The Misadventures of Rollo Hemphill - ebook

What’s in This Book

Youthful hacker-turned-slacker Rollo Hemphill can’t help failing ever upward in three comic novels, combined in this ebook edition. In _My Inflatable Friend,_ he devises a screwball scheme with a life-sized rubber doll to make his girlfriend jealous and stumbles into a gig on shock-jock radio. In _Rubber Babes,_ when he thinks he’s landed a cushy job heading up a Hollywood charity, he ends up running from the Feds. Then in _Farnsworth’s Revenge,_ he’s on the lam in Europe and gets recruited for a secret government operation that will either solve the energy crisis or destroy the worldwide banking system.

The painful consequences of Rollo’s comic misadventures show us all too vividly the perils of pretending to be someone you’re not — and the hazards of stroking every male’s most vulnerable part — his swelling ego.CHAPTER 1 MY CONFESSION

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My name is Rollo Hemphill and I’m no pervert.

This little book is the story of what I did with my inflatable friend, and the mostly embarrassing consequences accruing therefrom. As to the details of what I did, I refuse to bottom-line them until you know me better. Please keep an open mind and grant me a few pages by way of exculpatory background before I spill it, which I assure you I did, must, and will do.

Don’t read too much into it, this compulsion to confess my sorry deeds. You might surmise I had to write this as some punitive form of public service, and rather than deny that ugly accusation, I simply won’t say. If I gave you that up front, it would beg a host of other awkward questions, such as how and on what charge I was apprehended, how my public defender screwed the pooch and reamed me, and how society takes a warped view of even the purest and simplest of natural human urges. In short, if I copped to all that now, I’d be giving away the ending, and every Lit 101 student knows it’s hard enough figuring out how to finish a first-person narrative without tipping off the reader on the first page.

But trust me. Let me apply some backstory by way of lubricant and I promise you’ll get the whole thing in the end.

~~~

Way back when the root of all evil had not yet begun to flower, I was working as a car jockey at the Wuthering Palms Hotel. How, my old friends might ask, does an Exeter man find himself in such a menial position? I was lucky. My hacking career had been going so well that if I had not sent that self-incriminating e-mail to the Feds, today I’d be doing a long stretch in Leavenworth. Too clever for my own good. Story of my life.

It was my Apple got me in trouble, and it didn’t fall far from the tree. My father is supposedly in Costa Rica somewhere, something about a hedge fund or junk bonds, maybe both. My mother has the house in Darien all to herself, grows prize roses, and drinks a lot of “tea.” What passes for her philosophy of parenting holds that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all — so we never speak.

Long story shortened to not even a story, the Feds took away my encryption chip and made me swear I’d hacked my last, and, okay, I did some time. But they expunged my record because I was a month under eighteen when I let myself get caught. (By the way, I literally dropped out of Exeter. I leaped from a window after curfew, and they locked me out for good.)

At last, here I am parking cars at the Palms and thinking myself damn fortunate to have my very own legit Social Security number for once and a day job I can tell my friends about. If I ever have any.

On one of those dazzlingly bright California mornings that make rednecks back East flush with jealousy every year when they tune in the Rose Parade, I was thinking myself particularly smart to be out for a spin down Sunset in the Rolls Silver Cloud. (It’s the property of a guest who was booked into one of our bungalows for an extended stay.) Now, here is one of the few cars on the planet designed to optimize the ride in the _back_ seat, and it being such a fine day, the sunroof open and the sweet scents of eucalyptus and jasmine in the air, my imagination naturally turned to wondering how many bare behinds had been caressed by that buttery-soft calfskin as upright conduct was driven ardently home to them while the chauffeur did his own driving home trying his damnedest to keep his curious, beady eyes on the road. I mean, what’s the point of owning the most luxurious car in the world if it doesn’t get you laid? (Attention span: _Think_ of the boost you’d get from the throb of the turbines in a corporate jet!)

Thinking it pointless to concentrate on sex for very long unless it’s in the same room with me, I deliberately turned my attention to the incredible ride, the physical sensation of controlling the old gal, for all her hulk and heft. In this latter-day era of McPherson struts, rack and pinion steering, and computer-mitigated everything, the Silver Cloud is a miracle of traditional, conservatively bred elegance in motion. In the jaunty bounce-bounce of her coil and semi-elliptic springs, the saucy pump-pump of her silky pistons, her reciprocating ball joint _—_ she has nothing remotely new, just standup workmanship in heavy metal. She held her course like a planet-sized rock hurtling through airless space, and if any of her old joints were the slightest bit loose from all those years of bumping and grinding, she gave not a whimper of protest. Oh, you Brits, you stuck-up, hedonistic hypocrites _—_ you built a banker’s fuckmobile!

I’m obsessed with sex. Isn’t that normal?

As a matter of continuing education for potential career advancement, I was prone to using these little spins, supplemented by otherwise idle time spent in parked cars, to practice my improvisational skills as a shock-jock deejay. Perhaps because I hadn’t scored in a lizard’s lifetime, I was going through a Blue Period, trying for Howard Stern but with more edge. Personally, I would just as soon listen to real blues or even bluegrass at such times, but the voiceover style I was attempting was more like a heavy-metal shitstorm tantrum. Grabbing an empty bottle of Evian from the floorboard to use as a mic, I let fly:

“It’s Rockin’ Rollo the Rocknroller in the ER — electroshock radio — where we just keep shovin’ it atcha. That was ‘Can’t Get No More’ by the Skin Lollipops. Super-ficial! Next up, pud-whackers, it’s number seven on the charts, ‘Gotta Getcha’ by the Road Warriors. It’s goin’ out to Felicia from you-know-who, who’s you know what — gotta getcha!”

I can give ’em raw, if that’s what it takes. No sooner did I end my rant than the blues wafted over me for real. It’s not so much that I didn’t like what I did. My stylings, the inflections, the energy — the whole glib patter thing — was okay technically. I just didn’t like myself when I was doing it.

It helps the realism to be able to fade the music down going into the patter and up coming out of it, but if I’m driving and holding the mic, I don’t have a hand free to work my iPod. I could lose the mic, but my ego needed the prop.

The circuitous route of my mentations and motoring brought me eventually to the portals of my employer. I eased the old gal into the Palms and brought her to rest ostentatiously under the arch in the circular drive at the prestigious guest entrance.

My blood up from the stimulation of the ride, I leapt out with elan, looking every bit the playboy, I hoped, in my crested blazer, knife-edged gabardine trousers, open-neck crêpe-de-Chine shirt, and Morocco slip-ons (all celebrity castoffs from Goodwill). Tossing my silk scarf rakishly over one shoulder, I strode confidently down the welcoming red carpet, wanting to give the impression of a valued guest in an important hurry.

My way was blocked oafishly by Laszlo, our exceptionally short Hungarian doorman, who apparently did not understand his role in the script and instead of enhancing my image by making straight my way, interposed his diminutive, plump self dumbly between me and the door.

“Later, Laszlo,” I uttered with an aristocratic air as I shoved him gently but firmly aside, striving to maintain my forward momentum. He looked as though he were about to speak, which I noted with an ill-timed turn of my head, as I entered the huge revolving glass door. Whether he were about to caution me about some defect in the door mechanism or simply wanted to wish me a nice day, I never found out, because my looking back combined with my forward motion had the effect of lifting my scarf in the breeze of the door’s whirl, causing the tassels to lodge inconveniently between the door and the jamb, halting its rapid revolution, trapping me inside, constricting my neck, and very nearly choking me to death.

Perhaps confused about my intentions and not quick enough to prevent the mishap, Laszlo nevertheless bravely hurtled his small self to the rescue and began tugging furiously on the door. This must have been the opposite of the required action, because the door froze with a terrifying squeak, the scarf stretched tighter, and I could feel the blood rushing to my anguished face.

Pleading through the glass at the balding little man, my cries made no sound, for I could summon no air to stir my vocal cords. Instinctively, I strained my head to the end of its tether, which only served to wedge me in tighter and further constrict my windpipe. Laszlo’s worried face began to dissolve into a blissful pink cloud, and just as I was going under, I heard him exclaim, “Some big shot! Pullingk ven he should be —”

He must have decided then and there he’d be the one to change direction and threw all his hundred pounds at me.

“— Pushingk!” I heard his exasperated cough as the door gave way, spinning me inside, loosening the stranglehold, granting me a glorious, dizzying gulp of air, and throwing me onto the ornate splendor of the Persian rug in the lobby with little Laszlo on top of me looking pathetically like a Pomeranian trying to hump a Great Dane.

With remarkable grace, I thought, he rolled off me, stood, retrieved his billed cap, and fastidiously brushed his uniform, finishing by dusting off the gilt epaulets. Adjusting his cap and straightening his tie, he looked down at me, an unusual angle for him. “Some big shot,” he muttered, then turned and waltzed back through the ill-designed door to resume his post at the curb.

With a weak smile of grateful appreciation and trying to suppress the idea I’d just had intimate bodily contact with homely, short man, I stood slowly, expecting my pratfall had made me the humorous butt of the assembled crowd in the busy hotel lobby.

To my amazement, no one was watching. Not that the place was empty — far from it. There must have been fifty people in there, but my entrance hadn’t drawn the slightest attention. Instead, all eyes were on a half-dozen television screens strategically located at conversational gathering points in the large room.

One glance at a monitor told me there was no use competing with the most famous pair of tits in Hollywood.

Monica LaMonica, her cleavage cut so low you wondered how physical support was achieved, puckered up to plant a big, wet, passionate one on Buck Morehead, her leading hunk du jour. Ignoring the fact that such immodest décolletage was not the practice in the antebellum South, Monica’s costumers had her in ringlet curls, a velvet choker with heart-shaped diamond setting off her ivory throat. Conveniently for the sake of historical accuracy on his part, Dick wore nothing above the waist but a gleaming coat of coconut oil.

Must be a fantasy sequence, I thought _—_ knowing well, along with the rest of the free world, that _The Edge of Endlessness_ is a contemporary Upper East Side melodrama centering on the engrossing peccadilloes of gorgeous and conniving professionals in today’s fast-paced, cutthroat media industry.

Realizing that my cover had not been blown, I sauntered over to the bar with a renewed air of overconfidence, there to greet Nigel, our redoubtable concierge, who was sipping a Midori neat, totally out of keeping with company policy about drinking on the job.

“What’s the big deal?” I asked him.

He shushed me, indicating the screen. “Jessica is going to tell Courtenay he’s quits.”

“Not before he tells her he’s got a week to live.”

“That’s impossible. His transplant took. You out sick yesterday?”

I couldn’t take any more. “Why doesn’t _she_ get the disease of the week?” I wondered, knowing it was a ridiculous question. Turning from the screen, I spied a copy of _Loose Lips_ on the bar.

Four-walling her fame, as the publicists in this town would say, Monica’s color picture was on the front page of the tabloid. Above her trademark heart-shaped sunglasses and profusion of red hair, the headline read: “MONICA LaMONICA _—_ SHE WANTS TO BE ALONE!”

Perhaps too loudly, I asked Nigel or no one, “When was she ever alone?”

“We’re telling them she’s in the south of France.”

“I see London, I see France. I bet we’re washing her underpants.”

He sneered as if I were some disloyal footman and went back to watching the steamy episode.

Having spotted her stretch limo on the lot just moments ago, I had a pretty good idea where I would find the hotel’s most notorious secret resident. I had another, more urgent reason to go there, so, resuming my air of bored nobility, I set off across the expansive lobby toward the beauty shop.

An older couple perched on a settee in the center of the room. (My guess was third-generation German from Milwaukee _—_ lousy tippers.) He had a camcorder slung around his neck and a _Map of the Stars’ Homes_ stuffed in a thick Michener paperback. All he needed was a placard: “TOURIST CARRIES $500 IN TRAVELERS’ CHECKS.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the two of them scoping me, assessing my St. Tropez look and self-important walk, wondering _who I am._

_Good question,_ I think.

The reception area of the beauty shop was empty and dark. Opening the inside door to the workstations, I caught my heart’s desire in an innocently erotic pose.

Felicia Ferrulo, a gorgeous, dark, hot-blooded lady whose ancestors must surely have been Sicilian, was bent over a draped woman in the chair. Felicia’s back was toward me, and her micro-mini had hiked up so the plump bottoms of her sweet cheeks peeked out, separated by small wedge of hot-pink undies with lace trim.

Enthralled in the moment, I took a long, deep breath. Felicia! If she had given me a tumble then, _all this would not have been necessary._

I expected to find Monica in Felicia’s chair, but it was another guest, one who was rich enough but fameless. At that moment, Ms. LaMonica was probably safely installed in our Bungalow B, where she’d registered last week as “Jayne Jones _—_ Inquiries to Manager.” She had quickly developed a fondness for Felicia, who in her capacity as caregiver was a trusted member of the star’s life-support team. My contact with our stellar guest had been limited to opening her car door now and then, and my own survival sense told me to keep it that way.

Not finding the star there made me bolder.

“Babe, we are gonna be so fantastic,” I muttered, thinking about kissing the moist lips under the pink wedgie.

Felicia paid no attention and turned to wash her gooey hands in the sink. Thinking I was still unnoticed, I walked up behind her and reached for the Moon. But before I could make contact, my wrist was stopped and clamped tight as an iron manacle.

Her pouty face turned toward me now, and I grew all the more excited seeing she was flushed and sweaty from her labors. Her nails dug into my wrist as her wet-look rouged lips formed a sensuous, sneering French pucker. She blew a puff of air upward, dislodging a damp, dangling curl from her noble, perspiring forehead.

“What we have is not necessarily a relationship, and my name’s not Babe.”

I distinctly remember starting to say, “We need to talk. I’ll drop by tonight with a bottle of Chateau —”

“No you won’t,” Felicia said, cutting me off as she closed the door behind me.

Oh! I would walk on hot coals for this woman, but she knew I was already cooked, and she was not having any.CHAPTER 2 SHOT DOWN

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DANTE HAD HIS BEATRICE. FOR me it’s Felicia. Not only is the object of my desire heart-stoppingly beautiful herself, she can create beauty. As a qualified Sassoon graduate, she knows her scissor work and razor cuts, her lotions and mudpacks, her depilatories, dyes, and balms. Unfortunately for my span of attention on anything else but her, I see her every day at the Palms.

Ah! (Knuckle bite.)

She said we didn’t, but we had a relationship to speak of — that is, we were on speaking terms. She’d rushed me out of her shop today, but usually she didn’t seem to mind my stopping by on my break. She’d talk as she worked, sometimes even directly to me. (It sounded like singing, I thought.) I would listen and try to think of charming and witty rejoinders, but mostly I just stared in awe. She was genuine second-generation Italian, with that capuccino-colored Mediterranean skin, jet-black hair worn in a passionate tease, red pouty lips that said “You don’t own me” (but dared you to die trying), and that little bead of sweat on her upper lip when she got steamed — which happened whenever she expressed herself forcefully, as she often did with characteristic Sicilian zeal. Many were the times I fantasized that little string of sweat beads breaking out in the hot throes of physical passion induced by my ardent thrusting.

Ah!

Undeterred and having rehearsed my speech before the mirror at home, I dropped ’round to her place as promised. I carried a chilled bottle of Dom (borrowed from a room-service tray — I don’t make that kind of money). I sported a velour sweat suit — a comfortable, package-flattering ensemble that could be shucked quickly, I pictured, for that long-awaited, hastily consummated romp in her bedroom.

The apartment door swung open graciously at my buzzing to reveal her, drop-dead gorgeous in a floor-length silk evening gown with pendant earrings. Although I’m sure I mentioned earlier that day I’d be paying a visit, I hadn’t said anything about stepping out, especially in such style. So there we were — she dressed for the ballroom at the Ritz, me for pizza and TV, albeit with a respectable sparkling wine.

No matter. We’d both be undressed soon enough, hiccuping and giggling at the oddity and delight of lovers’ first coupling.

A puzzled look passed over her face like a wispy cloud temporarily hiding the sun. “Rollo, that’s right. You said you had something to ask me, but I didn’t think you meant you’d being showing up, uh, here.”

If not now, not ever. “I was just wondering whether you’d be interested in getting married. To me, I mean.”

The little cloud became a thunderhead and shot a bolt into her brain. I thought she stumbled back, but maybe she just blinked.

“You’d better come in,” she said numbly.

It was the first time I’d been to her place. The walls were filled with her paintings, the exclusive subject matter of which was puppies staring out with abnormally large, watery, affectionate eyes. Apparently, my love was the Keane of canine portraiture.

Ah, there was so much more about her I would learn, and eagerly!

She didn’t invite me to sit, didn’t offer a beverage or snack. In fact, she seemed disoriented in her own house. I stood frozen, holding the bottle of Dom behind my back.

Will she guess I swiped it?

She turned her head away (to wipe a tear?) and on turning back said, “I didn’t see this coming, Rollo. People usually, I don’t know, _date_ first.”

“I’m new at this,” was all I could find to say, playing the Fool card of naivete, since worldliness obviously wasn’t my strong suit.

From somewhere within herself she summoned fire, and I got a flash of my mother’s nine-pound Pekingese Shotzi, who quickly bites male dogs of any size squarely on the nose as they approach. Neither of these gals need ever fear a Rottweiler in a dark alley.

As abruptly as I’d popped the question, she turned me down, and ignoring the implications on the duration of my visit or my life’s entire future course, I dumbly asked for the reasons why.

“Why _would I_ marry you is a much shorter list,” she explained carefully. “Let’s keep this positive.

“You’re cute and sweet,” she continued, “and you have a nice sense of humor when you let yourself relax.” This girl didn’t have any trouble expressing herself, a trait I really admired, even as I was stung by the sharp truth of her list, not to mention its conciseness. I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t.

“But why _don’t_ you...?” I couldn’t help it coming out as a whine.

Her glance flitted from her watch to a wall clock, and I was impressed that she would bother to synchronize them, especially at this moment.

She became impatient and apparently decided to break her own rule about avoiding criticism. “For one thing, you’re unfocused.”

“I turned a corner in my life today,” I protested. “I decided you’re my future.”

“And you’re _mine?_” she asked incredulously, as if it were an undeserved condemnation. “Did you apply for a job at Charles Schwab? Win a Rhodes scholarship? Lose a rich uncle?”

“Hey, one step at a time.”

“Okay, Rollo. For example. Where’s the ring?”

It was a very good question. I had already told her I was new at this, so that excuse wouldn’t work again. “I thought we’d pick it out, you know, together.”

“So I could co-sign for the time payments? A ring is supposed to be two months salary, Rollo. Now, I’m not saying I’d insist on that, but I’m giving you some perspective here.” She paused for emphasis. “You can’t afford the prize in a Happy Meal.”

“Babe, I got plans.”

“Yeah, two rubbers in your pocket,” she smoldered. I marveled at her X-ray vision (she was even looking at the right pocket). “My name’s not Babe.” Was her upper lip breaking into a dew? “And you’re clumsy. If we had a baby, you might drop it.”

Where does this come from?

I searched my memory for some inexcusable gaffe I’d committed in front of her, but I was at a loss. It was such a silly reason, I began to see her objections as nothing more than anxious denial — a reluctance to confront the intensity of her true feelings for me!

I started toward her, an approach that I meant to end in a comforting embrace. As I said, “Everybody worries, but that never happens,” I raised my arms in supplication, swinging the ice-cold bottle of Dom. Its slick, clammy surface defied my grasp. The bottle slipped from my hand and thudded to the floor, connecting with toe of my right Reebok and inducing a sharp pain and what would eventually become an ugly multicolored bruise.

“Owwwwwwww.” Desperate for any affection at this point, I would gratefully accept sympathy. Although the embarrassment hurt more than my foot did, I went for an agonized wince and gave a little hop.

I thought I detected genuine concern. But just then, the doorbell rang and her expression changed to panic.

“You can’t stay,” she said, indicating that menace lurked on the other side of the door.

“But we —”

She was conflicted now about whether to answer the door or tend my foot. “Did you think I dressed for you?”

A sense of my own winning charm returned, perhaps because I was in free fall, with no hope of pulling out. “Well now,” I said, “I didn’t think you were taking the dog for a walk.”

She didn’t have a dog, which suddenly struck me as odd, given the recurring theme of her artwork. It would certainly give us something to talk about next time. I’d invite her dinner some night, try to find a way to suggest casual dress and modest fare.

She primped before a mirror, straightening a wisp of hair and delicately wiping the delicious sweat from her lip, finishing in a sexy pucker.

“His name is Stan,” she said emphatically. “We’re going to the opera.”

What a droll sense of humor, I thought. It was her deft way of easing my pain without resorting to physical touching, not the choice I would have preferred. “You can’t take a dog to the opera,” I laughed, appreciating her joke.

I knew a good exit line when I had one, and as she moved toward the door, I grasped the knob and opened it wide.

There stood Stan, the human equivalent of a deep-chested Rotty, with a neck as thick as my waist, draped in an Armani suit that probably cost what I make in a year, shooting an immaculate cuff to expose a glitter on the wrist that was sure to be nothing less than a Patek Phillipe.

I smiled winningly at him, hoping to come across as the innocuous boy next door who had just popped in for a cup of sugar or advice on a gay relationship. “She met you at the gym, right?”CHAPTER 3 THE GRUEL THICKENS

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WUTHERING PALMS HAS CHANGED HANDS more times than a Vegas silver dollar. The current owner is a Dutch conglomerate funded by a coven of VCs. In my parent’s generation, that meant Viet Cong, reputed to be vicious, heartless torturers who thought nothing of letting you bleed slowly to the verge of unconsciousness until you gave them exactly what they wanted, then left you for dead. Today’s veecees are venture capitalists. Ours grow tulips instead of bamboo, they have good complexions and smile a lot, but otherwise the old definition still fits.

They grabbed the Palms in a distress sale from some sultan’s wife or other, whose hubby was unwise enough to establish California residency long enough to learn the legal definition of community property. A gazillion dollars in handcrafted custom refurbishing and overpriced knickknacks later, our offshore owners put a stop to their own bleeding by cutting back on staff and posting Save the Planet cards in all the bathrooms, encouraging guests to reuse bed linens and towels, a politically correct move that reportedly saved them thirty-two percent on outside laundry bills. Delighted at reinventing the old Dutch concept that less is more, they decided that the new, reserved ambience should damn well cost more and doubled the rack rate, with not the slightest dip in occupancy. Hype and perceived luxury drive the overheated economy of early twenty-first century America, and to hell with those old-fashioned notions of value for money.

In a stroke of mismanagement I am still unable to fathom, these bog meisters retained the sitting hotel manager, a Boston Brahmin long past retirement age, one Hugo Farnsworth. A blanched prune done up in tweeds more suited to some musty Victorian drawing room than the cabanas of Beverly Hills, Farnsworth loathes the public, especially the nouveau-riche __ techno-youngsters who abjure sensible lodgings at a Hilton for the ersatz splendor of our frilly, pink-stucco bungalows. Maybe that’s what Monica’s image does for this place. People who stay here must feel they’re _in_ a Hollywood soap opera. Anyway, Farnsworth is rarely seen outside his fake-book-lined, leather-upholstered office, and some say the trill of his house phone is so soft it won’t wake him from a snooze.

~~~

The morning after I’d interrupted Felicia on the way to the opera, I limped over to the shop before the start of my shift to pay her a visit. I wasn’t sure what I’d say to her, but if she had a customer, maybe I’d catch a stray remark about the mysterious Stan.

On my way in, I noticed the Rolls out front, which did the place no harm imagewise, and I made a mental note to re-park it just as soon as I’d changed into uniform (but not until I’d gotten the scoop from Felicia).

Whom should I find reclining in the beautician’s chair but Ms. LaMonica, her face smeared in a mudpack. As if this weren’t enough to discourage me, I soon learned that Management was having me followed. I sensed Farnsworth’s ghastly hand on my shoulder, transformed as the paw of his familiar spirit and assistant manager, Hector Gomez-Ibarra. The wicked old fart must have sent him after me, because otherwise Hector is one cool dude, maybe even my best friend when he doesn’t have a hard-on from reading up on company policy.

He was not in a comradely mood. “Those jalopies don’t park themselves, _pendejo._” He apparently thought I’d made a habit of joyriding in the Rolls, when in fact I’d only had it out once (so far).

“Hector, old man,” I said as I gave him a playful jab in the shoulder. “Took out the Rolls _yesterday._ Capital. I was thinking of taking the Maser for a spin.”

“What-ever, Rollo. Just get behind the wheel of something quick or we both gonna be telling bad jokes in the unemployment line.”

Never too quick on the uptake, Monica finally stirred from beneath her mudpack: “Who’s there?” she demanded imperiously.

(My version of what happened next differs from later third-person reports.)

Hector put on his best hotelier manner, hands clasped as if in prayer (a needlessly stagy effect, I thought, since she couldn’t see him). “Miz, er, Jones! I hope we haven’t disturbed you? Do you have everything you desire?”

Monica’s voice was a low rumble, a jaded growl from the depths of despair as fame faces the monster of rapidly advancing age. She said, “You must be kidding,” or words to that effect.

The star’s animation put Felicia all a-flutter. “Aye, Miz Jones. Don’t talk!” Wetting her hands, she hastened to rework Monica’s plaster job. “Your Sedona red clay is going to crack, then I don’t know what.”

Job done and mired hands upraised like a surgeon, Felicia stormed over to us, clack-clack in those platform shoes that give a provocative rise to her round little rump. “You fellas get lost,” she whispered. “I’m getting her life mask, and you almost ruined it. Think of it — I’ll have her in clay!”

“She’ll have you in court,” I said.

“Never mind,” said Hector and urged me out the door.

No sooner were we out of the shop than Hector turned on me. “_Qué estúpido!_ I catch you once more borrowing vehicles…”

“Fringe benefit,” I explained. “_Doit de seigneur, noblesse oblige._ One of those.”

He got _muy macho._ “This is what’s called a verbal warning, bro. I got to go back to my office now and write out on a goddamn form _in fucking triplicate_ that I told you this. Blue copy goes in your personnel jacket, buff to Farnsworth. And I got to fax the white to corporate. Next time it’s a written warning, and don’t make me explain what I have to do for that.”

“Come on, Hector. You my homie.”

“You ain’t got no homies, you little wad of white trash.” No mistaking, his Irish was up, not to be casting aspersions on his dear mother in Veracruz. “I’m up for a promotion, and not you, not nobody is gonna screw it up. I’ll be looking for a rosewood briefcase, and you’ll be looking for parking spaces or you’ll be looking for a job.”

“Okay, I just went to ask Monica if she wanted her stretch detailed.”

I knew he was upset because his lost control of his verb forms: “You lazy and you a liar, ’cause when you not out joyriding you trying to get in Felicia’s coochie. I see the Rolls not parked, I know right where to look for you. Who you kidding, man?”

Surprisingly, in that moment, it was easy to think of Hector as my best, my truest friend. He had neatly placed my life goals in two categories _—_ fine automobiles and female companionship, not necessarily in that order. He was wrong, of course. He knew nothing of my other ambitions, but I could see how he and the rest of the world, seeing my actions, might form such a rash conclusion. It was a startling, clarifying moment, and I hugged him.

“Jeez!” he recoiled. “Get into uniform and wipe that silly grin off your face. You loco, you know.”

“Okay,” I said, “just the jacket. Don’t make me wear that stupid little hat.”

He glared at me and his lips tightened, showing perfect white teeth set in a rakish snarl. He was Fernando Lamas, Ricardo Montalban, Xavier Cougat in a white tropical suit. “Regulations is regulations,” he said, relishing his power.

A few minutes and a trip to the employee locker room later, I was dolled up in my regulation attire, looking, I always thought, not much different from an organ-grinder’s trained monkey. The uniform consisted of military-striped trousers and a toreador jacket with gilt epaulets, neatly topped off with a braided pillbox hat.

In my haste to return to my post, I ran straight into the Milwaukee sauerbraten, he distracted loading his camcorder and she slavering her pasty complexion with SPF-99. I bumped into him, knocking his DV cassette to the floor. (Bet the missus has a little digital in her purse. And knows how to e-mail snaps to her Favorites, maybe even how to surf for porn!) Stooping to retrieve it, he jostled her elbow, causing her to stick her own greasy finger in her eye. Each apparently assuming the other to blame, they set to bickering hellishly until they laid eyes on me, which broke the spell, startled them anew, and got them giggling so hard they drooled.

Having gone from media idol to sideshow novelty in the eyes of the public in a single afternoon’s performance, I felt no apology was necessary, tipped my cute cap deferentially in their direction, and headed briskly for the door.

From the other side of the plate glass, an amused Laszlo watched me make my way gingerly through the treacherous mechanism of our recent rapprochement. I hated him for his sniggering look, from which I imagined he was playing back his mental videoclip of humping me on the lobby rug.

He drew himself up to his full height and amazingly seemed taller than me as he observed, “Wery becomink, dat hat.”

The final straw! I marched over to him and bent down, nose to nose with the one person in the world I hoped I could safely humiliate. “You little Hunkie sausage,” I sneered. “Where’s your green card?”

He gulped, took one step back. I felt like Attila the Hun.

Ashamed my crisis of self-esteem had forced me into a testosterone standoff with a mild-mannered middle-aged midget, I strode down the walkway to retake my rightful, albeit temporary, place in command of the Rolls.CHAPTER 4 A FEDERAL CASE

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SPECIAL AGENT ARLEN PUGSLEY HERE. Excuse me for inter-rupting an ambitious literary work in progress, but it falls to me to provide some context. Hemphill’s painting a picture, so I need to give you the frame. You see, if you’ve been squaring yourself all along with Uncle Sam, your tax dollars paid for this book. (That won’t cut you any slack at Barnes & Noble, I’m afraid. But you’ve paid for the Internet several times over without so much as a whimper — so what’s the point of whining about it?)

I’m a federal parole officer. That puts me somewhere between a bully and a shrink most of the time, and I don’t do a bad job. I didn’t start out to be some kind of Maxwell Perkins to this snot-nosed Hemphill. But I freely admit I encouraged him — no, I required him — to get his filthy stuff off his chest and onto paper.

Tell you why.

I’m a bit heavier, in terms of seniority and expertise, than your average caseworker. (Yeah, okay, there’s my physical heft, too, as long as we’re being honest.) Most of the time, my job falls to some junior paper-shuffler who has some training in psych or criminology. But today, your big crimes, your terrorist incidents, and even your wars can be perpetrated and waged with keystrokes and mouse clicks. Unauthorized penetration is the name of the game. So we got an interagency task force for investigating high-tech misbehavior. Includes the Bureau, the warfighters, and the spooks. (Homeland Security fits in there somewhere, but that org chart is way too complicated to explain.) We keep an eye on kids who have too much intelligence and free time, too little ambition and respect for authority, and a talent for cutting capers with computers. Hackers are my specialty, and it’s my mission to apply my number twelve shoe to the soft, fat asses of these little pranksters before they get the idea of selling out to some criminal syndicate, corrupt foreign government, or extremist cell.

Fortunately, we got hold of Hemphill before he went rotten. What turns a slacker into a hacker, then a hacker into a hardened felon? In my opinion, the underlying cause is sexual frustration. Masturbation and abuse of computers go hand in hand, is my theory. The perps are mostly young males. They begin to experiment in their early teens. Goes without saying, if they could get laid, they wouldn’t feel the need to reach out and touch someone in cyberspace. The Net gives them easy access to porn, chat rooms, webcams — the whole disaster — but for these guys it’s mostly one-way, voyeur stuff, choked chickens. A fourteen-year-old with zits who just blew his allowance on another gig of RAM isn’t going to make any kind of in-person sexual rendezvous. He’s got zero chance of being a real player in that game, and he knows it. Oh, he’ll go through the phase of playing the e-mail impostor, but he’s no closer to gripping any flesh but his own and soon gets bored. When it dawns on him he can’t complete a sexual transaction, he’ll turn to the other — the financial kind.

And in that turning, he goes from being a more or less harmless prankster to practicing as a journeyman thief. Now, we can’t exactly nip his thing in the bud. If we rounded up everybody who’s beating his meat in front of a computer screen, we might as well turn the country into one big jail. But try any funny business with a credit card, and my team is all over your ass.

Hemphill actually didn’t draw our attention until what we’d call the second turning — when they start putting their skills to practical use for some client or other. At this point, the perp has gained some proficiency as a hacker. And maybe it’s been a few years and the zits are clearing up, so he’s got a shot at romance, even if it’s a long one. The objective is to impress the prospective girlfriend. Travis Bickle, you get the idea. Certainly, your hacker hasn’t spent his teens competing on the playing field or working out at the gym. He’s got one trick to show off, so he uses it.

In Hemphill’s case, his second turning came at age seventeen. Up to that point, he was pretty much an innocent — literally nickel-and-dime stuff to prove to himself he could pull it off. (We regard even those small transactions as serious. We’ve had cases where millions were embezzled one penny at a time.) But Hemphill was toying, amusing himself, not racking up big scores, and so he stayed mostly below our radar.

But then he starts to hang with one Audrey Skolnick, a groupie turned pulp-rag stringer. She was a few years older, already out in the world. An aspiring journalist who covered the garage-band beat, that one was a real trash collector. Ordinarily, her work would be no concern of ours (unless she turned political, as some of them do). Problem is, this material girl couldn’t balance a checkbook and lived on plastic. She hadn’t done it long enough to go bust, but when she took up with Rollo she was several thousand in the hole, and sinking fast.

For whatever reason — out of the goodness of his heart, you might say — he offers to go online and help her out. Works some transfers, zeros her accounts, cleans up her credit report — and in so doing pops up like a dummy on our shooting range. That’s when we nailed him.

We couldn’t get her as an accessory because, according to his testimony, it was all his idea. She didn’t encourage him, and if you believe his story, she didn’t even know what he was doing until after he’d done it. Said he borrowed her purse when she was sleeping, and that’s all it took. We had no way to prove otherwise, so she skated.

He drew three years — six months in a minimum-security facility and the rest on the outside in my tender care. It was a feather-light slap on the wrists, if you ask me, but the guy’s got this wounded-puppy look, and maybe the judge bought into that, I don’t know. It is hard to believe he could be malicious, but then you’ve got your Ted Bundy, whom you’d take for a straight arrow from prep school, so there’s no telling from appearances.

My job is, see he stays out of trouble and work on his low self-esteem. Bully and shrink, like I said. And it’s always the low-self-esteem thing. That’s your fallout from your sexual frustration. Did he even score with Audrey, after all that? Damned if I can tell, and he’s not telling me. In the pen, he won’t so much as pick up a tennis racquet, volunteers to wash pots in the commissary. His only bitch is he wants lotion for the chapping from his hands being in hot suds all day. Which they give him, we’re not monsters. But he won’t crack a book, won’t share in group, won’t talk to anyone, and shows his defiance of authority by putting hospital corners on his bunk when they’re not required.

He was shaping up to be a hard case, and they were glad to be rid of him. First thing I do, I line him up a good job — no minimum-wage gig, and not washing pots. Parking cars at a classy hotel — Wuthering Palms — with a full forty-hour week, health plan, and 401K. Back in the old days, before this tire showed up around my waist, I used to coach youth basketball at the Police Athletic League. My star player was a guard — would you believe it? — short brown kid named Hector from Boyle Heights. Played like a terrier. Ends up assistant manager over at the Palms. A phone call did the trick. My boys remember me.

Of course, Hemphill has the skills, if not the formal training, to handle a computer job. But, at least while I’m on the case, we don’t want him going near one. Or teaching, for that matter. No warping young minds in ways we can’t control. Or maybe even understand.

Which brings me to the task at hand. Hemphill shows no ambition. On the job, he doesn’t break the rules particularly, does what he needs to do to get by, but Hector says he’s a dreamer. Talks about wanting to be a deejay but doesn’t follow through. In our meetings, I bring it up, I get a blank stare, he changes the subject.

So I suggest maybe he should keep a diary. He doesn’t have to show it to me, but maybe some stuff will come up he wants to talk about. He doesn’t go for the idea, sees it as make-work, I guess. But a few months later, he changes his mind, tells me he wants to write his “confession.” Now I’m all ears. Not only because, for the first time, I’m seeing signs of his being interested in something — but also because both yours truly and my fellow wizards are always eager to let a hacker brag about how he did it. Keeps us current, you might say.

What we got was this piece of shit. Enjoy.CHAPTER 8 A PLOT LAID AND HATCHED

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ADORED BY THOUSANDS OF CHEERING fans who lined our route, Felicia and I were motoring through the narrow streets of Rome on our way to a date with the paparazzi at Cinecittà when Hector strolled over to the car and rudely leaned into the shot.

“You don’t learn, do you?”

It was in the heat of a weekday afternoon, and a respectable stillness had descended over the Palms. Our guests were either trying on yet another $400 pair in the air-conditioned lap of Saks shoe department, or they were alternately napping and rutting in their sumptuous suites. I therefore saw no need to take his rebuke seriously.

“Some pal you turned out to be,” I pouted.

As I expected, his tough look evaporated, and the sniggering smile of Hector my homie took its place. “You take the heat, the old man lets off steam, everybody got a job,” he explained. His expression broadened to a 100-Watt Aquadent smile. “No worries. I got your back, bro.”

“Why doesn’t that make me feel all cuddly, I wonder?”

“Don’t fuck up this job,” he said. “Or maybe you want me to sponsor you for dishwasher at Barney’s Beanery, something like that?”

He’d more than made his point, but I didn’t have to acknowledge it because at that moment a familiar white stretch Town Car pulled into the drive.

“Battle stations,” I muttered, getting out to resume my post at the curb. Hector noticed I hobbled a bit.

“You get anything off Felicia last night?”

“When she realizes how perfect we are for each other...”

“Just what I thought. Nada,” he laughed as he jerked off in pantomime. “She stomp your foot?” He obviously already had too much information. Felicia doesn’t speak to him (she thinks he’s a wannabe gigolo), and Audrey confides nothing without getting large gossip currency in return. So I wondered how much he knew about my aborted proposal, and from whom.

“I’m getting ready to make my move and some guy named Stan shows up. Built like a refrigerator, wearing this majorly hock-able gold watch. How does a normal guy compete with that?”

“Gotta make her jealous,” Hector said, his gaze tracking the limo’s approach. (Among the words that will live in infamy, those are surely some, planted by my compadre at that moment like virulent seeds in my fertile unconscious, there to proliferate like some nasty weed until all my thoughts, waking and otherwise, would be focused on that single goal.)

With Hector close behind (following through on his promise to watch my back) I was in motion toward the rear door of the car, but her driver Ernie Washington was way ahead of me, making a show of earning his salary.

“Miz LaMonica!” Hector was the first to exclaim as she jumped out at us. On this hot day, she looked like a giant snowball dressed all in white fur, gorgeous gams at one end, an explosion of fiery red hair at the other.

As Ernie quickly grabbed her shopping bags (Gucci and Halston), her trademark heart-shaped shades swung around to focus on him — training the killing power of her 10,000-gigawatt estrogen laser on him.

“I’m seventeen minutes late for my pedicure, Mister Afraid-to-Change-Lanes.”

Ernie gulped, there being no defensive posture against such deadly force.

Always the diplomat, Hector edged toward her. “Is there anything —?”

She grabbed the bags from Ernie and shoved them at our always-helpful assistant manager. “Here, put these in my bungalow.”

At this, Ernie’s timidity modulated to full-out panic as he must have wondered whether he’d be fired on the spot, deprived of the menial task of schlepping the spoils of the hunt to her beastly lair.

“Traffic was a b —” he started to say, as if in apology.

_Error! Miscalculation!_ The laser’s twin lenses swung back on him in a flash, locking him in her sights.

“I hear the b-word from you one more time and they won’t let you drive a golf ball. On a public course.”

Amazingly, that was the only firing she would do, this time.

Removing her lenses, she turned to me. In my role as bystander I must have represented the millions of her sympathetic fans. “You see these?” she asked, removing her lenses and pointing to her eye. Her face came close and I got a strong whiff of Passion. “Type-A worry lines. There isn’t enough mud on the planet to get rid of these!”

Ohmigod. What could be worse than an all-out estrogen laser attack? We three knew — it would be every man’s worst nightmare: a storm of tears, which would rain down like thermonuclear ash, entombing our hideously charred bodies with their shriveled penises until the next Flood. For reasons no less noble than saving every healthy dick on the planet, I prayed she would show restraint.

Hector — how does he manage it? — bent and scraped even lower: “Perhaps the lady would prefer to slip in by way of our rear entrance?”

She went right to the core of his meaning, however unintended. Tensions evaporated, she laughed, then gibed to me, “Go figure, a man who asks first.”

She flounced off rat-tat-tat in her ruby-red alligator heels in the direction of the deserted pool patio (a shortcut to Felicia’s shop). Ernie heaved a soulful sigh of relief and shot us a commiserating look as he climbed back into the stretch and drove off.

Hector handed me the shopping bags, then reached into his pocket for a key-access card.

“Why don’t you drop these over to Bunghole B,” he smirked, “seeing as how’s you and her are new best friends.”

I studied the card. “Is this a passkey for the whole damn hotel?”

Replacing the smirk, he did a very convincing menacing glare. “_Pendejo,_ I’ll know if you steal so much as a Cheeto from the minibar.”