Hollywood Moon hs-3

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Some dude at the mall,” Malcolm said. “He told me he wanted change for cigarettes and when I said, ‘Get a job,’ he suckered me. Man, I really kicked his ass.” Malcolm showed the knuckle abrasions to the forklift driver.

  The forklift driver, a young Latino, said, “What was he, a mallate?”

  “Yeah,” Malcolm said.

  “Those South L.A. niggers,” the forklift driver said. “They take the subway to Hollywood for dope and pussy. You’re lucky he didn’t pull a blade or something.”

  “He won’t even be pulling his cock,” Malcolm said. “I beat him real bad.”

  The forklift driver grinned and gave Malcolm a thumbs-up before driving away.

  Malcolm’s knuckles were hurting more than the small contusion under his eye. It was hard to remember exactly what had happened after he’d crawled forward onto her chest. He’d felt those big tits beneath him, and he was taking out his cock when she’d gotten her hands under his thighs and actually lifted him high enough for her to crawl out from between his legs. Then she was behind him, scrambling to her feet.

  He’d spun and tackled her, and she went down and started screaming. She kept screaming even after he punched her, how many times, he couldn’t remember. He did recall picking up the box cutter after she’d knocked it out of his hand. He remembered exactly how he’d been going to swipe it across her throat just as he’d swiped it across a thousand boxes he’d unpacked. But as he was ready to do it, he’d heard a car door slam and he panicked. He’d leaped up, run to the door, and was sprinting down the street to his car before he realized that the slamming car door came from the driveway next to hers, and that whoever had done it was already inside their house.

  Malcolm had found himself thinking about that encounter a dozen times since it happened. Sometimes he tried to remember every detail, sometimes the broad strokes. It made his palms sweat when he thought about it. He knew that this new rage within him was very dangerous, and he knew that he should try to get it under control. If he had money, real money, he could afford things to help him, like a hooker. Maybe a hooker would give him what he needed and he wouldn’t feel so angry all the time. Malcolm took out his cell phone and dialed the number of the man he’d met at Pablo’s Tacos.

  Dewey Gleason as Jakob Kessler was on Hollywood Boulevard across from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, sitting at a table, sipping a mediocre cappuccino, and waiting for Tristan and Jerzy. It was amazing how many Street Characters bothered to come out in the morning hours, but there they were, even duplicates. There were two Chewbaccas, and Dewey wondered if either was the one who’d gotten his ass thrown in jail last year. The newspapers had fun with it, saying that Chewie had crossed over to the dark side.

  He saw a Spider-Man and a Batman, this one looking even fatter than the one who’d recently gotten the crap beaten out of him by a panhandler half his size. That dustup made the news as well. He didn’t see any of the Marilyn Monroes this early in the day, and there weren’t a lot of tourists with cameras, certainly not the coachloads of Asians who really spent the bucks posing with, and tipping, the Street Characters. Dewey suddenly had a dreadful passing thought that without Eunice he could possibly find himself someday inside one of those horrid costumes, surviving on tips. The last stop of a failed actor. Dewey Gleason as a diminutive Darth Vader? Even on this hot summer day it made him shiver, and he shoved the image from his mind.

  The chirping of one of the cell phones brought him back into the moment, and as soon as he figured out which one of his characters the call was for, he answered, “Bernie Graham speaking.”

  “Mr. Graham, it’s Clark,” the voice said.

  Clark, he thought. Clark. Then it came to him. Yeah, the dimpled Latino kid from the taco stand. “How you doing, Clark?”

  “Fine, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’m ready to go to work.”

  “Right,” Dewey said. “You have a day job, as I recall.”

  “If I could make enough money with you, I’d quit the day job,” Malcolm said.

  “I like your style,” Dewey said. “Okay, I’ve got your number and I’ll call you later today. Maybe I can use you this evening or tomorrow evening.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Dewey shut the cell and checked his watch. What Eunice could accomplish without ever leaving their apartment never failed to intimidate him. He reckoned that his grudging awe for her abilities helped to keep him in bondage, as well as his dread of the future without her support. He had an address written on a Post-it Note that she told him to give his runners when they showed up.

  After leaving home that morning, Dewey had personally checked out that Post-it Note address in Los Feliz. He had a three-hour window of opportunity when there was absolutely nobody home in the beautiful two-story Mediterranean-style house. The home itself, built in the 1920s heyday of old Hollywood, would arouse no suspicion from the delivery men, since the expensive merchandise was being turned over to a well-dressed man standing on the porch. Dewey wished he didn’t have to be the man to take that risk. He wished he had runners who could pull it off for him, but of course that could never be. At that moment he spotted his runners.

  If Eunice could see Jerzy Szarpowicz, she’d crap icicles. There he was, galumphing along Hollywood Boulevard beside his lithe and handsome sidekick. Jerzy was wearing a baseball cap, his usual black T-shirt that barely covered his bulging belly, and baggy jeans that were falling off his fat ass. Nothing could be done with a guy like that except to use him as a mail thief and Dumpster-diver.

  Creole had possibilities. Dewey even liked his dreads because they made him look more like a Hollywood guy, an aspiring young actor maybe. And Creole could talk, whereas Jerzy just grunted. Dewey regretted he’d ever used Jakob Kessler with these two. Bernie Graham or even Ambrose Willis would’ve been better, and certainly easier on Dewey, especially on these hot days when Jakob Kessler had to wear a suit, dress shirt, and necktie.

  The lifts in his shoes were already hurting Dewey’s ankles, but he stood up rather than letting the runners sit. He said in his German accent, “Good morning, gentlemen. Walk me to my car.”

  His car was in the large parking structure on Orange Drive, and as they passed among the arriving throngs of summer tourists, Dewey handed Creole the Post-it Note and said, “Did you rent a suitable delivery van?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said.

  “Did you have any trouble with the driver’s license when you rented the van?”

  “We coulda,” Jerzy offered. “The pitcher on the license you gave him had me worried. I mean, it sorta looks like Creole, but with the glasses on in the pitcher and his dreads airbrushed out, it didn’t look too much like him today.”

  Tristan shot Jerzy one of those you-dumb-fucking-Polack looks, and sure enough, their boss jumped all over it.

  Tristan heard the man say, “What? You didn’t wear the glasses when you rented the van? And why were the dreadlocks showing? Don’t you understand that there are reasons to alter your appearance?”

  “He forgot the glasses,” Jerzy said as they arrived at the parking structure. “And his little pinhead looked funny in my hat, so he didn’t wanna wear it. There he was with his dreads hangin’ out.” Only then did Jerzy notice his partner glaring at him.

  “I want my people to obey orders,” Tristan heard his boss say in that Nazi accent of his. “Without discipline you jeopardize our work. We could’ve just let you use your own driver’s license and had you assume the risk that would entail.”

  “It was just one of them-those things, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Don’t worry about it, boss,” Jerzy said. “The guy at the car rental was a fuckin’ moron.”

  Both listeners allowed Jerzy’s remark about someone else being a moron to pass without comment. Then Dewey said, “The last phone call from my office said that according to the tracking number, the delivery truck will arrive between tw
elve thirty and one P.M. You will park a block away and wait. When the truck drops the merchandise, you will drive quickly to the address on the Post-it Note I gave you, park at the curb in front of the house, and load the merchandise as quickly as possible. Then you will follow me to the storage facility. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said.

  This was the part that Dewey Gleason hated, waiting for the arrival of a delivery. What if some very alert employee had somehow flagged the skimmed credit card that bought the plasma TV with a sixty-five-inch screen, as well as the big Sony home theater system? What if the check Eunice wrote for the two computers-a bogus check she promised Dewey would sail through the Los Feliz resident’s account that she “had thoroughly researched” online-had also been deemed suspicious? What if some cops from the LAPD’s Commercial Crimes Division were in the back of the delivery truck, ready to bust anybody taking delivery? Dewey’s white dress shirt was damp and sticking to his back and chest when he arrived at the Los Feliz address. He could feel the sweat running down his rib cage.

  Dewey rang the bell and knocked at the door just as a precaution. As expected, there was no answer. He strolled out to the street to see if he could spot the van belonging to Creole and Jerzy, but it was nowhere in sight, and that worried him. He looked at his watch and removed his key ring from his pocket. The hand holding the key ring was trembling and his palms were damp. There was nothing to do but wait, since the imbeciles who checked the tracking numbers at the delivery services were never reliable.

  Dewey felt his heart banging and his bowels rumbling when he heard the grinding of gears as a white delivery van began crawling up the steep residential street. This kind of anxiety wasn’t worth it anymore. By the time he paid expenses and sold the merchandise to his usual receiver, he figured he’d be lucky to net $1,500 from this whole gag. One thing was certain: If men with badges leaped from the van after Dewey took delivery, he was going to offer a deal the moment they Mirandized him. He was going to ask the detectives to phone the DA’s office, and in exchange for a promise of a plea bargain, he was going to give up Eunice and every runner they’d ever used. He would do all this right after he crapped his pants at the sight of them.

  The Latino driver parked the delivery van in front of the house and got out with a clipboard. He quickly came up the walkway, seeing Dewey standing at the front door with a set of keys in his hand. Another trucker, this one a younger black man, got out of the van on the passenger side.

  “Are you Mr. Harold Phillips?” the Latino said, looking again at the name on the delivery form.

  Losing his German accent, Dewey said, “You caught me just in time. I’d gotten tired of waiting for you and was leaving.”

  “Sorry,” the driver said. “We got hit with a couple of extra stops we hadn’t planned for.”

  “It’s okay,” Dewey said. “You’re here now.”

  Dewey signed “Harold Phillips” to the trucker’s invoice, and the driver said, “One more signature.”

  “Of course,” Dewey said, signing the second invoice.

  Then both men walked back to the truck and opened the rear doors. No men with badges jumped out. Dewey looked both ways on the street but still didn’t see Creole and Jerzy. The delivery team was carrying a Sony forty-six-inch HDTV up the three steps, when Dewey said, “Just leave everything on the front porch.” Then for their benefit, Dewey spoke into his cell phone to an imaginary installer, and said, “Roger? Are you and Slim on the way now?” A pause and then, “See you in fifteen. Everything’s here.”

  “The front porch?” the Latino said. “Don’t you want this stuff inside the house?”

  “I’ve got my geeks coming. They’re gonna set up the plasma in the den, a Sony in the living room, and the other in my bedroom. Just haul everything to the porch and they’ll bring it in as needed. Easier for them, easier for you.”

  The Latino shrugged and both men returned to the truck. It took four trips up the long walkway before everything was on the porch, including another Sony and a Pioneer sixty-inch plasma HDTV. Then the Latino hesitated, as though something wasn’t quite right here. He said, “Why don’t you let us — ”

  Dewey distracted him with a $20 bill, saying, “Thanks, guys. Stop and get yourselves a sandwich on me.”

  Both deliverymen smiled and thanked Dewey, then hurried back to the truck and were gone. Within seconds Dewey saw his runners driving down from somewhere near the top of the hill. They parked and got out quickly.

  “You had me worried,” Dewey said. “I couldn’t see your car.”

  “You’re not supposed to see our car, boss,” Tristan said. “That’s the idea.”

  “Let’s get to work,” Dewey said. “Our window of opportunity is closing.”

  After having loaded the merchandise into the rented van, Tristan and Jerzy were following their employer’s car to the storage facility in Reseda, when Tristan said, “When we got to that house, did you notice somethin’ funny about Kessler?”

  Jerzy, who’d been dozing in the passenger seat, said, “Naw, he looked like the same butt-tight Nazi he always looks like.”

  “He was way nervous, man,” Tristan said.

  “Why not?” Jerzy said. “The fucker jist raided somebody’s credit-card account for several grand and had some sweet fuckin’ electronics delivered to the sucker’s crib. Didn’t you feel your asshole wink every time a car drove up the street?”

  Tristan said, “Yeah, but when he was nervous, he didn’t sound so much like Schwarzenegger. In fact, he sounded like a regular old citizen of the U.S. of A.”

  “What’s your point, dude?” Jerzy said.

  “That made me check him out a little closer, and I don’t think his hair looked the same. His forehead looked higher.”

  “So, maybe the old fuck wears a rug,” Jerzy said.

  “He didn’t look so old today neither,” Tristan said.

  “So he got a good night’s sleep.”

  “I think he wears a disguise when we’re with him.”

  Jerzy said, “I don’t give a fuck if he decides to dress up like Wonder Woman and hustle tourists on Hollywood Boulevard. Jist so he pays us for the jobs.”

  “It might be worth our while to find out who he is.”

  “For what?”

  “You never know. How about we follow him home and see where it’s at?”

  “In this fuckin’ van?”

  “Just leave it to me,” Tristan said.

  A ten-foot-high chain-link fence enclosed the storage facility, with wire strung across the top of it. The runners watched their boss stop outside and punch in an access code to open the car gate. They followed him in and waited while he stopped and presented his ID to a woman in an office adjacent to the storage rooms. After he returned to his car, they followed him to the rear of the facility, where he waved them to a parking area.

  While they were unloading the van, their boss unlocked a double-size storage room and began shoving aside other crates and boxes to make room for the new merchandise. It only took a few minutes to carry it inside, and while his two employees were surveying the other stacks of crates to see what they might contain, their employer began counting currency he’d removed from his wallet.

  “Two hundred for each of you and one hundred for the van rental,” he said.

  “We got somethin’ more for you, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said, glancing at his partner, who looked perplexed.

  “And what might that be, Creole?”

  “Some very good mail. We worked the hills yesterday and did some Dumpster-diving outside a law firm on Wilshire Boulevard.”

  “Since I didn’t order that service, how much are you expecting me to pay?”

  “Real cheap. A hundred takes all of it.”

  They waited while their boss pondered before he said, “All right, let’s have a look at it.”

  “It’s not here. It’s in my car,” Tristan said. “Can we meet you back at the office late this afternoon
?”

  Dewey hadn’t planned on going there, and Eunice still hadn’t worked the last batch of mail they’d received, but the price was right, so he said, “All right, meet me there at six o’clock.”

  “We’ll see you there at six,” Tristan said.

  When they were driving out the gate of the storage facility, Jerzy said to Tristan, “Now, what’s this all about? We ain’t got no new mail for him.”

  “We will have,” Tristan said. “We’re gonna make a quick run through the Hollywood Hills and grab what we can.”

  “Fuck you!” Jerzy said. “What, for a lousy Franklin we’re gonna risk our ass again?”

  “Trust me, wood,” Tristan said. “After we sell him the mail, we’re gonna tail him right to his crib. And that’s gonna pay off in robo-bucks. I may jist take me a trip back to New Orleans to meet my cousins. My momma and me left there when I was five years old and came to L.A.”

  Jerzy mulled it for a moment. He hated to admit it, but this little nigger was smarter than he thought. Finally he said, “Whadda people in New Orleans do in their spare time besides drown?”

  There was one crime that Sergeant Murillo read at roll call that got everyone’s attention. After he went over the information concerning yesterday’s attack on a woman who lived in the southeast corner of Hollywood Division, he said, “Of course, this has to be the same box cutter suspect. The victim in this one gave a description that matched, but she didn’t see the guy as an Arab. She thought he looked Hispanic, but she couldn’t say for sure. The box cutter nails it.”

  Dana said, “Sergeant, is this victim middle-aged? And do you happen to know if she’s a blonde?”

  Hollywood Nate jerked a thumb in the direction of the surfer team sitting on his right and said, “These days, who isn’t blond?”