The Glitter Dome

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “I blinked. I just blinked for a second.”

  “Well, do your goddamn blinking when this tail is finished! Do your .… There he is!”

  The silver Mercedes was parked on Vine Street in front of a liquor store. The Weasel kept the Toyota lost in the number one traffic lane, and while the Ferret hit the floor, drove past the store until he could safely turn left. He parked on the first street south, where the Ferret leaped out of the car and ran to the corner to act as point man. While the Weasel kept the Toyota ready at the curb, the Ferret stood peeking around the corner at the silver Mercedes. Suddenly the Ferret ran back to the Toyota, and the Weasel dropped it in low gear.

  “Is he moving?”

  “No. He’s still inside. Does she really have four nipples?”

  “FERRET, GET THE FUCK BACK TO THE POINT! THIS IS BUSINESS! WE’RE GONNA GET OUR DICKS KNOCKED OFF!”

  So the Ferret loped back to his point position and sulked, and vowed to move in on the chicken with four nipples if the Weasel would only reveal her identity the next time he got drunk at The Glitter Dome. Four nipples!

  Then Just Plain Bill strolled out of the liquor store, glanced lazily both ways on the street, lit a cigarette, and got back into the 450SL, heading north again.

  The nark ark tailed him north on the Hollywood Freeway. They were resorting to props now. On the outbound trip the Weasel tucked his pony tail up under a construction worker’s hard hat. The Ferret kept down in the seat, only raising up when the Weasel’s eyes were drifting.

  Then the Mercedes took an off-ramp and an on-ramp and headed back inbound on the Hollywood Freeway, and the Ferret put on his blond Farrah Fawcett wig and slid over close to the Weasel, as they both sweated in what was left of a very hot afternoon.

  “I think your deodorant’s failed you,” the Weasel said when the Ferret cuddled up.

  “You were expecting Bo Derek?” the Ferret answered. “Oh, no! The asshole’s going back home!”

  There was no traffic between the Mercedes and the Toyota when they took the off-ramp. Just Plain Bill seemed to be looking in his rearview mirror. The Ferret had to put both arms around the Weasel and snuggle.

  “God damn, Ferret! I’m taking you to the morgue. They may as well start the autopsy right now.”

  “How you think you smell after throwing footballs for two days? You ain’t used deodorant since Christ was a carpenter. You …”

  “There he goes! Back on the goddamn freeway!” the Weasel yelled, and the Ferret threw his Farrah Fawcett wig in the back seat and jumped huffily to his side of the car.

  Just Plain Bill continued back inbound on the freeway, this time heading directly toward downtown Los Angeles, toward the Harbor Freeway, toward the waterfronts of San Pedro.

  Except that by now the outbound freeways were jammed with afternoon commuters, so the Weasel and the Ferret settled in six cars behind the silver Mercedes, which they assumed would stay on the freeway all the way to the harbor.

  “I wish Just Plain Bill was a broad. It’s so much easier to tail a broad,” the Ferret said, looking cagily at the Weasel, who had dumped his prop hard hat in favor of a prop cowboy hat in case Just Plain Bill was looking.

  “Broad or not, he’s one tough mother to tail,” the Weasel said, rubbing his distended eyeballs. Do all your blinking before you start the tail.

  “A broad spots some guy tailing her, it’s no problem,” the Ferret said, casting sidelong glances toward the Weasel. “She’s flattered, in fact. She thinks her Maidenform’s working. Which reminds me …”

  “Yes, she has four fucking nipples, and you could give me the entire balance a your paycheck that you don’t have to surrender to your ex-wife’s lawyer, and I still wouldn’t tell you her name,” the Weasel said.

  “Come on, Weasel, I shared that stewardess with you that time!”

  “Whadda you mean, shared her? You gave me her phone number and address is what you did, and you didn’t tell me she had a thing for Samoan longshoremen, and I nearly got my throat torn out when I tripped-on into that little beer party where guys were so big they made Schultz and Simon look like the Captain and Tenille. And that’s what you did for me by way a sharing her.”

  “Are all four nipples actually developed? Are they pink or more brownish? Are they two by two or sort of scattered? Just tell me if her first name is Trudy, Shirley or Rosie? It’s one a the three, ain’t it?”

  And so forth. It passed the long tedious ride down the Harbor Freeway in bumper-to-bumper, creeping lines of traffic. The exhaust fumes mingled with the dusk to produce that peculiar, deadly, beautiful Los Angeles sunset.

  And while the Ferret pondered four nipples, two up and two down, Just Plain Bill waited until the very last second at the Santa Barbara Avenue turnoff and jerked the wheel to the right, gunning the Mercedes down the ramp. The number three traffic lane, containing a green Toyota and a pair of bearded narcs, ground to a stop.

  “We lost him! He’s gone!” the Weasel yelled.

  “I told you we shouldn’t be so far back!” the Ferret yelled back at him.

  “Did you want me to bumper-lock him? You wanted me to tip our mitt, maybe?”

  “You get too cute and careful and this is what happens! I mowed that lawn seven times! Why didn’t you get in the center lane?”

  “You never use the center lane in busy traffic, you dumb shit. You get hung up in the center lane!”

  “So you had to be cute and now we’re jammed up, and might as well take a trip to the fucking ocean and see if the grunions are running, or dig for clams, or scrape abalone off the fucking rocks, or …”

  “Ferret, he’s behind us!”

  And he was. Just Plain Bill had come back onto the freeway at Slauson Avenue. The Weasel could see him six cars back through the rearview mirror.

  “Jesus Christ! Don’t turn around,” the Ferret said.

  “You think I’m crazy? Get your wig.”

  “You said my deodorant failed,” the Ferret reminded him.

  “Stop pouting, and slide over here!”

  So they cuddled again for another five miles, with Just Plain Bill behind them. It wouldn’t have been a bad way to tail him actually, since most people use their turn signals well in advance for a turnoff, and could be seen in the mirror, thus allowing the Weasel to turn off first. Except that Just Plain Bill didn’t drive like most people. He didn’t even drive like most hash dealers. He drove like he was delivering the secret of the neutron bomb to the goddamn Russians, and the Weasel was getting sick and tired of it. The Weasel lost his patience totally when the Mercedes managed to slide through an opening in traffic and get into the number one lane, pulling quickly ahead.

  “He’s in the fast lane, Weasel!” the Ferret said.

  “I see him.”

  “Well, get the fuck outa this lane!”

  “I can’t get out. Can’t you see I’m blocked?”

  Then the Weasel leaned out the window and waved frantically at an old man beside him in a Buick who grinned toothlessly and waved back. And blocked them in more completely.

  “I live my whole fucking life in the slow lane!” the Ferret whined.

  Then the Weasel leaned out the window and screamed at a Triumph TR-7 in front of him, and pressed on the horn. The driver responded by flipping them the middle digit and viciously stepping on his brakes, causing the Weasel to jump on his brakes which sent the Ferret’s head bumping into the windshield, knocking his Farrah Fawcett wig askew.

  The Weasel reacted by playing bumper cars with the TR-7, whanging the rear of the roadster, jetting the Triumph forward with each clang of the bumpers until the driver’s head was whiplashing like a metronome. The driver held up both hands in abject surrender and pulled off the freeway into the ivy, letting the Weasel careen madly down the shoulder of the freeway some half a mile, where they spotted the Mercedes cruising smoothly in the number two lane. Traffic was lighter this far from downtown and darkness had dissolved the mauve and crimson beauty of the ominous s
moggy sunset.

  By the time they reached San Pedro the Ferret had knocked back a six pack of beer, the prerogative of the passenger, and was getting beery enough to wax philosophical. He said, “I think my horoscope’s all wrong lately. Can you still see Just Plain Bill?”

  “I can still see,” the Weasel said disgustedly. “Which is more that I can say for you.”

  “I think I’m gonna move from Venice,” the Ferret said. “You can’t find love on a surfboard at my age.”

  “You got gills,” the Weasel grumbled, watching the Mercedes switch gradually to the slower lanes. “You can’t move inland. You wouldn’t live that long.”

  “I don’t care,” the Ferret said, popping open the last can of beer, making the Weasel curse. “My karma’s bad. I think I’ll take a leave of absence, go to the Himalayas, and worship some Chinese guru in Katmandu or wherever the hell.”

  “I think that’s the wrong place for those Chinese gurus.”

  “Wherever. I think I’ll live with a monk and a mongoose and maybe I can find nirvana. Which is a woman with four nipples.”

  That caused the Weasel’s eyeballs to click back under a hard hat, now that he’d switched props again. “All right, if you’ll stop getting sloshed, since we got business to attend to, I’ll tell you who she is. But only after we do our business and only if you stop swilling the suds.”

  The Weasel hadn’t finished his sentence before the full can of beer went flying out the window. The Ferret was all business. “I’ve got my eye on him, Weasel!”

  “Good.”

  “I wish we had a chopper. We coulda knocked out his taillight to make him easier to tail.”

  “We coulda, yeah.”

  “We coulda put phosphorescent paint on the roof of his car if we had a chopper to spot him.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Don’t worry, Weasel, we’re gonna sandbag this bastard!” The Ferret now sat ramrod straight, watching the Mercedes through binoculars. He looked like Charlton Heston on the bridge of a destroyer. It was amazing what some men would do for four nipples.

  Just Plain Bill, meanwhile, seemed to be taking a leisurely harbor tour for himself. He cruised into the parking lot of Redbeard’s Saloon, where cops and longshoremen had had some legendary punch-outs over the decades.

  It was said that when Redbeard died, his funeral was attended by half of San Pedro and all of the winos, pugs, and street fighters from the Main Street gym to Terminal Island prison. Redbeard Mahoney in his time had been a merchant seaman, a renowned arm wrestler, and a pretty good professional boxer, except for his crystal chin. So they all came, after Redbeard Mahoney bought it by drinking a quart and a half of Jamaican rum in one hour, thus winning a $500 bet but losing his life from alcohol poisoning. He went out with such flair that every Los Angeles wino from skid row to the waterfront spoke of his exit in hushed tones.

  The waterfront had looked like Mardi Gras the day of his funeral. There were two Dixieland bands, a troop of boy scouts, a platoon of uniformed cops who had earned their battle scars in Redbeard’s Saloon, and a busload of ragtag winos let out of Central Jail by a sentimental watch commander who had lost three teeth to a sailor in Redbeard’s Saloon in 1948, but had had the pleasure of seeing Redbeard Mahoney dislodge all the teeth of the cop’s adversary and then hold the sailor’s arms so the cop could personally play a little catch-up. Redbeard Mahoney was that kind of guy.

  Except that his name wasn’t Redbeard Mahoney. It was Moses Mankowitz. And in his will he asked that a rabbi be present to oversee the modern Viking funeral. At the fateful moment when the mortician’s powerboat was about to depart the wharf with the urn full of Moses Mankowitz, a.k.a. Redbeard Mahoney, an Orthodox rabbi squared his black hat, smoothed his long black coat, adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, and courageously marched through that mob of winos, pugilists, longshoremen, merchant seamen, commercial fishermen, veteran detectives, over-the-hill harness cops, weeping whores, and motley seafarers from Long Island to Long Beach. The multitudes got strangely silent when the little man in the black clothes and long black beard stepped forward to read in an ancient tongue. And then they heard it. Moses Mankowitz?

  At first it spread through the crowd like shared moonshine. Each passed it on to the other: Moses Mankowitz? Seventy-year-old B-girls began wiping the tears and scowling. What did it all mean? Moses Mankowitz?

  And then it descended on the crowd like a pall of tear gas! They grimaced. They gagged. They howled. They choked on it. Moses Mankowitz? Redbeard Mahoney? The Irish son of a bitch was a fucking hebe!

  When the crowd started to surge like the scum-crested waves lapping that wharf, the rabbi was warned by a uniformed cop that discretion was advised. Just then an incredulous Italian tuna skipper with a skinful of 80-proof bourbon from Redbeard’s own saloon came charging forward, leaped on the deck of the funeral boat, climbed the flying bridge, and wrestled the urn from the terrified mortician.

  “Say it ain’t so, Moe!” the wop screamed to the urn, proving that he did believe it.

  The police honor guard pounced on the distraught dago, wrestled the remains from his craggy claws, and threw Redbeard Mahoney’s earthly remains into the boat like a hand grenade, after which the seafaring mortician gratefully gunned both diesels and left a wake eighty yards wide as he headed out to open sea to scuttle the Jew in the jar before somebody scuttled him.

  But now Redbeard’s Saloon was just a tourist trap. The Weasel and Ferret had to take turns running to the alley to take a leak while the other kept watch. Christ, nobody would deal hash in a corny tourist trap like Redbeard’s Saloon!

  “I ain’t going for this,” the Weasel finally said, as they sat in the dark, slouched down in the Toyota watching Just Plain Bill’s Mercedes for over an hour. “This guy’s wearing me down. It just don’t make sense. This joint is where you find busloads a blue-hairs when they get off the freaking cruise ships!”

  Then they both got a rush. Just Plain Bill sauntered out of the tourist trap with two wizened men carrying briefcases, and a spindle-shanked woman who looked only a week away from Gladys Bruckmeyer’s mobile-home fantasy.

  “I’m about to break out in spots,” the Ferret said. “I don’t know where this guy’s coming from!”

  But they soon found out where they were going. They were going for a ride over the Vincent Thomas Bridge. The new threesome got in a forest-green Cadillac and followed Just Plain Bill’s Mercedes to the toll gate and across the bridge while the Weasel and Ferret cursed and swore and argued with the toll collector, who didn’t believe they were cops. What kind of cops didn’t have enough change for a ride on a toll bridge? Then the Ferret remembered there was a five-dollar bill stashed in his tennis bag in the trunk and they paid, swearing at the collector while he wrote their license number down to report them to the real cops.

  The slavering narcs were deciding what revenge to wreak on the toll collector when the Ferret yelled: “I am breaking out in spots!”

  Coming the other way on the bridge was the silver Mercedes, followed at a two-car interval by the nervous trio in the green Cadillac. So it was off the bridge, a squealing U-turn, and back on again. The Ferret was ready to give up, deciding that this was just some kind of nutty scavenger hunt.

  After leaving the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Just Plain Bill decided it was safe enough to get down to his real business, and he drove toward a row of warehouses near the harbor with the Cadillac close behind. Two blocks behind the Cadillac, the green Toyota was forced to maneuver without lights through the narrow deserted alleys and streets.

  When the Weasel saw the brake lights on the Cadillac stay lit after it stopped near a side street ominously close to the ocean, he made a decision.

  “Screw it,” the Weasel said. “I get any closer, lights or no lights, Just Plain Bill’s gonna make us. If he’s got any pals around here we might be made already. Let’s take a chance.”

  So he pulled the Toyota into the nearest alley, up to a wall behind a trash
heap, and they took their flashlights and guns from under the car seat and crept along the walls toward the smell of brine and dead fish and gull shit, toward the unlovely smell of the harbor of Los Angeles.

  They stopped and hunkered deeper into the darkness when the Cadillac’s brake lights went out and the two men left the woman in the car and, minus the briefcases, walked toward the wharf and out of sight.

  Now the Weasel and Ferret were sucking air, all right. This wasn’t a hash buy going down.

  “We’re lip-deep in horseshit,” the Weasel whispered.

  “We’re up to our ass in alligators,” the Ferret whispered.

  They crept ever closer, and now they didn’t even notice the chilly sea air. They were both sweating like a ten-mile run. They were silently cursing the three-quarter moon and wishing for cloud banks, or fog. Suddenly a gull screamed. Then a man screamed.

  The woman in the car heard it, or thought she did. Was it just another gull? She got out and said, “Rodney?”

  The Weasel and the Ferret were padding along now at a trot, running up behind the quivering woman who was standing beside the Cadillac with the door open. Then the cry of a gull was drowned out by a man screaming, “Don’t! Please! Nooooooo!”

  And the woman beside the Cadillac outscreamed a squadron of gulls when lean shadows flew by her in the darkness and the two narcs rounded the corner, their hearts banging out the sound of everything but the woman’s screams. The Weasel literally ran into Just Plain Bill, knocking him flat on his face and sending his .32 Browning clattering across the brick tarmac where a new member of the cast, an Asian, had one of the old men on the ground, taping his mouth and tying wrists and ankles preparatory to cutting his throat and dropping him into the water.

  The other old man, who had been kneeling face-to-muzzle with Just Plain Bill’s automatic pistol, was already taped and tied when the gunman went flying and the Weasel hit the ground just behind him.

  The Asian was on his feet, scrambling for his knife, when the Ferret came on them with his beam of light. While he began to understand what the hell was happening, the Asian accomplice was off and running, away from the dock straight toward the old woman in the Cadillac. The Ferret fired three times at the dodging figure, missed all three and went after him, leaping over the scuffling figure of the Weasel, who was pistol-whipping Just Plain Bill’s noggin into a pile of tapioca.