A Luna Blued

I wish I was in it for the stuff:  I wish I lived this life, did my job, said my prayers out loud for the reward: the guy, the trip, the money, the love…the feeling of praise from above.  But I know better.  You can pray all you want, work your ass off, try to love for all the right reasons and still end up alone, rhyming dim sum with cum and stuffing down hope like it was treason.

Still… I knew things no one else did and I knew that they were true.  I knew Horatio was held in a mansion in Bel Air and maybe she’d been bought like you buy a view.  And I’d need a whole lot of luck if I was gonna try and get her out and redeem the life that I was due… You could say I had something to prove.  I was gonna need some help.

Teddy Doheny put mustard on his tacos and liked his asparagus canned but he knew a thing or two… about things that are darker than night.  Like runaways hooking at the Olive Motel and little girls lost without a fight.  Sure, the rag he owned that I wrote for sported drivel about B celebs and bargain wine but once it had offered Hollywood truths and Teddy had the byline.  He’d written the story about the fire that had killed those three little girls a decade ago and I just knew… that somehow it was related to Myrna, Horatio and the business of flesh that’s never new.

He was wolfing a torta in a strip mall on Hyperion, going over my last review: written on the back of a napkin at Ciro’s in East L.A., drooling rellano juice.  “You know, that night you let me into the vault to look for that fire story?”  I asked before I sat down. “Don’t want to know that shit anymore”, he answered, “But I got a feeling it’s sticking around.”  “There’s a little girl…” I started; he interrupted, “There always is, can’t you stick with feta omelettes and chorizo stew?”  “It’s the City of Angels out there,” I reminded him, “We can make our own rules.”

He called me a dreamer.  Felt like he called me a fool.

Rhea.