But he truly knew better and so did his heart. His heart beat in step with each click of her heels and his sweaty palms strangled the steering wheel he sat rigidly behind. Though his car’s engine idled smoothly, his heart and his mind were agitated and indignant. Anger and lust dangerously commingled.
He willed her to stop and face her comeuppance. And she did. They did.
The first fuckin’ dyke bitch touched the other one’s arm. She then said something to her and the other one nodded. Then the clicking heels with the attitude clicked back toward the car they had left and he knew it was now, man, or never.
His sweating hands steered the car into an easy U-turn. The car entered the street entrance of the hotel’s guest parking lot. The one fuckin’ dyke bitch unlocked the car while the other stood in the entrance of the hotel and smiled a longing dyke smile. But he knew it would do her no fuckin’ dyke good.
The smell of the smoke in the air drew Clymenthia’s attention upward and she remembered. The fires in Malibu were still out of hand. She said a silent prayer for the beach community and thanked her lucky stars for all that had been given to her.
And then she looked over.
“Come on, baby, what’s taking you so long?” she mumbled to herself, suddenly realizing how bad she had to pee. Jeanette was a stickler and Clymenthia loved her for that, but when you gotta go, you gotta go. The notes Jeanette went back to the car to get didn’t need to be read in the car.
“Read ’em in the room, baby, read ’em in the room.”
With a sigh Jeanette was more than familiar with, Clymenthia started across the lot briskly, squeezing her thighs tightly with every quick step.
As she got closer to the car she could see that Jeanette was not inside and nowhere to be found. She wondered out loud, “How the hell did she get past me?”
She hightailed it back to the hotel lobby and found the ladies’ lounge. She knew she would never have made it up to the room.
What she did not know was that in a previous half moment a man set on vengeance and payback for crimes uncommitted had pulled up next to Jeanette, dazed her with a single blow, dragged her into his car, and disappeared into a night that would witness the evil some men do.
Chapter Twenty-one
Jeanette Bell awoke with that short heaving that comes with I the terror of not knowing what is happening, yet knowing that whatever it is, it is wrong. She was bent over the hood of a gray Nissan Altima, her hands bound before her by the strap of her purse that she clutched tightly with each brutal plunge.
His hand quickly covered her mouth and her nose when she tried to scream, and she could hardly breathe, but he did not care. He cursed at her and laughed viciously as he slammed into her like a battering ram over and over and over until her rectum bled.
Through all of the pain she bit at his hand, wrestled back and forth, struggled up and down, straddled on the hood, fought on her stomach, slammed the back of her head in his face, but against the 260-pound sex-maddened animal, it was futile. He delighted in the pain that his ten inches gave her and when he finally came he howled and shivered and rammed her with a violence that bruised her ribs.
Spent, satisfied, and exhausted, he fell on top of her. The impact sent a sharp shivering pain through her chest.
He finally got up off her. Then he grabbed her by the hair and flung her to the ground. She was too injured to scream out, though the pain demanded it, even as she rolled in the rocky dirt, her hands still bound together by the strap of her purse.
He looked over at her and laughed as he rolled the cum-filled, blood-and-excrement-covered condom down his still-dripping dick. He then threw it at her.
“Now I’m yo’ biggeth nightmare, bith!” he growled with a lisp like a school-yard bully as he pulled his pants up and zipped them, never taking his eyes off the battered and disheveled woman heaped like a discarded rag doll on the ground before him, torn clothes everywhere.
He then wiped at his brow and shook his bald head at the battle he had barely won. He didn’t really want to, or so he told himself, but he had to beat her while he fucked her because she fought back so fiercely. Fought like a banshee. And when he finished with her he was huffing and puffing like he’d just gone ten rounds.
He then shook his bald head and felt for his ten inches, making sure that they were still there.
And then for the first time he noticed the salty taste in his mouth and the whistling breeze through the new gap in his mouth that created the lisp. He dabbed at his mouth gingerly and felt the fresh snaggletooth, then looked down at his fingers and saw the blood.
“You fuckin’ raggedy-atth bith!” He growled at her sprawled on the ground. “You knocked out my fuckin’ teeff!” His eyes burned into her as he advanced with his bloody fist balled.
Desperately she scooted away, kicking dust in his path.
“Oh, yo gone get yo’ atth whupped now.”
And just as he reached her, a cloud of dust between them, he saw the flash and heard the blast that caught him in the shoulder and spun him around. The rat-tat-tat-tat-tat then stung each of his ass cheeks, and exploded his ball sacks. Five distinct pops danced his hell-destined torso round in a minstrelsy circle of unbearable pain until he grimaced and was facing the woman he’d raped, her purse in one hand and a small-caliber pistol smoking in the other. His eyes bulged like Buju Banton getting fucked by rough dick for the first declared time. Through the shock and pain he caught sight of the vengeance in her unblinking eyes. Then he caught sight of that final squeeze of the trigger as his whole miserable life flashed before him.
And the last thing he swore that he saw was the bullet coming right at his face. The last thing he swore that he felt was the explosion in his forehead that crossed his eyes and froze them in place as he fell to his suddenly manless man knees, as if hastened to a piteous punk prayer before smashing facedown in the dirt that engulfed his stank brandy-soaked corpse in a billow of dust.
Jeanette was so angry she shivered. She threw up and created a puddle of vomit and blood. Some poured down her neck. She wiped at the smear with maddening defiance.
And then for the first time that night she cried.
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-two
Early-morning joggers discovered the body of Ramon Jesse Alexander in a remote clearing across the street from Sony Pictures Studios. Culver City Police detective Edetta Franklin had gone over the crime scene thoroughly. Three days later the forensics report was on her desk. The blood on the discarded condom found at the scene—a condom that contained the victim’s semen—was determined to be that of a woman. Heel marks in the dirt concurred. The amount of blood mixed with vaginal and anal secretions suggested trauma. The puddle of blood and vomit was further evidence. Trauma suggested rape, rape valiantly fought against. The tooth on the ground and the victim’s fresh snaggletooth made the detective tense with an anger and pride of her own. “Right on, girl,” she muttered under her breath, believing the rape victim fought strong and hard before likely and righteously blowing her rapist’s brains out.
The interview with the dead victim’s wife certainly lent credence to the victim’s brutal aggressiveness with women. Charlene Alexander was stunned by the news. Detective Franklin noticed the bruises on Mrs. Alexander’s face, and suspected spousal abuse. Mrs. Alexander’s strange mixture of sorrow and relief was enough to arouse suspicion, but the fact that she was at a midnight tarry service, corroborated by her minister and fellow congregants, at the time the coroner determined her husband was killed spared her the accusatory finger.
Mrs. Alexander informed Detective Franklin that the last time she saw her husband was when he left with his running buddy, Tyler Martin, for the race track.
There was no love lost between Tyler Martin and Charlene Alexander. Ramon was the rope they tugged in opposite directions, both knowing they were attracted and repelled by Ramon, both masochists in love.
The next day Detective Franklin interrogated a clueless Tyler Ma
rtin, shocking him with the news Charlene Alexander did not bother informing him of. He was shocked and saddened, but not grief-stricken.
In fact he felt a morose relief. Since their days in the service together, as marines in the Gulf War, Tyler had always had a sexual attraction to Ramon that he fought hard to successfully mask. And he hated himself for the feelings he had—feelings when sharing the open shower in the middle of the desert, feelings when Ramon masturbated relentlessly to Playboy and pinups in the pup tent they shared, when Ramon gave him those tight brotha man hugs. It didn’t help matters that Ramon had saved his life during a massive mortar attack. Tyler would forever be beholden to the war hero who turned him on to the point of distraction.
But now it was over: befriending a sexy sociopath who had no other friends, trying to repay an unpayable debt to an asshole, aching desires for someone who brought such pain and misery to so many.
It was over. It was a strange relief.
“How’d it happen?” Tyler asked the detective flatly.
“What time did you two leave Hollywood Park?” Detective Franklin asked, ignoring his question.
“Four, four-thirty. Somewhere around that. Right after the fourth race.”
“And from there?”
“We stopped at the Living Room over on Adams and Crenshaw. Had a few drinks.”
“Then?”
“We ended up over on La Brea. We see all these people going into Eso Won, so it’s like all these fine women, so we pull up and go in, and they’re having this book signing for some bull dag—”
Detective Franklin’s pen stopped, but she didn’t look up. Tyler caught himself. He proceeded cautiously.
“…ah, so, like, we go in, and after awhile, he starts hittin’ on this sista that ain’t feelin’ him, ’cause, you know, she’s, well, you know, not feeling him.”
“Go on.”
“So, like, we hang there for a while. Then, after it’s over, I leave.”
“Alone.”
“Yes.”
“You and Mr. Alexander didn’t leave together?”
“No.”
“But you were riding together.”
“I needed to get outta there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things were gettin’ tense. Ramon was like gettin’ into his thing and I didn’t wanna be around when the explosion happened. I mean, he can be a kinda not-nice person—well I guess not anymore, huh? So I hopped on a bus.”
“What do you mean about the explosion, him not being a nice person?”
“Ramon was never used to women telling him no. He didn’t care if they was gay or not.”
“About this woman he was hitting on. Do you remember anything about her?”
“Yeah, sure. I mean, she was like fine as all git-out, but hard, not hard lookin’, but attitude-wise; definitely a hater when it comes to the brothas. And it was obvious that she and the sista who was reading had a thing going on.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The way they looked at each other, like a dude and his woman look at each other.”
Chapter Twenty-three
There was a characteristic chill in the San Francisco mid-morning air, but Jeanette Bell, aching from her injuries and slow-bourgeoning guilt-laced anger, was warmed by Clymenthia’s reassurance and love.
“Baby, he got exactly what he deserved,” Clymenthia said to her again, with a bedtime-story kind of soothing. “If I had been there, I would have done worse. Or better.”
In their suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, they dressed quietly and slowly for the reading and signing at A Different Light Bookstore in the city’s Castro district. The night before, Clymenthia had read and signed at Marcus Books in Oakland. The evening before that, signings and readings in La Jolla and Sacramento brought out hundreds of Teager fans. Despite Clymenthia’s protests and desire to end the tour, Jeanette would not allow the devastating events in Culver City to interfere with the last swing of the tour.
Dr. Eleanor Jamison, the physician Jeanette and Clymenthia sought down in L.A. the day after the rape, had been shocked by the bruised rib and facial and anal abrasions as she conducted her examination.
“What happened, Jeanette?” the doctor asked without looking up from her probe.
“It was just one of those things that got out of hand.”
The doctor said little more, but surmised all too well what had happened. “You should report this,” she finally suggested.
“There’s nothing to report except a wild night that got out of hand.”
“With a man.”
“With a man.”
Dr. Jamison had cleaned Jeanette’s wounds and had given her a prescription for pain, along with a final gentle plea.
“Don’t let this go, Jeanette.”
If only the doctor could have known. It had not been let go. It had been dealt with.
Chapter Twenty-four
Dee Dempsey-Bohannon felt blessed and cursed. Life really had been very good to her, but she longed for more. She was still trying to convince herself that divorcing Kevin was the right thing to do, although no better man could be found or desired. But she had not been brought up to settle. This was the affinity she shared with her favorite writer, Clymenthia Teager. Settling was not an option.
Settling for a long-distance marriage was not an option.
That morning she had received a call from Kevin, who was shooting a Lifetime TV movie in Toronto. He missed the sound of her voice and just wanted to check up on her, make sure she was all right. Kevin was always just a phone call a way. That was the problem. One of the television industry’s few A-list black directors, Kevin Bohannon spent more time on location than at home. He worked hard to give Dee a good material life, even as his hard work often deprived her of his physical affection.
But no matter where he was, Kevin always managed to call Dee every day when he was away.
Still, that wasn’t good enough for Dee. In the beginning she found herself hanging out with the other desperate Hollywood wives, who substituted their absentee husbands with Beverly Hills shopping sprees, Palm Springs spa visits, designer drugs, too much booze, pool boys, and tennis pros. The shopping sprees and husbandless spa trips began to bore her; she was too health-conscious and looks-conscious for anything more than the occasional drink. And drugs, like infidelity, were simply not her thing. Lovemaking with Kevin had spoiled her. She missed that almost as much as she missed his caring smile, his loving-kindness, and his manly gentleness.
On more than one occasion she wondered why the hell she discarded such a good man. And then she thought about who she was and what she believed. She did not settle.
How ironic that she had begun a friendship and was spending the afternoon with a woman who had clearly settled.
“He’s got some little bimbo bitch on the side,” Selma Fant groused as she swaggered toward her bar with their empty glasses, “which is just fine with me. The councilman and I haven’t made love in years.”
“No more for me, Selma,” Dee protested. Selma ignored the protest and prepared two doubles.
The doorbell rang and Selma was in no shape to make the long and winding trek out of the family room, past the library, through the living room and foyer, to the front door.
“Want me to get that?”
“Would you, hon?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” Selma saluted her as she half drained her fresh glass.
Just as Dee entered the foyer the doorbell rang again and she could see through the door’s glass window two police officers, who, when she opened the door, removed their hats.
“Mrs. Fant?” the shorter one asked. The taller one stood silent, trying his best not to look down at the ground.
“Ah, no, Officer, she’s in the back,” Dee said with a touch of concern. “I’m a friend. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Actually, ma’am, I need to speak with Mrs. Fant.”
“Please, come in
,” Dee responded, ushering them in, closing the door behind them. Concern was poorly masked in her voice. “Right this way.”
She led them through the house into the family room, where Selma was smiling at her empty glass.
“Selma?” Dee alerted her gently. “These officers need to speak with you.”
Selma looked up and saw the two handsome men, stunning in their crisp black uniforms and their gold and silver badges.
“Gentlemen,” she declared with a proud and slushy grin, “how may I help you?”
“Mrs. Fant,” the short one began with hesitation in his voice, “I’m afraid I have bad news.” The proud slushy grin froze on Selma Fant’s face.
“It’s your husband, Mrs. Fant…”
Slowly her glassy eyes stretched wide and the grin went grotesque. Her hands were now trembling as she reached back with one. And what Selma now knew was what Dee now knew. Dee took her friend’s trembling hand firmly. And as Selma’s body began to tremble as well, Dee brought Selma into her embrace; held her up, for she had weakened and could not stand up on her own. The trembling erupted into near-violent shaking. Tears burst from the Norma Desmond–stretched eyes and something low and foreboding rumbled out from the now grotesque grin.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” the short officer said as Selma wailed in Dee’s arms.
The Malibu fires had raged nonstop for four days. Palatial homes deep in the hilltop bush had been completely consumed while dumbfounded wildlife succumbed cruelly to smoke and flames. When the fires were finally contained and workers were able to go in and assess the damage, their worst fears were realized. Human life had been lost as well. The number was thirteen and counting. Councilman Felton G. Fant and his girlfriend were two of them.
Chapter Twenty-five
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