"Why?"
"I think I got good job for her."
"You better have my big bucks this weekend, Cosmo," Farley said. "Let me worry about Olive if she comes home."
When Cosmo closed the cell, Ilya took a great puff from her cigarette, sucked it into her lungs, and with her words enveloped in smoke clouds said, "If he go to junkyard tonight, he don't know nothing about ATM robbery."
"But I shall kill him anyways. The diamond blackmail shall end."
"Blackmail still there, Cosmo. Olive has our money and Olive know all about both our jobs. Olive is full of danger for us. Not Farley so much."
"But I shall kill him anyways?"
"Yes, he must die. Olive may give up the blackmail. She got lot of money now. She buy lot of drugs and die happy in two, three years."
"Our money," he said.
"Yes, Cosmo. She got our money, I think so. Call Gregori now. Say again and make him to believe you only scare Farley to pay a debt he owe you. Tell Gregori you will pay money for the Mazda on Monday."
Before phoning Gregori, Cosmo said, "Ilya, you tell me. When Gregori come to bring key to junkyard, you fuck him. No?"
"Of course, Cosmo," she said. "Why?"
"If he getting scared about Farley, scared about Mazda that I want to crush to scrap, is okay if I tell him you wish to make him glass of tea one more time? To make him calm?"
"Of course, Cosmo," she said. "My tea is best in all of Hollywood. Ask Gregori. Ask anybody who taste my tea."
Six-X-Seventy-two got the call twenty minutes after they'd left the House of Chang. Hollywood Nate spun a U-ee and floored it. He craved redemption.
When they got back to the restaurant, Mrs. Chang tossed her head in the direction of the kitchen. And there they found Trombone Teddy sitting at the chopping block by the back door, happily scarfing down a huge bowl of pan-fried noodles.
"Teddy," Nate said. "Remember us?"
"I ain't causing no trouble," he said. "They invited me in here."
"Nobody says you're causing trouble," Nate said. "A couple questions and you can sit and enjoy your noodles."
Wesley said, "Remember the fight you had on the boulevard? We're the officers that got the call. You gave me a card with a license number on it. Remember?"
"Oh yeah!" Teddy said, a noodle plastered to his beard. "That son of a bitch sucker-punched me."
"That's the night," Nate said. "Do you still have the card? With the license number?"
"Sure," Teddy said. "But nobody wants it."
"We want it now," Wesley said.
Trombone Teddy put down his fork and searched inside his third layer of shirts, dug into a pocket with grimy fingers, and pulled out the House of Chang business card.
Wesley took it, looked at the license number, and nodded to Nate, who said, "Teddy, what kind of car was it that the mail thief was driving?"
"An old blue Pinto," Teddy said. "Like I wrote down on the card."
"And what did the guy look like?"
"I can't remember no more," Teddy said. "A white guy. Maybe thirty. Maybe forty. Nasty mouth. Insulted me. That's why I wrote down the license number."
"And his companion?" Wesley said.
"A woman. That's all I can remember."
"Would you recognize either of them if you saw them again?" Nate said.
"No, they was just dark shadows. He was just a dark shadow with a nasty mouth."
"Tell us again what she called him," Wesley said.
"I don't remember," Teddy said.
"You told me Freddy," Wesley said.
"Did I?"
"Or Morley?"
"If you say so. But it don't ring a bell now."
"Have you seen them either before or after that?"
"Yeah, I saw them try to hustle a clerk in a store."
"When?"
"A few days after he insulted me."
"What store?"
"Coulda been like a Target store. Or maybe it was RadioShack. Or like a Best Buy store. I can't remember. I get around."
"At least," Nate said, "you got another good look at them, right?"
"Yeah, but I still can't remember what they look like. They're white people. Maybe thirty years old. Or forty. But they could be fifty. I can't tell ages no more. You can check with the guy at the store. He gave me a ten-buck reward for telling him they were crooks. They had a bogus credit card. Or bogus money. Something like that."
"Jesus," Nate said, looking at Wesley in frustration.
Wesley said, "If we can find the store and find the guy who saw them, at least you can say that they're the same two people who stole from the mailbox, isn't that right?"
"He stole from the mailbox," Teddy said. "She didn't. I got a feeling she's okay. He's a total asshole."
Wesley said, "If the detectives need to talk to you, where can they find you?"
"There's an old empty office building on that street on the east side of Hollywood Cemetery. I'm living there for now. But I come here a few nights a week for supper."
"Can you remember anything else?" Hollywood Nate said, taking a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and putting it on the chopping block.
"Hell, half the time I can't remember what day it is," Teddy said. Then he looked at them and said, "What day is it, anyways?"
Viktor Chernenko was known for working late, especially with his obsession to solve the jewelry store robbery and the ATM robbery-murder, and most of the veteran cops from Hollywood Station were aware of it. Nate knew it and was busting stop signs and speeding to the station faster than he'd driven to the House of Chang.
They ran into the detective squad room and were overjoyed to see Viktor still there, typing on his computer keyboard.
"Viktor," Nate said. "Here it is!"
Viktor looked at the business card, at the license number and the words "blue Pinto" written on it, and he said, "My mail thief?"
Since he had been on the initial callout, Brant worked all day in southeast L. A. with Andi on the Gulag homicide. Doobie D, whom they had identified through data received from his cell provider, was Latelle Granville, a twenty-four-year-old member of the Crips with an extensive record for drug sales and weapons violations. He had begun using his cell in the afternoon.
With a team of detectives from Southeast Division assisting, the cell towers eventually triangulated him to the vicinity of a residence on 103rd Street known to be the family home of a Crips cruiser named Delbert Minton. He had a far more extensive record than Latelle Granville and turned out to be the Crip who had been fighting with the slain student. Both were arrested at Minton's without incident and taken back to Hollywood Station for interview and booking. Both Crips refused to speak and demanded to call their lawyers.
It had been a very long day, and the detectives were hungry and tired from working well into an overtime evening. Then Andi returned a phone call from a cocktail waitress, one of the people she'd interviewed at the Gulag on the night of the murder. At that time, the waitress, Angela Hawthorn, had told Andi she was at the service bar fetching drinks when the fight broke out and had seen nothing. So why was she calling now? Andi wondered.
"This is Detective McCrea," Andi said when the woman answered her cell.
"Hello," Angela Hawthorn said. "I'm at home. I don't work at the Gulag anymore. Dmitri fired me because I wouldn't put out for one of his rich Russian customers. I have some information that might help you."
"I'm listening," Andi said.
"Up in the corner of the building by the window to Dmitri's office there's a video camera that sees everything on the smoking patio. During the party I'm pretty sure it was there like it always is. But when you showed up it wasn't there. Dmitri probably took it down so you wouldn't see it."
"Why would he do that?"
"He's paranoid about bad publicity and cops and courtrooms. And he doesn't want trouble with black hoodlums. In fact, he doesn't want black customers. He just wouldn't want to be involved in your murder case. Anyways, if you get that c
amera from him I'll bet you'll see that black guy sticking the knife in that kid. Just keep my name out of it, okay?"
When Andi hung up, she said to Brant, "Do you need money?"
"Why?"
"You're going to be getting even more overtime. There might be video at the Gulag with our murder shown right there on it!"
Brant looked around, but all the other detectives had gone home. Only the night-watch detective Compassionate Charlie was there, with his feet up on the desk, sucking his teeth as usual, reading the L. A. Times sports page.
"I'm all you got?" he said.
"Don't be a wuss. This is more fun than being an IA weasel, isn't it?"
"I don't know," he said. "I'm starting to miss the Burn Squad. At least I got fed every once in a while."
"When we're all through tonight, I'm making you a very late supper with a bottle of good Pinot I've been saving. How's that sound?"
"Suddenly I'm renewed," he said.
"One thing, though," Andi said. "I think I should call Viktor. We might find a Russian translator very useful if this nightclub owner starts lyin' and denyin' like he probably will. Viktor is a master at handling those people, a kick-ass skill he learned in the bad old days with the Red Army."
"He's just getting home by now," Brant said. "He won't be pleased."
"He owes me," Andi said. "Didn't I do a dumpster dive for him? Didn't it cost me a busted bra strap?"
Eavesdropping as usual, Compassionate Charlie said, "Hey, you guys looking for Viktor? He left in a hell of a hurry with Hollywood Nate and that big kid Nate works with. I love to watch Viktor run. Like a bear on roller skates."
Chapter EIGHTEEN
THE BLUE PINTO was registered to a Samuel R. Culhane who lived on Winona Boulevard. Viktor Chernenko was sitting in the backseat of the black-and-white, concerned about whiplash with Hollywood Nate still driving in his high-speed redemption mode.
Wesley said to Viktor, "You know, Detective, the only problem here is that the first time we talked to Trombone Teddy he said the guy's name sounded like Freddy or Morley."
"Maybe Samuel sold the car to a Freddy," Nate said. "Stay positive."
"Or lent the car to Morley," Viktor added.
The house was almost a duplicate of Farley Ramsdale's old Hollywood bungalow except it was in good repair and had a small lawn in front with geraniums along the side of the house and a bed of petunias by the front porch.
Wesley ran to the rear of the house to prevent escape. It was dusk, and he didn't need a flashlight yet. He took cover behind the garage and waited.
Viktor took the lead and knocked, with Nate standing to his left.
Samuel R. Culhane wasn't as thin as Farley but he was in a late stage of methamphetamine addiction. He had pustules on his face and a permanent twitch at the corner of his right eye. He was several years older than Farley and balding, with a bad comb-over. And though he couldn't see Hollywood Nate standing beside the guy at the door, he knew instantly that Viktor was a cop.
"Yeah?" he said cautiously.
Viktor showed his badge and said, "We need to talk to you."
"Come back with a warrant," Samuel Culhane said and started to close the door, but Viktor stopped it with his foot and Nate pushed past and into the room, touching the badge pinned to his shirt, saying, "This is a brass pass, dude."
When the back door opened and Nate whistled to him, Wesley entered and saw the tweaker sitting on the couch in the living room looking glum. Viktor was formally reading the guy his rights from a card that every cop, including Viktor, had memorized.
Nate handed Samuel Culhane's driver's license to his partner and said, "Run him, Wesley."
After Viktor had finished with the rights advisement, he said to the unhappy homeowner, "You are not pleased to see us?"
"Look," Samuel Culhane said, "you ain't searching my house without a warrant, but I'll talk to you long enough to find out what the hell this is all about."
"We must find out where you were on a certain night."
"What night?"
"Three weeks ago. You were driving your Pinto with a lady friend, no?"
"Hah!" Samuel Culhane said. "Driving with a lady friend? No! I'm gay, dude. Gayer than springtime. You got the wrong guy."
Persisting, Viktor said, "You were driving on Gower south of Hollywood Boulevard that evening."
"And who says so?"
"You were seen."
"Bullshit. I got no reason to drive down Gower in the evening. In fact, I don't even go out till around midnight. I'm a night person, man."
"There was a woman in your car," Viktor said.
"I told you I'm gay! Do I gotta blow you to prove it? Wait a minute, what crime was I supposed to've done?"
"You were seen at a mailbox."
"A mailbox?" he said. "Oh, man, now I get it. You're gonna try to fuck me with a mail theft."
Wesley came in then and handed an FI card to Viktor on which he'd scribbled some of Samuel R. Culhane's rap sheet entries.
Reading, Viktor said, "You have been arrested for fraud . . . one, two times. Once for counterfeiting. This is, as they say, consistent with the theft of U. S. mail from a public mailbox."
"Okay, fuck this," Samuel Culhane said. "I ain't spending a night in jail till you guys get your shit together and figure out you got the wrong guy. I'll come right out and tell you what's what if you'll go away and leave me be."
"Proceed," Viktor said.
"I rented my Pinto for a week to a guy I know. I got another car. He lives down there off Gower with an idiot tweaker who calls herself his wife but they ain't married. I warned them both, don't fuck around and do any deals in my Pinto. They didn't listen to me, did they? I'll show you where he lives. His name's Farley Ramsdale."
Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb looked at each other and said it simultaneously and with such gusto that it startled not only Samuel Culhane but Viktor Chernenko as well.
"Farley!"
That goddamn Olive, she never puts anything in its proper place. Farley was still thinking of Olive in the present tense although he knew in his heart that she was in the past. He had to admit there were things he was going to miss. She was like those Bedouin women who walk through minefields while the old man stays fifty yards behind on the donkey and follows in her footsteps. Never less than obedient. Until now.
Finally he found the key cards in the bottom drawer of the kitchen together with the egg timer she'd never used and a badly burned skillet that she did use. They were the best key cards they'd ever stolen, and they had always fetched a good price. Just the right size and color, with just the right mag code to look exactly like a righteous California driver's license once they slapped the bogus facsimile on the front. He was going to have to find another woman partner to hang around that particular hotel and get more of them. Maybe a halfway classy woman who would never arouse suspicion. He tried to think of a halfway classy woman he might know but gave up trying immediately.
Of course he knew that the junkyard rendezvous was very dangerous and might be a trick of Cosmo's to kill them, but after he'd told Cosmo that Olive had boogied and Cosmo still wanted him to make delivery, he figured it was probably okay. That fucking Armo wouldn't dare try to kill him with Olive out there able to dime him to the cops if Farley went missing. Would he?
He might. Farley had never dealt with anyone as violent as Cosmo, so that's why he'd devised a little plan of his own. Sure, he was going to drive to that lonely junkyard on that lonely fucking road in east L. A., where no white man in his right mind would roam around at night. But he wasn't stepping one toe out of his car, no way. He was going to drive up, wrong side of the road to that fence, reach out, and grab the paper bag. And if the money was in there, he'd pull into the yard, spin a sweeping U-turn, blow his horn until Gregori came out, toss him the paper bag with the key cards in it, and zip on out of that yard and back to white man's country-if Hollywood could be called white man's country these days.
And if there
wasn't a trap at all and Gregori got insulted by his method of delivery and threatened not to do business with him anymore, too fucking bad. Gregori shouldn't hang with gun-packing Armos like Cosmo. He should stick with thieving, chiseling, blood-sucking Armos like himself. Yeah, Farley thought with waxing confidence as he fantasized about the glass he'd be smoking tonight, where's the glitch in that plan?
Suddenly he was hungry from all that thinking, but he couldn't bear the thought of a cheese sandwich. He had a yearning for Ruby's doughnuts, especially for a couple of those big fat cream-filled, chocolate-covered specials. He found the emergency twenty-dollar bill he had stashed in his underwear drawer, where Olive would never look, then propped up the broken back door as best he could and left for Ruby's. Like Pablo's Tacos and the cybercaf,, Ruby's Donuts was one of the last stops on the Tweakerville Line.
He saw a couple of tweakers he knew in the parking lot, looking hungry but not for doughnuts. Come to think of it, this was the first time he'd ever gone to Ruby's looking for something to put in his stomach. The Hollywood nights were growing more and more strange and weird and scary for Farley Ramsdale, and he couldn't seem to stop it from happening.
They didn't really need Samuel R. Culhane to lead them to Farley's house. A call took care of that. The FI file was full of shakes involving Farley Ramsdale and Olive O. Ramsdale, and it also had their correct address as shown on his driver's license. Like other tweakers, they were always getting stopped and FI'd. But Viktor pretended that Culhane's presence was needed just to be sure that if left alone, he wouldn't make a warning call to Farley.
Driving his Pinto, Samuel R. Culhane did as he was told and led 6-X-72 and Viktor Chernenko to Farley's house, where he slowed and indicated the house with his left-turn signal. Then he took off for home while the cops parked and piled out of the black-and-white, approaching the house with their flashlights off.
As before, Wesley went to cover the back door. He found it partially ajar, one hinge hanging loose, and propped in place by a kitchen chair. Nate and Viktor got no response and there were no lights on in the house. Wesley checked the empty garage.
"He's a typical tweaker," Nate said to Viktor. "Out hunting for crystal. When he finds it he'll come home."
Hollywood Station (2006) Page 28