Lost in Hollywood

by Cindy Callaghan

  “Ugh.” I was in the back. This time I laid on my back and pulled my knees up to my chest. It wasn’t too bad, except I couldn’t see out the window.

  Payton looked at her phone as Leo drove up Wilshire Boulevard. “Wait. Where are you going? My GPS says the sign is the other way.”

  “I told you it would be difficult. It’s closed to the public, surrounded by a razor-wire fence, and monitored by motion detector cameras that feed into police headquarters.”

  “Well that’s discouraging,” I said.

  “Sounds impossible,” Payton added.

  The speaker in the ceiling said, “Difficult, not impossible.”

  It was kind of creepy the way she could hear us without being in the taxi.

  “So where are we going?” Payton asked.

  “To the police station,” Leo said.

  “Why?” Payton asked.

  “They like burritos.”

  I stared at the roof of the taxi and took stock of my situation:

  • My Science Olympics project was worked out in my head, but we didn’t have time to work on it and time was ticking. I thought it was very likely that we were going to lose the bet with the DeMarcos, which would lead to Payton totally freaking out.

  • We had only one place left to hunt for a treasure that was maybe buried somewhere in Hollywood, possibly near a famous D. A treasure that, as Payton pointed out, might not be hidden at all; it might’ve been spent or stolen. And we only had a ripped clue, which we were not even sure was a clue at all, to work with.

  • Chances were that after spring break, Payton and I were going to lose to the DeMarcos. I would run home from school, humiliated, and bury my head in my pillow, which would now reside in an outer-space-themed room that I shared with the only nine-year-old to be on the FBI’s list of suspected aliens. And ABJ would be unpacking her Hollywood memorabilia in her new pink room.

  • I was balled-up, staring at the ceiling of a banana pretending to be a burrito.

  A feeling of impending doom warmed me—or is that the temperature in the back of this vehicle?

  “We’re almost there,” Leo said. “I’ll just heat up our supply and we’ll be ready to go.” He pushed a button and hot air filled the taxi with the smell of ground beef with taco seasoning.

  “Can I get a little air conditioning back here?”

  “Sure,” Leo opened the window and a burst of hot air flowed through my hair.

  He stuck his arm out and waved to people as we passed. “Hey, bud!” “Hey, dude!” “Hiya!” “Text me!” “See you later!” “Howdy!”

  He pulled over at the police station among a row of food trucks. Payton helped me roll out, and we met Margot and Payton at the popped trunk. Instantly a cloud of Mexican deliciousness lured a swarm of uniformed people in our direction.

  “My friends in blue,” Leo said. “As always, a lunch special for you who protect and serve.”

  “What’s the special today?” asked an officer whose breast was heavily adorned with patches and symbols.

  “Half price.” Leo’s announcement was met with a crowd of claps. “My young friends here”—Leo indicated us—“will get you whatever you want.” He collected money while we handed out foil-wrapped lunches to everyone.

  “These ladies are visiting all the way from Delaware. They want to be doctors, and they’re working on an amazing science project at their great-aunt’s house up in the hills.”

  The cops unwrapped their burritos and listened to Leo, who seemed to have a way of capturing people’s attention. “They’ve been a huge help to her—she’s having some health issues.”

  “It’s nice to hear that today’s youth still helps their aging family members,” said one officer.

  “Yeah,” Leo said. “They’re actually helping her find something very important that she’s lost. They’ve spent their whole spring break searching high and low—”

  Leo was interrupted by a symphony of police radios. “All units! Please respond to a ten ninety-nine at Hollywood and Vine.”

  Leo received a stream of backslaps and thank-yous. Only one officer remained.

  “Why don’t you need to respond to the call?” I asked him.

  “I’m a bicycle cop. We don’t respond to ten ninety-­nines.” He took the last bite of his burrito. “Good batch today, Leo.”

  “Thanks, Mitch,” Leo said. “Actually, you were the guy I came here to see, but I thought I’d sell a few burritos too.”

  “Really? Me? How come?”

  “You still taking the tour shuttles up to the sign?”

  “Every Saturday and Sunday. Student loans, you know.”

  “Sure. I get it.” Leo added, “I would be very appreciative to anyone who could help these girls.”

  “Tell me whatcha need. I might be persuaded.” He shoved the burrito in his mouth and paused for only a second to appreciate the flavor. “Really good batch,” Mitch said again.

  22

  I don’t know how we did it, but Payton and I were both in the backseat. I tried to sit in the plexiglass sidecar with Margot, but the extra weight made it sag to the pavement.

  My legs hung over the front seat, one on each side of Leo’s head. Payton’s did the same to Mitch the bicycle cop. It was the only way we could fit.

  “We’ll pick up a shuttle bus. That will be less conspicuous than this taxi,” Mitch said.

  “Good plan,” Payton said, but getting words out when your body was so compacted wasn’t easy.

  “Air,” I managed to push out.

  Leo and Mitch opened their windows.

  “You know,” Mitch said. “I’d love to get into this business with you.”

  “Seriously?” Leo asked. “I’ve been thinking of expanding. The problem has been acquiring a second vehicle. Finding automobiles shaped like Mexican food is harder than you’d expect.”

  “Well, you might be in luck. We impounded a Wiener Mobile about ten years back. It was never picked up and is about to go to auction.”

  “You canNOT be serious.”

  “I would never joke about a Wiener Mobile.”

  “If you get these girls to that D, and get that mobile at the auction, you’ve got a deal,” Leo said.

  Margot’s voice chimed in overhead, “Pending a full safety inspection of the wiener.”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” Mitch said up into the speaker. “I can get you to the D. Consider this a done deal.”

  We wound up roads that made the taxi feel more like a roller coaster than a food car. The serpentine turns made my stomach flip-flop in an unpleasant way, risking serious burrito puke in the back of this mobile. I didn’t tell Payton, because that puke was going to affect her way more than it would me.

  “Are we there yet?” I asked.

  “I might barf,” Payton said. Me and my bestie are so much alike.

  “Almost, little grasshoppers.” Leo wasn’t lying because the taxi stopped at a parking lot of shuttle buses labeled HOLLYWOOD SIGN TOURS.

  “Lemme get the keys,” Mitch said.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “All the way to the D, I hope.” Leo rubbed his palms together. “Did you hear about the wiener? This is a great day.”

  “If we find what we want at the D, it will be an amazing day,” I agreed.

  Margot said, “Utterly smashing, dahling. Perhaps there will even be porridge there.”

  Payton said, “I don’t think we’re doing that anymore.”

  “Right.” Margot shrugged. “I was just practicing.”

  A second later we were riding in style in an air-conditioned shuttle bus with cushy seats. I had my own seat.

  Mitch filled us in on his tour spiel. “This mountain that the Hollywood sign sits on is called Mount Lee. The letters are forty-five feet tall each, the whole sign is three-hundred-fifty feet long, and it sits in the middle of Griffith Park, which was an ostrich farm in the 1800s. The park and the Griffith Observatory have been featured in Hollywood films, but non
e more prominently then James Dean’s 1955 Rebel Without a Cause. The sign was originally built in 1923 as an advertisement for a real estate development and cost twenty-one thousand dollars. It was only intended to last for a year and a half, but it became an internationally recognized symbol during the Golden Age of Hollywood and was left there.”

  Very interesting stuff. Suddenly I was bummed about not taking any actual tours in Hollywood.

  Mitch continued, “Originally the sign was built with no access. Since there were no streets, mules brought the building supplies up the hill, but in 1940 Howard Hughes bought the one hundred and thirty-eight acres around the sign to build a fantastic mansion for his fiancée, Ginger Rogers.”

  “I was named after her!” I yelled out.

  “Then Hollywood is in your blood,” Mitch said. “Howard Hughes built the access roads for the project, but he and Ginger broke up and the mansion was never built. But people say something was built, only no one knows what because Howard was real secretive—kind of a strange guy, a real ‘end-of-the-world nut.’ Anyway, soon the sign became a target of vandals and pranksters.”

  Margot said, “Lots of them got hurt.”

  Mitch nodded. “So access was limited and eventually made illegal.”

  “If it’s illegal, how are we going to get to the D in the sign?” I asked.

  “You might want to pull this bus over right now. Uncle Leo and I aren’t doing anything that even smells like it might be illegal,” Margot said. “What kind of cop are you?”

  “Whoa, calm down there, Susie Safetypants. No one is doing anything illegal. I have no intention of breaking the oath I took as a bicycle cop,” Mitch said. “I gotta ask you though, have you got something against Ls? There are two of them, you know? Right next to each other.”

  Margot started, “The hidden—”

  Payton swung her foot into Margot’s shin, maybe a little harder than she intended, because Margot winced. “Nothing against them,” Payton said. “But the letter D is special to us.”

  “Then I’m the man who can get you there. You see, when our old friend Howard Hughes didn’t build the mansion of love for Ginger, the city bought the land and installed a radio tower to control all of the police communications.”

  “How does that get us closer to the sign?” I said.

  “No one can get to the letters except radio tower maintenance or police,” Mitch said. He flashed his police badge. “I’m your man.”

  Now I understood why Leo went to the police station. “That’s what I’m talking about,” I said.

  Payton said, “We won’t even have to pretend anything is possessed or haunted.”

  “Or lacking precautions,” Margot added.

  “What?” Leo asked. “What was pretend haunted?”

  “Long story,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t have to fake it here,” Mitch said. “There has long been talk of this area being haunted by the ghost of Peg Entwistle.”

  “Who’s that?” Payton asked.

  “An actress. She died back in 1932. By the H.”

  A chill went up my back. That’s the way it always worked in the movies—pretending all this time, and now something was actually haunted. I shook it off as we started for the sign.

  23

  With Mitch’s keys, swipe cards, and secret passwords, we got into the restricted area, up to the radio tower, through the razor-wire fence, and we hiked down to the letters.

  The sound of a police radio squeaked. “Unit B-Nineteen, please check in.”

  “That’s me,” Mitch said. “B is for bicycle.” Into the police radio that was attached to his shoulder he said, “B-Nineteen.”

  “Are you in the restricted area?”

  “That’s affirmative,” Mitch said.

  “Did she say this is restricted? Then we can’t be here.” Margot tugged Leo’s arm. “Come on, we can’t stay.”

  The radio asked, “Do you have clearance?”

  “That’s affirmative.” Then to Margot he said, “We have clearance.”

  “Oh. I love affirmative,” Margot said.

  “So much better than negative,” Payton said.

  “Or no,” I said.

  “Or not now.”

  “Or never.”

  Suddenly Mitch stopped walking. “Is this like a routine you’re practicing?”

  “It’s for real, dude,” Leo said. “They’re trying to break the habit, but haven’t been having much luck.”

  “I don’t know why it bothers people so much,” I said.

  “I know. Right?” Payton asked.

  “I mean, can’t we open our minds, people?”

  “A little tolerance.”

  “It makes us special,” Payton said.

  “No two snowflakes are the same, and that makes them special,” I said.

  “And you don’t see anyone getting their neurotransmitters in a twist over that,” Payton said.

  “Somehow snowflakes can be unique, but as soon as two besties finish each other’s thoughts, there’s a protest,” I said.

  Margot jumped in, “Did someone in government sign a referendum stating that friends who quick-talk phrases is a public health crisis?”

  Huh?

  “That didn’t make sense, did it?” she asked.

  “I just like that you try,” Payton said.

  I said, “Me too. If at first you don’t succeed—”

  “Enough!” Mitch said at the front of the first O in WOOD. “If you three can’t zip it, I’m turning my shuttle around and taking you out of here. No Wiener Mobile could be worth this.”

  “Jeez,” I whispered to Payton.

  “Testy,” Payton whispered back.

  “Grumpster,” Margot said. (She did it!)

  Leo zippered his mouth and pointed at us.

  We okay-signed back to him.

  “Here we are.” We’d walked three hundred and fifty feet, and now Mitch stopped by the D. “Do your thing.”

  I looked up at the massive letter and had a vague feeling I was on an episode of Sesame Street that was sponsored by the letter D.

  I said, “Let’s get to work.” We felt all over the D itself. Well, the bottom five feet of it. It towered over us, not unlike a skyscraper. If I jumped as far as I could, I wouldn’t have reached the hole in the D. We went around back and felt the rods and poles and posts supporting the massive letter.

  I didn’t see or feel any levers or compartments.

  “Anything?” I asked Payton.

  She shook her head.

  I looked at Leo to see if he’d found anything. “Nada. Zip. Doughnut,” he said.

  I propped my hands on my hips. “What about the pirate way?”

  “Buried?” Payton asked.

  “If you have another idea, my auditory system is ready and waiting.”

  She twisted her earring. “I don’t.”

  “Let’s kick up some dirt.” I grabbed a stick and poked it all around the ground under and surrounding the D.

  Payton got on her hands and knees and moved big stones.

  Nothing.

  We stood together, and gazed down at the city. “Think,” I said.

  “My synapses are firing on full blast, but I’m not getting any other ideas.”

  “How would ABJ have gotten it up here?” I asked.

  Mitch said, “You just have to know the right people.”

  “She doesn’t know anyone,” I said.

  “That’s not true,” Leo said. “She just doesn’t see anyone anymore. She knows lots of people in town and she still has lots of fans—she gets mail and everything.”

  “Maybe there are other sites that we haven’t thought of,” I said.

  “Or, I hate to say it,” Payton said, “but maybe the money really doesn’t exist.”

  To Leo I asked, “Is that possible?”

  “I guess anything is possible. She could have donated it or walked onto Hollywood Boulevard one day and tossed it in the air.”

  “
People would’ve gotten trampled, and we would’ve heard about it on the news,” Margot said. “I watch for things like that. Pretty much every day, someone somewhere has gotten trampled. Sometimes by people, but also by horses, elephants—one time it was a team of Labradoodles. Not a pretty sight.”

  Payton asked, “Do you ever think of sunshine and roses?”

  “Sure. Sunshine gives you sunburn, which can lead to melanoma. And roses have thorns that prick you, leaving open wounds that often get infected.”

  Leo, who led our hike back to the shuttle, said, “Since you were a little girl, you’ve always looked at the darkest side of things.”

  “I don’t think of it as ‘dark.’ I like to consider all the possibilities so that I can be prepared. I wear sunscreen—one hundred SPF—and never touch roses. See how that works?”

  When she explained it, it sort of made sense.

  Mitch took us back to the taxi. Payton and I rock-­paper-scissored while the men discussed Wiener Mobile deets.

  24

  Payton and I sat outside on the patio with Payton’s laptop open to our original notes about searching in Hollywood.

  Leo had dropped Margot off at home, and returned to ABJ’s where he had housework to do.

  “I think my ganglions are tangled from thinking about this so much,” I said.

  Payton said, “Look, I want to help ABJ keep her house and you keep your new bedroom, but we need to get our ganglions tangled around the Science Olympics.”

  “I know,” I said. I KNOW! I KNOW! How could I NOT know, when you’ve brought it up EVERY SINGLE DAY?!

  Payton asked, “How much time do we have now?”

  I looked at my phone. “It’s T minus fifty-five hours.”

  “Crap. Ginger, that might not be enough time.”

  I really didn’t want to set the ABJ thing aside, but maybe it was good to give my temporal lobes a break from Ds, hay bales, and hash marks, and unpack the Science Olympics ideas that were crowding my mentalus storageum. I explained them to Payton.

  “I like it,” she said, then yelled into the kitchen to ask Leo, “Where does ABJ keep her Christmas decorations?”

  “In the basement.” He clarified, “Well, it’s not exactly a basement. More of a basement-slash-fallout shelter. You see, this house was built in 1945, right after World War II, which was a time when people seriously prepared for a nuclear attack by building bomb shelters. Some people built them under their backyards, but basically anyplace they could dig deep enough and pour cement would work.”