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_____

Lyman was beaming when he got back to town a few days later.

“Traced my old nursemaid from Fort Worth to a mobile home park outside Oklahoma City,” he told a bunch of us one afternoon at Tito's Tacos on Washington in Culver City. “She said my mother called her all the time from Hawaii where she was working in a hospital.”

“How long ago was that?” Rainey asked.

“Over seventeen years ago.”

“What're you going to do now?” Dung asked.

“Have the search people check out all the hospitals and other public records.”

“This woman in Oklahoma,” Zoom asked, “she tell you why your mother stayed in Hawaii all this time and never came back for you?”

He shook his head. “No. Just that she couldn't come back.”

_____

Now and then I thought about Ovary; that if he died maybe I could've been arrested for causing it. But he didn't die. So what was the big deal about the whole episode anyway? Still, it surprised me that I was a little sorry about the way I got rid of him; but not sorry that he quit.

Even Vysell and Batman asked me if I had anything to do with Ovary. Naturally I denied everything. How dumb could I
be after that coin flip? I didn't want to lose these two guys as the only friends I ever had.

It was a completely new experience to share exaggerated, funny stories with these guys even though almost everything I told them was bullshit. But what's the truth got to do with anything anyway? Especially when you're starting to make friends.

Surprisingly, and it was a surprise, hanging around with these two guys more and more started meaning a lot to me. Naturally, I still tried to use people to get what I could out of them; that's human nature. My dad taught me that a long time ago. But this new feeling of belonging or even being associated with this fraternity was definitely different in a good kind of way. Something I never experienced before.

_____

About a week before Christmas we had a great holiday party at the house. Most of the guys stayed in town since the winter weather here was warm and sunny, pot was everywhere, the beer never stopped flowing, and the girls radiated sex.

A couple hundred people were at the party, with different people coming and going all night long. Other fraternity guys were there, a lot of sorority girls, and a bunch of neighborhood Venice sluts who thought that fucking college guys would give them a step up out of the gutter.

Instead of the pledges providing the entertainment like we were told to do, me and the other pledges hired Tiffany and Amber to perform their lesbian act. For more money, guys oil-wrestled the girls. Later upstairs in the pledge dorm, the girls gave blowjobs for fifty bucks. Funny though, even for all the hundred dollar offers, neither girl would let a guy fuck them. That's where the Venice sluts came in handy.

Doc, the usual DJ was there, wearing his one-piece, black vinyl, body stocking that made him look a nigger's dick. People were wall-to-wall, sweating, dancing, getting high from pot, booze, meth, X, and probably coke even though I didn't see anybody using it. The noise and the music was getting louder and
louder as the night wore on. Even the back yard was jammed with drunks. It was really a great party. What proved it was that nobody there could pass a field sobriety test if their life depended on it.

Richie LeRoy, with his 35mm camera constantly flashing, was snapping shots of everybody for the house scrapbook.

But a little after twelve-thirty, five uninvited guests showed up, all dressed alike.

“Shit,” Vysell mumbled between his teeth to me and Batman, “Porky and the Pigs.”

The clothes on all three of us stunk so bad of pot that somebody would've thought that a marijuana field was on fire and the wind blew in our direction for hours.

“Party's over!” a short, butch-looking cop who might've been a transsexual, yelled in an unusually deep voice for a female.

Her four dumb male helpers all gave us the evil-eye, trying to look mean.

Doc hurriedly changed songs, this time playing the theme song from Cops, with all of us joining in on the chorus.

The dyke bitch, wearing sergeant stripes, flicked the living room light switch up and down continually for about thirty seconds, like at a Pink Floyd concert, until Doc finally stopped the music.

“ID everybody!” this questionable woman ordered. “Party's over!” When she turned around, she had thick, stringy, brown hair that looked like the ends of a wet mop and an ass as broad as a bus.

In the next hour the five cops must've gotten wrist cramps writing a citation to most of the people there for chickenshit crimes like false ID, minor in possession of alcohol, under the influence, possession of under an ounce of pot. Unfortunately for the out-of-state people without California ID, they got taken into custody and had to bail out of jail. No doubt serious violent street crime in Venice must've drastically dropped that night during the time the cops raided the party.

Luckily for Tiffany and Amber, who swallowed enough sperm to float a battleship, when the cops went upstairs, they
were between customers, pressed against each other's naked body. But when the cops checked their ID through the station's computer, both of their fake licenses were revealed; Tiffany was seventeen and Amber was sixteen. Both girls were taken into custody for curfew violations.

My souvenir from the cunt cop was a citation for under an ounce of pot when three joints fell out of my wallet when I showed her my ID that was probably the only legitimate one there. Unfortunately Lyman, Headlights, and Frizzhead left about fifteen minutes before the cops arrived. Me and everybody else had to appear in West L.A. Court on January 14.

The next day, even though I wasn't there, some cops served a search warrant on the fraternity house, kicking everybody off the second floor. They said they were looking for evidence of a rape. I just laughed, thinking of all the idiots who paid Tiffany or Amber or any of the dozen neighborhood pigs for sex, probably carelessly leaving a cum spot on the bed sheet which I heard is the same as leaving your name, address, phone number, photograph, and fingerprints.

_____

By Christmas, things were falling into place pretty well. Ali Reza had been e-mailing me my school assignments regularly. All I had to do was show up in class once in a while and read a little which I mostly did while sitting on the toilet.

_____

The day before New Year's Eve, sometime after two in the afternoon, Lyman ran down the back stairs into the yard and told me and the other dope-smoking pledges in an ecstatic voice, “I found my mother!”

“Where?” Dung asked.

“Honolulu Memorial Hospital. She works there. I'm flying out this afternoon.”

_____

With less than a month to Hell Week, and still eight pledges too many, I decided to stop drinking and smoking dope so much and spend more time figuring how to get rid of the extra baggage; especially Lyman.

Unfortunately, Lyman had the same idea, but acted first. Besides scamming me out of the will money, his plans for me also included prison.

Thursday, January 2, 2003

1:30
P.M
.

“E
VERYBODY'S ON THE RAPE LIST
!”
Froggy sputtered, with a terrified look on his face. He grabbed my forearm as I entered the front hallway of the fraternity house. “Look on the pledge bulletin board!”

He pulled me into the kitchen and up to the bulletin board where I got the shock of my life! A computer-printed page in bold type read:

RAPE INVESTIGATION:
ALL PLEDGES BE IN
THE HOUSE AT 3:00 PM
TODAY OR YOU'RE OUT
OF THE PLEDGE CLASS!

JACK CHRISTIANSON

“Even a cunt investigator,” Rainey said, pointing to the bottom of the of the page where a white push-pin stuck through a business card that read in part:

LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT
Det. Sue Montelino

Sex Crimes

Under the card somebody scrawled in red ink PUSSY POWER.

It was impossible that the cops found my private video collection. Hell, even the girls I fucked didn't know they got fucked. But since I never use rubbers, maybe one of them got pregnant and the cops are trying to get DNA from every guy they knew. But why are the other pledges involved? It didn't make any sense. I'll bet this bitch cop was just fishing around, probably following up some twat's fantasy that she got gang-banged somewhere like they always show in porn movies. Yeah, the more I thought about it, the more I knew this investigation wouldn't amount to shit.

I swear I heard Dung's heartbeat as he stood next to me and squeaked in a cracked voice, “What the hell is this? I never fucked any girl anywhere.”

“Then your unbroken hymen on the end of your dick will prove it,” Wide-Load snickered.

Rickshaw Boy could barely clearly speak either. “Do you think it's some girl from high school whose parents called the cops after she got pregnant?”

“No,” Grossberg interrupted. “Christianson said some girl got raped here by at least one of us pledges.”

“Rape?” Rawlings muttered. “Who needs to rape anybody? I get more pussy than I can handle.”

“Me too,” Castle murmured, probably convincing nobody.

“Who's the victim?” Grossberg asked. “That'll tell us a lot.”

“Who knows,” I answered, checking my watch. “But in an hour and a half we'll find out.”

_____

Like ants, all of us were fidgeting around in the living room at 2:45, too scared to sit still, waiting for the lady sex cop. She got there at 2:55, carrying a black attache´ case in her right hand and a big, brown, knock-off Louis Vuitton purse in her left hand. The fake was easy to spot; the hardware was orange instead of gold. In her mid-30s, she was about five-eight, thin, with frosted, shoulder length, brown hair partially covering her dangling,
gold earrings. She didn't waste any time with false charm.

“I'm Detective Montelino,” she mumbled in a monotone through a nearly-closed mouth, doing a pretty good job of mimicking Clint Eastwood's cop character Dirty Harry.

Her large, hazel eyes were as alert as a preying hawk's, staring at each of us, one-at-a-time. Her matching black pants and black jacket over her black sweater didn't exactly soften her appearance either.

“This is the procedure. Wait here. When I'm ready for you, I'll talk to each of you individually in the yard. When we're done, wait upstairs. And don't discuss our conversation with each other. Then I'll talk to everyone as a group.”

Rainey raised his hand like he was in grammar school. “I've got a question.”

“Ask me outside,” she interrupted. “Who're you?”

“Tim Rainey.”

“OK Mr. Rainey, you can be first. Come outside with me.” Then she looked over at us. “The rest of you, wait here until I call you.”

With his grim face looking down at his shoes, Rainey headed toward the kitchen following the cop as docilely as an obedient puppy.

“Anybody know yet who got raped?” Castle asked.

“No idea,” Batman answered.

“Me neither,” Watson mumbled.

“Don't know nothing about nothing,” I muttered, taking the advice my father gave me that he always used when the state and federal investigators continually tried to question him.

“Got no idea either,” Holmes said softly, shaking his head.

“Same here,” Froggy added.

None of the other guys knew shit either.

I cornered Batman and Vysell. “You tell anybody about my videos?” I whispered.

Both guys flinched a little, like they were shocked I'd even ask them that.

“Hell no,” Vysell answered.

Batman just shook his head.

Both guys were believable.

I checked my watch every five minutes until it was almost 3:30. Then, ashen faced, Rainey walked back into the living room.

“Stafford, you're next,” was all he said, before stumbling up the stairs alone.

Even though I still thought this was a bullshit investigation, the familiar knot suddenly came to life in my stomach and started strangling my intestines. I stood up and slowly walked outside into the back yard.

The cop was standing as I approached. Two aluminum lawn chairs with different color, torn webbing faced each other with a small, white, plastic table in between. The black attache´ case was closed, lying flat on the table. Next to it was a blue, loose-leaf notebook. She pointed to the chair across from her before she handed me her business card, identical to the one that was pinned to the bulletin board.

“Please sit down.”

I plopped down, surrendering to the chair, twisting around trying to get comfortable. But my right knee suddenly started bouncing. I couldn't control it as she stared down at it.

“State your name please.”

“Kurt Stafford.”

“Mr. Stafford. You're not under arrest. You can leave anytime you want. In fact you don't have to tell me anything.”

“What if I leave or refuse to talk to you?”

“Then whatever facts I have from this investigation will be turned over to the District Attorney's Office and they'll decide whether or not to prosecute you.”

“What's my advantage if I talk to you?”

“Having your side of the story heard.”

Again she stared at my uncontrollable right knee that almost kept time to my fluttering heartbeat that pumped way too fast.

I nodded. “Sounds OK,” I muttered.

Her voice lost its earlier threatening tone. “Were you at the fraternity Christmas party?”

I shook my head slowly. “I don't think so.”

“Do you know Richie LeRoy?”

“Sure.”

“He's the fraternity photographer, isn't he?”