3

There are any number of ways to approach Hollywood Boulevard, but for pure shock value, the key is to strike at the heart of the beast, right where the cheese factor is highest: the intersection of Hollywood and Highland Avenue. That’s Limburger Central, baby, with a side of extra stink. You cruise on up the street, passing Santa Monica and Sunset, all-for-a-dollar stores slowly replacing the discount movie-prop and video-editing services, and by the time you hit the Boulevard, you’re a prime-time player in a full-fledged Warhol/Escher urban nightmare. There are the usual tourist hot spots, of course, but it’s the locals who make the original sin city worth the pricey parking lot fees.

Things have changed, I’ll let that much slide—it’s not the eighties anymore, when Mohawks were to Hollywood Boulevard what crew cuts are to the Marines, but the hairstyles are still plentiful, large, and kaleidoscopic. Many of the denizens of the area have found new, impressive ways to express their self-loathing, primarily by locating body parts to pierce that were previously unknown to medical science. The hate-the-world sneer, so popular only five short years ago, has recently been replaced by the I’ve-seen-it-all smirk, which is less visually disconcerting, but still troubling nonetheless. And the clothing is still a hoot; though ripped jeans have been usurped by ripped leather, the end result is the same: ragged clothing, soiled flesh, and a brown-tinged aura that acts as a bumper sticker—DON’T BOTHER ME, I’M DANGEROUS. Heck of a town.

Dinos, as a rule, do not frequent this part of the city; we find it difficult enough to live our double lives without having to disenfranchise ourselves from the rest of the world by choice. Still, there are exceptions, and I’ve smelled a few of our kind among the runaways and hustlers lining the gold-sprinkled streets. This, by the way, is not a colorful description—a number of years ago, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce actually voted to embed flecks of gold plating into the asphalt of the Boulevard itself, so that the city streets could truly be said to be paved with gold. Delusional, to be certain, but that’s why I love coming up here.

“I hate coming up here,” Ernie says to me in the car. It’s round about three in the afternoon, and we’ve just finished up doing some preliminary investigation on Star, aka Christine Josephson, Minsky’s little fruit tart. She’s sweet, all right—the kind of sweet that’ll rot you from the inside out. Three lockups in juvie, two arrests as an adult, no small cookies when you’re only nineteen.

“We’re in, and then we’re out,” I say. “All I wanna do is talk to Jules, and we’re done. If anyone has a handle on this Progressives thing, she will.”

“She creeps me out.”

“She creeps everyone out. Bite your tongue and try not to kiss her.”

Dingy golden stars pass by underfoot, each engraved with the name of a so-called celebrity. Some are famous, some slightly less so, some have been plucked from the Encyclopedia Obscuria, but they’ve all paid to get there. The sordid secret about the Walk of Fame is that there’s no particular distinction in having one of these hunks of bronze, apart from the honor of knowing that your studio paid ten grand to the city of Hollywood. That’s all it takes—a picture of Salmon P. Chase on a little green bill and you, too, can be pissed on by some of the most erudite bums in the universe.

We pass by Danny Kaye (Ornithomimus) and Bob Hope (Compy—actually, the only one I’ve ever laughed with rather than at), and a host of other dino-cum-celebrities, and eventually arrive at the famous Hollywood Wax Museum, where twenty-four hours a day you can witness the spectacle of wax slowly melting under ultraviolet light. It’s not as exciting as it sounds.

I pay the husky female attendant my eight dollars—“Highway robbery,” mumbles Ernie—and as the woman turns around to give us our tickets, I take a deep whiff near the back of her neck. I’m rewarded with the musky odor of fermented yeast and peanut shells. This chick’s a walking baseball game, but at least now I know she’s a dino.

“Is Jules in today?” I ask, spinning around to make my scent glands readily available to her.

“I don’t wanna smell ya,” she barks. “I gotta smell the crap walking down this street all day long, I don’t need any more.”

“Just tell us if Jules is here,” says Ernie.

“Yeah, it’s here today.” A push of a small button beneath her console and the front door to the museum buzzes open. “It’s in the back.”

“I know where to go,” I say and lead Ernie into the darkness.

We pass through the chamber of terror—this is where it all gets a little spooky, mind you—and once we’re over the shock of how similar the Michael Jackson sculpture has become to LaToya’s over the years, we enter the actual Hall of Horrors, replete with larger-than-life figures of Frankenstein, the Wolfman, and more than a few real-life serial killers.

We make our way to the back of the museum, passing a few tourists along the way—mammals, all of them—until we reach the pièce de résistance, a diorama with attendant wax sculptures depicting the fighting medical men of the 4077th, the lovable team from M*A*S*H. Not content with having extended the Korean War three times longer than necessary, Hawkeye, Radar, and the rest of that wacky crew now invade reality every day via six thousand pounds of wax and a couple of shaky-looking plastic army tents.

“Last I saw her, she’d moved the workstation back here,” I say, leading Ernie past a partially melted B. J. Hunnicut and toward one of the small tent facades. A quick series of knocks on the “false” door on the front of the tent, and after a few moments, a muted scuffling emanates from the other side.

“Turn around,” comes a raspy voice, shot through with sultry overtones.

“It’s me, Jules. It’s Vincent.”

“Then you know the rules, lover. Turn around.”

A small compartment slides open near the door’s peephole, and I willingly place the back of my neck against the wire mesh, presenting my scent glands for inspection. A strong inhale from behind the screen, a moment’s whiff of delight, and a second later the lock turns.

As the door opens, I notice that some form of unnatural human perfume is at work in this place, nearly overpowering Jules’s natural lemon chiffon aroma. She must be slathering on the Obsession again, a filthy mammalian habit she can’t seem to break. We walk through the door to find Jules strutting back toward her workshop, wiggling that tight guised-up rear as she goes. She’s sporting a pair of form-fitting black jeans this afternoon, along with a sleeveless blouse that’s got all but two buttons undone. Long, curly black hair hangs down to that small waist of hers, and the legs stretch in all the right directions. For a human female, Jules is a knockout.

Too bad she’s a Velociraptor, and bad over again that she’s male.

“Close the door, fellas,” purrs my favorite dino drag queen. “So sweet to see you.”

“I’m gonna be sick,” Ernie mumbles to me, and I fix him with a hard glare. It’s not rare for dinosaurs to be homosexual, but the spectacle of a male dino wearing the guise of a human female is just too much double deception for most of our kind to take. There’s persecution and there’s persecution, but ostracism knows no bounds for a dino who’s crossed genders. As a result, Jules spends most of her time in this cramped, musty back room, practicing her special brand of guise reconstruction away from the public eye.

Moving quickly after our host, we head down a short corridor and soon enter the workshop. Great multicolored balls of wax line the wooden floor of this simple, spartan studio; the concrete walls are bare of decoration, and an intricate shelving system hangs down from above, bolted into the ceiling via strong iron clasps. Within these drawers and cabinets and compartments are the tools of Jules’s trade—scalpels, syringes, putty knives, and mallets—along with a few samples of her work so that she might give customers a chance to see in advance what they’ll look like once their requested procedure is complete. Photographs line the walls, intricate close-up work detailing the before-and-after nature of her profession.

“You come for your lips, Vincent doll?” Jules asks me as she takes her place behind that wide oak table. “Mmm, we could fatten those up a bit, make ’em smooth and kissable.”

I smile and say, “Not why we’re here, Jules.”

“Of course it’s not why you’re here, but a little help every now and again doesn’t hurt a man, does it? Us ladies aren’t the only ones who need the nipping and the tucking. Ten-minute procedure, tops.” She beckons me closer, and, always amused at her little antics, I obediently step toward her open hands. A slight tug at the top lip of my mask as she brings up a long, red fingernail, tracing it along the fleshy underside. “One cut down the main line, then I implant, say, twenty cc’s of wax, re-sew, even it out, and suddenly you’re a dreamboat.”

“Forget the lip job. We need some information,” Ernie blurts out.

Jules falls back behind the desk, landing hard on her simple wooden stool. Her eyes meet mine—dazed, a little hurt.

“It’s not that we don’t think you’re a great plastic surgeon,” I explain. “We think you’re the best. But we’ve got an appointment. Soon. We just don’t have the time.”

“I am good,” she pouts.

“I know you are.”

She turns to Ernie, eyelids blinking, flashing at strobe-light speeds, bottom lip puffing out, turning it all on. “And you, big boy?”

Ernie looks to me, and I pointedly look away. No help here; Ernie’s never been the most tolerant of fellows, and though he’s certainly an old dog, there’s a few new tricks he’s gotta learn.

“Fine.” He sighs. “You’re good. You’re the best. Can we get on with this?”

All smiles now, Jules reaches out and pinches Ernie’s cheek. “We sure can, lover.”

“Have you ever heard of the Progressives?” I ask.

A wad of phlegm slaps onto the concrete floor, and it’s a stunned moment before I realize that Jules is the culprit. “Why would you want to know?” she mutters.

“Guess you’ve heard of ’em,” Ernie says. “What can you tell us?”

“Only secondhand information, darling. I hear what I hear from my friends on the street, but my friends on the street aren’t always the most reliable queens in the world.”

“What could make them reliable?” I ask.

“A little bit of basil, a little sniff of snapdragon,” singsongs Jules, smiling all the way. “Unfortunately, the drag business isn’t what it was five years ago. Did you know they’re shutting down the Shangri-La next Saturday? It’s becoming a coffee shop, of all the horrible things. Times are tight for my little friends, the poor dears.”

“They’re good, they’ll find work.”

“They’re the best, but the best doesn’t work for free, darling.”

She’s avoiding the issue; this is what Jules does when she’s uncomfortable with the conversation at hand. But two twenty-dollar bills are soon making their way from Ernie’s wallet to the oak table, and when I give him a little nudge, he adds one more to the pile. Jules scoops up the money, folds the bills in half, and tucks them inside her shirt, presumably into some bra we are unable to see.

“You don’t want to deal with them,” she begins. “They’ve screwed up a lot of good dinos.”

“That’s why we’re looking. Go on.”

She sighs, but the lady knows she’s got to talk once the money’s been put away. “Started up about thirty years ago by some nutcase vacuum salesman,” she begins, formalities having been dispensed with. “Built it up out of the back room of his little store up in Pasadena, but over the years they got more and more converts. Business folk. Finance folk. Entertainment folk. Anyone with money, or access to money, anyone looking for a way outta their regular life. From what I hear, they’ve got their tendrils all through the city by now.”

“What’s this guy’s name?”

“Don’t remember. Doesn’t make a difference anyway, honey, ’cause he’s dead. Caught some bug and bit the big one ’bout ten years back.”

“Bummer. Coulda been a good start.”

“You wanna start somewhere, sugar, go sign up. The Progressives have a storefront down by Hollywood and Vine,” she says. “My friends tell me they’ve got quite the operation going out of there.”

I shake my head. “Can’t be. Been by that corner a dozen times and I’ve never seen it.”

“And if you tell people that this isn’t a wax museum,” says Jules, “if you tell ’em that it’s just a front for black-market guise surgery, how fast do you think they’ll call the loony bin on your sweet behind?”

“Go on.”

“It’s a tourist crap shop on the outside. Three T-shirts for ten dollars, plastic Hollywood signs, fake California license plates with your name on it. They’re all over the Boulevard, but this one’s got a little something extra where something shouldn’t be.”

Ernie can’t hold back. “Bet you know that real well.”

Jules doesn’t mind the crack. She blows him a wet kiss, tongue waggling through the air like a panting dog. “Your friend is catty today, Vincent,” she says to me. “I like that in a man.”

I let it go—no need to wring the tension rod even tighter—and say, “Let’s pretend we’re interested in talking to one of these Progressives. Say we’re interested in finding out more about the group. We walk into the tourist shop and . . . what? Is there a code word?”

“You’ve been in this business too long, Vincent. No code word. In fact, you don’t even have to walk inside. Those cats are always on the prowl, waiting outside the shop, smelling the air for dinos walking by. They catch a whiff of one, they invite you inside the store, and that’s when the fun begins.”

“Fun, eh?”

“It helps if you look lost.”

“Maybe we should buy a map.”

“Spiritually lost. Emotionally lost. Pretend you’ve just lost your job and your house kind of lost. Pretend your dog ran away kind of lost. Pretend your wife’s left you kind of lost.”

At this, Ernie spins and stomps back toward the door. “Come on, Vincent. We’ve got what we came for—”

“Ernie, wait—she—she didn’t—”

“Forget it,” he growls. “I’m done with this shit. Let’s go.”

“I’ll meet you outside,” I call after him. I hope he’s heard me, as he’s already through the door, into the museum, and winding his way past Hot Lips and Frank on his way toward the exit.

“Did I say something wrong?” asks Jules.

“Not so you’d know it. His wife . . . He’s grumpy right now. Don’t mind him.”

“I won’t. So . . . how’s it going, sweetie? Got any hot punches on your dance ticket?”

I shake my head. “No one like you, Jules. Listen, I spoke with your father, like you asked me to.”

“Oh.” Her hands begin to fiddle with the instruments by her side. She absentmindedly rolls a ball of wax around the table, gaze averted from mine, as if by not looking she can shield herself from the truth. “And?”

“And . . . it’s the same as it was.”

“He won’t see me,” she says, trying to keep the warble out of her voice.

“No. He won’t.”

Jules issues a game little shrug, tossing her hair back across one shoulder. “Well, it’s his loss, right?”

“Exactly. His loss.” I’m not good at this comfort thing. I should probably put out my hand for her to take. I should probably put an arm around her shoulder. I should at least convey my apologies for not being able to convince her severely opinionated father that his only son is not a freak of nature, that he’s just doing what he feels is right in a world where not only do the sexes masquerade as one another, but the species can’t even keep their tails on straight. But as it is, I just stand there mutely, waiting for Jules to let me out of the awkward situation.

“Go on, Vincent,” she says quietly. “Go join your cult.”