Hollywood Moon (26 page)

She smiled bigger and said, “Let’s go inside. I been taught not to talk till we’re relaxed and friendly.”

Harris stepped gingerly inside, ready to go for his gun at the slightest provocation, and he started counting in his head
to sixty.

“You’re so nervous, it makes you more cute,” she said. “Anybody ever tell you that?”

“You have no idea,” he said, counting: fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…

“I just feel like kissing you, and I never kiss my dates,” she said.

“I’m not really into kissing,” he said. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine…

“What if I kissed your cock?” she said. “Would you be into that?”

“Well, that’s a different story,” he said. Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three…

She put her hand on his groin and said, “I think I’ll fuck you till you beg me to stop. But first let’s see the hundred dollars,
darling.”

“Fifty-two, fifty-three… ,” he said aloud now, alarming the girl, especially when he jerked open the door and started scratching
his scalp with both hands like he had a head full of lice.

And suddenly they both heard a loud and terrible scream from the apartment next door, and the cover team, who also heard it,
along with 6-X-76, came running fast, taking the stairs two at a time.

The hooker yelled, “What’s going on?” and Harris Triplett was half in and half out of the doorway, pointing frantically to
the next apartment, where they heard a cry for help.

The older vice cop, a burly white guy with a shaved head and a clamp-on hoop earring, banged on that door and yelled, “Police!
Open up!”

They could hear several frantic voices inside, but no one came to the door. The older vice cop drew his pistol, stepped back,
and kicked it open.

The four cops rushed inside, and the older vice cop yelled to three terrified men, “Everybody freeze!”

The older vice cop and Hollywood Nate ran along a hallway to the sound of moaning. The master bedroom was well lit and occupied
by one naked man with lank gray hair and a gray mustache over a blue upper lip. He lay prone on the king-size bed and moaned,
gasping for breath. Alongside the man, half hidden in the sheets, was a bloody object that looked to Nate like a totem of
some sort.

“Call an RA,” the vice cop said, and Nate drew the rover from his belt and requested a rescue ambulance.

Nate hurried back down the hallway to the large living room just in time to see Dana Vaughn come out of a bathroom with a
bath towel while the Latino vice cop guarded three men, two of them already handcuffed together. The third man, a naked senior
citizen with sad, baggy eyes, his body frail and fish-belly white, stood next to the fake fireplace with his hands in the
air, sporting a tent-pole erection that would not subside given the number of potency pills he’d ingested with his martinis.
His crimson countenance attested to the pills more than to his current embarrassment.

Dana said, “Cover that object, sir.”

When she threw the towel at him, it landed right on his erection, and Nate said, “Damn, partner, it must take a lot of practice
to do that.”

Dana figured everybody at Hollywood Station would hear about the towel toss, given Nate’s big mouth.

After advising the guests of their Miranda rights, the Latino vice cop said, “Write some FI’s on these guys till we find out
what’s what. I gotta go check on our little operator.”

He went next door, where Harris Triplett had placed the young hooker under arrest and handcuffed her while she cried her eyes
out and tried in vain to convince him that she was not a juvenile and not a runaway.

Finally the girl said, “Okay, okay, you’ll find out anyways. My name’s Muriel Travers and I ran away from Canton, Ohio, two
months ago.”

“And how old’re you?” the Latino vice cop asked.

“Sixteen,” she said, dabbing at her tears with a tissue. “In four weeks.”

While the vice cop went back next door to inform his partner that they had a juvie to deal with, Harris Triplett became filled
with compassion for the weeping teenager, and he said gently, “I’m sorry, Muriel. I know how you must feel, but when you get
home to your family, this Hollywood experience will seem like a bad dream. Do you want me to call your folks for you? Is there
anything I can do to help you?”

“Yeah,” she said, “you could take out your gun and blow your fucking head off, you narc cocksucker.”

Meanwhile, in the next apartment, Hollywood Nate had himself a look at the decor. There were large framed photos of nude men
wrestling and playing volleyball, and the resident was into Barbie dolls and Disney collections, which was not uncommon in
Hollywood. On the fake fireplace hearth, a Mickey Mouse stuffed toy was riding a glass penis.

The two middle-aged men sitting quietly on the sofa in the large living room, handcuffed together, kept looking anxiously
at the hallway leading to the master bedroom. One was a balding fat guy with Jack Sparrow facial hair, wearing an orange wife
beater, board shorts, and flip-flops, and anxiously crushing a blond wig in his hands, apparently part of his beach boy getup
for this 1960s party. The other guest was a bit younger than the others, with a fringe of mousy hair, and teeth coated in
porcelain veneer as white as a toilet bowl. He was dressed like a cheerleader in a letterman sweater, chinos, and saddle shoes.
Both men were blitzed but sobering up from fright.

The cheerleader said, “Officers, we’re not doing anything illegal here. We’re having a harmless nostalgia party. We don’t
even use drugs, except for the strawberry martinis. Maybe we had too many.” Then he pointed to the naked old guy with the
erection and said, “Roger was down in the pool having a moonlight swim just before you arrived, and hadn’t dressed yet.”

“Must be awful hard water down there,” Nate observed.

Dana said, “There’s a guy in the bedroom who might dispute how harmless your nostalgia party is.”

When they could hear the whoop and whine of the ambulance siren, the older vice cop left the man in the bedroom to enter the
living room and whispered to Dana, “I think the guy’s in big trouble. His ass is torn up, and he’s got a couple vials of heart
medication on the nightstand next to him. I think he’s had a heart attack.”

“Check out the beach boy,” Dana whispered. “There’s blood spatter on his shorts.”

“Uncuff him and bring him in the master bedroom,” the vice cop said. “I need to talk to him privately.”

In the next few minutes, the paramedics arrived with their gurney and carried the stricken man out of the apartment, where
they encountered a detective in a wrinkled suit and a horrible necktie. It was Compassionate Charlie Gilford, waiting at the
foot of the stairs until the gurney got past. Only his instinct for the bizarre would get him out of the squad room when there
were summer reruns of his favorite reality shows, but when he heard the watch commander talking about this one, he figured
it might be worth a peek.

The detective entered and checked out the living room and then walked to the master bedroom with the older vice cop.

“This is what spoiled the party,” the vice cop said, gloved-up and holding a twelve-inch bloodstained Barbie doll, with her
one arm extended and the other broken off.

“Her ponytail’s a mess,” said Compassionate Charlie. “Let’s hear it.”

Back in the living room, where Hollywood Nate and Dana Vaughn watched the partygoers, Dana said sotto to Nate, “If there was
a Hollywood moon tonight, we’d win the pizza.”

When Compassionate Charlie returned from the bedroom, he beckoned Nate and Dana into the hallway away from the others, where
he quietly explained things.

“Seems like the over-age beach boy shoved a Barbie doll up the host’s ass to liven up the party and get a few giggles from
the others,” Charlie explained. “With the host’s permission, he says. Except when the rubber band that held Barbie’s little
arms in place busted loose, they popped straight out, and her fingers are sharp. So, suddenly the guy on the bed doesn’t love
Barbie no more and doesn’t find the joke very funny and he starts screaming. But the beach boy, who says he drank seven martinis,
claims he got confused and thought it was a pleasure scream, not a pain scream, until the guy started clutching his chest
and gulping like he’s underwater and grabbing for his heart medication.” After a pause, he added, “I imagine his love canal’s
gonna need to be resurfaced big time.”

“Are we booking anybody here?” Nate asked, looking queasy.

“The guy was turning blue when I saw him last,” Charlie continued. “And with his heart condition and all, he might just croak.
So, even though this won’t go anywhere, I’m gonna call this a mandated sexual assault case for now, and I’m gonna advise booking
the Brian Wilson look-alike until somebody can interview the host tomorrow. If he lives.”

“How about the others?” Dana asked.

“Let them walk, but we’ll need a good crime report and transportation for the beach boy.”

“What’s the booking charge?” Nate asked.

Compassionate Charlie grinned and said, “How about assault with a deadly Barbie?”

Nate and Dana went back to the living room, thinking that things couldn’t get much stranger, until the diminutive man called
Roger let out a yelp, lost his wraparound towel, and scared the crap out of everybody. A purple oscillating object flew across
the floor and stopped when it struck Nate’s shoe, causing him to leap away like it was radioactive.

“Sorry,” Roger said, picking up his towel. “I’m sorry to alarm you, but I held it in as long as I could.”

“What the hell is that?” Nate demanded.

“It’s a vibrating egg. I didn’t want you to know it was there. I’m so embarrassed.”

The detective ran into the living room and said, “Who yelled?”

Hollywood Nate, looking a bit pale, pointed to Roger, who was holding the towel in front of him, and Nate said, “That dude
shot me in the foot with an egg he had tucked up his ass!”

The detective shrugged and said, “So, chill. This is Hollywood, for chrissake.”

“What?” Nate said. “You think it’s an everyday thing when a guy lays an egg on your goddamn shoe?”

Backing her partner, Dana said, “Yeah, Charlie, wouldn’t you find it a teeny bit weird if someone fired a rectal egg at
you?
”

Compassionate Charlie stroked his chin as though mulling over something momentous. And before exiting, he sucked his teeth
and said, “I think it all depends on the size of the egg he laid. Are we talking pigeon or ostrich?”

When Malcolm Rojas left Mel’s Drive-In that evening, he was excited about the money he was going to make. He considered quitting
his job in the warehouse even before working a single day for Bernie Graham, but then he thought he’d better wait and see.
It was still too early to go to bed, so instead of driving home, he parked on a side street near Hollywood High School and
impulsively dialed the number of Naomi Teller.

Her cell phone rang several times, and when he was about to give up, she said in a small voice, “Hello.”

“Can you guess who this is?” Malcolm said.

“No,” she said, stifling a giggle because she knew who it was.

“Do you have so many boyfriends you can’t guess?” he said.

“Maybe,” she said, even though she’d never had a real boyfriend.

“Take a guess,” he said.

She said, “Josh.”

“No, it’s not Josh,” Malcolm said, and he sounded so disappointed, she laughed and said, “I’m just kidding. I know it’s you,
Clark.”

Malcolm was happy again and said, “I’d sure like to take you for a ride in my Mustang sometime.”

“You have a Mustang?”

“It’s an old one,” Malcolm said, “but it runs good. “We could go to the beach.”

“I’d like that,” she said, “but my mom’d go all spaz if I went to the beach with a guy as old as you.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Twenty-one maybe,” she said. “You sound older than you look.”

“I’m nineteen,” he said. “Is that better?”

“My mom’d still think you’re too old for me. You’re an adult and I’m a juvenile.”

“What if we met at the mall and went to the movies?” he said. “Would that work?”

“Sure,” she said. “As long as my mom doesn’t know.”

“I’m gonna call you on Friday and set something up, okay? We’ll maybe see a movie and grab a pizza and get better acquainted.
Can you do it?”

He could hear the excitement in her voice when she said, “For sure. Call me at about six o’clock on Wednesday, okay?”

“Okay, Naomi,” he said. “I can’t wait.”

“Me too, Clark,” she said.

Malcolm felt good when he closed the cell and dropped it on the passenger seat. It made a clicking sound when it bumped against
the box cutter. Looking at it made him think that it was too early to go home. His mother would be sitting there watching
one of her stupid TV shows if she was sober, and she’d insist on making him a sandwich even after he told her he’d eaten already.
She wouldn’t believe him. She never believed him. If she was drunk, she’d forget and call him Ruben, and she might even try
to stroke his hair again.

He was starting to get angry just thinking about it. He felt like masturbating to relax, but instead, he found himself driving
around the residential streets. Then he drove to the shopping center and cruised the lanes farthest from the store. The last
row of cars was in a rather dark area, and in that part of the lot, the pole light was not working. He saw some customers
walking toward their cars. One was a shapely young Asian with a stylish black bob, pushing a shopping cart. He glanced at
her and drove past. Another was an attractive Latina who looked to be thirty-something. He drove past her as well.

Then he saw a middle-aged silvery blonde carrying two bags of groceries. He thought about his new boss, Bernie Graham, who
had put so many ideas into his head that evening. He thought about Bernie’s advice to always have a story ready when you approach
someone to pull a gag, as Bernie called it. He felt it again: arousal mingled with fear. He put the box cutter in his pocket
and got out. He approached behind the woman, who had the hatch open on her Volvo station wagon.