Hollywood Hills(15)

Two young women paused on their way to the nearest of the restaurants when they heard the raised voices in the parking lot. In what was left of twilight they saw a skinny, long-necked valet parking guy with a wiry thatch of cinnamon hair that was wind-tunnel wild from parking the cars with windows down. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt, black bow tie, and black pants, and was shouting at a burly woman identically clad, whose dark hair was cut as short as the guy's.

"Do not do threats with me!" Ludmila yelled. "You no good, worth-noth-ink shit!"

"You can shove your job up your fat ass, you lesbo freakazoid!" Jonas Claymore yelled back, his bobbing Adam's apple the size of a hen's egg. He ripped off his clip-on tie and flipped it at her, catching her right in the eye.

She responded with a blow. Not a bitch slap. A real punch. A straight right-handed corker with a lot of hefty shoulder behind it, and Jonas Claymore's upturned nose exploded in a blood spray and he fell back against the BMW, dropping to his knee for a second.

Then he leaped up, screaming, "I'm gonna tear your throat out, you commie cunt!"

One of the two women watching from the sidewalk took her cell phone from her purse and dialed 9-1-1.

By the time 6-X-32 of the midwatch showed up, both combatants were down on the pavement exhausted from having wrestled and punched and bitten and clawed for several minutes. Jonas Claymore clearly had gotten the worst of it. His face bore scratches and contusions, and his buttonless shirt was hanging out and blood-spattered. His breath came in short rasps and his hairless concave chest heaved as he pawed at his right ear where a tiny snippet of the lobe had been bitten off. His former boss had a purple mouse under one eye and a bruised lower lip and her left shirtsleeve was completely ripped away.

The black-and-white squealed into the parking lot and two blue-uniformed cops got out, the shorter one carrying a side-handle baton.

Jetsam said to his partner, "I'll take the female, bro."

"Roger that," Flotsam said, walking toward Jonas Claymore, who was standing, hands on his knees, bent over and trying to catch his breath.

Before the tall cop could speak, Jonas said, "That Russki douche bag started it! She pushed me and then she slugged me. I was just defending myself."

"You didn't do too good a job of it," Flotsam noted.

"She suckered me!" Jonas hollered, loud enough for gawking passersby to hear.

"Keep your voice down," Flotsam said. "And tell me what happened."

Meanwhile Ludmila was trying-to tie her white shirt together in order to cover her size 46 E cup bra, and she said to Jetsam, "He is no-good bum. I hire him. I pay him good. He never share tip with nobody. He is worth-noth-ink shit!"

"How did the fight start?" Jetsam asked.

"He is say-ink rude things to me. He use his dirty mouth and make me fight."

"Are you saying that you got physical before he did?"

"What?"

"Did you hit him first?"

"Well ... ," Ludmila said, as though she were contemplating an exceedingly difficult question. "Is depend-ink how you see si-tooation."

"Uh-huh," Jetsam said. "I had to be there, right?"

Flotsam suggested that Jonas tip his head back and press the remnants of his shirt to his nose and hold it there.

"Are you really interested in making a battery report?" Flotsam asked. "And a private person's arrest?"

"Wouldn't you?" Jonas pulled the balled-up shirt away from his face for a moment.

"I'd have to think about it," Flotsam said. "She's a woman." Jonas said, "She's a slit-licking lizzy warthog! She ain't no woman."

"According to the law she is," Flotsam said. "We'll do what you want. You could make a private person's arrest and we'll be glad to transport, but then we'll expect you to follow through all the way. Think about going to court and telling in public how that babe clocked you. It could be way embarrassing, dude. Up to you, though."

That stopped Jonas cold. He thought about it a moment, about the humiliation and all the hassle, and he said, "Well, what if we forget about it, the both of us? Can we do that?"

"Okay with us," Flotsam said. "But I don't wanna get another call about you two duking it out again."

"You won't. I'm going home," Jonas said. Then he yelled to Ludmila, "You can't fire me! I quit, you goddamn commie carpet muncher!"

"Fock you, stupid head!" his former employer said and flipped him the bird.

That afternoon when Jonas Claymore got back to his apartment that he shared with Megan Burke in Thai Town, she was lying on the couch watching an old TCM movie in a Percocet fog.