Hollywood Moon

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “What’re you talking about, no morning appointments? You got houses to rent. I told you there was a ten-o’clock showing on the fourth house. And then you got two more appointments on that same house this afternoon and two more appointments tonight on the fifth and sixth houses. You claimed your burglar partners were gonna come through.”

  He swung his feet onto the floor and kept his head ducked, ready for the explosion. “There won’t be a third, fourth, fifth, or sixth house.”

  “Do you mean what I think you mean?”

  “The last thing I did last night before I came home was check on them. You were right. The guys I hired only changed the lock on one and lied about doing the others. They gave me dummy keys for the rest.”

  “Well, no shit, Dewey!” Eunice said, lip twisted in her supersneer. “Just like I predicted, whenever you hire tweakers.”

  “You think I can hire unemployed mechanical engineers, Eunice? It’s the fucking world we live in. You can’t trust anybody.”

  “Outsmarted by tweakers,” Eunice said. “Well, no shit!”

  “They didn’t outsmart me! I told you, they threatened me. They coulda killed me, not that you’d care. I had no choice, Eunice. Sometimes that’s what happens out there.”

  She stood smoking and looking down at him with contempt and said, “Well, get out on the street and pick up the noon delivery in Los Feliz. Do something to earn your keep, Dewey. That’s all I can say to you. Earn your keep like I do. Consider it a warning.”

  “Here I lie, numb and helpless!” he said, using lines he’d delivered in dinner theater. “While a croaking albatross smothers me in its wings, plucking out my eyes, devouring my guts!”

  “You sound like such a sissy when you go all theatrical,” Eunice jeered. “If Hugo was here, he’d say you oughtta consider testosterone shots.”

  His head was throbbing when she stalked out of the room. He sat on the side of the bed for several minutes, listening to her computer keys begin clickety-clacking. He thought about his desperate life and how there didn’t seem to be a way to change it. If only he still got calls from his agent. He’d take any job he could get, anything that paid a stipend. He would read for parts, even audition for those snotty kids making Internet films. He’d do dinner theater gigs in the suburbs. If only he still had an agent. He opened the nightstand drawer and took out the cell phone he used for Tristan and Jerzy.

  When he was shaved, dressed, and heading out the door, Eunice barely glanced at him, except to snort at his Jakob Kessler getup. He turned the dead bolts and had a flashback of Eunice’s face when his eyes had popped open that morning, of that dangling cigarette and that horrible scowl. Today she’d had the deepest furrows in her brow he’d seen in months. He felt so desperate and miserable and angry that he was emboldened to strike back somehow.

  Before slamming the door behind him, he said, “You know, Eunice, your everyday scowl lines are especially mean and evil today. Why don’t you call your dermatologist?”

  “Dude, who won?” the forklift driver said to Malcolm Rojas when they were uncrating a washing machine in the warehouse.

  Malcolm reflexively touched his face. The flesh was tender under his left eye where the woman had nicked him with her fist after she’d struggled to her feet. She was strong, that fat bitch, and she’d fooled him with her begging and crying, but then she’d made a quick move and was on her feet and almost got away.

  “Some dude at the mall,” Malcolm said. “He told me he wanted change for cigarettes and when I said, ‘Get a job,’ he suckered me. Man, I really kicked his ass.” Malcolm showed the knuckle abrasions to the forklift driver.

  The forklift driver, a young Latino, said, “What was he, a mallate?”

  “Yeah,” Malcolm said.

  “Those South L.A. niggers,” the forklift driver said. “They take the subway to Hollywood for dope and pussy. You’re lucky he didn’t pull a blade or something.”

  “He won’t even be pulling his cock,” Malcolm said. “I beat him real bad.”

  The forklift driver grinned and gave Malcolm a thumbs-up before driving away.

  Malcolm’s knuckles were hurting more than the small contusion under his eye. It was hard to remember exactly what had happened after he’d crawled forward onto her chest. He’d felt those big tits beneath him, and he was taking out his cock when she’d gotten her hands under his thighs and actually lifted him high enough for her to crawl out from between his legs. Then she was behind him, scrambling to her feet.

  He’d spun and tackled her, and she went down and started screaming. She kept screaming even after he punched her, how many times, he couldn’t remember. He did recall picking up the box cutter after she’d knocked it out of his hand. He remembered exactly how he’d been going to swipe it across her throat just as he’d swiped it across a thousand boxes he’d unpacked. But as he was ready to do it, he’d heard a car door slam and he panicked. He’d leaped up, run to the door, and was sprinting down the street to his car before he realized that the slamming car door came from the driveway next to hers, and that whoever had done it was already inside their house.

  Malcolm had found himself thinking about that encounter a dozen times since it happened. Sometimes he tried to remember every detail, sometimes the broad strokes. It made his palms sweat when he thought about it. He knew that this new rage within him was very dangerous, and he knew that he should try to get it under control. If he had money, real money, he could afford things to help him, like a hooker. Maybe a hooker would give him what he needed and he wouldn’t feel so angry all the time. Malcolm took out his cell phone and dialed the number of the man he’d met at Pablo’s Tacos.

  Dewey Gleason as Jakob Kessler was on Hollywood Boulevard across from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, sitting at a table, sipping a mediocre cappuccino, and waiting for Tristan and Jerzy. It was amazing how many Street Characters bothered to come out in the morning hours, but there they were, even duplicates. There were two Chewbaccas, and Dewey wondered if either was the one who’d gotten his ass thrown in jail last year. The newspapers had fun with it, saying that Chewie had crossed over to the dark side.

  He saw a Spider-Man and a Batman, this one looking even fatter than the one who’d recently gotten the crap beaten out of him by a panhandler half his size. That dustup made the news as well. He didn’t see any of the Marilyn Monroes this early in the day, and there weren’t a lot of tourists with cameras, certainly not the coachloads of Asians who really spent the bucks posing with, and tipping, the Street Characters. Dewey suddenly had a dreadful passing thought that without Eunice he could possibly find himself someday inside one of those horrid costumes, surviving on tips. The last stop of a failed actor. Dewey Gleason as a diminutive Darth Vader? Even on this hot summer day it made him shiver, and he shoved the image from his mind.

  The chirping of one of the cell phones brought him back into the moment, and as soon as he figured out which one of his characters the call was for, he answered, “Bernie Graham speaking.”

  “Mr. Graham, it’s Clark,” the voice said.

  Clark, he thought. Clark. Then it came to him. Yeah, the dimpled Latino kid from the taco stand. “How you doing, Clark?”

  “Fine, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’m ready to go to work.”

  “Right,” Dewey said. “You have a day job, as I recall.”

  “If I could make enough money with you, I’d quit the day job,” Malcolm said.

  “I like your style,” Dewey said. “Okay, I’ve got your number and I’ll call you later today. Maybe I can use you this evening or tomorrow evening.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Dewey shut the cell and checked his watch. What Eunice could accomplish without ever leaving their apartment never failed to intimidate him. He reckoned that his grudging awe for her abilities helped to keep him in bondage, as well as his dread of the future without her support. He had an address written on a Post-it Note that she told him to g
ive his runners when they showed up.

  After leaving home that morning, Dewey had personally checked out that Post-it Note address in Los Feliz. He had a three-hour window of opportunity when there was absolutely nobody home in the beautiful two-story Mediterranean-style house. The home itself, built in the 1920s heyday of old Hollywood, would arouse no suspicion from the delivery men, since the expensive merchandise was being turned over to a well-dressed man standing on the porch. Dewey wished he didn’t have to be the man to take that risk. He wished he had runners who could pull it off for him, but of course that could never be. At that moment he spotted his runners.

  If Eunice could see Jerzy Szarpowicz, she’d crap icicles. There he was, galumphing along Hollywood Boulevard beside his lithe and handsome sidekick. Jerzy was wearing a baseball cap, his usual black T-shirt that barely covered his bulging belly, and baggy jeans that were falling off his fat ass. Nothing could be done with a guy like that except to use him as a mail thief and Dumpster-diver.

  Creole had possibilities. Dewey even liked his dreads because they made him look more like a Hollywood guy, an aspiring young actor maybe. And Creole could talk, whereas Jerzy just grunted. Dewey regretted he’d ever used Jakob Kessler with these two. Bernie Graham or even Ambrose Willis would’ve been better, and certainly easier on Dewey, especially on these hot days when Jakob Kessler had to wear a suit, dress shirt, and necktie.

  The lifts in his shoes were already hurting Dewey’s ankles, but he stood up rather than letting the runners sit. He said in his German accent, “Good morning, gentlemen. Walk me to my car.”

  His car was in the large parking structure on Orange Drive, and as they passed among the arriving throngs of summer tourists, Dewey handed Creole the Post-it Note and said, “Did you rent a suitable delivery van?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said.

  “Did you have any trouble with the driver’s license when you rented the van?”

  “We coulda,” Jerzy offered. “The pitcher on the license you gave him had me worried. I mean, it sorta looks like Creole, but with the glasses on in the pitcher and his dreads airbrushed out, it didn’t look too much like him today.”

  Tristan shot Jerzy one of those you-dumb-fucking-Polack looks, and sure enough, their boss jumped all over it.

  Tristan heard the man say, “What? You didn’t wear the glasses when you rented the van? And why were the dreadlocks showing? Don’t you understand that there are reasons to alter your appearance?”

  “He forgot the glasses,” Jerzy said as they arrived at the parking structure. “And his little pinhead looked funny in my hat, so he didn’t wanna wear it. There he was with his dreads hangin’ out.” Only then did Jerzy notice his partner glaring at him.

  “I want my people to obey orders,” Tristan heard his boss say in that Nazi accent of his. “Without discipline you jeopardize our work. We could’ve just let you use your own driver’s license and had you assume the risk that would entail.”

  “It was just one of them—those things, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Don’t worry about it, boss,” Jerzy said. “The guy at the car rental was a fuckin’ moron.”

  Both listeners allowed Jerzy’s remark about someone else being a moron to pass without comment. Then Dewey said, “The last phone call from my office said that according to the tracking number, the delivery truck will arrive between twelve thirty and one P.M. You will park a block away and wait. When the truck drops the merchandise, you will drive quickly to the address on the Post-it Note I gave you, park at the curb in front of the house, and load the merchandise as quickly as possible. Then you will follow me to the storage facility. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said.

  This was the part that Dewey Gleason hated, waiting for the arrival of a delivery. What if some very alert employee had somehow flagged the skimmed credit card that bought the plasma TV with a sixty-five-inch screen, as well as the big Sony home theater system? What if the check Eunice wrote for the two computers—a bogus check she promised Dewey would sail through the Los Feliz resident’s account that she “had thoroughly researched” online—had also been deemed suspicious? What if some cops from the LAPD’s Commercial Crimes Division were in the back of the delivery truck, ready to bust anybody taking delivery? Dewey’s white dress shirt was damp and sticking to his back and chest when he arrived at the Los Feliz address. He could feel the sweat running down his rib cage.

  Dewey rang the bell and knocked at the door just as a precaution. As expected, there was no answer. He strolled out to the street to see if he could spot the van belonging to Creole and Jerzy, but it was nowhere in sight, and that worried him. He looked at his watch and removed his key ring from his pocket. The hand holding the key ring was trembling and his palms were damp. There was nothing to do but wait, since the imbeciles who checked the tracking numbers at the delivery services were never reliable.

  Dewey felt his heart banging and his bowels rumbling when he heard the grinding of gears as a white delivery van began crawling up the steep residential street. This kind of anxiety wasn’t worth it anymore. By the time he paid expenses and sold the merchandise to his usual receiver, he figured he’d be lucky to net $1,500 from this whole gag. One thing was certain: If men with badges leaped from the van after Dewey took delivery, he was going to offer a deal the moment they Mirandized him. He was going to ask the detectives to phone the DA’s office, and in exchange for a promise of a plea bargain, he was going to give up Eunice and every runner they’d ever used. He would do all this right after he crapped his pants at the sight of them.

  The Latino driver parked the delivery van in front of the house and got out with a clipboard. He quickly came up the walkway, seeing Dewey standing at the front door with a set of keys in his hand. Another trucker, this one a younger black man, got out of the van on the passenger side.

  “Are you Mr. Harold Phillips?” the Latino said, looking again at the name on the delivery form.

  Losing his German accent, Dewey said, “You caught me just in time. I’d gotten tired of waiting for you and was leaving.”

  “Sorry,” the driver said. “We got hit with a couple of extra stops we hadn’t planned for.”

  “It’s okay,” Dewey said. “You’re here now.”

  Dewey signed “Harold Phillips” to the trucker’s invoice, and the driver said, “One more signature.”

  “Of course,” Dewey said, signing the second invoice.

  Then both men walked back to the truck and opened the rear doors. No men with badges jumped out. Dewey looked both ways on the street but still didn’t see Creole and Jerzy. The delivery team was carrying a Sony forty-six-inch HDTV up the three steps, when Dewey said, “Just leave everything on the front porch.” Then for their benefit, Dewey spoke into his cell phone to an imaginary installer, and said, “Roger? Are you and Slim on the way now?” A pause and then, “See you in fifteen. Everything’s here.”

  “The front porch?” the Latino said. “Don’t you want this stuff inside the house?”

  “I’ve got my geeks coming. They’re gonna set up the plasma in the den, a Sony in the living room, and the other in my bedroom. Just haul everything to the porch and they’ll bring it in as needed. Easier for them, easier for you.”

  The Latino shrugged and both men returned to the truck. It took four trips up the long walkway before everything was on the porch, including another Sony and a Pioneer sixty-inch plasma HDTV. Then the Latino hesitated, as though something wasn’t quite right here. He said, “Why don’t you let us —”

  Dewey distracted him with a $20 bill, saying, “Thanks, guys. Stop and get yourselves a sandwich on me.”

  Both deliverymen smiled and thanked Dewey, then hurried back to the truck and were gone. Within seconds Dewey saw his runners driving down from somewhere near the top of the hill. They parked and got out quickly.

  “You had me worried,” Dewey said. “I couldn’t see your
car.”

  “You’re not supposed to see our car, boss,” Tristan said. “That’s the idea.”

  “Let’s get to work,” Dewey said. “Our window of opportunity is closing.”

  After having loaded the merchandise into the rented van, Tristan and Jerzy were following their employer’s car to the storage facility in Reseda, when Tristan said, “When we got to that house, did you notice somethin’ funny about Kessler?”

  Jerzy, who’d been dozing in the passenger seat, said, “Naw, he looked like the same butt-tight Nazi he always looks like.”

  “He was way nervous, man,” Tristan said.

  “Why not?” Jerzy said. “The fucker jist raided somebody’s credit-card account for several grand and had some sweet fuckin’ electronics delivered to the sucker’s crib. Didn’t you feel your asshole wink every time a car drove up the street?”

  Tristan said, “Yeah, but when he was nervous, he didn’t sound so much like Schwarzenegger. In fact, he sounded like a regular old citizen of the U.S. of A.”

  “What’s your point, dude?” Jerzy said.

  “That made me check him out a little closer, and I don’t think his hair looked the same. His forehead looked higher.”

  “So, maybe the old fuck wears a rug,” Jerzy said.

  “He didn’t look so old today neither,” Tristan said.

  “So he got a good night’s sleep.”

  “I think he wears a disguise when we’re with him.”

  Jerzy said, “I don’t give a fuck if he decides to dress up like Wonder Woman and hustle tourists on Hollywood Boulevard. Jist so he pays us for the jobs.”

  “It might be worth our while to find out who he is.”

  “For what?”

  “You never know. How about we follow him home and see where it’s at?”

  “In this fuckin’ van?”

  “Just leave it to me,” Tristan said.

  A ten-foot-high chain-link fence enclosed the storage facility, with wire strung across the top of it. The runners watched their boss stop outside and punch in an access code to open the car gate. They followed him in and waited while he stopped and presented his ID to a woman in an office adjacent to the storage rooms. After he returned to his car, they followed him to the rear of the facility, where he waved them to a parking area.