Hollywood Moon (24 page)

“Well… ,” she hesitated.

“Or better yet, ma’am, if you would please buzz me in, I’ll get the keys myself. Please. I’m gonna get in trouble with my
boss!”

“Well, all right,” she said. “But you should be more careful next time.”

“Thank you!” he said, hearing the electronic tone and the click of the lock.

Tristan hurried through the unlocked gate, scaled the outside staircase, taking the steps two at a time, and walked briskly
to the last apartment on the east end of the third floor. It was number 313. He descended the stairs even faster, went back
to the directory, scrolled the digital directory, and rang number 313.

“Hello,” a familiar voice answered.

Tristan recognized Jakob Kessler minus the German accent, hung up the phone without a word, returned to his car, and called
his boss on his cell phone.

The phone rang several times before Dewey could get out of the bathroom, his trousers at half-mast, and check the taped-on
label on his GoPhone to see which of his characters the call was for.

“Jakob Kessler,” he said, after getting the cells sorted.

“Mr. Kessler, it’s Creole,” Tristan said. “Do you have any jobs for Jerzy and me?”

“Not for the rest of the week, Creole,” Dewey said. “I shall call you on Monday.”

“Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said. “I have somethin’ to talk to you about. Can we meet somewheres this afternoon?”

“What is it about, Creole?”

“Nothin’ I can talk about on the phone,” Tristan said. “You’re gonna be real glad to hear about it.”

Dewey thought about his meeting with Clark, but there was no way to fit Creole in before that meeting, because Clark was expecting
Bernie Graham, not Jakob Kessler, and a costume change was too much.

“I cannot do it today.”

“Okay, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said. “How ’bout tomorrow?”

“I shall call you, Creole.”

After closing his cell, Tristan mulled it over and thought, We’re meeting
today,
Mr. Kessler, or whoever the fuck you are.

He got on his cell and speed-dialed Jerzy. He knew, by the way Jerzy answered, the dumb Polack had been woken up by the call,
probably after smoking crystal or crack last night.

“Get some clothes on, wood,” Jerzy said. “We got us some important work today.”

“Where you at?” Jerzy said through a yawn.

“On Franklin at Kessler’s crib. Meet me here in an hour. And stay on your cell. I may have to move to another location.”

“What is this bullshit?” Jerzy muttered.

“Do it, wood,” Tristan said. “It’s about a
real
payday.”

Eunice had been gone for most of the day, first to her gynecologist, afterward for lunch at her favorite restaurant on Melrose.
Every once in a while she needed a day off, but when she arrived home, she was all business and intended to work well into
the evening to make up the time. She didn’t expect to find Dewey there.

“What the hell’re you doing here?” she said with a sniffle, suffering from summer allergies exacerbated by constant smoking.

He pointed to the $3,100 on the table between two of the computers and said, “I collected for the TVs.”

“And?” she said, taking a tissue from her purse and blowing her nose with a honk.

“And what?”

“And what else have you done today?”

“Aw, fuck!” he said. “I risked my life to collect from a thug you couldn’t imagine in an acid nightmare, and I bring every
penny of it home, and you ask me what else have I done.”

“Why didn’t you get online to the Assessor’s Office? I told you there were loan documents I need, and I showed you how to
do it. I wrote out everything so a child could understand.”

“Yes, Eunice, I’m a computer re-tard. I know that. How could I ever forget it?” His jaw muscles flexed after he spoke.

“Why didn’t you do a few lockboxes in the hills? I gave you cards with mag strips that’d work.”

“I’m not a fucking burglar, Eunice,” he said.

“I’m not asking you to ransack the houses and steal their TVs,” she said. “But you could get valuable information if you’d
look around in desk drawers. You got your real-estate business cards if somebody comes home. You only have to leave the door
wide open, hand them a card, and say you’re a West L.A. Realtor sizing up the property for a hot client. You’re always bragging
about what a great actor you are. But now you can’t play a Realtor with conviction? Why can’t you manage that, Dewey? Are
you that gutless?”

He didn’t answer for a long, painful moment. When she wanted to savage him, she’d always do it by reminding him that he was
a failed actor, one of thousands out there on the streets of Hollywood. These days she seemed to be deliberately trying to
drive him out of her life. She seemed to be looking for an excuse, but he wasn’t going to give it to her. Not yet.

When he did answer, he said quietly, “I’m not entering a house where people live, and that’s the end of it. It’s too risky.”

“Hugo would never hesitate to —”

Then he found himself in free fall. “I’m not Hugo, goddamnit!” he cried. “Hugo’s in the joint, doing fifteen years because
he did every fucking gag you dreamed up, and you finally got him caught!”

“Hugo had balls!” she said, sneezing twice, her allergies inflamed by a burst of emotion.

“I did too until I met you!” he said. “Just run what’s left of my nuts through your crosscut shredder, why don’t you? Just
turn them into confetti, Eunice! They’re no good to me anymore!”

“A drama queen,” Eunice said. “After a real man like Hugo Beasley, I ended up marrying a drama queen. What the hell was I
thinking?”

“There’s such a thing as divorce, Eunice!” he blurted, but he wanted to grab those words back and swallow them, especially
when she replied, “There certainly is, Dewey, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot these days.”

When she went to change into her working clothes, she slammed the door to her bedroom, and Dewey felt the familiar rumbling
in the bowels. It was even more intense than when he’d been alone in that storage room with Hatch. What if she did kick him
out? Where would he go? How would he live? On the other hand, she needed him more than he needed her. He was the street performer,
the artist who made all her computer machinations result in the profits that drove her, the treasure she lived for.

And that made him think about those bank accounts that she’d opened way back when she’d been married to Hugo. Every dime she’d
salted with Hugo and later with Dewey had gone into them. Maybe he was being conservative, estimating them to have reached
$500,000. Maybe she was close to her $1,000,000 goal! Maybe there was a way for computer-illiterate Dewey Gleason to learn
the numbers and passwords to access the accounts. It calmed his bowels when he thought about it. But if he ever got the chance,
he knew he wouldn’t take only half. He deserved a lot more than that for putting up with that scowling shrew for nine long
years.

When he was getting ready to go out again, Eunice was at a computer, looking as slovenly as ever.

“I’m going to work now,” he said as pleasantly as he could. “I’ve got a new kid to meet. His name’s Clark. Latino, with a
great smile. I got a strong feeling he’ll be a good runner for us.”

She didn’t answer, and he started feeling the fear again. She wouldn’t really lock him out and call a lawyer. Would she?

He said, “Would you like a couple of Whoppers when I come back tonight?”

Without removing the cigarette from her lips she said, “Yeah, with fries.”

Dewey Gleason smiled then. If there was a way to the witch’s stony heart, it was by sticking a Whopper under her dripping
nose.

“That’s his Honda, but that don’t look like him behind the wheel,” Jerzy Szarpowicz said to Tristan Hawkins as Dewey Gleason’s
car pulled from the underground parking garage onto Franklin Avenue.

“That’s because he’s somebody else,” Tristan said, giving the Honda time to get a few car lengths ahead. “He ain’t Jakob Kessler
today.”

They followed the Honda when it turned south on Highland Avenue, and then it made several turns designed to get through some
of the afternoon Hollywood traffic. Tristan almost lost the Honda twice before reaching Ivar Avenue and headed south until
they were on Santa Monica Boulevard.

“This James Bond shit is wearin’ me down, man,” Jerzy grumbled. “How we’re gonna make money from this is —”

“He’s going to the cyber café,” Tristan said.

“So what?” Jerzy said as Tristan drove toward the strip mall. “I still think that ain’t him in that car.”

Tristan got stopped at the next light, but there was no need for concern. He could see the Honda catch a parking place by
the donut shop after a car pulled out. Tristan turned south and parked half a block from the strip mall.

“Let’s go for a walk, wood,” Tristan said.

The strip mall was busy. Lots of customers were at the 7-Eleven, and the donut shop was doing a brisk business. But the summer
foot traffic coming and going from the cyber café was amazing even at this hour. Later, the tweakers and baseheads would be
out in numbers, working the rented computers and meeting one another for surreptitious exchanges of money, drugs, stolen merchandise,
and identity information.

There was a coffee-colored drag queen in an extravagant pink wig, a rhinestone-studded jersey, and second-skin shorts sashaying
along the sidewalk beside the cyber café, hoping to catch a trick on his way home from work.

As they walked past the dragon, Jerzy leered and said, “Howdy, sweetness.”

The dragon took one look at Jerzy, tossed her do, and said, “Fuck off.”

When they were standing outside the donut shop, concealed behind an SUV, Tristan said, “Take a good look through the window.
Is it him or not?”

Dewey was standing in line behind an agitated tweaker, and Jerzy said, “That dude’s jonesin’ bad. He needs a sugar fix.”

“Forget the tweaker,” Tristan said. “Is it Kessler or not?”

“That guy limps,” Jerzy said. “And he’s shorter than Kessler and younger. And his glasses have thick black frames.”

“Is it him?”

“Yeah, it’s him,” Jerzy said grudgingly.

“I told you,” Tristan said.

“That don’t prove nothin’,” Jerzy said. “The guy’s a thief and also an actor, so what? Half the people in this fuckin’ lot
are probably actors or wannabes. And they’re all thieves.”

“We’re gonna hang around a little while and see what role he’s playin’ tonight,” Tristan said.

After Dewey got his coffee, he walked to a small table to wait for the arrival of Clark. Tristan and Jerzy strolled across
the parking lot, where Jerzy had a cigarette and checked out the parade of hungry hustlers while Tristan kept an eye on the
donut shop. Every time a customer went inside, Tristan would return to the same place behind the SUV to see if the customer
was meeting with the man he knew as Jakob Kessler. Twenty minutes passed before Tristan saw a young Latino wearing some kind
of employee work shirt and jeans enter the donut shop and head straight to the small table in the back. Tristan took a closer
peek and saw the newcomer talking to their man.

“I’m so glad you called, Clark,” Dewey Gleason said, shaking hands with Malcolm Rojas, who sat down at the table. “Would you
like a cup of coffee? A donut maybe? They’re pretty good.”

“No, thanks, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said.

“I’d like to talk to you about the business we do, Clark,” Dewey said.

“We have lots of venues to explore in order to find out how you might work best for us.”

“I’m a hard worker,” Malcolm said.

“I’m sure you are, but it’s a matter of where you’d fit in. Let’s go for a ride in my car and chat awhile about a few simple
jobs.”

Tristan and Jerzy scurried to the Chevy Caprice when they saw their man and the young guy leave the donut shop and head for
the Honda. Tristan was in an all-out sprint to get to the car in time, and Jerzy cursed and puffed all the way, trying to
keep up.

There was a moment when Tristan feared that they’d lost their target in the stream of cars on Santa Monica Boulevard, but
they managed to catch up, and twenty minutes later they pulled into the shopping center’s lot and parked three rows away.

When Dewey and Malcolm emerged from the Honda, Tristan said to Jerzy, “He’s forgettin’ to limp.”

And then it was almost as though their man could hear them, because Dewey suddenly got into his Bernie Graham limp on his
right leg, all the way to the store entrance.

Jerzy said to Tristan, “You wearin’ a wire, or what? He musta heard you.”

“He’s takin’ that kid to school, that’s what he’s up to, wood.”

“What, like credit-card shit?”

“Yeah, what else? Let’s take a look.”

“Listen to me, Creole,” Jerzy said. “I’m hungry and I’m tired and I’d really like to smoke a little glass right now, but I’ll
go along because I already come this far. But then you’re gonna tell me what the fuck you got in your head.”

It was a huge supermarket, one of many in the chain where Malcolm’s mother always shopped. They walked to the long queues
of shoppers pushing carts toward the dozen checkout counters, and Dewey said, “Clark, are you good with text messaging, like
most young people these days?”

“Whadda you mean, Mr. Graham?” Malcolm asked.

“When you were in high school, were you able to sit at your desk and look at your teacher with your cell in your hand and
text a girlfriend in another class without getting caught? That kind of thing?”

Malcolm Rojas hesitated to answer that one, the truth being that there was no girlfriend in that Boyle Heights barrio school,
where he’d never belonged. Nor any boys whom he could call his friends either. Nobody ever had the back of the half-Honduran
loner whom the other kids called Hondoo when they spat on his shoes.

Malcolm simply said, “I can handle a cell phone, if that’s what you mean.”

“Watch, Clark,” Dewey said, gesturing toward a woman who’d reached the checkout and was loading her groceries onto the merchandise
belt as the cashier rang them up. “She’s the one I’d want to work on.”