Hollywood Moon (19 page)

The detective switched off his TV, stretched, yawned, and stood up. His rumpled Men’s Wearhouse suit coat hung on the chair
behind him, and for a few seconds, Sheila Montez had to gawk at the detective’s incredible necktie, decorated with what were
apparently meant to be some sort of cubist embellishments. Compassionate Charlie, who liked to go bargain shopping for Tijuana
imports on Alvarado Street, had bought it from a Mexican street vendor who kept pointing to the design, saying, “Diego Rivera!”
Except that it looked like something Diego Rivera might have sketched on a tablecloth during a bout of d.t.’s.

“Okay, so what’s the big deal about this?” Charlie said to Aaron, while Sheila took the tweaker into an interview room.

“Didn’t the watch commander talk to you about it?” Aaron said.

“Is this the cemetery deal?” Charlie said, cranky from being pulled away for more paperwork.

“It sure is,” Aaron said.

The detective walked into the interview room, looked at the tweaker who sat in the chair nodding off, sniffed the air, and
walked back out.

“That dude reeks,” Charlie said. “What am I smelling?”

“Formaldehyde,” Sheila Montez said, lip curling.

Sergeant Lee Murillo entered the detective squad room then and said to Aaron and Sheila, “Well, there’s no doubt about it.
You two get the Almost-a-Hollywood-Moon award. One extra-large pizza with the works.”

Charlie Gilford glanced quizzically at the sergeant and said, “For what?”

Sergeant Murillo said, “For handling the weirdest call of the night.” Then the detective looked at Aaron Sloane and said,
“Were those two hemorrhoids boning male corpses or female corpses?”

“Female corpses,” Aaron said.

“Well, shit!” Compassionate Charlie Gilford scoffed. “You call that weird?” Then he repeated the mantra heard every day around
the police station in that unique part of the world: “This is fucking Hollywood!”

G
ET UP!
” Eunice yelled, and Dewey smelled smoke and and bolted upright, thinking the place was on fire. But the smoke he smelled
was from the cigarette dangling from Eunice’s mouth.

When he looked up at her, he said, “Oh, shit.”

“Don’t gimme that oh-shit look,” Eunice said. “It’s eight o’clock. This is the second time I’ve had to come in here.”

Dewey said, “You’re killing me, Eunice! Killing me! I can’t work fifteen hours a day. Nobody can.”

She stared at him and said, “You don’t have to work at all, Dewey. This is Hollywood, U.S.A. You’re free to sit on your ass
all day long and watch
Girls Gone Wild
videos if that’s what you want. But not in my apartment. Not in my life. Make up your mind.”

“Goddamnit, Eunice, I don’t have any morning appointments,” he said, cursing himself for the whine that drizzled out every
time she looked as serious as a stroke, as serious as poverty.

“What’re you talking about, no morning appointments? You got houses to rent. I told you there was a ten-o’clock showing on
the fourth house. And then you got two more appointments on that same house this afternoon and two more appointments tonight
on the fifth and sixth houses. You claimed your burglar partners were gonna come through.”

He swung his feet onto the floor and kept his head ducked, ready for the explosion. “There won’t be a third, fourth, fifth,
or sixth house.”

“Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“The last thing I did last night before I came home was check on them. You were right. The guys I hired only changed the lock
on one and lied about doing the others. They gave me dummy keys for the rest.”

“Well, no shit, Dewey!” Eunice said, lip twisted in her supersneer. “Just like I predicted, whenever you hire tweakers.”

“You think I can hire unemployed mechanical engineers, Eunice? It’s the fucking world we live in. You can’t trust anybody.”

“Outsmarted by tweakers,” Eunice said. “Well, no shit!”

“They didn’t outsmart me! I told you, they threatened me. They coulda killed me, not that you’d care. I had no choice, Eunice.
Sometimes that’s what happens out there.”

She stood smoking and looking down at him with contempt and said, “Well, get out on the street and pick up the noon delivery
in Los Feliz. Do something to earn your keep, Dewey. That’s all I can say to you. Earn your keep like I do. Consider it a
warning.”

“Here I lie, numb and helpless!” he said, using lines he’d delivered in dinner theater. “While a croaking albatross smothers
me in its wings, plucking out my eyes, devouring my guts!”

“You sound like
such
a sissy when you go all theatrical,” Eunice jeered. “If Hugo was here, he’d say you oughtta consider testosterone shots.”

His head was throbbing when she stalked out of the room. He sat on the side of the bed for several minutes, listening to her
computer keys begin clickety-clacking. He thought about his desperate life and how there didn’t seem to be a way to change
it. If only he still got calls from his agent. He’d take any job he could get, anything that paid a stipend. He would read
for parts, even audition for those snotty kids making Internet films. He’d do dinner theater gigs in the suburbs. If only
he still
had
an agent. He opened the nightstand drawer and took out the cell phone he used for Tristan and Jerzy.

When he was shaved, dressed, and heading out the door, Eunice barely glanced at him, except to snort at his Jakob Kessler
getup. He turned the dead bolts and had a flashback of Eunice’s face when his eyes had popped open that morning, of that dangling
cigarette and that horrible scowl. Today she’d had the deepest furrows in her brow he’d seen in months. He felt so desperate
and miserable and angry that he was emboldened to strike back somehow.

Before slamming the door behind him, he said, “You know, Eunice, your everyday scowl lines are especially mean and evil today.
Why don’t you call your dermatologist?”

“Dude, who won?” the forklift driver said to Malcolm Rojas when they were uncrating a washing machine in the warehouse.

Malcolm reflexively touched his face. The flesh was tender under his left eye where the woman had nicked him with her fist
after she’d struggled to her feet. She was strong, that fat bitch, and she’d fooled him with her begging and crying, but then
she’d made a quick move and was on her feet and almost got away.

“Some dude at the mall,” Malcolm said. “He told me he wanted change for cigarettes and when I said, ‘Get a job,’ he suckered
me. Man, I really kicked his ass.” Malcolm showed the knuckle abrasions to the forklift driver.

The forklift driver, a young Latino, said, “What was he, a
mallate?
”

“Yeah,” Malcolm said.

“Those South L.A. niggers,” the forklift driver said. “They take the subway to Hollywood for dope and pussy. You’re lucky
he didn’t pull a blade or something.”

“He won’t even be pulling his cock,” Malcolm said. “I beat him
real
bad.”

The forklift driver grinned and gave Malcolm a thumbs-up before driving away.

Malcolm’s knuckles were hurting more than the small contusion under his eye. It was hard to remember exactly what had happened
after he’d crawled forward onto her chest. He’d felt those big tits beneath him, and he was taking out his cock when she’d
gotten her hands under his thighs and actually lifted him high enough for her to crawl out from between his legs. Then she
was behind him, scrambling to her feet.

He’d spun and tackled her, and she went down and started screaming. She kept screaming even after he punched her, how many
times, he couldn’t remember. He did recall picking up the box cutter after she’d knocked it out of his hand. He remembered
exactly how he’d been going to swipe it across her throat just as he’d swiped it across a thousand boxes he’d unpacked. But
as he was ready to do it, he’d heard a car door slam and he panicked. He’d leaped up, run to the door, and was sprinting down
the street to his car before he realized that the slamming car door came from the driveway next to hers, and that whoever
had done it was already inside their house.

Malcolm had found himself thinking about that encounter a dozen times since it happened. Sometimes he tried to remember every
detail, sometimes the broad strokes. It made his palms sweat when he thought about it. He knew that this new rage within him
was very dangerous, and he knew that he should try to get it under control. If he had money, real money, he could afford things
to help him, like a hooker. Maybe a hooker would give him what he needed and he wouldn’t feel so angry all the time. Malcolm
took out his cell phone and dialed the number of the man he’d met at Pablo’s Tacos.

Dewey Gleason as Jakob Kessler was on Hollywood Boulevard across from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, sitting at a table, sipping
a mediocre cappuccino, and waiting for Tristan and Jerzy. It was amazing how many Street Characters bothered to come out in
the morning hours, but there they were, even duplicates. There were two Chewbaccas, and Dewey wondered if either was the one
who’d gotten his ass thrown in jail last year. The newspapers had fun with it, saying that Chewie had crossed over to the
dark side.

He saw a Spider-Man and a Batman, this one looking even fatter than the one who’d recently gotten the crap beaten out of him
by a panhandler half his size. That dustup made the news as well. He didn’t see any of the Marilyn Monroes this early in the
day, and there weren’t a lot of tourists with cameras, certainly not the coachloads of Asians who really spent the bucks posing
with, and tipping, the Street Characters. Dewey suddenly had a dreadful passing thought that without Eunice he could possibly
find himself someday inside one of those horrid costumes, surviving on tips. The last stop of a failed actor. Dewey Gleason
as a diminutive Darth Vader? Even on this hot summer day it made him shiver, and he shoved the image from his mind.

The chirping of one of the cell phones brought him back into the moment, and as soon as he figured out which one of his characters
the call was for, he answered, “Bernie Graham speaking.”

“Mr. Graham, it’s Clark,” the voice said.

Clark, he thought. Clark. Then it came to him. Yeah, the dimpled Latino kid from the taco stand. “How you doing, Clark?”

“Fine, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’m ready to go to work.”

“Right,” Dewey said. “You have a day job, as I recall.”

“If I could make enough money with you, I’d quit the day job,” Malcolm said.

“I like your style,” Dewey said. “Okay, I’ve got your number and I’ll call you later today. Maybe I can use you this evening
or tomorrow evening.”

“Thanks, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’ll be waiting.”

Dewey shut the cell and checked his watch. What Eunice could accomplish without ever leaving their apartment never failed
to intimidate him. He reckoned that his grudging awe for her abilities helped to keep him in bondage, as well as his dread
of the future without her support. He had an address written on a Post-it Note that she told him to give his runners when
they showed up.

After leaving home that morning, Dewey had personally checked out that Post-it Note address in Los Feliz. He had a three-hour
window of opportunity when there was absolutely nobody home in the beautiful two-story Mediterranean-style house. The home
itself, built in the 1920s heyday of old Hollywood, would arouse no suspicion from the delivery men, since the expensive merchandise
was being turned over to a well-dressed man standing on the porch. Dewey wished he didn’t have to be the man to take that
risk. He wished he had runners who could pull it off for him, but of course that could never be. At that moment he spotted
his runners.

If Eunice could see Jerzy Szarpowicz, she’d crap icicles. There he was, galumphing along Hollywood Boulevard beside his lithe
and handsome sidekick. Jerzy was wearing a baseball cap, his usual black T-shirt that barely covered his bulging belly, and
baggy jeans that were falling off his fat ass. Nothing could be done with a guy like that except to use him as a mail thief
and Dumpster-diver.

Creole had possibilities. Dewey even liked his dreads because they made him look more like a Hollywood guy, an aspiring young
actor maybe. And Creole could talk, whereas Jerzy just grunted. Dewey regretted he’d ever used Jakob Kessler with these two.
Bernie Graham or even Ambrose Willis would’ve been better, and certainly easier on Dewey, especially on these hot days when
Jakob Kessler had to wear a suit, dress shirt, and necktie.

The lifts in his shoes were already hurting Dewey’s ankles, but he stood up rather than letting the runners sit. He said in
his German accent, “Good morning, gentlemen. Walk me to my car.”

His car was in the large parking structure on Orange Drive, and as they passed among the arriving throngs of summer tourists,
Dewey handed Creole the Post-it Note and said, “Did you rent a suitable delivery van?”

“Yes, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said.

“Did you have any trouble with the driver’s license when you rented the van?”

“We coulda,” Jerzy offered. “The pitcher on the license you gave him had me worried. I mean, it sorta looks like Creole, but
with the glasses on in the pitcher and his dreads airbrushed out, it didn’t look too much like him today.”

Tristan shot Jerzy one of those you-dumb-fucking-Polack looks, and sure enough, their boss jumped all over it.

Tristan heard the man say, “What? You didn’t wear the glasses when you rented the van? And why were the dreadlocks showing?
Don’t you understand that there are reasons to alter your appearance?”

“He forgot the glasses,” Jerzy said as they arrived at the parking structure. “And his little pinhead looked funny in my hat,
so he didn’t wanna wear it. There he was with his dreads hangin’ out.” Only then did Jerzy notice his partner glaring at him.

“I want my people to obey orders,” Tristan heard his boss say in that Nazi accent of his. “Without discipline you jeopardize
our work. We could’ve just let you use your own driver’s license and had you assume the risk that would entail.”