Hollywood Crows (32 page)

“Holy shit!” he said, stumbling inside, fumbling for the notebook paper in his pocket as the alarm’s warning chirp sounded. He couldn’t find it! The security breach would show on the computer in the office of the security provider in a few more seconds if he didn’t…

He found it in his pants pocket! He looked at it and punched in the maid’s code and the warning tone stopped. Then he stepped back out to the garage and retrieved the tension bar and pick. He put on the latex gloves and, for good measure, used the tail of his T-shirt to wipe the door handle that he’d grabbed on to. Nobody was going to
CSI his
ass.

When he got inside, he walked to his right, entered the kitchen and then the dining room, where he could see the view of Hollywood. He’d never been in a home like this. As scared as he was, he had to admire it for a moment. It was hard to take it all in. The extravagance! Now he wished he’d demanded more for this job. Ali was always poor-mouthing about how his wife had made him almost broke. Look at this! What was an extra thousand to that fucking goat eater? To a man who had lived in a house like this?

Leonard Stilwell believed that was a weakness that had held him back all his life. He was too generous and too trusting in his fellow man, and what had it gotten him? He tore himself away from the sights and got down to business. He found the little office near the kitchen, where Margot Aziz paid her bills. He opened the drawer that Ali had described to him and found the large envelopes, labeled by year. He looked through them until he found the folder for 2004. He tucked it under his arm and returned to the door, setting the thumb-turn that the maid had forgotten to set.

He was into the garage and the spring-loaded hinge on the door was in the process of closing the door behind him when he remembered. Ali said more than once for him to leave the door unlocked. Leonard stopped the door just in time. He unlocked the thumb-turn so that the maid, Lola, would catch hell for not setting it, just as Ali had ordered him to do. Of course Ali would never find out from Leonard that Lola had failed to set it in the first place.

But when he was walking away from the house, Leonard regretted that he hadn’t set the thumb-turn. Fucking rich assholes never give working people a break. He didn’t want to be responsible for the dumb old Mexican woman getting her ass chewed out. But he figured the divorce was so bitter that Ali’s ex would never fire the maid, if only to spite Ali.

On the other hand, the Mexican maid probably had family who would take care of her, and Social Security, and maybe welfare checks, and everything else the U.S. government gives to the millions of wetbacks in this country. The same federal government that turned him down the last time he applied for SSI assistance based on his poor health and addiction to rock cocaine. Some county social worker would always point to some shitty job like dishwasher and expect him to take it. In 2007 Los Angeles, it didn’t pay to be a white man.

After being seated safely behind the wheel of his Honda, Leonard opened the big folder to see if he could spot what it was that made this worth so much to Ali Aziz. But all he found were receipts, check stubs, and banking lists of cleared checks. Just ordinary household crap that anyone might keep around for a few years.

As he was driving down the hill to meet Ali Aziz, a lot was going on inside the head of Leonard Stilwell. He kept looking at the file folder. How could it be so important? And then there had been Ali’s insistence on the door being left unlocked to get the ex-wife more pissed off at the Mexican maid. But if the house was in escrow and the ex-wife was moving, the maid would be history anyway. It didn’t hang together and never had from the first moment Ali had tried to spin it.

When he got down to the Mt. Olympus sign, he saw Ali’s Jaguar farther down the road, facing up the hill. He parked on the opposite side of the road, got out with the file folder, and crossed to Ali’s car.

He handed the folder through the open window, and Ali said, “Good, Leonard. You done a very good job. Give me the garage opener and the piece of paper with the alarm code, please.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Leonard said, handing both items to Ali. “She has new door hardware. If I wasn’t an expert, I never coulda picked the lock.”

Ali gave Leonard a roll of hundred-dollar bills, saying, “It is all there, Leonard. Thank you for helping me.”

“It was a different lock setup. Not like you said it was,” Leonard repeated.

“You leave it unlocked?” Ali said, suddenly concerned.

“Yeah, sure,” Leonard said.

“Okay, Leonard,” Ali said, starting his engine. “Come by the Leopard Lounge sometime. I shall buy you a drink.”

Leonard looked at Ali and said, “Because I had such a lotta extra work to do on the new hardware, it took more time and put me in more danger. I think I deserve a bonus.”

Ali pushed the gearshift back into park and said, “We have a deal.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t get it right and it made the job very tough and risky. I think I should get another one of them Franklins.”

Ali dropped the shift into drive and said, “Good-bye, Leonard.”

Then he made a U-turn and drove back down toward the boulevards, as though to return to his business.

Leonard had a hunch then and decided to play it. He took his time getting into his Honda, waiting until Ali’s Jaguar had vanished in the Hollywood traffic. Then he started his car, made a U-turn, and drove back up Mt. Olympus, passing the Aziz house, turning onto the street farther up the hill, and parking behind a gardener’s truck. Leonard got out and walked back to the corner and watched the house of Margot Aziz fifty yards down the road.

He only waited five minutes until Ali’s Jaguar appeared, driving past his former home and parking in nearly the exact spot where Leonard had parked prior to his burglary. Ali got out of his car and walked to the garage and opened it. And Leonard could see the large file folder in Ali’s hand. He was returning it, just as Leonard thought he would. This wasn’t about a fucking folder full of canceled checks and household shit.

Ali saw for himself that Margot had changed the lock on the garage access door as she had done on the others. He hadn’t counted on that, but he doubted that it had presented any difficulty for Leonard Stilwell. Ali was furious that the thief had tried to get another hundred dollars out of him. Ali put on a pair of latex gloves he’d gotten from his nightclub dishwasher, examined the handle, and opened the door.

He used the maid’s code to silence the alarm chirp and closed the door behind him, checking his watch. Another thing about Margot was that she was a creature of habit. She went to Pilates every Thursday and stayed until 5:30, no matter what. Then she would pick up Nicky at the home of the nanny and take him somewhere and feed him junk food that he liked, food she would never eat. Ali hated her for that as well. When he got custody of his son after her death, he would see to the boy’s healthy diet. Lots of yogurt and lamb and rice and vegetables.

He quieted his fears by remembering the stories in the news a few months earlier about two Los Angeles women who were on vacation in Russia and were poisoned by thallium, the toxic metal that was first suspected in the murder of former spy Alexander Litvinenko until polonium-210 turned out to be the killer. Also, he remembered that Los Angeles County health officials had found that a popular brand of Armenian mineral water contained large amounts of arsenic. And then there was the local and national recall of premium pet foods found to be laced with rat poison that was killing cats and dogs. Poison was everywhere. If it happened after she was gone from Los Angeles, there was no way that anyone could suspect Ali Aziz, no matter how much he gained from her death. Nicky would get her estate and he would get Nicky. In essence, he would have everything back as it should be.

After replacing the large folder in the small office, Ali climbed the stairs to the master bedroom and felt pangs of nostalgia. He had loved this house. He had loved being married to Margot in the early days, and having the most beautiful baby he had ever seen, and making more money in his two nightclubs — especially the Leopard Lounge — than he had ever dreamed possible. He had loved Margot then. Or, more accurately, had been bewitched by her. She was the most perfect woman who had ever stepped on his stage. All natural, no silicone or saline, not even now, as far as he knew. Before she became a discontented, scheming bitch, the sex she had given him was like nothing before or since. During those early years with Margot and his infant son, Ali had been a completely contented man. A devoted husband, a loving father, a considerate boss who seldom required blow jobs from employees.

Ali felt the nostalgia more painfully when he entered the master bedroom. There used to be a photo of him on the wall by the dresser, but it was gone. The enormous walk-in closet was even more full of her clothes than it had been when he lived there. The bills that came to his lawyer’s office were an outrage and had taken up so much argument before the judge that Ali had decided it was cheaper to pay them than to pay the hours that his lawyer billed to him.

He looked in his former walk-in closet, prepared to see the clothes of the lover Jasmine had told him about, but it was now more than half full of her overflow. He guessed she owned fifty pairs of shoes, maybe more. And those were just the dressy ones. The others — flats, sandals, athletic shoes — numbered in the dozens as well. There was no sign of men’s clothing.

He entered the bathroom and was happy to see that there was no trace of any man living in the house. After talking to Jasmine, he’d been afraid that the boyfriend whom Margot had flaunted in her telephone calls might have completely taken over this bedroom suite. He couldn’t get his mind around an image of this man in this bedroom, naked with Margot. And where was Nicky during those times?

Ali couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to do the terrible job he came here to do. He removed the little envelope from his pocket and then opened the medicine cabinet. But Margot’s sleep aids were gone. Panic struck! They should be there. They were always there, high on the top shelf, where Nicky couldn’t get to them. He began opening drawers. He opened the medicine cabinet on his side of the bathroom. He opened lower cabinets, even though he knew she wouldn’t keep prescription drugs there.

Ali ran back into the master bedroom and started opening drawers in the two massive walnut dressers. Then he went to the upright chests of drawers and opened them. It was hot in the house with the air conditioner timed to come on thirty minutes before she returned home. He was perspiring heavily. He could smell himself. He told himself to be calm, to only look in high places that Nicky couldn’t possibly reach.

Ali entered his former closet, the one that now held her overflow. On the top shelf he saw a jewelry box, the one where she kept her costume jewelry. He took it down. The vial of magenta-and-turquoise capsules was there! He was so shaken he had to sit.

Ali went to her vanity dresser and sat down on the padded chair she used when brushing her hair before retiring. He emptied the vial onto the dresser top and took the deadly capsule from the envelope. He put it into the empty vial and then scooped the other capsules on top of it. He opened the new vial that he’d gotten from Jaime Salgando and added six capsules from it to her vial, because hers was half empty. She wouldn’t notice the few extra capsules, but they would provide the extra time for her to be living elsewhere when it happened.

He put her vial back in the jewelry box and placed it on the top shelf where he’d found it. He looked around the master bedroom for the last time. He knew he would never see it again, and it brought tears to his eyes. It would all have been perfect if she had not turned out to be such a coldhearted, conniving American bitch who stole his money and broke his heart.

When he got to the garage access door he reset the thumb-turn as he believed it was before Leonard had picked the lock for him. He removed his gloves, opened the garage door, and closed it quickly after stepping outside. Then he walked up the hill, very pleased that there was no traffic passing and there were no gardeners on the nearby properties. When he got in his car, he made a careful U-turn and proceeded back down to the boulevards.

The gardener had moved the truck behind which Leonard Stilwell had parked, and a woman in the next house watched him when he walked to his car.

Leonard smiled at her and said, “Do you know which house Madonna lives in? I seem to have the wrong address.”

The woman looked at him suspiciously and said, “No, I don’t. I don’t think there’s anyone by that name on this block.”

“Oh, well, I’ll try farther down,” Leonard said with a wave.

While driving down the hill, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Ali hadn’t hired him to take something out of that house. He’d been hired so that Ali could get into that house. And it had nothing to do with the big folder that Ali had carried back inside. He’d been in there for thirteen minutes. What was he looking for? He couldn’t have been stealing something that she’d miss or he’d have wanted Leonard to make it look like a burglary. Yet that’s what Ali did
not
want.

Leonard pulled to the curb at the first sewer opening he saw, hopped out of his car, and tossed the latex gloves down the hole. Now let’s see them try to
CSI
my ass again, he thought.

When he got back in the car, he took the tension bar and lock pick from his pocket and put them in the glove box. He was two blocks from the cyber café, where he figured to score plenty of rock with some of the Franklins he had, when it hit him: the answer to the Ali Aziz puzzle. Suddenly, he was on it. There was only one thing it could be. That fucking devious Ay-rab had planted a listening device in his ex-wife’s house!

If Leonard were to drive up there later tonight, he was sure he’d find somebody parked on that street who shouldn’t be there, somebody hired by Ali to monitor what was happening in the little lady’s bedroom. Leonard figured that this was the kind of shit that crazed rich people did during their divorces. People who didn’t really appreciate what was worthwhile in life.