Free Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom by A. L. Haskett

such a fine machine.”
    Duncan gave him a quarter.
    “God bless you, Mr. Getty,” said the bum.
    “My name’s not Getty.”
    “I’ll say it’s not.”
    Duncan rode away wondering who Getty was. He did not make the association with J. Paul as he had not expected sarcasm from a vagrant. Four miles later he locked the bike to a post outside a gallery on Melrose Avenue where Angela had arranged for his inclusion in an exhibition of promising Los Angeles artists. An Aryan named Sven attended the door. His wispy blond hair fell to his shoulders. He dressed in black from his linen shirt to his leather storm trooper boots. Duncan was six-two and weighed one sixty-five on a good day. This Nordic giant had six inches and ninety pounds on him and looked like an angry Thor.
    “Your invitation,” he growled.
    Duncan searched his pockets. “I have forgotten it,” he said. “But I’m one of the artists.”
    “Of course you are. Now leave quickly before I rupture your spleen.”
    Not sure where his spleen was but nonetheless not wanting it ruptured, Duncan left. He circled the block, hopped a fence, and entered through the kitchen. Cooks spoke heated Spanish at him and brandished sharp kitchen knives.
    “Como esta usted?” Duncan kept his back to the walls and his eyes on the knives. “Donde es cerveza?”
    A cook gave him a beer and guided him through a door into the main gallery where patrons dressed in silk and spandex and double-breasted wool congregated amid framed paintings and bronze statues. Duncan wore jeans and a gray tweed jacket over a paint-smeared t-shirt. His hair was tangled and whipped from his ride to the gallery. Some guests wore cowboy boots of the Italian variety favored by Tiffy. Duncan wore tennis shoes because his boots kept slipping off the bicycle pedals. He roamed through a crowd bent on ignoring him until he came to a painting that stopped him cold.
    It was of a naked man strapped in an electric chair. Desperate, hollow eyes stared out of a shaved head. His muscles were tense, his teeth gritted, his eyes wide and legs spread to reveal a small, erect penis, the head of which sported a metal cap wired into the chair. A blond woman in a guard uniform stood in the shadows behind the chair, her hand on an electric switch, her face beatific in its indifference. It was not the subject that interested him though. It was the guard. It was the cowgirl in the painting in Angela’s office and now, he realized, it was the girl in the Cadillac.
    Achilles Last Stand, the card under the painting read, by Sheila Rascowitz .
    “Isn’t it horrible?”
    Duncan turned. Pris stood by him regarding the painting, her eyes electric with disgust. She wore a short yellow skirt, a white silk blouse, and a yellow leather jacket. She pushed a strand of hair from her forehead and smiled at Duncan.
    “Hey,” he said, “that’s you, isn’t it?”
    “Sadly, yes.” She frowned. “It just sold for five thousand dollars.”
    He studied the painting from an alternative viewpoint. “Go figure.”
    “I understand you had a good time last night.”
    “Umm …” Duncan’s face burned, “I don’t actually remember if I did or not.”
    “Champagne told me your virtue remained intact.” Pris touched his arm. “Though I understand you woke with a serious case of blue balls.”
    “Can we talk about something else?”
    “Of course. She also said you asked about me.”
    A muscular woman with a brown brush cut wedged herself between them. She wore jeans stuffed in black boots and a white t-shirt beneath a black leather vest. She was nearly as tall as Duncan and at least as heavy, thirty years old, with light brown eyes and three silver studs piercing her right ear. Chains crossed her boots and vest. She was attractive in a masculine way.
    “Come on.” She grabbed Pris’s arm. “I want you to meet someone.”
    “Don’t pull your butch routine on me, Sheila.” Pris shook loose. “You pay my rent but you don’t own