This is how it went down:
It was somewhere between ten PM and midnight, Mulroney didn’t know when exactly, he could look it up, but fuck it, right? What does it matter? Night’s night. Point is, it was dark out, and the kid’s parents were asleep, and do you want to hear the story or not?
March wanted to hear the story.
So it’s dark out, the father’s an orthopedist, spent the day fixing bunions, the mother’s a whatchacallit, a, a, Jesus fucking Christ, he couldn’t think of the word, anyway it kept her on her feet all day, so she’s bushed too, and the kid—Bobby’s his name, Bobby Vandruggen, the pop’s Henry, the mom’s Joyce—sometimes your memory works, sometimes it doesn’t, right?—anyway, the kid’s up because, you know, it’s only ten PM—
Or midnight.
Or fucking eleven twenty-eight, point is he’s awake, and he’s watched the Hardy Boys, he’s watched that Steve Austin show, sure he could watch Carol Burnett, but he’s a teenage boy and his parents are asleep so you know what he’s gonna do instead, am I right? So he sneaks into his parents’ room, because he knows where the old man stashes the good stuff, right under the bed, copies of Rogue and Oui and Snizz where the lady of the house’ll never find ’em, ’cause when does she ever clean under the bed, right? So mom and pop are sawing logs, and little Bobby sneaks in quiet as a goddamn mouse and snatches whatever’s on top, only I can tell you what it was because we entered it into evidence, didn’t we? Can’t leave shit like that lying around, can we?
Of course not.
Of course not. So it’s like a year-old issue of Cavalier—don’t give me that look, like you never bought a copy, March.
Never in my life.
Should try it sometime. Anyway, little Bobby takes his prize to the kitchen and makes himself a sandwich and he carries it to the living room and he sits on the couch in his button-fly pajamas, and opens to the centerfold, which this month is Misty Mountains, and if you say you don’t know who that is, I swear to god, March, I’m gonna start thinking you’re a fruit. Don’t answer that, I don’t even want to know.
Now, meanwhile—this is up by Mulholland, right? On the hillside? And up on the highway, this blue Trans Am comes out of nowhere, takes the curve at maybe eighty, I’m talking real Smokey and the Bandit-type shit here. Smashes through the guardrail, bang, starts tearing down the hill, right toward the kid’s house, where the orthopedist and his lady are sleeping and their boy is focused on Misty Mountains. Can you imagine? Then, boom, the whole fucking side wall of his house comes down, and this Trans Am comes tearing through. Miracle he wasn’t under the wheels, you want to know the truth. Place is a total goddamn disaster area. Car goes right through an armchair, a grandfather clock, the wall on the other side—bam, bam, bam. Half the ceiling comes down. Mom and pop wake up, of course. They’re calling his name, Bobby, Bobby, but Bobby’s outside, running down the hill, to where the car’s fetched up against this stand of trees. And the driver, get this, she’s been thrown, she’s lying on the ground next to the open door, the car’s totaled and she’s pretty badly fucked up too, barely breathing, but she’s—you won’t fucking believe this—completely, bare-ass, like a bluebird, naked. I mean, nothing on. You understand? I’m not saying she went driving in her panties. I mean nothing. And who do you fucking think it is?
Misty Mountains.
What, you already heard this?
It was on the news, Mulroney. Everyone’s heard it.
Well, I’ll tell you something you didn’t hear on the news. She’s dying, right? She’s got barely enough breath to speak, but she’s trying to get something out, and the boy leans close to hear it. You want to know what she says to him? This naked lady he’d just been whacking off to, who just wrecked his house, who’s lying by the steaming, crumpled wreck of her Trans Am? She takes one last breath and says to him, she says, “How do you like my car, big boy?”
I shit you not, March.
And then she dies. Right in front of him. And you know what this kid does? He pulls off his pajama top, and he covers her up with it. Not like over her face, over those beautiful tits of hers. So she’s decent, you know? When mom and pop get there. When Stevenson and Pickler show up.
* * *
That’s how it went down, according to Officer William Mulroney of the LAPD, while he looked up the license plate number of a red ’74 Volkswagen Type 181 registered to one Amelia Francine Kuttner.
Repercussion \re-per-kush-uhn\, noun:
The consequence of an action, usually unpleasant; often refers to ongoing or lasting effects.