Hollywood Moon

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “You’ll like the money when it comes,” Jerzy said. “And you’ll forget the rest of it.”

  “It won’t have to come to violence,” Dewey said. “I’m sure of it.”

  Malcolm and Naomi were seated at the counter at Mel’s Drive-In, and he was very happy with how impressed she seemed.

  “It’s too cool for school!” she said. “A burger on the Sunset Strip!”

  Malcolm said, “Want some ice cream for dessert?”

  “I’m stuffed,” she said, pushing the plate away.

  “I like chocolate,” Malcolm said.

  “Me too,” she said. “Especially frozen yogurt.”

  “Yeah?” Malcolm said. “I like frozen yogurt better than ice cream too. You and me, Naomi, we got lots in common.”

  Naomi smiled and said, “I’m real glad you called today, Clark. I was starting to think maybe it wouldn’t happen.”

  “When I make up my mind, I stick to it,” Malcolm said. “I’m gonna be getting a new job soon. Then I’ll have more time and more money to do things I wanna do.”

  “What do you wanna do?” Naomi asked, and Malcolm loved the way she tossed her head to get her shoulder-length blonde hair off the side of her face.

  “Oh, maybe get a newer car. I like Mustangs, but mine’s pretty old. And I wanna buy you some things. Expensive things.”

  “Me?” Naomi said.

  “Sure,” he said. “You’re my girl now. I feel like I know you better than anybody else in my life,” Malcolm said. Then he repeated, “You’re my girl.”

  Naomi was startled and confused, and she said, “Clark, I like you. I really do. But my mother’d have a litter of kittens if she knew you called me that or if she even knew I was here with a guy your age. Especially a guy she never met.”

  “I’ll go straight to your house now and meet your mother,” Malcolm said. “And I’ll tell her how I feel about you.”

  He didn’t like the look on Naomi’s face then. And he didn’t like it when she lowered her gaze and said, “Clark, don’t talk crazy. I think maybe you should take me home now.”

  She managed an insincere smile but remained silent for a moment when he said, “Okay, but I hope I can come in for a few minutes and see how you live.”

  “See how I live?” Naomi finally said as Malcolm examined the bill and put money on the counter. “Whadda you mean?”

  “I wanna see how a real American family lives. I didn’t have that kind of family. My mother was a Persian, and my father was a French chef in New York before we moved to L.A., when I was a baby.”

  A moment passed and Naomi said, “How did you get the scrapes on your knuckles, Clark? And that little bruise on your face?”

  “I got in a fight at work,” Malcolm said. “Two big guys in the warehouse were picking on a little guy, and I stepped in and took care of business. I can’t stand bullies, and I clocked both of them. They ended up in the ER.”

  Naomi did not comment further and was more than apprehensive during their ride and only spoke when she had to direct him to her house on Ogden Drive. He, on the other hand, chattered nonstop about music, often referring to the latest songs he’d heard on KROQ. When they were a few blocks from her house, he turned up the volume and began singing along with “Love Me Dead.”

  He knew the entire lyric, and he turned his brilliant smile on her when he sang about “the mark of the beast.” And again when he sang, “You’re born of a jackal.” He smiled even bigger when he said, “That song’s about me!”

  Naomi Teller had begun trembling by then and felt enormous relief when he pulled up in front of her house, a well-tended home in an area where homes were upper-middle class, but to Malcolm Rojas they looked like mansions.

  She got out of the Mustang quickly, closed the door, peered through the open window, and said, “Clark, I really can’t invite you in now. I need time to tell my mom and dad how nice you are, even though you’re an older guy. I just need… well, like, time.”

  “That’s a beautiful house,” he said. “Which room is yours? Upstairs in front, I bet, so you can see the street.”

  “Yes, you’re a good guesser, Clark,” she said. “Well, bye-bye.”

  “Next time I wanna meet your family and see how you live,” Malcolm said. “Promise me, Naomi.”

  Naomi said, “Okay, Clark.”

  “Don’t forget me, Naomi,” Malcolm said. “Don’t ever forget me.”

  “I won’t,” Naomi said. “That’s for sure.”

  When she was feeling the security of her front door just a few yards away, she paused, turned again, and, looking back at the handsome young man in the Mustang, said, “Jones isn’t a French name. You said your dad was a French chef.”

  Malcolm said, “You’re right, Naomi. He changed it when he came to America because his name was too hard to pronounce.”

  “I took French in middle school,” Naomi said, feeling bold enough now to challenge him. “I bet I could pronounce it. What is it?”

  “I don’t like to talk about my family,” he said. “They both died in a car crash.”

  “Oh, that’s sad,” Naomi said. “Who raised you?”

  “I was raised by jackals,” Malcolm said, and he began laughing.

  The laughter grew in intensity until he had tears in his eyes. Naomi Teller imagined she could still hear that laugh when she ran inside her house and turned the dead bolt.

  Night fell with a thud, thanks to the summer smog. It got very dark very fast. Sergeant Miriam Hermann in 6-L-20, the senior sergeant’s designated car, was cruising Hollywood Boulevard when she spotted the shop belonging to 6-X-32 parked on Las Palmas Avenue, just north of the boulevard. She saw that the surfer cops were talking to a white male pedestrian, so she pulled over to the red zone on the boulevard, showed herself on the radio as being code 6, and left her car to observe unseen.

  Flotsam and Jetsam were both facing north and didn’t notice their supervisor standing thirty yards behind them in the darkness of a doorway. Sergeant Hermann could see that the guy facing the two cops was hammered to the point of oblivion. She doubted that they’d gotten him out of a car, because he looked too smashed to walk, let alone drive.

  Flotsam looked at the fiftyish fat guy, whose souvenir Universal Studios cap, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with dark socks said “tourist.” He was doing his best to stand without staggering to one side or the other, and Sergeant Hermann heard the tall cop say, “Well, Stanley, even though you’re more bombed than Baghdad, we’d like to give you a break and let you walk home. But I don’t know if you can manage it. Where’s home?”

  “The R-R-R-Roosevelt Hotel,” Stanley managed to say, with a pronounced slur and a stutter like Porky Pig’s. “I… c-c-c-can do it! Honest!”

  Jetsam looked at his partner and said, “I dunno either, partner.” Turning to the drunk, he said, “Where you from, Stanley?”

  The man looked at them like he couldn’t remember, but he said, “Indi… Indi… Indian… aw, fuck it… apolis.” Then he got the hiccups.

  “Well, your hometown makes a difference,” Flotsam said. “Most surfers have heard about the USS Indianapolis. It got torpedoed in the Big War. A lotta brave sailors got taken by the men in gray suits.”

  “What?” said Stanley, utterly perplexed.

  “Sharks,” Jetsam said. “Surfers don’t like the men in gray suits. We know all the stories about them.”

  “Oh,” Stanley said without the slightest idea what the hell they were talking about.

  “I say we give him a chance,” Flotsam said. “In memory of the Indianapolis. You down, partner?”

  “I’m on it, bro,” Jetsam said. Then he looked at the drunk and said, “It’s a balloon test. Pass it and we’ll let you go. You good with that?”

  Stanley said, “L-L-L-Lemme blow in the b-b-b-balloon. I ain’t that… that…” And he lurched to starboard, but Jetsam grabbed his arm before he crashed to the pavement, and said, “I think drunk is the word you’re searching for, Stan
ley.”

  Flotsam said, “Anyways, you ain’t the one that has to blow, Stanley.” With that, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a yellow balloon.

  He put it to his lips and blew it to the size of a cantaloupe, after which he pinched off the neck, held it in front of the drunk’s face, and said, “Game on, Stanley. If you can catch it, you’re a free man.”

  Then he let it go. The balloon soared and dove and smacked the pavement while Stanley pawed the air in a futile attempt to grab it, with Jetsam holding his collar so he didn’t kiss the concrete.

  “Best two out of three, dude?” Flotsam said to Stanley, who nodded eagerly and said, “Let her r-r-r-rip!”

  Jetsam picked up the balloon, readying for another test, when Sergeant Hermann startled both cops by walking up behind them, saying, “What in the hell are you surfer goons up to this time?”

  Both cops spun around, and Flotsam said, “Oh, hi, Sarge. We’re just, uh, trying to, uh, figure out how drunk this man is.”

  Stanley said, “Come on, let’s d-d-d-do it!”

  “Let’s not,” Sergeant Hermann said. Then to her cops, she said, “You can’t book him now, not that you ever intended to. You might have a bit of a problem explaining your balloon test to a judge.”

  “Well, Sarge… ,” Jetsam said, trying to come up with something plausible.

  “Where do you live?” Sergeant Hermann asked Stanley.

  “The R-R-R-Roosevelt Hotel,” he said, swaying precariously, “for a f-f-f-few days. Then I’m going home to Indi… Indi… Indi… aw, fuck it.”

  “Take this man to the Roosevelt Hotel,” Sergeant Hermann said. “And don’t ever let me catch you two playing with balloons again.”

  Without a word, both surfer cops got Stanley by the arms and marched him to the backseat of their shop.

  When they got him inside the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, Stanley said, “Don’t leave. Let’s have a n-n-n-nightcap in honor of the Indi… Indi… Indi…”

  “Aw, fuck it,” Flotsam said, finishing it for him.

  SEVENTEEN

  MALCOLM WAS GOING to treat himself to his second burger of the day, this time at Hamburger Hamlet, and he was also thinking about going to a movie. When his cell phone chimed, he felt sure it was Naomi Teller and didn’t bother to look, so he eagerly said, “Hi!”

  “Clark, it’s Bernie Graham,” Dewey said.

  “Oh, yeah, how you feeling, Mr. Graham?”

  “I’m a lot better than yesterday,” Dewey said. “In fact, my secretary, Ethel, asked me to call. We’d like to take you to dinner as a sort of reward for what you did.”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “You don’t have to do that. I only hope we can start working together soon.”

  “We will,” Dewey said. “I need to mend a bit longer, but in the meantime, we’d like to take you someplace for a bite to eat after you get off work tomorrow. Do you know Musso’s on Hollywood Boulevard east of Highland?”

  “No,” Malcolm said, “but I’ll find it.”

  “It’s a very old place with good, wholesome food like your mother used to make.”

  “My mother. Yeah,” Malcolm said.

  “What about meeting us at Musso and Frank at five thirty? Pull around to the back and park in their lot. Come in and look for Ethel and me at one of the tables near the bar.”

  Malcolm thought it over and said, “Okay, Mr. Graham, but I sure hope we can get started on my job real soon. I need the money.”

  “We will, Clark, we will,” Dewey said and clicked off.

  After Eunice returned from her banking excursion, one of many that seemed to last an unusual amount of time, Dewey said matter-of-factly, “Eunice, I made an early dinner reservation for tomorrow at Musso’s. I thought we could use a little R & R.”

  As expected, she was dismissive. “Knock yourself out, Dewey. I’ll stay here and earn a living for both of us. Bring me two Whoppers after you’re through.”

  Then he said, “I was hoping you’d come this time. I invited the kid, like we discussed.”

  “Kid?”

  “Yeah, the new boy, Clark. It’s the least I can do for the way he rescued me after I got beat up by that meth-crazed runner. I think he’ll turn out to be a good little moneymaker.”

  “Did the kid say he’d come?” Eunice said, her voice rising in anticipation.

  “Yeah, he’s coming,” Dewey said. “It’ll be fun to see the lad in a nice restaurant. A real treat for him. I wish you’d come along too. We haven’t had a night out together in a long time.”

  She paused for only a few seconds before saying, “Well, it has been a while. I guess I can use an evening off. But why do you have to eat at the old places? Christ, drive down Melrose and pick one of the hot ones: Lucques or Bastide or All’ Angelo. You think you can recapture your youth by dining at Musso and Frank or the Formosa Café? Get real, Dewey. Old Hollywood is gone with the wind.”

  He stared at her. There was nobody else on the planet who could come close to turning an invitation into an insult the way Eunice could. There was so much he would’ve liked to say, but all he said was, “The kid’ll feel more relaxed in one of the old places that serve comfort food. Let’s think of him.”

  “Okay, have it your way,” Eunice said and lit another cigarette.

  “Good,” Dewey said. “I made an early reservation because the boy works at his job all day and he’ll be starved.”

  “I guess we really should do this,” she said. “He did you a big favor, all right.”

  Dewey went to his bedroom and left the door slightly ajar and turned on the shower in the bathroom. Then he crept to the open door and listened.

  He heard Eunice dial a number, and when it was answered, she said, “Hello, Henri, this is Eunice Gleason. You gotta take me tomorrow for a cut and dye. And I’ll need one of the girls for a manicure and pedicure as well.”

  Dewey listened while she got her response, and then she said, “No, Henri. It has to be tomorrow. It’s important to me. I’ll give you a tip that’ll make you very happy.”

  There was another silence and she said, “Eleven o’clock, and noon for the nail work. Terrific! Thanks, sweetie!”

  When she hung up, Dewey heard her actually start humming a tune. He had to close the door when she came toward the hallway, so he couldn’t make out the song. With a grim smile he wondered if it was one from her childhood, like “Puppy Love.”

  Malcolm finished his hamburger and paid the bill, and when he was in the parking lot, he started thinking of Naomi. He was surprised how disappointed he’d been when it had been Bernie Graham on the phone instead of his girl. He’d been thinking about what it would be like to kiss Naomi and have her kiss him back. He intended to find out next time.

  The only girls he’d ever kissed were those sluts he went to school with in Boyle Heights. Those cholas with their eyebrows plucked bare, wearing eye shadow and mascara that made them look like those old punk rockers with painted faces. The making-out part and the gropes he got from them had never excited him much, not even on the few occasions when one of them would strip naked in his bedroom when his mother was at work. They’d certainly never excited him enough that he could keep an erection long enough to get the thing done, and after one of them taunted him and asked if he was a homo, he never even tried again. That was just before Malcolm and his mother moved to Hollywood, and it was one of the reasons the move had secretly been such a relief to him. Those little bitches were spreading lies about his failed performances, he was sure of it.

  There would be no such problems with Naomi Teller. He got hard just imagining how she’d look naked. Thinking of those developing little breasts and her narrow hips was thrilling. At her age, she was built more like a boy. And her nipples would be pink, not brown like the ones on those little east-side bitches who’d mocked him. But he would not rush things sexually. He only wanted to kiss Naomi romantically, and tell her she was his girl, and hear her say that he was her guy and that she wo
uld never forget him.

  Malcolm sat in his car and impulsively phoned her. It rang four times, and just before he clicked off, she said, “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” he said, smiling.

  “I know,” she said.

  “I was wondering if you were thinking of me,” Malcolm said. “I was thinking of you.”

  “In a way I was, Clark,” she said, and her tone was not happy.

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that I’m too young to be seeing you. My parents would be very upset, so I think you shouldn’t call me anymore.”

  The silence on the line lasted ten seconds before she heard him say, “Tell me the truth. Did your parents put you up to this?”

  “They don’t even know about you, Clark. It’s the way I feel. I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I know you’ll find a girl your age and —”

  “You little bitch!” he cried, his face reddening and his voice quaking. “I thought you were different!”

  Stunned, Naomi Teller said, “Clark! I’m hanging up now! Please don’t ever call me again!”

  “You’re just like —” But she clicked off before he could finish. He was in a rage. He tossed the cell phone onto the seat beside him and opened the glove box, taking out the box cutter. He snapped out the cutting blade. This was the same fury he’d last felt when he’d beaten that bitch with his fists. He withdrew the blade into the grip, put the box cutter in the pocket of his jeans, and sped from the parking lot of Hamburger Hamlet, heading west.

  The code 2 call on Ogden Drive was given to 6-X-76, Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate. It came out as “See the woman, prowler there now.” Backing up 6-X-76 were Mindy Ling and R.T. Dibney, who’d just cleared from code 7.

  The responding car pulled up to the curb with lights out in case the prowler was still at the scene, but Dana and Nate saw the exterior house lights were on. A man and woman Dana’s age were standing on the front porch. As the backup unit parked behind their car, Dana and Nate got out and Nate said, “What happened?”

  Martha Teller was small-boned and fair, like her daughter. Her husband was taller, prematurely bald, with rounded shoulders and the beginning of a paunch. He said, “I heard what sounded like footsteps on the front walkway. Then I heard someone yell, ‘You bitch!’ I looked out but I didn’t see anybody. Then a minute later, this came flying through an upstairs window.”