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Semper fi, boss. We’ll work out the details at your convenience, and I’ll round up my boys.”
    “And in the meantime? Is there anything you need?”
    Benzedrine was a groin groper. One thing came to mind.
    “My Landing Strip’s got two empty runways tonight. Liz told me you’re conversant with the concept.”
    I heard voices outside the bungalow—male and brazenly brusque. I thought I heard foot scrapes and coughs.
    Crowley said, “Liz explained the concept, so I called you prepared. I’ll send two stenos over.”
    “Mr. Crowley, you’re a pisser.”
    “It takes one to know one, sir.”
    We hung up. I heard the voices again. A key-in-lock noise followed. I walked into the living room. The door opened wide.
    William H. Parker.
    Two plainclothes bulls. Maladroit mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.
    “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
    I unpinned my badge and tossed it at Parker. It hit his chest and dropped on the floor. The mastiffs moved. Parker gestured Get back . The mastiffs pawed the carpeting.
    I unhooked my gun belt and dropped it on a chair. I called up some cool. Freon Freddy, the Shaman of Shakedown.
    “Hit me, Bill. Shack jobs, living above my means, bending the rules here and there. My head’s on the chopping block, baby. Guillotine me.”
    The mastiffs smirked smug. Pious Parker parsed out a grin.
    “You are currently engaged in an intimate relationship with a Pan American stewardess named Barbara Jane Bonvillain, now in federal custody for possession of narcotics procured in Mexico. I must inform you that the outsized Miss Bonvillain is a Communist agent and a personal emissary of Marshal Tito, the Red boss of Yugoslavia. As if that weren’t enough, Miss Bonvillain is really a man. She underwent a sex-change operation in Malmö, Sweden, in late 1951, before her stellar efforts impersonating a woman at the ’52 Olympics. You fucked a man, Freddy. You’re a homo. Get the hell off my police force.”
    *  *  *
      “You’re a homo.”
    “You’re a homo.”
    “You fucked a man.”
    “You fucked a man.”
    “You’re a homo, you’re a homo, you’re a homo.”
    I drank myself into a stunned stupor. I passed out on the floor. I got intimate with insects inhabiting the rug. They were dung desperadoes. They were my filthy fellow travelers, lower than lice.
    “You’re a homo, you’re a homo, you’re a homo.”
    I drank, I passed out, I woke up. I went eye to eye with a big beetle. We discussed the man-bug metaphysic, infused with frissons from that freaky frog Camus. The beetle explained that life was horrifically happenstance and that we were all fucked by fate. Bugs were bid by biology to live off larvae and leaves. Men were massacred by lascivious lust and bumbled into bed with he-shes. You didn’t know that she was a he. Hit your bennie stash and find your way out of this funk.
    I obeyed the beetle. The Benzedrine outrevved the booze. I talked shit with the beetle for hours. We went feeler to feeler on the floor.
    I called Abe Adelman at the State License Bureau. I promised him two G’s for PI’s ducat, quicksville. I bid the beetle adieu and climbed back into my civvies. I drove straight to the Hollywood Ranch Market.
    L.A. looked like Pompeii, post-earthquake. The summer sun skimmed the sky and scattered death rays. Hes were shes and shes were hes and the most gorgeous girls were gargoyles. I got to the market and ran up to my office. Jimmy was scanning the August Lowdown .
    He said, “You’re wigged out, Freddy.”
    I said, “I’ve been talking to a bug.”
    “What did he tell you?”
    “Some shit you wouldn’t believe.”
    “I would . It’s the basis of our friendship. We tell each other shit the world wouldn’t believe.”
    I smiled. “Tell me something typical. I’ve had a jolt. I need to get my feet back under me.”
    “The barman at the Manhole is pushing horse.”
    “I’ll file it away in case I need him.”
    Jimmy