Hollywood Moon hs-3

by Joseph Wambaugh

  The first part of their watch was routine. They got a few calls on their MDC and dealt with them. One was a family dispute in southeast Hollywood involving a Latina with eight children, all of them boys. The woman was being driven to near violence by her two oldest, high school dropouts who were not working and didn’t care to try. The yelling in that house had alarmed the neighbors. Their second call involved perennial parking problems everywhere near Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards.

  After writing a speeder on Highland Avenue just before sunset, they got their first hotshot call. The RTO’s voice said, “All units in the vicinity and Six-X-Forty-six, see the woman. Prowler there now…”

  The address given was close to the area of the previous night’s violent sexual assault, and as with most hotshot calls these days, the designation was code 3. The current chief had initiated this code 3 policy in order to keep other speeding responders, who were not using sirens, from crashing into one other. The cops enjoyed code 3 rides.

  “Let’s hit it,” R.T. Dibney said, and Mindy Ling turned on the light bar and, with her usual caution, drove only as fast as she ever did, cutting off the siren when they got close to the address in order to arrive quietly.

  When they parked, it was dark enough that lights were on in most of the apartments on the street, and the passing traffic was using headlights.

  As Mindy Ling was removing the key, R.T. Dibney said, “I want some real light for this one.”

  He reached under the seat for his five-cell flashlight and said, “Hey, this feels lightweight. Where’s the batteries?”

  He clicked the switch, then unscrewed the battery cover, and out jumped a very pissed-off lizard. It landed in the lap of Mindy Ling, who screamed and leaped from the car with the lizard right behind her, the reptile hightailing it into the nearest vegetation.

  This happened just as the surfer cops were pulling up in front of the apartment building, and Jetsam said, “Maybe this wasn’t a good time for it.”

  “I warned you, dude,” Flotsam said. “What if it happened when she was driving?”

  “Jolly up, bro,” Jetsam said. “The Oracle always said that doing police work was the most fun we’d ever have in our whole lives.”

  “Correction, dude,” said Flotsam. “The Oracle said good police work. This don’t exactly qualify.”

  It turned out that whoever had been roaming through the darkened parking area behind the building was long gone, but three cops from the midwatch and four more from Watch 3 had the opportunity of seeing Mindy Ling shaking and sputtering, trying to pull herself together.

  R.T. Dibney looked with suspicion at the surfer cops and said, “Somebody put a lizard in my flashlight.”

  “Heavens!” said Flotsam.

  “Gracious!” said Jetsam.

  “Goddamn son of a bitch! I want the name of the asshole that did this!” Mindy Ling said to R.T. Dibney, who’d never heard her swear like this.

  “Don’t look at me!” he said. “I didn’t do it to my own flashlight!”

  She shivered and looked a bit nauseous as she turned abruptly and headed to the apartment of the person reporting.

  R.T. Dibney hung back for a moment and said to the surfer cops, “Whoever did it better not brag about it. Mindy’ll hunt them down and they will die a slow death by chopstick torture. After working with that babe, I am sure that China will eventually rule the world.”

  “I think it was a way juvenile prank,” Flotsam said.

  “Childish to the max,” Jetsam said.

  “I ain’t mad at whoever did it,” R.T. Dibney said. “This incident taught me something important. Mindy Ling is a girl. She’s a real girl, after all. Now I might even start to like her a little bit.”

  After a few minutes, Mindy Ling returned, and when all officers were heading for their cars, she said to R.T. Dibney, “You ready to go, or do you wanna stay here and look for your lizard?”

  “Hey, it wasn’t my lizard!” R.T. Dibney said, his mustache twitching. “I was the intended victim of this here outrage.”

  Jetsam said, “Mindy, don’t, like, go all bleak about your lizard phobia. I know a copper that’s scared of clowns.”

  “Dude!” Flotsam said, reddening.

  “Get outta my face, you surf rats,” Mindy Ling blurted, storming to her car.

  After 6-X-46 had driven away, Jetsam walked to the lushly planted area in front of the apartment building, shined his flashlight beam under a camellia bush, and said, “Bro, you are one lucky reptile. Your travel accommodations sucked, but this is a way cooler ’hood than the one you left behind.”

  Business was good at Pablo’s Tacos early that evening. Parking was scarce in the little strip mall on Santa Monica Boulevard, and Malcolm Rojas, who had recently gotten off work at the home improvement center, had to park two blocks away on a residential side street. He knew from his prior visits to the taco stand that cops cruised by regularly and hassled any tweakers who looked like they might be holding or scoring crystal meth or other drugs. Malcolm had never eaten the lard-fried tacos from Pablo’s and seldom ate Mexican fare at all, intent on leaving the Latino part of him back in Boyle Heights.

  Still, Malcolm decided maybe he should try smoking a blunt when the anger grew too fierce. Before he got out of his Mustang, he took the box cutter from his pocket and put it under the front seat in case the cops stopped by and started jacking up people. He’d buy a little bit of weed and get out of there fast.

  He’d gotten paid today, so he had plenty of money, no thanks to his mother. She was always yammering about him paying room and board now that he was almost twenty years old, as if their apartment was a damn boardinghouse or something. She still had settlement money left from his father’s accidental death, and she was making good tips working part-time at Du-par’s coffee shop in Farmers Market, so he couldn’t understand why he should have to pay her.

  It was just like his mother. Everything was all about her. He told her if she’d quit drinking a quart of Jim Beam every other day, she’d have more money, and she told him he was being cruel. Malcolm longed for the day when he could leave her, cut all ties, be his own man. That day would come.

  There was nobody hanging around Pablo’s that he’d seen or dealt with in the past. Pablo’s mostly did a takeout business, but there were a few small tables inside, so he decided to sit and wait for a pot dealer to arrive. He needed something to make him feel more in charge of his emotions. He was still troubled about what had happened in the parking garage-troubled, but also more excited than he’d ever been in his entire life.

  He’d wanted to come in that bitch’s mouth, that’s what he’d wanted to do, but he’d been too scared. There had been too many cars passing by, and he’d feared that at any minute one of the other residents would drive in. Then he might’ve had to fight for his life. How would that have been? With only a box cutter against a grown man? That’s how Malcolm Rojas saw himself in such an encounter. Fighting for survival against a grown man.

  But he didn’t think he’d ever need to do that again. He’d never again let the anger rule him. He’d masturbate or smoke a blunt and everything would be okay.

  Yet he’d brought his box cutter from the home improvement store again today. Why did he do that? He didn’t want to think about it now. He just wanted a taste, only something to take the edge off. And if his mother bitched about him smoking it, maybe he’d tell her to go dive in her bottle of Jim Beam and shut the fuck up. Malcolm ordered a cup of coffee and sat down at one of the little tables inside to watch and wait for a dealer to show.

  Dewey Gleason had been Bernie Graham all day. Bernie Graham was no challenge at all and in fact was a bit boring to his creator. Bernie was an L.A. guy, born and raised, and as Dewey saw him, Bernie had come from money, the son of a successful plastic surgeon who catered to a glamorous Westside trade. Bernie had an MBA from USC and had been a highly successful investment adviser, but he had suffered through two bad marriages with a gambling problem that necessita
ted his foray into illegal activity.

  Dewey felt he had to establish this plausible backstory when dealing with college kids. They asked questions that the likes of Creole and Jerzy would never ask. The college boys were paranoid about getting caught and mentioned their parents a lot, and Dewey had to share fictional background information to reassure them. Or rather, paternalistic Bernie Graham had to.

  At least Bernie Graham didn’t need to be imposing, so Dewey didn’t have to wear the shoes with lifts and suffer from ankle pain for two days, as he did when he was Jakob Kessler. Nor did he need the contact lenses, because Bernie Graham seldom needed to intimidate anybody. And Bernie Graham didn’t have to be an older man, so Dewey could lose the gray wig. About all he’d done for Bernie Graham was use a rinse in his hair to make it a few shades darker and apply a stick-on mustache along with trendy eyeglasses.

  His Bernie Graham character always dressed well-thanks to Nordstrom’s no-questions-asked return policy-usually in a blazer and chinos. Dewey had considered creating a small but noticeable scar across Bernie’s forehead that a college kid would undoubtedly describe for the cops if the kid was ever arrested. Ultimately, he’d decided that the scar would be overkill, but he affected a right-legged limp that he claimed was the result of a skiing accident on Mammoth Mountain, where he’d gone with fraternity brothers.

  Meeting college kids wasn’t hard to do. The previous year, Dewey had cultivated one who’d been working part-time at a Starbucks in West L.A., and he’d parlayed that meeting into several others with students who were cash-strapped. Soon he knew a dozen kids he could nurture and train. To begin with, he’d simply buy their debit cards and their PINs. The card-selling student would have to be in good standing with his bank. Dewey could almost always buy the card for $300 or less, but sometimes the more assertive kids chiseled another $100 out of him.

  Then Dewey as Bernie Graham would use a “deposit runner” unknown to the first kid to deposit several of Eunice’s counterfeit checks into the account of the kid who’d sold him the card. The deposit runner would have good bogus ID created by Eunice, so that any photo taken by a bank security camera would not match the student who’d sold Dewey the card. Then a third student, one who Dewey called his “ bucks-up runner,” not known by either of the first two, would be hired to travel to San Diego County, or out to the Palm Springs area, where there were some very big Indian casinos. That student, with another of Eunice’s bogus IDs, would gamble a little, and through a clever phone call to override the card’s daily limit, he would loot the debit account until it was dry. Any security video taken at the casinos would likewise not match the legitimate owner of the debit card, nor the one who’d deposited the bogus checks.

  When the bank finally contacted the original student, the kid would say, “Oh, my gosh, my debit card isn’t in my wallet! And I had my PIN number taped to it! Oh, my gosh!”

  When the bank tried telling the kid that he owed the bank payback for the thousands they’d lost, the kid would recite lines fed by Bernie Graham: “But I didn’t even know it was missing until you called me!”

  The security at Indian casinos was generally lax, and none of Bernie’s runners had gotten arrested so far. The security people at the casinos were concerned with customers cheating the house, not with cheating the banks. They’d look diligently for elaborate devices designed to beat the slot machines, but ATM scams were of little concern to them, and, most important, there were no close-up cameras at the ATM machines in the casinos, which made them desirable targets.

  Dewey Gleason’s favorite line as a closer to a new college kid was, “Look, the banks take the hits, so the Injuns don’t give a shit. You think the banks can’t afford to lose a few thousand here and there? Who needs it more, you or Bank of America?”

  Dewey had no doubt that every one of the students skimmed some of the cash they were supposed to be returning to their mentor. Most of them would say something like, “Mr. Graham, there was a guy eyeballing me, so I had to gamble more than I wanted to. But I didn’t lose too much.”

  But what they ended up giving him made the whole gag surprisingly profitable. The college kids didn’t want to lose this new and fascinating source of income, so they were careful not to kill the golden goose. It made Eunice happy, but Dewey complained that he’d ended up being nothing more than a coach and collector. There was no challenge for a man who’d spent most of his adult life chasing casting agents and reading for uninterested TV producers and auditioning for parts he never got. At least with Jakob Kessler he got to give a real performance, and it was exhilarating, especially when he turned those pale contact lenses on someone like Creole and talked about greed. That’s when he felt he was doing what he was born to do. He was giving a great performance every time, no matter what that jealous bitch had to say about it.

  His last stop late that afternoon was in West Hollywood, but after a long day spent collecting, Dewey got a phone call on one of the eight GoPhones he kept on his person and in his briefcase.

  Eunice, who could never resist belittling him, said, “Hello. Am I speaking with the tall and fearsome Jakob Kessler or gimpy little Bernie Graham?”

  “How do I hate thee?” Dewey replied. “Let me count the ways.”

  “What?” she said. “You’re breaking up.”

  “Get to the fucking point, Ethel,” he said, using her GoPhone name. “Whadda you want?”

  “Stop by the Mexican joint after you’re all done,” she said, which they both knew to mean Pablo’s Tacos, the notorious Santa Monica Boulevard meeting place for tweakers, crackheads, and others with illicit goods to sell. “Look for a black guy who calls himself John. He’s supposed to show up at around eight fifteen with the goods I talked to you about on Monday.”

  Eunice had never shut her fucking mouth on Monday or any other day, and most of what she’d said had passed him by. She had one idea after another, one job after another for him to do, while she just sat there in the apartment and “created,” and smoked herself into an early grave. The last part would be just fine with him if it could happen sooner. Monday? Which gag was that? Finally, he had to admit the truth and take what she’d surely dump on him.

  He said, “Okay, Ethel, I don’t remember what you told me on fucking Monday, okay?”

  “You don’t remember. Why doesn’t that surprise me?” she said. “Why do I knock myself out for you?”

  “Please let me knock you out sometime,” he said, slamming on the brakes after almost blowing the light at Cahuenga and Sunset because she had him so upset.

  “The guy with the goods from his office? Sweet Jesus! Do I have to spell it out for you on the goddamn phone?”

  Then he remembered. A Nigerian night janitor who was acquainted with one of Dewey’s Mexican runners claimed to have access to his company’s checks, and he’d suggested that some checks could temporarily disappear from the office, no problem. His company employed several hundred Latino workers, and Eunice intended to make duplicates of the paychecks and then have the janitor return the originals to the check file. She was curious to see how many could be cashed by Dewey’s Mexicans with bogus IDs she supplied before the company and the company’s bank discovered that some paychecks were being cashed twice.

  “Okay, Ethel, I’m all dialed-in now,” Dewey said after he remembered her instructions regarding the Nigerian. “I’ll go by the joint and look for some black dude, which might include half the people I see in the parking lot, what with so many silverbacks coming up to Hollywood from South L.A. every goddamn night. Do you have a better description?”

  “Your runner said he’s forty, fat, and nervous, remember?” Then she said, “No, of course you don’t remember. Offer one Franklin to him and see how it goes from there.”

  “This is just great,” Dewey said. “Somebody walks into that parking lot looking suspicious and the first cop cruising by will be on him like maggots on the horse meat they sell in that joint. And of course, being a black foreigner from his fucked-
up country, he’ll be an hour late.”

  Ignoring his complaints, Eunice said, “And after you finish with that job, stop and get me a Whopper with fries. No, make it two Whoppers. I’m hungry.”

  Then she clicked off, and Dewey threw the phone on the seat beside him, muttering all the way to West Hollywood, for what he’d previously thought would be the last stop of the day.

  Dewey was leery about dealing with a Nigerian. They had their own scams and didn’t work well with outsiders. Dewey thought that by now everyone with the brain of a chicken would be onto the big Nigerian eBay scams, such as the one where an item, like a golf cart, would be listed for sale by a legitimate US seller. The Nigerians would send a check to the seller made out for five times the asking price of the item. Many honest but gullible sellers would send the item and the balance of the huge check to the Nigerian, who the seller figured was just not attuned to our American way. Of course, the seller’s check would be legitimate but the Nigerian’s original check would be bogus.

  Dewey had seen a notice on the online classifieds site craigslist from a seller who’d been stung. He’d posted a message saying that his item was “not for sale to any Nigerian.” Dewey figured he should be cautious when dealing with the Nigerian tonight and would look and listen very carefully to determine if the sheet of checks was legitimate.

  He was lucky to find a parking space for his Honda Civic just off the Sunset Strip, and he spotted his depositor runner sitting outside at a sidewalk table, where he could sip a $5 cup of coffee and pretend that he was going to amount to something in the world as soon as he got his degree in anthropology or whatever useless fucking thing he was studying. Dewey hadn’t met one yet who he thought would end up as anything but a valet parking attendant or a busboy at some Wolfgang Puck restaurant, if he got lucky.

  This one was a smallish kid, and of course he was wearing wraparound shades, cargo pants, and a baseball cap pulled low, as if he were someone who didn’t want to be recognized by the adoring public. Dewey wondered where he got the T-shirt with the Warner Bros. logo on the back. That, the cargoes and retro sneakers, and the inability to get out of his car without a bottle of designer water said, “I am employed in some capacity at the studio!” Dewey Gleason was sick to death of doing business with these pathetic little fucks.