Hollywood Crows (30 page)

You could count the old woman’s bones through flesh the color of antique ivory, but she seemed very alert and described the suspicious man to Gert and Dan as having black hair and “large, liquid brown eyes.”

When Gert asked if she had any idea who the man was, the old woman said, yes, his name might be Tyrone Power.

Gert, who was nearly twenty years younger than Doomsday Dan, said, “Is this Tyrone Power a black man or white?”

“He’s white,” Dan said to Gert.

Gert looked at Dan and said, “How do you know?”

Instead of answering Gert, Dan said to the old woman, “Was he wearing a black mask, by any chance? And did he carry a sword?”

“No,” the old woman said. “Not this time.”

“On other occasions?” Dan asked.

“Oh, yes, sometimes,” she said.

“Did he ever carve a
Z
on any objects around here?”

“He might have,” she said. “He’s very handsome.”

“I know exactly where this man is,” Dan said.

“You do?” the old woman said.

“Yes, and I’ll see to it that he doesn’t come around bothering you again. You don’t have to worry about it. Do you live with someone?”

“Yes, I live with my daughter. She’s at work.”

“Well, you can sleep tight. We’ll take care of that fellow.”

“You won’t hurt him, will you?” she said. “He’s very handsome.”

“I promise we will not hurt him,” Dan Applewhite said.

When they were walking to their shop, Gert said, “So, okay. Who’s this Tyrone Power?”

“You’re too young to know, but he was a big movie star.”

“And you say you know exactly where to find him?”

“Yes, in a mausoleum at the Hollywood cemetery,” Dan Applewhite said.

Gert cleared by pressing a button on the MDC keyboard and they resumed patrol, Dan driving and Gert keeping score. She logged the call and then looked over at Dan.

“You know what I heard about you?” she said.

“What’s that?”

“I hear you’re a serial groom, that you’ve been married four times.”

“That’s a lie,” he said. “Three times.”

“You don’t like to stay married very long, huh?”

“I’ve been married a long time,” he said, “but to three different women.”

“Got kids?”

“Only one,” Dan said.

“How old?”

“Twenty-six. He’s a computer geek, and a whiner like his mother. How about you?”

“Never been married,” she said. “This job isn’t conducive.”

“You’ve got lotsa time,” he said. “You’re young.”

“Look at me. I don’t have anybody breaking down my door,” she said.

He turned and did take a good look at her and he said, “Whadda you mean?”

“I’m wide,” she said with defiance in her eyes. “Ask Treakle.”

“You care what Chickenlips thinks?” Dan said. “I think you look healthy. I’m sick of anorexic women. My last two wives figured out a way to throw up more food than they ever swallowed.”

“My dad’s a skinny German,” she said, “but my mom’s Dutch, with big shoulders and wide hips. From picking too many tulips, I guess. I favor her side of the family.”

“I like the way you look,” Dan said.

Gert smiled slightly and said, “Tyrone Power, huh? I’m gonna have to educate myself. He played Zorro?”

“Long before Antonio Banderas,” Dan said. “You like old movies?”

“I haven’t seen too many, but yeah, I do.”

“I know an art house cinema where they even show silents. You should go with me sometime. I mean, not like a date or anything. I know my sell-by date is way past.”

“You’re not that old,” she said.

“You don’t think so?” said Doomsday Dan.

The incipient flirtation was interrupted by another computer message, directing them to an address familiar to Ronnie Sinclair and Bix Ramstead.

When 6-X-66 arrived at that address and knocked, a portly black woman came to the door. She pointed across the street at a wood-frame cottage where two shopping carts were overturned in the tiny front yard.

“I’m Mrs. Farnsworth,” she said. “I’ve called you all about the people over there. About the shopping carts in the yard and about the noise.”

“Is that what this is about?” Gert said. “Noise?”

“No, this is about the quiet,” she said. “It’s too quiet over there. At this time of evening they usually got this weird Somali music blaring. But not tonight.”

“Maybe they’re not home,” Dan said.

“They’re home,” Mrs. Farnsworth said. “I seen them through their windows an hour ago, but now the blinds are down.”

“Maybe they went to bed,” Gert said.

“Honey, they don’t go to bed till two, three
A.M
.,” Mrs. Farnsworth said. “At least
he
don’t. He yells at her all the time. And I know he beats her, but she won’t say nothing whenever I get a chance to ask her about it.”

“It’s pretty hard for us to go knock on people’s doors and ask them why they’re being so quiet,” Dan said.

“There’s a young man,” Mrs. Farnsworth said, “a young white man. He used to drive her home once in a while. She cleans his house, is what she told me. He lives with his handicapped parents and he has a good job and he’s good to her, she said. One day I seen him drop her off, and her husband came outta the house with only his underwear on and he grabbed her arm and started jabbering in their language and dragged her into the house and slammed the door. After that she took the bus home from her housecleaning jobs. He’s a very mean man and she’s a very sweet and frightened girl.”

Gert looked at Dan and he said, “We can knock and try to think of some reason for doing it. Just to make sure everything’s okay.”

“The shopping carts,” Mrs. Farnsworth said. “He’s been warned about that before.” Then she went to a bookshelf and removed a porcelain vase with some cards inside. She handed one to Gert, saying, “The officer wrote his personal phone number on the back of the card and said I could call him anytime.”

Gert read it and said, “Officer Bix Ramstead.” Then she said to the woman, “We’ll knock and see what’s what.”

“Please,” Mrs. Farnsworth said. “I’m really worried about that girl. And so was that Officer Ramstead. You could see it in his face.”

Gert Von Braun and Dan Applewhite crossed the residential street, needing their flashlights to keep from stepping into the potholes that the city of Los Angeles hadn’t the financial resources to repair.

They listened and heard nothing inside. Dan knocked. No answer.

Gert walked a few steps to the window and listened. Dan knocked again. No answer.

Dan said, “There’s nothing more we can do here.”

Gert put her palm up to hush him and pressed her ear to the door. “I think I hear something,” she said.

“What’s it sound like?”

“It’s very faint. Like a man chanting or something. In their language, not ours.”

Dan drew his baton and banged it on the door, good and loud. Gert kept listening after he stopped.

“Anything change in the sound?” he said.

She shook her head and tried the knob. It was locked.

“Maybe we should call a supervisor,” Gert said. “To give us an okay to enter.”

“And take the chance of drawing Chickenlips Treakle?”

“Forget the supervisor,” Gert said.

Both cops walked back to the street. Gert said, “Put your light on this.”

Dan held the business card and lit it for her with his flashlight beam. She took out her cell and dialed the handwritten number on the back of the card.

The Crows were in their street clothes: Ronnie in a striped, tapered shirt, and jeans from Banana, and Bix in a yellow polo shirt and chinos from the Gap. Ronnie thought he was even better-looking out of uniform. LAPD blue seemed somehow unbecoming to him. Ronnie had ordered the chile relleno plate and a margarita. Bix had ordered two carne asada tacos and a cold
horchata
, made of rice water and cinnamon. Ronnie had hesitated before ordering an alcoholic drink in front of Bix but then figured it would make him even more uncomfortable to know she was avoiding booze for his sake.

They were halfway through dinner when his cell chimed. Ronnie wondered if it might be the mysterious caller who’d made him so uncomfortable. The one he’d lied about, saying it was his brother Pete.

He looked at the number and didn’t recognize it. “Hello,” he said.

“This is Six-X-Sixty-six, Von Braun here,” Gert said. “Is this Officer Bix Ramstead?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“I got your number from a Mrs. Farnsworth,” Gert said. “It’s about some Somalians that live across the street from her. She tells me you know something about them.”

“What happened?” Bix said.

“It’s weird,” Gert said. “Apparently they’re in there, but they won’t answer the door. The house is way too quiet to suit Mrs. Farnsworth, and I can hear the guy inside chanting some voodoo or something.”

“Are you going in?”

“We don’t know whether to back off or bang on the door some more or what.”

“Did you call a sergeant?”

“No, we’re afraid we’d get Treakle. He’d turn it into a fire drill.”

“I’ll be right there,” Bix said.

When he closed his cell, he pulled some bills from his wallet and put them on the table. “That was a midwatch officer. It’s the Somalians. Something’s wrong and they won’t open the door.”

“Where’re you going?”

“He might open the door for me. I established some rapport with him.”

“Bix, you’re off duty,” Ronnie said. “Let a supervisor deal with it. You shouldn’t get involved.”

“Finish your dinner, Ronnie,” Bix said. “I’ll call you when I check it out.”

“This is not your responsibility,” Ronnie said.

“I feel I should’ve done more,” he said, turning toward the door. “I had a gut feeling.”

“We did what we could at the time,” Ronnie called after him. “If something bad happened there, it’s not your tragedy, Bix!”

She didn’t know if he heard that last part or not. Bix Ramstead was running out the door to the parking lot.

Mrs. Farnsworth was standing on the street by the black-and-white. She’d given Gert and Dan each a cup of coffee, which they were finishing when Bix Ramstead drove up and parked his personal car, a family-friendly Dodge minivan.

The cops gave their empty cups to Mrs. Farnsworth, who said, “Evening, Officer Ramstead.”

“Hello, Mrs. Farnsworth,” Bix said. “I’m glad you kept my card.”

“It’s real quiet in there,” she said to Bix. “And it’s never quiet in there. And he got real mad at her last week when a young white man she works for gave her a ride home. If he’d hit her, I woulda called you. But he just grabbed her arm and got in her face and yelled angry Somali talk. And she took the bus home the next day without the young white man. It shouldn’t be so quiet in there like it is tonight, Officer Ramstead. I’m scared for that girl.”

A moment later, all three cops were back on the front porch of the wood-frame cottage. They stood silently and listened. There was only the hum of traffic on the nearby four-lane avenue and the sound of a dog barking nearby and the whirring of cicadas in the yard next door and faint salsa music from somewhere down the block. Then they heard the sound of a deep male voice, chanting prayers.

Bix knocked at the door and said, “Mr. Benawi, it’s Officer Ramstead. I spoke to you last week about the shopping carts, remember?”

They listened again. The chanting stopped.

Bix said, “Mr. Benawi, please open the door. I need to talk to you. It’s okay about the shopping carts. I just need to know that everything else is all right. Open the door, Mr. Benawi.”

The chanting started again and Gert Von Braun felt a shiver, but it was a warm, dry summer evening with a Santa Ana blowing hot wind from the desert to the sea. Dan Applewhite felt the hair on his neck tingle and he knew it wasn’t caused by the Santa Ana.

Bix Ramstead said, “We’re not leaving until you open the door, Mr. Benawi. Don’t make us do a forced entry.”

The chanting stopped again. They heard padded footsteps. Then Omar Hasan Benawi’s rumbling voice on the other side of the door said, “There is nothing for you here. Please leave my home.”

“We will, Mr. Benawi,” Bix said. “But first I need to talk to you face-to-face. And I need to see your wife. Then we’ll all go away.”

“She will not talk to you,” the voice said. “This is my home. Please go away now. There is nothing for you here.”

They heard the padded footsteps retreat away from the door, and the chanting began once more.

“Well, shit!” Dan said.

“Now what?” Gert said.

“This is what the federal consent decree has done to the LAPD,” Bix said to Doomsday Dan. “What would you have done back when we were real cops?”

Dan looked at Bix Ramstead and said, “We’re white, he’s black. We better not do something hasty. I can’t afford a suspension right now.”

“Answer my question,” Bix said to Dan. “What would you have done six years ago, before a federal judge and a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats emasculated us?”

Dan Applewhite glanced at Gert Von Braun and said, “I’da kicked the fucking door clear off the hinges and gone in there to see if that woman is okay.”

“Exactly,” Bix Ramstead said.

And he took three steps back, then ran forward and kicked just to the right of the doorknob, and the door crashed open and slammed against the plasterboard wall.

Bix Ramstead’s momentum carried him into the darkened living room. Gert Von Braun and Dan Applewhite drew their nines and followed him, casting narrow beams of light around the shabby room. Dan took the lead, trying to illuminate the ominous hallway leading to other rooms at the rear of the cottage.

The chanting had stopped. Now there was no sound at all, except for the traffic on the busy avenue half a block away. The first room was stacked with cardboard cartons, aluminum cans, and refundable bottles. Their flashlight beams played over the boxes, and then the cops advanced one behind the other to the last room, where a dim light was burning. Dan Applewhite pressed his back to the wall, his Beretta semiautomatic in his right hand now, and he crouched and peered around the corner.