A Death In Beverly Hills
'To Hell with the stunt guy. I'll do it myself.' -- I did it all right. Fucked up my back for weeks. Anyway, long story short, never mix Vicodin with two bottles of Fogarty Reserve Cab. Did I trash the place? Yes, I did, and I also paid all the damages the next day. Do I remember what happened?" Travis gave Katz a level stare. "Not a fucking thing. Nada. One minute I'm ordering the appetizer, the next I'm waking up in one of your cells." Travis shook his head. "Taught me a lesson -- never mix pain pills and alcohol."
    Katz looked back at his list. "February of 2000?"
    Travis frowned. "Yeah, I messed up bad on that one. That one's on me. Valentine's day. Clare Cantrell had just moved in with me a couple of weeks before. She was my co-star in Danger Nights . You do a movie like that with a woman like her, built like a you-know-what, and stuff's gonna happen unless you're playing for the other team, which I never was. Anyway, we think it's love or lust or some damn thing and the next thing you know she moves in. Brings her fucking rat dog, and her maid and her dietician and her personal trainer and her life coach and twenty other losers and starts taking over. 'Don't eat red meat', 'Don't drink so much', 'Try my herbal tea,' 'Why are you so mean to Mr. Whiskers?' God damn disaster from day one but the sex was good, so what are you going to do?
    "Let met tell you, by the middle of February I was at the end of my rope. A nice ass can only take you so far. Anyway, I come home, beat, and she starts in, I don't appreciate her, I take her for granted, I didn't bring her anything for Valentine's Day. . . . you get the picture. And she won't shut up. She just keeps going and going and going like the frigging Energizer Bunny!" Travis frowned and threw up his hands. "I snapped, okay? I just snapped."
    "You split her lip and knocked out one of her teeth," Katz said, reading from his file.
    "I just gave her one shot, one little shot, just to shut her up." Travis waved his hands as if to dispel the unpleasant memory. "She tripped. Yeah, I hit her. I admit that, but not hard. She got excited, I don't blame her for that, and she tried to back up and caught her foot on the rug or something and fell against the coffee table. That's how her lip got split and her tooth knocked out. Hell, you know that, Jack" Travis said, turning to Furley.
    Katz glanced sourly at his partner.
    "I've told Simon about being the investigating officer that night," Furley said, embarrassed.
    "Then you know what happened," Travis said to Katz. "Jack did a great job. You've got one hell of a good cop for a partner here. Professional all the way. He got Clare to the hospital, stayed with her, got her calmed down. An hour later she realized that we were both out of line and neither of us needed the bad publicity. She refused to testify and I went to anger management. Best thing I ever did. Changed me, really, I have to admit that. Hey, we're good friends now. I see her all the time on the Drive. Can't even tell which tooth was the one that got knocked out. Glued it back in. Fucking doctors are miracle workers these days." Travis gave Katz a quizzical glance and looked at his watch. "We just started shooting my new project last week, a horror flick but in sort of a Film Noir style, The Boneyard . I'll get you guys passes to the premiere. So, are we all done?"
    Katz glanced at Furley then closed the file. "Yeah, Tom, we're done. If you think of anything else, you give us a call."
    "You bet. Oh-oh," another quick glance at his Patek Philippe, "gotta jet."
    "Tripped on something sticky and fell on something hard?" Katz muttered after Travis had left the room.
    "He hit her with a solid right cross. His ring knocked out the tooth. She figured pressing charges would just cause her grief in the industry and anyway, at most all he'd get would be a slap on the wrist."
    "Well, at least he took an anger management class."
    "Yeah. I wonder how that worked out for him?" Furley mused,

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