70 - Violated

 

 

They came a night while we were gone, wedging open the balcony door.

Dan claimed they were pros, knowing enough to climb over the rail from the front door platform to our small balcony where the glass door posed less of an obstacle than the front door did, knowing how easily they could get past the latch to the balcony glass door.

I had suspected something even before we got upstairs to the apartment when I noticed the lights on above us after we came home after dark.

“That’s funny,” I told Louise. “I don’t remember turning on the lights.”

Then Louise saw our cat out on the balcony, causing us to rush up the stairs, at which point we took note of the open balcony door.

“Someone’s been here,” Dan concluded, as he eased ahead of us through the door into the apartment, his body stiff, cautious, his face a mask of pending fear. He moved like a large cat, not stepping too far from the wall, as if scared someone might pop up behind him. He made his way to the beaded curtain which he parted with his long fingers to keep them from rattling too loudly as he eased into the hall beyond.

He looked troubled, but less fearful when he reappeared.

“Nobody’s here now,” he said. “But some of your stuff is missing. they got your recorder and nearly all of the tapes.”

I wasn’t thinking about that when I pushed passed him into the hall and finally into the master bedroom where I yanked open the closet door, searching on the upper shelf where I had stashed the money belt. It was still there, untouched. Nobody had taken any of our clothing either.

Louise eased into the room behind me.

“What is going on?” she asked, her voice nearly shrill with panic.

“We’ve been robbed,” I said, watching her scared expression worsen, the shock of the violation rushing through her as her shoulders shook.

“Robbed? How? Why?” she asked.

“They came through the balcony door,” Dan said, coming into the bedroom after he had checked out the possessions in his own. “This was real slick.”

Luck kept them from finding the video recorder, though Dan was wrong about the audio tape recorder, which I had stuffed into a corner of the small hall closet.

They had taken what they could see on their first rush through the apartment.

Whoever it was had taken a smaller portable tape deck from the main room, and some money – mostly coins – we had left on the shelf near the kitchen. They had even taken our TV and toaster oven.

“This is kind sell the stuff back to the shops downtown,” Dan said. “Most likely, everything you bought downtown was hot in the first place, stolen from some other place in Hollywood.”

“They took almost all our clothing and anything else we had laying around,” I said. “They even took our spare change from the cabinet near the kitchen.”

Louise looked stunned. All the clothing we had bought on the Boulevard and even the stuff she had dragged along from Boulder, was gone.

I could see the look of panic in her eyes, the idea that we would need to find a way to get more money, only now without the benefit of the porno market, which thanks to my antics had blackballed us.

I thought about possibly selling pot or acid, figuring we might make just enough to get by until I figured out something else. But that thing could get a bit hairy, especially with the parade of Narcs the LA Free Press had exposed, their photographs like a rogue’s row I couldn’t get out of my head, and they were like cockroaches, for everyone we saw, there were plenty more that we didn’t, and the last thing I needed was to get busted for selling only to have them find out I was wanted for a much more serious crime.

When I asked Dan about it, he threw up his hands and said he didn’t want anything more to do with any of it.

The break in had him as upset as we were, perhaps because he thought Billy Night Rider was behind it, and through us, trying to get at him.

“The timing is wrong,” he said, but didn’t elaborate on what he meant, though it was clear other things were going on in his life.

There was talk on the street about Billy and Dan.

Dan began to look angry.

“This wasn’t an accident,” he said. “Somebody we know set us up.”

Again, I could tell he was thinking of Billy, and the several confrontations we’d already had with the biker, including the threats made at Hamburger Palace.

“I’ll be back,” Dan said, retracing his steps towards the main room and the door towards the driveway.

“Where are you going?” I shouted after him, unable to catch up with his long stride before it took him down the stairs outside to the driveway.

“I have to check out a few things,” he shouted back, and then was gone.

Louise and I stood there, she looking as violated as I felt, our world penetrated by those evil forces against which we thought we were immune.

We had met them outside, going out into their world, but now these demons had invaded us, though in truth I knew they had invaded us before, when we invited Dennis in before Christmas, when Louise made it clear she wanted to make love to him, and maybe others as well, the way she had when that motorcycle gang had gangbanged her in the mountains of Colorado, and even here, she sought something more than I could give her when she reached out to do the porno films, satisfying some deep need that scared the hell out of me.

Everything was out of control, especially me, scared to death as to what to expect next.

At least, I thought what money we had left was safe.

I went to the kitchen to boil some water; I needed coffee.

And yet, more than we had lost more than material things, an eroding of trust, and a sense that both Louise and I were trapped in the situation, but for different reasons.  I knew down deep I ought to let her go and do what she wanted to do with whomever she wanted, and that if it hurt too much, I should simply walk away.

There was no way to control her behavior if she was dead set on doing things like that, as she apparently was, and would likely arise again. There would always be another Dennis, either knocking on our door or meeting us in the street.

But could I walk away, leaving her behind, without money or prospects?

Would she turn me into the police if I did?

Was it really Billy that had invaded us? I kept thinking maybe the mobsters from the modelling agency had decided to get even with us for the antics I had pulled in yanking Louise out of their grasp. It wasn’t that she was all that important to them. Innocent girls flocked to LA looking for their chance in movies. It was the principle of the thing, the fact that we defied them. Maybe they even feared I would go to the police and this break in was a kind of warning, a message to us to keep our traps shut or we might face worse in the future.

Louise came up to me in the kitchen, looking as shaken as I felt.

“I don’t think we should sleep here tonight,” she said. “I don’t feel safe.”

Apparently similar thoughts about the modelling agency had crossed her mind as well.

“We should wait for Dan to come back,” I said. “He might learn something about who did this.”

“But what if they come back?” Louise asked.

It was thought that hadn’t gelled in my brain yet, but once planted, it grew into panic.

Would they return? Maybe to make sure the lesson stuck with a bit more violence? I didn’t think they would kill us or anything as dramatic as that, but they might want to beat me up or demand some kind of payment for what they lost during the filming.

“I don’t think they will come back,” I said, sounding more sure of myself than I actually felt. “This was a burglary. They got what they came for. They probably don’t think we have much more they can take.”

I didn’t say anything about getting beat up.

Louise studied my face, her eyes full of fear, although my words seemed to comfort her somewhat. Still, she shook her head.

“I think we should get out of here anyway,” she said.

“Where could we go?” I asked. “Do you want to spend the night in a motel?”

“No,” she said. “I meant we should get out of town.”

Leave? The thought scared me almost as much as staying did.

“Let’s just wait for Dan,” I said.

 

 On the lamb menu 

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