L.A. Success (23 page)

All that is right next to Wilshire Boulevard, which runs through Beverly Hills all the way to the ocean and is lined with the most expensive stores you can imagine. You can drive by the mammoths and then continue to Rodeo drive and see all the babemmoths and trophy-wifemmoths trying to avoid the bitter gazes of the alimonymmoths, who angrily flash credit cards as if they were razor-sharp teeth.

It was the perfect image of L.A.: All the luxury in the world sitting on a thin crust of habitable space, on the verge of sliding down into inky oblivion and being forgotten. Add to that an unbreathable atmosphere, a serious lack of water, and the occasional forest fire, mudslide or earthquake, and you could wonder why people ever came out here in the first place. You could wonder, that is, if you were from someplace else, but when you live here, you know. The fake mammoths they put in the tar are great, but on the other side of the pool, they should have put people standing around with cocktails and Louis Vuitton bags, and twenty feet into the pool, some poor schmuck stuck in the tar with a handful of cash, smiling madly as he sinks away.

That reminded me, it was time for me to go get my money.

I walked up the path to the center of the park, where the huge, perfectly square museum had been built into the side of a small hill, kind of like one of those ecologically friendly houses. When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was that in the center of the museum they had built a glassed-in plant exhibit that looked like a jungle, with birds flying around. All the other exhibits were arranged around it.

I paid the entry fee, and the cashier stuck a little square sticker of a mammoth on my shirt as proof that I had paid. I walked in, passed up the introductory educational movie, and entered the first series of exhibits. The giant ground sloth was one of the first things I saw. The bones were all black from the tar, so it looked much more evil than the fake version outside. It was standing up on its back feet and balancing itself with its thick tail. The little plaque said that ground sloths were herbivores, but since it went extinct, I'm guessing that even a carrot gave this big ugly thing a run for its money.

I looked for Spieldburt, but he wasn't there yet, so I walked around for a while longer. Most of the collection was of wolves, which I didn't find that interesting, but the mammoth and saber-toothed tiger skeletons were worth the price of admission. I liked to imagine them coming to life and gouging all the tourists with their six-foot-long tusks, taking revenge on the people for having pulled them out of their final resting places. Then I came to something crazy. I've already said that I normally don't read much, but there was an enormous geological time line on the wall with all sorts of dates and explanations. I wasn't going to read any of that crap, of course—I mean, who goes to a museum to read? I could not do that at home just as easily—but a group of people were at one section acting all amazed, so I went over there.

It turns out that in all the excavating they've done—and they've dug thousands and thousands of years into the past—only one chick has ever been thrown into the tar pits. Don't get me wrong—I'm not saying that more women deserved to be thrown in. It's just that, knowing what we know about modern society, you have to wonder if people in the past were a lot nicer than they are now. Imagine if the tar pits were open to the public 24 hours a day and there was no security. You're telling me that not a single modern guy would throw his mother-in-law in? Not a single cheating ex-girlfriend would be "swimming with the mammoths?" Oh hell yeah, they would. And there'd be lots of dudes in there, too. Dudes who whack off to the internet after their women go to bed. Dudes who obsess over which local sports team made up of non-local players is better than someone else's local sports team made up of other non-local players. Yeah, I'd probably chuck a few of those in myself.

I went back to the giant ground sloth and waited behind a group of visitors who were trying to explain to a young girl of about seven that this big thing was a sloth.

“Sloths look like monkeys and live in trees,” she said. “This looks like a bear.”

“Yes, but it's related to the little sloth,” said a woman.

“Is it the little sloth's grandpa?”

“Not exactly. Ask your biology tutor tonight,” she said.

“I don't have biology tonight. I have ice skating and then the junior dolphins' dive club.”

Most of these rich L.A. kids don't realize that what they really have are “mommy-needs-a-free-hour-to-have-an-affair” classes. If I get married some day and my wife ever tells me something like “I signed our daughter up for Brazilian martial-arts class,” I'm calling a divorce lawyer immediately.

The group moved on toward the mammoth, leaving behind one person who glanced shiftily around. I got up close enough to look underneath the lowered bill of his baseball cap. It was him. I was finally going to get to talk with Spieldburt again.

I stepped up right next to him and cleared my throat a little. He looked over.

“Herisson?” he asked. This guy had a short memory, but I guess it was true that he hadn't seen me in a long time and that I’d lost some weight since then.

“At your service,” I said, and he rolled his eyes.

“You'll never pull this off.”

“I already know everything I need to know. I'm just waiting for a little advance before I lay it on you.”

“An advance? Are you out of your mind? How do I know you have anything that could do any damage?”

“I've been working with Gertie on this. Believe me, I know everything.”

“What has she told you!” he said, grabbing me by my Arnold. I pulled myself free and stepped back.

“You'll find out, but you better have the money ready. I'm talking five grand!”

“Five grand? You're doing all this for five grand? What are you, stupid?”

“That's the going rate. You get it ready, and when I have the third act prepared with the photos, I'll set up a time to meet through Grant.” Spieldburt looked relieved to hear all this.

“Fine,” he said, slightly stunned, and continued on through the museum.

I doubled back to the entrance and stopped in the gift store. They had a stuffed version of a ground sloth that I had to buy. I also picked up a cool vial of tar.

37

When I got back to the parking lot, I saw Grant's car. He was ducked down low in the driver seat peeking over at me, so I pretended not to see him. I got in the car and pulled out slowly. Sure enough, his metallic-blue, sun-bleached hatchback rattled out after me.

I started out driving reasonably but then decided to pull a Gert on him. I weaved wildly all over Wilshire Boulevard, sped up randomly, and then slowed down so much that I felt like a turtle. Along one stretch, I darted ahead so far that I couldn't see him anymore, turned into a parking lot and waited for him to pass me. Then I got back on the road and raced ahead of him, not making the slightest indication that I was on to him as I passed right by. I felt like a killer whale playing with a hapless seal before the final crunch.

I was about to lose him for good when I asked myself why prissy, New-England Grant would be following me anyway. I figured the only way to find out would be to let him continue. I started driving normally, and I could almost hear his car wheeze a sigh of relief. I drove like that all the way to Dennis' house, making sure not to lose Grant at the intersections.

I parked in the driveway and got out. Grant parked right in front of the neighboring house and ducked down again. I actually had to make an effort not to look over at him. All that expensive education and not a lick of common sense. I entered the house, went up to Dennis' room and took a peek out the window with the binoculars.

He was dialing on his cell phone, which looked a lot more expensive than his car. I wanted to hear what he was saying, so I broke out the parabolic microphone.

“...back to his house. No, there's no way he saw me. For how long? Okay. Who? Who's that? Well, how will I recognize her? All right,” said Grant into his phone and then hung up. He crooked his neck around to check out all the windows of the house and then fiddled with the radio for a while.

From the sound of the conversation, it appeared that Spieldburt had asked Grant to see if I was receiving visits from Gertie. Maybe he thought I had fallen for her during the investigation, kind of like how Dennis had fallen for Ignacio.

I gave Grant an hour and then peeked out the window again. He was making that occasional quick head jerk that signaled oncoming sleep.

I took the vial of tar to the kitchen and stuck it in the microwave for a few minutes until it got really viscous. I wrapped it up in a towel so that I wouldn't burn myself and took it and the stuffed sloth out the back door. I went through several backyards and then cut over to the street a block behind Grant's car. Crouching behind a four-by-four, I whipped out the binoculars and focused in on him. He was in a slouch and not moving at all. I mapped out the path I would take up to him and then zigzagged forward, stopping behind the parked cars to verify he was still sleeping.

The driver's side window was rolled down all the way. Grant's head was tilted at what looked like an uncomfortable angle, and a line of drool was making its way down to a growing wet spot on his shirt. I was about to carry out my evil plan when the sun reflecting off his complicated phone caught my eye. It was underneath the car stereo in a little compartment. I reached in as far as I could, but with my short arms I didn't make it much farther than the other side of the steering wheel. I watched him for a few seconds and decided to try it again, but this time I took out the shit phone, held it in my hand, and then leaned into the window head first. I moved slower than a sloth so that I wouldn't make the slightest noise. I even held my breath until I thought I was going to pass out. With half my body in the window, I slid the shit phone into the compartment and took out Grant's super-complex device. I gave a little goodbye wave to Grant with it as I slowly pulled myself out of his window.

I moved over to the front of his car and took out the vial of tar. It wasn't made to be opened, so I really had to claw at it, but when the top came off, I poured it out right onto the middle of the hood. Then I took the stuffed sloth and planted him in the tar facing Grant. The growling expression it had was going to be perfect for Grant to wake up to.

I doubled back, and when I was in the house again, I checked out the scene from Dennis' bedroom window.

Grant was sound asleep. I expected him to wake up soon, but he kept sleeping away. A mother and her son walked by, and the kid went wild trying to drag his mom over to the sloth, but even that didn't wake him up. I was just dying for him to see his surprise, and the longer he slept, the more it ate me up. I finally cracked, took out my new phone and dialed up Grant's shit phone. I saw his head leap up. Then, as he tried to remember where he was, he wiped off a bunch of drool with the back of his hand and then looked at it as if he had been betrayed by his own body. Then he focused in on the ringing. He tilted his head slightly, like a dog that hears a high-pitched noise, and reached over to pick it up. With a look of disgust he saw that his phone had morphed into the inbred cousin of its former self and that the incoming call was from “Grant.” After a couple of very vulgar words and a punch to the steering wheel, he answered.

“You bring my fucking phone back here right now you—” he said and then launched into a high-pitched, girly scream when he noticed the sloth. I waited for him to calm down a little.

“Don't worry, it'll take him a good hour to walk around to the side of the car to attack you,” I said.

“Is that tar on my car?”

“He must have had it all over his feet when he climbed onto your hood. You didn't happen to be at La Brea earlier, did you? I hear that happens from time to time.”

“If you don't give me back my phone, I'm going to call everyone in your repertory and tell them you have a venereal disease.”

“My ex is the only one in that phone, and she dumped me, so have at it,” I said and hung up.

Grant got out and grabbed the sloth with one hand. It was stuck on there good, so he put his free hand down on the hood for support. He started pulling again, but then let go of the sloth, grabbed the arm that was touching the hood and pulled it out of the tar he had accidentally ended up in. His left palm was speckled with black. He walked over to the lawn and tried to wipe it off, but ended up with blades of grass stuck to his hand. After a new round of swearing, he walked back over to the slothmobile, got in, and, holding his left hand up to avoid spreading any tar, drove off, his car veering off to the right every time he let go of the wheel to shift.

38

I went downstairs, sat down with my dad and tried to figure out how to use my new, complicated phone. It had a miniature keyboard and a touch screen, and occasionally, when I said something to my dad, it would light up and start calling people. I had to be careful what I said while this thing was turned on. After about thirty minutes of fiddling with it, I found the repertory and started going through it. There were hundreds of names listed, and every one of them had several pages of notes. There were birthdays, addresses and telephone numbers, but also personal notes like “hates the Angels,” “sleeping with Juanita from art design,” and “loosens up after a margarita—must be on the rocks with salt.” I found my name, and along with my number it said “possible blackmailer or stalker.” The biggest annoyance was that I couldn't find Spieldburt's number anywhere. Maybe Grant had hidden it under another name in case he ever lost his phone, but there was no way I was going to call every person listed in order to check.

I was having trouble digesting the fact that I was once again going to have to call Grant to get in contact with his boss. I knew Grant would have to talk to me, since in the end he had to do what his boss wanted, but he could make life difficult and say crap that I wouldn't be able to forget any time soon. What a drag.

I was so annoyed at my practical joke having backfired that, for the first time in months, I really felt like having a beer to calm down. I hadn't stocked Dennis' fridge since I knew my dad wouldn't cook anyway, but I was hoping Dennis had left a Budweiser or two. I walked over to the kitchen and was about to open the fridge when the home phone rang. I walked quickly back to the living room and answered it.