Hollywood Crows

ELEVEN

OF COURSE, Hollywood Nate didn’t know anything at all about the surfers’ debate taking place out on the street in front of the Aziz home. He was sitting at the dining room table, sipping wine and looking into the amber eyes of Margot Aziz, who kept topping off his wineglass and trying to persuade him that she made the best martinis in Hollywood.

Finally he said, “I’m just not much of a martini guy. The wine is great and the pasta and salad were sensational.”

“Just a simple four-cheese noodle,” she said. “Your mom called it macaroni and cheese.”

“I should help you with the dishes,” he said. “I’m good at it. My ex-wife was dishwashing obsessive and turned me into a kitchen slave.”

“No dishes for us, boyo,” she said. “My housekeeper will be here in the morning, and she gets mad when there’s not something extra for her to do.” Then she said, “Did you have kids with your ex?”

“That was the one good thing about my marriage. No kids.”

“Can be good or bad,” she said. “Nicky is the only good thing about my marriage, which will soon be officially over, praise the lord.”

Nate looked around and said, “Will you get to keep this house?”

“We’re selling it,” she said. “Which is sad. This is the only home Nicky’s ever known. Did your wife get to keep your house?”

“It was an apartment,” Nate said. “More or less a pots ’n’ pans divorce. She came out of it way better than I did. Married a doctor and now lives the way a Jewish princess was meant to live. Her father hated it when she married a cop. She shoulda listened to him. I shoulda listened to him.”

Margot said, “My Nicky is five years old and deserves to keep the lifestyle he’s always had.”

“Sure,” Nate said. “Of course.”

“I worry a lot about him, and that’s part of what I need to talk to you about.”

“Okay,” Nate said. “I’m listening.”

“I’ve become afraid of his father.” Then she stopped, took another sip of wine, and said, “Sure you won’t have a martini? I’ve just gotta have one when I talk about my husband, Ali Aziz.”

“No, really,” Nate said. “You go ahead.”

Margot Aziz got up and walked out of the dining room and into a butler’s pantry, then to the kitchen, where Nate could hear her scooping from an ice maker. He got up and joined her, watching her make the cocktail.

“I’m not a big-city girl,” she said. “I’m from Barstow, California. Where desert teens spend Saturday night dining at the historic Del Taco fast-food joint and getting deflowered at the prehistoric El Rancho Motel. I dreamed of being an entertainer. Danced and sang at all the school assemblies and plays. I was Margaret Osborne then, voted the most talented girl in the senior class.”

She was quiet for a moment, and when they reentered the dining room, she said, “A James Bond vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred. Can’t I tempt you?”

“No, really, Margot, I’m feeling just perfect.” He wondered if “tempt” was meant as a double entendre, hoping it was.

She tasted the martini, nodded in satisfaction, and said, “The problem was, when I came to Hollywood and started looking for an agent and attending cattle calls and auditions, I discovered that every girl here was the most talented girl in her school. Changing my name from Margaret to Margot didn’t glam it up much.” She gave a self-deprecating shrug.

“I suspected you were a dancer,” Nate said. “Those legs.”

“Since turning thirty I’ve gotta work harder to keep things in place.” She sipped again, put the martini down, and said, “I wasn’t born to all this. My dad worked for the post office, and it almost broke my parents to put my older sister through college. Lucky for them, I didn’t want that. I wanted to dance, and I decided I was going to give it all I had. And that I did for nearly four years. I did waitressing to buy food and keep my car running. And then I did other things.”

Nate thought he’d heard this story before. Or seen it in just about every movie ever made about showbiz wannabes. He waited while she lowered her amber eyes as if ashamed, and he finally said, “Other things?”

“I became a topless dancer at some of the clubs on the boulevards. It was good money compared to what I’d been surviving on. Sometimes I made five hundred dollars a night on tips alone.”

She looked at him as though awaiting a response, so he said, “A girl’s gotta make a living somehow. This is a tough town.”

“Exactly,” she said. “But I never danced at the totally nude clubs. Those no-liquor joints that do totally nude attract servicemen and other rowdy young guys. I’d never take all my clothes off.”

“I understand,” Nate said, but he was wondering how big a difference a G-string made. He remembered a screen-writing class he’d taken at UCLA. Reductive. This freaking story was reductive.

“And then I got a job at the Leopard Lounge,” Margot said, “and I met Ali Aziz.”

“Your husband,” Nate said.

She nodded and said, “He owned two clubs. I danced at the Leopard Lounge for more than two years and made quite a lot of money, by my standards. I moved into a very nice condo, and Ali kept taking me on dinner dates and buying me expensive presents and behaving like a real gentleman. And he kept begging me to move into this house with him, but I refused. And finally he convinced me that he would be a kind and loving husband. Fool that I am, I accepted his proposal and married him, but only when he agreed to a proper marriage with no prenuptial. By the way, have you ever heard of my husband?”

“The name’s familiar,” Nate said. “We have a Nightclub Committee that’s run by our Community Relations Office. I think maybe I’ve seen the name.”

“He makes sure he donates to all of the Hollywood police charities. You may have run into him at police events. He’s chummy with lots of the officers at Hollywood Station.”

“Yeah, I do think I’ve heard of Ali Aziz,” Nate said, wondering how chummy Ali would be with the Jewish cops at Hollywood Station.

“My parents were not thrilled when I told them about Ali, but I took him home to Barstow just before the wedding and they were very impressed by his good manners. He even assured my mother that if we had children, they would be raised Christian.” This time when she paused, she took another sip from the martini and yet again topped off Nate’s wineglass.

“Back then it was peachy, huh?” Nate said, thinking, she was the most exciting woman he’d ever shared a meal with in his entire life, but this sappy story was killing his wood!

“For sure,” Margot said. “The honeymoon was in Tuscany and he bought me a little Porsche for a wedding present, and of course I never had to set foot in the Leopard Lounge again, except to help him with the books. The last real work I ever did in that place was when I talked him into a major refurbishing and he let me do the design.”

Nate sneaked a look at his watch. It was 10:30 and they weren’t even close to getting naked. And all the goddamn wine was making him gassy. Pretty soon he’d be farting!

He said, “So after a few years of marriage, what? He was no longer a gentleman?”

“He’s a fucking pig!” Margot said it so viciously it startled him.

“What happened?”

“Women. Cocaine. Even gambling. And the scary thing, he kept talking about leaving Hollywood. Leaving America. Going back to the Middle East with Nicky and me.”

“Nice,” Nate said. “I can just see you in a burka, or one of those other beekeeper outfits.”

“He said I’d like Saudi Arabia. Claimed he had connections there, even though he’s not a Saudi. I said I’d die first, and that he wasn’t taking my son anywhere.”

“And that started the fireworks?”

“Definitely,” she said. “And it resulted in my filing for divorce and starting a really big-time dispute over the division of property. But that’s another story.”

Nate finally decided that even if all this was gospel, it was hard to feel sympathy for rich people. He offered an official police response, saying, “Has he hurt you or threatened you in any way?”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you tonight,” she said. “He has threatened me, but in very subtle ways.”

“Like how?”

“Like when he comes to pick up Nicky for his visit. He’ll say things like, ‘Enjoy this while you can.’ Or, ‘A boy needs his father, not a mother like you.’ Then he makes signs.”

“What signs?”

“He points a finger at me like a gun. Once he mouthed the word bang. Things like that.”

“That’s not much in the way of a threat. And it’d be his word against yours.”

“That’s what the other officer said.”

“What other officer?”

“I’ve talked to another of your officers about it. An officer I met last year with my husband at one of the Tip-A-Cop fund-raisers. I can’t remember his name. I told him what was going on, but he said that I should talk it over with my divorce lawyer. He said that so far, my husband hadn’t done anything criminal that I could prove.”

“Took the words right outta my mouth,” Nate said.

“But last week when Ali brought Nicky home, he said something that made my blood run cold.”

Nate remembered his screen-writing professor saying that no screenplay should ever contain those last three words. “Yeah?” he said, trying to muster enthusiasm.

“He said if I didn’t agree to sign certain business documents, something very bad would happen.”

“What documents?”

“Documents pertaining to the businesses, the stock portfolio, and properties we own.”

In a minor way Nate had an understanding of divorce law, and at last something piqued his interest. He said, “You mean you’re an owner right along with him of everything?”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

And now Hollywood Nate started getting a woody once again. This Barstow babe must be a world-class piece of ass to have rigged a deal like this with a dude from the Middle East! Nate said, “He wants you to sign off on certain things?”

“On certain things I can’t even talk about. Signatures I agreed to give so that he could avoid certain tax liability, as well as others of his dealings I can’t discuss.”

“Back to the very bad thing that would happen,” Nate said. “Did he describe what might happen?”

“He’s too smart for that,” Margot said. “But he drew his finger across his throat.”

Here we go again, Nate thought. Finger across the throat. Every time she said something he was ready to buy into, she came up with lines that could have come from the piece-of-shit movies he’d appeared in.

Nate said, “Did you tell your lawyer about it?”

“Of course,” she said. “But he told me Ali would deny it, and just to change my locks and alarm code. Which I had already done.”

“Anything else by way of a threat?”

“Yes. One night last week I saw him standing on the street when I came home from dinner with a girlfriend. He was half a block down behind a parked car. He ducked when I drove past, but I’m sure it was him. When I got in my driveway, I saw taillights driving down the hill.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Yes. I called Hollywood Station and talked to an officer at the front desk. I told him I wanted a car to patrol my street, and if they found my husband, to stop and investigate. The officer said he would tell the area car to be on the lookout for Ali prowling around. I insisted that he make a record of my call. My lawyer advised me to be sure that there is official verification of every incident.”

“So you’ve told the cop you met at the fund-raiser, and you called Hollywood Station, and now you’re telling me. Any other police officers know about this?”

“Yes, last Saturday night I was sure I heard footsteps beneath the bedroom balcony at about eleven P.M., and I called Hollywood Station again. And two officers arrived, along with a sergeant. They didn’t find anything.”

“Do you remember the sergeant’s name?”

“Let’s see…no, but he was young and officious. He issued a lot of orders to the officers.”

“Did he have lips?”

“What?”

“Was his name Treakle?”

“That’s it. Sergeant Treakle.”

Well, Nate thought, she’s done everything but put it on MySpace and send up smoke signals. Help! Ali Aziz is threatening me, but I can’t prove it.

“Does your husband still see your son?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I had to agree to reasonable visitation rights. Ali has a luxury condo in Beverly Hills and a full-time housekeeper and au pair. There was nothing I could do about it.”

Nate felt his woody withering again, especially when she said, “Won’t you let me make you a vodka martini? It’s a wonderful mood enhancer.”

And yet hers wasn’t half finished. This chick was way more interested in pouring booze into him than into herself. What about her mood? It occurred to Hollywood Nate Weiss that wealthy people could be very perplexing.

He once again declined a martini and said, “If you’re really scared of him, have you considered moving away?”

“I have,” she said, “and I will. But in the meantime I went to a gun store in the Valley where they have a pistol range and I took a shooting lesson. The gun store owner said I’m a fast learner. I’m thinking of buying a pistol. Do you like the Glock or the Beretta?”

“Whoa!” Nate said. “Are you that scared?”

“I am,” she said. “I’d have bought a gun already, but with Nicky getting into every nook and cranny in this house, I’ve been afraid to do it. The alternative is more expensive but might be wiser.”

“And what’s that?” Nate said.

“I’ve been thinking about hiring someone from a security firm to stay here in the house until it closes escrow. Oh, did I tell you that I sold it already?”

“No, you didn’t,” he said.

“Well, I did. With the agreement of my husband and his attorney. And with proceeds to be shared. I’ll just need someone here for forty more days, maybe less if the buyer can close early. We have bedrooms and bathrooms we’ve never used. But then I thought, Who knows what kind of person might be employed by those security firms? And I got to thinking, there might be a police officer from Hollywood Station who’d be interested in a very nice room-and-board arrangement for a month or so. I think I could feel safe with a real police officer being here. Is that feasible, do you think?”

Now Nate was so baffled by this woman that he decided to test her. He said, “I might be interested.”

“I was hoping to hear that, Nate,” Margot said with a little sigh. “I’m truly scared for my safety and for my son’s.”

“Where’re you moving to?” he asked.

“Haven’t decided yet,” she said. “That’s another thing our lawyers are fighting about. He doesn’t want me to take Nicky out of Los Angeles, but we’re trying to show the court that Ali’s business environment does not make this the ideal place to raise Nicky. Ali knows I love San Francisco and New York. But until that’s settled, I’ll rent a condo for Nicky and me right here in L.A.”

“Good luck with your battle,” Nate said.

She took another tiny sip from the martini glass, her voice sultry now, and said, “What do you drink besides wine? Let’s take a pair of fresh cocktails out onto the balcony and talk about this further.”

And then it kicked in: the cop’s survival instinct, honed by all the years of playing Guess What I’m Really Thinking with countless miscreants on the streets. She had drunk far less wine than he had, and she’d hardly tasted her martini. And those eyes-the color of good whiskey, Jack, maybe, or Johnnie Black-were mesmerizing, but Nate’s response to more drinking was dictated by blue radar, not raging hormones.

He said, “Okay, I’d love to talk about it further. But I’m just not that much of a cocktail drinker. I’ll hang on to my wineglass. You go ahead and have another James Bond special.”

He saw the immediate disappointment on her face. And then he heard a cell phone chime from the butler’s pantry. Margot excused herself, went to the pantry, and picked up her go cell from the countertop.

“Yes,” she said and listened. Then she closed the pantry door and whispered, “No, honey, he won’t do.” She listened for a moment and said, “He’s not a drinking man.” She listened some more and said, “Please, baby, don’t say that. I’m going back to number one. I’m going after him very hard. Please. Give me a week.”

While Margot Aziz was in the butler’s pantry, Hollywood Nate Weiss made a very tough decision. He was going out on that balcony for more talk, but he was going to make a serious move on her to see where all this was going. And if she resisted and tried one more time to pour booze down his throat, he was outta there. This is Hollywood, he thought, and there are extremely unusual people around these parts-gorgeous, scary people who could turn smoking male wood into a steaming pile of sawdust.

Nate didn’t get a chance to execute his strategy. When Margot came out of the butler’s pantry and back into the dining room, she said, “Nate, I’m terribly sorry. That was my au pair. Nicky’s got a fever and she’s worried. I’ve gotta drive over there right now and pick him up.”

“Sure,” Nate said, not as disappointed as he might have predicted. “Anything I can do?”

“No, I’ll call you tomorrow. I have your number.”

When Hollywood Nate was walking out the door, it occurred to him that he should get her cell number too. He started to ask for it but thought he’d better leave. She had a sick kid to deal with. And anyway, he wanted to see if this stunning, rich, very strange woman would call him tomorrow. The amazing thing was, he’d been so bowled over that he hadn’t done what he always did when he met a likely babe. He hadn’t even told her about his SAG card and that he’d appeared in two TV movies.

As he was driving home that night, he remembered what his first field training officer had said to him when he was a boot, fresh out of the academy: “Son, that badge can get you pussy, but pussy can get your badge.”

Jasmine was scowling when she stormed out of the dancers’ bathroom into the dressing room, wearing only her yellow G-string and red stiletto heels. She put her throwaway go cell in her locker, where she kept her street clothes.

One of the stage-sharing dancers that evening, a broad-shouldered redhead called Tex, was sitting in a recliner, looking at photos in a fan magazine. Tex was top heavy from saline overload and was wearing a G-string, a cowboy hat, a short sequined cowgirl vest, and white cowboy boots.

Tex said, “What’s wrong, Jasmine? Boyfriend trouble?”

“Yeah, boyfriend trouble,” Jasmine said, her face darkened by rage and frustration.

“If we could invent a vibrator with a twenty-word set of responses, we’d never need them,” Tex said. “What is he, a gambler, an addict, or a boozer?”

“This guy’s definitely not a boozer,” Jasmine said. “Which is too fucking bad.”

Tex was about to ask what Jasmine meant by that, when Ali Aziz popped his head in the door without knocking, and said, “Jasmine, I got to see you.”

“My next set’s coming up, Ali,” Jasmine said.

Ali was dressed for the evening in a blue double-breasted, raw-silk blazer, a blue silk tie, and a white shirt with monogrammed cuffs. He said, “Tex can take your set. Come.”

Tex rolled her eyes and said, “This job sucks in more ways than one.”

When Jasmine entered the office, Ali closed and locked the door, sat in his desk chair, and poured himself a glass of Jack Daniel’s. Jasmine stood and waited. Lately, he’d call her in there just to rant, especially if he’d been drinking, so maybe if she was very lucky, it wasn’t for a hummer after all.

“Fucking bitch!” he said. “Cunt bitch!”

It could only be one person he was talking about. “Margot?” she said.

“Fucking bitch!” he said. “She don’t do nothing my lawyer says. Nothing I say. She always tries to keep my Nicky away from me. She only gives him to me when the judge makes her. She requires me to spend lawyer money for everything. Every week more lawyer money. Fucking bitch!”

Ali took a big gulp of Jack and said, “You have been knowing her for three years. You helped her to decorate this place. You are her friend. I need for you to be my friend. I need for you to help me more.”

“Help you even more?” Jasmine said.

“Watch out for my Nicky. The house will be in the close of escrow soon and she will move to a condo. That is what she says to my lawyer. But now I want you to watch.”

“Ali,” Jasmine said, “I already am sort of watching out for Nicky, just like you said for me to do. Sort of. But I only get to see Margot, what? Once a week? She lives on Mount Olympus. I live in Thai Town. Jesus, Ali, gimme a break.”

“She says to me that she is going to take Nicky away from California when the house is finish with the escrow and the divorce is over. She says to me that her lawyer is going to make this happen. She says to me that she has a boyfriend and this is none of my business. She says to me all of this on the phone yesterday. I am going insane, Jasmine! My Nicky! He is my life!”

“Okay, Ali, I’ll tell you something I didn’t wanna mention. The last time I phoned her, I was sure she was all weirded out on something. Probably coke. And Nicky was there, because she yelled at him real mean.”

Suddenly, Ali Aziz started sobbing boozily and pulled a red handkerchief from the pocket of his blazer.

Jasmine watched and waited, and before he stopped she said, “I guess I could pay her a personal visit twice a week. Maybe take her some of the Chinese cookies she loves. I might be able to find out if the boyfriend’s staying at the house. And maybe I could ask her straight out if she’s doing coke again.”

Ali stopped weeping then and said, “I ask her, I beg her, I say, ‘Please, Margot, whatever happens, do not go back into the life of cocaine. You must take care of our Nicky.’ When I first met her, she was spending all her money on cocaine. A beautiful, young dancer who was doing so much cocaine. Soon I was more than her boss. I was her friend and she quit the cocaine. Then pretty soon I was her husband.”

“Yeah, you told me,” Jasmine said, thinking how she hated taking the last set. But now she’d have to take it for Tex while she listened to this shit for the hundredth time.

“Jasmine, I want for you to see Margot and to tell me what is what. I shall pay for it. Do not worry, I shall pay you for the time you use. I must know what is in her head. Is she truly wishing to take my Nicky away to a different state? Maybe to do cocaine again with this new man? Without my Nicky I shall die, Jasmine!”

“I’ll do what I can, Ali,” Jasmine said. Then she added, “Tell me, Ali, what happens to your situation if Margot dies?”

“Margot die? God willing!” Ali said. “I shall have my son then. But do not think that I can make such a thing happen. I am a businessman. I am a loving father. I am no killer.”

“Of course you’re not,” Jasmine said. “But I’m curious about your deal with her. About how you got all your holdings so tangled up with her.”

“Fucking lawyer! Fucking accountant!” Ali said. “I got rid of them, but too late. They said to me I can escape from taxes if she is on the deeds and licenses for certain things. Stupid bastards! Now I must suffer for it.”

“What if you die?” Jasmine said. “Who gets your piece of the money and property?”

“You talk too much of death, Jasmine,” Ali said suspiciously.

“You want me to spy for you? Okay, but I gotta know what’s going on. I don’t wanna be part of any violent plots.”

“No! No violence!” Ali said quickly. “I am not a violent man!”

“So tell me, when you die, who gets all your wealth?”

“Nicky, of course. My lawyer is, how you say, executor. But all goes to Nicky. I weep to think of my Nicky with no daddy and only his bitch cunt mother to take care of him.”

“It’s hard for me to figure how a smart businessman like you married without a prenup in the first place,” she said.

Ali said, “You did not know her when she was a young girl. The most beautiful dancer in all Los Angeles. A young girl with eyes that make you go dizzy. So smart she could make me act stupid. She always refuse to give me the blow job. She refuse to even give me kisses more than a few times. She made me to believe she is a virgin. She made me so stupid I run out and buy her a very big diamond ring. She still will not give me sex even one time. I say we sign a business contract and we get married. She say to me no marriage with a business contract. I was the most stupid man in Los Angeles because she made my brain sick. I make her my wife. No contract, no nothing. Two years after that, I listen to my stupid lawyer and stupid accountant, who get her name mixed up in everything. I save some tax money, but look where I arrive to today!”

Jasmine grinned then and said, “How were the blow jobs after all that?”

“Okay,” he said. “But not like the ones you give to me.”

“If you were to die, it’d be real nice to be Nicky’s mother,” Jasmine said. “There’d be ways his mother could cut into Nicky’s fortune.”

“Why do you talk like that, Jasmine?” Ali said. “Stop! You make me feel sick.”

“I’m only saying what you must be thinking,” Jasmine said. “If I’m going into the spy business in the middle of a very bitter divorce involving…how many millions?”

“Please, Jasmine, stop now!” Ali said.

“I’m just saying. I just have to be careful what I’m getting into, is all. She might have very bad friends who could see the tremendous advantage to her if you would pass away suddenly. And as your agent I might find myself in serious trouble. Whadda you know about this new boyfriend, for example?”

Ali was holding his head in his hands now, getting a headache. “Nothing. I know nothing.”

“How do you know he’s not some coke dealer from her younger days? How do you know what the two of them are scheming about? He might be a very dangerous man.”

“I beg you to stop,” Ali said.

“I just hope it all works out for you, Ali,” Jasmine said. “For your son’s sake.”

Ali said, “When Nicky is older, I think he shall see his mother is a cunt bitch. And he shall want to come and live with Daddy. That is what my new lawyer says. He tells me I must have very much patience.”

“Okay, I’ll do more undercover work for you, Ali, but I’ll need serious compensation for it.”

“Yes, yes,” Ali said. “If she is doing cocaine with this man, you must tell me very fast. Then I can tell my lawyer and we maybe can go to the judge to get back my son. This country have very insane laws.”

“You mean I might have to give a deposition or something?” Jasmine said. “I wouldn’t like that.”

“I shall pay you, Jasmine,” Ali said. “You shall not be sorry.”

“To betray my friend?” Jasmine said. “And to maybe run the risk of her new pal finding out about it? That’s gotta be worth a lot.”

“I shall pay you plenty,” Ali said. “Nicky is my life.”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” Jasmine said.

“Thank you, Jasmine, thank you,” Ali Aziz said. “Now, please come here and make me feel like a man once more.”

“Not again,” Jasmine muttered but nevertheless got down on her knees in front of Ali’s chair while he unzipped his fly, wishing he’d taken Viagra.