by Dick Lochte
The man backed up, bumping against the Cherokee. ‘There’s no film,’ he screamed at Mace. ‘It’s a digital . . . an EOS-1D. Top of the line.’
Mace looked from him to the camera. ‘The photos are on a disc or what?’ he asked.
‘A Fat32 memory card.’ He reached out a hand. ‘I can show—’
‘No. Tell me.’
‘OK.’ He talked Mace through the camera’s image playback set-up. ‘Hit that button,’ he said, ‘the photo can be magnified as much as twenty-five times. At eleven point one megapixels, you can—’
‘These six shots of me all you took?’
The man hesitated, then said, ‘No. I took twelve, total.’
‘How do I get rid of them?’
‘Key that command.’
‘This one? “Erase all?”’
‘Oh, Jesus, no. I got over fifty shots in there. Even some of Gaga without the wig. Please. Just delete the snaps I took of you.’
Mace started on that, going one at a time, to make sure.
‘I can never figure you fuckers out. It’s all publicity, man. I don’t get why guys like you and Clooney try to take my fucking head off. I don’t get in your face like some. I respect your space. Still, you guys throw shit at me. Hit me. Bounce my head on concrete. I can’t even get health insurance any more . . .’
Mace was barely listening to the guy. When he was finished deleting his photos, he handed over the camera.
The man took it eagerly, cuddling it like it was a favorite pet. ‘You guys think we’re all lowlifes, right? Bottom feeders. Fuck you. We make you guys.’
Mace didn’t know what the hell the man was going on about. ‘Who told you to take my picture?’
There was an aluminum case open on the Cherokee’s back seat with two cameras nestled in foam rubber pockets. The photographer placed the EOS-1D in the remaining pocket. ‘Told me? Nobody told me. It’s just what I do.’
Mace saw that the question asked on the front of the man’s T-shirt was answered on the back. ‘I DID.’ He grabbed the man’s shoulder and spun him around.
‘C’mon, buddy. Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake. You got what you wanted.’
‘Who told you to take my picture?’
The man looked genuinely puzzled. His free hand moved toward his pants pocket. Mace stopped it.
‘What’s your fucking problem?’ the man whined, trying to release his wrist from Mace’s grip. ‘I just wanna give you my card. OK? Just my fucking card.’
Mace released his wrist.
Slowly, he removed a worn, overloaded wallet from his pocket. He fished a bright yellow card from it that he handed to Mace. ‘I’m Simon S. Symon. Like it says there. Proprietor of ShootOnSite. That’s me. I take candid pictures of celebrities.’
‘This is supposed to make me like you more?’ Mace said. ‘Who told you to take my picture?’
‘Listen to Mister Me. Like you’re the reason I’m here.’
‘Talk straight.’
‘The night man at the Florian’s an old bud, so he phones me real late to tell me some guest just blew through the lobby with Deidre Lindstrom. They’re stoned. Feelin’ each other up, almos’ goin’ down on each other right there in the lobby.
‘So I grab a few hours of snooze and here I am. A shot of Deidre looking hungover will be worth maybe two grand, three. But the guest, some kinda TV exec from back East, ain’t a guy. Now that hikes the price of the photo considerably. That’s the guest’s Audi across the aisle. They gotta show up sooner or—’
‘You took pictures of me,’ Mace said. ‘Why?’
‘You’re somebody, right? Got that don’t-fuck-with-me look. To me that says photo op. My guess is TV, right? I can’t keep track of everybody on the box, what with cable and all. But you TV pricks are the toughest to get along with. And we make you guys.’
Mace stared at Simon S. Symon, trying to decide if it was worth knocking him around a little to make sure he wasn’t bullshitting. The sound of heels clicking on concrete made the decision suddenly moot.
Mace glimpsed someone at the far end of the garage.
Simon S. Symon had already grabbed his camera.
But it wasn’t Deidre Lindstrom and her lesbian exec from back East. It was Angela Lowell, dressed for summer in tight white slacks and a black silk blouse.
Mace moved between the Cherokee and the SUV. ‘Fifty bucks for a couple of good clear prints of her,’ he whispered to the paparazzi.
‘No prob,’ Symon said.
‘I gotta run. Pick up at the address on your card?’
‘Yeah,’ Symon said, busy getting Angela in his frame.
Mace headed toward his leased Camry Hybrid, hopping over car bumpers to avoid Angela’s line of sight. He was sliding under the steering wheel by the time she drove past.
Backing the Camry from its stall he saw Wylie running full out from the stairwell carrying a small laptop. ‘I got her,’ Mace shouted to the boy.
‘What about this?’ Wylie held up the laptop.
‘I don’t need it.’ In point of fact, he had no idea how the tracking device hidden in the Mustang’s trunk worked.
As he drove past the Cherokee, he was annoyed to see Symon aiming his camera at Wylie.
TEN
Angela Lowell couldn’t find a coin for the meter.
Sitting several parked cars back on Melrose Avenue, in a loading zone, Mace watched her root through her handbag, then duck back into the yellow Mustang, probably to rifle the glove compartment. Finally, she gave up the search and decided to risk the ticket.
She literally ran into a shop with the enigmatic name of Slick.
Unless she returned to feed the meter, indicating she would be spending some time there, he wouldn’t bother following her inside.
From his angle he couldn’t see anything on the storefront to indicate what sort of goods or service Slick provided. Its Spartan display window offered few clues. Just a white plastic tree on Astroturf. Colorful little squiggly things were hanging from the tree’s otherwise bare branches. Mace counted three customers, male, going into the store before Angela emerged with a package the size of a large book under her arm. She tossed it casually into the rear of the Mustang and slid behind the wheel.
He let her enter the traffic flow along Melrose before nosing the Camry out. As he drove past Slick’s window, he discovered that the squiggly things hanging from the tree were contraceptives.
Angela’s next stop was on Hollywood Boulevard. Triple Tech, an ultra-contemporary aluminum Quonset hut, with a chrome and neon facade as understated as a slot machine and about as appealing. She found a parking space directly in front.
Mace backed into the only other open slot, eight or nine cars down. Facing the street, he was able to watch the Mustang and Triple Tech’s front door in the Camry’s rear-view. This time, it took no imagination to figure out what the place was peddling: computer games and other electronic crap.
In less than five minutes, she emerged with a small bag of what he presumed were expensive non-essentials. She surprised him by walking away from the Mustang, heading for a flash clothes store named Cruise Line. In its window, two male manikins, dressed in yachting gear, lay spooning on a wooden deck chair, while a third, wearing a US Navy officer’s cap and a thong stood at a ship’s wheel with a martini glass in one hand.
Returning to the Mustang with arms full of merchandise, Angela took her shopping expedition to Honeymoon Way, an unassuming semi-commercial street between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard. She parked at an old, brick building that housed two presumably separate enterprises, the Honeymoon Drug Store and Schlesinger’s Gun Shop.
Mace was growing restless. His watch told him he’d been following her for nearly an hour and it seemed to have been a waste of time. As far as he could tell, the woman was just shopping. As he watched her stride into the drug store, her body language gave no suggestion of anything out of the ordinary.
But the store was another matter. Its lighted display win
dow featured an assortment of aloe lotion bottles in front of a cardboard diorama depicting a woman slathering her naked, lobster-red sunburned back with the stuff. An innocuous-seeming display. But it blocked a view of the shop’s interior. As did the frosted glass panels of its old-fashioned wooden front doors.
It was as if Angela Lowell had walked into a dark cloud and faded away.
The set-up seemed . . . suspicious. He supposed the cloudy glass may have been used to ward off direct sunlight. But the dark green awning that covered both doors and display window should have taken care of that. Was there a reason they were hiding the interior of the drug store?
Was this assignment fucking up his head? He was afraid he knew the answer to that one.
He concentrated on the opaque glass panels, saw or imagined vague shadowy motion in the store. Finally, he took a deep breath, exhaled, shook his head and got out of the car.
An old-fashioned bell tinkled as he entered the Honeymoon Drug Store. The place was a throwback to the days before chain superstores. Black and white tile floor, high ceiling, wood and glass counters. Boxes and bottles neatly shelved against the walls. There was even a small soda fountain, dark and unused. At the rear of the room a middle-aged druggist in a crisp white coat was talking to a boy wearing cargo pants and a Lakers T. The boy was carrying a skateboard under one arm. A few elderly Hispanic women were studying a cosmetic display to his left.
It reminded Mace a little of the drug store his father had used, where he had spent so much time on medication runs during the old man’s last days. In spite of the association, he’d liked that store. And he would have liked this one, except for one thing. Angela Lowell wasn’t in it.
Mace moved to a postcard rack. Idly pawing an assortment of glossy ultra-ugly photos of LA by day and night, he scanned the store, convincing himself that she wasn’t behind a counter or display.
Puzzled and annoyed, he exited the store. He turned to give it one last look, took a backward step and bumped into someone.
It was Angela Lowell, hurrying to her car. She seemed angry.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘It helps if you look where you’re going,’ she said, continuing on to the Mustang.
Feeling like a fucking idiot, Mace stood there watching her get into the car. Finally, he pried his feet from the sidewalk and went back to work.
The Mustang led him to Sunset Boulevard, where a traffic light stopped them just as, to their right, Hollywood High had ended its school day. A group of pierced, tattooed, spike-haired, tattered-bloused schoolgirls were thumbing a ride. They caught Mace staring at them and waved their hands. A female student with hair the color of flamingo feathers and a voluptuousness that seemed advanced for her years placed a hand under one partially-exposed breast as if offering it to him.
Just what I need, Mace thought, shifting his glare from the girl to the Mustang.
To distance himself further from the delights of statutory rape, he pressed on the Camry’s dash panels, hoping to uncover the car’s cigarette lighter. The Camry had its good points, chief among them being anonymity. At first glance it looked like half a dozen other charcoal gray sedans. And he liked the keyless ignition system and the hybrid engine’s silence that allowed you to lurk unnoticed with the motor running. But there was a lot of crap he found unnecessary, like the LED monitor on the dash that kept a running tally of gas consumption. And the panels hiding necessities like ashtrays.
And the goddamned cigarette lighter.
A metal door flipped up, exposing a plug for a cellular phone and the lighter. He got a cigarette going, then punched on the radio and began scanning past the rap, rock and Spanish-speaking stations. The traffic opened up and as the Mustang made a turn on to Sunset, he settled on a shock-jock show.
It was stop-and-go along Sunset in the shadow of the giant ego stroking billboards. One of them, devoted to Jerry Monte, featured the superstar and blossoming poet standing on a windswept mountain top in tight black leather pants and a flowing open white silk shirt. The caption read: ‘The Legend Continues.’
On the radio, a female call-in was complaining that her husband ‘was lucky if he got it up twice a week.’
‘Maybe you should slip a little blue pill into his oatmeal, honey,’ the jock suggested with a leer in his voice.
‘I tried that,’ the caller said, whining now. ‘All it did was give him the added excuse of a headache.’
‘OK, then you gotta slip the dude a roofie, babe. I’m a big believer in love chemistry.’
‘Shit,’ Mace grumbled and snapped off the radio.
He drove in angry silence, filling the car with cigarette smoke that the air conditioner battled but could not defeat. His discomfort and increasing depression almost made him miss the Mustang’s sudden burst through an opening in the traffic.
Cautiously, he followed the yellow convertible’s lead, squeaking through a changing traffic light.
The Mustang continued up Sunset past the Florian, past the Strip with its shops and bars and restaurants. Past Honest Abe’s Coffee Empourium which looked dreary and deserted in the sunshine.
The traffic fell off as they cruised beside UCLA where students walked and jogged, evidence that there were still some pockets of normalcy in the city.
Crossing over the San Diego Freeway, Mace relaxed a little and tried the radio again, this time giving the FM band a spin. He settled on a jazz station broadcasting from Long Beach. He wasn’t what you would call a jazz lover, but it served his mood as the drive continued.
Gliding easily along Sunset’s snake-like turns, he tried to figure out how Angela Lowell had exited the drug store. She’d been coming from the direction of Schlesinger’s Gun Shop. Were the two stores connected? He hoped so, because that meant she may have had business in both. If, on the other hand, she had gone out the back of the drug store and into Schlesinger’s through its rear, that would suggest she’d spotted him tailing her and was now aware of his presence.
Even in the air-cooled car, he felt a drop in the outside temperature as they approached the ocean. The Mustang turned on to the Coast Highway, heading north.
Another few miles and both cars passed under the Malibu sign. Eventually they left the Coast Highway at Wildlife Road heading in the direction of a strand of beachfront mini-mansions in a gated community called Point Dume Estates.
The high-end homes had been built in the Eighties to fill the needs of the excessively wealthy, television and film folk in the main, who, for unspecified reasons, were unable to secure residency in The Colony. The Dume Estates crowd could rest assured that they were in the second most elite section of Malibu and that their ridiculous monthly mortgage payments were buying them privacy from the common herd, if not from fire, high tides, rodent infestation and septic tank malfunctions.
Mace followed the Mustang, staying what he thought was a safe distance behind. But he was caught off-guard by how close the Estates’s security gate was, once you turned south off Wildlife on to Dolphin Way.
The Mustang was barely two car-lengths from him, stopped at a white booth with an orange roof that resembled the tile roofs on the beach front homes resting beyond and below. He braked, but it was too late. Angela Lowell may not have seen him. She could have had her eyes on the gate being raised and, that completed, the road ahead. But the guard standing just outside the booth was facing his way, giving him the Ray-Ban once-over.
That couldn’t be helped.
Mace put the Camry into reverse and began engineering a U-turn away from the gate, conscious of the guard focusing on him and the car. He was a big man, black, wearing a brown uniform and a sea-green helmet. He said something and a second uniformed guard, this one white, appeared from behind the booth.
Mace had to blink to make sure he was seeing properly. The white guard seemed to be riding a big motorized two-wheel scooter, rolling his way at surprising speed.
The white guard yelled out, ‘Sir . . . ?’
Mace ignored him, as much as
you can ignore a guy on a motor-driven scooter shouting at you. He straightened out and drove off, following Dolphin Way to Dume Drive. Making the turn, he took a final look back and saw the white guard, standing atop his scooter, turning it in a slow circle, eyeballing him.
ELEVEN
Mace picked up a late portable lunch at The Malibu Country Mart, an upscale mall in the vicinity. He as heading for his car, scowling because he’d just paid fifteen dollars for a cup of coffee and a Swiss-cheese sandwich, when he saw a pack of paparazzi pressing in on a young brunette wearing big sunglasses and a tiny summer dress. Mace had no idea who the girl was, though he gathered her name was ‘Gigi,’ since that was what the monkey-like photographers were shouting to catch her attention.
She didn’t seem to be aware of their existence, but her bodyguard, a black mountain of muscle with a communication device screwed in his right ear, was struggling to keep from swatting the scruffy interlopers from their path. He looked hot and uncomfortable in his gray suit and he kept repeating, ‘Stand back, please,’ as if it were a mantra that he didn’t really believe in.
Part of the passing Malibu parade.
Mace carried his overpriced lunch to the Camry and returned to Wildlife Road, parking half a block before Dolphin Way where he could dine while observing the traffic leaving Point Dume Estates. He lowered the car’s windows and took advantage of the cool ocean breeze.
For a while, he entertained himself by studying the sea birds as they rode the wind currents. But after nearly an hour their graceful glides began to have a hypnotic effect. His eyelids were at half-mast when he heard someone clear his throat with a pointed ‘A-hem!’
He jerked awake to see a man standing near the car, staring into his open window. The guy was in his forties, a British stereotype, complete with off-white silk suit, ascot and brush moustache. Smiling genially. Not at all threatening.
‘Help you?’ Mace asked him.
‘My friends and I would love for you to join us.’ A British accent, no surprise. He made a graceful gesture with a thin, pale hand, indicating a baby-shit-yellow limousine, the ugliest color Mace had ever seen, parked on the opposite side of the road.
