Hollywood Moon hs-3

by Joseph Wambaugh

  She felt his fingernails again and the blindfold was pulled and twisted and finally torn away, along with some of her hair, but again she did not utter a sound. She looked up at the naked lightbulb in the ceiling fixture, blinked several times, and then looked at Jerzy’s face. It seemed like his dilated eyes were all pupil with no iris showing. She turned her head for a glance around the empty room.

  “It could use a woman’s touch,” Jerzy said. “But I don’t think you’ll be here long enough, one way or the other.”

  That was when he’d gone to his leather jacket crumpled on the floor and removed a plastic bindle from a zip pocket and shaken several capsules into his large, filthy hand. He’d swallowed them down with a pint of gin from the other pocket. When he raised the bottle, his T-shirt was hiked, and she could see a gun inside the waistband of his jeans.

  “Please unchain one hand so I can smoke on my own,” she’d said.

  That was the moment. He’d reached for her left wrist, but she’d jerked her right hand forward and said, “This one’s killing me.”

  It made no difference to Jerzy which hand he freed, and he’d unlocked the padlock that joined the link around her right wrist, the one that was so tightly cinched that she knew she had no chance of slipping out of it. But when Creole had linked her left wrist, he’d put the padlock through the chain one link looser, and Eunice thought there was maybe a chance with that one.

  Shaking his head in admiration, Jerzy tossed the padlock onto the floor and said, “If I ain’t careful, I’m gonna ask you to divorce Bernie and marry me!”

  When her right wrist was free, she lowered her arm painfully and said, “Thank you, Jerzy. I don’t think I’ll be looking for another husband, but I will definitely be eliminating that son of a bitch who put you up to this. Can I have that cigarette, please?”

  Jerzy Szarpowicz didn’t know what the hell to say to this woman now! So she’d figured out that her old man was in on the gag! He could hardly wait to hear what she said next. He walked over to the kitchen counter to her purse, and she only had a few seconds when his back was to her, but she used her right hand to manipulate the chain encircling her left wrist. She thought she just might be able to pull free. It was possible!

  He dropped the purse beside the bed, and when he gave her a cigarette and lit it, she took the biggest pull on a smoke that he’d ever seen, and she said, “Bless you, Jerzy.”

  “Yeah, well, you better hold your prayers till we talk.”

  Between desperate puffs, inflating her lungs with smoke, Eunice watched the downers already having an effect on Jerzy, despite the meth he’d smoked.

  “How close are you to Creole?” she asked.

  “We ain’t in love,” Jerzy said.

  “I wanna make a deal with you and you alone,” Eunice said.

  “Ain’t you takin’ advantage of my kindness with all your wants?”

  Eunice said, “If you will kill my husband, I’ll give you three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s all I’ve got. If you wanna share it with Creole, that’s up to you. But I have a feeling you’re too smart for that.”

  Jerzy took one of the cigarettes from Eunice’s pack, lit it, stood up and started pacing, and said, “Fuck me! You are one evil-eyed, cold-blooded, backstabbing devil-woman!”

  “I know I’m in no position to make deals,” she said. “I’ll lead you to the money this morning, after you kill Bernie for me. I want him dead.”

  “Any other requests?” he said. “You want me to run down to the market and get you some peppermint ice cream?”

  “There’s a key,” she said. “It’s in my apartment. I’ll tell you where I hid it. Take a taxi there. Deal with Creole any way you want, but kill that son of a bitch I’m married to. Use your knife to keep it quiet. Bring the key back here, unchain me, and I’ll drive with you to the storage facility where the money is.”

  Jerzy was wishing he hadn’t mixed the downers with the glass. His head was spinning and he was having trouble following the conversation. Then he said the one thing she hoped he would not say. “Why don’t you jist tell me where the key is, and I’ll phone Creole and he’ll bring it here along with Bernie. And after you tell Bernie how to get the money outta storage, I’ll take the money away from him at the storage place and kill him for you. I never liked the motherfucker anyways.”

  “Won’t work,” she said quickly. “Nobody can get into the storage facility but me. There’s a real security guard in the office where you check in. He’s even armed. He’ll never let Bernie or anyone else in there without me. Is it safe to kill Bernie here in front of Creole? Will he permit it?”

  “You think I’m gonna leave you here alone while I taxi to your crib?” he said.

  “There’s nothing I could do,” she said. “You can chain up both my wrists to the bed and tape my mouth again. But I wish you wouldn’t. My lips hurt like hell.”

  Eunice forced herself to breathe normally as she watched him thinking. She was counting on his greed and the fact that his brain was drug-addled. Nearly a minute passed before he spoke.

  “Where’s the key?” he said.

  “There’s a little pocket that I sewed in the drape over the window in his bedroom. The key is in it. You could get it without Creole even knowing about it.”

  “You mean the key is right there beside his bed?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “The last place he’d ever look.”

  “A devil-woman,” he said admiringly. “And where’s the storage place?”

  “It’s called North Hollywood Storage,” she said, unable to come up with the name of an existing storage facility other than the one from which she was kidnapped. This was a hazardous moment for her if Jerzy was smart enough to pick up his cell to look for a phone number under that name. “It’s not too far from our apartment. I put a lotta furniture in that storage room to make it look legit. The money’s in the dresser drawers.”

  “I gotta figure out how to make all this work,” Jerzy croaked. “Right now I can’t think too good.”

  It was then that he’d said he needed to take a nap to clear his head.

  When he awoke three hours later, Eunice could clearly see dawn through the cracks in the blinds and in those three hours, she’d formulated her plan. He snuffled and snorted and dragged himself to his feet and stumbled to the bathroom to urinate.

  When he came back, Eunice said, “Are Creole and my husband at our apartment?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Eunice saw the ox nodding, still half asleep, and she thought it was now or never. She said, “God, I gotta go to the bathroom bad. I’m about to poop my pants.”

  “I hope you ain’t too modest,” Jerzy said, “because the door stays open. And make it quick.” Then he unlocked the padlock on her left wrist.

  Eunice stood up with a groan, bowed her back and rotated her hips, and walked slowly to the bathroom. On the way, she saw bread and a mayonnaise jar on the kitchen counter. Jerzy stood outside the door, glancing inside while Eunice, actually constipated from stress and fear, gave her own acting performance, grunts and all. Needing an eye-opener, Jerzy shuffled over to his leather jacket on the floor and took a swig from the gin bottle.

  When she was finished, she washed her hands, leaving them wet, and returned to the bed. She put her left wrist back into position and kept her right hand down by her hip, the hand with the bar of soap in it, which she slid beneath her wrinkled dress. She held up her left wrist to be chained.

  As soon as he clicked the padlock through the same link as Creole had used before, she said, “Call a taxi and get over there. Ring them on the gate phone, and when they let you inside, act like you’re panicked. Say you killed me accidentally and everyone better get outta town. Get Creole out of there somehow and then kill my husband and get that key. Taxi back here and we’ll go together to the storage facility to pick up my husband’s car for the rest of our business.”

  “It might jist work,” Jerzy said, looking at
his buck knife.

  “It will,” she said. “But you better call Creole now and say something to keep them from driving over here. The element of surprise is what’s gonna make it all happen for you.”

  “What should I say?” Jerzy asked, and Eunice believed she almost owned him now. She was thirsty and knew he must be parched, given all the booze and drugs he’d ingested.

  “Tell Creole to stay there and wait for your call. Say that you might be on the verge of getting the info but that I’m a tough cookie.”

  “You got that part right,” he said.

  “Okay, Jerzy, you saw Bernie do his acting bits often enough. Let’s see you do it, but first, please get me some water.”

  He went to the kitchen and came back with a plastic bottle of water, removed the cap, and handed it to her. When she drank, it seemed to remind him how thirsty he was, and he returned to the kitchen for another. When he did, she poured water on her left hand and wrist.

  He returned and retrieved his cell from his jacket and speed-dialed, and then he did just what she was depending on. He turned away and walked to the kitchen to give his performance without an audience. Dewey would have stayed there, relishing an observer, but Jerzy was not an actor, and she knew instinctively he’d want privacy.

  She heard him say to his partner, “I need more time. She’s bad, man. Her old man’s a pussy, but she ain’t. Gimme another hour.”

  And while he talked, she soaped up her left hand and wrist, moving herself into more of a sitting than reclining position so that he would not see the soap slime running down her bare arm. There was one more movement she was depending on: a bowel movement, a real one this time. His. She needed him in that bathroom. But as she twisted and pulled, her hand was not slippery enough. It wasn’t working!

  He came back from the kitchen and said, “Okay, I gotta call a cab, and I’m gonna have to chain you up real good and tape your mouth. Sorry about that.”

  “Jerzy,” Eunice said. “I’m about to faint from hunger. Before you go, can I have something to eat? Anything.”

  “All we got is some bread and a package of salami.”

  “That sounds great,” Eunice said. “Please bring it here.”

  Jerzy went to the kitchen and came back with the package of meat he hadn’t opened and the loaf of bread.

  “You wouldn’t have anything to put on the bread, would you?” she asked.

  “I got a jar of mayo in there,” he said.

  “That’s perfect,” Eunice said.

  When he came back with the jar of mayonnaise and a plastic butter knife, she’d already torn open the meat package and was making a sandwich. “Would you like one?” she asked.

  “Naw, I only get the munchies when I smoke pot,” he said. “When I get the money, I think I’ll switch to blow. I’ll be able to afford first-class booger sugar after you make me rich.”

  “Can you open the jar for me?” Eunice asked.

  He opened the mayonnaise jar and handed it to her, watching her spread a small dab on the sandwich with the plastic knife.

  “Don’t try stabbing me in the throat,” Jerzy said with a revolting leer.

  Eunice wished she’d had a cigarette to calm herself, but with as much self-control as she could manage, she said prosaically, “Maybe you need to have a poop too before you leave here, Jerzy. You’re gonna kill a man with a knife. And it won’t be a plastic knife like this one.”

  He stared at her fiercely, and she froze, shivers shooting through her. Had she gone too far and made the dolt suspicious? Or was he just contemplating the impending murder, something he’d never done before?

  Finally he said, “Yeah, I gotta admit I’m a little nervous about guttin’ your old man, but once I start…”

  Jerzy stopped talking and lumbered into the little bathroom, leaving the door open. She heard him unbuckle his belt, and as soon as his bathroom noises began to tell the story, she reached into the mayonnaise jar and scooped out a handful, slathering it on her left hand and wrist. Then she rotated her wrist and pulled, all the time trying to hold the chain in her right hand to keep it from striking the steel bed frame. The mayonnaise oozed down her arm as she twisted her wrist and tugged. And suddenly, her left hand slipped past the linked manacle! She sat upright, and when she heard him grunting, swung her feet to the floor, grabbed her purse, and bolted for the door.

  Jerzy saw her flash across the open bathroom door and yelled, “Hey!” Then he leaped to his feet with his jeans down around his boots, and fell forward onto his knees and then onto his face, yelling, “I’ll kill you! Now I’ll kill you! You’re a dead woman!”

  But he was yelling into an empty room. Eunice was already halfway down the steps, not knowing what part of L.A. she was in, running barefoot along the sidewalk in Frogtown, absolutely certain that if she let him get close, he’d shoot her dead.

  Tristan Hawkins and Dewey Gleason were exhausted from having ransacked the apartment for hours. They had not found a key, nor any evidence of a storage facility, a safe deposit box, or anything else to provide a clue as to where the money could be.

  Tristan was slumped in Eunice’s chair in front of one of the computers, and he said, “Maybe we gotta admit the possibility that your old lady put all the money in a bank account. Or maybe more than one account. If she did that, we’re gonna have problems.”

  Dewey, who looked to Tristan like a man facing a firing squad, said, “I don’t understand how she could be holding out so long. What could he be doing to her?”

  “We’re way down the road past all that,” Tristan said. “We gotta depend on the Polack to make her talk, and that’s the end of it.”

  “I wish I had it to do over,” Dewey said with a bleak stare into the abyss.

  “Well, you don’t,” Tristan said, “and I’m sick of hearin’ you say that.”

  And that was when Tristan’s cell rang, and Dewey said, “Thank God! Maybe she’s talked!”

  “Yo,” Tristan said into the phone, and Dewey studied him, seeing the alarm grow on his face as he listened to a long monologue from Jerzy Szarpowicz.

  Then Tristan said, “No, don’t come here! Catch a cab to… to the office. Yeah, wait there. We’ll clean out the storage room and take the stuff there in the van.”

  When he closed his cell, Dewey looked at him and said, “Is she dead?”

  “No, she escaped!” Tristan said. “And if I can get my hands on his gun, I’m killin’ that motherfuckin’ Polack as soon as all this is over.”

  “How could she escape?” Dewey said.

  “Never mind how. We gotta get outta here. You and me’re goin’ back to the storage room and loadin’ up every fuckin’ thing in there. Does your old lady know about the office?”

  “She knows about it but not exactly where it is,” Dewey said.

  “Okay, Bernie, we’re gonna store the merchandise in the office for a few days, and you’re gonna sell all of it to your fence, and we’re gonna split the money three ways. Because that’s all any of us is gonna get from this fuckin’ gag.”

  “She can’t call the cops,” Dewey said in despair.

  “I ain’t takin’ no chances,” Tristan said. “She figured out this gag from the git, and at this point she might be ready to go to jail herself jist to see you go down. If you wanna pack a bag, hurry the fuck up. And I wouldn’t advise you to argue about any of this, because the Polack is about ready to kill the first person that crosses him. But before you pack up, let’s check somethin’ out.”

  Dewey followed Tristan into his bedroom and watched, perplexed, as Tristan went to the window and carefully examined the drapes, running his hand over every inch. When he was finished, Tristan said, “Like I thought. No key. And I don’t have to look. There ain’t no such business called North Hollywood Storage.”

  “What?” Dewey Gleason said in confusion.

  Five cars containing motorists on their way to work drove past Eunice Gleason when she ran into the street, waving frantically. The sixth one,
an old Pontiac driven by a middle-aged Mexican woman heading to her job at a restaurant in Silverlake, stopped for her.

  Eunice wasn’t sure how much English the woman understood, but Eunice told a tale of having been picked up by a man in a bar and literally held captive by him after she’d refused him sex.

  The woman kept repeating, “Policía?” when there were breaks in Eunice’s tale, but Eunice looked out at the street, shook her head, and said, “No, no police. Just drop me there at Denny’s, por favor.”

  When she got out of the car, she tried to give the woman a $20 bill, but the woman refused to take it, once again saying, “Policía?”

  Eunice smoked a cigarette in front of Denny’s restaurant and looked in her compact mirror. She had what looked like a swath of sunburn across her mouth and chin where the tape had been ripped off. Her new hairdo was tousled and tangled, and there was no makeup left except around her eyes, but she felt surprisingly relaxed when she approached the door. Nobody in Denny’s seemed to notice that the disheveled woman who entered and went to a booth was barefoot.

  Without looking at a menu, she said to the waitress who brought a pot of coffee to her table, “Hotcakes, crisp bacon, two eggs over easy, and tomato juice. When you get a chance.”

  The salty-looking waitress said, “Rough night, huh?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” Eunice said, realizing that she was feeling something close to elation.

  The whole kidnap might have been a Dewey Gleason gag, but the presence of Jerzy Szarpowicz was real. She had escaped torture and, finally, death. She had done it with brains and guts, and now she was free of that miserable little son of a whore who at this moment was probably trying to figure out how he could scrape together enough money to run for his life. Now that the weasel had realized what a formidable woman he’d married, he was no doubt panic-stricken. Well, her retirement had just arrived ahead of schedule. But it would be retirement for one person, not two, so she’d get by. She had to get back to the apartment and take the hard drives from the computers, along with all the incriminating files.