“Yeah,” he said, “I can’t go to work. I’ll have to call in sick.”
“Oh, sweetie,” his mother said. “Are you sure you’re too sick? You have a good job, and I’d hate to see you lose it. And today you’ll get overtime pay.”
“A good job,” he said. “Slicing boxes open on a Sunday? Unpacking merchandise I can’t afford to buy? A good job.”
He sat at the table and took a sip of the orange juice.
“If you’d only gone on to City College like I — ”
“Like you what?”
He couldn’t stand it when her voice got shrill and whiny. He couldn’t stand the sight of her in that shapeless nightgown with her tits hanging down and her fat ass sticking out, and that bleached frizzy hair in pins and two pink curlers, like somebody in a movie fifty years old.
“I was gonna say, if you’d gone on to a community college last year, it woulda been better than any entry-level job you could get at that mall. Your mother told you that.”
The thing he hated most was when she referred to herself as “your mother,” often accompanied by the stroking of his hair, which, thankfully, she hadn’t done in months.
“First you say I shoulda went to college — ”
“Gone, sweetie,” she interrupted. “Shoulda gone to college.”
“Okay!” he said. “Gone, gone, gone! How could I pay your damn room and board if I’da gone to college?”
“You wouldn’t have had to,” his mother said, putting the plate in front of him. “I woulda supported you for as long as you stayed in school.”
He felt it coming again. The anger. He started to cut the fried eggs and take a bite, but his hands began shaking.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Why is it your money? When Dad got killed, why did the lawsuit money go to you? Why not to both of us?”
“You were a boy, Malcolm,” she said.
“I’m not now,” he said. “I’m almost twenty. Why do you get the money and all I get is — ”
“Room and board,” she said, still with that country accent from her Oklahoma roots. “Which you should be glad to pay for, unless you wanna go to college or even a trade school.”
Then her face softened and she stood behind him and, to his chagrin, reached over to actually stroke his hair, as though she’d read his thoughts and was taunting him. His breath caught. He could hardly believe it, and he said, “What’re you doing?”
“You’re still a boy,” she said, stroking.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that!”
“Why not, sweetie?” she said. “You have your father’s lovely curls, and you’re still your mother’s darling little — ”
Malcolm Rojas swept his breakfast off the table, sending the plate crashing to the floor. When he leaped to his feet, as though to hit her, she gasped and backed up to the sink.
“Malcolm!” she cried. “Have you gone crazy?”
He stood trembling, then turned and ran to his bedroom and slammed the door. Malcolm pulled on his jeans and a clean white T-shirt and didn’t bother to call his boss before running out the door and down the stairs of the apartment building.
The last thing he heard from his mother was sobbing and her shrill voice calling after him, “Sweetie, what’s wrong? Please! Let’s talk about it!”
When he got to the carports, he jumped in his Mustang, backed out, and started driving aimlessly. Ten minutes later he was heading west on Sunset Boulevard, roaring past the morning traffic clogged in the eastbound lanes, heading toward the ocean without knowing why. He pulled over long enough to calm himself and to phone the boss’s number, and he was glad to get voice mail and not the man. Malcolm wanted to explain how sorry he was that he had a fever and a sore throat, but he lost his nerve.
He put the cell phone away, reached into the glove compartment to remove the box cutter, and put it in the pocket of his jeans, deciding to go to his job.
That Sunday afternoon at roll call, the midwatch was down to four cars, with several cops off-duty. Sergeant Lee Murillo read the crimes and gave the usual admonitions and warnings about failure to complete the crushing load of forms that the consent decree entailed. Then he had to listen to the usual responses. These included some rational comments about the civilian firm that was getting richer from the audits, as well as some about the federal judge who would decide when the LAPD was in compliance. Then the heat started to rise, and of course the sergeant pretended not to hear the irrational suggestions delivered in stage whispers from one cop to another as to what the overseers should do with their audits, and what the federal judge should do with the consent decree, and what the judge’s mother should have done with him, and which parts of him should be fed to the family cat. He knew that cop defensive humor was the equivalent of smacking someone in the face with a cream pie full of maggots, so he let it go.
Recalling some of the morale-lifting techniques of their late beloved senior sergeant, he ended roll call by saying, “There’s nearly a Hollywood moon tonight.” He gestured toward the framed photo hanging beside the door and said, “For you new people, a Hollywood moon is what the Oracle called a full moon, and tonight we’re getting close. The team with the weirdest call gets an extra-large pizza with the works, compliments of Sergeant Hermann and my good self. Of course, we’ll share the pizza with the winners. Too much of that stuff is not healthy for you.”
“We had a weird one last night, Sarge,” Johnny Lanier said. “A woman called us because her elderly father swallowed eight triple-A batteries.”
“That’s not so weird,” said R.T. Dibney. “Poor old geezer probably just wanted to keep on going and going and going.”
“Does it count for weird if we catch another stalker breaking into some house in the Hollywood Hills just to take a dump in a celebrity’s toilet?” another wanted to know.
“Sorry, that’s almost a cliché,” Sergeant Murillo said.
Just before leaving, R.T. Dibney lifted the spirits of several of the male officers when he announced to the assembly that a rape report he’d taken the prior evening from a hooker on Sunset Boulevard contained a statement that the rapist had a “huge penis.”
“The dude musta been real proud of his cruel tool,” R.T. Dibney explained to all. “He took several photos of it to show off to the girls on the boulevard. And after he refused to pay and the hooker got lumped up, she grabbed the photos and ran. I got one of them here. Wanna see the big schvantz?”
That generated some interest, and several cops, females included, gathered around R.T. Dibney to have a look. It resulted in high fives and cries of “Yes!” from very relieved male cops who measured up. However, any urologist could’ve told them that the big schvantz was actually in the normal-to-small range. Like theirs.
At 5 P.M. that afternoon, Dewey Gleason, who was once again Ambrose Willis, was too occupied to remember the kid he’d met at Pablo’s Tacos. He was busy being a Realtor. Half the morning and all afternoon, he’d been checking on a dozen foreclosure addresses that Eunice had downloaded. These and thousands like them had been damaging the local economy for months.
The runners he’d chosen for this job were unsavory. He’d needed a professional lock-picking burglar but settled for a pair of lowlife housebreaking tweakers whom he intended to dump as soon as possible. They were waiting in a battered old Plymouth parked at the curb in front of a modest house on Oakwood, in southeast Hollywood. Dewey couldn’t remember their names, but it didn’t matter. When he parked his car and got out, both thirty-something tweakers-one an inked-up Latino with a lip stud, and the other a sleazed-out, nearly toothless, shaky white guy with the sweats-got out of their car to meet him. The white guy gave Dewey a dozen keys.
“Afternoon, Mr. Willis,” he said.
“Afternoon,” Dewey said. “How many houses did you get done?”
“All six,” the tweaker said, scratching his ribs, his neck, trying to reach his back.
Dewey gave him a look, and the tweaker smiled apologe
tically, showing the gaps in his grille, and said, “I’m jonesing. No sense lying to you. I need some ice pretty bad. Real bad, in fact.”
“Let’s see your work,” Dewey said, heading for the door with the tweakers at his heels.
The sweaty tweaker pointed out the key to this house and Dewey tried it in the lock. It worked perfectly and he pushed the door open.
“We changed the front-door lock on all six houses, no problem,” the tweaker said. “Can we get paid now?”
Dewey said, “How did you get in to change the locks?”
“Four had an unlocked window. One had a back door that you could slip with a credit card. One had the back door hanging wide open.”
“Careless,” Dewey said, shaking his head. “Everyone’s so careless these days.”
“Our pay, Mr. Willis,” the sweaty tweaker repeated, and Dewey could almost smell the addiction on him.
Dewey opened his wallet and gave the tweaker $150.
“What’s this?” the tweaker said. “We finished the jobs, changed the locks, and bought you extra keys.”
“That’s what we agreed on, one Franklin and one Grant per house,” Dewey said.
“We did six houses,” the tweaker said.
“So you say,” Dewey replied. “As soon as I inspect them, you’ll get the balance.”
The Latino spoke for the first time. “So we say, man.”
He said it so softly that Dewey was unnerved. Spittle was dripping over the guy’s lip stud, and his eyes had narrowed.
“I’ll meet you at Pablo’s Tacos in three hours,” Dewey said. “After I inspect the others.”
“You ain’t going nowhere with our money,” the Latino said.
This guy didn’t seem to Dewey like the spun-out tweakers he occasionally had to deal with. This guy seemed calm and focused and very serious. “Whadda you say about this?” Dewey said to the sweaty tweaker. “We’ve done business in the past. Whadda you say?”
“I gotta go along with my partner,” the white tweaker said. “I got the joneses real bad. I can’t wait three hours to buy me some crystal.”
Dewey took another look at the Latino, who never blinked those slitted black eyes, and Dewey took seven more $100 bills and one $50 bill from his wallet. “I’m trusting you two,” he said lamely.
“You can trust us, Mr. Willis,” the sweaty tweaker said, snatching the money from Dewey’s hand. “You got more jobs for me, just drive by the taco stand any morning after nine. I’ll be there, looking for work. By the way, the keys were fifty bucks extra.”
Dewey was furious, but he reluctantly gave the tweaker another $50 bill, and as they slouched away from the house, whispering to each other, he had a sudden stab of panic. What if they decided to kill him to take what was left in his wallet? What if that’s what they were whispering about? Dewey was ready to run as fast as he could if they turned and came back at him. He was enormously relieved when they got in their car and drove off.
Dewey quickly locked the door, went to his car to retrieve a “For Rent” sign attached to a wooden stake, a roll of tape, a ball of string with brightly colored pennants attached, and a hammer. The sign said “Brad Simpson Real Estate,” along with one of Dewey’s cell numbers on it. He strung the pennants across the front porch posts and pounded the stake into the desiccated front yard.
Dewey drove to the next house on his list, desperately hoping that the tweaker had not lied to him. But he had. The second set of keys did not work, and he was positive that when he drove to the other four houses, they would still have the original locks in place. Fucking lying tweakers! He hated them all. He hated this work. He hated thinking what Eunice was going to say when she found out he’d been fleeced.
Eunice, ever the anal planner, had made Dewey place the ads in the PennySaver and on craigslist from a computer that he’d rented for an hour at the 24/7 cyber café, where lots of drug dealers and hookers did business online. And because he was nearly computer-hopeless, she’d written detailed instructions for him on how to do it. Eunice later told him she’d quickly received several phone calls from eager prospective tenants who’d jumped at the rental price, so Dewey knew she’d now be impatiently waiting for his call, no doubt on her forty-eighth cigarette of the day.
“Good to go” was all he said when she answered.
She said, “I got several prospects dying to be the first one to see the places. I’ll send a client to destination number one at six thirty.”
“Jesus Christ!” Dewey said. “I’ve had a long day. I’ll meet them tomorrow.”
“People gotta work for a living,” Eunice said testily. “You’ll close the first deal this evening and then wait for number two. I’ll have another good prospect there by seven thirty. The rest you can do tomorrow. Understand?”
He didn’t have the nerve to face a broadside right this minute, so he said, “They’re not all done yet.”
“So?” she said. “Get somebody else to do them if the guys you picked won’t do the job. What’s the problem?”
He was silent for a moment and decided on a partial confession. “They made me pay them in advance for the others. I paid them for the whole job.”
The line was dead for at least ten seconds before she said, “Made you? Made you? How?”
“They made me. That’s all I can say right now.” Then he lost his nerve again and lied. “But they’re gonna go back and finish the jobs. They promised.”
“Goddamn it!” Eunice said. “You accepted the promise of a fucking burglar? You’ll never see them again!”
“I told you they made me!” he said, and now his voice had jumped a few frets and he hated her more for causing it. “It’s gonna be okay!”
“How come nobody ever made Hugo do anything he didn’t wanna do?” she said. “Tell me that!”
“They made him go to jail, didn’t they?” Dewey yelled before clicking off.
It was all Dewey could do to keep from smashing that phone on the sidewalk in front of house number one. He went to his car, put the Brad Simpson Real Estate cards in his shirt pocket, and waited for the first good prospect to arrive for the appointment. Then he heard the chirp from one of the four cell phones he was carrying.
Malcolm Rojas was a half hour late in dialing the number of the man he knew as Bernie Graham. When he got his man on the line, Malcolm said, “I’m sorry I’m late, Mr. Graham. I’ve been real busy.”
“Who is this?” Dewey said.
“Clark. You know, from Pablo’s? You gave me your number?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dewey said. “Did you decide you wanted a job?”
“In the late afternoons and evenings,” Malcolm said, “after I leave my regular job.”
“Gimme your number,” Dewey said. “I’m busy right now, but I’ll phone you later.”
After giving his cell number to his prospective employer, Malcolm put the cell phone in his pocket and it clicked against the box cutter. He was on a residential street a few miles from that apartment with underground parking, on the other side of Hollywood. He wondered why he’d driven over here and why he was watching the women leaving the shopping center. He’d been sitting here in his car for more than an hour. He tried to concentrate on other things, such as the job he might be getting with Bernie Graham. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be making real money, not the shitty wage he was getting from the home improvement center for unpacking boxes.
Thinking of that made him look at his hand. Just before leaving work, he had sliced a tiny laceration near the base of his thumb with his box cutter while opening a crate containing power drills. It was small, but deep enough to sting. The boss had given him the first-aid kit, and he’d sprayed and patched the wound.
Then Malcolm felt it coming again. It always began in his belly and worked its way up until he felt that his face was on fire. His head would throb with it. In comic books, anger was often drawn in red, but his wasn’t red. His was darker, black maybe. He felt almost smothered by dark vapors that m
ade it hard to catch his breath. He could taste his rage, and it tasted like the blood on his hand. It scared him but he was excited by it.
Malcolm had seen dozens of women leave the shopping center and go to their cars, but this was the one he wanted. She drove an old gray Volvo sedan, and she was alone. He followed her, careful to keep a car between them like in the movies, and that part was thrilling. He knew that nothing was going to happen. He was only playing a game, a stalking game. She wasn’t going to pull into an underground parking garage like the last one. It couldn’t happen like that again. He was just fooling around, just passing the time until his anger subsided and he could go home.
Malcolm followed her onto a residential street six blocks east of the Wilshire Country Club. She lived in a bungalow, the type he’d seen in movies about old Hollywood. It was white stucco with a Spanish-tile roof. There was a tiny yard in front and there were lots of other small houses nearby. He parked half a block down the street, leaned back, fingers interlaced behind his head, and closed his eyes. He was just waiting to grow calm again. He needed a good night’s sleep, he thought. Soon he was dozing fitfully.
The first “clients” arrived a few minutes before 6:30 P.M., and Dewey, with his best Realtor’s smile, met them on the front porch, holding the door wide open. They were a young Latino couple, he with a pronounced accent, she with a slight accent and a baby in her stomach. Dewey figured they were no older than twenty, and they were shy.
The husband had the look of a gardener. He wore a khaki shirt and frayed jeans, and there was dirt under his nails. His naturally dark skin showed a decided tan line across his forehead, where his hat was usually worn.
Dewey held out his hand and said, “Welcome, folks! I’m Brad Simpson. Here’s my card.”
The young man shook his hand, and his wife spoke for them, saying, “We’re the Valencias. We spoke to a lady in your office.”
“Yes,” Dewey said. “That was my secretary, Ethel. We’ve had so many inquiries in the last hour. She’s called me on my cell four times. This one is going to be rented quickly. Come on inside.”
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