Hollywood Moon (34 page)

Flotsam jerked open the car door, and Chuey turned in his seat, trying but failing to stop the 140-pound animal. In fact,
the surging Rottweiler shoved Chuey out onto the street flat on his face, a pint bottle of vodka he’d been concealing behind
him spilling onto the asphalt. And then the dog paused for a few seconds on the front seat, snarling at the cops.

Flotsam dropped his flashlight and, instinctively holding the baton high in the air to deliver a hammer blow, said, “Here
he comes!”

But suddenly the animal froze. The brute stopped growling. His huge mouth opened wide and his tongue lolled out. And he started
barking, an excited bark, without menace.

Flotsam said, “What the fuck?” and stepped back.

The dog leaped onto the street while Jetsam aimed his pistol directly at the animal’s massive skull. But the dog sat, looking
at the taller cop and barking happily.

“Bro!” Jetsam cried. “The baton!”

“He can have it!” Flotsam cried. And then to the animal he said, “Okay, doggy! Fetch! Fetch!” And he hurled the baton with
all his strength and heard it clattering to the pavement forty yards down the darkened street.

The Rottweiler yapped with joy and raced after the baton as Flotsam picked up his flashlight, and Jetsam grabbed Chuey by
the back of his collar. They quickly handcuffed the prisoner and dragged him to their shop, throwing him into the backseat.
Then both cops leaped into the black-and-white and Flotsam made a faster U-turn than he had when Chuey had tried to get away
from them.

Thirty seconds later, the Rottweiler was running back to the car with the aluminum baton in his teeth. But when he saw the
car had gone, he dropped the baton and chased the black-and-white, howling.

Chuey’s brother and his friends were surprised to see the police car speeding back toward them, and the kid thought he heard
a dog barking furiously farther north on the street. The barking seemed to be getting closer. It sounded like a big dog. It
sounded like
their
dog, and he was coming their way.

Flotsam slowed and yelled, “Grab your mutt when he gets here! Your brother’s going to jail for DUI.”

Then Flotsam floored it again and circled the block until he was back to Chuey’s lowrider. They stopped to lock the car and
give Chuey his keys.

“I gotta find Excalibur!” Flotsam said, jumping out of the car with a flashlight, searching for his baton.

Jetsam said, “Make it fast, bro, before the dog figures out he’s been gamed and comes looking for revenge!”

Flotsam yelled, “Eureka!” when he found the baton resting against the tire of a parked car. He picked it up and ran to their
shop, giving the baton a kiss before putting it in the door rack. Suddenly, he was wiping his mouth on the shirtsleeve of
his uniform.

“Gross!” he said. “I kissed dog slobber!”

When they were on their way to Hollywood Station, their silent prisoner made an observation, his first words spoken since
being pushed out of his car by the Rottweiler.

Chuey said, “Fernando just wants to chase sticks, man. He can do it all day long.”

Jetsam, coming down from the waning adrenaline rush, said, “Is Fernando the one with two legs or four?”

O
F COURSE
, neither Tristan nor Jerzy needed to watch the apartment of Dewey Gleason during the night. After Jerzy had been dropped
off at his car, he’d driven home to Frogtown to smoke some glass and listen to his woman bitch at her brats. There was so
much yelling and turmoil in the little house that he’d grabbed a blanket and pillow and gone out to drink some gin and find
some peace in his car. The crystal, along with the gin and backseat sleeping, made for a fitful night, and his back was stiff
and his neck ached when he woke up at 8:15
A.M
.

Jerzy thought of the instructions from Creole to find a place in Frogtown where they could safely hold Bernie Graham’s old
lady for however long it might take to get the information. Jerzy didn’t like the idea of keeping the woman in his own ’hood,
but Creole convinced him that it should be in an area where people minded their own business, and this was as good as any
place.

Frogtown was a strange little chunk of northeast Los Angeles, south of the junction of the Golden State and Glendale Freeways.
It was quiet during the day, but at night, Latino gang members often emerged onto the streets like the frogs had done decades
earlier, when the amphibians were still able to thrive in the L.A. River bordering on the east. The river in the summer was
sometimes little more than a dirty stream running through a monstrous graffiti-tagged concrete trough, and no one had seen
a frog in years.

After Jerzy did a gum rub with a few remaining granules of crank, he fixed himself a plate of scrambled eggs while his woman
was gone on one of her constant trips to the middle school vice principal’s office because of the latest fight one of her
sons had started. Driving and canvassing the area, he spotted a “For Rent” sign in a window over of what had once been a
panadería.
On the wall of that defunct bakery was a vivid mural of barrio life depicting tattooed gang members alongside the Virgin
of Guadalupe, who stood beside a canary-yellow lowrider Chevrolet with chrome spinners. It was the only wall on that part
of the street that hadn’t been tagged, so apparently the mural was respected.

What Jerzy liked about the building was that other than the little upstairs apartment, there were only commercial properties
for two blocks, and the former bakery was a safe distance away from lofts occupied by the painters and sculptors who nowadays
encouraged art walks and daytime visits from prospective clients. Jerzy figured that at night the closest commercial buildings
would be empty of people and only occasionally visited by a private security service. There’d be little chance of anyone hearing
something like a scream.

And that made him think of Bernie Graham’s woman. It could come to that, a woman screaming. Creole didn’t think so and didn’t
even want to plan for it, but Jerzy knew better. If the whole fucking game went sideways, it might come down to forcing the
information out of her. He knew that Bernie Graham had the stomach for it even if the little nigger didn’t. He phoned the
number on the “For Rent” sign and learned that the tiny upstairs apartment could be rented, first and last month and security
deposit, for a total of $2,500. He figured they were in business.

As bad as Jerzy Szarpowicz felt when he awoke that morning, he was in much better shape than Dewey Gleason, who’d slept perhaps
two hours all night, in twenty-minute intervals. When he tentatively raised himself on an elbow and slid his legs over the
side of the bed, he felt a sharp pain but ignored it and forced himself to stand. After that, he took a few hesitant steps
to the bathroom, holding on to his midsection with both hands, as though something might drop onto the floor.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d anticipated, and he even managed to take a shower and dress himself unassisted in a suitable Bernie
Graham wardrobe: oxford cotton, long-sleeve shirt, tan casual pants, and Gucci knockoffs. He put the glasses and mustache
in his shirt pocket and decided it was too hot and he was too sore to be bothering with a Bernie Graham blazer. When he gingerly
entered the kitchen, Eunice was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading the
L.A. Times
with an ashtray full of butts in front of her.

She glanced up and said, “Well, well, look who’s on his feet and breathing.”

“Only breathing as much as I have to,” he said. “For chrissake, why don’t you open a window and let some smoke outta here?”

“The smoke eater’s on the blink again. You gotta get it fixed.”

“Just open a window, Eunice.”

“Sure,” she said, “may as well, now that you brought Clark here. I guess security doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I’m gonna call Clark today and hook up with him,” Dewey said. “I’ll make sure everything’s cool with the kid.”

Dewey opened the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of tomato juice while Eunice read silently. Then he opened a box
of wheat bran and poured it into a bowl with some skim milk. He took it into the computer room just to get a short distance
away from her cigarette, and he sat staring at computer number one. There was a page of indecipherable numbers on the screen
and a list of names that meant something only to the woman in the other room.

He ate the wheat bran and fantasized about how, with a few movements and clicks of the mouse, someone with the right information
could pull up the name of her bank and maybe transfer the funds to another bank anywhere in the world. If he could do that,
his entire miserable life would be changed. Just like that.

Eunice interrupted his thoughts with her chronic morning cough and said, “Where you going today, Dewey?”

“I haven’t seen the Mexicans in almost a week. They should be onto something by now. I was gonna track them down and then
I thought I’d go to the second list of foreclosed homes and do the rental gag again.” Lying, he added, “I got a new guy who
can change the locks and make me some keys. This one’s not a tweaker.”

When he finished his cereal, he entered the kitchen and started to put the bowl and glass in the sink but then realized it
would just give her something else to bitch about, so he put them in the dishwasher, and then went to the bathroom to brush
his teeth. By the time he came out, Eunice was sitting in front of computer number three, tapping away with uninterrupted
clicks.

“See you later,” he said and opened the door.

“Dewey,” she said, taking the cigarette out of her mouth.

He stopped in the doorway, expecting some more shit from her, and said, “Yeah?”

In an amicable voice the likes of which he hadn’t heard in months, she said, “Did you say you were gonna see that kid today?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure everything’s okay. I might give him some busywork and a couple hundred bucks
to keep him happy.”

“I was thinking,” Eunice said. “Since he knows something now that nobody else does, we’re gonna have to handle Clark with
extra-special care.”

“Yeah?” Dewey said. “You got a suggestion?”

“I was thinking that you better keep him close for a while.”

“I don’t think I’ll have to adopt him,” Dewey said.

“I’m just saying, maybe we should… get to know him,” Eunice said.

“Like how?”

“Oh, how about we invite him to a nice restaurant tonight or tomorrow night? You know, talk to the boy? See where his head
is? I sure wouldn’t wanna pack up and move to another location real quick just because of him.”

A look, a silence, and she returned to the computer keyboard, tapping the keys as though it had been a thought in passing.

“Maybe you’re right,” Dewey finally said. “I’ll call and see if he’s good to go for something like that. Maybe we could take
him to Musso’s. I can’t remember the last time we went to dinner together.”

“Okay,” she said too casually. “Gimme a call and let me know if it’s gonna happen.”

By the time Dewey got down the steps to the parking garage, he actually laughed aloud, then looked around to make sure nobody
was down there who could hear him. Dewey Gleason’s pain was forgotten. This was an unbelievable stroke of good fortune. He
only had to figure out how to make it work. Dewey was giddy with excitement. Eunice was falling in love!

It was payday, and Malcolm’s boss did not look particularly happy when the young man asked to leave work two hours early for
a dental appointment. He asked why Malcolm hadn’t told him this before the day he was due at the dentist so that a suitable
personnel adjustment could have been made. Malcolm apologized and said it would not happen again.

The moment he left work, he speed-dialed Naomi Teller and was overjoyed when she answered.

“It’s Clark,” he said. “Today’s the day!”

“The day for what?” Naomi said.

“Where you at?”

“I’m at my girlfriend’s house. We’re gonna go swimming in her pool.”

“Forget swimming,” Malcolm said. “Lemme pick you up and we’ll go to Mel’s Drive-In on the Strip.”

Naomi hesitated and then said, “Can I bring my girlfriend?”

“No way, Naomi,” Malcolm said. “This is our special time, like I been promising. You’re gonna like Mel’s. It’s not McDonald’s,
that’s for sure.”

“On the Sunset Strip?” she said. “I guess not.”

“I can afford it,” Malcolm said.

Again there was silence on the line, and then the girl said, “Okay, you wanna pick me up here?”

“Where is it?”

“On Hayworth, right near Fountain. Let me run and get the exact address. I’ll have to think of some excuse.”

“Tell her your cousin arrived from Boston and your mom wants you home right away.”

“Who should I say is picking me up?”

“Your cousin from Boston.”

“I think I can come up with a better story,” she said. “Gimme a minute to get the house number for you.”

“Goody!” Clark cried.

That made her giggle. “You’re so silly,” she said.

After Naomi came back on the line with the address, Malcolm said, “I’ll see you in twenty-five minutes.”

He clicked off and drove to a check-cashing service near the home improvement center to cash his paycheck. He wasn’t worried
about money anymore. He’d soon have plenty of it, now that he was in tight with Bernie Graham and his secretary, Ethel. He
wouldn’t really mind if his boss at the warehouse fired him.

Thinking of his warehouse job made him think of the box cutter in the pocket of his jeans. These days he was carrying it with
him at all times. He took it out, opened the glove box, and tossed it inside.

Late that afternoon, Dewey Gleason as Bernie Graham rented the tiny upstairs apartment in Frogtown after receiving the call
from Jerzy Szarpowicz. Within an hour of closing the deal and signing the check—using one of the small-business accounts that
was nearly depleted—Dewey met with his co-conspirators at the property.