Hollywood Moon hs-3

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “That was great work, Dana,” Jetsam said. “You rock, girl.”

  Dana said, “I’m gonna be notified by detectives if he goes home, but I think it’d be super-cool if one of us busts him on the street before they do. Stay on the air and listen for Six-X-Seventy-six.”

  “Roger that,” Flotsam said. “We’ll be all over it.”

  When Dana and Nate were gone, Flotsam said, “Now, dude, you wanna waste our time investigating a possible weenie waver who’s, like, suffering the effects of a Hollywood moon? Or do you wanna be ready to jump with Dana and Nate if the big ping happens somewheres around us?”

  “You’re right, bro,” Jetsam said. “Why should I give a shit if a driver don’t have pants on? Sometimes I forget where I’m at.” Then he looked at his partner and they said in unison, “This is fucking Hollywood!”

  When the driver signed the citation, Flotsam tore off a copy, handed it to the man, and said, “Drive carefully, sir, and please try to keep both hands on the wheel.”

  Eunice, having started on her third Bombay martini, was wearing a tiger lily silk blouse and Ralph Lauren white jeans that she could hardly squeeze herself into, and toeless wedges. She’d had trouble deciding on a lipstick but had finally settled on something called Flirty Burgundy. She hoped it didn’t draw attention to the damage that the duct tape did to the skin around her mouth. She was considering another change when the phone rang.

  She picked up and heard him. “Hi, Ethel,” he said. “It’s Clark.”

  “Come on up,” she said and touched a phone button to open the gate.

  Eunice took one more look in the mirror before opening the door with a huge smile.

  “Hi!” she said, thinking he looked very hot, sweaty, and tired. But also thinking there was something very sexy about that. She had an image of herself helping him out of his T-shirt and drying his chest and shoulders with a towel. She imagined that his skin would be hairless. She knew his body would be firm and smooth. She said, “You look like you could use a cold drink, Clark.”

  “Is Mr. Graham here?” Malcolm asked.

  “Mr. Graham is definitely not here,” she said. “And won’t be coming back.”

  “He won’t?” Malcolm said. “Where is he?”

  “Like old Hollywood, he’s gone with the wind,” Eunice said.

  “I don’t get it,” Malcolm said. “I’m supposed to work for him. He promised!”

  “You can work for me,” Eunice said, finishing the martini in a gulp. “At least for today. We gotta get these boxes and luggage down to your car. I need you to take me to the airport.” As he looked at the suitcases waiting by the door, she said, “I hope we can fit all my bags in your Mustang. Is the trunk very big?”

  “I gotta see Mr. Graham!” Clark said. “He made a lotta promises to me. Is he at the office?”

  “The office?” she said. “Oh, yeah, the apartment where he meets with the runners. He might be there, but he can’t help you.”

  “He’s gotta help me!” Malcolm said. “I better drive over there and talk to him.”

  “Look, Clark,” Eunice said. “Lemme get you a cold drink. How about a martini? Bet you never tasted a real Bombay martini.”

  “I gotta go find Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said and started for the door.

  “Sit down, Clark,” Eunice said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Malcolm hesitated while she pushed a computer chair on wheels toward him and lit a cigarette. The smoke in the apartment was making him nauseated and she looked like she’d had too many martinis, but she had urgency to her voice, so he sat.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m sitting.”

  “Clark,” Eunice said, “Mr. Graham isn’t in charge of our business. Mr. Graham is just a glorified runner. I’m the boss of our operation, and I’m shutting things down for a while. I’m leaving town and won’t be back for a few months.” Then she added, “I’m going to New York.”

  “How about Mr. Graham?” Malcolm said.

  “Fuck Mr. Graham!” Eunice said. “Pardon my French. He tried to cheat me, so I fired him. He’s out.” Malcolm looked so distressed that she felt sorry for him and said, “I’m gonna come back here and start a new business in a few months, and I could use a smart boy like you. I’ll stay in touch and tell you when and where to meet me. But for now, I want you to help me get rid of everything in those boxes. We’ll have to find Dumpsters for them and then return here to get my bags. I can see now that we’ll never be able to squeeze the boxes and the luggage into your car.”

  Malcolm’s disappointment was palpable even to Eunice in her deliriously happy, three-martini state.

  “You called me here to be your taxi?” Malcolm said, hardly moving his lips when he spoke.

  “Not my taxi, my loyal employee,” Eunice said. “It’s important that we get rid of all the stuff in those boxes. I’m gonna pay you two hundred dollars, Clark. With maybe a bonus if we can dispose of everything and get me to the airport in two hours.”

  “This is not right,” Malcolm Rojas said. “I gotta go to the office and talk to Mr. Graham about this. This is not fair.”

  When he stood abruptly, Eunice said, “Clark, Clark, cool down. I’ll pay you three hundred. And after I get settled, I might just send you a plane ticket to come visit me. How would you like that?”

  She stood and reached up slowly and buried her left hand in the beautiful curls over his ear. His dark eyes were so fiery and intense she felt her own heat rising.

  “You can make plenty of money with me, sweetheart,” she said with a long sigh, tugging at his curls, thinking his nose was cute and pert and his dimples were divine.

  When she pushed closer to him he could smell the gin, and it disgusted him, and her touch disgusted him, and when she called him sweetheart, it enraged him. “I’m not your sweetheart,” he said.

  “What… what’s wrong?” she said, looking at his face flush. “I’ll bet you never had a mature woman treat you right, have you, Clark? I’ll treat you right and pay you good money to boot. All for a little help this evening.”

  Malcolm felt her left hand scratching and tugging, and then her right hand moved down his body to the front of his jeans, and he felt her touching his crotch, rubbing it, feeling gently with her fingers, her recent manicure badly damaged by the chains that had bound her. “Just sit back down, Clark,” Eunice said. “And let Momma teach you a few tricks.”

  With that, Malcolm Rojas shoved her so hard in the chest that she staggered back and fell onto the kitchen floor. “You bitch!” he said. “Don’t you ever put your hands on me! You fat old filthy bitch!”

  Eunice was livid. She pulled herself up by grabbing the kitchen counter, unsteady from the martinis, and yelled, “Who the fuck do you think you are, you Mexican dimwit? Get the fuck outta my apartment! Get out, you pathetic little greaser!”

  She started for the door to jerk it open when she felt the strike to her throat-an instant of burn, and then she couldn’t breathe. She threw her hands up and blood washed over them, running down her arms. She instinctively started to run, trying to breathe, but she could not breathe. Nor could she scream. She ran to her bedroom, slammed into the doorjamb, and fell to her knees. There was no air! She tried harder to breathe but nothing entered her lungs except blood.

  Malcolm stood with the box knife down by his leg, looking at her. The tiger lily top was now a burgundy that matched her lipstick. She toppled onto her side, hands clutching at the air, as though she were trying to paddle up and away from there, blood streaming and finally bubbling from the widening gap in her throat. In less than a minute she stopped thrashing. Her body jerked twice and then was still except for little twitches. Malcolm couldn’t take his eyes off her, utterly amazed. It was the most astonishing thing he’d ever seen. And then he turned and ran for the door, hurtling down the steps, running to his Mustang.

  While driving aimlessly east on Franklin Avenue, he was startled by the dried spatter on his right hand. He started to wipe it
onto his jeans but then paused and looked at it. The blood was arousing conflicting emotions in him. He knew that later tonight in bed he would have to relive this event as best he could. Right now he was too rattled to remember the instant that he’d slashed her. He hoped he could remember it while lying alone in the dark. He did not feel remorse. She had left him no choice, the way she’d screamed at him and handled him like he was nothing. Like he was a helpless child that she could fondle as she wished. He was only sorry there wasn’t some way he could tell his mother what he had done-not to grieve but to gloat.

  But then fear began to overwhelm him. He didn’t know what the police could find at crime scenes. On TV it was like magic. The scientist-cop could almost trap your shadow and use it to catch you somehow. He hadn’t worried about things like fingerprints when he’d attacked those other bitches. He never really touched anything but their fat bodies. And since he’d never been arrested, they couldn’t find him, even if he left a bit of fingerprint somewhere. But this was different, what he’d done today. He was trying to think of what he’d touched in that apartment. Nothing. Only the door handle. It was a lever and he’d opened it with his palm wrapped around it. Could they get a print from his palm?

  Then he remembered! He’d braced himself against the wall when she was trying to swim away from him through the air. His entire left hand with all five fingers might be imprinted on the wall beside her body! Did they take a thumbprint when he got his driver’s license? He couldn’t remember. If they did, was it the left thumb or the right thumb? Or was it his index finger? Would they have that to compare with the handprint he’d left in the apartment?

  He took his cell from the charger and clicked it on to call Bernie Graham. Maybe the man was leaving Los Angeles too, just like Ethel. Malcolm needed someone to tell him what to do. Maybe Bernie Graham would take him along, and they could set up the business in some other city. Then he remembered the office. She said he might be there. Malcolm was more frightened than he’d ever been in his life. The fear was exploding into outright panic.

  Dana Vaughn, who was riding shotgun with her cell phone pressed to her ear, closed the cell and said to Hollywood Nate, “Flo Johnson said they got a ping!”

  “Where is he?” Nate asked.

  “She doesn’t know exactly. She’s being given quadrants. Santa Monica Boulevard between Wilcox and Cahuenga.”

  “Better get on tac and tell Flotsam and Jetsam and Sheila and Aaron.”

  “How about Mindy and R.T. Dibney?”

  “Okay,” Nate said, “but we may have to taze R.T. to keep him from shooting the guy on sight.”

  By the time Malcolm reached the duplex in east Hollywood, the moon was large and full and high enough to make the street glow, the way he’d seen the boulevard glow in reflected glare from the huge spotlights during red carpet events. There was a van parked in front and no parking for half a block north, where he managed to find a space. He wondered if any of Bernie Graham’s runners were there. He needed to speak to the man alone. He was feeling light-headed and giddy, like when he smoked pot. His thoughts were fragmented, and he kept seeing her doing her dog paddle, trying to swim away while the blood splashed onto the floor.

  He dialed the Bernie Graham number.

  Dewey Gleason felt a sliver of hope when the cell rang. He didn’t even look at the caller ID. It had to be Hatch, the man with the money!

  “Bernie Graham,” Dewey said anxiously.

  “Mr. Graham, it’s Clark,” he heard the voice say.

  “Oh, shit,” Dewey said. “I can’t talk to you now. Call tomorrow.”

  “You have to talk to me, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’m outside the office in my car.”

  “Get outta here, Clark!” Dewey said. “I’m busy. Call tomorrow.”

  “You’ll wanna talk to me,” Malcolm said. “It’s about Ethel. I was with her.”

  Dewey was silent for a moment and then said, “Okay, come in.”

  “Are you alone?” Malcolm asked.

  “No, but we’ll talk privately. Come in.”

  Malcolm closed his cell and put it in the glove compartment with the box cutter. He thought about it for an instant, then put the box cutter in the pocket of his jeans. He felt calmer just having it there. The box knife made him feel… large. When he stepped from the car, a dagger of moonlight stabbed at his eyes. He looked away from the glowing white ball in the black-velvety sky over Hollywood.

  “Who the fuck was that?” Jerzy Szarpowicz asked.

  “A runner,” Dewey said. “He’s outside.”

  “You told him to come in?” Tristan said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “You’ll wanna hear what he has to say,” Dewey said. “It’s something about my wife.”

  That silenced them. All three were waiting when Malcolm tapped on the door. Dewey opened it, and Malcolm stepped inside, out of the bright moonlight. He looked at the boxes and crates stacked wall-to-wall.

  “Hello, Mr. Graham,” he said with a shy smile. “I knew you were still in business.”

  “Whadda you know about his wife?” Jerzy said to Malcolm.

  Malcolm looked warily at the ferocious man and back at Dewey. “This is real confidential, Mr. Graham,” he said.

  “Okay, let’s go in the other room,” Dewey said.

  Dewey led Malcolm around the maze of stolen merchandise to the single bedroom at the rear of the apartment.

  Dewey turned on the ceiling light, and before he closed the door he heard Jerzy say, “I ain’t happy about this.”

  He heard Tristan reply, “I ain’t happy about nothin’ right now.”

  After the door was closed, Dewey said to Malcolm, “What about Ethel?”

  “She lied to me, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “She told me your business was all through, and she wanted to pay me to drive her and all her stuff to the airport. But I didn’t do it.”

  Flabbergasted, Dewey said, “She called you?”

  Nodding, Malcolm said, “She said she was the boss and you were… nothing. She was in a hurry to leave and go to New York. I bet she stole some of your money.”

  “All of this happened at our apartment?” Dewey said.

  “Yeah,” Malcolm said. “I came straight here afterwards. I’m glad to see everything’s okay. I can help you sell the stuff in there and then we can leave L.A. and start making real money like you said. You can find another secretary better than Ethel.”

  This boy! Dewey could only gape at him, at his earnest and intense gaze, the dark, liquid eyes somehow different tonight, with a kind of… glint in them. “Did she say anything else, Clark? Anything about… about how she spent the night after the three of us had dinner?”

  “No,” Malcolm said.

  “How did she look? The same as at dinner?”

  Malcolm thought and said, “She had a lot more makeup on.”

  “Okay,” Dewey said. “So you left her and came here?”

  “That’s right,” Malcolm said.

  “That’s fine, Clark,” Dewey said. “But you can run along now. I’ll call you on Monday and we’ll get some jobs going. Okay?”

  “I can’t wait, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I want you to leave L.A. with me and teach me the business. We’ll be a good team.”

  “I couldn’t leave L.A. even if I wanted to,” Dewey said. “I’m short on cash right now.”

  “You have to,” Malcolm said.

  Dewey was losing patience. He said, “Why do I have to?”

  “Because you’ll be in trouble when they find Ethel in your apartment.”

  “Whadda you mean, ‘find her?’ ”

  “Find her dead.”

  Neither spoke until Dewey said, “What the hell’re you talking about, boy?”

  “She made me kill her,” Malcolm said. “I had no choice.”

  Dewey could only shake his head in exasperation. He could see from the beginning that the kid was a bit strange and creepy, but he should’ve realized sooner that the boy was a real men
tal case. He opened the bedroom door and said, “Then she won’t be needing the apartment anymore, will she? Maybe I’ll just move back in until the rent runs out.”

  “Don’t go out there yet,” Malcolm said. “You think I’m making this up, but I’m not. I cut her throat. She bled all over the place. She’s dead, Mr. Graham. You and me, we gotta make plans.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Dewey said, but he felt an ominous shiver in the sweltering room on this warm summer night. He shook it off. “Ridiculous,” he repeated.

  Dewey walked out to the room where Jerzy and Tristan waited. He said to Jerzy, “Clark’s leaving. He needs to go home and rest. I think maybe he’s having some kind of… episode.”

  Less than a block away, no fewer than three unmarked cars were double-parked, including one containing D2 Flo Johnson. Behind the most recent arrival were 6-X-32, Flotsam and Jetsam, and 6-X-76, Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate. Two detectives were on the front porch of a residence adjacent to the red Mustang with the pinging cell phone in the glove box. Three detectives were covering the rear of the house, and the bluesuits were backing the detectives in front.

  A very old immigrant from the Dominican Republic who did not speak English and was thoroughly confused opened the door. Flo Johnson spoke to him in Spanish for a few minutes and then said to the others, “This isn’t where he is. Do you wanna set up on the Mustang or start knocking on doors?”

  The detectives were trying to decide on their next move when 6-X-66, Sheila Montez and Aaron Sloane, arrived, followed by R.T. Dibney and Mindy Ling in 6-X-46.

  Dana looked at the cops emerging from their shops and said, “The midwatch is well represented. Let’s find this bastard. He’s gotta be in one of the houses on this block.”

  The surfer cops approached Dana and Nate, and Flotsam said, “On Wednesday we got a call half a block south on this side of the street to an apartment almost empty of furniture. There were two guys there with bad news written all over them. Might be setting up a crack house or something.”

  “A big fat white guy that looks like a biker,” Jetsam said, “and a light-skinned black guy with dreads.”