by Kurt Douglas
Frank turned the card over in his hand. Sporting a neon-green bud leaf in the top right corner, the card read, Hi-Green Collective: Best nugs on Franklin Ave.
He pushed the card into his shirt pocket and stood up.
As he headed toward the door, Frank turned and asked, “They let felons sell pot, huh?”
Rick threw his hands up and said, “It’s legitimate work, Frank. If they can’t sell pot, what can they do?”
Frank shrugged and opened the front door.
Halfway out, Frank said into the air before him, “Always a pleasure, Dick,” and walked out into the courtyard, letting the door slam behind him.
Sparking up a cigarette, he clanged through the gate and jumped into his Ambassador.
The morning traffic had died down on the boulevard and it only took Frank two cigarettes to get to the collective off of Cahuenga and Franklin. Pulling into the parking lot, he noticed an abundance of BMWs. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was pulling into a used Beamer dealership. Maneuvering his car into a small space between two of the white Beamers, Frank threw the shifter in park with a clunk and opened his door, making sure to bump the car beside him just enough to satisfy his urge.
The whole front of the weed outfit was painted in the same bright, neon green that made up the leaves on the business card. Other than the bright paint and the green cross next to the door, the nameless storefront could’ve been anything. Frank walked under the dome camera over the door and through the green plate glass, entering a small lobby.
The wood floor glowed under the fluorescent lights above. The walls were decorated in various works of graffiti; art is what they’d call it. A handful of your favorite cartoon characters holding dime bags and joints. A certain lovable cat from the Sunday comics swallowing a few ounces of the sticky-icky poking out from a lasagna. Three little duck brothers wearing 420 T-shirts and sitting around a bong. All of this sprinkled along the perimeter of the small room. The tasteless mural only broke in three places; the entrance, a small rectangular window covered by frosted privacy glass, and a heavy steel door.
Frank approached the window and chimed the small bell sitting on the ledge. The window zipped upward and he was greeted by a pair of large breasts tightly clad in a white tank top. Frank noticed the faint lines of her areolas underneath the thin white shirt—she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“First-time patient?” he heard a voice call down from above the cleavage.
“Yeah,” Frank replied as he fished his wallet from his slacks.
Flipping it open, he offered his info through the window.
“Fill this out,” the breasts said as they lowered, handing Frank a clipboard and allowing him a look at the face attached.
She hung half out the window with her elbows perched on the ledge as she waited for him to fill out the paperwork.
She was your typical bud shop girl. Her hair, brown roots that faded into streaks, reaching down toward the bleached blonde strands at the end. Pink sclera surrounded her dark-brown button eyes, and her plump lips, turned upward in a smile, were pinched tight around a smoldering joint.
“Don’t worry about your doctor’s info,” she interrupted Frank’s scribbling. “That’s more of a formality.”
With that, he was finished and handed the clipboard back to her along with his doctor’s recommendation. She took the paperwork and slid the window shut, only her silhouette visible through the frosted glass.
“Come on in,” she said, her voice muffled.
Then a buzzer sounded. Frank took a few steps to his right and swung open the large steel door. Stepping into a makeshift cage of wrought-iron security gates, his sinuses were washed in the dank smell of marijuana. Before he could bask in the sweet scent, a second buzzer sounded and Frank released himself from the cage with a twist of the knob, entering the bud shop floor.
Before him, a glass case lit up by neon lights displayed the shop’s selection of goods: a row of jars filled with varying shades of green nuglets, a shelf of pipes, rolling papers and other smoking accessories, and, on the bottom row, the edibles—brownies, cookies, crackers, even Jolly Ranchers and suckers. Behind the display case a young man with round cheeks, deep-set eyes and a bald head stood between Frank and the back door. His pearly white smile sparkled above a black T-shirt sporting the collective’s logo; a big neon-green bud leaf. Frank could hear the television blaring behind the back door. A daytime talk-show about the dangers of diabetes, loud enough to screech through the heavy door, but not loud enough to hide the heated argument that was going on behind it.
“Hey, Mr. Black,” the young man behind the counter said, his volume attempting to match that of the voices behind him. “Because you’re a veteran, you don’t even have to make a donation today and you’ll still get the first-time patient deal. Score, right?”
The young man chuckled as he passed Frank’s paperwork across the counter. His smile sparkled. Frank pocketed the papers. He said nothing.
Frank leaned against the case, looking down into its contents as he listened to the voices in the backroom. While Frank stared, the young man began filling a white prescription bag with items from the middle row; a plastic grinder, a joint, some cellulose papers and a cheap plastic lighter.
Folding the bag shut, he looked at Frank and asked with the pep of a seasoned salesman, “What can I get you?”
Turning his eyes upward from the glass shelf, Frank said in a stone-cold voice, “Chad Campbell.”
The name caught the young man off guard. He looked over his shoulder at the backdoor then back to Frank.
“He’s not here right now.”
“Mm-hmm,” Frank mumbled.
With a step to his left and a quick leap forward, Frank burst through into the back room.
“Hey man! You can’t go back there,” the young man called out, reaching for Frank’s arm.
But it was too late. Frank was too fast. He was already two steps through the door before the young stoner reacted.
Frank noticed the ill regard for fire safety codes as he looked around the closet-sized room, inspecting the faces of the dozen or so men sitting in a circle of chairs in the center. Each of them, dressed in suits with their hair slicked back, looking like a horde of swarthy, misplaced businessmen, sat upright around a large hookah packed full of reefer. Two of the men were still yelling at each other. None of them noticed Frank. They went back and forth between English and Armenian. Their screams all but drowned out the talk show playing on the flat screen mounted to the wall.
Frank reached up and shut off the TV. That caught their attention. The argument ceased and all the faces turned toward Frank.
One of the men who was arguing stood and threw his hands to his side, palms facing outward in an exasperated sign of disapproval. He was radiating contempt toward the young man standing in the doorway behind Frank. The one who wasn’t fast enough. The one Frank ignored.
“Chey you guy,” he growled in a heavy accent, “You cannot be back here.”
This time his contempt was aimed at Frank.
Frank threw open his wallet with a flip of the wrist then slammed it shut.
“Frank Black, PD,” he said.
Knowing these outfits liked to be left alone, he twirled his finger around the room, pointing to the blocked fire-exit, the missing smoke detectors and the exposed electrical conduits, then asked, “You want me to call the Fire Marshal?”
“No buddy. It’s good, ara,” the man exclaimed.
Extending his hairy hand to Frank, he said, “Tony Kavakian. This is mine. How can we be friends, officer?”
The wallet trick always worked.
“I need to speak with one of your employees.”
“They are volunteer, not employees, my good friend,” Kavakian rebutted as he placed his hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Let’s move back up to front. No one’s allowed back here. Okay, guy?”
Frank lifted his chin toward the group in an effort to say, What about them?, but Tony had already pushed him
back out onto the shop floor.
“Barev chent, no one in the back, eh!” Kavakian shouted to the young man at the counter, slapping him hard enough on the back of the head to send a shockwave rippling across the loose skin on his bald scalp.
Kavakian turned to Frank.
“So, what guy you want to talk, eh?” he asked, pulling out a cigarette and packing it on the back of his hand. His gaudy gold watch hung from his wrist, swinging with each pat of the butt.
Frank pulled out a cigarette as well. He reached the flame of his Zippo toward the end of his smoke, but before the flame met paper, Tony Kavakian, moving with impressive speed for his age and shape, snatched the cigarette from Frank’s lips. Breaking the Pall Mall between his fingers, he handed it back to Frank.
“No smoking,” he said as he sparked his own cigarette.
If it wasn’t for the Armenian mob’s entanglement with the dispensary industry, Frank would have slapped him to the ground right then and there, but Frank didn’t need a hit squad waiting outside his apartment complex all because some A-hole snatched a cigarette from his mouth and he couldn’t keep his cool.
Frank pocketed the broken Pall Mall and said with calm demand, “Chad Campbell. Where is he?”
Kavakian turned back to the young man behind the counter and shouted, “You know this guy? Where is he?”
“He’s on lunch, prolly running up at the sign,” he answered, pointing his finger toward the back of the shop.
“There you go, officer,” Kavakian huffed through a cloud of smoke. “He’s on lunch. Probably at the Hollywood sign. You’ve no need to be here.”
“Thanks,” Frank said, his jaw clenching and his fist tightening around the broken Pall Mall in his pocket as he turned toward the make-shift cage.
“Ara,” the young man called, “Don’t forget your goodie bag.”
Frank turned with a pivot of his boot heel and faced the young man and Kavakian.
“You’re kidding, right?” Frank sneered as he walked back to the display case.
As the young man handed Frank the small, white paper bag, he said, “If you see his Taurus there, then that’s where he’s at. It’s green. Old. Banged up.”
“Thanks,” Frank said again, his jaw loosening a bit to allow some sincerity into his words.
Frank flicked the broken smoke into the trashcan and shot Kavakian a straight-faced glare, his jaw clenched, making no effort to hide the bitterness behind his steely blue eyes. As Frank reached the makeshift cage, he took his attention off Kavakian and place it on the knob before him. The buzzers sounded in time, allowing him a seamless exit from the shop floor, through the lobby and out into the Beamer-filled parking lot. As Frank got into his Ambassador, he hoped the car he had mashed beside him was Kavakian’s. He mashed his car door into the white Beamer one more time for good measure, then peeled out of the lot.
It didn’t take Frank very long to wind up Beachwood Avenue into the Hollywood Hills below the Hollywood sign. As he pulled onto Mulholland, Frank spotted a group of cars parked in a dirt turnout. Amongst them, he noticed a dark green Taurus with a broken taillight and a bungee cord holding its trunk shut. He pulled over.
Frank stood at the Taurus, peering into the windows. The floorboards were covered in empty cans of Monster and Five-Hour Energy and crumpled foil wrappers that once held protein bars. The seats were torn and patched with duct tape. The back seat was just as much a wreck as the front; at least a week’s worth of grocery trash, fitness magazines strewn about, and a couple of duffel bags stuffed full. Looked like Chad was heading somewhere. But, it wasn’t the duffel bags that caught Frank’s attention. It was the half-empty roll of cellophane that drew his eye.
He decided to check the trunk. After all, it was only bound shut with a bungee. Frank moved around to the back of the car. It smelled rank. After yesterday morning, he anticipated a body as he reached his finger under the bungee’s hook, freeing it from the frame. The trunk popped open and the foul stench spilled out and over Frank. Dirty laundry. Nothing in the trunk but dirty laundry.
As he stood with his arm overhead, propping the trunk open and staring down at the shit-stained boxer briefs and sweat-stained shirts, Frank heard a commotion behind him. Turning, he let the trunk fall; it bounced behind him as he watched a couple dart down the hill in a panic.
They were both clad in matching trendy jogging attire typical of the Hollywood Hills types—water bottles clipped to their shorts and flashy jogging shoes cradling their feet. Yuppie runners. The man shouted into his cell phone as his wife clung to his arm. Frank couldn’t make out their words, but he could see the desperation in their faces. Their eyes stricken by horror and their mouths curled downward in disgust. The woman stopped, holding her hand over mouth as her body heaved up and down. She reached for her husband’s arm, but he didn’t notice. He kept shouting into his cell phone and pointing back up the hill, continuing rapidly toward Frank and the group of cars.
As the man came within earshot of Frank, he heard him say, “A fucking body! How many times do I have to say it? There’s a goddamn body in the hills.”
In the distance, the contents of his wife’s stomach rose to her throat. She gagged. Then, with one big heave, her mouth let loose and her breakfast spilled out onto the dirt at her feet. She heaved once more then stood and wiped the bile from her chin.
“Please tell me they’re coming,” she begged her husband.
He held his hand up to her and turned away, his attention on the phone. “Yeah. We can wait at the bottom of the hill... Yeah... Okay.”
A handful of other joggers came down the hill, but they didn’t seem to have had the same gut-wrenching experience as the couple. They didn’t even take note of the panicked joggers. Many of them still had their earbuds plugging up their heads and sweat dripping down their brows and into their eyes. Three Dobermans dragged an old lady nearly end over end as they sprinted down the uneven trail, but none of them, not even the dogs, looked the slightest bit disturbed. The yuppie jogging couple heaving chunks, however—they knew something Frank wanted to know.
Frank approached them and flashed his wallet.
“Show me the body,” he demanded as he took the man by the arm, pulling the cell phone away from his face.
The man blabbered, “Wait. What? What?”
But, Frank’s fiery glare shut him up quick. He was a lot smaller than Frank. It was easy for Frank to manhandle him, leaving a trail of half-steps and drag marks in the dirt behind them as Frank pulled him up the hill, right past his wife.
Still recovering, she cried out, “You’re not going back up there, are you, Dave? Please tell me yo—”
She covered her mouth, stopping her sentence short. She could feel her stomach turning just by the mention of what was up the hill. Dave, now realizing her state, reached out for his wife, pulling against Frank. It was no use. Frank’s grip was strong and his determination was stronger and he was still mad about his broken Pall Mall.
“She’ll be fine, Dave,” Frank assured as he yanked, pulling Dave toward him. “Show me the body.”
Dave struggled and pulled for about three hundred yards up the hill. The rolling trail was cut deep, severed with cracks and veins where the water would spill down after a long rain. To the east, the trail continued upward to the Hollywood sign, climbing through trees that grew in size the higher you went. To the west, the path was lined with scrub brush and patches of wildflowers. Frank continued dragging on Dave until they had reached a spot where the brush cleared up and the trees grew short enough to show you the sprawling skyline of downtown. Wrapped in brown, smoggy clouds, the city glistened in the warm summer sun and the ocean shone behind it. Dave pointed down into the bushes.
“There,” he murmured. “Down there.”
“How’d you see it from up here?” Frank asked, tugging again on Dave’s arm.
This time, Dave pulled away, saying, “My water bottle rolled away. I was fishing it out of the bushes when...”
He didn’t finish his sentence. He knelt in place and cupped his hands over his mouth, panting into his palms. As he regained control, a woman came down the hiking trail. Frank’s eyes followed her as she jogged toward them. Ignoring Dave’s hyperventilation, Frank watched her breasts as they bounced, hanging freely behind her thin cotton tank. He made no effort to hide his stare as she came closer and then passed. Pivoting on his heel, he watched her backside, in nothing but gray tights, rise and fall as she ran down the hill. Dave just continued half-hyperventilating on the ground. Shaking his head, Frank moved down the hill and into the bushes, leaving Dave in the dirt.
He pushed his way through the tendrils of greasewood and claws of scrub oak, lifting his jacket to avoid the snags. As he tripped into a dirt clearing a few feet below, Frank shouted over his shoulder, “I’d have let the bottle go, Dave.”
“I think not,” Dave rebutted down to him, “Tasmanian rainwater. It’s flown in from the rainforest. The rainforest. There’s no better water than rainforest water. That’s what Style magazine says. Crisp. Fresh. Clean. It’s bottled without ever touching the ground.”
It appeared Dave’s wind had returned to him. Frank rolled his eyes and took out a cigarette. As he flipped shut his Zippo, smoke billowing round him, he saw the toe of a brown loafer and the left hem of a pair of gray slacks sticking out from behind a hedge of deer grass. Inspecting the dirt around him, he saw only the jumbled footprints of the couple running circles in a panic before heading back up to the trail. No steps of the man arriving. No steps of another going.
Coming around the bush, Frank saw the corpse. A man in a neatly pressed gray suit, in his late forties or early fifties. He was lying in the grass with his hands behind his head. His neck was wrenched forward by the small rock beneath him, pushing his chin into his chest, making him stare at whoever would find him. If not for his face wrapped in cellophane, the frozen look of terror, and the wads of hundred dollar bills sticking from his pockets, you’d think he was waiting patiently in the seclusion of the bushes for a boy he'd met on the internet. He hadn’t even been there long enough to start stinking.