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blazer. He shrieked insults in Tagalog. They assuredly pertained to my mother.
    He pirouetted and parried. We were in knife-fight tight. I risked a ripe stab wound and roundhoused him to the head. My sap hit him full force.
    The seams ripped his face. The business end tore an eyebrow loose and smashed in his nose. He dropped the knife. I kicked it away. I grabbed his neck and squelched a scream. The deep-fry dipper was a few feet away. It was spitting hot grease and spuds Lyonnaise.
    I dragged him over. I stuck his knife hand in the grease and French-fried it. I thought of all the Japs I would have killed if I hadn’t spent the war stateside.
    He screamed. It was brigades of torched Japs on Saipan. I held his hand in the grease and burned it to the bone. Spatters hit my London Shop shirt.
    I dropped his hand. I walked to the locker, grabbed the pictures, and flipped through them. Liberace Goes Greek—Kodacolor prints and negatives.
    Sanchez screamed and careened through the kitchen. He overturned a dish rack and spastic-bounced off the walls. His hand was charbroiled. I saw flesh fall off the fingers.
    *  *  *
    The night was young. I was five thou to the good and hopped up on blood and aggression. Revelation ripped me. I knew I could mix my own fruit shakes. I decided to keep two of the negatives.
    A call to R&I delivered the dish on the smut-film troika. The boys shared a pad in Silver Lake and a bent for things sex-soiled and seditious. Semper fi —they met in the Marine Corps and ran rackets out of a bondage bar down in Dago. They sold forged green cards, peddled Spanish fly, led Rotary groups to TJ for the mule act. Their bestselling item: dildo replicas of Donkey Don’s 16-inch whanger.
    They fell in the shit in ’50. They sold Spanish fly to a high-school nympho and promised her a date with Donkey Don. The Donkster reneged. The nympho impaled herself on the gearshift of a ’46 Buick and hemorrhaged. San Diego PD filed assault one. The judge tossed the case. A ripe rumor: he was one of Race Rockwell’s regular tricks.
    Their pad was a little wood-frame job overrun by bougainvillea. I rang the bell at 23:00 and got no answer. A loose window screen gave me quick access. I crept flashlight-first and inventoried.
    The boys possessed Nazi armbands, Mickey Spillane novels, and combat-pinned Marine blues. Barbells, camera and lighting gear, nudist-colony mags going back to ’36. Souvenir snapshots from the Klub Satan, Tijuana, New Year’s ’48. Ticket stubs from the Manuel Ortiz–Harold Dade fight. A promotional contract for a nigger stumblebum named Junior “Knockout” Wilkins.
    I walked out to the porch. I brought a pint of the boys’ Old Crow with me. I recognized the ribbons on their uniforms. I was training troops in Parris Island while they stormed Guadalcanal.
    I sipped bourbon. I got a light load on. A jalopy pulled up at 1 a.m. The boys piled out and made for the door.
    I whipped out my badge and held my flashlight beam on it. It was très dark out. I couldn’t see them cringe and capitulate. I imagined it, ghoul-like.
    “My name’s Fred Otash. You’re going into business with me.”
    *  *  *
    Exuberant extortionist, enterprising entrepreneur. A round-the-clock roundelay as I licked my lips for Liz.
    I got half-gassed with the lads and laid down the law: 20 percent of your smut biz in trade for police protection. And—you’re now the naughty nucleus of Fred O.’s stud farm. Get ready to bring the brisket to some housewives in heat.
    Donkey Don laid a ladle of bennies on me. I buzzed through a tour of duty downtown. I broke up a fistfight at the Jesus Saves Mission. I chased a raft of Red agitators out of Pershing Square. I popped a whip-out man at the Mayan Theater. I busted a high-spirited kid setting winos on fire with a blowtorch.
    My tour of duty tapped down. I went by the criminal-courts building and read up on divorce law. I reserved a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and scrounged