. A good way to resurrect him and hail him as heteros.e.xual.

We waited. We worried details. Rock and I belted bonded bourbon and bulls.h.i.tted our way down to D-Day.

Rock psyched me out and psychoa.n.a.lyzed me. I told him about my chickens.h.i.t childhood in Chillicothe, Ohio. I told him how my meshugenah mom mistreated me. She only let me read one book: a thick thesaurus. Rock bestowed a bourbon-bombed benediction on me. I told him that Hush-Hush would always run and rag him as a raging p.u.s.s.y hound. I think we might have hugged once--but don't tell anyone.

8:10 P.M., Friday, 4/4158. The lilac-colored carpet on Rock's living-room floor.

Rock jumped out of his jockey shorts. Yolanda yanked off her dress and stamped herself with the stations of the cross. I bored my eyes in on her and buzzed the fuzz.

My cop buddy caught the call. "Los Angeles Police Department. Sergeant Helgeland speaking."

I said, "Prowler at 841 Roscomare, Bel-Air. Shots fired." I hung up, hauled upstairs, and smoked two Smith & Wesson rounds out a rear window. I heard the live-in lover boohoo and beat his fists on the bed he bounced on with the Rock. I bounced back downstairs and went big-time bug-eyed.

It was supposed to be a faux-f.u.c.k. It wildly and willfully wasn't. Rock had Yolanda priapically pinioned. She had her eyes shut. She couldn't catch Rock surrept.i.tiously centered on a malecenterfold spread.

The phone rang. Yolanda yelped and rocked off of Rock. She said, "It is Good Friday. I have a premonition." She pounced on the phone. I perched by the earpiece and heard what she heard-- hissingly Hush-Hush.

"Johnny. . . hitting me. . . I'm so afraid. . . ."

Yolanda wrapped herself in Rock's robe and ran out the door. She ran to Rock's lavender Lincoln and raised rubber. I ran out and tailed her in my c.o.o.n coach. We pa.s.sed a big bevy of blackand-whites rolling toward Rock's rancho.

We bombed to Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. We lashed into Lana Turner's house sixteen seconds apart. We bombed up to an upstairs bedroom. I froze in the doorway and caught a frightful freeze-frame frisson: Lana--terrified, tear streaked. A teenage girl--shiny eyed, in shock, and scared s.h.i.tless. Johnny Stompanato staring at the knife Yolanda just jammed in him.

That's the real story: off the record, on the Q.T. and very Hush-Hush.

I latched onto Lana 's letters late that night. I leaked two to Ben Luboff and bought Rock back into the closet. I closed the closet door on Ben's big toe. I told him to clear me with Clinton Anderson or I'd clip him for that sweet smack he swung on the sweaty swish, He capitulated and kowtowed and called me back. He pa.s.sed me a cautiously codified Anderson aside.

I know where you were Good Friday. YE going south. Let's go with the public version.

A deal went down behind BHPD doors. Anderson could not afford to yank Yolanda and push her public and stamp her for the Stompanato snuff The Chief chiseled out a deal and chilled himself out of trouble and chipped Cheryl Crane into a chump child charge. Lana let it go down. Anderson addressed her with a big bag of dirt he took from Terry Tompkins at Tattle. Lana liked to lez with Lila Lee once in a soft sapphic moon. Terry had a pack of Polaroids.

Don Jordan decided to let me live. He decisioned Honeybear Akins and wore the welterweight crown for fifteen fat months. Benny "Kid" Paret mugged him and took his t.i.tle in May 1960. Some malefactors mugged him for real and murdered his mulatto a.s.s in the mid- '90s.

Yolanda moved back to Mexico. Hollywood had its hooks in her She transcended the tragedies of her life and triumphed as a snuff-film auteur Steve Crane c.r.a.pped out in '85. Those lavish Luau liquor libations lopped out his liver The live-in lover left the Rock for Liberace. He maliciously maintained that I turned Rock straight--despite a ma.s.sive mountain of definitive data that conclusively contradicted him. Rock and I remained friends. 1 pressed his preposterous straight credentials in Hush-Hush and herded him to a herbalist when I heard he had AIDS. Potent potions prolonged Rock 's life for a small parcel of time. My current prognosis is presumably much better I want to LIVE. I want to lay out the scopophiliac scope of my life in a NON--mea culpa manner I want to slap myself in serial form all over GQ. I've got an artful array of dirt on Art Cooper--the editor-in-chief I've extorted him into publishing this piece. I've got dirt to illegitimize Ilena Silverman--Art's most artful editor They'll print what I tell them to.

I talked to my doctors today. My red-blood count is oscillating optimistically up. I might make it to the moment that they dig up and discover a cure.

The gonif three gurneys down is still staring at me. He 's looking more and more familiar He 's tripping out of the tableaux that I just tantalizingly tattled. I've got him on the tip of my tongue.

Right there. Right-- The Rock's lachrymose live-in lover. The cuckolded kid who cursed me back in-- He made me make him. He made a geriatric jump in my direction. He's got a hypodermic full of hyper-hazy, health-hazarding s.h.i.t. He wants to reinfect me and get his revenge on the Rock.

I grabbed the sharp shiv shoved under my bed.

September 1998TIJUANA, MON AMOUR.

I lashed the live-in lover and left him for dead. A night nurse noted his absence and noticed his knees nudged under my bed. She hauled him out. She hydrated him. She tricked up a transfusion and blasted him with black-market blood.

She saved his life. She convinced a kangaroo court to convict me of a.s.sault on an AIDS Ward. She trumped up a tribunal and jerry-rigged a jury. She found five f.a.gs and fed them facts on my f.a.g-fragging Hush-Hush heyday. They banished me to a bas.e.m.e.nt stuffed with stacks of old newspapers.

Doctors dip by and drizzle my IV drip. Pill pushers pump me with potions. A h.o.m.ophobic herbalist hops by and hails me as his heteros.e.xual hero. I regale him with riotous riffs on scandal scores and outrageous outings. We ponder my plight as a f.a.g-fragger plowed with the HIV plague.

I mope most mornings and meander most afternoons. I drag my IV drip and stumble. I study the stacks of old newspapers and notice my name now and then. I bop back to better times. I relive my reign as a nihilist knight and dream draconian.

LOS ANGELES HERALD-EXPRESS, JUNE 3, 1955:.

MONAHAN KILLERS EXECUTED AT SAN QUENTIN.

At 10:00 this morning, Barbara Graham, John "Jack" Santo, and Emmett Perkins, the convicted slayers of Burbank widow Mabel Monahan, went to their deaths in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison.

The executions capped a frantic series of appeals and phone calls to Governor Goodwin J. Knight. Governor Knight rejected last-minute pleas to save the lives of the convicted killers and sent them to their deaths for the 1953 murder. Santo wept and squealed as he was dragged to the gas chamber. Perkins and Miss Graham submitted to their punishment stoically. Miss Graham a.s.serted her innocence a few moments before she was put to death. Los Angeles County ProsecutorJ. Miller Leavy, who successfully tried the case, called her statement "poppy-c.o.c.k. Barbara Graham was just as guilty as her murderous cohorts, and she was justly punished for her grievous transgression."

On the evening of March 9, 1953, Santo, Perkins, Miss Graham, and two men named John True and Baxter Shorter broke into Mabel Monahan's house, convinced that she was harboring $100,000 belonging to a gambler nephew. True and Shorter looked on in horror as Perkins, Santo, and Miss Graham pistol-whipped Mrs. Monahan in an effort to get her to reveal the location of the money. Mrs. Monahan told them that there was no cache of money, a statement which was proven to be true. Enraged, Santo, Perkins, and Miss Graham beat Mrs. Monahan to death.

John True voluntarily surrendered and turned state's evidence. Baxter Shorter disappeared before Santo, Perkins, and Miss Graham were apprehended. It is a.s.sumed that Santo and Perkins killed him to ensure his silence.

Santo and Perkins were suspected of having committed several other robbery-murders in northern California, dating back tO 1951. Miss Graham was a narcotics addict and former prost.i.tute. Her good looks and steadfast protestations of her innocence gained her a sympathetic audience among the general public and a small sector of the press. Before Miss Graham, Santo and Perkins's trial, rumors of police-DA's Office "dirty tricks" aimed at finagling a confession from Miss Graham surfaced. Deputy DA Leavy called the rumors "Poppy-c.o.c.k. Every attempt that the DA's Office and members of the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Police Departments made in order to get Miss Graham to recant her preposterous allegations of innocence were entirely legal and aboveboard."

The bodies of the three convicted killers will be shipped to undisclosed locations for burial.

LOS ANGELES MIRROR, DECEMBER 17, 1955:.

PAYOLA PROBE IN WORKS.

HEADED FOR GRAND JURY?.

A confidential source within the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office told Mirror reporters that members of the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles Police Departments, along with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, are conducting a probe into "Payola": The practice of bribing radio announcers, or "disc jockeys," into giving certain recordings preferential amounts of playing time on their programs.

The probe will allegedly focus on KMPC disc jockey Flash Flood and his treatment of Linda Lansing's current 45-RPM single, "Baby, It's Cold Inside." Flood (the former Arthur John Beauchamp) has been playing the novelty song at least sixteen times a day since the record was released on October 1 i. When asked to comment on this, Flood told a Mirror reporter: "What can I say? I dig the side, and I dig Linda Lansing, and n.o.body's paid me to dig either one. And I dig all the publicity I've been getting, because it's boosted my ratings way up, but I don't dig all the heavy treatment I've been getting from the fuzz, although I do dig all the heavy names that are getting caught up in this thing."

Linda Lansing (the former Hilda Claire Wa.s.smansdorff) is the look-alike younger sister of actress Joi Lansing (the former Joyce Wa.s.smansdorff), costar of The French Line and Son of Sinbad. "Baby, It's Cold Inside" was Miss Lansing's debut recording, and it was written for her by acclaimed songsmith Sammy Cahn. Miss Lansing is chiefly known as the model and pitchwoman for Teitelbaum Furs in Beverly Hills, and her "gimmick" is performing advertis.e.m.e.nt jingles, fur-clad, on Tom Duggan's weekly gabfest on Channel 13. She recently appeared as a singer at the Igloo Club in Long Beach and the Trianon Bowling Alley lounge in South Gate, but both engagements were considered unsuccessful. Flash Flood told the Mirror: "I dug Linda's act at both venues. I dig the way she sells a song, and I dig it that she wears short fur coats and nothing else as her trademark. Frankly, I dig Linda the most, but that doesn't mean I took payola to spin her side."

The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office does think that someone has paid Flood to promote "Baby, It's Cold Inside." Prosecutor J. Miller Leavy told the Mirror, "We think we're dealing with payola, pure and simple, and several police agencies are looking into it for us." Sergeant Robert Duhamel of the Beverly Hills Police Department confirmed Deputy DA Leavy's statement.

"Where there's smoke, there's fire," Duhamel told the Mirror. "And our investigation is turning up some prominent people."

Duhamel refused to comment on which "prominent people." The Mirror went to Danny Getch.e.l.l, editor in chief and head writer for the notorious scandal magazine Hush-Hush. Getch.e.l.l claimed that his piece in the December issue, "Payola Pantheon! s.e.x-Sational Sinatra and Luscious Linda Lansing Linked!" sparked Deputy DA Leavy's probe. Getch.e.l.l told the Mirror: "I got a tip that Frank Sinatra was paying Flash Flood to promote Linda Lansing's song, and I confirmed that tip to my satisfaction and wrote it up in the December issue. That's all I'll say. I'll never feed your newspaper any hot leads that I could publish in my magazine. You can't blame me for that, can you?"

Deputy DA Leavy and Sergeant Duhamel would not comment on Mr. Getch.e.l.l's a.s.sertions. Frank Sinatra and Linda Lansing could not be reached for comment. Flash Flood told the Mirror: "I don't dig Danny Getch.e.l.l. He's a parasite pa.s.sing himself off as a journalist. I dig Sinatra and I dig Linda Lansing. And dig this: I think Skip Towne (a rival disc jockey and the former Sol Irving Moskowitz) tipped off Getch.e.l.l to louse up my career. Payola, schmayola. What we've got here is freedom of speech run amok. You can dig that, can't you?"

Skip Towne could not be reached for comment. Danny Getch.e.l.l told the Mirror: "I stand by my piece in Hush-Hush, and I condemn Flash Flood's accusations as libelous and communistic. Freedom of speech should always serve as a search for the truth, and the truth is my moral mandate."

I.

Sin-sational Sinatra: A macho-maimed mama's boy and p.u.s.s.y-whipped putz. A punk with a pack of pit dogs to rough up recidivistic reporters.

Skip Towne skimmed me the skinny: Frank flipped Flash Flood five grand to flip that song and hitch it up the Hit Parade. Impishly implied: Linda Lansing lanced Frank's libido and pulled him around by the pud. Payola payoffs and poontang--perennia] p.o.o.p for Hush-Hush.

Sinatra sent me a nice note: "Danny, how could you? The Pacific Dining Car parking lot, Io:oo A.M. Thursday. You know it will go worse if I have to send the boys out to find you."

The Boys: Freelance freaks out of Frisco. Greaseb.a.l.l.s who grovel and suck up to Sinatra. Discipline dispensers hot to hurl some hurt and rack up ringside seats for Frank's next stand at the Statler.

Frank hates Hush-Hush. Hush-Hush hates him. I published a piece on his private doc and his p.r.i.c.k-enlargement procedure. His pit dogs pounced on my Packard and blew it up on publication day.

"10:00 A.M., Thursday."

I deconstructed my dilemma. I contemplated compliance and concocted countermeasures. I strategized. I stripped the strait I was in down to strict essentials. I decided to frame Frank in the name of free speech.

8:30A.M., Thursday, 12/21/55.

I bopped by Ben Hong's herb hut in Chinatown. I bought a bushel of Belladona Bulbs and a mound of man-eating Ma Huang. Hush-Hush pushes panaceas and hopped-up health highb.a.l.l.s to hipsters and high-school kids. We pitch potency pills and cancer cures on our back pages and ship the s.h.i.t out of a shack behind the Shangri-Lodge Motel. It's legal and lethal in the long run. A loyal league of losers laps it up. Belmont High hopheads buy our Bitter Burdock Buds in bulk and bounce off to Cloud 9 in cla.s.s.

I needed to nail a big bag of boo. Ben Hong heard me out. He said Bob Mitchum was moving Maryjane to move out of debt with the Mob. I buzzed Bob and blitzed him with a bit of blackmail bait: that bleached blonde who blew you in the Hialeah bleachers was really a high-cla.s.s drag queen. Bob stuttered, sputtered, and spat out, "What do you want?" I said, "Drop some stuff on me."

Bob kowtowed and consented. I popped out to his pad in Pacific Palisades and glommed a gla.s.sine-wrapped glob of righteously resinous reefer. I stoked up a stick in my Studebaker and stood on the gas. I mainlined my way downtown.

I flew like a flipped-out flamingo. I flapped my wings and wafted back to earth on West 6th. I popped by the Pacific Dining Car parking lot.

I slipped by in slow motion. I slid my eyes into slits. I reconnoitered--reefer wracked and wrapped in a marijuana mushroom cloud.

I saw sin-sational Sinatra sipping a midmorning martini. He was lounging by a lilac Lincoln. Two lethal-looking lapdogs were perched on a Pontiac Coupe. They laughed and lapped up every line Sinatra launched their way. They were maladroit mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master. Their snouts were snagged and snared cloyingly close to his a.s.s.

The parking lot was packed. The Pontiac was penned between a Buick and a boss Bonneville. I could undulate in and out unseen.

I bipped down the block. I stashed my Studebaker off the street and bebopped back on foot. Sinatra had his goons in stammering st.i.tches. Stale stuff: the story of Come-San-Chin, the Chinese c.o.c.ksucker.

They didn't see me. I dipped down and duck-walked into the lot. I popped up to the Pontiac and whipped my bag of boo in a wind-wing.

I whizzed out of the lot. I winged down the street and wiggled into a phone booth. I dipped a dime in the slot and slid a call to Sergeant John O'Grady.

O'Grady: Grandstanding and greedy. A gratuitous need to grab gra.s.shoppers and hurl himself into the headlines. He popped Art Pepper for pot and bagged Bob Mitchum on a boo bounce back in '48. He hauled in Hedda Hopper's hophead son just last week.

He picked up. "Narcotics, O'Grady."

I said, "Getch.e.l.l, bearing gifts."

"I'm listening. You've got three seconds to catch my attention."

I said, "The Pacific Dining Car parking lot. Frank Sinatra's goons and an ounce of s.h.i.t on the floorboard of a green Pontiac."

"When?"

"Now."

"Is Sinatra there?"

"You can't miss him. He's the skinny guy with the voice."

I loped back to the lot and breezed up brazen. Sinatra saw me. The lapdogs licked their lips. I saw a big guy in the backseat of the lilac Lincoln.

Sinatra slid on slick black sap gloves. They were wickedly weighted with dollops of double-ought buck. They packed a wellknown wallop.

The lapdogs leered at me. A mean-looking Mexican busboy sidled out a side door. He balanced a monster martini on a monogrammed tray.

The lapdogs laughed at me. The Mex marched up and made mealy-mouthed "Si, Senor" sounds. Sinatra popped his patentleather fingers. The Mex made a suck-a.s.s sound and sunk down submissive. Sinatra snapped his fingers and snared the martini.

He said, "You're prompt." He looked at his lapdogs. He said, "He's prompt, Boys." The lapdogs laughed. The Mex sneered and snickered. I snuck a look at the Lincoln. The big guy in the backseat kept his back to me.

I popped up to the Pontiac coupe. I said, "How's tricks, Frank? Your mother still doing her act with the mule?"

Sinatra sizzled and simmered. Steam stormed out his ears and stung me. He made mincy fists. His martini gla.s.s shot into shrapnel shards.

The lapdogs got lanced. The Mex got minor-league mangled. They shook shards off their shirts and popped puzzled eyes at Il Padrone. The punk patriarch palpitated and p.i.s.sed in his pants. Dig the dip on those gorgeous gabardines!

I said, "I talked to Ava, Frank. She said you were hung like a cashew. I'm running it on the March cover. 's.e.xy Songster Packs Pint-Sized p.e.c.k.e.r, Gorgeous Gardner Sez."

Sinatra fumed and fueled himself into a fugue state. He stuttered, stammered, s...o...b..red, slathered, and came off catatonic. His heart hammered. b.u.t.tons shot off his shirt and sheared me in the shins.

The lapdogs lurched at me. The Mex made machismo-like motions. An LAPD narc ark arced into the lot.

Everybody froze--frustrated and fright-fraught.

John O'Grady jumped out. His paunchy parmer piled out and paused by the pa.s.senger door. The lapdogs listed and almost landed in my lap. Glare glowed and shimmered off their shoulder-holster straps.

Badges--a shiny Sheriff's shield and a BHPD b.u.t.ton. O'Grady said, "LAPD. n.o.body move. n.o.body say a f.u.c.king word."

I looked at the lilac Lincoln. I made the big boy in the back.

Sergeant Bob Duhamel--Beverly Hills PD.

A payola prober propped up in a prime suspect's sled.

The paunchy parmer popped over to the Pontiac. He popped the pa.s.senger door and picked up the bag of boo. O'Grady said, "W/ho's this belong to?"

Sinatra went knock-kneed and pa.s.sed another pa.s.sel of p.i.s.s.

The Mex moaned mumbo jumbo and muttered, "Mierda, mierda."

The lapdogs whipped their coats wide. Sun shafts shot off their shields.

O'Grady ogled them. His eyes shot shield to shield. He said, "Tell me what we've got here, and make it convincing. And tell me why Frank Sinatra just wet his pants."

The lapdogs lowered their eyes. I felt their brainwaves broiling. They brought their eyes up bright and brutally bristling. They slung them slow at the Mex.