Casey looked across the table. She felt like there was a bungee cord connecting her to Dream. She leaned forward, and softly touched her hand.
Jumper turned to Casey, “He treat you like that too?”
“Yeah. But she’s right. Nobody cares.”
“No. I care. We care.”
27
The lights from inside Wing’s 24-hour liquor store burned against the first hints of daylight. Through the plate glass window of the store, just off the Boulevard, Casey saw an old guy, who must have been Wing, watching the Weather Channel from behind a counter-to-ceiling wall of bulletproof Plexiglas. There, slipping money through the cash slot and receiving a pack of Salem’s, was Dennis. Behind him, his new girl was holding a bag of Fritos and drifting back and forth in front of a long refrigerator, trying to pick a soda. She looked sixteen, maybe a little younger. Casey felt sorry for her. The girl took a Mountain Dew to the counter, Dennis paid for her stuff, and they came outside into the parking lot. Dennis stopped short, seeing Casey standing by his jeep in the otherwise empty lot.
“Look at that,” Dennis said.
Casey didn’t say a thing. She just stared at him, thinking about what he did to her and Dream, and what he’d do to the new girl.
“Your timing’s not the greatest here, but we can hook up later on. How’s that?”
“That’s what you think? I’m here to hook up?”
“It’s okay. So it took a little time to realize what you got.” He stripped the cellophane off the cigarette pack. The girl looked at Casey, not sure of what was going on.
“Really,” Casey said.
“It’s okay. I’ll let it slide.”
“You’ll let it slide?”
She turned and walked towards the street. Dennis followed.
“Hey. Hey! Man, where you going?” he called after her.
Casey glanced over her shoulder at him and kept on walking. Dennis crushed the wrapper up into a ball and threw it to the ground. He jogged after her—when springing out from between two parked cars were Dog-Face and Jumper. Dog-Face thrust his arms around Dennis’ waist, as Jumper threw a paint-splattered blue plastic tarp over his head. Dennis swung his fists up, trying to break free, but Dog-Face—the toughest kid on the Boulevard—instantly pinned Dennis’ arms down to his side.
“What the fuck!” he screamed, flailing, trying to break free. The tarp started sliding off, and fell so far down Casey could see Dennis’ face—covered with dirt from the tarp, twisted with fury. Dream raced over to help. She swiftly pulled the tarp back down to Dennis’ waist.
Dennis fought like a monster to get away, but Dog-Face and Jumper were in control now. They dragged Dennis down the alley that ran alongside the liquor store.
Casey looked around for trouble. Wing was still stuck on the Weather Channel, not seeing, or not wanting to see. The only person on the street was the new girl who stood frozen in place, silent and stunned.
“Go! Get outta here!” Casey yelled. The girl stared at Casey, confused.
“Do it! Go! Go!”
She took off, and Casey raced after the others. Dog-Face and Jumper had dragged Dennis to the end of the alley. He was still fighting, still trying to get away.
Casey ran up to them, and Dog-Face jerked the ratty tarp off Dennis’ face.
“Who the fuck are you?” Dennis yelled at Dog-Face.
“I’m the taxman, motherfucker,” Doggy shot back. And with that he drove his huge fist straight into Dennis’ left eye. Dennis dropped to the ground and Jumper scrambled on top of him, trying to pin him down. Dennis managed to throw Jumper off and came up, swinging. But Jumper smashed his cheek below the other eye, instantly followed by Dog-Face sending another fist into Dennis’ stomach, dropping him again. As he hit the ground, Dog-Face muscled Dennis onto his back and Jumper stood over him, his boots pressing Dennis’ forearms to the concrete.
Jumper turned to Dream and yelled, “He’s all yours.”
Dream ran over and screamed, “Remember me?”
Dennis glared at her.
“Come on. You don’t remember?”
Dennis turned his head and spit on the ground. And Dream drove a kick straight into his balls. Dennis yelled out, and curled up on his side. Dream circled around and sent another kick between his legs and then kicked him even harder in the stomach.
“Don’t hear your rap now. Where is it?” Dream said, kicking him again. She was possessed, almost dancing, taking one kick after another. And every time Dream connected, Casey felt a jolt of satisfaction. She could watch Dream kick him all day.
“Hey—don’t hear no sweet talk no more …” Dream said, trembling, “I’m such a pretty girl. I need a friend here. You gonna be that friend. Come on. Give it to me. Give it to me! Gimme that sweet talk.” And she landed another kick straight into his balls. Dennis screamed.
Dream turned around, and Casey could see she was shaking with rage … and crying.
“Your turn,” Dog-Face called over.
Casey stepped up to his head. This was going to feel so good. She looked at Dennis on the ground and thought, for once in her life, the tables had turned, and she was going to give Dennis back some of his own—make him taste the pain like she did. She could never make him know what it was like to be raped by him and his disgusting buddies—but she could drive her foot straight into his face. There was blood all over it, and she pulled back her foot back to make some more … And she stopped. She couldn’t.
“Come on. Feels good,” Dream said.
“Let me,” Jumper said. And he did, driving two more kicks into Dennis’ stomach. Dennis groaned in pain. Casey went to kick him in the same place. Again, she couldn’t. She stood over his face and screamed, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you for everything you did to me!”
She stomped the ground beside his head, causing him to jerk back, and then she leaned down and spit in his face. She stared at his fucked-up face—that took so much joy in raping her—then turned away, never wanting to see it again.
They were back on the Boulevard. The sun was coming up and Hollywood was bathed in a crisp, lush blue light. Jumper and Dog-Face were walking ahead of Casey and Dream. Jumper raised his hand up and Dog-Face slapped it a high-five. The guys laughed. Casey smiled a little. She felt something good inside. Dream reached over and held her hand.
28
Casey didn’t make it to Joey’s until almost eleven. Paul was sitting in a booth by himself.
“Remembered me after all,” he said.
“Come on.”
“No. You come on. That’s the Boulevard, I guess. Gotta expect people to disappear.”
“It’s not that, you know.”
“What then?”
“Just, things happened. Good things. Really good things. I’ll tell you.”
“Can’t wait,” Paul said coldly.
“Hey, it’s not like you had a number I could’ve called.” She slid next to him in the booth and kissed his cheek. She noticed a battered brown leather bomber jacket on the seat next to him.
“Nice jacket.”
“Got it at Frenchy’s thrift store.”
“Way cool. Looks warm.”
“Is. Have some fries,” he said. “How’d it go?”
“I decided something.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not doing any more dates,” Casey said.
“Good. Do it.”
“And I think you should stop too.”
“And sit on the sidewalk begging nickels? No thanks. I liked the room we had.”
“That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you. I got us a place we can live. A squat. Wanna go see it?”
“Can’t. I got a date.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. It looks like real money.”
“Later?” Casey said.
“There he is.”
He headed for the door where a shiny blue Mercedes had pulled up outside.
“You forgot your jacket,” she called after him.
> “No I didn’t.”
“Sure you did.”
“Nah—I got it for you.”
She couldn’t believe it. No one had ever given her something as great as this. She ran after him to give him a huge hug. He smiled to end all smiles, and went out towards the Mercedes. Casey thought, nice car, real money—things were improving.
29
Jimmy
The clock behind the security guard in the black marble Century City tower entrance read 5:55. Perfect. The mahogany paneled elevator flew up in a whoosh that made Jimmy’s ears pop as he and Erin rode up to the forty-first floor. When the doors slid open Jimmy saw an enormous reception desk with Miller & Lodge, LLP across its front in brass letters. Behind the desk was a floor-to-ceiling window with a view all the way to Santa Monica. As they approached the desk, the receptionist, a tall, athletically-built kid with movie-star looks was stuffing a script into his bag. Jimmy told them who they were.
“Mr. Lodge’s secretary is about to go home for the day,” the receptionist answered.
“Sorry, but can you let her know we’re here?”
He noisily exhaled … but at 5:58, his first job was making it to the gym, yoga, acting lessons—anything but arguing with two cops.
Lodge’s secretary was a nice-looking, well-dressed, Filipino lady. Her coat was already on and she was clicking off a game of FreeCell when they reached her desk. It made sense to Jimmy that she wasn’t swamped with work—how many calls a day do you make for a boss who’s dead?
Erin gave her a kind smile and said, “We know how late it is, but we’ve been completely overwhelmed and just haven’t been able to make it here earlier. We were hoping to go through Mr. Lodge’s things. See if there’s something that could help.”
“Tomorrow would be much better. If you come in the morning I can stay with you all day.”
“Yeah … Tomorrow doesn’t really work,” Jimmy said.
She looked torn.
Erin added, “We’re really sorry. Can we buy you coffee at Starbucks downstairs? We’ll try to finish as fast as we can.”
“It’s okay.”
She took off her coat and went back to her FreeCell. Jimmy and Erin entered the office. Displayed on the walls were undergraduate and law school diplomas from UCLA and a large framed certificate honoring Lodge’s appearance before the California Supreme Court. There were also framed pictures which Lodge must have taken on vacations: giraffes in Africa, mosques in Turkey, gondolas in the rain in Venice. Lodge wasn’t a half-bad photographer. They started plowing through his files. It was slow going. A real-estate deal here, another one there. A contract the size of a small city’s white pages. Endless notes for on-going negotiations.
The secretary stayed outside at her desk, moving from FreeCell to solitaire, back to FreeCell again. Every now and then she would stick her head in. At 6:30 she was pleasant and offered them sodas or water. By 7:00 her smile had faded. At 7:15 she was pacing with her coat on behind her desk. Around 7:45 she was cranky as hell, and by 7:55 she asked them if they could lock the door behind them on the way out. Which is what Jimmy wanted in the first place.
Now they had the run of the office. Miller was in Vegas for the day with the mayor, the others in the firm had long since left, and Jimmy could hear the distant hum of the cleaning people’s vacuum cleaners. But for all the freedom, two hours later Jimmy was sitting in one of Lodge’s red leather chairs surrounded by a pile of useless files—half a dozen for a huge new office tower under construction on Wilshire, and a knee-high pile of contracts for building casinos.
“How are you doing?” Erin asked from behind Lodge’s desk where she methodically searched his computer.
“He’s got more gambling business than an Indian chief, but bullshit when it comes to something for us. You?”
“He either clean or clever,” Erin said.
“So far.”
As he plowed through yet another stack of files Jimmy thought about an assignment he did in New York with another undercover named Ron Chang. Ron was obsessed with the city’s massage parlors, almost all controlled by the Hong Kong tongs. He had a right to be. The gangsters would go into tiny Chinese villages and basically buy teenage girls from their parents. The tongs would smuggle the girls into the US, where they were made to turn tricks in massage parlors to repay the money their parents took, plus what it cost to smuggle them into the country. It could be twenty or thirty thousand dollars. The girls were young, scared, and incredibly naïve. Jimmy did the math and figured they’d have to work seven or eight years, fucking one asshole after another just to pay back the gangsters that brought them into this misery in the first place. The girls weren’t officially slaves, but they were goddamn close, and seeing it broke his heart. There were eighty-two massage parlors in the precinct and systematically Ron or Jimmy would go in undercover looking for a massage, and get them to offer ‘something extra’. They got offered the ‘something extra’ in eighty-one of them. But the way a cop’s mind works is—not thinking the eighty-second place was clean—no way. It’s just their technique wasn’t working on eighty-two. Jimmy kept going back in—he and Ron were on a mission to nail number eighty-two. But after nine or ten trips back to the place, they realized it really was just a massage parlor. That’s all. As Jimmy sifted through Lodge’s notes, he was haunted by the possibility that the same thing could be happening here. Sure Lodge gets iced somewhere he shouldn’t have been. But what if at the end of the day, he was clean, and this was massage parlor eighty-two all over again?
Erin pulled up Lodge’s appointments from the day he was killed. It was virtually empty. When she went to two days before—she leaned back in her chair and smiled.
“He sees Cat Cassandra? Now that’s bizarre.”
“Who’s Cat Cassandra?” Jimmy said.
“He cuts hair. I saw him a couple of times.”
“Something strange about it?”
“You might say that. But when I saw him—it was the only time in my entire life I was stopped on the street—twice—by someone asking me who cut my hair.”
“But you didn’t stick with him?”
“It was a little much.”
“How?”
“Cat was the last appointment our vic had—or at least the last official appointment, right?”
“Sure. But what’s the deal on Cat?”
“Know something, Jimmy—you could use a haircut.”
30
Jimmy had been to the Roosevelt Hotel dozens of times, but he had never been in a room like 401. The door swung open to give him a view of Cat, a tall Filipino man wearing a fluffy Helmsley Palace bathrobe, and whose face was fully made-up, compete with ultra-long fake eyelashes. Cat led them inside the tiny room, no bigger than a standard–issue Manhattan studio apartment, with a folded-up futon couch and a beauty shop chair that faced a large mirror which had a chest in front of it holding clippers, brushes and the usual hairdresser’s supplies. Below the chest legs was a collection of high pumps, all of them black or red. On one side of the mirror was the largest TV Jimmy had ever seen. An old black and white movie played—a young Shirley MacLaine was running down a Manhattan street with a blissful smile. Leaning against the TV was a six-foot stack of straight and gay porno tapes. On the other side of the mirror was a display case packed with figurines of angels, the Virgin, and saints and crosses.
“Honey, you have been gone much too long.” Cat said to Erin. He had a faint accent.
“I know, but my new partner, Jimmy, he needs it a lot it more. Right?”
Cat cocked his head like a beagle. “You have a smart partner.” He extended his hand, indicating the chair and Jimmy slipped in.
Erin checked out the angel case. “This is new.”
“I still do all these Filipinos. They come here for their hair, but always wanna buy the saints too. What am I gonna do?”
He threw a plastic beauty-shop sheet over Jimmy.
“You want the same, honey—but better, right?”
“Cat was the hottest thing in Manila,” Erin said.
“Years ago, darling” he said with a laugh. “Years ago. I had three shops there. But thank God somebody still remembers me.”
As Jimmy looked around the room he knew how a Jew must feel at a Catholic mass. It was a world familiar to lots of people, but it sure wasn’t him. Reflected in the mirror behind him was a gold trophy nearly as tall as Cat.
“What’s the trophy for?” Jimmy asked.
“Miss Castro. I came in second place.”
“That’s impressive.” Good God, if his dad could hear him now, complementing this drag-queen on his beauty contest success.
“But you know who I lost to? …”
He couldn’t wait.
“Miss Gay America. We went out for two months after that. But she was such a user—just laying around and looking beautiful, like some pussy cat. Use me, use me, use me, that’s all she ever did. Finally, I had to throw the lazy bitch out.”
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