Hollywood Crows (19 page)

When they got back to their shop and started driving, Dan Applewhite took a good look at Gert Von Braun. He was a lot older and knew he wasn’t much to look at. And he couldn’t seem to keep a wife for very long, no matter how much money he spent on her. But he was starting to develop feelings he hadn’t had for a while. Despite her bulk and scary reputation, Gert Von Braun was starting to grow very attractive.

“What say we stop at Starbucks, Gert?” he said impulsively, then added something that usually interested other female partners. “I’d love to buy us a latte and biscotti.”

Gert shrugged and said, “I’m not much for sissy coffee, but I wouldn’t mind an In-N-Out burger.”

And
zing
went the strings of his heart! He grinned big and said, “Okay! One In-N-Out burger coming up!”

“With grilled onions and double the fries,” Gert added.

He was back at an ATM that night, a different one this time, on Hollywood Boulevard. Leonard Stilwell had worked diligently to set the film trap with the glue strips in place. He couldn’t sit around his room waiting for the job with Ali. The advance that Ali had given him was gone, smoked up in his pipe and lost on those goddamn Dodgers after he was stupid enough to make a bet with a sports book who’d beaten him 90 percent of the time.

Despite his prior misgivings and fear of all the cops he’d seen around the Kodak Center, the area offered an irresistible attraction in the persons of all those doofus tourists. So after casing carefully, he’d decided that a certain one of the ATMs wasn’t quite as dangerous as the others because it was in a dark corner and provided an easier escape route to the residential street several blocks away where he’d parked his old Honda. Now he was watching that ATM. Several Asians with cameras dangling from their necks almost bit. They’d be no good to him unless they spoke enough English to accept his “help.”

The ATM customer who finally stopped was the one he wanted. The guy was at least seventy years old and so was his wife. He was carrying a bag from one of the boulevard souvenir shops and she was carrying another one. They wore walking shorts and tennis shoes and their baseball caps had pins all over them from Universal Studios’ tour, Disneyland, and Knott’s Berry Farm. Her brand new T-shirt said “Movies For Me” across the back. Just looking at them made him imagine the heavenly smoke filling his lungs.

The guy put his card into the slot but nothing happened. He punched in his PIN and looked at his wife. Then he looked around, presumably for help, just as a younger man with hair the color of an overripe pumpkin, a wash of freckles, and a howdy-folks smile walked to the machine, holding his own ATM card in his hand.

“Are you finished with your transaction, sir?” Leonard said.

“There’s something wrong with the machine,” the tourist said. “My card won’t come out and the dang thing doesn’t work.”

“Golly,” Leonard said, as syrupy as he could manage. “I’ve run into this before. Do you mind if I try something?”

“Help yourself, young man,” the tourist said. “I sure don’t wanna be calling my bank and canceling my card. Not when we just got to Hollywood.”

“Don’t blame you,” Leonard said. “Let’s see.”

He stepped forward, put his fingers on the “enter” and “cancel” keys, and said, “Way it was explained to me is, you punch in your PIN number at the same time you hold down ‘cancel’ and ‘enter,’ and it should kick out the card. Wanna try it?”

“Sure,” the tourist said. “Let’s see, I hold down which two keys?”

“Here, lemme help,” Leonard said. “I’ll hold the two keys down and you just go ahead and punch in your PIN number.”

“I’ll hold down the keys,” a deep voice behind Leonard said.

He turned and saw a guy his age. A tall, buffed-out guy looking him right in the eye. Leonard’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“This is my son,” the tourist said. “There’s something wrong with the machine, Wendell. This fellow’s helping us.”

“That’s nice of him,” Wendell said but never took his stare from Leonard’s watery blue eyes, not for an instant.

Leonard said, “Go ahead and punch in your PIN number.” But he didn’t dare look at the keyboard. In fact, he made it a point to look away.

“Nothing,” the tourist said. “Not a goldang thing happened.”

“Well, guess you’ll have to cancel it,” Leonard said. “It was worth a try. Sorry I couldn’t help you.”

As he was sidling away, he heard the woman say, “See, Wendell, there’s lots of real nice, polite people in Hollywood.”

Leonard felt like weeping by the time he’d walked several blocks to his car. He needed crack so bad he couldn’t think of anything else. He wasn’t even hungry, although he hadn’t eaten a real meal for two days. And to make matters worse, there was a police car parked behind his car with its headlights on, and two cops were giving him a goddamn ticket!

“Is this your car?” Flotsam asked when Leonard approached, keys in hand.

“Yeah, what’s wrong?” Leonard said.

“What’s wrong?” Jetsam said. “Take a look where you’re parked.”

Leonard walked around to the front of the car and saw that he was halfway across a narrow concrete driveway belonging to an old two-story stucco house that was crammed between two newer apartment buildings. He hadn’t noticed the driveway when he’d parked, not after he’d circled the streets for twenty minutes, looking for a parking place where he wouldn’t get a goddamn ticket like this.

“Gimme a break!” Leonard said. “I’m between jobs. And even if I wasn’t tapped, I couldn’t give my ride to those goofy wetbacks at the pay lot. They’ll back your car right up onto the fanny pack of the first tourist dumb enough to take a shortcut through the parking lot, and then what?”

“Too late,” Flotsam said. “It’s already written. Lucky you came back, though. The guy in that house wanted your car towed.”

“No mercy,” Leonard said. “There ain’t a drop of mercy and compassion in this whole fucking town.”

Jetsam had his flashlight beam close enough to Leonard’s face to see the twitching and sweat. He raised the light to check Leonard’s pupils and said, “Got some ID?”

“What for?” Leonard said. “I haven’t done nothing.”

“You drive this car,” Jetsam said. “You have a driver’s license, right?”

Leonard reached in his pocket for his wallet. “Not a drop of mercy or compassion for a fellow human being,” Leonard said, taking the parking citation from Flotsam and handing Jetsam his driver’s license.

Jetsam took the license and walked back to their shop and sat down inside it.

“Aw, shit,” Leonard said. “What’s he doing, calling in on me?”

“Just routine,” Flotsam said, giving Leonard a quick pat-down.

“That’s what they always say,” Leonard whined. “Do you guys ever give a person a break? I mean ever?”

“Whadda you been arrested for?” Flotsam asked.

“You’re gonna find out in a few minutes,” Leonard said. “Couple of small-time thefts is all. I learned my lesson. I’m just a working stiff now. Between jobs.”

When Jetsam came back, he said to his partner, “Mr. Stilwell here has two priors for burglary and one for petty theft.”

“The burglaries were reduced to petty theft,” Leonard said. “I pled guilty and I only got county jail time. The petty theft was for shoplifting when I had to steal some groceries for an elderly neighbor who was sick. Jesus! Can’t a guy get a second chance?”

By then, both cops figured him for a crackhead or maybe a tweaker, and Flotsam said, “Mr. Stilwell, you wouldn’t object if we took a look in your car, would you? Just routine, of course.”

“Go ahead,” Leonard said. “If I said no, you’d find an excuse to do it anyways.”

“Are you saying no?” Jetsam said.

“I’m saying just do what the fuck you gotta do so I can go home. I give up. There ain’t a drop of mercy and compassion and charity left in this whole fucking city. Here.”

He pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them to Jetsam, who opened the door and did a quick search for drugs in the glove box, under the seats and floor mats, and in other obvious places. All he saw was a note behind the visor with an address on it. He recognized the street as one on Mt. Olympus near the house where a multiple murder involving Russian gangsters had occurred. He jotted the address down in his notebook.

When he was finished, he nodded to Flotsam and said, “Okay, Mr. Stilwell, thanks for the cooperation.”

By then Leonard was shaking his head in disgust, and when he got into his car, he was mumbling aloud about the merciless, pitiless, fucking city he lived in.

“Let’s drive up to Mount Olympus for a minute,” Jetsam said when they were back in their shop.

“What for?”

“That guy had an address behind his visor. What would a loser like that be doing up on Mount Olympus? Except casing a house, maybe.”

“There you go again,” Flotsam said. “Dude, you are determined to go all detective and sleuthy on my time. Maybe the guy’s looking to become a gardener or something. Did you think of that?”

“He’s the wrong color. Come on, bro, it’ll just take a few minutes.”

Flotsam headed for the Hollywood Hills without another word and, finding the winding street, followed it up to the top.

Jetsam checked addresses and said, “This number don’t exist.”

“Okay,” Flotsam said. “You satisfied now?”

He turned around just as Jetsam spotted a familiar car in a driveway a few houses away from where the street address should have been.

“That’s Hollywood Nate’s ride!” he said.

“That Mustang?”

“Yeah.”

“Dude, there’s lots of Mustangs in this town.”

Jetsam grabbed the spotlight and shined it on the car. “How many with a license plate that says SAG4NW?”

“What?”

“Screen Actors Guild for Nate Weiss. How many?”

“So?”

“Maybe we should stop and see if the resident knows a Leonard Stilwell.”

“Look, dude,” Flotsam said. “We already dragged Hollywood Nate into one of your wild goose chases. We ain’t gonna interrupt whatever he’s doing in there with another of your clues. And knowing him, whatever he’s doing in there involves pussy, that much is totally for sure. So he is not gonna be happy to see us, no matter what.”

“Bro, this could be something he should know about.”

“It’s the wrong goddamn address!” Flotsam said. “You can tell Nate all about it tomorrow. That thief we just shook ain’t gonna be killing no residents on this street tonight. You good with that?”

“I guess I gotta be,” Jetsam said.

“Tomorrow you can call Sleuths R Us if you get more brainstorms.”

“Bro, do you think you could stop ripping on me about that?” Jetsam said. “So I made a mistake about the SUVs. Can’t you just step off?”

Flotsam said, “I’m off it. Somebody’s gotta prove there’s a drop of mercy and compassion in this whole fucking city. Are we gravy, dude?”

“Gravy, bro,” Jetsam said. “Long as you don’t mention it again.”

“I’m off it forever,” Flotsam said. “And that’s the truth, sleuth.”

O
F COURSE
, Hollywood Nate didn’t know anything at all about the surfers’ debate taking place out on the street in front of the Aziz home. He was sitting at the dining room table, sipping wine and looking into the amber eyes of Margot Aziz, who kept topping off his wineglass and trying to persuade him that she made the best martinis in Hollywood.

Finally he said, “I’m just not much of a martini guy. The wine is great and the pasta and salad were sensational.”

“Just a simple four-cheese noodle,” she said. “Your mom called it macaroni and cheese.”

“I should help you with the dishes,” he said. “I’m good at it. My ex-wife was dishwashing obsessive and turned me into a kitchen slave.”

“No dishes for us, boyo,” she said. “My housekeeper will be here in the morning, and she gets mad when there’s not something extra for her to do.” Then she said, “Did you have kids with your ex?”

“That was the one good thing about my marriage. No kids.”

“Can be good or bad,” she said. “Nicky is the only good thing about my marriage, which will soon be officially over, praise the lord.”

Nate looked around and said, “Will you get to keep this house?”

“We’re selling it,” she said. “Which is sad. This is the only home Nicky’s ever known. Did your wife get to keep your house?”

“It was an apartment,” Nate said. “More or less a pots ’n’ pans divorce. She came out of it way better than I did. Married a doctor and now lives the way a Jewish princess was meant to live. Her father hated it when she married a cop. She shoulda listened to him. I shoulda listened to him.”

Margot said, “My Nicky is five years old and deserves to keep the lifestyle he’s always had.”

“Sure,” Nate said. “Of course.”

“I worry a lot about him, and that’s part of what I need to talk to you about.”

“Okay,” Nate said. “I’m listening.”

“I’ve become afraid of his father.” Then she stopped, took another sip of wine, and said, “Sure you won’t have a martini? I’ve just gotta have one when I talk about my husband, Ali Aziz.”

“No, really,” Nate said. “You go ahead.”

Margot Aziz got up and walked out of the dining room and into a butler’s pantry, then to the kitchen, where Nate could hear her scooping from an ice maker. He got up and joined her, watching her make the cocktail.

“I’m not a big-city girl,” she said. “I’m from Barstow, California. Where desert teens spend Saturday night dining at the historic Del Taco fast-food joint and getting deflowered at the prehistoric El Rancho Motel. I dreamed of being an entertainer. Danced and sang at all the school assemblies and plays. I was Margaret Osborne then, voted the most talented girl in the senior class.”

She was quiet for a moment, and when they reentered the dining room, she said, “A James Bond vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred. Can’t I tempt you?”

“No, really, Margot, I’m feeling just perfect.” He wondered if “tempt” was meant as a double entendre, hoping it was.

She tasted the martini, nodded in satisfaction, and said, “The problem was, when I came to Hollywood and started looking for an agent and attending cattle calls and auditions, I discovered that every girl here was the most talented girl in her school. Changing my name from Margaret to Margot didn’t glam it up much.” She gave a self-deprecating shrug.