Plainclothes Naked (44 page)

“Fine.”

Tina’d pinned her hair back up, and was already stepping into her nurse’s uniform. “If you OD it’s no problem, the ICU’s one floor down. We can make you a happy cabbage.”

“Right,” said Manny. “Speaking of human vegetables, if I don’t get out of these restraints, I’m gonna need a diaper.”

“Actually, you had one until yesterday.”

Manny cringed, and Tina patted his hand. “Don’t worry. It only makes me love you more. See you later.”

She headed for the door and Manny called to her. “Tina, come on!” He tried to keep the pleading out of his voice. “You’re not just going to leave me strapped down like this?”

She paused and made a show of considering. “Doctor would be very mad.”

“I’m sure,” he said miserably. “Would you just fucking get over here?”

“So much for postcoital glow.” Tina took her time undoing the leather restraints at his hands and ankles. “I may never see you so lov able again.”

“I don’t know,” said Manny weakly, when he could move his limbs, “that was amazing. I never ...I mean, I’ve always been the fucker.”

“Trust me, honey, you still are.”

Manny waited until Tina closed the door, then shut his eye. He felt dizzy, ready to throw up, and completely in love. His own good luck scared him.

Manny’s last morning in the hospital. Tina, pushing an empty wheelchair (the hospital’s insurance required all departing patients be rolled to the curb), walked into his room just as a pink-faced, Jerry Falwell–looking fellow was walking out with a manila envelope.
‌

Manny stood by the window, idly fingering the gouge under his eye patch where Zank’s crack pipe had burned out a hollow of flesh.

“Time to go,” Tina called, breaking his reverie with a bite on the back of his neck. “You’re a free man.”

Manny turned. No matter how many times he saw her in her nurse’s uniform, the sight scorched him.

“I hate to leave,” he said. “I was starting to dig the place.”

“Checkout time’s eleven, Stud. Who was your visitor?”

Manny hadn’t decided whether to tell her, but one look and he knew there’d never been any question. He just had to lay it out.

“A guy from the RNC. The Republican National Committee.” “Right. . . . What did he want?”

“What do you think?” Manny paused, felt for the fresh scar on his belly, and started up again. “You know, I never realized, but when you really look at Mister Biobrain, up close, Bush is totally leering at his own equipment. Marge has a weird expression, too, like she’s being goosed from the other end. ‘It looks like an odd party.’ That’s what this guy said when I showed it to him. I don’t know if that’s Republican for ‘perverted,’ or if that’s just how guys who went to Andover and Yale and work in ‘deep politics’ talk.”

“Deep politics?” Tina didn’t look happy.

“That’s who Marge was dealing with. He’s some kind of opera tor. And he was fucking sharp. I thought I recognized him from CNN, maybe MSNBC, but I didn’t ask. Anyway, he said the smiley face might have been drawn on the photo, not on George. ‘We can bring people in to prove his testicles were undecorated.’ He actually said that, like we were already in an impeachment hearing. You would have loved listening to him. ‘We can show the photo was tampered with, but that doesn’t buy us much. It’s still the President’s genitals, eye-level with a lady who’s not his wife. One wrong move and we’re looking at Scrotum-gate. That’s the last thing our country needs. We had just about enough of that from Mr. Clinton, thank you.’ ”

Manny rubbed his one good eye, which throbbed from all its new responsibility.

“Did you tell him?” Tina asked.

“Tell him what? That that ‘lady’ used to be my wife? He probably knew anyway. He had all the angles.” Manny imitated the man’s gen teel delivery. “ ‘If it turns out he did draw the little face on himself, that’s a different kind of trouble. Then we’re into abnormal behavior. Like Dick Morris and the toe thing. Or else it just looks juvenile, and we’re back to the frat boy issue....’ ”

Tina squinted at him. If he was pinned, she’d spot it. Codeine would teeny up the pupils every bit as much as heroin.

“You haven’t relapsed, have you? You seem a little chatty. You’re doing voices.”

“Give me a piss-test, Sweetheart. I’m eight days off everything but Advil and ginger ale. Did you know they bring twelve-step meetings to the liver ward? N.A. or the highway.” He massaged his temples. “I’m kind of in shock that it’s finally over. The guy came here to deal. So I made a deal.”

Tina tried to read his face but couldn’t. Since the morning he rolled out of surgery, they’d spent hours together every day. They’d made love whenever they could. Talked about everything in the world. The only secret left between them was the future.

Manny suddenly took her by the shoulders. “Listen,Tina, they offered money.”

“And?”

“I said no.” “You said
NO
?”

After all the times she’d fucked with his head, she wondered if now he was fucking with hers. Either that or he was going Marvin on her. “Look,” he went on, “I’ve thought about it. If I wanted cash, I could have sold the photo through Roos’s buddy, to the highest bidder. But it’s too messy. Once that picture hits, everybody’s going to try and trace it back. Like Deep Throat. Besides, there’s more important things

than money.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Tina replied. “I’ve never had any.” “Well, you could.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean,” Manny said, “is how would you like to be the wife of a Congressman?”

“WHAT?”

“I need to explain? Marge was planning to use Mister Biobrain to get into Congress. There’s going to be a new seat from Upper Marilyn County. Some redistricting bullshit. And thanks to some backroom deal between parties, the Republicans own it.”

“Manny—”

“Just listen.” He moved a hand to her face, ran a finger over those cheekbones that still made his mouth dry. “Turns out Marge already let the big boys know she had a picture that would fuck their world. God

love her, she told W.’s pals that unless they put her in Congress, she’d tell stories about her and the leader of the free world that would make Bill and Monica look like Fred and Ethel. Her bad luck, when I let the heavies know that I had the picture, well . . . let’s just say they trust me more ’cause I’m a man. And I wear a badge.” His grin was ambiguous. “Anyway, now she’s fucked, and I’m in.”

Tina started to speak, and Manny pressed a finger to her lips. “Before you say anything, there’s something else. As part of the deal, I can’t fix any of this.”

He pointed to that pocket of seared flesh under his eye, then tapped his eye patch. He finished by raising his still bandaged fist, Black Power–style.

“It’s sick,” he said, but not unhappily. “They had their way, they’d chop off the rest of my hand and fit me with a hook. They want to play up the ‘personal sacrifice’ angle.
NOBLE COP WHO GOT MAIMED IN THE LINE OF DUTY
. Do the John McCain

thing. The more I’ve sacrificed, the more people will love me. ‘There aren’t a lot of heroes, Detective Rubert, but you’re one of them.’ The guy actually said that. He also said they’d keep my thumb on ice—they can do that—and pay for any kind of surgery later, after I’m established. They’ll put the money on account with whatever doctor I want.”

Manny knew how this must sound. But he wanted her to know everything good, bad, and unconscionable.

“If it’s okay with you, I’m gonna lay my surgical gift certificate on McCardle, let him get a new face. Maybe he can turn over a new leaf and go for Sammy Davis this time. I’ll give the business to Roos. I owe both of ’em. Anyway, the Democrats aren’t even going to field a candi date, so it’s a lock. In a couple of years, a Senate seat comes available. Who knows? In a decade or two, we could be banging in Lincoln’s bedroom. . . . Of course, if you say yes, you’ll be married to a mutant. But what the hell.”

For a long moment, Tina didn’t say anything, then she smiled and slipped her hand between his legs.

“I can handle the mutant part, baby, but I never had you pegged as a Republican.”

Manny shrugged. “Life’s a compromise,” he said, and dropped into the wheelchair for the long ride out.

A b o u t t h e A u t h o r
‌

JERRY STAHL
is the author of the narcotic memoir
Permanent Midnight,
which was made into a movie starring Ben Stiller, and
Perv
—
a Love Story
, both
Los Angeles Times
best-sellers. He has written extensively for film and television, most recently for the hit series
CSI
. His much-anthologized fiction and journalism have appeared in
Esquire
,
Details
,
Playboy
,
Black Book
,
LA Weekly
, and
Tin House
. He lives in Los Angeles.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

P R A I S
E
F O R
‌

Plainclothes Naked

“[Stahl is] the new king of black humor. . . .
Plainclothes Naked
[is] a hallucinogenic potboiler.” —
New York Post

“
Plainclothes Naked
is vile, scurrilous, depraved . . . and hilari ously funny. Jerry Stahl should either get the Pulitzer Prize or be shot down in the street like a dog, as he’s clearly a menace to society and a traitor to everything you thought you believed about America.”

—Anthony Bourdain, author of
Bone in the Throat

and
Kitchen Confidential

“Absurdist postmodern pulp fiction.... [It] will unplug your mind.” —
Elle

“Stahl has nerve, heart, a language of his own, and a ghastly, riotous humor that burns brightest just as the executioner offers the last cigarette.” —Tobias Wolff, author of
This Boy’s Life

“Gripping and powerful.” —
Mirabella
“A radical weave of outrageous humor and fascinating weirdness.

. . .
Plainclothes Naked
is so amazingly beautiful—and so shock

ing—Stahl should finally earn his own entry in the dictionary.”

—J. T. LeRoy, author of
Sarah

“Raw and devilishly raunchy.” —
Vanity Fair

“It is one thing, fine and rare, to write from the heart. It is another thing, finer and rarer, to write from the secret unutterable cham bers of the heart. Jerry Stahl, whose words are as cool and deadly striking as a cottonmouth, does just that. No one who reads him will remain quite the same.”

—Nick Tosches, author of
Dino
and
Trinities

“Bare-ass hilarious. . . . A wonderfully sick comic masterpiece of the hard-boiled genre.” —
Paper
magazine

“Jerry Stahl’s writing is like comic machine-gun fire.
Plainclothes Naked
is a page-turner and a page-burner. Fans of noir, fans of comedy, fans of great writing can unite on this one.”