DOWN a DARK ALLEY

By Will the Thrill Viharo

To my pal Brian - you'll always be King of the Hill in my book. Thanks for the support.

ONE

The night Johnny Varga met Helen Black was no different from his usual nocturnal routine. On his way to the corner market, he ducked down the dark alley behind it just to see what lurked in the shadows. His life was so boring he almost wanted danger to grab him by the throat and beat him to a pulp. As usual, he was disappointed. Until, that is, he walked into the market and met Helen.

Johnny nodded at the friendly Indian dude behind the counter as he walked in and immediately headed for the Macaroni and Cheese. He was wondering whether he had enough milk at home for the Macaroni mix as well as his Wheaties in the morning when a sudden, obstreperous noise shattered his contemplation.

"Give me all your fucking money and give it to me now!"

Spouting this demand was a shapely, attractive young girl with bleached blond hair. Johnny guessed correctly that she was about twenty-four, with little formal education but plenty of street savvy. She was acting alone, without benefit of a mask to conceal her identity from the camera, which she decided in a belated afterthought to destroy, pumping two well-aimed bullets from her .357 with a grace and ease that impressed Johnny and the Indian in completely different ways.

Johnny was in love, the Indian was not.

Trying to act cool despite an obviously bad case of the shakes, the Indian popped open the cash register and handed Helen a grand total of two hundred dollars and seventy-two cents. "You gotta be fuckin' kiddin" me," she said.

"That is all I have here," the Indian assured her nervously.

"Don't you have a safe or something?" Helen barked.

"Yes. It is at home."

Helen's trigger finger fidgeted nervously.

"Well...where do you live?"

"In my apartment." The Indian was hoping he could kill time rather than vice versa.

"Don't be a fuckin' wiseass, man, I'll blow you away in the blink of fuckin' eye. Don't think I won't."

This was Miami. The Indian believed her and cut the comedy. In the meantime Johnny was inching closer to the object of his newfound fascination. In her peripheral vision, Helen sensed his presence and quickly swung her weight around behind the .357 so Johnny's forehead was the bullseye, just above his black horn-rimmed glasses. Johnny stopped dead in his tracks, but he was too much in awe of her to fear her.

"You can kill me if you want," he said. "My life's a mess anyway. But before you do, I just wanted you to know...I think you're, you're..."

"What? What?" He was starting to scare her, a little. She wondered if he was from the psychological wing of the local SWAT team, trying to talk her down to size. Either that, or he was insane.

"I think you're the most beautiful girl I've met in Miami."

At least he was a charming wacko, Helen thought. Then she sensed movement behind the counter and swerved toward the Indian in time to take a bullet from his .44 in the arm. As she fell back into the candy display she squeezed the trigger of the .357 three times. The first bullet exploded behind the Indian, shattering several bottles of Wild Turkey. The second hit the cash register, blowing it into a twisted heap of metal on the floor behind the counter. The third bullet hit the Indian, quite by accident since she was shooting out of blind agony, squarely in the chest, bursting his heart like a coconut dropped from a. skyscraper. A trail of blood and money was left in the wake of the shootout as Helen staggered outside. Sirens wailed in the distance immediately, probably for something else, but still.

Johnny was momentarily frozen with shock, but he put it together fast enough to assess the hopelessness of the Indian's fatal situation and the precarious predicament of his dream girl. He rushed out after her. "Come my place isn't far from here," he said, putting his faded aloha shirt over her shoulders, and she bled all over his white tank top T-shirt beneath. She looked quite pale in the light of the full moon, and she was shivering despite the warm, humid Florida air. He led her past the dark alley behind the market, and he shivered as well.

TWO

Johnny Varga was stuck in a perpetual state of Virtual Unreality. While the rest of humanity swarmed around him in a frenzied blur, Johnny felt like he was waiting alone on a platform for a train that may only be a rumor, but he already had his ticket. Since he was afraid if he went to take a leak or something the alleged train would come and go without him, he just stood there, waiting for a phantom Choo- choo that may never come to take him to a place that may not even exist, except in his dreams.

It was around two-thirty A.M., and Helen was passed out cold on his sofa, bleeding all over the carpet. But the 1949 film noir Gun Crazy was on TCM, and Johnny had been looking forward to it all week, so he flipped it on and pretended he wasn't fascinated by the chiaroscuro mayhem while he tended to his wounded angel. Johnny had read enough crime novels and seen enough late night crime flicks to know how to dress a gunshot wound. He tied one of his favorite old T-shirts - the one with "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" on the front - around her shoulder to stop the blood flow while he gingerly cleaned the wound with grain alcohol, which was when she had passed out with a scream. The bullet had passed right through her arm, so at least he didn't have to deal with that aspect of the operation. Still, she was in bad shape, and would need professional medical attention in the morning.

In the meantime, he whipped up his Macaroni and Cheese dinner after changing his undershirt, tossing the blood soaked one in the trash with a mixture of relief and pride. As it turned out, he didn't have enough milk for breakfast. After all that, he'd left without the milk, which he could've taken for free, he realized.

Johnny stayed up for most of the movie and then dozed off on the floor beside the couch until dawn, when a loud moan from Helen snatched him out of dreamland, or nightmareville, since Johnny almost never had pleasant dreams while asleep. Only while he was awake.

He got up and put on some coffee. Her eyes were still closed, and she looked like a vampire in an open casket, which kind of turned Johnny on, since he had always loved those bosomy, ivory skinned vampire babes in those old Hammer horror flicks. He flipped on the radio which was terminally tuned to the oldies station, just in time for the Suicide Soundtrack, featuring, in the words of the snide DJ, "all the hits that made you want to slit your wrists." Today's slit list included "Nights in White Satin," "Do You Know Where You're Going To?" "Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word," "The Way We Were," and a special tribute to the "Minstrels of Misery," Simon and Garfunkel. It was all Johnny could do not to bust out sobbing as he gazed upon Helen's fading beauty while listening to these melancholy melodies, which brought back painful memories of all those junior high school girls who turned his love into poison. His young life had felt like one long Roy Orbison song. Now, as an aspiring novelist of thirty-five, his past was behind him. The future beckoned brightly. The present, however, still sucked. But as Helen opened her large lovely eyes for the first time since the dark distant night, Johnny felt a surge of hope.

"What the fuck happened?" she said in her soft, girlish voice.

"You don't remember?" Johnny said, offering her a coffee in his collectible tiki mug from the Mai Kai up in Fort Lauderdale.

With great difficulty she sat up and looked around the small studio apartment, "I remember...ohhh SHIT! Ow! Fuck! My arm."

"What?"

"It hurts, god damn it. Who're you anyway?

"Johnny. Johnny Varga."

"Johnny Varga? What're you, a fuckin' cowboy or a private eye?"

"Sounds like it, huh? I guess my mother had a flair for the dramatic. She liked movies."

"Where is she now?" Helen sipped the coffee greedily.

"Gone," Johnny murmured.

"Where?" she said with suspicion.

"Heaven, I hope."

Helen rolled her yes. "Yea, right. Prob'ly. You can only go up from this fuckin' world, that's for sure."

"So what's your name?" Johnny asked her.

"Helen Black."

"Oh yea? Nice. Where're your folks?"

Helen shrugged. "Beats the shit outta me. I was adopted."

"Really? Nice folks?

"I was State raised, stupid. Found my ass in a trash can. You got anything to eat around this rat trap or what?'

"Yea...want some toast?"

"Sure." Her blood sugar was already being perked up by the coffee, liberally dosed with Hazelnut flavored cream. Suddenly she was chattering away the neurotic guest on a celebrity talk show. This isn't the first time I've been shot, y'know," she said. "It ain't no big fucking deal or anything.You mind if I make a call?"

"Sure," Johnny handed her the phone. "Who ya gonna call?"

"I'm going to call El Doctor. He makes house calls." She dialed slowly, finding hard to focus. Johnny was perplexed, as usual.

"El Doctor, you said?" She stared at him like he was a retarded child.

"Yea, right. El Doctor. He's Cuban, so we call him that."

"We?"

"Can the questions for now, okay? I feel dizzy - Hello?" Helen proceeded to speak in a staccato streak of Spanish, which really impressed Johnny, who only knew a few bad words from immigrant dishwashers in the restaurants he worked in while living in Los Angeles. Helen could do anything. And this wasn't the first bullet she had stopped! What a woman.

During the conversation, Helen picked up an unopened bill on the coffee table and translated the address into Spanish. Johnny didn't interrupt. She hung up after two intensely verbal minutes. "He'll be right over. Mind if I take a quick one?"

"Sure. A quick what, though - ?"

"Shower, what else? Blowjob?"

"Oh, oh.Okay. Yea, help yourself..."

Despite her valiant efforts to the contrary, she was still quite weak from the blood loss, and as she stood, up, she wavered and fell into his arms.

"You had that planned, didn't you?" she said. "Just help me into the shower, okay? I'll take it from there."

With her unwounded arm draped around his shoulders, Johnny walked Helen slowly to the shower, which he turned on while she sat on the toilet. The steam began fogging up his black rimmed glasses, which he took off and cleaned. He kept planning to get contacts and never wished he had them more than now. She was wearing a halter-top that featured a broken strap, which went sexily with her cutoff jeans and open toed snakeskin high heels. Dressed to kill. It didn't take much for her to finish taking off the halter-top. She simply let the other strap slide down her shoulder and the wiggled out of it, along with her cutoffs. She was not wearing any panties. All this was accomplished as Johnny was adjusting the water temperature. When he turned to help her into a standing position, she was already nude and ready.

"I'm barin' to go, Johnny," she said with a wan smile. "Help me in, will you?And stick around in case I fall. I don't want to pass out and brain myself on the fuckin' tile."

Consumed with desire, Johnny couldn't muster any words, so he simply followed orders with restrained resolve. He tried hard not to touch her breasts, much less look at them, as he helped her into the water and stood her up, but his massive erection was distracting him from any noble concentration.

The shower revived her energy somewhat, but Johnny never left her side, and he took off his shirt so he wouldn't get it soaked. This was the most erotic action he'd seen in over a year, and he was relishing every wet, wild minute of it.

"This is the first shower I've had in a week," Helen giggled. She held her wounded arm out of the water. Johnny felt a strange urge to kiss it, the bandaged arm, that is, but he he held back, unsure how she'd take it. The woman knew how to shoot, after all.

Five surreal minutes flowed by until Helen asked Johnny to help her out of the shower. She stumbled and sat awkwardly on the toilet seat. "Dry me off," she ordered him, and he obliged her without hesitation.

This is so film noir, he was thinking to himself. A true-blue gun moll in his bathroom, naked as sin, and with a tattoo! He noticed it as he was delicately drying her left boob. Just beneath the breast was a small broken heart. Before he could ask her about the significance of this tattoo, a loud knock on the front door disrupted his thought.

"Cops!" He shouted fearfully.

"Probably just El Doctor," Helen said to him calmly. "He lives in Little Havana, I called him on his cell, and he picked right up, lucky for me. He was right in the middle of fucking a nurse in his car, too. That's where he fucks a lot of chicks, since he's married. I fucked him there once, I should know."

Johnny lost his erection, which was a good thing since he didn't want to answer the front door with a raging boner anyway. He put his faded aloha shirt back on as Helen finished drying herself off and then he went to answer the door with mild trepidation.

THREE

El Doctor wasn't nearly as formidable as Johnny had anticipated. He was only about five four with a pot belly, balding cranium and thick glasses.He had a thick moustache and a macho swagger, however, sporting white slacks and a bright orange "Cubavera" shirt. "Hello, may I please see Lady Scarf ace please?" he said to Johnny with a gleaming grin, holding his medical bag out in front of him for I.D. purposes, apparently. Doctor didn't wait for Johnny to respond. He brushed past him and looked for Helen, who walked out of the bathroom with the towel draped around her curvaceous body.

El Doctor greeted her with a bear hug and then helped her to the couch, where she removed the towel and spread herself elegantly in a supine position, like a sex-crazed patient trying to seduce her horny shrink. El Doctor immediately to work on her arm, while Johnny stood impassively watching, trying not imaginethis swarthy little mole burrowing into Helen's hand-basket with slimy gusto.

While Johnny was watching this bizarre operation, the crack El Doctor reference to Helen, calling her "Lady Scarface," came back to him. Lady Scarface was not the name he had given his dream girl in the past. Suddenly Johnny found himself pining for the company of Loretta Lynx, the beautiful sociopathic waitress at Wolfie's Deli, who had given Johnny nothing but frostbite and inspiration since their one and only date several months back. At least Loretta was relatively normal - neurotic, vicious, a garden variety fruitcake, yes, but at least she wasn't criminally insane. Unless he counted the death promise she had given Johnny should he ever call her house again. But that had been an idle threat, made in the heat of passion. It wasn't like she knocked over five-and-dimes for change then whacked out the hapless owner in an impromptu shootout. Loretta Lynx didn't even know that the film version of The Untouchables with Kevin Costner was based on the TV series, not the other way around. That's how out of touch she was with actual crime. Johnny wanted to go see her now at the Deli, since she worked the breakfast shift today, and as far as he knew no restraining orders had been put into effect. Besides, he still had her death threat saved on his voice mail, made while he was saving lives as a 911 trouble shooter. As long as he saved that message, he had her. If his body ever turned up somewhere, the cops would hear that message, and book her for Murder One. Even if Helen had been the actual shooter. Life is beautiful, Johnny thought to himself. Everything was falling into place at last. Why worry?

"This is all over the news today," El Doctor said to Helen.

Johnny's momentary spell was broken by this revelation.

"The killing, I mean.It's in the Herald."

"So? I've made the paper before," Helen shrugged non-chalantly.

"Not by name, Lady Scarface."

Johnny wished he would stop calling her that. He preferred to think of her more as a Robin Hoodette or something.

"What?" she shrieked. "I shot the shit out of that camera, man. They got nothin'on me! How the hell could I be fingered?"

"There were two cameras," El Doctor said. "Everyone in this town is paranoid, you know that. How could you be so fucking careless? Why did you have to shoot him?"

"'Cause! It was just like that narc I blew away in the Everglades, man. Self-defense. You know me - I'm no glory shooter. I just take care of myself".

"But why did you need money so badly you had to rob a fucking grocery? I would've lent you the money, you know that. Why didn't you just call - "

"I owed somebody, okay? I was just gonna strong-arm the idiot before he started fucking shooting at me! What an asshole - he'd blow my sweet juicy ass away for two hundred bucks! Ask Johnny if you don't believe me."

El Doctor turned and looked at Johnny, who felt his future sliding into a black bottomless abyss as he listened to this conversation. "Is true? He shot first?"

Johnny nodded dumbly.

"Turn yourself in, then, and beat the rap," El Doctor said to Helen as he finished dressing her wound. "I'll get our number one top lawyer on it. No time. Maybe a blowjob for the judge."

"Fuck that!" Helen yelled, her large pointy breasts jiggling with indignation. "I ain't no slut, I keep telling you!" Helen sat up and draped the towel around her with a sudden burst of modesty. "I'll just leave town till this clears up. I'll stay with Tony or Vinnie, one of my old Mob boyfriends. They'll take care of me."

"Tony and Vinnie are married now? Conjo, what a mess."

Helen's almond shaped, deep chocolate brown eyes were wide with shock. "Married? Like to each other?"

"Don't be stupid. They can't just take care of you anymore. It is not like you are still a teenager now. You should act your age, take care of yourself and quit fucking around."

"All those fucking favors I did those assholes, and they can't watch out for me now? Like hell!" Helen reached for the phone, dialed a number, then hung up. "Some bitch answered Tony's place. I used to set up hits for those greasy fuckheads, and they go and get married! Fucks me up! Shit!" She heaved the phone across the room, ripping it from the wall in the process. Johnny flinched, but said nothing. Helen was obviously on a homicidal tirade, and Johnny had noticed the .38 sticking out of El Doctor's rear waistband. He decided to let things cool off before intervening on his behalf.

"Tony and Vinnie live in Lauderdale anyway, which is not far enough," El Doctor said to her as she paced the room like a caged tigress in heat. "If you want to leave town leave the fucking state! We'll go to Mexico together."

"Oh yea? And what will you tell your wife? I'm a patient?"

"That's what I always say! I do house calls, baby, remember?"

"Fuck Mexico. I'd rather go to Hawaii or someplace tropical. Yea right anyway, nice fuckin' dreamin'. Just forget it. I'll just lay low here for awhile till I decide what to do. That okay with you, Johnny?" Before he could answer, she said, "Hey, you got any smokes around here!"

"Uh...no," Johnny said.

"NO? Well, anyplace close you can get some for me?"

"Well...there's the corner market, but I don't think it would be a good Idea for me to go there now - "

"FUCK!" Helen was in a frenzy now.

El Doctor tried to calm her down. "Sit, sit, take it easy, I'll drive a few blocks and pick some up for you. Right now you need to rest. Hey, you got a bed?" El Doctor asked Johnny.

"Yea, you think I sleep on the floor?"

"Tonight you will. Put her in it while I go to the store. I'll be right back. And don't go outside. They may want to talk to you."

Johnny was visibly shaking now, along with his voice. "What? Who Me? Why?"

"Because, you were seen on the camera, helping her escape. They probably think you were an accomplice."

"You gotta be kiddin'."

"Do I look like I'm kidding, amigo?" El Doctor stared into Johnny's eyes with a look of iron, not irony as Johnny had hoped. Yes, his life was ruined, no doubt about it. But at least he could still fix a few things.

"Pick up some milk while you're at it," Johnny told El Doctor.

FOUR

Johnny's couch was a pull-out bed, so he set it up for his new, semi-permanent guest while she paced impatiently, feeling simultaneously feint and furious. Johnny was silent as he made up the bed, wondering how he had gotten into this situation and, more importantly, how he could get the hell out. Nothing in his wettest dreams or wildest nightmares matched this strange scenario. Even that dark alley behind the market had never promised anything so seductively evil in its bleak, black vision. Johnny had been dealt far more than he'd bargained for. He just wanted to live long enough to write his tragic baseball lesbian love story Two Balls and a Dyke, so at least he'd leave something behind besides a stack of unpaid bills, a bloody corpse and a death threat from Loretta Lynx on his voicemail.

"So is that all true?" Johnny asked Helen as she plopped down nude into the sheets and got comfy. She was built like one of those old Fifties men's magazine models - shapely, but soft. Her deep tan only seemed to accentuate her boldly sensuous femininity. Johnny also noticed she had very pretty feet, though the red nail polish was badly chipped. He also fleetingly noticed scars on her stomach, thighs and shoulders, but chose to ignore these flaws.

"What?" she said with a yawn and a stretch.

"You know, about those Mob guys, and setting up hits and killing some guy in the Everglades - "

"I don't want to get into it now, ya mind?"

Suddenly Johnny rose to the occasion. Sitting beside her gently but with a hot disposition, he fumed, "Yea, I mind, for Christ's sake. I do mind, a lot. I saved your god damn life last night when I don't even know you, I'm risking my neck now for now good reason I can make out, and the least you can do is talk to me and not act like the god damn Queen of the Nile who's been wounded in battle and has her fucking slaves to take care of her.Alright? And don't think of telling El Doc-tor or whatever his god damn name is to threaten me, either. I'm no pansy suburban white bread idiot you can play with like a slinky. Now, you can stay here and I'll try to help you if you're, y'know, like, fuckin' nice to me and all. But I'm fed up with letting myself get humiliated by you flaky psychotic bimbos, whether or not you're packing heat. Got it?"

Helen had it, all right. She reached over and kissed her benefactor flush on the lips. "'Bout time you stood up for your rights, Johnny-O. I was beginning to wonder about you."

The kiss had put a damper on Johnny's temper. "Why, 'cause I harbor felons?"

"No - 'cause you take too much crap from 'em. Just relax and get in the bed with me. Take off your clothes and settle down. I'll give you a massage. I was known for them in the old days."

"You mean when you were in the Mob?" Johnny asked with a grin.

"Yep," Helen answered matter-of-factly. "Now strip down before El Doctor gets back with the cigs."

"Does El Doctor have a real name?"

"Sure."

"What?"

"How the hell should I know? What's the dif? Lie down and shut up already."

"It's just that...I get the idea there's something...intimate going on between you two," Johnny said as he fumbled with his fly. "I don't want to jeopardize anything, like my life, if he comes back sees us, y'know, in bed together."

Helen let out a sigh. "Number One: he can go fuck himself if he thinks he can tell me who I can and can't go to bed with. And Two, this is your house and can do what and you want, right? Be a man, remember? Or did you lose your hard-on already?"

Feeling light-headed from lack of sleep, lust and too much excitement, Johnny delved between the sheets after shedding his clothes and glasses, laying in a prone position as Helen began to massage him from the neck down. Even though she had showered, she smelled so...fleshy, Johnny noticed. Earthy. His boner made a comeback and he lay on his stomach and she continued to talk as her surprisingly soft and therapeutic hands relieved the tension he had accumulated over the past three decades.

"After all that, I dropped all the fuckin' money on the way out the door," she sighed. "I got nothin' to show for this. I'm so stupid I can't believe it. Two hundred lousy bucks. Shit, I used to drop more than that at lunch in the good old days. Me an' this guy Tony used to rob this jewelry store on Flagler like once a month, just for kicks. I mean, we could afford to buy the whole fuckin' store, but if we did that, we'd be no better than those rich capitalist creeps in North Miami, living in their penthouses above everything like Hialeah doesn't even exist, or Liberty City. At least I'm honest about who and I what I am. Y'know? I'm no phony asshole who pretends to be something I'm not, like these cops and politicos running around Florida waving the fucking flag in everyone's face while they spit on people like me and you when no one's looking."

"Me and you?"

Helen leaned over and Johnny could feel her nipples grazing his shoulder blades as she whispered in his ear, "Yea...I know you, Johnny. I can tell just by looking at how your place is furnished that you have dreams that didn't come true, that you're just a regular guy trying to get by. Like me."

He briefly considered his apartment décor, too, best described as Target Tropical - cheap bamboo lawn furniture and party tikis were the primary aesthetic. "Like you?"

"What're you, a fuckin' parrot?" She sat back up and continued to rub his tense muscles. "Yea, like me. Me, I've been on my own since I was fourteen years old. That's when I met Tony, then Vinnie. They wanted to marry my ass, but fuck that, I don't want to be owned like a piece of jewelry for them to show off."

"So did you...did you really set guys up to get hit and all?" Johnny was intrigued and incredibly relaxed, intoxicated by her touch and voice. His eyes were closed as he dreamily imagined what he'd just described. His dick was leaking onto his sheets by now.

"Yea, but so what? Only assholes, nobody, you know, decent or anything. Other crooks, just like them."

"How'd you do it though? Set them up, I mean?" He wanted fuel for his fantasies.

"Easy. I lured them under false pretenses, as the saying goes. They thought they were getting one thing, and BANG!, they got another."

"Another kind of bang."

"See? You're not so dumb after all. What a relief. Florida has too many stupid white guys. Look at our fuckin' governor." Helen gently rolled Johnny over onto his back and straddled him as she massaged his pecs. He kept his eyes closed, but she was sitting directly on his boner now. It was truly like a dream. "So you mind if I stay here a while now I'm being so nice?" she cooed.

"Until the cops come breaking in, so yea sure. I'm a lonely guy, except for my cat, that is."

"You got a cat?"

"Yea, why, is that a problem?"

"Only if he tries to sleep on my head. I hate that."

"Just don't shoot him, okay? He's all I have."

She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek, her breasts and hair caressing his smiling face. Then she kissed his ear and meowed and licked the lobe. "Not any more..."

FIVE

El Doctor would have been back sooner had he not been stopped for speeding on the way back from the supermarket. He was so afraid Helen would seduce Johnny in the interim he had even forgotten to buy the milk. The traffic cop, sensing El Doctor's rude urgency, took his sweet time writing out the citation. El Doctor had been doing seventy in a thirty-five MPH residential stretch. The traffic cop proceeded to give the sweat-soaked El Doctor a lecture on the downside of mowing down schoolchildren and elderly pedestrians who might not be able to leap out of the way of oncoming juggernauts. El Doctor cussed to himself in Spanish, but the Miami Beach cop was bi-lingual and picked up every malicious syllable. This inspired the cop to detain El Doctor even further. He discovered El Doctor's registration had expired. It was all El Doctor could do not to pull the .38 out and whack the nuisance on the spot.

Back at his tacky tiki pad, Johnny and Helen were not engaging in fornication, despite the pulsating pressure to do so. Johnny had no condoms, for one thing, and Helen seemed like the type to be carrying more than just a gun. Also, he couldn't keep it up long enough, despite the full body massage they were giving each other, taking turns with various body parts - you rub mine, I'll rub yours. Helen wasn't in the mood for a full-scale performance, anyway - she was still weak and dizzy, and the bandage on her arm made her feel somewhat unsexy. But her instantaneous rapport with Johnny stirred something in her besides the urge to procreate. Could it be her maternal instinct? Helen had been thinking a lot lately about having a kid, if only she could find a suitable father, preferably someone in a legit racket. She didn't want her baby to grow up like she had Johnny seemed so lost and boyish, so desperate for feminine care that Helen imagined him more as her child than as her mate. Except when he turned over on his back - then Helen wondered whether the two could be successfully combined.

"I feel like I'm dreaming," Johnny said, eyes closed, as Helen massaged his inner thighs, teasingly avoiding his genitals, which had taken on a life of their own. "You really are a dream girl, aren't you? Come to life."

"You hardly know me," she purred.

"Don't get carried away."

"I don't even care you're a killer."

"I'm only a killer by accident, y'know. I never meant to hurt anybody. If I hadn't shot that guy, he would've killed me. See how it works?"

"Law of the jungle.The female jungle. That was a movie with Jayne Mansfield - The Female Jungle, it was called."

"I don't see many movies. Too busy living."

"That's good. I've often wondered what it would be like to shoot somebody."

"Oh yea? You have anybody in mind?"

"Yea sure. Lots of people."

"What're you, fuckin' Charles Manson or some shit?"

"No, no. Charlie Brown is more like it. I mean, I could never actually kill somebody, but imagining it is fun sometimes. In slow motion, with music, like Miami Vice."

Helen had his pecker in a Miami vise. But despite his arousal, he didn't come. He kept his eyes closed and kept thinking - about Loretta Lynx.

"Some people imagine killing me, even," he said. His erection went down. Helen pouted but said nothing.

"Your turn," she said, lying on her back, legs wide open. "Do my thighs."

With a groan, Johnny began massaging her legs, still thinking of Loretta Lynx, of the night they made out in this very bed, and she gave him a huge hickey to remember him by, at least until it faded. Then she had abruptly stopped talking to him, leaving him to wonder what wrong button he had pushed, and to second guess her subsequent determination to deflect all advances from him, even friendly ones. Women.

Then Johnny again noticed the broken heart tattoo-beneath Helen's left breast. "Hey...can I ask you something personal?" Which felt like an odd question, with her wide open beaver poised in front of him like the web of the black widow.

"Shoot," she said. One track mind.

"That tattoo of the broken heart...what's the story behind it?"

Helen frowned, but kept her eyes closed, "What do you care?"

"Just curious. It seems like your soft spot. Tough broad like you, and you got a tattoo of a broken heart under your boob. Why - someone broke your heart once?"

"You should be a detective. No kidding."

"So I'm right, then?"

"What do you want, a fuckin' prize? This ain't a game show."

"All right, forget it, if you're gonna get touchy about it - "

"It just brings back bad memories, okay? Just talk about something else for now."

"Well...like what?"

Helen opened her eyes, smiling wickedly, and raised her eyebrows. "Guess what I'm thinking, and I will give you a prize."

Johnny was getting nervous again. He'd never had it so good. Okay, so there were some strings attached - she was a woman with a record and a warrant out for her arrest, but the good far outweighed the bad, at least for the moment. Then the sound of El Doctor's El Dorado peeling into the parking lot in front of Johnny's studio broke the spell.

"Put your clothes on," Helen said abruptly as she hid her body with covers. "Do it quick. Then go in the other room."

"But what about my manhood - "

"Trust me, I recognize the way he pulled in. He's plenty pissed. He's a good shot too. If he sees you in the raw, you won't have any manhood."

"Okay, okay. Jesus Christ, what a day." Johnny rushed into the kitchen pulling his pants on as he went. El Doctor burstinto the room through the unlocked door, .38 out and ready.

"I was ready in case the cops were here," he said feebly. Johnny was shaking half-naked in the kitchen, staring into a bowl of dry Wheaties he had just poured. El Doctor stood staring at Helen, then Johnny, gun still out.

"Y-you got the milk?" Johnny said to El Doctor in a squeaky voice.

"No, sorry. I forget. I'll get it later," He tucked the gun back into his waist band o "Sorry. I'm a little edgy, forgive me, okay? I got a ticket and it made me in a bad mood."

"How, uh, how long you plan on stickin' around?" Johnny asked El Doctor boldly, stepping out of the kitchen.

"You got my smokes?" Helen said then. El Doctor nodded, and handed her a carton of Camels and a box of matches.

"You hear my question?" Johnny said evenly.

"Yea I hear you, mang, just relax. I want to watch over my patient here, that okay with you?" El Doctor was becoming a serious pain in Johnny's ass.

"Well, I'm a writer, and I need my privacy."

El Doctor laughed derisively, and loudly, for a long time. "A fucking writer, huh? So how you make a living, heh?"

"I'm also a driver," Johnny answered meekly.

"Stock cars in Daytona?"

"No. Blood tests in Miami. I go to work at three, so I gotta leave in a coupla hours. It's over in the Grove, at Mercy. Swing shift. So I usually write in the mornings - "

"So who stopping you?" El Doctor said, climbing into the bed beside the chain-smoking Helen.

Then the sounds of a hungry cat were at the front door. It was The Leopard Man, named after an old Val Lewton flick. The Leopard Man was really a fat, sweet, slightly Russian Blue tabby, the product of a broken home. One of Johnny's old flames had dumped The Leopard Man on Johnny, only then his name had been Bagheera, after the black panther in The Jungle Book. Johnny re-christened him The Leopard Man, since the cat obviously thought he was human, and entitled to the same relative luxuries and respect. Johnny let The Leopard Man in and followed him to the kitchen, where he filled The Leopard Man's bowl with dry cat food.

El Doctor scanned the room while this went on. The walls were bare except for two movie posters - one from Mad Doctor of Blood Island and the other from Revenge of the Creature, two movies El Doctor had never seen, and had no desire to. The cheapjack bamboo furnishing was sparse, the powder blue-painted walls cracked and chipped, but the room was tidy and clean. Just depressingly lonesome. There was a home video system with a stack of DVDs on top. El Doctor scanned the lurid titles: Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, Point Blank, I Eat Your Skin, Blood Feast, The Thrill Killers, Day of the Dead, The Devil's Rejects. Fucking crazy ass Americans, El Doctor thought to himself. So out of touch with reality. Helen was falling asleep. Johnny's hands had soothed her spirit as well as her body. Secretly, she was planning on staying here a long time. But she didn't want to inform El Doctor or Johnny of her plans just yet. They would find out as they happened, anyway.

SIX

Johnny drove one of the few Edsels left in existence, a gift bequeathed to him by his father in New Jersey, where Johnny was born and raised until he was a teenager, before his mother took him to L.A. Johnny's father had died when a car he was working on in his auto shop slipped off its jack and crushed him. The authorities found the incident suspicious but could not find any hard evidence of foul play. No one associated with Johnny's dad even had any motive that anyone knew of. The Edsel had been the old man's pride and joy, and it was in mint condition when he passed on. Johnny's mother wanted to sell it, despite the old man's promise that Johnny would one day inherit it, so Johnny staged a phony robbery one night and he hid the Edsel in the barn of a friend's farm way out in the sticks. The friend was a school mate, a strange loner like Johnny, whose parents were old and senile and never really noticed the Edsel till, years later, Johnny returned from California to reclaim his inheritance, which he then drove to Miami, where a girl was waiting for him, or so he had been led to believe. The girl was already married to someone else by the time Johnny got there. But at least he had the Edsel.

Johnny was very paranoid that someone would vandalize or rip off his baby, so he always took extra special precautions with its care and safety. He parked it in the underground garage of his apartment building, where there were very few spaces available. For this privilege Johnny cleaned the laundry room once a week for the landlord, a retired New Yorker living on a pension from a business he never disclosed, although word was he was a former button man for the Mob. Johnny wondered if Helen would recognize him, and vice versa.

When Johnny drove his Edsel to work, he felt like he was in a dream bubble from a 1950s fantasy world of his own making. The Edsel was like something that had escaped from Johnny's imagination, a remnant of an idealized era that for Johnny only existed on videotape. The Edsel was the one tangible element of Johnny's dreamland, besides Loretta Lynx, who looked like Donna Reed, and now Helen, who was built like Mamie Van Doren. The best of both worlds, Johnny thought as he drove to work that afternoon, trying hard not to worry about what havoc El Doctor and Helen would create in his apartment while he was gone. At least he wasn't bored anymore.

Johnny loved cruising the Art Deco district just a mile or so from his studio. The combination of the Edsel and the Deco helped Johnny to escape the numbing realities of his waking world, while at the same time depressing the hell out of him, because as time went on and he got older he realized deeper and deeper that his fantasies were not the answer to his problems. He needed something he could touch.

And now there was Helen. Johnny just couldn't figure out if this was a mixed blessing or flat-out curse. There was a distinct possibility he could get laid, but as he drove down Collins Ave. past Wolfie's Deli, the old familiar ache returned, even though Loretta was not there now. Her shift was over. He'd be visiting her again tomorrow, though. He was even toying with the idea of bringing Helen with him, just to gage Loretta's reaction when he walked in with this bleached bombshell who backed up her bravado with bullets. Real ones, not cowardly voice messages. A real woman. That would teach Loretta all right. The one snag was that when Helen walked out his door there was a good chance she'd be surrounded by a SWAT team and cameras from "America's Most Wanted," Johnny could do without the publicity at this point, he decided.

Back at his apartment, El Doctor was watching television game shows while Helen slept, waking up groggily and irritably whenever El Doctor shouted at the screen, usually in Spanish. El Doctor called his wife to tell her he'd be late and she hung up on him, but this was S.O.P. El Doctor planned on giving Helen a quick one later on in the evening before Johnny got home, as payment for medical services rendered. Again, this was S.O.P. But Helen was dreaming of Johnny as she slept, and also of their baby, and their lovely home in a beautiful trailer park, away from the madness of urban mayhem, where she could at last settle down and be the woman she had always wanted to be. Johnny offered her new hope that her circumstances could change. All she had to do was twist his mind around to her way of thinking. So far, so good.

In the hospital lab, Johnny was distant and detached, more so than usual, and his co-workers noticed.

"Thinking about the book again?" asked the Haitian guy whose name Johnny could never remember.

"What? Oh yea, right," said Johnny, punching the clock with acute disinterest.

"What is it called again? You told me once."

"Ask the Dust," Johnny said. Every time he made up a new, famous title for the Haitian, because he didn't want to have to explain the ironies behind the very American title Two Balls and a Dyke. Last week it had been called The Day of the Locust. The Haitian never remembered anyway, or so Johnny thought. The truth was, the Haitian was very well read and had actually read most of the titles Johnny mentioned The Haitian was the one having fun at Johnny's expense, not the other way around, as Johnny thought.

"When may I read it in the store?" the Haitian said with a smile.

"Next year," Johnny said.

"Can't wait," the Haitian said, still smiling as he walked off.

Johnny wasn't allowed to drive his Edsel on the job, which was all right by him, since he didn't want to cruise through some of the spookier neighborhoods -especially at night - in his coveted dreamboat. The Edsel had recently been painted bright lavender, making it a neon target anyway. The interior was a sparkling pink. Cops often pulled Johnny over, thinking he was a dealer or a pimp with a white bread face. The car Johnny drove on his route was a dull, simple Pinto. His route covered a good deal of Greater Miami, but concentrated chiefly on doctors and satellite labs in Coconut Grove. Johnny liked the Grove and often took his break in a cafe on Grand Avenue, which had the quiet, tree-lined ambience of a sleepy college town. Johnny also drove throughout Coral Gables, the Beverly Hills of Miami, and he sometimes took strolls through the Miracle Mile shopping district, admiring but not buying. Someday, he promised himself, he'd take Loretta Lynx on a whirlwind shopping spree through Miracle Mile and beyond, once his novel came out to thunderous critical and commercial success. Unless, of course, she killed him first.

Johnny's job consisted of picking up bio-hazardous specimens in plastic bags from labs and doctor offices and delivering them to the mother lab adjacent to Mercy Hospital. He also delivered lab reports back to the clients, as well as sundry supplies. It was not a particularly inspiring occupation, but Johnny enjoyed the freedom and solitude on the road. At least the Pinto was equipped with an antiquated but operating CD player, so he could listen to his favorite songs en route. The CD he had with him tonight was one of his special compilations, all exotic tunes by the likes of Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman, Les Baxter, the Surfmen the Out-Islanders. But as Johnny drove through the night this particular evening with a backseat full of bodily fluids, all he could concentrate on was Helen alone in his apartment with El Doctor. This was good in that it took his mind off of Loretta Lynx, but it was bad in that he was nearly involved in a serious multi-car pileup on 95 due to his preoccupations. He survived unscathed, save for a mess of maledictions hurled his way from several badly shaken motorists.

As he finished his route that evening, he tried an old mental trick his father had taught him the first time his heart had been broken, back in New Jersey, when Johnny was only in the seventh grade. His father had told him, "Son, whenever you start putting a girl - any girl, whether she's your wife or girlfriend or just some snob who won't speak to you - whenever you put a girl on a pedestal, instead picture her on a toilet, taking a nice, big, loud, wet, messy crap. That'll remind you she's only human like the rest of us, and de-glamorize your portrait of her as a goddess." Johnny had never forgotten this homespun advice, and had actually put it to successful use more than once, but lately it just had not been doing the trick. For instance, when he pictured Loretta Lynx in such an awkward, vulnerable position, it made him laugh, but it didn't turn him off. And now when he applied the same technique to Helen, he found to his horror that it actually turned him on.

SEVEN

When Johnny returned home that night, the apartment was dark save for the blue light of the TV screen, where Nick Ray's first film, They Drive By Night, was playing to an empty house.

Both El Doctor and Helen were gone.

Johnny tried not to worry. Good riddance, he said to himself as he cracked open a Coke and settled down in front of the tube. They Live By Night, a film noir Johnny had never seen, was the story of a young criminal with an innocent heart who falls in love with a simple backwoods girl and they try to begin a new life together, despite the fact that his past keeps catching up with his present and mucking up their future. They become lovers, then newlyweds, then fugitives. This was a disturbing pattern for Johnny to witness, though he couldn't bring himself to turn it off until the final fadeout, which ends with the guy being shot to death by cops while the girl, pregnant with his child, reads a note he had written her, still clasped in his dead hand. The note told her something he never had the nerve to tell her in person: "I love you." Johnny was in tears when Helen and El Doctor burst in, laughing, drunk, hanging all over each other. Johnny's tears dried quickly as he confronted them.

"I thought you had taken a powder for good," Johnny said with a weak voice. "What the hell's going on? I thought you were wanted by the cops and had to lie low for a while, I don't get this."

Helen bounced from El Doctor's arms to Johnny's. "Johnny - hic! - didn't you get my note?"

"Note? What note? I didn't see any note."

"Oh, come here, silly." She led him by the hand to the bathroom, where she had written with lipstick on the mirror: "Went for a moonlite swim, be back soon. XXXOOO Me."

"See?" she giggled. "I wouldn't let you worry about me like that. I'm no flake, y'know. What did you think?"

Johnny was already busy wiping the lipstick from the mirror. In the other room, El Doctor was passed out cold in the middle of the floor, his pants down around his ankles. When Helen saw him, she fell down laughing.

"No nookie for you!" she howled.

"Ssshhh. The neighbors!" Johnny hissed from the bathroom.

"Don't be such a tightass, Johnny!" Helen said, stripping and hopping into the sofa bed. "Come here and lie next to me, Johnny! I wanna - hic! -massage! Right now, motherfucker!"

"I said keep you voice down!" Johnny said, giving up on the smeared mirror and shutting off the bathroom light. "Jesus. What's your problem?"

Helen looked hurt. "Are you mad at me, Johnny-O?"

"Mad at you? You come home drunk at two in the morning when you know you should stay indoors, and you want to know if I'm mad at you? You gotta be putting me on."

"Well...are you?" she pouted, bare-breasted and bedroom-eyed. Her hair, dark roots increasingly obvious, was a tangled mess, but in a sexy way. Johnny felt his will weakening by the second.

"Am I what?" he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the unconscious man of medicine on his floor, a man who was basically a complete stranger to Johnny, as was Helen, naked and stoned in his bed, beckoning him to enter her web of sin. As if he wasn't already inextricably caught.

"Are you mad at me?" she giggled like a cinema sex siren, lying playfully on her belly, her cleavage pressed against the sheets, glowing in the light of the TV screen. "No one saw me, Johnny, don't worry. EL Doc and me just went to visit Tony in Lauderdale real quick, to make plans."

"Tony? The one you were talking about? The gangster?"

Helen giggled some more. "Oh, sweetheart...you're actually worried about me, aren't you? How sweet. You really do care about me, don't you, Johnny?"

Johnny tried hard not to look into her eyes or at her breasts, but it was a losing battle. He surrendered and lay down on his back while she unbuttoned his shirt. His loneliness had sold him out to the enemy, as usual. "What plans?" he asked as she straddled him and unhooked his pants.

"None of your business," she whispered as she pulled his pants down around his knees.

"It is my business if you're going to stay here," Johnny whispered as she took his penis in her mouth.

He couldn't make out her muffled reply, but he didn't care what it was, anyway. He came in about thirty seconds and fell asleep with a broad smile on his face while Helen licked her chops like a lioness feasting on her catch.

EIGHT

The first thing Johnny saw when he woke up the morning after the blow job was Helen polishing her .357 Magnum with the same dexterity and tenderness she had displayed in giving him head. She was quite a woman, Johnny smiled inwardly.

"Hi!" she said, kissing him flush on the mouth. "I put some coffee on, want some?"

"Urn...sure, okay. Where's the doc?" Johnny had noticed right away that El Doctor was no longer prone on the floor, or anywhere in sight.

"He has to go to his office sometimes," Helen explained on her way to the kitchen. "Besides, it ain't like he fuckin' lives here or anything. Want cream and sugar, sugar?"

"Yea, lots," Johnny said, sitting up. Helen had even placed the Herald at his feet on the edge of the bed. It was still wrapped in the rubber-band. With trepidation, Johnny unraveled it, glancing over the front-page headlines and greatly relieved to find only the usual assortment of terrorism, global warming, economic collapse, and run of the mill chaos. So far Helen had not made the front page. Johnny gave the rest of the news sections a cursory once-over in search of timely topics such as the suspected whereabouts of the pretty young shooter-on-the-loose, and found nothing to curb his appetite for breakfast. He really wanted to dine at Wolfie's however, since Loretta Lynx was covering the late morning and lunch shifts, and it had been a week since he had gone to visit her. But he didn't want to leave Helen alone for several reasons, including his safety and hers from the long arms of the law, plus he didn't want to offend her gracious sensibilities. He was rapidly growing accustomed to her strong feminine presence, and he wanted her to stick around for as long as possible. His reason emanated from his loins as well as his lonesome heart, both of which were experiencing a rather disorienting sensation of relief bordering on actual pleasure. These were truly days of wine and roses, not whining and neuroses as usual. The world outside made no sense, why should his?

Helen made a point of winning the Leopard Man's trust by feeding him first thing. She knew from experience the quickest way to a man's heart is through his pussycat. The Leopard Man was still somewhat distant with Helen, since she was still an intruder in his domain, and a female human one at that, and The Leopard Man was very possessive of Johnny. But for the moment, it appeared Helen was his source of food supply, so he decided to maintain a cautious diplomacy until further notice. With reflexive resolve, Johnny stretched and reached for the remote control, flipping on the TV and running through the various cable channels with a veteran couch potato's agility. For a few minutes he watched a rerun of Surfside 6, but mainly because he loved the theme song. Then he kept going, finally freezing on the frenzy of images from La Femme Nikita, a French New Wave crime thriller about a young, pretty female junkie who happens to be criminally insane. After the cops bust her and she blows one of them away in the process, the Government fakes her suicide and trains her, pretty much against her will, to work for them as a hired assassin. It was sort of a French version of My Fair Lady Meets the Terminator. Johnny had seen it about a week before in its entirety, but watching it again now with Helen humming in his kitchen gave the experience a whole new dimension, a sort of 4-D movie with Ultra-Sensurround. Helen, after all, was the real thing, in the flesh. She came in with his coffee just as Nikita was undergoing her first training mission, blowing away a bunch of French guys in a hotel kitchen while synthesized drums and gunfire blared on the soundtrack.

"My kind of movie," Helen said as she slid under the covers with Johnny. Johnny reached over and kissed her shoulder, then noticed the scar on her forearm, in the tender underside of her bicep, which was not as soft to the touch as it looked. "How'd you get that?" he asked with sincere concern.

"A bullet, what else?" said Helen, mesmerized by the action on the small screen.

"Oh yea?" Johnny was strangely titillated. "You mean during a shootout?"

"No, I shot myself to get out of the fuckin' Army," she snapped. Then she quickly changed her tone and kissed his cheek. "Don't ask so many questions, Johnny. I'll get suspicious,"

"Suspicious? Of me? Of what?"

"I dunno. I guess I'm a little on edge these days. Being a fugitive isn't what it's cracked up to be." Helen reached for the remote and clicked off the TV. "Enough of that shit already. I live it, buddy." She straddled him and began kissing his neck. Johnny dropped the coffee on the floor and The Leopard Man was instantly upon the spill, lapping up the cream-and-sugar laden liquid with relish. "So should you," she said, putting him inside of her. Johnny didn't have time to even consider putting on a condom. It was too late. Their bodily fluids were mingling. She was consuming him, making him one of her kind, like Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger. Johnny's fantasy of being raped by a vampire/gun moll was coming true, and for the moment he didn't care what the ramifications of this would be. Helen was sucking him dry, body and soul. He was hers.

NINE

Despite her disdain for him, Loretta Lynx was beginning to wonder what had become of her number one fan, Johnny Varga. While she had no intention of giving into his bizarre advances, and had every desire to see him dead, she couldn't help but give in to this nagging curiosity. Had he finally given up on her, and lost interest completely? She couldn't believe that. Or rather, she couldn't accept it. She called his number just to see whether it had been disconnected, and when his machine picked up she quickly slammed down the receiver, somewhat relieved, somewhat disturbed. She couldn't quite figure out what effect Johnny had on her, just that it wasn't pure apathy, more a mix of hatred and something else she couldn't quite discern. Could it be attraction? Of course not, she told herself. She deserved better than him. She had been raised by her wealthy parents in Fort Lauderdale to meet a wealthy young Med student during Spring Break, marry him, and make more rich, snobby Republicans like her heritage dictated. So far, most of the wealthy Med students she had encountered in her young life were too egotistical and obnoxious to deal with past the first date. In some ways, she hated her own whiteness, and secretly she lusted for the Cuban busboys at Wolfie's to gang-bang her late one night in the kitchen after closing. So far, none of the white boys had turned her on very much, and she feared she was frigid and doomed to unhappy bondage with a drunken intern. Either that, or she would die in the gas chamber for the murder and dismemberment of Johnny Varga.

But why did she want to kill him? Loretta had been an English major at the University of Miami before dropping out to pursue waitressing at Wolfie's, and she knew Freud or Jung or one of those smart ass intellectuals would say she really wanted to fuck him. Everything was sex, sex, sex, especially to repressed people who couldn't get any, like the professors that always hit on her. Loretta had told her father, a Princeton educated layer, highly respected in Lauderdale high society, that she was not really dropping out, merely going on hiatus, taking a breather before embarking on the master plan: Harvard Law School. Loretta wanted to be a lawyer about as much as she wanted to be a waitress, but at least Wolfie's didn't require a BA. Loretta had always found South Beach seductive, and the proximity of Wolfie's to the beach and cafes and clubs promised a luxurious decadence she felt she needed to wallow in before settling down to her staid, pre-planned, pre-ordered, pre-paid future.

Maybe she just wanted to kill Johnny out of frustration. Sexual, familial, whatever. Perhaps her anger at the injustice of the world at large was driving her to the homicidal brink, and Johnny was simply a convenient target. Sublimating her rage over oil spills and the senseless slaughter of seals and dolphins would probably not save her from the gas chamber, however, even with her father defending her. After all, whatever she thought of him, Johnny Jinks was supremely innocuous. At least he would appear so to the jury, despite the evidence she was compiling against him.

In the beginning, Loretta believed Johnny Jinks was stalking her, since he kept leaving her little notes next to his empty coffee cup despite the fact that Loretta was going out of her way to ignore him. When she had finally relented and gone out for coffee with him on Ocean Drive after work one day, she hoped that this would appease the freak and she could then get on to her life without him. But this only stimulated his obsession with her, or what Loretta, who had a healthy ego, perceived as obsession. She was used to frat boys following her around, and as a sorority girl she was famous for both her sobriety and chastity. The sisters thought she was a heroine, the brothers thought she was an uptight bitch. She did date off and on in college, and liked making out with football hunks when the mood struck her, but she had only actually slept with one boy, a quiet, sensitive loner who later committed suicide, she assumed because she had dumped him one night over the telephone. He didn't even give her time to explain she was going through a bad period - monthly cycle, not school session - and had made a hasty decision based on her mood of the moment. Next day, bang, he'd shot himself. What she didn't know was that the boy was a closet homosexual who knew his macho father, a police sergeant, would have him arrested for attempted sodomy even though he had had only one experience with a boy, and that had been at camp in the Everglades when he was twelve, Loretta was haunted by this, however, and was always plagued by a sense of guilt for driving a love-crazed suitor to blow his brains out in the center of the Student Union, in the middle of the day. Spectators abounded, and Loretta was often blamed for this catastrophe. She'd even been named in the college paper article covering the event as a "possible catalyst." Loretta had put this article in her scrapbook with a mixture of pride and anxiety. She dropped out soon after.

Loretta's father was not proud of her, but still paid the rent on her North Miami Beach apartment, which boasted security guards, an Olympic swimming pool, in-house laundry service, maid service, and even a dating service for singles which Loretta never took advantage of, despite her mother's gentle urging. Loretta wanted to find Mister Perfect or just be left alone. All she had to do was decide just what qualified a guy for this lofty role, and then she'd sink her teeth in him forever.

On afternoons when Loretta didn't have to work, her mother would drive down from Lauderdale and play tennis with her in the apartment building's private court, then go for a swim in the private pool and then perhaps order a pizza and have a pajama party, watching dirty videos rented from the private video outlet downstairs. Her mother's name was Priscilla, but her dad always called her Prissy, and now Loretta did too. Her dad's name, to both of them, was simply Daddy. It had been so long since she had heard her fathers real name she had practically forgotten it.

They were alone on the tennis court today, so they spoke freely while bouncing the ball back and forth over the net with athletic banality.

"I want a grandchild," Prissy said with a huff.

"Buy one," Loretta shot back.

"You're my only daughter, and my only chance," Prissy said sadly.

"I guess you're screwed," Loretta said for effect.

"Watch your motrth, young lady. No wonder you can't find the right man."

"Who said I was looking?"

"How much longer are you going to work at that dump?"

"Wolfie's is not a dump, Prissy. John Kennedy ate there once,"

"Damn Yankee liberal Democrat jackass."

"Yea, that's the one. A lot of famous people ate there. Look at all the movie stars on the wall. They're all dead."

"Not all the movie stars in the world are dead, though. Maybe I'll meet one there."

"Dream on."

"I plan to," Loretta said, stopping to catch her breath after once again beating the pants off her mother. "I want to dream for as long as I can before waking up to Daddy's little world."

They walked off the court and toward the private showers for female residents. "You're already in Daddy's little world, Lor," Prissy said in a maternal tone of condescension, "Look around. Who do you think is paying for this? Not Wolfie, that's for sure."

"It won't be forever," Loretta said. "I plan to move out." They both stripped and turned on the shower water. Prissy was in good shape for a middle-aged woman, largely due to tennis workouts with her daughter, but also partly due to the affair she was carrying on with the young stud messenger boy who worked for her husband's firm. He kept her in shape and feeling good about herself. Loretta was naturally a shapely goddess, due to heredity and the aerobics class she attended nearby, mainly to work off steam which would otherwise be channeled into the violent murder of Johnny Jinks.

"You plan to move out?" said her mother, thinking of the messenger as she ran her fingers over her body, "And go where, may I ask? Back to Lauderdale?"

"Never. I was thinking of the West Coast, actually,"

"Of Florida?"

"No, Prissy, of course not. I meant L.A. I'm thinking of becoming an actress."

Prissy stuck her pinkie in her ear and drained out the excess water to clear her auditory channels. "I hope I didn't hear what I thought I heard," she said.

Loretta shut off the shower water and grabbed a towel. "You heard me, Prissy. But don't tell Daddy yet. I'm going to tell him I'm transferring to UCLA, and I am, but I'm going to major in Drama, not English. Face it, I'm not cut out to be a lawyer. I just don't care about that world, Mother. It's boring. I want excitement in my life." Prissy was getting frantic as it dawned on her that Loretta was not kidding.

"Honey, sweetheart, listen to me. You're not being realistic. There's plenty of excitement right here in Miami, even if it is the wrong kind." Prissy had always hated Miami. She was from Atlanta, and her husband was from Virginia, but he loved South Florida. He loved Miami too, but not with his daughter in it. They both wanted Loretta to move back to Lauderdale or just move to New England and go to Harvard, per the original schedule.

"I want the right kind of excitement, though, and I won't find it here," Loretta said as they walked up to her apartment. Loretta avoided the elevator because the attendant always ogled her blond beauty and it reminded her too much of college. Prissy liked having her blond beauty admired, however, and always flirted with the beefy pool attendant, disgusting Loretta and embarrassing her as well.

"Let's just relax and watch a video and sip some Chablis," Prissy said, taking Loretta's arm with a good-natured warmth. "We have time to think about this later. What video did you rent?"

Loretta smiled slyly. "To Live and Die in L.A." Prissy let go of her arm and shuddered.

TEN

El Doctor had arranged a meeting with Tony Volare on neutral turf - Hollywood -because both were paranoid and had the muscle to back it up. Of course, Tony Volare's muscle was Mob muscle, and El Doctor's muscle was Cuban Marielito muscle, which meant instant Latin bloodbath if anyone got too jumpy, though both believed that their muscle was the stronger of the two. Where macho Latino egos are stake, it is best to tread softly. Besides, El Doctor had mutually sensitive business to discuss with Tony - namely, Helen Black, and what to do about this situation she had put herself in, and, inadvertently, the one she had put them in. The problem was, Helen knew too much about both the Mob and the Cuban drug syndicates, and if she got pinched and was coerced into cutting a deal with the D.A., she could spill the beans and the pasta right into the Atlantic Ocean. Both El Doctor and Tony loved, or rather lusted for Helen, but this was business. Something had to be done to ensure her silence, even if it meant whacking her, an option neither found desirable. Hence, this informal meeting at a small Hollywood bistro, to talk things out, before any beans or blood was spiled.

"Tony Volare," El Doctor said with a broad, phony smile while quickly scanning the restaurant for signs of camouflaged torpedoes. "Just like the song by Bobby Darin, eh? Vo-larr-eee," he sang, annoying the hell out of Tony, who was in a bad mood anyway.

"Dean Martin, you mean," Tony said with strained patience as they both sat down. Tony knew El Doctor had come alone, because he had put a tail on him. And besides, when he had driven up to visit his house with Helen and set this meet, it was clear he was as nervous as Tony about this situation. El Doctor was annoying, but not altogether stupid, at least not where survival was concerned. "Or Bobby Rydell, who did the pussy ass watered down white bread vanilla teeny-bopper fuck version."

"Huh?" said El Doctor. "Bobby who? Darin, no?"

"Rydell, not Darin. Bobby Darin was a god damn genius, he sang Beyond the Sea, Mack the Knife, that kinda classy shit, with style. Get your god damn dead goomba singers straight."

"No offense, mang," El Doctor said brightly. "As far as dead guys go, I like Perez Prado myself - you too, no? See? Usually when two guys are banging the same broad, especially in our circles, they cannot sit and talk this way. We have more important things in common that hold us together, like mambo music. It is a sign of progress between our two camps, you think?"

"Helen told me last night that she is no longer sleeping with either of us," Tony said flatly. He snapped his fingers and two cafe con leches were brought to the table by a humble, silent waiter.

El Doctor appeared shaken by this statement, but maintained some poise. "Of course, she does not want to cause a rivalry between us. Last night was just to catch up on old times, have some fun, not cause a fucking cockfight."

"The point is neither of us got any last night, am I right?" Tony said, looking El Doctor dead in the eyes with the iciness he was dreaded for. Tony was forty-six and handsome in the Armand Assante mold, and he dressed like a disco king, with wide lapels on three-piece suits, and huge sparkling necklaces tangled in his nest of exposed chest hair. He was a charming killer, however, and Mickey Rourke was his friend and idol. They admired each others' style, and Tony always hung out with Rourke when he came to town, up in his penthouse digs on Ocean Drive. Years ago Tony had bankrolled some of Mickey's local fights. Tony wanted to be a movie star, too, but then who didn't.

"You went home to your wife, didn't you?" El Doctor said with a wicked grin.

"Like I said...neither of us got any," Tony said, and they both laughed hesitantly, just to break the ice.

"Anyway, I think she is in love with a little white punk," El Doctor said, swallowing his cafe con leche in one gulp and then snapping his fingers for the waiter and ordering a coco frio and some oysters. Tony was not hungry just yet.

"What are you talking about?" Tony asked cooly.

"This punk she's staying with in Miami," El Doctor said. "Young white dude, says he's a writer."

"A rider? A rider of what? Horses?"

"Heh?"

"He's a fuckin' jockey or what?"

"No, what you talking? A writer. You know. Of books."

Tony's brow was furrowed. "Smart ass preppy fuck, huh? What's he look like?"

"Ah, you know. Pasty white skin, black hair, scrawny. Wears glasses. Real loser."

"What? What the fuck would our Helen be doing with someone like that?"

"I'm still trying to figure this out myself, you know? Doesn't make sense. He is not her type. He is nothing like me. Or you."

"What does this shithead write you said? Books?"

"Fuck if I know."

"Well find out. He could be a pain in the ass for us. What if he's a fuckin' journalist? What's wrong with you?"

"He's not a fucking journalist, Tony, relax. Fuck. He's just a punk, I told you. I take care of it if anything happens. Right now he's keeping Helen out of sight, so it's okay."

"She's holed up with this fuck?"

"Yea. You gotta wife now, remember? It was Helen's idea last night that you introduce her as your cousin, not mine. I don't think she bought it, you ask me."

"She didn't. Like I said, neither of us got any last night. You never did respond to that. You didn't get any last night, am I right or what? Huh?"

Tony again looked El Doctor in the eyes, causing discomfort. "Tony, I told you, nada. I sleep in the same bed, but no action, you follow?"

"You slept in the same bed?" Tony stiffened.

"She my patient, remember? I told my wife I was at the hospital anyway."

"Stupid fuck, she coulda checked up on that."

"I didn't tell her which one, Tony! Con jo, I'm no idiot, okay?"

"So this white fuck is nailing our Helen, huh?"

"I didn't see nothing, but who knows? Maybe now, even as we speak. You know Helen. She's no fucking nun."

"Well, she better keep her habit to herself, so to speak. If she gets pinched on this chickenshit knockover and starts bending over for the Man we'll have to have our inside people shut her up, and I mean for good. She's got great tits, but she ain't altogether there upstairs, know what I mean?"

"She is a great piece of ass, no question, but no fucking genius, es verdad. Tell me, Tony, why do we stay married to our fucking wives with all this great slash running around Florida, heh? We crazy?"

"No," Tony sighed. "Just Catholic. Listen, Doc, if anyone starts rocking our boat, Helen and this whitebread fuckhead are the first ones overboard, cabeesh? There's no room for sentimentality here."

El Doctor nodded grimly and slurped down his final oyster. "You not going to eat something?"

Tony rose and straightened his tie. "I didn't come here to eat," he said evenly, then he walked out with two waiters packing pieces right behind him. El Doctor groaned and shook his head.

ELEVEN

Helen needed new clothes, since she'd bled all over the robbery wardrobe and was tired of wearing Johnny's old aloha shirts. When Helen told Johnny she was going to go shopping that night while he was at work, he panicked.

"Where are you going to find a store that's open and that doesn't have some cop around who'll slap the cuffs on you?" he yelled at her as she relaxed in the bath he had run for her.

"Stop talking like a fuckin' movie, or I'm outta here," Helen said flatly.

"You're out of here?" Johnny laughed. "And where would you go?"

"You think you're my last hope or something? How do you think I got around before I met you, Johnny? Gimme a fuckin' break."

"You know, you shouldn't say 'fuck' so much. It makes you less attractive. Really."

"You ain't my fuckin' mother, alright, so can it. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!"

"You think you're cute, don't you?" Johnny said, sitting on the toilet and pouting at the prospect of Helen leaving his life. "The truth is, you don't have anywhere to run now that you're on the lam."

"On the lamb? You mean like leg of lamb? You mean like I'm into sheep, that what you mean?"

"And the way you say you'll leave, it's like a threat, like you're doing me a favor to stay here, a real big favor."

"You're gettin' laid, aren'tcha? Quit complainin'. I'm the best nookie you ever had, or ever will, so what's your problem?"

"Ha! You really think I've been waitin' around here for you to show up?"

"Me or somebody like me. Only there ain't nobody like me, so yea, I'd say that. I mean, look at you. Look at your pathetic life, Johnny. I mean when was the last time you got laid anyway? I mean with a real woman like me?"

"All the time, babe. All the time. The Shiek of South Beach, that's me."

"Yea, right, Romeo. The Geek of South Beach is more like it."

Johnny didn't say anything else. Helen stood up and opened the shower curtain, and stood in front of him glistening in all her glory. "Hand me a towel?" she said coyly, and Johnny complied without looking at her right away. Helen stood in the tub with the towel around her hefty hips until he finally looked up. She was smiling. "Help me out?"

With a fake sigh Johnny put his arms under hers, and when he did she embraced and kissed him. "How about I give you money and you go shopping for me, okay Daddy?" Helen whispered in his ear.

Johnny pulled back slightly and looked at her through a haze of desire. "What money? You got money?"

"Well...I know where we can get some. All I need is a little disguise so we can go out together to my bank in Coral Gables."

"You got an account in a bank? In Coral Gables?"

She kissed his nose. "You catch on fast, Johnny-O. Now help me get dressed in a disguise".

"I thought you wanted me to go out for you? Doesn't that make more sense?"

"But I can't make you up to look like me, Johnny, and you have to be me to cash a check at my bank. That's the law."

"Funny, you talkin' about the law."

Helen glared at him.

"Sorry," Johnny stammered. "But don't me a geek again. Okay?"

In response she smiled radiantly and once again enveloped him in her voluptuousness. "I sorry," she said in baby talk. "I wove you, Johnny-O."

Johnny didn't know what to say, and he didn't feel ready to engage in baby talk with her, so he kept silent while he dried her off with the towel.

"I can make myself up to look like a boy or somethin'. Well, maybe not. How about a dyke?"

"Don't say dyke. It's offensive."

"But isn't that the name of your book? Something about a dyke?"

"Yea, but that's different. That's, uh, y'know. Art."

Helen laughed as she walked into the living room, dropping the towel behind her, and lay on the bed, still unmade, with feline grace. "I have nothing against lesbos. I don't have anything against anybody, as long as they don't get in my face. Hell, I've slept with my share of women."

Johnny was awestruck and turned on. "Oh yea?"

"You can't eat beef all the time, Johnny. A little fish now and then is good for you. Anyway, let's talk about my disguise so I can get money so you can buy me some new clothes?"

"Well...how about I just lend you the money, till you get on your feet?"

Helen laughed again. "Johnny, when I get on my feet, I'm running for the nearest border. And that means you're back to this." She pantomimed masturbation.

"Yea, yea, yea, Miss God's Gift to Mankind, but it isn't safe for you to go out yet, in any disguise, unless you got plastic surgery."

"Johnny, just trust me, okay? I like you as much as you like me, and I don't want to get busted again, especially not for a fuckin' murder rap, so take it easy.I've got both our best interests in mind. I didn't get where I am today by being stupid, y'know."

"Neither did I." And where were they?, Johnny asked himself. Stuck in his little room with a noisy cat. Truly, they had both arrived.

"Nice comeback. So anyway, just listen to me from now on, and we'll be fine. I may even take you to Mexico with me."

"Mexico? What makes you think I want to go to Mexico?"

"Because that's where I'll be, and where I'll be, my pussy will be. Get it?"

"The world does not revolve around your...your - "

"The world doesn't, but you do."

"The only pussy I care about is the Leopard Man."

"You mean your fucking cat? Your gato? Why, you train him to give you head?"

"Stop it, okay? Just stop it. I feel sick." Johnny sat on the edge of the bed, but for once he didn't want her to touch him.

She was relentless, though, giving him a delicate massage while she whispered in his ear. "Johnny...you know I'm only kidding. How long have we known each other now?"

"I don't know. Two and a half days, about."

"Well, that's longer than I knew my parents. We're close, Johnny. We're a team. We'll go far together."

"You mean like Mexico or the gas chamber?"

Helen kissed his neck and massaged his crotch until she felt the tension and doubt drain away. "I mean like heaven," she cooed.

TWELVE

Time was running out. Johnny had to be at work in less than two hours and Helen was still trying to come up with a disguise. She had tried various combinations with Johnny's limited retro-hipster wardrobe of bowling and aloha shirts. Finally she pulled out an old jogging suit Johnny had bought once when had briefly considered exercising to relieve stress. He jogged twice then just decided to stock more liquor in the house instead. She added his Elvis-style shades to the ensemble, and put up the hood.

"All I need is some gold chains 'n shit," she smiled.

"Jesus Christ, Helen, it's not a costume party. Make up your mind, I have to go to work soon. You look like a rapper, or a white trash terrorist."

"So?"

"You're too pretty to walk around like that. Too bad. Too bad you gotta live like this."

Helen took off the huge gold shades and looked at Johnny with sincere tenderness. "You're sweet." She kissed him once gently on the lips. "You really are a sweet guy. Now let's get outta here so I can get some cash and buy some new fuckin' clothes."

Johnny didn't see the .357 Magnum she had tucked under his sweatshirt.

When he opened the front door, daylight burst into the dark room like laser beams, but the sun didn't destroy Helen. She was no vampire, Johnny thought. Just a crazy, mixed-up kid. That didn't explain his association with her, though. He'd self-diagnose himself later.

"Let me drive," Helen said when they reached the garage.

"No way, nobody drives my Edsel but me. I don't like this, anyway. I can always go out and buy you more clothes."

"I want to use my own money and pick out my own shit, thank you. You'll dress me like I'm going to a fuckin' sock hop."

Johnny revved up the big engine but still felt powerless. "Let me ask you something. If you have a bank account with money in it, why'd you hold up that store?"

"The bank was closed and I lost my ATM card," she explained coolly.

"Don't you have a checkbook?"

"Lost that too. I got mugged."

"Ah, c'mon. Did you ever have a real job? I mean besides seducing wise guys for hits."

"What, you shittin' me? I'd rather hold up liquor stores than work in one. What do you think I'm qualified to do, anyway? Be a secretary? I had no education except what I picked up in the streets, Johnny. And hey, what is it you do for a living? Drive shit and piss around all day? Yea, that's real fuckin' glamorous."

"At least I contribute to society."

"You contribute shit, you mean. You ain't my fuckin' shrink or social worker, you're just some sweet bored lonesome ass geek with a crappy job who just got real lucky 'cause you met me. Turn here...."

"Okay."

THIRTEEN

The Edsel cruised down Miracle Mile like a wayward rocket ship from the past, when the future had seemed so sleek and comfortable. It was a breezy afternoon, a cause for complacency, a reason to stay in South Florida despite the crime, the racism, the tourists, the bugs, and the big screen remake of Miami Vice. Johnny felt trapped in a dream of his own design, with a fallen angel by his side. He almost didn't care what happened next.

The Edsel stopped at the corner of Ponce De Leon Blvd. and Helen got out in front of the First Union Bank. "Keep the engine running, I'll only be a minute," she said as she dashed inside. Johnny didn't even have time to tell her how impressed he was that she had an account in such a prestigious looking building. He was parked in a white zone, and couldn't remember what this meant. Maybe it was for white people, in which case he was okay, as long as no one caught on he was white chocolate, not vanilla, like the majority of Coral Gables. Evan the Cubans here seemed white to Johnny. Too much money bleaches the soul,he decided, but doesn't clean it.

Johnny tapped his fingers nervously on the steering wheel and listening to the oldies station play "I Fought the Law (And the Law Won)." He began to daydream, almost unconsciously, about Loretta Lynx as he sat in the Edsel. The next song on the oldies station was "Since I Feel For You," by Lenny Welch, a song which always put Johnny in tears. For some reason, he did not think of Helen while this song tortured him - he thought of Loretta. Despite the wild sex and promise of sudden violence that Helen offered him copiously, Loretta Lynx was still haunting him. This neighborhood reminded him of her. He loved a girl in California once who was from Palo Alto, who later married a Stanford graduate, Johnny forgot in what, and she always reminded him of Loretta. Johnny had gone to Palo Alto with this girl once to meet her folks, which turned out to be the kiss of death, since she dumped him soon after. She was the one he had been calling from the Surfcomber Hotel just before he got fired. The girl had left Palo Alto to pursue a career as a fashion designer in L.A., or something shallow like that. At least Loretta worked in the real world, in a real diner, and had real aspirations, Johnny told himself. She was down-to-Earth, a woman of the world. Coral Gables reminded Johnny a bit of Palo Alto, even, but this made him uneasy, since he knew these were parties to which he was cordially uninvited. Loretta belonged in a world like this, diner or no diner, and Johnny knew it, even though he hoped she wouldn't mind slumming long enough for him to get his novel published. Johnny recalled another girlfriend who lived in Miami, married to a Real Estate broker or something, who didn't want to wait for Johnny's ship to come in, fearing she'd be too old to bear children by then. Last he'd heard, her husband was sterile and they had not adopted, as far as he knew. He'd lost touch with her, but that was just as well. Come to think of it, she lives right here in the Gables, he remembered suddenly. Wouldn't it be funny if she happened to walk by and see the shapely, beautiful Helen getting in his Edsel? Wouldn't that be a gas? Johnny actually "began looking around for her, shopping in the area, maybe with an adopted Haitian kid in tow, casually strolling along and then recognizing the Edsel. Then Helen would come running out and -

BANGI BANG! POW!

The sharp reports of gunfire shattered Johnny's daydream. Suddenly, his waking life was a blur. Helen jumped into the Edsel next to him, money bags in hand, and shouted, "DRIVE, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER! DRIVE! NOW! MOVE IT!"

Johnny was in a daze until Helen stuck the smoking barrel of the .357 to his temple. "I said...drive," she hissed through gritted teeth. Sirens wailed from somewhere, everywhere. A security guard, obviously wounded and cradling his leaking guts, was stumbling towards them, his gun wobbling in the air. Without thinking clearly, Johnny stepped on the gas and the Edsel lurched forward, barely avoiding collision with several oncoming vehicles. He was on the wrong side on the street as well as the Law. Then he was on the sidewalk. The world around him was complete mayhem, and Helen would not stop shouting at him. He wanted to cry, but couldn't. He was still in shock. The sight of at least three police cars, lights flashing with migraine intensity in his rearview window woke him up. Battling an urge to vomit, he slammed on the brakes and skidded into a parking meter.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Helen screamed, but the police were already surrounding them. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Johnny tore the .35? from Helen's grasp after a brief struggle. Helen was crying now. So was Johnny. Shotguns pointed at them, they were ordered out of the car with their hands in the air, Johnny was ordered to drop the Magnum and he did. Then he passed out cold. Helen kicked him and spit on him as he lay unconscious on the ground.

Then out of the blue came the sound of more gunfire, as if an Army had descended. Uzis and grenades exploded from several directions, and then came the tear gas. Chaos ensued as the cops began wildly at their attackers, who actually only numbered a half dozen, and they were all packed into one sedan that belonged to Tony Volare. When the smoke cleared, Helen was gone, and Johnny was still on the ground, unconscious of the world crashing down around him.

FOURTEEN

Johnny missed Helen.

It had been a week since the cops had let him walk, convinced that the notorious Helen Black had forced him to offer her sanctuary, then threatened him into being her getaway driver for that daringly dumb daylight bank job. He was still supposed to report in periodically, and his house was under surveillance in case Helen or any of her cohorts tried to return.

Johnny was something of a hero now at work, and he'd even made Carl Hiassen's column. But this didn't cheer him up. The only thing that might do the trick was if Loretta Lynx had read about his exploits and got so turned on by his heroic confrontation with the forces of evil she'd marry him on the spot before someone else snatched him up. It was worth a shot. Besides, he hadn't been to Wolfie's since the whole Helen business had began. Perhaps it was Fate.

Still, now that Helen was gone, he felt a tremendous gap in his daily life, one that had always been there, probably, but now the emptiness felt more excruciatingly painful than ever, since he realized what he'd been missing for so long. At least there was still Loretta. Maybe. But then Loretta had always been a Maybe, whereas Helen was a big, juicy Affirmative. He knew it couldn't have lasted, though. And anyway, she was probably mad as hell now at him for chickening out, when all he wanted to do was stop this trail of tragic missteps and rehabilitate her, once and for all. But now she'd probably put a hit out on him, even do it herself, blow his dick off and hand it to him. So what. Without her, it was of no use to him anyway.

A big problem with getting to Wolfie's these days was transportation. The Edsel was parked in the garage, but since the bank job and subsequent hysteria, it had become a bullet-ridden hunk of twisted metal. The cops had it towed back to the garage at their expense, since they felt badly for poor Johnny, innocent victim of Florida's endless crime wave, washed up bruised on the beach of bereavement, though all the bullet holes were from the Uzis of the mysterious attackers, who had not wounded one cop in the assault. Obviously the intention had been only to frighten and distract them while Helen was being rescued. The fact that they had left Johnny behind too had been a major point in his defense, though the authorities also wanted to let Johnny go free to serve as potential bait. He had been released without bail for this purpose, but he was still on the local law's shit list, and was being watched carefully. His spotless record and innocent kisser had certainly helped his credibility, but even that couldn't save him from Helen Black. The cops also feared retribution against Johnny, who had eschewed their protection (though they kept tabs on him anyway, in case Helen showed up). Johnny wanted to take his chances on his own, because secretly he prayed Helen would return and steal him away to Mexico or some other mythical paradise.

In the meantime, he had his novel to write, which he had re-titled Up the Fireplace, ostensibly a metaphor for something, but he hadn't figured that part out yet. He just gave his lesbian protagonist a fireplace. But in case Helen didn't re-enter his life at some point, all he had for a muse was Loretta Lynx. It was time to pay her a visit.

As Johnny boarded the bus for Collins Ave., he was wondering how Loretta would respond to him now that he was an accessory to armed bank robbery, and a free one at that. Hopefully she'd find this an attractive new attribute, though Johnny also wondered whether Loretta was worth the bother. Loretta was beautiful, but cold. Johnny had reached the point where he'd rather have a firecracker like Helen pistol-whip him into submission. But Helen was out of the picture, at least temporarily, and his novel needed some of that female-spiced inspiration to get it back in high gear. Johnny got off the bus and walked into Wolfie's with an air of confidence tinged with anxiety. Immediately his defense shields were up, but the devil-may-care veneer was a flimsy vanguard in the face of Loretta's angelic radiance. As soon as he sat down at the counter, he began repeating his mental mantra: Just order, eat, and get the hell out of here. Already he was assuming she'd have a negative response to his presence. Unfortunately, his ESP was A-OK.

In his wallet, Johnny carried several handy clippings of the Herald's piece on his derring-do, and he decided that this would be a more appropriate tip than a personally inscribed, easily discarded napkin. After all, he was a veritable hometown hero, albeit susceptible to untimely feinting spells. Fortunately this minor fact had been left out of the newspaper article. The cops had painted quite a rosy portrait of Johnny Varga, Local Hero for the media, though this too was part of their plan to use Johnny as a hook to catch the mobsters and the stolen loot, which had also vanished in the mysterious attack. Johnny had no idea who Helen's accomplices could have been, though he suspected El Doctor, but did not inform the cops of this missing piece to the puzzle.

A sudden chill breeze alerted Johnny to Loretta whizzing past him to pick up an order. Usually she split the counter with another waitress, plus serviced a nearby station, so the odds were Johnny would get her as a waitress every other time, and in either case he'd always be visible to her, and vice versa. Whether she waited on him or not, he would always leave her a poem next to his empty coffee cup, and if she had not been his waitress, he would write her name on the backside of the napkin and fold it over. The napkin-poem was always read by eyes other than Loretta's, however, and often read by everyone except her.

Loretta often read the Herald while on break, which partially explained why her eyes were glazed over with end-of-the-world ennui. She did notice Johnny, however, and went directly into her "ignore" mode, which shone like neon. Johnny had even worn an extra aloha shirt - a new one - to catch her eye. He didn't even attempt direct contact with her after he saw her whisper in the other waitress's ear to take his order. She had done this so obviously it nearly made Johnny laugh. He was used to the game by now, and didn't take offense. It proved she had noticed him after all.

Loretta's mind was bouncing with so many conflicting thoughts her head felt like a pinball machine. She had indeed heard about Johnny's travails on the nightly news, though she had missed the newspaper piece, perhaps because her horoscope had been negative that day and she had thrown out the paper in disgust. She was glad that her psycho suitor was at least a mini-celebrity; it made her feel good to ignore someone with notoriety. She made a point of flirting with the Cuban busboy working her station, a short but stocky, sunny but shy teenager supporting his mother on his tips money. His name was Ernesto, or Ernie, as he was known, and he was quite startled when Loretta came up behind him and pinched either side of his waist. He had a crush on Loretta, like most of the busboys at Wolfie's. At the same time, Johnny picked up the Sports page left behind on the stool beside him and pretended to be absorbed by the latest Jai-alai scores. He acted so mesmerized by these statistics which had absolutely no bearing on his personal life that he didn't even look up when his waitress brought over his coffee. He just nodded with an obligatory politeness, then read on, obsessed by every insignificant statistic. After two years in Miami, he still wasn't even sure what the hell Jai-alai was.

Unbeknownst to either Johnny or Loretta was Detective Sonny of the Armed Robber Division, hunkered down in a nearby booth. Johnson has once been an undercover operative for Vice, but transferred out three years ago for several reasons, one being the ribbing he got on account of his name, which seemed like a cross between Don Johnson and his TV altar ego's, Sonny Crockett. The fact that Johnson was blackdid- not deter anyone from calling him "pal" and asking him if they could borrow his Ferrari now and then for a high profile bust. Sometimes they just called him "Tubbs" instead.

Sonny Johnson was in his late 30s and was light-skinned, which accounted for the ribbing he received from fellow human beings both white and black, as well as other officers concerning his insistence that he was Afro-American. He was very soft-spoken and well-educated, did not like Hip-Hop, speak fluent jive or live up to any of the normal stereotypes, plus he dressed and acted very conservatively while keeping his politics to himself. He lived with his wife and six-year-old son on Key Biscayne, where he had recently bought a condo after being promoted to detective. Beat cops were requested to live within city limits for on-call emergencies, but Johnson had won himself the luxury of living any damn place he pleased. His new position garnered new respect, at least to his face, and he took no crap from anyone, particularly the assholes over at Vice, over whom he had no authority directly, but he still outranked his old cronies on the payroll. He harbored very little bitterness toward anyone, but he was terminally sad regarding the state of human life on this planet in general. He was originally a New Orleans boy and had grown up amid a level of oppression accepted as one of the laws of Nature, at least in his neighborhood. He had lived in Liberty City and in Hialeah while a patrolman for the Miami Police Department, pounding beats on both turfs, and when he graduated to a Vice position the depression that had been accumulating reached a breaking point. He couldn't believe his people, or any people, lived this way. Not that he believed Florida was any more tolerant than Louisiana - quite the contrary - but seeing it first-hand had only deepened his awareness of the widespread crisis. Originally he had joined the force as a potential crusader against this evil, working from the inside out, and his Tulane degree in Sociology came in handy on many occasions. He had passed on social work to become a cop because he wanted to fight the battle at ground zero. After seventeen years, his mission seemed hopeless. All he could do was take down enough criminals to make his quota and justify his lofty position. Like most urban centers, but especially here in Miami, the drug trade was wiping out his inner city brothers and sisters. He never talked much about his fears and ideals with anyone except his loving wife Sara, and sometimes his boy Lionel, because if he did he would only incur the same stupid racial jokes from good-natured morons.

Take this Johnny Varga character. Johnson wasn't buying his jive ass honky routine, with those silly tourist shirts. He believed Johnny was an accomplice, but wasn't sure to what degree. He had arranged to have Johnny freed so he could keep an eye on him on the outside. The kid's life was so small-scaled that keeping a tail on him during spare time was simple. But Sonny Johnson wanted a break in this case soon, and if Johnny didn't warm up the trail within the foreseeable future, Johnson was going to see to it that his white chocolate ass was tossed back in the cooler, with plenty of butter on the side.

Detective Johnson picked up on the game of charades going on between Varga and that stuck-up waitress. He laughed to himself, remembering his own awkward days of Bachelorhood, trying to pick up on girls in clubs and places, though that period of his life had been cut short rather quickly and ahead of its time when his wife met and nailed him. Johnson had never cheated on his wife, though he often considered it. When she and his boy went down to Key West sometimes to get away from the torrid debauchery of Miami, Johnson would watch the collection of X-rated tapes he had confiscated on a bust while doing Vice years ago. His partner and he distributed some to fellow officers with a penchant for this stuff and kept the rest for themselves. It seemed ironic and somehow wrong to harbor evidence from an undercover pornographic racket stakeout, but Johnson's hormones, pumped up by the sultry atmosphere like everyone else's, made the final call. And these videos weren't store-brought - they were homemade with some of Miami's finest. None were underage, as far as Johnson could tell, so his conscience didn't bother him too much. Like most people, he lived according to his own code of moral relativism. The only time