Prologue

Saturday, November 17, 1973

Tina, Los Angeles

The phone rang enough times that I couldn’t ignore it. Not too many people had my phone number, and fewer ever used it. It was probably Suze Rancherd, the director of the film, telling me I had to come in to shoot something over. It’s only money, baby. I got off the couch in my little downtown apartment and walked over barefooted to pick up the handset. The temperature in my place was cool for LA, so I wore a light woolen shawl over my vanilla-colored chemise. The chemise was silk, and it looked good on my caramel skin. It was almost Thanksgiving, even though that never meant as much to us Chamorros as it did to the statesiders. I picked up the phone and listened without saying anything. A girl can’t be too careful.

A woman’s voice asked me if I was Miss Christina Diaz, and when I said yes, she said, “Please hold for an incoming international person-to-person call from Guam.” There was a noticeable change of sound as the operator connected us. What’s this about? Mom?

“Tina,” the voice said, through the staticky sound of a long-distance call. “Tina, Tina, Tina.”

Oh shit. What’s the old joke? It came to me like a hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. That voice. That voice I hoped I’d never hear again. “What do you want, Foghorn?” I asked. He was always so cocksure and self-important; I privately called him Foghorn Leghorn after the cartoon character. By the end I called him that to his face, but I hadn’t used that name for a long time, and I wasn’t happy to use it now. That was all supposed to be in the past. Bygones be bygones. I’m out of there. I’m in LA, at school. On scholarship. My hair still smelled of coconut oil from the shower.

“I have a problem, Tina. And I need you to come back to help me solve it.”

I could feel my cheeks get hot. I thought he understood that the past would stay the past. My mind was racing with all the things it could mean to have him reaching out to me now. I really didn’t need this. “You have a problem all right, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I left, remember?”

“Do I remember? Thank God you left. I was going crazy. But now things are coming back to haunt both of us. It’s your mother, girl. She is starting to make my life difficult. Very difficult.” The pitch of his voice went up—he sounded stranger than ever, positively screechy. “I need you to come back here to Guam and if you don’t, I may take steps to make sure you get kicked out of school. Or worse!”

Jesus, did Mom find out about him and me? I had kept this secret so hidden from everybody. “What’s my mother got on you?” This could be bad. Very bad.

“Got on me? It was nothing. It was over in a minute. Not like you, girl. I am sure your mother doesn’t know anything about us. But I got you to hold over her! If she pushes on me, she is going to find out about you and your movies—count on it! She’s not bothering me because of you. She doesn’t know. It’s not you that started it. A girl came into my chambers during a school tour last month. She got into my lap and showed me what she does at home with daddy. Jesus! This story of the girl in chambers—she was with me for a minute, is all—but rumor starts floating around, not like when you were here. My people here at the court know better, they aren’t going to touch this, you kidding?! Still, it gets to be a story. Someone told it to the Attorney General’s investigators, and guess who is now following up? Your mother is investigating, and now I need you to steer her away or we are both going to have trouble at our door.” It almost sounded like he choked at the other end. He was creepier than I remembered.

“There’s no trouble at my door; I left and I’m not coming back. Screw you. I never told anyone about you and I don’t plan to. You go right ahead and fuck up somebody else, but don’t goddamned call me about it.”

“No no no no no. I need you here. Right now.”

“I’m in school, and I’m busy on a job. I can’t just cut and run. Fuck you for calling me.”

“No, my dear. You come back immediately, or I will fuck you. A new way. You and your mama too. I don’t think your school is going to be so happy, either.”

I could hear his breathing and it seemed strange, uneven, maybe ragged. I was silent, but worked up, my own breath loud in my ears. The memories of how much of a mess I had gotten into, maybe caused, stopped me like a flashbulb captures a picture. Was it my fault? Was it his fault? Shit yes—his fault. I thought I had gotten far away from him. He had a lot of nerve to think I’d bail him out. He can rot. He doesn’t have a hold on me anymore. Does he?

“Your mother doesn’t know how you make a living. But I do. I’ve been following you, of course.” Wow, that sounded even more spooky. “I even have one of your movies. It makes me feel like I’ve taught you something.” That made me want to puke. I didn’t think anyone knew about the movies—and they were all done under my stage name, Sirena. “Don’t underestimate me, Tina, my friends in law enforcement are everywhere. You can’t hide from me, you know? I can find you anytime. How do you think I got your number?”

Lanya. The Chamorro expletive fit. I could clearly hear where this score was moving.

“You know, my sixteen-millimeter print is in my air-conditioned office, so the film is well preserved. No mold. I haven’t shown it to anybody yet, and I’d like to think that I won’t have to. You just come home right away and help me get your mother redirected, and both of us can keep our secrets. Buy a ticket immediately. You know the island hopper leaves Monday early from Honolulu. There are more stops, but it will get here before the next direct flight from Honolulu. Be on it. Your mama is breathing down my neck already. I can only put this off for a couple more days. If you’re not here, then I will change the conversation your mother wants to have. She won’t like it.”

My mom is a cop. She’s a special kind of cop, an investigator for the Attorney General. She’s the head of a unit of investigators for the Department of Law and it’s a big deal. On Guam, Chamorro culture has a male edge, especially for the gumataotao, the warriors. She worked her way up in the distinctly male world of policing as a street cop, a job not made easier by the macho attitudes of the typical Chamorro tao tao. It didn’t matter that she was Chamorro, because she was most of all a she. The Filipino guys, probably 30 percent of the force, looked at her cross-eyed. She left the police department as soon as she could. She took advantage of a move into the investigators’ unit at the Attorney General’s Office back in the sixties, practically right after President Kennedy lifted the island’s security status and opened things up. And now she was the head of the unit. Sounds better than it pays.

I couldn’t attend the music department at USC if it wasn’t for the piano scholarship; we don’t have that kind of money. The scholarship wouldn’t have happened if not for my connected piano teacher. My mom just gets a typical GovGuam salary, not much, but still she was sending me money until I told her to stop. I told her that I got a job helping at the school and don’t need her money. She doesn’t have enough of it to repair the leaks in her own rusty corrugated metal roof—she shouldn’t spend it on me.

Hearing him on the phone brought me back. “Tina,” he said, his voice sounding every bit like it had to travel through thousands of miles of undersea cable to reach me. “I’m waiting to hear from you. Will I see you here, or will your mother and I watch your movie together and talk about the future you could have had?”

I wanted to say “fuck off,” but I didn’t. “You want me to show up, tell some lies for you, and you’re going to give me your print of the movie. Then I’m going to come back home. Is that your plan?”

“Leave tomorrow,” he said, and hung up.

This sounded like a terrible plan, and as I sat there it occurred to me that there must be lots of prints of the movies I’ve made floating around out there, and hell, it’s a market, they’re for sale. This would happen again. I had to go back and help my mom see that I own my life. Whatever I did, it shouldn’t be used to help old Foghorn. Fuck him. But I had to go back to soften the blow to Momma. How does making a little movie about getting poked by a few guys turn out to be such a big mess? It takes a lot less time than the piano and it pays way better. At least for now.

I knew Mom would be furious even if she wasn’t on Foghorn’s trail, but I couldn’t let her walk blindly into my past with Foghorn. Not to mention what kind of mess he could create for all of us. Maybe, just maybe, I could take away his power by owning up. I shook my head and picked up the phone to call the Navy PX for tickets on Continental Air Micronesia. I guess I was going home.

Foghorn, aka Judge Scraggins, Guam, USA

I hung up the phone, feeling more confused than anything else. I spend most of my days sending bums to jail or placidly listening to supplicants and making unremarkable rulings on various legal matters, but now I was asking myself, like Alice in the last year’s film version of Adventures in Wonderland, Who am I? And then, snap, just like that. That little bitch. Calling me Foghorn. This whole situation has become impossible. I don’t have to stand for this, do I? I made one little mistake. Just one. After that witch Tina seduced me and gave me crazy dreams, I swore I would never go to that place again. I was relieved when she left for school in LA, thank God. When she left, I vowed to put it all behind me.

I didn’t even touch a girl until that little vixen Louisa slipped into my chambers during a school tour and closed the door behind her. She knew what she was doing. She came up to me as I sat behind my desk and smiled while putting her hand on my arm. My blood pressure went through the roof. I knew I should walk her right out, but I was overcome, and I pushed my chair away from the desk and invited her to sit on my lap. She snuggled into me, and I immediately felt myself react to the touch of her slender legs.

She asked me if I’d like to see what she does with daddy and spread her knees apart in my lap. One little time, just one. My hand was on her slender thigh, then it slipped up her dress. I just petted her body, under her blue-and-white-checked school dress, and I couldn’t help myself, I just couldn’t. It was…oh. Oh… Uh-oh. She hopped off me, looking a little nervous. I gave her my stern Judge look. “Louisa—This. Never. Happened. Do you understand? We will both say that this never happened.” She nodded tremulously, backed out of my chambers, and ran off. She couldn’t have been in my chambers for more than ten minutes. When she ran out, I went into my washroom to try to clean myself. One little time, and now people are hearing stories.

I’m not a sad-sack village idiot, I’m the judge! I’m the judge! They think things are spinning out of control, but they are so wrong. So wrong. I’m in control, I’m in control—I’m the judge, goddammit! But when I looked at my hands they were shaking.

Monday, November 19, 1973
Mona

Burbank. I could see it, and I could smell it. I could almost taste it. The hazy yellow air hung over the boxy sheet-metal industrial buildings that looked like they all came out of the same Erector Set. I knew I would have to wash the stink out of my hair later. The sun crept up, an orange orb glowing creepily through the smog. It didn’t look healthy. This would be my last day up here working on Lou’s new movie. Working title, The Devil in Justicia Jones. When Harry and the boys made their last film, Deep Throat, it was a sensation. I can tell you, it turned our world around, just seeing this triple-X full-length feature film distributed all over the country, and everybody talking about it in public; it was like the dawning of a new age in my industry. I knew Harry, he described himself as a nice Jewish boy (whatever that was), but always a card, Mr. Comedian. After they made Deep Throat in Miami, Lou, the producer (not his real name, but we don’t go there), needed help with post-production here in Burbank, and he called me. And now, as a favor, I was doing it again, but it was time to go back home to San Diego.

This work had interrupted my own project and I needed to get back to it. I was standing on a loading dock behind a big metal-sided building, the Burbank studio, looking down the street at blocks of a dozen other metal-sided buildings, and thinking about the long drive home. On the freeway, it’s a straight shot down the California coast to San Diego once you get past Disneyland. I was ready to get our current film in the can, ready to be back, and wondering what it would be like to have Gary there waiting for me.

Gary. My new beau. I’ve lived alone for a long time. More than a decade. Building a business at the club downtown, Tell No Tales, and learning how to turn movies into money at what we smilingly call the “studio” in Kearny Mesa has occupied my complete time and attention for years. Men haven’t been a part of my life except to the extent they represent a commodity, a stud that can get it up again and again and do it for me—on film. When my world collided with my young Harbor cop, things got out of hand in a hurry. And now he’s waiting for me at home. My home. It’s a new one for me.

I don’t usually do work for other producers; I have my own outfit, and we do very well making our own shorts down in San Diego. I helped with Deep Throat just because a friend needed me (that’s how I met Harry), and when they ran into the same post-production blues on the next movie they figured I’d bail them out again. This is my last, though. We’ve got enough going on by ourselves. Too much of enough. Which made me remember to call. I left the loading dock and went back inside to the partitioned rooms that passed for offices, dialed Suze, and listened to the phone ring. It was early, but I knew she’d be up.

“Hello?” Her tone when she picked up the call was cautious, implying the question, “Who is this?” Not that I blame her at all; in our business you get some pretty strange calls from even stranger people.

“It’s me, Suze. I wanted to let you know I’m done up here, and I’m driving back today. How’s the shoot going? Did you make up for the time you lost last week?”

“Not as good as we hoped. We’re two days behind schedule now. Friday we needed, like, three or four takes with different guys before we got the right groove with Tina. She is enthusiastic, but she isn’t really a professional, you know what I mean?”

“Can you make up for it now? I’ll be there by lunch unless there’s an accident on the freeway. I can help. We’re almost at the end of this, all the rushes looked great—we only need a few more days and it’s all post-production after that.”

“A lot will depend on how Tina handles it today. I’m going to the studio in an hour to see things are ready, and she’s supposed to show up early. You going to be up there for another hour or two? I’ll call with a report.”

“Thanks. I’m going to wrap up and then have a bite to eat before driving down. I’ll call you from the road; I’ll find a pay phone. Should be about ten-ish.”

“Talk to you later,” she said, and hung up.

I held on to the handset, and then put my finger on the hold button, pressed and released, and waited for a new dial tone, dialing my own number when I heard it. That I was dialing myself seemed strange. Gary picked up after three rings.
“Mona?” he said.

“Hey, Gary,” I said. “Just checking in. It’s like I told you yesterday—it’s a wrap and I’m driving home. I just wanted to check in on Freebie. How’s it going for you?”

Gary and I are in uncharted waters, both of us; living together in my house was still a new thing. It was just a few weeks ago that he left his dad’s house where he had been living for years and came to live with me. Tight quarters, small apartment, but we managed. I think he regretted it when I told him I had a commitment to go up to LA for a week to help a friend, but he suggested that he use the time to do some construction.

Gary moved in with just an armload of stuff. He doesn’t have much, but even so we realized that my place, never more than a small apartment for me to eat and sleep in, fine for my own solitary life, was tight for two. Once Gary learned that I own all three of the units on the property, and that the ones next door were kept empty because I never rented them out (although they occasionally housed a friend in need, or Tina when she drove down for a shoot), he suggested that he could open up the wall between my house and the next-door cottage and make it a bigger place so it would be easier for both of us.

Fine, I’d said. Get comfy. Make sure you have enough space for the dog, I told him, because knowing I was leaving for a week, I had brought him home a surprise before I left. A young dog; the pound thought he was about a year old. Tolerantly labeled a German shepherd mix. Emphasis on the mix. We decided to name him Freebie. It would be a new place, and a new life, for the two of us. And the dog.

The two of us. Wow—I get it, but it is still pretty new to me and it feels a little strange. Now my new boyfriend is building a nest. At least, that’s how it felt. I agreed that two combined cottages would be good, even though things seemed to be happening quickly. It gave Gary a sense of contributing and I figured it would be nice. We’d have lots of space. We might need it. And we did have a terrific view: the fishing pier they built off Ocean Beach was visible from my cliffside living room window.

On the telephone, Gary started telling me how things are going. “The building project is fun, really. Strange to be here with you gone, but I’m ready for you—most of the mess is gone, but we had to put in a double-thick header because the old bearing wall…” My attention faded as he started giving me a report about the work. I wasn’t really listening to him describe his carpentry challenges. My mind was still on my last call, and the worry about how we were days behind in our shooting schedule. I didn’t need that and couldn’t afford it. “…I just won’t have everything painted. It’s essentially done except for that. But I miss you, and Freebie misses you. He sulks every time we go out in the evening. Wants to know where the lady of the pack is.”

“I’m glad you said ‘lady,’” I retorted, knowing what the female of a pack is usually called. “I’m going right to the studio when I get into town—we’re behind and there’s some work to do—but I’ll be home tonight, and we can walk down for some dinner.”
“Don’t bother,” he said, “I’m going to cook something for you.” That was a first, and it made me blink inwardly. He was going to cook dinner for me?

“You be good to Freebie, OK? See you soon.” I hung up the phone and in walked Harry Reems.

I smiled. He is usually funny, but this early in the morning he looked unsteady on his feet. He made a real impact in Deep Throat, and now lightning was ready to strike twice. At least, that’s what they hoped. “The ever-ready Mr. Reems,” I called to him, a little sarcastically. “So good to see you this morning. I thought you’d sleep until noon.”

Harry smiled back at me. “I’d be happy to go back to bed if you’d join me, Mona.”

“No way, Jose. I’m headed back home, and I want to arrive fresh as a daisy.”

“I’ll miss you, sugar,” he said, and gave me a quick hug and a fleeting peck on the cheek. “Drive carefully—let’s do this again some time.” He turned and walked an oscillating path back into the building, and I went back outside to the loading dock and down the short steps to my new little Benz coupe, a replacement for one I lost last month when someone tried to murder me. Not one to fixate on the past, I decided to get going on the strength of one cup of bad office coffee. I hopped in my little Benz and drove toward the freeway to head south, stopping at the first taqueria before the freeway entrance that looked nothing like a franchise. After nibbling down a breakfast burrito (kind of awful, actually) and some more scalding hot coffee, I went outside the food stand to a pay phone mounted on a telephone pole. I called Suze at the studio over the noise of morning traffic, and she gave me an update. Not good.

“What do you mean, she hasn’t shown up?” I knew that Suze had been clear with Tina on Friday when she shot the last two scenes, and Tina knew she was supposed to get in early today.

“Yeah, it’s worse than that. Everybody else did show up. Payroll is rolling, and our star hasn’t even called me with an explanation.” I could tell Suze was angry, and she knew I was because as the days slipped by, our costs kept going up. I thought for a bit.
“Look, Suze, have someone check to make sure she wasn’t in a traffic accident on her way down, OK? And I’ll drive by her apartment to check; it’s not that far out of my way, given that I’m in Burbank. She lives by USC, right? Give me her address.” I waited while Suze had someone go check the file, and scribbled down the address on a napkin when she read it out to me. “Don’t worry, I have a Thomas Guide; I’ll find her. I’ll call after I’ve checked her place—probably take me close to an hour.” I paused. “Check with the cops, OK?” I hung up, took a deep breath, and took the ramp onto the I-5 to make my way to central Los Angeles and my missing starlet.

End of Sample.