Boulevard (16 page)

She took off her coat and went back to her FreeCell. Jimmy and Erin entered the office. Displayed on the walls were undergraduate and law school diplomas from UCLA and a large framed certificate honoring Lodge's appearance before the California Supreme Court. There were also framed pictures which Lodge must have taken on vacations: giraffes in Africa, mosques in Turkey, gondolas in the rain in Venice. Lodge wasn't a half-bad photographer. They started plowing through his files. It was slow going. A real-estate deal here, another one there. A contract the size of a small city's white pages. Endless notes for on-going negotiations.

The secretary stayed outside at her desk, moving from FreeCell to solitaire, back to FreeCell again. Every now and then she would stick her head in. At 6:30 she was pleasant and offered them sodas or water. By 7:00 her smile had faded. At 7:15 she was pacing with her coat on behind her desk. Around 7:45 she was cranky as hell, and by 7:55 she asked them if they could lock the door behind them on the way out. Which is what Jimmy wanted in the first place.

Now they had the run of the office. Miller was in Vegas for the day with the mayor, the others in the firm had long since left, and Jimmy could hear the distant hum of the cleaning people's vacuum cleaners. But for all the freedom, two hours later Jimmy was sitting in one of Lodge's red leather chairs surrounded by a pile of useless files—half a dozen for a huge new office tower under construction on Wilshire, and a knee-high pile of contracts for building casinos.

“How are you doing?” Erin asked from behind Lodge's desk where she methodically searched his computer.

“He's got more gambling business than an Indian chief, but bullshit when it comes to something for us. You?”

“He either clean or clever,” Erin said.

“So far.”

As he plowed through yet another stack of files Jimmy thought about an assignment he did in New York with another undercover named Ron Chang. Ron was obsessed with the city's massage parlors, almost all controlled by the Hong Kong tongs. He had a right to be. The gangsters would go into tiny Chinese villages and basically buy teenage girls from their parents. The tongs would smuggle the girls into the US, where they were made to turn tricks in massage parlors to repay the money their parents took, plus what it cost to smuggle them into the country. It could be twenty or thirty thousand dollars. The girls were young, scared, and incredibly naïve. Jimmy did the math and figured they'd have to work seven or eight years, fucking one asshole after another just to pay back the gangsters that brought them into this misery in the first place. The girls weren't officially slaves, but they were goddamn close, and seeing it broke his heart. There were eighty-two massage parlors in the precinct and systematically Ron or Jimmy would go in undercover looking for a massage, and get them to offer ‘something extra'. They got offered the ‘something extra' in eighty-one of them. But the way a cop's mind works is—not thinking the eighty-second place was clean—no way. It's just their technique wasn't working on eighty-two. Jimmy kept going back in—he and Ron were on a mission to nail number eighty-two. But after nine or ten trips back to the place, they realized it really
was
just a massage parlor. That's all. As Jimmy sifted through Lodge's notes, he was haunted by the possibility that the same thing could be happening here. Sure Lodge gets iced somewhere he shouldn't have been. But what if at the end of the day, he was clean, and this was massage parlor eighty-two all over again?

Erin pulled up Lodge's appointments from the day he was killed. It was virtually empty. When she went to two days before—she leaned back in her chair and smiled.

“He sees Cat Cassandra? Now
that's
bizarre.”

“Who's Cat Cassandra?” Jimmy said.

“He cuts hair. I saw him a couple of times.”

“Something strange about it?”

“You might say that. But when I saw him—it was the only time in my entire life I was stopped on the street—twice—by someone asking me who cut my hair.”

“But you didn't stick with him?”

“It was a little much.”

“How?”

“Cat was the last appointment our vic had—or at least the last official appointment, right?”

“Sure. But what's the deal on Cat?”

“Know something, Jimmy—you could use a haircut.”

30

J
immy had been to the Roosevelt Hotel dozens of times, but he had never been in a room like 401. The door swung open to give him a view of Cat, a tall Filipino man wearing a fluffy Helmsley Palace bathrobe, and whose face was fully made-up, compete with ultra-long fake eyelashes. Cat led them inside the tiny room, no bigger than a standard–issue Manhattan studio apartment, with a folded-up futon couch and a beauty shop chair that faced a large mirror which had a chest in front of it holding clippers, brushes and the usual hairdresser's supplies. Below the chest legs was a collection of high pumps, all of them black or red. On one side of the mirror was the largest TV Jimmy had ever seen. An old black and white movie played—a young Shirley MacLaine was running down a Manhattan street with a blissful smile. Leaning against the TV was a six-foot stack of straight and gay porno tapes. On the other side of the mirror was a display case packed with figurines of angels, the Virgin, and saints and crosses.

“Honey, you have been gone much too long.” Cat said to Erin. He had a faint accent.

“I know, but my new partner, Jimmy, he needs it a lot it more. Right?”

Cat cocked his head like a beagle. “You have a smart partner.” He extended his hand, indicating the chair and Jimmy slipped in.

Erin checked out the angel case. “This is new.”

“I still do all these Filipinos. They come here for their hair, but always wanna buy the saints too. What am I gonna do?”

He threw a plastic beauty-shop sheet over Jimmy.

“You want the same, honey—but better, right?”

“Right.”

“Cat was the hottest thing in Manila,” Erin said.

“
Years ago
, darling” he said with a laugh. “
Years
ago. I had three shops there. But
thank God
somebody still remembers me.”

As Jimmy looked around the room he knew how a Jew must feel at a Catholic mass. It was a world familiar to lots of people, but it sure wasn't him. Reflected in the mirror behind him was a gold trophy nearly as tall as Cat.

“What's the trophy for?” Jimmy asked.

“Miss Castro. I came in second place.”

“That's impressive.”
Good God
, if his dad could hear him now, complementing this drag-queen on his beauty contest success.

“But you know who I lost to? …”

He couldn't wait.

“Miss Gay America. We went out for two months after that. But she was
such
a user—just laying around and looking beautiful, like some pussy cat. Use me, use me, use me, that's all she ever did. Finally, I had to throw the lazy bitch out.”

Stuck in the mirror, was a picture from the
LA Times
of the West Hollywood Halloween parade where a stunning Imelda Marcos was striding down the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard. Jimmy realized she was none other than the guy cutting his hair.

“You always go out as Imelda?”

“No!!” he said as if he was shot with a bullet. “I used to. Every night—for years. But American men they don't appreciate
class
any more. They want
trash
. So now I go out as Sharon Stone. Ugh. But it works.”

“Yeah … I guess.” What else could he say?—We American men really do appreciate class, and you were so wrong to abandon Imelda?

Erin flipped through a
Harper's Bazaar
on the couch. “We heard you did Mark Lodge,” she said.

“Honey, I didn't
do
him. I just cut his hair.” Turning to Jimmy, he said, “She tell you how many cops I do?”

“You're kidding.” As soon as he said it, Jimmy realized his answer should have been,
I didn't know that
, and kill the conversation. It was too late.

“Oh yeah. In uniform—and on duty. You cops love it. It's a nice little dirty thing. Makes the night go by faster.”

“You tell them what you are?” Erin said.

“God yes!—I always says to them this hot chick got a hot dick. I don't want no surprises later.”

“And they don't mind?” Jimmy said.

“Nah, that's what they there for.”

“What about Lodge?” Jimmy said.

“He was nothing. His secretary sent him to me the first time. I couldn't believe he came back.”

“What did he talk about with you?”

“Pfff. Borrrrring. Too, too Valley. But he liked the book, so he wasn't a complete nothing.”

“What book?”

“What book?—
The book
. You never saw it? Right there on the table.”

Erin picked up a large red photo album—and pulled back.

“See what I mean?” Cat grinned.

“Show it to your partner.”

She held it open for Jimmy. On the first page there were half a dozen Polaroids of men of all different ages and races, but all in the same basic pose—on their backs, stretched out the same couch that Erin now sat, and naked. The book was packed. It looked like he had half the city in there.

“Okay. I get it.”

Erin shut the book.

“Sure you don't wanna see the whole thing,” Cat said. “Might find someone you know.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Jimmy said. “Those are all cops?”

“Not all—but plenty.”

“Lodge was interested in it?” Erin said.

“Honey,
everybody
but you two is interested. That book is worth a million dollars …”

Not to me, pal,
Jimmy thought.

“… If I wanted to sell it, it would be bye-bye shopping Betsey Johnson and hello
owning
Betsey Johnson. All these closet queers with wives in the Valley? Name your price.”

“Lodge ever talk about what he was doing?” Erin asked. “About work or anything else?”

“Nothing, honey”

“You're sure?”

Jimmy was about to pump him for more info. Then he stopped. Whatever Lodge was, he wasn't an idiot, and Cat had to be the most indiscreet man in Hollywood—hardly the person you confess anything to.

Jimmy had about all he could take and started to get up. He looked into the mirror and realized that for all the craziness—this drag queen was giving him the best haircut he ever had. Maybe he'd come back sometime.

31

J
immy drove towards the stationhouse, cutting through a light rain misting over West Hollywood. Erin was staring out the window, trying to catch sight of any kids she knew who could tell them something. When the streets were this quiet, every house seemed to have a memory for Jimmy. As they drove down Seward he passed a big place with a nice white picket fence. Six or seven years ago, he was the first one on the scene where a young Japanese woman with an eight-month-old baby had been pistol-whipped during a break-in, and her husband shot in front of her. Every time he drove past the house, Jimmy thought about the woman as he arrived—the baby crying in her arms, the husband on the floor still bleeding from a shot to his cheek, her screams tearing into the night. That image, a snapshot of unimaginable pain, he figured would be with him till the day he died.

The light changed. Jimmy shut his eyes a moment and tried to push the woman's screams away. It worked. For now. But they would be back. There wasn't a street in Hollywood that didn't have a memory that Jimmy wished he could shake. An apartment building where a waitress was stabbed in the vagina by her jealous boyfriend and left to bleed to death in the bathtub; a nice tiny house where a raging drunk kicked his nine-months pregnant girlfriend so hard in the stomach that the baby died. Over the years Jimmy tried to change his route home—so he wouldn't keep seeing the same ghosts, but there was always some house, some park, some spot where the ghosts found him.

“Striking out—the rain, “ Erin said, pulling him out of the horrors.

They drove in silence for a block. He could see the side of her face from the corner of his eye and wondered what she was thinking. She turned to him. “How come you moved out here?” she asked.

“I had an incident in New York.” Lousy way of putting it, Jimmy thought, but it was the best he could do.

“Bad?”

“I guess.”

“If you don't want to talk about it, that's okay.”

“No. It's alright. I was coming back from a break-in with my partner Angelo in the East Village—or the Lower East Side—that's what it was called when my father and uncles used to be cops there. And I see this little twelve-year-old girl who comes running up to me screaming there's a guy at the bodega at the corner chasing after a kid with a nine. Angelo hits the gas, and the girl was right—at the end of the block, there's this fat black guy waving the gun and running after a fourteen year old kid yelling, ‘Gimme that the fuck back.' But the kid kept running. Angelo pulls the car onto the curb across the street from the bodega. I jump out and squat behind the open car door for cover. Angelo pops out the other side, and leans over the cruiser with his arms stretched out on the hood pointing his gun at the perp. Angelo yells across the street to the perp, ‘Drop the gun, buddy'. The perp is a nasty-looking guy, his pants are unbuckled and hanging half-open, and his face is covered with scrubby white stubble. ‘Drop it!' Angelo calls over again. But the perp just stares at us with the strangest goddamn look. But then, he does like he's told and drops the gun onto the lid of a dumpster. So we relax a little. Another scumbag with a gun, but at least he was giving it up without a hassle. Angelo yells, ‘Just walk way from it, man. With the hands up.' The perp takes a step away from the dumpster. I feel for my cuffs on my belt—and then the perp scoops up the gun and aims it right at my head. What was it?—a tenth of a second. Less? And that tenth of a second was
filled
. Filled with thoughts of my wife being a widow, my kid, the person in the world I cared the most about, growing up without a dad. I pulled the trigger—but before my shot was even out, Angelo's shot had already hit. Then mine hit. Then two more of Angelo's. And the perp was dead. No question.”