It indicates so many possibilities, this El Lay.

Ella A. Moss was an Ella lay in my still-young life when I was in junior high.  She was very friendly to me during nutrition, which she did for my body during the lunch hour, but as I later verified she also supplied to every other guy in my graduating class and a few dropouts and a couple of science teachers in their labs also, when she wasn’t doing the entire humanities department as well as the football team and the cheerleaders too.

She was popular and knew how to fuck them all and keep over a three point average, which was her yearly abortion mill toll, where her credit was good and her reputation supported it.

Ella A. Moss went in to education,which she had been doing since the 7th grade and got very good at servicing the needs of various students in her section, midsection and those tasty parts just below the girth-based fleshy zone above her pussy and below her breasts, not that chicken was on the menu every day she and I would meet outside the girl’s gym.

There were days when I met her with meat balls, which I’d dangle in her mouth for her saucy scent to overcome my steamy noodles, never limp, always springy, like a sprung mattress, the kind that creaked and groaned even when not in use.

The school cops enjoyed our act in which they’d catch us.  They’d never throw Ella A. Moss back, front or middle, but done with her, she’d generally be released to my care and control, which I really had no part of, though I didn’t care when she made me feel I could control any and all parts of her anatomy.

Now that’s care and control.

I figured fingers were most suited for a good feel, not as much for the print part, but for the slickness of where they’d been during a lunch too short to cover even one Ella A. Moss breast, which could be nibbled to death, though to really die happy in our district would mean the feckless football team would have to score, huddle and score again and again, something they could only do with the cheerleaders yielding like the other team refused to do, kicking up through and out of the uniforms while the band played on, which hardly made it harder to score.

Ah, high school.

There is no turn back or bypass lane, but there is such a thing as blowing through the checkpoint.  They will not shoot you, but more than that, is wishful thinking because becoming a CHPpie means having no sense of humor – it’s in their contract.

Snow White and I blew through – actually she was blowing me at the time – the checkpoint and a Czech border guard named Jancik chased us down.  Snow White’s beautiful lip action saved us a trip to the pokey and by the time we reached Anaheim, Disneyland had just introduced a new ride, nicknamed as A Snow Show (ASS), a piece of which I got in the parking lot, where a shirt-tale relative of Artie Moreno was guiding the shuttle bus, which now cost .50 cents the ride.

Then I considered my chances.  If I joined them in dash-in immigration, there were two consequences.  I’d get away with it and could take a bus to San Diego, where I’d be scot free, Scotland being the template.  If I got arrested, to where could they deport me?  Pomona?

I shuffled in with a group of young giggling girls who considered this just another run to Disneyland…Magic Mountain, worst case.

I met Delores who was a part time Snow White in Fantasyland, what else would explain her nifty three piece costume and makeup.

“If you’re Snow White…”

“How come I’m in TJ?  I came down here to buy drugs.”

Great.  Snow White on drugs.

“My mom is dying on cancer and needs some relief.  These drugs give it.  We have no medical support in Mexico, except things are so much cheaper and her insurance has a $5,000 deductible, which I’ve yet to reach.  I do keep receipts.”

“Doesn’t Disneyland….”

“Not for a part time Snow White.”

We talked about health care issues for about a half hour, then a clearly pregnant woman named Ponchita described the go-signal.

“I’m about to drop my baby.  When you hear me start to give birth right at the crossing.  It’ll be bloody, that’s your signal to run like crazy.”

It worked like a border child birth border crossing switcheroo should work and soon Snow White and I were on a long haul bus headed up the foothills on a 5 Freeway diversion project near the under construction 880.

Most of the passengers were  bingo club seniors on the return leg from a Palm Springs to Ensenada jaunt to buy booze, pills and discounted lottery tickets.  Another day in the Southwest.

“We thought you were going to cooperate with us,” he said to me.  “Instead you defected to a foreign country.  What kind of cooperation is that?” he yelled at me as he holstered his gun and pushed me against my rental car.  He didn’t handcuff me and there were no other agents in sight.

“I rented the car,” I said.  “Hundreds of Americans go to TJ every day.  You never told me not to go there.”  I shoved him away and dusted myself off.  “I got rolled and shoved back over the border, so leave me alone, goddamn it!”

“Where did you go in TJ?” he demanded.

Either he knew the answer, because he was known at the TJ IHOP, which meant lying would be problematic, or he didn’t know, in which case he shouldn’t.

“At a bar.”

“Which one?”

“When you go into a fuckin’ bar and fuckin’ TJ, you don’t take notes and check for a health department report, you just go into a fuckin’ bar.”

He couldn’t argue with that.  “Who was the waitress?”

“A Mexican, big tits, tight skirt, small tip…in fact, no tip.  Actually, huge tip, they got $300.”

“Serves you right.”

“So arrest me already, although I’m not sure of any crime I committed.”

“Small problem.  We’re the feds, we got the juice.  Congressman Darrell is putting pressure on the director to get you out of his life.  Do that, you’ve got no more problems.”

“But you were the one who wanted me to return to his district.”

“Such are the vicissitudes of our business.  One day you’re a wanted man, next day we don’t know you. Believe me, the ‘don’t know you’ scenario is a much better way to be.  You just owe the feds about $300 less depriciation for the GPS.”

“Bullshit.  I’ve already lost $300 on this deal…let’s call it even.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve collected.”

“You mean the FBI rolled me?”

“Let’s just say were even, Steven.”

“Don’t call me Steven, Gymmy.”

I stepped into my rental car and disabled the GPS, knowing how it could be used to demonstrate my every movement, by tossing the thing into a nearby dumpster.  Let the cops trace the dumpster’s every move, which ideally would be from the alley to a trash truck, then back to an alley.  Might require a SWAT team to rescue it, and no doubt I’d be sent the bill.

I made a left at the 405, which was the shortcut to the border, Tijuana and all the good towns Americans so love to  hate…drug assassinations and all that…definitely a heavier scenario to worry about.

Traffic was no problem, at least to those not on the freeway.  To us freeway flyers, the fast part wasn’t in the bargain.

Rule of thumb one:  When you see a Tijuana cop running your way, run the same way, because what he or she is running from can’t be good.  Rule of thumb two: stay on Ave. Revolucion and stay off Ave. Constitution, because the latter constitutes a dangerous place for Americanos…say what you want about the Revolucion.

And don’t linger or loiter, drink, drink, drink and when sufficiently drunk, cross the border, prove your identity and wait for the drunk wagon on the U.S. side.

The Tijuana IHOP, unlike all IHOPs I had visited previously sold cocktails, strong cocktails and really delicious Americano food.  And after a few zombies, all the waitresses looked just like Wanda.

“Su nombre?” I asked one.

“Juana,” she replied, her smile radiating through my inner core.  “Su nombre?”

Had I recalled, I would have told her.  But the zombie delivered its desired effect, so I simply handed her my card, which she put in her generous bodice…meaning a generous tip.  I wondered if she had photos of the TJ equivalent of Grady…so I asked.

What I got was the manager.  “Who you Mr., asking ’bout Grady?” said the tall well-dressed manager-guy whose name tag described him as Alonzo.

I handed him my card.  He looked at it, but having no bodice, had no place to store it, so he handed it back to me.  “You know, senor, at night, we turn in to a drinking establishment.”  His English seemed to have improved immensely once he knew who I was.  “So you’re right, Grady was here, with the north of the border IHOP staff having his photo taken.  There are more on the walls,” Alonzo said, pointing to a corridor leading to the men’s room.

I had to pee anyhow, so I went to look.  About a dozen photos, including the one FBI Agent Gymmy had shown me…and a longer shot of the same scene, with Agent Gymmy sitting at a table, with a big wide grin across his drooling face.

Boom!  Out went the lights!

When I came to, I was in the dusty stateside parking lot where I had left my rental car, the very dumpster in which I had pitched the GPS device, the implication being for me to search and reinstall.  What the hey?  First I was coldcocked, delivered across the border and I hadn’t even been charged for the three zombies I had consumed.  Of course, I was missing my wallet.

I searched the dumpster, found my wallet, missing about $300 and my car keys.  The GPS device?  Gonzo

“Sure.  I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced,” I said, tactfully pointing to her bursting belly.

:”Oh, that’s Grady Jr.  I just had a sonogram and I’m radioactive.”

“Is that on the menu?”  Again, way too much tact for the situation.

“Right under hot specials.  Remember hot cakes?”

That was the second time I’d heard the phrase.  It was a reference to pancakes in antiquity.  FBI Agent Gymmy had used it during our debrief.  Funny Wanda should be using it now.  “Hot cakes, don’t think I recall.”

“Neither did the sonogram tech.  He ran out of the room, thought his reactor was leaking.  It was just me with little Grady Jr.  Way things are shaping up, I’ll have more special needs than the kid.”

That’s when Darrell made an appearance.

He looked at me; he looked at Wanda.  Speechless.  “What are you doing here?” he asked, as if he’d seen an undercover FBI agent going through his file cabinet.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“You don’t understand the etiquette of your job, I see,” he said.  “In the trade known as political consultant, you always move on to the next consumer and if you spot the old consumer – that would be me – walking down the street, you go to the opposite sidewalk or skulk down an alley.  You never return to the scene of the crime.”  He then looked at Wanda.

“I had nothing to do with that, it was Grady.”

“Who?” asked Darrell.

:”Grady.”

“Never heard of a Grady.  Now what’s today’s special, Wanda?”  Darrell looked at me once again.  “Are you still here.  Isn’t there another IHOP in town?”

“Maybe Grady will know,” I said, taking out my flip phone.  I hit his number.  Darrell smirked his Darrell smirk; the line was dead and he knew it.  Probably Grady was too.  I almost told him I had photos, but Wanda might lose her baby over that.  “Here’s my card,” I said, pushing it toward Wanda.  “Special of the week.”

Darrell reached for it, but Wanda tucked it into her generously endowed IHOP cleavage, safe from the grab bag hands of congress.  “That’ll be relfected in your tip,” Darrell joked, as if I wasn’t even there, which I soon wasn’t.

They showed me his photo in various guises and asked me if I knew any of the others in the photos.  They included but weren’t limited to me with Darrell and Grady in a beer bar surrounded by men who looked like they just fought a forest fire and couldn’t find their way out of the trees; Grady as a businessman; Grady in a high school photo from a yearbook in which most of the classmates looked mentally defective and/or physically challenged and Grady partying in a speedo, surrounded by topless babes (now why hadn’t he invited me to those soirees, wondered I).  All I got was some cash and a lousy few days at a freeway-close motel near an IHOP.  Then I got to thinking, one of those IHOP servers looked like the lady who was hanging her tits near his pina colada in the photo, so close in fact, the bright red nipple looked like the fruit adjunct to the drink.

Was the FBI testing my hetroness?  If so, it worked.  “Do you have the film version of this party?” I asked the agent.

“Do you know any of these women?” he asked.  Either he already knew the answer – yes, yes, a million times yes!!!  Suddenly I was hungry for the IHOP world famous cherry tipped pancakes, but not just any.  I knew which IHOP I’d be headed to, post haste, good taste, no time to waste.

The agent told me to call him if Grady called, but didn’t make any suggestions about my food intake, though the few IHOP pounds I had put on months ago had proved to be a bitch to shed and I asked him if the FBI had a gym.

“Some offices do, but we get a membership in Golds.”

“Gym?” I asked.

“Most call me Jimmy,” he responded.

“Agent Jimmy,” I mulled the phrase over in my palatte, still hungry to taste the best custom IHOP product, the kind they didn’t even know they were serving.

“Would you like to keep the photo?” Jimmy asked.

“May I?”  They knew how to crack the truth out of me.

He nodded.

“What’s her name?” Jimmy asked, pointedly.

“Wanda,” I answered, looking closer at her attributes.  “She works at IHOP.”

“You can have the photo if you revist her. We’d like you to wear a wire when you order the hotcakes.”

A strange euphamism I’d not heard before.  “Does the FBI put this on an expense account, or can you issue me a credit card?”

“If you used an FBI credit card, she might catch on.  We know Wanda.  She’s been to college.”

So I had been assigned to wave my magic Wanda.  “What do you want me to talk about?”

“Tell her you’re a friend of Grady…has she seen him lately…how did she know him…you can even show her the photo.”

“What do you hope to learn?”

“Whatever Wanda tells you. Just be sure to sit at her table.”

“When I went in there, she worked at the counter.”

He showed me additional photos of Grady.  This was a set of him as a child with his family in a park in what looked like some Rust Belt east coast town near Lake Erie with a nuclear reactor in the far background and a shuttered factory in the foreground.

“Nice town,” I said.  His mother seemed to be crying and his father had a stern look on his face and a gun on his hip.

“He was a cop,” said Jimmy.  “After he was fired from the FBI.”

Now I understood.  “What crime did Grady commit?” I asked.

“We think he’s doing what he can to get even with the government for what they did to his dad.  Grady’s father had an assignment like yours, to get the goods on the local congressman.  Problem was, when his dad was finished with his assignment as a congressional undercover operator, we found out his actions led to the ill-advised shutdown of that reactor without the necessary safeguards and Grady became radioactive.  So his whole life was devoted to getting revenge for the nuclear waste that was Grady and in turn, Grady’s goal has been to nuke the FBI for dad.”

“Where’s dad?” I asked.

“That’s what we’d like to know.  We think he’s behind this conspiracy.”

“How’s Congressman Darrell involved in all of this?”

“Good question.  You’ll need this.”  He handed me a geiger counter.

To be continued.

Grady, at least that’s what he called himself, wanted me to meet Darrell, a big shot and a politician, as if there were a distinction who had a brilliant idea about further feathering his own nest and marching his way to the statehouse.

We met at Darrell’s office in a really ugly suburban city, miles away from anything attractive and in a suffocating heat.  Darrell seemed to thrive on all this.  It was freeway close and he had lots of cash, a bit of which he handed me with instructions.

He gave me a name, told me to find out what I could.  I could and I did.  A lot of it was in the county clerk’s office where the name had originated before he himself advanced into politics.  I heard tell that Darrell confronted the man with what I had generated, but the poli I had researched would have none of it, tossing Grady and Darrell out of his office.  That made Darrell mad, so he got an impeachment rolling, using what cash he hadn’t paid me to finance it.

And what did I learn in the clerk’s office?  That the poli had once filled out an application for a new name, a name generally belonging to the opposite sex…suggesting a tilt toward cross dressing or getting a sex change.  Whether this was a joke or him messing around with the prospect of becoming a she, I’ll never know, but it’s still in public files, wating to be discovered, savored, enjoyed and sniffed, if the discoverer is so inclined.

Darrell, bless his awful heart – he’s a jerk, trust me, I hung with him for a few months – never did use the info because the man was getting increasingly unpopular on his own and was unseated.  When I asked, either Grady or Darrell told me that to reveal it might get the poli some sympathy, but I think it was because Darrell also swung that way, and didn’t want to open that can of worms.