Hollywood Moon (7 page)

Lee Murillo wondered when they’d start in on their latest complaint. That would be the brouhaha over the judge’s wanting “confidential
financial disclosure” by all LAPD officers who worked gang enforcement details and narcotics field enforcement. The rant came
from Johnny Lanier, the only black cop on Watch 5. Johnny was a compact, outspoken P3 with fourteen years on the Job. He was
a veteran of the first Gulf War who liked to say, “This job has all the good things about the Army: a uniform, weapons, camaraderie,
ball-busting fun, and I don’t have to go back to Iraq.” He was next up to work the Gang Impact Team, but he didn’t know if
he wanted to work GIT now that there was the financial disclosure issue.

“Who’s the problem out there, gangbangers or us?” he said. “You think I want some gangster or his lawyer getting his hands
on my bank account number? How does that keep me honest in the first place?”

“No other law enforcement agency has to reveal their assets or bank accounts,” Hollywood Nate said. “Do you think those few
crooked LAPD cops put their loot in their bank accounts? The only ones that get their privacy violated here are the honest
cops!”

Sergeant Lee Murillo looked at his watch then, and they took it as a cue. They ceased grumbling and settled down so he could
call roll and read the crimes. But before he started, Sergeant Murillo earned a bit of applause when he said quietly, “I’d
like to tell the federal judge that if I was a crooked cop, I would certainly never put the hot money in my bank account.
I’d stuff it in my freezer, just like your average US congressman.”

Six-X-Seventy-six decided to write their first ticket of the watch at 6:30
P.M
., shortly after clearing from roll call, when they saw a ten-year-old GMC pickup blow a stoplight on Melrose Avenue near
Paramount Studios. There was still plenty of daylight on this hot summer evening, and the setting sun was certainly not in
the eyes of the driver who was heading east.

Hollywood Nate was driving and said to Dana Vaughn, “You’re up.”

Dana grabbed her citation book, and after Nate tooted at the guy to pull over, he parked behind the pickup. She got out and
approached the car while Nate crossed behind her and stepped up on the sidewalk to look in through the passenger window.

The driver was a wide-bodied working stiff in his late twenties dressed in a gray work uniform. His fingernails were grease-caked,
and smudges showed on his ruddy cheeks, as though he’d been crawling under a car.

“Your license and registration, please,” Dana Vaughn said, and the guy fumbled with his wallet.

The smell of stale beer hit her, and when he handed over his driver’s license, she said, “How much have you had to drink today?”

The guy looked up with bloodshot, unfocused eyes, brushed his light brown hair off his forehead, and said, “The boss let me
off early because my wife had twins yesterday. A boy and a girl. Two of the mechanics I work with bought me some beers to
celebrate.”

“How many beers did you drink?”

“Seven,” he said. “Or eight. I’m not used to drinking.”

Dana looked over the bed of the truck at Hollywood Nate and said, “Whadda you know? A forthright man.” Then she opened the
door of the pickup and said, “Step out, sir. Up onto the sidewalk.”

When the new father stepped onto the sidewalk, he stumbled, and Nate reached out, grabbing his elbow. “Whoa, cowboy,” Nate
said.

“What’ve you been arrested for?” Dana asked.

“Nothing,” the young man said. “Never. You can check. And I only had one ticket for speeding in my whole life.”

“Your whole life is gonna be cut short if you keep drinking seven or eight beers and driving,” Dana said.

She looked at Nate, knowing that he hated booking drunk drivers, believing it was too much paperwork for a misdemeanor and
that it probably meant court time. He was always looking for something that could get his name in the news. Something that
could make a casting agent see it and remember him.

The mechanic stood on the sidewalk, facing the two cops and reeling slightly, taking out his cell phone. “I can call and have
my brother come get me,” he said boozily. “I’m a father now. I can’t afford to go to jail. Besides, Officer, I’m not really
drunk.”

“You’re not, huh,” Dana said. “Let’s see you count backward from seventy-five to fifty-five. If you can do it, we’ll let you
lock up your truck and call your brother.”

The mechanic said, “Yes, Officer.” And turning around unsteadily until his back was to the astonished cops, he said slowly
over his shoulder, “Can you please tell me again what number I should start with?”

Hollywood Nate stared dumbfounded, and when he’d recovered, he said to Dana, “Partner, there’s no way we can book this guy.
I can dine out on this story.”

Dana Vaughn said to the new father, “Okay, honey, turn back around and call your brother to come get you.”

The trio standing on the sidewalk never noticed the nondescript gray Honda Civic motoring slowly past them on Melrose, where
the mechanic had earned his freedom by unintentionally providing the officers of 6-X-76 with a locker-room tale. The man that
Tristan and Jerzy knew as Jakob Kessler glanced their way but was not curious, checking his watch because he had to be at
the restaurant before Suzie got off shift.

Suzie was waiting for Kessler when he got there. She was a recent college graduate who’d majored in art history and, like
thousands before her, had gotten employment where she could, usually in Hollywood eateries. The young woman looked nervous
and was fiddling with her auburn ponytail when Kessler walked into the chain eatery on Sunset Boulevard. The stools were all
taken, as were most of the tables, and Jakob Kessler, wearing his usual dark suit and plain necktie, waited until a customer
vacated one of the stools.

He sat, ordered a cup of coffee, and used a paper napkin when he lifted the cup to his lips, so as not to leave fingerprints
when he was working a job. As for DNA on the cup, there was nothing he could do about it short of carrying a spray bottle
and washing it. He dismissed his action as a silly example of his growing anxiety with the work overload being forced upon
him, and he dropped the paper napkin.

Suzie brushed past him, touching his back when she took an order to the kitchen, and when she returned, she paused behind
his stool, removed the skimmer from under her apron, and handed it to him. Jakob Kessler took the skimmer, which was the size
of a cigarette pack, and put it under his suit coat in a small bag hanging from his shoulder. As Suzie was walking away, she
had her hands behind her and held up four fingers on one hand and five on the other, meaning that she’d skimmed nine credit
cards.

Jakob Kessler put money on the counter for his coffee and counted out two $50 bills for Suzie. He felt he was being overly
generous, but she was new and he wanted to keep her in the game. They passed close to each other when he headed for the door
and she freed her right hand from a tray of dessert and grabbed the money, slipping it into her apron pocket. He didn’t have
a replacement skimmer with him and made a mental note to have his wife go on the Internet and buy several new ones. After
all, they were only $50 each and worth their weight in diamonds.

For his next stop he had to drive over the hill to a mall in Sherman Oaks. Once again he considered the way he was doing business,
wearing out tires and shoe leather when there were competitors doing it the easy way. He knew several Hollywood Armenians
who were putting their skimmers inside service station gasoline pumps. He’d been told that it was ridiculously easy to do,
since one key opened all pumps. The Armenians would simply wait until the service station was closed, then install the skimmer.
After a few days they’d return to the pump and remove it as easily as they’d installed it.

The Romanians were more ingenious, and experts in Bluetooth technology. They’d simply aim their device, which would seek,
find, and connect, relaying the information from the skimmer. They didn’t even have to take the risk of dealing with a device
that might get discovered by a service station owner who’d then alert police. The city was full of cyber thieves trolling
the airwaves.

He drove to a Hollywood shopping center and entered a hardware store, one of the chains that employed at least a hundred employees
in each store. He picked out a roll of duct tape that he did not need and headed for the checkout line manned by a longtime
store employee named Harold Swanson, a man who spent far too much on the horses at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita.

This was another case that caused Jakob Kessler vexation after his suggestion to install a skimmer in the POS machine was
summarily dismissed by his wife as “stupid and risky.” He knew that none of the Eastern European teams would have hesitated
to bribe Harold Swanson to install a skimmer there at the point of sale, to be removed at a propitious moment, thereby eliminating
all these daily trips over the hill into the San Fernando Valley.

When Harold Swanson saw Jakob Kessler in line at his counter, he worked a little faster to finish with another customer and
said to Kessler, “Evening, sir, is that all you’re purchasing this evening?”

“Just the duct tape,” Jakob Kessler said in his German accent.

“Yes, sir,” the clerk said. “Sometimes we have sales on duct tape where you can buy six rolls at half price. Six.”

Jakob Kessler said, “Six. I shall remember that.” Then he put down a $10 bill for the tape along with six $50 bills from his
wallet.

Harold Swanson put the duct tape and the skimmer in a plastic bag, pocketed the six President Grants, and handed the bag to
Jakob Kessler, saying, “Have a nice evening, sir.”

Tristan Hawkins and Jerzy Szarpowicz were waiting at the duplex/office with two of the three Latino runners that Kessler had
hired for their skill in passing bogus checks at the many stores catering to illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America.
Tristan and Jerzy were speaking to each other by then, as much as they ever did, Jerzy sitting in one of the secondhand overstuffed
chairs, when all at once he slapped at a flea and leaped to his feet.

“Goddamn it!” he yelled and did a dance, his wattles bouncing as he slapped at his belly and reached around to his back, brushing
away more imaginary fleas.

“Why do you think I never sit on nothin’ here unless it’s made of wood or plastic?” Tristan said. “How ’bout you, Diego?”

One of the two young Mexicans sitting at the table in the kitchenette looked up and grinned, a gold tooth gleaming, and said,
“Las
pulgas
. They don’ be hurting you, man. If they ain’t scorpions, I don’ say nothing.”

He was doing freelance work, “washing” a stolen check with acetone. The larger Mexican next to him, a placid mestizo teenager,
was doing the same to another check, but he was washing it with nail polish remover. Both men worked with great patience and
care.

Tristan said to them, “Don’t let Mr. Kessler see you doin’ that. Nobody with any class bleaches checks these days. It’s too
easy to make your own.”

The smaller Mexican shrugged and said, “This how we do it back in Cuernavaca. I still make some money like this.”

Jerzy walked to the kitchen, opened the little refrigerator, found nothing but two strawberry sodas inside, and took one without
asking and popped it open. He eased his bulk onto the floor, leaned against the plasterboard wall, and drank.

Tristan said to the Mexican, “Can I have one too, Diego?”

“Okay,” said the Mexican, not looking up from his work.

Tristan put two dollars on the kitchen table and took the last soda. When he sat down beside his partner, he said, “So how
do you like the job, wood?”

“It’s okay,” Jerzy said. “Till somethin’ better comes along.” He gulped down the drink, crushed the can in his big beefy mitts,
and said, “How long you been workin’ here, anyways?”

“Almost two months,” Tristan said. “Old Jerzy was somebody I used to see at Pablo’s Tacos when I’d go there to score a couple
rocks. He told me about Jakob Kessler. Now Old Jerzy’s gone.”

“This job don’t look like a place where you form long-term relationships,” Jerzy said.

“How’d you meet the man?” Tristan asked.

“This basehead named Stella told me about him. She used to live in the room next to me at Cochran’s Hotel. Said I could make
some serious coin, but I ain’t seen nothin’ serious yet.”

“I don’t know a Stella workin’ for him,” Tristan said.

“She’s brain-fried, man. Here one day, spun out and gone the next.”

“Jakob Kessler is one weird dude,” Tristan said, realizing that this was the first time in four days working together that
he and Jerzy had spoken more than a dozen words at a time.

Jerzy just grunted and scratched his balls, looking as though he’d like to throw one of the Mexicans out of a kitchen chair
so he could get off the floor.

“Way he got me,” Tristan said, “he saw me lookin’ at some shiny spinners on a pimpmobile at Pablo’s. He says to me in that
Hitler accent of his, ‘You don’t have to steal spinners. If you want them, you can walk in a store and buy them with a credit
card.’ Then he bought me a taco plate and we talked.”

“He never bought me nothin’,” Jerzy said.

“The man can talk,” Tristan said. “Do those weird eyes of his ever get on your nerves?”

“I don’t pay no attention to nobody’s eyes,” Jerzy said. “Unless I think the guy’s an undercover cop and he’s lookin’ at me
too close.”

Tristan then said to the smaller Mexican, “How long you been at work here for the boss?”

The Mexican shrugged and said, “Three, four week. I think.”

“And your amigo?” Tristan said.

“The same.”

“See?” Tristan said to Jerzy. “Nobody works long for Kessler. Then they’re gone, like Old Jerzy. I’ll bet this fuckin’ apartment
is rented week to week.”

“What, you were hopin’ for a pension and health plan?” Jerzy said.

“I just don’t wanna suddenly not be here someday,” Tristan said. “Like Old Jerzy.”