When Dewey took the chair across the table, the kid smiled nervously and said, “Hi, Mr. Graham. I’m ready to go to work.”
Dewey, ever cautious, removed the envelope he was carrying inside the pocket of his summer blazer, holding it by the corner between the tip of his thumb and forefinger, and slid it across the table.
“Everything is there, Michael,” he said quietly after glancing to his right at a young woman with a leopard headband who might have overheard them if she hadn’t been jabbering on her cell phone.
“Mitchell,” the student corrected.
“Yes, Mitchell,” Dewey agreed. “You’ll find two checks each for three banks. The debit cards and the driver’s licenses are in the name of Seymour Belmont, Josh Davidson, and Ralph Tanazzi. Instructions are very clear. Make sure you carry the correct ID and debit card for each bank and then deposit the checks as though you do it every day. The PIN number is taped on the card for you.”
“I’m sorta blonde,” Mitchell said, concerned. “I don’t look like a Ralph Tanazzi.”
“You look like the photo ID,” Dewey said. “That’s all you have to worry about.”
“I hope the pictures on the driver’s licenses turned out okay,” Mitchell said. “That guy in the camera shop you sent me to was drunk.”
“He did a good job,” Dewey said. “Don’t sweat it.”
“And my… pay?”
“Is in the envelope,” Dewey said. “Three hundred dollars for walking into three banks. A couple hours of your time, driving included.”
“You said four hundred dollars, Mr. Graham,” Mitchell said.
“Did I?” said Dewey disingenuously. He withdrew his wallet from the pocket of his blazer, removed a $100 bill, and put it on the table, saying, “My mistake.”
An Asian waiter approached and said to Dewey, “Sir, what can I get you?”
“You’ll buy me a coffee, won’t you, Mitchell?” Dewey said.
Happily the kid replied, “Of course, Mr. Graham. And how about a croissant?”
Later, while driving to Pablo’s Tacos, Dewey had to admit that Eunice had some impressive talents she’d learned from her first husband, Hugo. She could legally shop on the Internet and buy whatever she needed. Legitimate companies sold her magnetic ink and high-end printers with different color inks, as well as other card-altering devices. Dewey was amazed the first time he watched her redo a mag number and slide a new mag strip in place of the old one.
She had very valuable information that she sometimes kept in the virtual storage she got when buying new computers. She claimed that the cops were able to get links to Internet sites, but that was all, and that Dewey, who was nearly computer-illiterate, should stop worrying and leave the thinking to her. Of course, a deprecating crack or two would top off any admonishment she directed his way.
Eunice kept much of her information in a Yahoo account, including names, credit-card numbers, and Social Security numbers, so that she could just log in and bring up the information as needed. Sometimes she went to Office Depot to buy Mips VersaChecks with computer programs, along with plenty of check stock. With that she could produce her own checks, account numbers, and routing numbers. She believed it was risky and didn’t like to do it too often, but Eunice had never spent a day in jail, except for a DUI, and Dewey had been jailed only twice, for traffic warrants back when he was a struggling actor, before meeting Eunice.
When Dewey parked in the little strip mall and walked inside Pablo’s Tacos, he saw no black man who was forty, fat, and nervous. The people at the tables were a Latino couple with two small children, all of them eating tacos and refried beans, and a young Latino guy sitting by himself, drinking coffee.
Dewey ordered a taco he didn’t really want and a Coke. Then he sat at the table next to the young man, who was no older than Dewey’s college kids. In fact, this boy could very well be in college. He was a good-looking, slender young guy with great curly hair, wearing a red T-shirt, clean jeans, and Adidas running shoes. He had no tatts, earrings, or face jewelry, but being at Pablo’s Tacos in an apparently expectant mode might mean that he had a drug issue and could use some fast and easy bucks.
While waiting for the Nigerian, Dewey figured he might as well work the kid and see what was what. Dewey nibbled at the taco and felt the heat instantly. He grabbed his Coke, took a couple of gulps, and said, “Damn, they didn’t warn me about the jalapeños!”
Malcolm Rojas said, “You have to tell them no heat.”
“I can’t eat this,” Dewey said, dropping the taco onto the paper plate.
“Take it back to the counter,” Malcolm said. “They’ll give you another.”
“I’m not hungry anyway,” Dewey said with an affable smile, “but thanks for the tip.”
Malcolm looked at him curiously. In Hollywood, when a middle-aged white stranger started being friendly, Malcolm figured he was probably gay. This guy looked straight enough, but you never knew, especially on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Dewey said to Malcolm, “I’m looking for ambitious young college students who’re interested in some very profitable part-time work. Would you be a student by any chance?”
Malcolm, who hadn’t taken a single course even at a community college since graduating from high school, now figured the guy for some kind of pervert and said guardedly, “What kind of work?”
“Just some easy jobs to help with tuition and books, with a lot of money left over.”
Even more curious now, Malcolm lied and said, “I’m only a part-time student at City College. Does that work for you?”
“Certainly,” Dewey said. “If I told you that you could make between five hundred and a thousand dollars working just a couple of days a week, would you be interested?”
Now Malcolm was sure the guy was a perv. He said, “I don’t do fuck films, man.”
Dewey chuckled and said, “You wouldn’t make such easy money in such a short time doing fuck films.” He broke off a piece of the fried taco shell and said, “Are you willing to work with cards?”
“How do you mean?” Malcolm asked.
“Do you have a debit card?”
“No,” Malcolm said.
“How old’re you?”
“Nineteen,” Malcolm said truthfully.
“That’s fine,” Dewey said. “You can pass for twenty-one, no problem.”
“Whadda you mean, ‘pass’?”
“If I gave you a debit card, a PIN number, and good ID with your picture on it, but with a bogus name, would you be willing to use it to draw out money at certain places that’re very safe? Or would you be willing to go on a fun shopping trip and buy all kinds of great things with a credit card that has someone else’s name on it?”
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “I got a job. I never done anything with debit cards or credit cards.”
“I’ll bet your job pays minimum wage,” Dewey said.
A bit offended, Malcolm said, “It’s a living.”
There was something about this young man. He had a straightforward sincerity about him that Dewey seldom found in young people these days. Something told him that he could use this forthright young Latino to great advantage. He drew a business card from his wallet with the name Bernie Graham on it along with the number of one of his GoPhones, and slid it across the table to Malcolm.
“Think about a shopping trip as a starter,” Dewey said. “Buying great merchandise is what it amounts to. You’d buy things at places I send you to, and you’d deliver the items to a place that I select. Call me tomorrow at five P.M. if you’re interested. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll figure it’s a no-go.”
“I work till five,” Malcolm said. “Can I call you at five thirty?”
“Certainly,” Dewey said, confident that he’d hooked his fish. “I’m Bernie Graham. What’s your name?”
“You can call me Clark,” said Malcolm, standing up to leave. “Clark Jones.”
“I hope to hear from you, Clark Jones,” said Dewey as the
young man exited the taco shop.
Six-X-Thirty-two was driven by Flotsam, whose partner had gotten permission from Sergeant Murillo to go home early after telling the supervisor that his dog had disappeared from the yard and his landlady was in a panic. It was a lie hastily dreamed up by the surfer cop after his waitress du jour at IHOP agreed to go surfing with him the next morning at Malibu but only if the surfer cop could get to the beach by 8 A.M. Because Watch 5 didn’t end until 0400 hours, Jetsam had been in a tizzy, worrying about sleep deprivation that might make him less than magnificent the next day. So he concocted the dog story for Sergeant Murillo, even though the only pet he had was a turtle.
Flotsam, who of course was privy to his partner’s scheme, asked the sergeant what he should do for the remainder of the watch, and it turned out that P1 rookie Harris Triplett’s usual field training officer was on a special day off. The probationer had been assigned to assist the desk officer that night, just to give him something to do, so Sergeant Murillo decided to let him work with Flotsam for the remainder of the watch. The sergeant would ordinarily have been reluctant to put even a last-phase probationer like Harris Triplett with either of the surfer cops, but being down to five cars on the midwatch, he thought he’d take a chance.
Young Harris Triplett found himself riding the rest of the watch with Flotsam, and they happened to be cruising past Pablo’s Tacos when Malcolm Rojas was walking away from the strip mall. Malcolm didn’t interest Flotsam at all. What interested Flotsam was a portly black man driving an old Toyota who’d managed to find a parking place in the mall and who emerged from his car with a small paper-wrapped parcel in his hand, which he tucked under his jacket before approaching the entry door.
“First thing, dude,” Flotsam said. “That year Toyota you can start with a screwdriver or a pair of scissors. Anything will turn the ignition on. So we’re suspicious right away that the car could be hot, right?”
“Yes, sir,” said the unsuspicious boot.
“And we know from long experience that Pablo’s is a place where tweakers, baseheads, and every other kind of doper hangs out and does deals, right?”
“Yes, sir,” said the rookie, who had no long experience about anything but who agreed with everything a P2 or P3 said.
“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ It makes me feel like a shoobie.”
“A what?”
“A lame-oh that wears socks and sandals on the beach.”
“Oh,” Harris said.
“Sometimes they bring their baloney sandwiches in a shoe box. Shoobie, get it? Way wack.”
“I see,” Harris said.
“So okay, for a dude in a place like this to be sticking a small package under his coat, that, like, sets off all kinds of alarms on our blue radar, don’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” Harris said, with conviction this time.
“Goddamnit!”
“Sorry, sorry!”
Flotsam said, “Something about the way that dude dresses says to me he’s an immigrant. It’s like all these Armenian gangsters? Unibrows in Armani Exchange and Members Only jackets, right? You know they ain’t from around here.”
“Got it.”
“Look at that dude’s shoes. Are they plastic or what? And those pants pulled up to his chest bone? And a white dress shirt and horse-blanket coat? He’s from somewheres else too.”
“Got it,” Harris said.
“What if this black guy turns out to be Puerto Rican or Dominican?” Flotsam said. “I heard you can speak Spanish, right?”
“Yes,” the rookie said. Then he hesitated and added, “Well, I get a two-point-seventy-five-percent pay bump for speaking Spanish. I minored in Spanish at Cal State L.A., but I’m not so good at the reading and writing.”
“We won’t have to write to the guy,” Flotsam said.
“To be honest, I sort of speak Spanglish.”
“Close enough,” Flotsam said. “Let’s go hear his story, whatever language it’s in.”
Flotsam parked the car in the red zone in front of the strip mall, and both cops collected their batons and entered the parking lot.
The Nigerian and Dewey Gleason made eye contact the moment the man entered the taco shop. Dewey was about to speak, when he spotted two uniformed cops-one a tall blond with gelled hair, and a younger athletic-looking partner-walking fast across the parking lot. His instincts told him to avert his gaze from the Nigerian’s and to get the hell out of there ASAP.
Sure enough, the cops entered and the tall cop said to the Nigerian, “Sir, we’d like you to step outside for a minute.”
“What for?” the Nigerian said in accented English, eyes widening.
Flotsam said, “We need to have a few words, sir.” Then more firmly, “Step outside, please.”
Reluctantly, the Nigerian walked outside with the cops, and after the glass door swung shut, Dewey Gleason rose and dumped his uneaten taco plate into a trash receptacle. He exited in time to see the cops walking the man toward an old Toyota at the far side of the parking lot. Dewey saw a parcel drop from under the man’s checked sport coat and fall onto the asphalt. The younger cop picked it up and the Nigerian acted as though he’d never seen it before.
Dewey slowed when passing the trio, and he could see that the package had torn open and several sheets of checks had spilled onto the ground. The dumb shit had only needed to bring one sheet of checks for Eunice to duplicate! Dewey quickened his pace, not bothering with the Bernie Graham limp and not looking back. He wasn’t sure, but when he reached the street, he thought he could hear the sound of handcuff ratchets chattering closed. It was a sound that chilled his blood.
SEVEN
Malcolm Rojas could hear his mother in the living room watching TV when he finally got home. That’s all she did when she wasn’t at work. He could hear the ice cubes tinkling in her glass of Jim Beam. She was laughing at some dumb show she was watching and might be half drunk by now. He thought he’d call in sick tomorrow. He hated working on weekends. The card belonging to that guy Bernie Graham was on his mind. He decided to make an appointment with the man and hear more about the debit cards and the real money he could make. It scared him to think about it, but it also excited him.
Excitement. That made him think once again of the woman in the apartment garage. Of how she’d been down on his lap. Of how he’d owned her. She’d promised she’d do whatever he wanted if he didn’t hurt her with the box cutter. For a second he remembered that he hadn’t done what he’d wanted to do with her, something he’d never done in his life. He’d wanted to come in her mouth, that fat old bitch. And he didn’t, couldn’t. He pushed it from his mind. He listened to his mother laughing again, but he didn’t want to let her make him angry. He began to listen to heavy metal on his iPod.
Music made him start thinking about that girl Naomi. He almost called her but changed his mind. He wanted to see her again and promised himself that he would. He even liked the retainer on her teeth. It made her look… what was the word? Vulnerable, that was it. She looked so vulnerable. Naomi didn’t seem to go with heavy metal, so he turned off the iPod. He wondered what she’d do if he kissed her and tried to touch her small breasts. He began getting an erection.
Then he heard his mother laughing again. He started to become angry, despite himself. He tried to think of Naomi again, but he could not. He pictured that fat bitch in the parking garage and thought of what he’d wanted to do to her, and that made him remember his failure. His fury grew powerful and he put his pillow over his head and tried to will himself to sleep.
It took him an hour, and when he awoke he was sweat-drenched. He could recall bits and pieces of a recurring dream. He was younger in the dream, and he was in bed with… he couldn’t say who. He smelled the booze on her, and she kept stroking his body, starting with his hair, until her hands slid down his hips. She was murmuring “Ruben… my sweet Ruben.” The dream was always like that. He awoke with an erection, and even after he masturbated, he could not go back to sleep for hours. T
he rage wouldn’t let him.
Because the Pacific Dining Car on Sixth Street near downtown was open 24/7, Dewey Gleason chose it instead of Musso amp; Frank on Hollywood Boulevard, which was much closer to home. He preferred the city’s oldest eateries, where little had changed since the likes of Gable and Tracy and Raymond Chandler had dined there. It was 1 A.M., and he was fatigued, waiting in the clubby little bar for the college kid, after having delivered two Whoppers to Eunice and changed his disguise. He loved old drinking spots like this, all mahogany, brass, and faux leather, offering timeless reassurance. He sat sipping a Manhattan, his first drink at the end of a very long day. There were three other men having cocktails, along with a bickering couple at the other end of the bar, no doubt having just come from somewhere that had gotten them juiced enough to fight it out in public.
What was the kid’s name? Christ, he’d dealt with four of them since he’d hit the streets this morning and they’d begun to look and sound alike. When contact was just getting started with these kids, they were all positively thrumming with nervous energy, and not a little fear. Eventually they became laconic and lazy and even insolent when the greed set in. That’s when Dewey had to dump them and look for a new set of faces, new college boys eager to sell their debit cards.
He asked himself again, What was the kid’s fucking name? One time last month when Dewey was this exhausted and it was this late, he’d almost forgotten his own name, or rather the name of the character he was playing. Now, at 1 A.M. in the Pacific Dining Car, he had to think for a moment and touch the eyeglasses he was wearing. They belonged to Ambrose Willis, who in his past fictional life had been a lecturer in business management at an Ivy League university. Dewey was always vague about which university until he was sure it was not one with which the kid had familiarity. Ambrose Willis wore an auburn toupee and had a large mole on his left cheek near his mouth.
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