For the first five years of their marriage, he'd secretly searched for an account number, a routing number, or an online passwordf_"anything that might open the door to her treasure vault. But he was never even able to discover in which bank she hoarded their money. He reckoned that by now she'd accumulated about $500,000, give or take. Currently he was running six bank accounts under several names, where money from their various gags could be deposited, transferred to another bank, and withdrawn before their victims' own banks ever discovered a problem. And Eunice did in-person as well as online banking. On one of his snooping forays, he'd found four checkbooks from local Hollywood banks.
Something had always bothered him about the retirement account story she'd fed him. It was that she was the momma bird protecting the nest egg that was going to see them through to a comfortable retirement in San Francisco. It was there that she owned an inherited family home on Russian Hill, currently leased out, but which would be theirs during their golden years. The thought of all that made him shiver with revulsion.
And then one day in March, after they'd gone out for a dress-up dinner at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she didn't see a single celebrity and got drunk instead, he'd found a brass key. He'd spotted it while snooping in her wallet after she'd passed out in her bedroom, and it looked to him like a padlock key. He'd hardly slept that night, thinking about the lock that the key would fit. There had been too many occasions over the years when she'd nagged and harangued Dewey about making banking errors that could lead back to him, or rather to one of the characters he played when he did in-person banking.
The fact was, she was distrustful of banks and always overestimated the employees, always fearing red flags, as she put it. As far as Dewey could see, a few zeros added to a number meant nothing at all to the young tellers, most of whom looked like they'd rather be bartenders or cocktail waitresses or anything else where they could make a few bucks and meet some interesting people. He had persistent thoughts that someone like Eunice would keep her retirement fund in a safe deposit box rather than in an account where she'd surrender control to people she obsessively feared.
But the key he'd found in her wallet was not to a safe deposit box. It looked like an ordinary brass padlock key, the kind he used at storage facilities where he kept the merchandise that his runners bought with bogus checks and credit cards. He began thinking a lot about that key. There could be a huge amount of cash in storage somewhere in Los Angeles. That key provoked endless fantasies for Dewey Gleason.
In recent months he'd often awakened in the middle of the night and imagined ways in which he could kill Eunice, even though he'd never had the stomach for violence. In his most recent fantasy, one that gave him enormous pleasure, he envisioned holding her captive in an escape-proof basement, maybe in a cabin up near Angeles National Forest. Each morning he'd supply her all the water she needed, along with the choice of four Burger King Whoppers or four packs of cigarettes, which is what she ate and smoked on an average day. Whoppers or cancer tubesf_"either or, her choice. Dewey was confident that the miserable cunt would die of starvation within a month.
While Dewey Gleason was at the Pacific Dining Car, Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate got a call to meet 6-L-20 in the alley behind the Pantages Theater. Traffic on Hollywood Boulevard was heavy, and it took an extra few minutes to get there. The sergeant was Miriam Hermann, an LAPD old-timer with thirty-six years on the Job. They saw her car parked on Vine Street, and she was outside, leaning against it. Sergeant Hermann was a chunky woman of sixty-one years with black caterpillar eyebrows and iron-gray hair trimmed shorter than Dana's. Sergeant Murillo, the best-read supervisor at Hollywood Station, thought she looked like Gertrude Stein. But Miriam Hermann had no Alice B. Toklas, only rescued animals: two dogs and three cats. It was said that she'd had an unhappy childless marriage to a veterinarian before she was a cop, but she wasn't chatty about her past and no one knew for sure.
When Dana and Nate got out of their car, Sergeant Hermann said to them, There's something going on back by the trash Dumpster. I saw some guys walk outta the nightclub and into the alley.
A drug deal? Nate said.
Maybe, the sergeant said. Let's have a look.
While they were walking, Dana said, They're like lions waiting for prey in these nightclubs. A girl turns her back and they hit her drink with an eyedropper full of GHB. She awakes in a hotel room, raped and sodomized.
Never take your hands off your drinks in Hollywood, Nate agreed. If necessary, use a sippy cup.
They entered the alley, staying in the shadows of the buildings with their flashlights off. There was plenty of street noise to muffle their footsteps, but they needn't have worried. Somebody in a car on Vine Street was screaming at somebody else who was stalled in traffic. Soon horns were blowing and engines were racing. When the cops got close to the Dumpster, they saw that a man had a woman pinned up against it and was humping her from behind while two other men watched, probably waiting their turns.
The men were all well dressed and so drunk that none of them even noticed three cops approaching. Sergeant Hermann signaled to Dana and Nate, who circled the Dumpster to cut off retreat, and the sergeant turned her flashlight on the woman, who might as well have worn a sandwich board announcing her occupation. The two bystanders looked up but didn't attempt to escape. The guy in the saddle made no effort to stop, even after staring into the flashlight beams. His eyes were watery and unfocused with lids drooping. He just kept going at it.
Several seconds passed until Sergeant Hermann finally said, Am I not standing here, or what? Back off!
Reluctantly, the jockey did so. He was a forty-ish white man dressed in nightclub-black and so fried he didn't seem to know that his penis was hanging limp and ineffective as he struggled to put it away. The hooker was also white, way past her prime and obviously amped, probably on cocaine, the nightclub drug of choice. She was dressed confrontationally in a strapless black tube dress that stopped midthigh. Her makeup might be called theatrical if the theater was Kabuki. She wore stockings with seams, held in place by a partially exposed black garter belt, and she would've looked appropriate only at a Marilyn Manson concert.
He wasn't hurting me, the hooker said. In fact, I didn't feel nothing.
That's your fault. I want my money back, the customer whispered, louder than he intended.
For the first time, the woman paid close attention to the cops and said, I don't know what this man is talking about, Officers. There's no money involved here. This was just a spontaneous expression of love. Then she looked woozily at the man in black and said, Ain't that right, honey?
He caught on, staggered forward, and said, That's right, Officers. This was not an act of prostitution. It was justf_"I don't know, a burst of mad passion. We shoulda gone to a motel.
You should go to a clinic, Sergeant Hermann said. Then turning to the other two, she said, How about you? Waiting to express your mad passion too, were you?
One drunk, who was submitting to a pat-down search by Dana, said nothing. The other, who had already been searched by Hollywood Nate, said, I just thought somebody was doing a Heimlich maneuver and I wanted to help. Can we go back to the nightclub now?
Sergeant Hermann had the look of someone who wanted to be anywhere else, and after thirty-six years of police work, she definitely looked her age. She arched her spine with her hands on her hips, as though her back was killing her, looked at her watch, and said, I'm hungry. Time for code seven.
Go ahead and take seven, Sarge, Hollywood Nate said. Then to the hooker and her trick, he said, You two are going to jail for lewd conduct. He looked at the drunken observers and said, Anybody got outstanding warrants? You paid all your traffic tickets?
The two observers mumbled an assent, and Sergeant Hermann waved at her cops and walked back through the alley to Vine Street, while Dana handcuffed the two prisoners, and Hollywood Nate filled out FI cards on the other two. They looked too prosperous to be wanted on
traffic warrants or anything else, and their IDs were proper, so they were released.
Before they left, Hollywood Nate said, If you go anywhere near your cars, you better have a designated driver. Understand?
Sergeant Hermann had completed a long cell call while standing beside her shop by the time Nate and Dana were walking out of the alley with their two arrestees. Before the sergeant got back in her car, Nate and Dana saw her approach a shiny new Beemer that was illegally parked on Vine Street with the engine running.
They heard her say to the young black man in the driver's seat, Move your car, please. That's a no-parking zone.
He looked lazily at her and said, I'll only be a minute. My friend went in the club to find somebody.
Move the car, sir, Sergeant Hermann said.
This is some shit, the indignant driver said. You're only messin' with me 'cause I'm young and I'm black and I'm good-lookin' and I got a cool ride. Am I right?
Sergeant Hermann, who had heard this, or variations of it, hundreds of times in her long career, was feeling very tired and very old at the moment. She said to the driver, I'm a senior citizen and I'm a Jew and I look like a manatee and my Ford Escort's nine years old. Where're we going with this bullshit?
The driver wanted to fire back but was out of verbal ammo, so he dropped it into gear and drove away.
Chapter EIGHT
THE NEXT MORNING, Malcolm Rojas got out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen, holding his throat and swallowing hard, feigning illness so he could avoid going to his job at the home improvement center.
His mother was frying eggs for him, and his orange juice was on the kitchen table. She looked at him and said, Sore throat?
Yeah, he said, I can't go to work. I'll have to call in sick.
Oh, sweetie, his mother said. Are you sure you're too sick? You have a good job, and I'd hate to see you lose it. And today you'll get overtime pay.
A good job, he said. Slicing boxes open on a Sunday? Unpacking merchandise I can't afford to buy? A good job.
He sat at the table and took a sip of the orange juice.
If you'd only gone on to City College like I f_"
Like you what?
He couldn't stand it when her voice got shrill and whiny. He couldn't stand the sight of her in that shapeless nightgown with her tits hanging down and her fat ass sticking out, and that bleached frizzy hair in pins and two pink curlers, like somebody in a movie fifty years old.
I was gonna say, if you'd gone on to a community college last year, it woulda been better than any entry-level job you could get at that mall. Your mother told you that.
The thing he hated most was when she referred to herself as your mother, often accompanied by the stroking of his hair, which, thankfully, she hadn't done in months.
First you say I shoulda went to college f_"
Gone, sweetie, she interrupted. Shoulda gone to college.
Okay! he said. Gone, gone, gone! How could I pay your damn room and board if I'da gone to college?
You wouldn't have had to, his mother said, putting the plate in front of him. I woulda supported you for as long as you stayed in school.
He felt it coming again. The anger. He started to cut the fried eggs and take a bite, but his hands began shaking.
Tell me something, he said. Why is it your money? When Dad got killed, why did the lawsuit money go to you? Why not to both of us?
You were a boy, Malcolm, she said.
I'm not now, he said. I'm almost twenty. Why do you get the money and all I get is f_"
Room and board, she said, still with that country accent from her Oklahoma roots. Which you should be glad to pay for, unless you wanna go to college or even a trade school.
Then her face softened and she stood behind him and, to his chagrin, reached over to actually stroke his hair, as though she'd read his thoughts and was taunting him. His breath caught. He could hardly believe it, and he said, What're you doing?
You're still a boy, she said, stroking.
Don't, he said. Don't do that!
Why not, sweetie? she said. You have your father's lovely curls, and you're still your mother's darling little f_"
Malcolm Rojas swept his breakfast off the table, sending the plate crashing to the floor. When he leaped to his feet, as though to hit her, she gasped and backed up to the sink.
Malcolm! she cried. Have you gone crazy?
He stood trembling, then turned and ran to his bedroom and slammed the door. Malcolm pulled on his jeans and a clean white T-shirt and didn't bother to call his boss before running out the door and down the stairs of the apartment building.
The last thing he heard from his mother was sobbing and her shrill voice calling after him, Sweetie, what's wrong? Please! Let's talk about it!
When he got to the carports, he jumped in his Mustang, backed out, and started driving aimlessly. Ten minutes later he was heading west on Sunset Boulevard, roaring past the morning traffic clogged in the eastbound lanes, heading toward the ocean without knowing why. He pulled over long enough to calm himself and to phone the boss's number, and he was glad to get voice mail and not the man. Malcolm wanted to explain how sorry he was that he had a fever and a sore throat, but he lost his nerve.
He put the cell phone away, reached into the glove compartment to remove the box cutter, and put it in the pocket of his jeans, deciding to go to his job.
That Sunday afternoon at roll call, the midwatch was down to four cars, with several cops off-duty. Sergeant Lee Murillo read the crimes and gave the usual admonitions and warnings about failure to complete the crushing load of forms that the consent decree entailed. Then he had to listen to the usual responses. These included some rational comments about the civilian firm that was getting richer from the audits, as well as some about the federal judge who would decide when the LAPD was in compliance. Then the heat started to rise, and of course the sergeant pretended not to hear the irrational suggestions delivered in stage whispers from one cop to another as to what the overseers should do with their audits, and what the federal judge should do with the consent decree, and what the judge's mother should have done with him, and which parts of him should be fed to the family cat. He knew that cop defensive humor was the equivalent of smacking someone in the face with a cream pie full of maggots, so he let it go.
Recalling some of the morale-lifting techniques of their late beloved senior sergeant, he ended roll call by saying, There's nearly a Hollywood moon tonight. He gestured toward the framed photo hanging beside the door and said, For you new people, a Hollywood moon is what the Oracle called a full moon, and tonight we're getting close. The team with the weirdest call gets an extra-large pizza with the works, compliments of Sergeant Hermann and my good self. Of course, we'll share the pizza with the winners. Too much of that stuff is not healthy for you.
We had a weird one last night, Sarge, Johnny Lanier said. A woman called us because her elderly father swallowed eight triple-A batteries.
That's not so weird, said R. T. Dibney. Poor old geezer probably just wanted to keep on going and going and going.
Does it count for weird if we catch another stalker breaking into some house in the Hollywood Hills just to take a dump in a celebrity's toilet? another wanted to know.
Sorry, that's almost a clichAc, Sergeant Murillo said.
Just before leaving, R. T. Dibney lifted the spirits of several of the male officers when he announced to the assembly that a rape report he'd taken the prior evening from a hooker on Sunset Boulevard contained a statement that the rapist had a huge penis.
The dude musta been real proud of his cruel tool, R. T. Dibney explained to all. He took several photos of it to show off to the girls on the boulevard. And after he refused to pay and the hooker got lumped up, she grabbed the photos and ran. I got one of them here. Wanna see the big schvantz?
That generated some interest, and several cops, females included, gathered around R. T. Dibney to have a look. It resulted in high fives and cries of
Yes! from very relieved male cops who measured up. However, any urologist could've told them that the big schvantz was actually in the normal-to-small range. Like theirs.
At 5 P. M. that afternoon, Dewey Gleason, who was once again Ambrose Willis, was too occupied to remember the kid he'd met at Pablo's Tacos. He was busy being a Realtor. Half the morning and all afternoon, he'd been checking on a dozen foreclosure addresses that Eunice had downloaded. These and thousands like them had been damaging the local economy for months.
The runners he'd chosen for this job were unsavory. He'd needed a professional lock-picking burglar but settled for a pair of lowlife housebreaking tweakers whom he intended to dump as soon as possible. They were waiting in a battered old Plymouth parked at the curb in front of a modest house on Oakwood, in southeast Hollywood. Dewey couldn't remember their names, but it didn't matter. When he parked his car and got out, both thirty-something tweakersf_"one an inked-up Latino with a lip stud, and the other a sleazed-out, nearly toothless, shaky white guy with the sweatsf_"got out of their car to meet him. The white guy gave Dewey a dozen keys.
Afternoon, Mr. Willis, he said.
Afternoon, Dewey said. How many houses did you get done?
All six, the tweaker said, scratching his ribs, his neck, trying to reach his back.
Dewey gave him a look, and the tweaker smiled apologetically, showing the gaps in his grille, and said, I'm jonesing. No sense lying to you. I need some ice pretty bad. Real bad, in fact.
Let's see your work, Dewey said, heading for the door with the tweakers at his heels.
The sweaty tweaker pointed out the key to this house and Dewey tried it in the lock. It worked perfectly and he pushed the door open.
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