Everyone had a chuckle except Flotsam and Jetsam. Then Sergeant Murillo said, “I don’t know if she’s blonde. You might check with the sex crimes detail at West Bureau. It might be meaningful or maybe not. He might go after a brunette next time. One thing for sure, though, with a guy like him there will be a next time. He clocked her bad but didn’t rape her.”
“He didn’t cut her?” Dana said.
“He dropped the box cutter during the struggle,” Sergeant Murillo said. “She was lucky. After he was through punching and kicking her, he picked up the weapon and fled. This attack was a lot more violent than his first try, and the victim’s in the hospital. I’m guessing we’ll see a gathering storm of violence with this guy. Both times he struck in the evening, the same time that you’re nice and fresh and ready to rock. It’d be terrific if one of you midwatch units were to stop a likely guy on a shake and come up with a box knife. If you do, I’ll buy you pizza for a week. Hell, make it two weeks.”
“Maybe we’ve got a shot,” Dana said. “Same approximate time of attack. He’s gotta be a local guy.”
Sergeant Murillo said, “If you get him, I will also write you a fabulous attaboy, Dana. Or in your case, an attagirl. And it’ll be so effusive that Napoleon’s letters to Josephine will sound like mash notes in comparison. Now let’s hit the bricks.”
“Napoleon Harris is a good middle linebacker, but I didn’t know he’s a letter writer, did you?” R.T. Dibney said to Mindy Ling. “And who the hell’s Josephine anyways?”
As always, after everyone gathered their gear, they touched the picture frame of the Oracle for luck before they left the roll call room.
TEN
Dewey Gleason wanted to hook up with the new kid, Clark, before day’s end, but that would’ve meant a costume change. He couldn’t do that now because he had to go back to the duplex/office in east Hollywood to meet Creole and Jerzy and buy the new batch of mail that Creole claimed was so excellent. Eunice estimated that only five percent of the mail they bought from runners had any value whatsoever, and less than two percent had identity information that could make significant money for them. Still, she demanded lots of it and bitched if he paid too much to get it. Dewey knew he couldn’t win with her, no matter what.
If it were up to Dewey, he’d just drive around with a laptop and pick up computer signals. He’d talked to lots of identity thieves at the cyber café, tweakers and crackheads mostly, who were doing just that. Then they’d go online and log in on the target’s Internet service provider to access his computer and retrieve information they needed. Since there were so many businesses these days offering free Internet access, they could later log in on one of those ISPs to surf the Web and buy merchandise with stolen card numbers. Most people didn’t bother to change their security codes with their ISPs, so it seemed to Dewey that it only made sense to update the way they were operating.
But would Eunice permit this safer and more sensible approach to their business? Of course not. It was too slow and uncertain for her. And she repeatedly said he wasn’t capable of handling anything technical and could barely use a computer well enough to send e-mail. She preferred that Dewey do things the old-fashioned way, the way Hugo had done it, so she could get her “retirement fund” faster, and never mind the risks he had to take to get it done.
Eunice had lately set a target of $1,000,000 tax-free, after which they would quit the game and go to San Francisco, even though she knew that Dewey hated the city. He recalled an incident back when they were still sleeping in the same room. He was singing in the shower and changed the lyric of an old standard. He’d crooned, “Hate San Francisco, it’s cold and it’s damp, that’s why the lady is a tramp!”
Then he’d dried off, grinned at Eunice, who was lying in bed, smoking, and said to her, “That’s the way Rodgers and Hart shoulda written the song. That’s the way I sang it when I did little theater in Santa Barbara. That was a great gig. Santa Barbara’s really a nice town.”
Eunice had snuffed out her cigarette and said, “You wanna stay in this hot smog belt after we earn the retirement fund? It’s fine with me. Because Momma left her heart in San Francisco and can very easily leave your ass in Hollywood. Let’s hear you sing that one, Tony Bennett.”
It was an erection killer and the beginning of what he was certain would be an attempt by her to squeeze him out of the big payoff when the target was reached. Moreover, Dewey no longer believed he could stay out of jail long enough to accomplish her goal. He felt like the bomber pilots in the old war movies who had to fly during daylight hours over Germany, knowing that survival odds were getting longer with each mission flown. He was now ready to settle for far less than a million bucks, especially if he could ever devise a scheme where it went to him.
In the locker room prior to roll call, Jetsam resisted all attempts from his partner to find out what had transpired at Malibu Beach the morning before with the waitress from IHOP. While Sergeant Murillo was reading the crimes to the watch, Flotsam was relentlessly chattering in his partner’s ear to no effect.
“Come on, dude,” Flotsam whispered. “Something musta happened out there on the foamy for you to go all lock-jawed. Dial me in!”
Sergeant Murillo looked up from the reports at Flotsam and said, “Would you mind discussing surf reports later. We’ve got a roll call to get through here.”
It wasn’t until they’d been out on patrol for thirty minutes that Jetsam relented and said, “Okay, bro, you carried the load when I went home early two nights ago, so I guess I oughtta tell you what went down with the IHOP hottie yesterday.”
“Go, dude!” Flotsam said. “I got my ears on.”
“Okay, bro, but I gotta tell ya, I’m noodled. I been beat down and rag-dolled and launched by kamikaze waves in my time, but it ain’t nothing compared to how that salty sister cranked me. And taking last night off didn’t revive me.”
“Are we talking chocka coolaphonic nectar sex?” Flotsam asked excitedly.
“No, bro, she showed up with a Barney in a sausage sling!” Jetsam said.
“What?” Flotsam cried, almost rear-ending a car in front of him on Highland Avenue.
“She tells me he’s her cousin, out here on summer break from college in Kansas or Missouri or some fucking place where there ain’t no ocean. And she apologizes and says she had no choice but to bring him, and would I, like, teach him some basic surfing maneuvers.”
It was almost too grotesque for Flotsam to contemplate. “A shoobie in a Speedo? And she expected a real Kahuna to be seen on the same beach with him?”
“Roger that,” Jetsam said. “A DayGlo green Speedo.”
“Dude,” Flotsam said with genuine sympathy. “I feel ya.”
“First thing I did was I took that Benny aside and I go, ‘Bro, you try to go out there amongst a horde of surf rats wearing that DayGlo banana hammock, and they just might banzai you with their boards and send you home to Iowa or wherever you come from in wires and plaster casts.’ I ask him if he didn’t bring some board trunks to wear on the beach and he tells me everybody wears Speedos where he comes from. And I go, ‘Peachy, bro, but this ain’t the Piney Woods YMCA swimming pool, or summer fun at Lake Suck-a-hot-one. This is Malibu-fucking-California!’ ”
“I can’t adjust the focus here,” Flotsam said. “That slammin’ server from IHOP told us she surfs twice a month. She oughtta know the minimum fucking dress code for admittance.”
“Maybe you just shouldn’t trust someone who wears rings on her index fingers,” Jetsam said. “And this dorky cousin of hers, he don’t understand basic English. He blanks about half the time I’m talking to him. So I take our breakfast bunny aside and I go, ‘Okay, I’ll put your cousin out on a board and slip him into a nice gentle chubbie that don’t have much of a break, but if them surf Nazis out there start looking at him with a kill-the-hodad death ray, I’m towing him back to sandy safety.”
“So did you?” Flotsam asked.
“Yeah, I put him on the old
log I keep in my truck and I rolled him around in the foamy. He tried standing up a few times, and he’s all splashing and squealing and I’m thinking to myself, Why me? I drive to Oxnard twice a month to visit my mother and to Pacoima to visit the old man. And I send checks to both my ex-wives, mostly on time, even though the kid I thought was mine turned out to have the DNA of my ex-wife’s dentist, who drilled into a lot more than her root canals. And I still stop and play Frisbee with my former girlfriend’s dog, even though I can’t say hello to my former girlfriend without getting spit at. So I, like, try to live a decent life, bro. What I wanna know is, why does God treat me like a butt crumb?”
“Dude,” Flotsam said, “sometimes it just seems like God takes a day off to go to the track or something.”
“Anyways, when I think it can’t get no bleaker, the squid manages to stand halfway up on a mini-bump and he starts screaming, ‘Cowabunga! Cowabunga!’ ”
“I’m speechless, dude!” Flotsam said. “Were you soooooo tempted to throw a choke hold on him?”
“Bro, I was, like, half a heartbeat from C-clamping his scrawny neck and letting him drift on down to San Pedro. But I see this pair of water monkeys paddling their boards right at us and I’m all, like, ‘Okay, crusher, you and me’re about to get spiked by a pair of seriously ugly sado creeps, so let’s push the off button.’ ”
“You are truly lucky to be alive, dude,” Flotsam said. “Bobbing on the briny unarmed with some spazzed-out hodad yelling, ‘Cowabunga.’ Next time get a Navy SEALs killing knife and Velcro it to your ankle.”
“There ain’t gonna be no next time,” Jetsam said, “After we cruised on back to the IHOP honey, we find her all stretched out on these humongous beach towels under a big umbrella. But now she’s all stripped down from her shorts and jersey into a sort of, like, old-school bikini.”
“What, no thong?” Flotsam said. “That ain’t right, dude.”
“The retro bikini ain’t the half of it,” Jetsam said. “So we, like, sit there, and the cousin’s all fired because he thinks he’s ready now to star in The Endless Summer, Part Four, and then I catch a break, or so I think. The cousin says he’s gotta be bumping on home, and I almost stand up and cheer. Turns out they came in two cars, and after, like, another eternity of surf questions, he bounces. The last thing he yells at me is, ‘Farewell, O great wave rider! Farewell!’ And at last I’m alone with my bodacious babelini.”
“Oh, man!” Flotsam said. “This is the good part!”
“Just wait,” Jetsam said. “She like, knew she owed me big time for what she put me through with cousin Horace, or whatever the fuck his name is, and she could see I’m all stoked from looking at her voluptuaries. And my inner slut is now totally in charge. And pretty soon I’m all sprawled there on the towel under the umbrella kissing her shoulder like somebody on the Lifetime channel.”
“Wooka, dude!” Flotsam said. “Now you’re rockin’!”
“So by and by I’m sort of eager for, like, harmless foreplay, given that our GPS location is not totally secluded. And then I find out why no thong bikini.”
“Why is that?”
“She just had butt implants, and the incisions ain’t healed up enough.”
Flabbergasted, Flotsam said, “You mean that booty ain’t the babe’s?”
“No, it belongs to Dr. Strangelove or whoever the fuck gave it to her,” Jetsam said.
“Then what?” Flotsam said, fearing the worst.
“I’m all heading upstairs on those magnificent mammaries, and she goes, ‘Cease and desist, surfer boy!’ ”
“Don’t tell me the bimbo decided to play Our Lady of Malibu?”
“No, the problem was, her saline or silicone or whatever they used to construct her implants was all leaking. And she’s suing the plastic surgeon and can’t stand to have them touched, let alone fondled.”
“I gotta feeling this is gonna get worse,” Flotsam said, getting sympathy pangs and gingerly feeling his own breasts.
“Roger that,” Jetsam said. “Because by now I’m scared to touch any more of her below her chin for fear of what I might find that ain’t really hers. Or like, maybe some part of her will fall off in my hand! And now she’s all laying there with her eyes shut, and I’m, like, confused, sort of. So I say to myself, Go for it. And I pounce like a panther, and she is the recipient of one of those mega-long, steamy-hot, summertime movie kisses that the women in the chick flicks all swoon over.”
“I never could see that part of the game,” Flotsam said with a shrug.
“Me neither,” Jetsam said, “but I locked on because her lips are, like, Scarlett Johansson-huge. Think of two all-meat tire tubes pressed together. And bro, I kissed and I nibbled and I licked with the darting tongue of a cobra! And then I started some sinister sucking on her lower lip with mucho enthusiasmo. But when I got no applause, no response, no nothing, I go, ‘Don’t you like this?’ And she goes, ‘Like what?’ And I go, ‘That ain’t no casual kiddie kiss you just got, wahini. That was cooleoleol kissing designed to propel a lucky chickie to an advanced state of beach blanket bliss.’ ”
“And what did she say to that, dude?” Flotsam asked. “Though I’m almost scared to hear the answer.”
Jetsam shook his head slowly and said, “She tells me that her lips are so plumped with implants gone bad, she didn’t feel a thing. And that when she gets through with her lawsuit, her plastic surgeon’s gonna be dressing as Alvin the Chipmunk and posing for tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.” Jetsam sighed then and added, “Bro, I ain’t got my mind in the game tonight. I am like, way, way woefully noodled.”
They rode for a while in silence, and finally it was Flotsam who said somberly, “Dude, we all know that Mother Nature is a pitiless cunt.”
“A heartless bitch, bro,” Jetsam concurred.
Waxing philosophical, Flotsam added, “But when a person chooses a surgical body shop to rebuild their own chassis, it’s, like, bound to wreak collateral damage on innocent bystanders like you. Only one thing we can say about Spare-parts Suzie and your tale of terrible despair.”
Flotsam paused and looked toward Jetsam, who took the cue. And they uttered the station mantra in unison: “This… is… fucking… Hollywood!”
Dewey got to the duplex/office just after 6 P.M. He hadn’t had any jobs for the Mexicans in the last few days, so the place was unoccupied. He unlocked the door and had to sit there and wait twenty minutes before Creole and Jerzy showed up with a disappointingly small bag of mail.
“That’s all you have?” he said in his German accent when they entered, looking almost as tired as he was.
“Yeah, but it’s good stuff, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said, even though he didn’t know what the hell they’d grabbed from the curbside mailboxes that afternoon.
“It isn’t even sorted,” their boss said.
“We been busy lately,” Tristan said. “All we had time to do was toss the junk mail. I took a quick look and I know you’ll be happy with some of the stuff we got for you.”
Since Jakob Kessler never used obscenities, Dewey didn’t tell them what he was thinking when he withdrew $100 from his wallet and grudgingly handed it over. “And now I would like to go home,” he said.
“So would we, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said as he quickly left the apartment, with his partner shuffling along behind him.
They were in Tristan’s old Chevy Caprice half a block away and spotted their employer exit the apartment, set the dead bolt, and walk to his car as though his feet were killing him, as indeed they were with those three-inch lifts in his shoes.
There was still plenty of daylight left by the time they were three cars behind him on Sunset Boulevard, and Jerzy said to Tristan, “I don’t know what the fuck this superspy shit is gonna do for us.”
“I don’t either,” Tristan said. “But I got real good instincts, wood.”
They almost lost his car when, after turning north on Cahuenga, their target turned quickly west on Franklin A
venue. Tristan caught the red light and slammed on his brakes too late. They were in the middle of the intersection, initially blocked from a left turn by swift moving southbound traffic. Tristan made it all stop for him by making a reckless left turn that got brakes screeching and horns honking.
“Fuck!” Tristan said. “We lost him.”
After barely escaping a head-on, Tristan was driving westbound on Franklin, when he encountered a stalled car half a block ahead. A dozen other cars were trapped behind it in traffic, their employer’s car among them.
“We got him!” Tristan said, getting into the queue of cars that were waiting for the stalled car to move. Three Latinos who looked like gardeners got out of the car and pushed it to the curb.
Tristan drove past the traffic snarl just in time to see Jakob Kessler’s car pull into a wide driveway, and when the gate opened, it continued under the upscale apartment building into the parking garage.
And that was when he heard a horn tooting behind him and looked up to see a light bar flashing.
“Shit!” he said and pulled over.
A moment later he was looking into the face of Dana Vaughn, while Hollywood Nate walked up on the passenger side of the car.
“License and registration, please,” Dana said to Tristan.
“Did I do something wrong, Officer?” Tristan asked, deciding whether to show his real license or the bogus license he’d used to rent the van.
“Nothing except blow a red light and make a left turn against oncoming traffic that almost caused a head-on collision as well as a couple rear-enders. You were very lucky.”
Tristan decided not to fuck with this bitch, so he gave her his legitimate driver’s license and reached into the glove box for his registration. That’s when Hollywood Nate made his presence known by coming right up to Jerzy and peering over his shoulder into the glove compartment as Tristan removed the registration and handed it to Dana.
“It’ll be a few minutes, Mr. Hawkins,” Dana said. Returning to the car, she checked on Tristan for wants and warrants, ready to write the citation for the red light and the left turn.
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