Free McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 by Cadillac Jack (v1.0) Page A

             "She's always using me to entertain her
B—list," Cindy said. "That's why."
                   We continued along briskly until we were up
the steps and in the doorway of her house. Cindy flung her coat on a nice
French bench, not unlike the one in the Penrose hallway.
                   She had a tastefully appointed if slightly
predictable bedroom, in which only one thing really caught my eye: a white
football helmet covered with sparkles, of the sort commonly awarded homecoming
queens just as they are about to be crowned. This one sat on a walnut bureau
near Cindy's windows.
                   "Gosh," I said. "Were you a
homecoming queen?"
                   She had already shucked her dress. Before
answering she glanced at her watch and took it off, as she walked over to me.
                   "Of course," she said. "Santa Barbara High."
                   For a daydream believer like myself it was the acme of something: the boy from the little
cowtown in the West, the homecoming queen from the far Pacific shore.
                   But for Cindy it was no big deal.
                   "Come on," she said. "Let's go
to bed. I gotta have my sleep."
                  

Book II
     

Chapter I
     
                   "Ho, ho, Cadillac Jack," Boog
chortled, when I walked into his Cleveland Park house the next day. He was lying on one end
of a huge leather couch, looking deeply hungover, although it was four o'clock in the afternoon.
                   "Lookit him," he added.
"Pussy-whipped, weak in the knee joints, and deprived of his common
sense."
                   "What common sense?" Boss said. She
was sitting on the other end of the couch, wearing a red caftan. The couch was
littered with newspapers, as was much of the floor.
                   Linda Miller and Micah Leviticus sat on the
floor, playing electronic tennis on the TV set.
                   A tall, surly-looking man in green fatigues
stood over them, observing their every stroke and occasionally offering advice.
When Boog mentioned my name he strode over and shook my hand vigorously.
                   "Moorcock Malone," he said. "Glad to meet you, fellah. That was a fine thing you
did."
                   "What thing?" I asked , trying to remember some fine action I might have taken. I
knew, of course, that Moorcock Malone was practically the most famous
journalist in America , and that he was probably very well informed. Still, it was unsettling
to think he knew more about me than I did.
                   Meanwhile, he was still shaking my hand and
beaming his approval out of big serious brown eyes, though even while he was
beaming he tried to keep one eye on the tennis game.
                   "Down, down!" he said, after Linda
had just zipped two aces under the little bar of light that constituted Micah's
racquet.
                   Micah cast an anxious eye at Boss.
                   “Boss, I’m getting behind again," he
said.
                   "What fine thing?" I repeated.
                   "Why, stabbing those pugs," Moorcock
said. "A fine thing. Of course, drowning them in
the finger bowls would have been even better. That would have been an excellent
thing."
                   "There wasn't much water," I said.
                   "Oh, there's a way to do it," he
said. "I saw it done once, near Vals-les-Bains."
                   "Like shit you did," Boss said.
                   Moorcock Malone looked hurt by Boss's
disbelief. He stood without comment as Linda zipped another ace past Micah.
                   Then he suddenly furrowed his large brow, in
an effort to better remember the pug drowning. I got the sense that Moorcock
furrowed his brow as normal mortals might fiddle with