Hollywood Station (30 page)

"Cosmo!" she screamed again. "I am going to kill you or me! Stop this car! Let me out!"

"Two minutes," he said. "We be at house of Farley. We put this car in garage of Farley. Our money shall be safe. We shall be safe!"

The Mazda bucked and shuddered its way down Gower to the residential street of Farley Ramsdale. Cosmo Betrossian was afraid that the car wouldn't make the final turn, but it did. And as though the Mazda had a mind and a will, it seemed to throw itself in a last lurching effort up the slightly sloping driveway, where it sputtered and died beside the old bungalow.

Cosmo and Ilya got out quickly, and Cosmo opened the garage door and threw some boxes of junk and an old, rusty bike from the garage into the backyard, making room for the Mazda. Cosmo and Ilya both had to push the car into the garage. Cosmo tucked both pistols inside his belt, grabbed the container of money, and closed the termite-riddled door.

They went to the front door of the bungalow and knocked but got no answer. Cosmo tried the door and found it locked. They went to the back door, where Cosmo slipped the wafer lock with a credit card, and they entered to await the return of their new "partners."

Cosmo thought that now he had more reason than ever to kill the two tweakers, and that he must do it right after they entered the house. But not with the gun. The neighboring homes were too close. But how? And would Ilya help him?

The canister contained $93,260, all of it in twenty-dollar bills. By the time they had finished counting it, Ilya had smoked half a dozen cigarettes and seemed calm enough, except for her shaking hands. Cosmo began giggling and couldn't stop.

"Is not so much as Dmitri promised, but I am happy!" Cosmo said. "I am not greedy pig." That tickled him so much he giggled more. "I must call Dmitri soon."

"You kill the guard," Ilya said soberly. "They catch us, we go to the house of death."

"How can you know he is dead?"

"I saw bullets hit him. Three. Right here." She touched her chest. "He is dead man."

"Fucking guy," Cosmo said, testy now. "He did not give up money. Dmitri say no problem. The guard shall give up money. Not my fault, Ilya."

Ilya shook her head and lit yet another cigarette, and Cosmo lit a smoke of his own while he stuffed stacks of money back into the can, leaving out eight hundred, which he divided with Ilya, saying, "This make you not so much worried about the house of death, no?"

He took the container back out to the car, wanting to lock it in the trunk, but the ignition key did not work the trunk lock. He cursed the Georgian again and put the container in the backseat of the Mazda and locked the door.

When he returned to the house, Ilya was lying on the battered sofa as though she had a terrible headache. He went over to her and knelt, feeling very aroused.

He said to her, "Ilya, remember how much sex we feel when we rob the diamonds? I feel that much sex now. And you? How would you like to fuck the brains outside my head?"

"If you touch me now, Cosmo," she said, "I swear I shall shoot the brains outside your head. I swear this by the Holy Virgin."

Less than a mile away, Farley and Olive sat in Sam's Pinto, having borrowed it once again, parked by the cybercaf,. They saw several tweakers entering and then leaving after having done their Internet business, but they saw no one who they thought might have some decent crystal for purchase.

"Let's try the taco stand," Farley said. "We gotta get Sam's car back to him before it gets dark and pick up our piece of shit. He musta fixed the carburetor by now. One good thing about tweakers, Sam can sit around his kitchen table with my carburetor in a million pieces and he actually enjoys himself. Like a fucking jigsaw puzzle or something. There's fringe benefits from crystal if you stop and think about it."

"I'm glad the police cars and ambulances stopped their sirens," Olive said. "They were giving me a headache."

She was like a goddamn dog, Farley thought. Supersensitive hearing even when not tweaked. She could sit in a restaurant and hear conversations on the other side of a crowded room. He thought he should figure out a way to use that, the only talent she possessed.

"Something musta happened at one of the stores in the mall," Farley said. "Maybe some fucking Jew actually charged a fair price. That would cause a bunch of greasers to drop dead of shock and tie up some ambulances."

He was driving out of the parking lot and turning east when a southbound car at the intersection also turned east and drove in front of him, making Farley slam on his brakes.

"Fuck you!" Farley yelled out the window at the elderly woman driver after he flipped her the bird.

He hadn't gone half a block when he heard the horn toot behind him. He looked in the mirror and said, "Cops! My fucking luck!"

Benny Brewster said to B. M. Driscoll, "You're up."

The older cop wiped his runny nose with Kleenex, pushed his drooping glasses back up, sighed, and said, "I'm really not well enough to be working tonight. I shoulda called in sick."

Then he got out, approached the car on the driver's side and saw Farley Ramsdale fumbling in his wallet for his driver's license. Olive looked toward the policeman on her right and saw Benny Brewster looking in at her and at the inside of the car.

"Hi, Officer," Olive said.

"Evening," Benny said.

As B. M. Driscoll was examining his driver's license, Farley said, "What's the problem?"

B. M. Driscoll said, "You pulled out of the lot into the traffic lane, causing a car to brake hard and yield. That's a traffic violation."

Benny said to Farley, "Sir, how about showing the officer your registration too."

Farley said, "Aw shit, this ain't my car. Belongs to a friend, Sam Culhane. My car's at his house getting fixed by him."

When he quickly reached over to the glove compartment, Benny's hand went to his sidearm. There was nothing in the glove box except a flashlight and Sam's garage opener.

"Tell the officer, Olive," he said. "This is Sam's car."

"That's right, Officer," Olive said. "Our car is getting its carburetor redone. Sam has it all over the table like a crossword puzzle."

"That'll do," Farley said to her. Then turning to B. M. Driscoll, he said, "I got a cell here. You can use it and call Sam. I'll dial him for you. This ain't a hot car, Officer. Hell, I just live ten blocks from here by the Hollywood Cemetery."

Benny Brewster looked over the top of the car to his partner and mouthed the word "tweakers."

Then, while B. M. Driscoll was returning to their car to run a make on Farley Ramsdale and the car's license number and to write up the traffic citation, Benny decided to screw with the tweakers, saying to Farley, "And if we followed you to your house just to verify you're who your license says you are, would you invite us inside?"

"Why not?" Farley said.

"Would there be anything in your house that you wouldn't want us to find?"

"Wait a minute," Farley said. "Are you talking about searching my house?"

"How many times have you been in jail for drug possession?" Benny asked.

"I been in jail three times," Olive said. "Once when this guy I used to know made me shoplift some stuff from Sears."

"Shut the fuck up, Olive," Farley said. Then to Benny he said, "If you don't write me the ticket, you can search me and search this car and you can search Olive here and you can come to my house and I'll prove whatever you want proved, but I ain't letting you do a fishing expedition by looking in my underwear drawer."

"Underwear floor, you mean," Olive said. "Farley always throws his underwear on the floor and I gotta pick them up," she explained.

"Olive, I'm begging you to shut up," Farley said.

Benny looked up and saw B. M. Driscoll returning with the citation book and said, "Too late. Looks like the citation's already written."

B. M. Driscoll looked over the roof at his tall partner and said, "Mr. Ramsdale has a number of arrests for drug possession and petty theft, don't you, Mr. Ramsdale?"

"Kid stuff," Farley mumbled, signing the traffic ticket.

"I didn't write you for not having a registration," B. M. Driscoll said. "But tell your friend, Samuel Culhane . . . where does he live, by the way?"

"On Kingsley," Olive said. "I don't know the number."

B. M. Driscoll nodded at Benny and said, "That checks." Then to Farley he said, "Have a good evening, Mr. Ramsdale."

When they were once again on their way to the taco stand to score some ice that Farley now needed desperately, he said to Olive, "You see what happens when you pin a badge on a nigger? That fucking Watusi wanted to go on a fishing expedition in my house."

"Maybe we shoulda just invited them home to see that you're a property owner and the stuff on your driver's license is correct," Olive said. "And it wouldn'ta mattered if they searched. We got nothing but a glass pipe at home, Farley. That's why we're out here. We got no crystal, no nothing at home."

Farley turned and stared at her until he almost rear-ended a pickup in front of him, then said, "Invite cops home to search? I suppose you'da made coffee for them?"

"If we had any," she said, nodding. "And if they didn't write the traffic ticket. It's always best to be friendly with the police. Being mean will just bring you more trouble."

"Jesus Christ!" Farley cried. "And then what? Maybe you woulda told them you were going to fuck them both to be friendly? Well, I hope not, Olive. Because making terroristic threats is a felony!"

Chapter
FOURTEEN

BUDGIE AND FAUSTO were the first of the midwatch teams to break away from the hunt for the red Mazda. Virtually every car had driven east toward gang territory and the less affluent neighborhoods where most of Hollywood's street criminals resided, but the suspects' descriptions could have put them anywhere. By now the cars were looking for a male, white or possibly Hispanic, in his midforties, of medium height and weight, with dark hair. He was wearing a Dodgers cap and sunglasses, a blue tee, and jeans. His companion was a female, white, also about forty, tall and full-figured, with red hair that two Latino women said looked like a cheap wig. The woman with the gun wore sunglasses also, a tight, multicolored cotton dress, and white espadrilles. Both witnesses commented on her large "bosoms."

A supplemental description was given to the communications operator by Viktor Chernenko during an on-scene interview thirty minutes after the shooting, when the area around the ATM machine was taped off and controlled by uniformed officers. Even though Viktor knew that the Bank Squad from Robbery-Homicide Division would be handling this one, he was confident that these were the suspects from the jewelry store.

When the report call came in on their MDT, Fausto said to Budgie, "Well, by now they're in their hole. Best we could hope for is to spot the abandoned Mazda. They probably dumped it somewhere."

The report they were assigned was for attempted murder, which in Hollywood could mean anything. This was, after all, the land of dreams and fantasy. They were sent to a quite expensive, artsy-craftsy, split-level house in Laurel Canyon, certainly not an area where attempted murders occurred frequently. The fact that there was no code assigned to the call made them think that whoever took the call at Communications didn't think it was worthy of urgent response.

The caller was waiting on his redwood balcony under a vaulted roof. He waved after they parked, and they began climbing the outside wooden staircase. It was still nearly an hour before sunset so they didn't need to light their way, but it was dark from shadows cast by all of the ferns and palms and bird of paradise plants on both sides of the staircase.

Fausto, who was getting winded from the steep climb, figured that the gardeners must make a bundle.

The caller held open the door and said, "Right this way, officers."

He was seventy-nine years old and dressed in an ivory-white bathrobe with satin lapels, and leather monogrammed slippers. He had dyed-auburn transplants and a gray mustache that used to be called a toothbrush. He introduced himself as James R. Houston but added that his friends called him Jim.

The inside of the house said 1965: shag carpets, lime-green-flowered sofa, Danish modern dining room furniture, and even an elaborate painted clown in a gilded frame resembling the ones that the late actor-comedian Red Skelton had painted.

When Fausto said, "By any chance is that a Red Skelton?" and got a negative reply, Budgie said, "Who's Red Skelton?"

"A famous comic actor of yesteryear," the man said. "And a fine painter."

Only after their host insisted did they agree to have a glass of lemonade from a pitcher on the dining room table. Then he said to Fausto, "Even though I don't have the honor of owning a Red Skelton clown painting, I did work with him in a movie. It was in nineteen fifty-five, I think. But don't hold me to that."

Of course, he was implying that he was an actor. Budgie Polk had learned by now that in Hollywood Division, when a suspect or victim says he's an actor, a cop's automatic response is "And what do you do when you're not acting?"

When she said this to him, he said, "I've dabbled in real estate for years. My wife owns some rental property that I manage. Jackie Lee's my second wife." Then he corrected himself and said, "Actually, my third. My first wife died, and my second, well . . ." With that he made a dismissive gesture and then said, "It's about my present wife that I've called you here."