Hollywood Crows

FOURTEEN

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Hollywood Nate got a phone call at home from his CRO sergeant at Hollywood South. The surfer cops had been trying to reach Nate and had left a cell number with the sergeant. When Nate called the number, Jetsam answered, and Nate could hear the sound of crashing surf in the background.

“Why am I being summoned by the headache team?” Nate wanted to know.

“Bro, Malibu is radical today!” Jetsam said. “You should be here. My partner is out there with two little newbies in thongs the size of tire patches.”

“I see,” Nate said. “You had to give a surf report to somebody and I won the prize?”

“No, bro,” Jetsam said. “I gotta talk to you about something.”

“Talk,” Nate said.

Jetsam said, “I wish I could do it in person at the station, but our hours and yours don’t match too good.”

The rest of it faded, and when the signal returned, Nate said, “I can’t hear you.”

“Shit!” Jetsam said. “Meet us at Hamburger Hamlet at noon straight up.”

Then it was Nate who said “Shit!” The signal was gone and Nate figured it was probably because the goofy surfer had failed to charge his cell.

Nate was supposed to meet Rita Kravitz to talk with three members of the Homeless Committee, but he felt obliged to postpone that and meet with Flotsam and Jetsam, who would be at Hamburger Hamlet, expecting him. Hollywood Nate could only hope that Jetsam wasn’t in his sleuthing mode again. The last episode had gotten him supper with Margot Aziz, but that was all it had gotten him. She still had not called.

Late that morning Leonard Stilwell dragged himself out of bed without having slept more than two hours altogether. He’d awakened several times with nightmares and had lain awake for hours before falling into a brief but fitful sleep. For most of the night, he’d contemplated how he had barely survived catastrophe the previous evening as a result of being driven to desperate measures. He was lucky to be alive and free but had no prospects whatsoever, except for the job with Ali Aziz. His weekly rent was due in two days and he hardly had enough money to put gas in his car and enough food in his belly to keep from feeling weak and nauseous. He ate the last of the breakfast cereal right out of the box, since he had no milk, drank a cup of coffee, didn’t bother shaving, and got in his car, determined to drive straight to the Leopard Lounge and demand another advance from Ali Aziz.

Leonard had to bang on the kitchen door before one of the Mexican workers looked out and opened it.

“Where’s Ali?” Leonard asked.

“He ees een the office,” the young guy said, obviously uncertain if he should have opened the door for Leonard.

Leonard walked past him, entered the main room, where another Mexican was vacuuming and cleaning tables, and continued down the long hallway to Ali’s office. He didn’t bother to knock.

“Leonard!” Ali said, irritated by the abrupt entrance.

“I gotta talk to you, Ali,” Leonard said.

“I tell you I shall call.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t wait no more,” Leonard said.

Ali Aziz glared at him. Leonard’s freckled face looked blotchy. His blue eyes seemed even more empty and stupid-looking than usual. His rusty red hair was a tangled mess and he hadn’t shaved in days. Ali thought he must be a fool to be involved with this thief. If only he himself knew how to open a locked door. He was starting to wonder how long it would take him to learn such a skill and if a locksmith could be hired to teach him.

Then Ali said, “I shall need you soon.”

“Well, soon ain’t soon enough,” Leonard said. “I’m busted, man. I need money now. I’ll wait, but only if I get another advance.”

“No, Leonard,” Ali said. “I give you one advance. We make the deal.”

“Four hundred more,” Leonard said. “I gotta pay my rent and I gotta actually take some nourishment once in a while. You ever think of that?”

“We shall do the deal next week,” Ali said. “I promise you.”

“You said a Thursday. Tomorrow is Thursday.”

“This week, no,” Ali said. “Next week for sure.”

“I’m outta here,” Leonard said, turning toward the door.

“Okay!” Ali said. “Leonard, please. Go out to the kitchen and tell Paco to get you food. Eat. I see you in twenty minutes, okay?”

Leonard reluctantly obeyed, wondering what kind of food they’d serve in a joint where all the customers really wanted was to look at bare ass and jerk off.

When Leonard was gone, Ali pulled his worry beads from the desk drawer and fingered them while he dialed the number of the farmacia on Alvarado Street.

“Bueno.” Jaime Salgando answered it himself.

Affecting a jaunty tone he did not feel, Ali said, “What is happening, Jaime? You do not hire a girl to answer the phone no more. Business is very bad?”

Recognizing the voice and accent at once, Jaime Salgando said, “Ali, old friend! And how are you today?”

“Fine, brother, I am fine,” Ali said. “But I must have a very big favor. I must ask my friend to please come for the date tonight and bring what I ordered from you. The girls are very much ready for you. This night is very much better for them.”

“I can’t, Ali,” Jaime said. “My granddaughter is in a school play this evening and I have to be there to see her.”

“Jaime,” Ali said. “This is most important. I must have it. Another child on my street almost got attacked yesterday. From this killer dog.”

“I’m sorry, Ali,” Jaime said. “I can’t disappoint my grand-daughter.”

“Can I come to the store and pick up my order today? I do that, okay?”

“But I haven’t seen my friend yet,” the pharmacist said. “I don’t have what you ordered.”

Ali thought of how desperate Leonard looked, and now it was his turn for desperation. He worked those worry beads for all they were worth until he came up with a plausible story. Ali said, “Jaime, my brother, I am so sorry. There is another reason that Saturday date is no good.”

“What is that?”

“Tex, she is getting married on Saturday. Big wedding. We all shall go to it. She says to me she cannot have fun with old friend Jaime no more after that. Even Goldie shall go to this wedding. I have new girls to work that night. I never meet these girls before. I hire the girls from the agency. I cannot ask new girls to have a special party with my friend Jaime. I am sorry.”

The pharmacist was silent for a moment and then said, “Strange. I never think of these girls as doing normal things like getting married.”

“But Tex says if her friend Jaime can come tonight, she can give him a very great time. Like, how you say, it is her getting married party?”

“Bachelor party,” Jaime said. “Or bachelorette, in this case.”

“Exactly!” Ali said. “And Goldie says, ‘Oh yes, that is going to be very much fun.’”

Again the pharmacist hesitated before speaking. “All right. I’ll make a call and deliver your order to you at seven o’clock. I’d like to watch the show for a while. Then I’d like to have my private party and be home by midnight.”

“All shall be as you wish, brother!” Ali said. “The dinner reservation shall be ready and so shall Tex and Goldie!”

“I didn’t like that motel last time,” Jaime said. “It wasn’t very clean. I want to go to that nice one by the Leopard Lounge.”

“Anything, brother,” Ali said.

After he hung up, Ali scrolled to Tex’s cell. When she answered, he said, “Tex. You shall not do the special party on Saturday. You must do the party tonight. Get Goldie. Come tonight, eight o’clock.”

He had to hold the phone away when she yelled, “Goddamnit, Ali, I told you I needed tonight off! I got a date I been looking forward to! I ain’t doing the old Mexican tonight and that’s final!”

Ali felt his blood rising. The planning, the expense, the anxiety, the fear, it was all getting to be too much. He was doing all of this for his son. To save his beloved son from his son’s bitch mother. His motives were pure and he was being obstructed by everyone!

Ali heard himself yell into the phone, “I shall pay you big bonus! I shall pay Goldie big bonus! But you shall come tonight! You are listening to me?”

“Keep the bonus, Ali!” Tex yelled back at him. “You can fuck the old Mexican yourself, for all I care!”

Ali began choking on rage now. His eyes were bulging and he’d broken the strand that held the worry beads. He screamed into the phone: “You do like I say or I fire you! You got to fuck the old Mexican! I am the boss! The boss don’t got to fuck no old Mexican!”

He was panting, and he swallowed his spit and felt light-headed and unsteady. He thought he might vomit. The worry beads were scattered all over his desk.

Then Tex’s voice said calmly in his ear, “It better be a big fucking bonus, Ali. And I mean it literally.”

Four of the eleven senior lead officers at the Community Relations Office were on vacation. Ronnie and Bix were filling in for the Police Explorer Program, which involved kids of both genders ages fourteen to twenty. Many of the former Explorers went on to join the LAPD when they were twenty-one years old. Ronnie liked working with the kids, who were open and eager and idealistic. She hoped they could hang on to some of that if they did become regular police officers. Of course, there was no way she could warn them about the premature cynicism that she and her colleagues had to battle throughout their careers. For these kids, cynicism was not on their desktop.

Bix Ramstead was starting to worry her more each day. Through casual conversation she learned that his wife and two children had left for their vacation, along with his wife’s parents, to her parents’ lakefront home in Oregon. From what he said and didn’t say, Ronnie gathered that Bix’s father-in-law, a retired judge and a demanding perfectionist, might not have been a best friend to his son-in-law. In any case, Bix seemed relieved not to be spending two weeks with the judge.

Since his family had gone, Ronnie thought she could see a difference in his eyes, his voice, even the steadiness of his hands. She was positive that he was drinking, and not just a little bit. Ronnie didn’t think that Bix should be alone in his house for two weeks.

That day, while the two cops were taking code 7 at a good little restaurant in Thai Town, sharing a spicy, hot shrimp salad, she said, “Must get lonely for you with the family gone.”

“I’ve got our dog, Annie, to keep me company,” he said. “How about you? You’re always alone.”

“I’m used to it,” she said. “But you’re used to a wife and a couple of adolescents charging around. How’re you coping with silence?”

“I get to watch whatever TV program I like,” Bix said. “With a big, slobbery dog sleeping in my lap. And I don’t have to make the bed.”

“You know you’re always welcome to join us for our burrito rendezvous on Sunset Boulevard. Sometimes Cat shows up, or Hollywood Nate. Rita Kravitz is usually there, and Tony Silva. The boss comes by once in a while. In fact, we might be going there tonight.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I think I’ll try for eight hours’ sleep, if Annie will let me. She sleeps crossways and takes up most of the bed. She kicks like a mule in her sleep and passes enough gas to launch the Goodyear blimp.”

Ronnie hesitated, then said, “Are you still concerned about the, you know, booze thing when you go out with a bunch of coppers?”

“It enters my mind,” Bix said, “but that’s not the reason.”

“How long’s it been since you had a drink?”

“I don’t count the days like an alcoholic does,” he said. “But it’s been well over a month.”

“Do you miss it?”

He shrugged and said, “I can take it or leave it.”

Ronnie Sinclair knew that Bix Ramstead was lying.

“No shoes, no service,” the imperious hostess at Hamburger Hamlet-one of the legion of otherwise unemployable liberal arts majors who staffed nearly every nonethnic restaurant and bar in Hollywood-said to the surfer cops when they walked through the front door.

“Bro, I didn’t notice you were shoeless,” Jetsam said to his partner when they returned to Flotsam’s GMC pickup to get his sneakers. “You gotta show some class.”

“Why do you take me to fancy establishments where you gotta wear shoes?” Flotsam said. “I’m so used to running around the beach all day, I don’t know if I got flip-flops on or not. You think I spend a lotta time looking at my own feet?”

“Since we’re not packing, I hope nobody tries to steal our boards,” Jetsam said, their guns being under the seat of the locked truck. “Anyways, the wusses that run the consent decree would go all PMS-ey if we capped a surfboard thief.”

“Only if they’re oppressed minorities,” Flotsam said. “If they’re white, you can shoot them down like rabid pit bulls and back over them in your truck five or six times.”

“Check the city demographics, bro,” Jetsam said. “We’re the oppressed minority.”

When they reentered Hamburger Hamlet, they got disapproving looks from the hostess, this pair of surfers in baggy T-shirts and board shorts, with salt still clinging to their sunburned faces, and sand falling from their hair. They couldn’t have looked more like surfers if they’d been wearing half-peeled wet suits, but at least she could now count four sneakers on their sockless feet, so they got seated in a booth to await the arrival of Hollywood Nate Weiss.

They only had to wait ten minutes, and both were hydrating with their second iced tea when Nate entered and sat down.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of doing lunch with you two sand crabs?” Nate said.

“Wanna cold drink?” Jetsam said when the waitress came over to their table. She was an Asian with very nice legs.

“I’ll have what they’re drinking,” Nate said.

“Iced tea coming up,” she said. “Lemme know when you want something else.”

Nate checked her out as she was walking away and said, “I might just do that.” Then he said to Jetsam, “So you wanted face time. What’s up?”

Flotsam assumed his “I got nothing to do with this” pose, and Jetsam said, “Last Friday night we wrote a parking ticket to a guy named Leonard Stilwell. The name mean anything to you?”

Nate looked puzzled and said, “Nope.”

“Wormy-looking white dude. Maybe a tweaker, maybe a crackhead. Fortyish. Medium height. Red hair, freckles, black Honda with primer spots?”

Nate shook his head and said, “Nada. Am I supposed to know him?”

Jetsam said, “I dunno, but he had an address in his car, and just for the hell of it we checked it out, because this dude shouldn’t be having an address up on Mount Olympus. Not unless he’s going there to clean out their garage or something. He’s got a couple priors for burglary.”

“Still not tracking,” Nate said.

“So we don’t find the address,” Jetsam said. “The number’s off a little bit. But right near there where the address should be, we see a car.”

“His car?” Nate said.

“Not his car,” Jetsam said.

That brought things to a sudden stop. Nate frowned slightly and said, “You saw my car?”

“SAG4NW,” Jetsam said. “So we thought you should know about this burglar Stilwell, is all.”

Flotsam corrected his partner, saying, “He thought you should know. Me, I’m neutral in this matter.”

Hollywood Nate didn’t speak for a moment and then said, “It was the wrong address, you said.”

“Yeah, but there was no street address to exactly match the one on the piece of paper. If I remember right, the address you were visiting ended in four eight? His address ended in two six. But then the street turns and the numbers are totally different. The house you were in is closest to the number he wrote down.”

Flotsam was sick of this. He said to Nate, “Dude, my pard thinks whoever lives in that house might be a future crime victim or maybe a present criminal if they’re connected to this dirtbag Leonard Stilwell. That’s, like, the shorthand version of this here drama.”

“What’s, like, the longhand version?” Nate said.

“The longhand version is that my pard is all goony over Sinclair Squared, and he would love to become a Crow and work with her, even though she don’t know a surfboard from an ironing board. But come to think of it, whenever somebody asks her to iron something, she divorces him. And since she don’t marry nobody unless his name is Sinclair, I wish he’d either change his name to Sinclair or stop all this Sherlock shit, because it’s wearing me down!”

Jetsam just looked at his partner, astonished. He’d never seen Flotsam so exercised.

“What’s his crush on Ronnie got to do with the burglar?” Nate asked Flotsam, as though Jetsam weren’t there.

“He heard that Ronnie and Bix Ramstead were working that part of the Hollywood Hills, kissing ass with all those rich whiners up there, and he’s, like, trying to bring the spotlight on this and score points with Ronnie and maybe the Crow sergeant.”

Jetsam still stared at his partner in astonishment and finally said, “Bro, why didn’t you switch to my frequency? I didn’t know you were all vaporized about this!”

“I been trying to for days,” Flotsam said. “You ain’t been the same ever since you fired off flares over the SUVs in the body shop. You’re, like, totally spring-loaded. You just don’t listen to body language no more!”

“I didn’t know you were all bent, bro!”

“Work out your domestic partnership later,” Nate said. “I can tell you that the person who lives in that house is not some kind of crook. As to being a target of this guy Stilwell, I just don’t know.”

“Is she your squeeze?” Flotsam said with a leer.

“Hey, I don’t ask you about your Bettys,” Nate said.

“Dude, you are hormonally spirited!” Flotsam said admiringly.

Rebounding from Flotsam’s tirade, Jetsam said to Nate, “It wouldn’t hurt to ask your squeeze-I mean, the person who lives there-if she knows a Leonard Stilwell. If she don’t, it might be something to talk over with the burglary dicks. Trust me, bro, that pus bucket Stilwell is a waste of good air, and he’s up to no good.”

“I’ll give her a call,” Nate said, “and see what she knows.”

“Is she a hottie or just rich?” Flotsam said to Nate with that same annoying leer.

“She’s just somebody with a car for sale,” Nate said. “I was talking to her about her SUV.”

It had slipped from Nate’s mouth before he could stop it, and Jetsam jumped on it. “Hey, bro! That’s the SUV from the body shop, ain’t it? The one you talked to the guy about?”

Nate saw both surfers looking at him expectantly now. He decided to tell the truth. He said, “Yeah, that’s the one. And yeah, she’s a burner babe, but nothing happened.”

“This is destiny at work, bro!” Jetsam said with a flourish. “There’s only a few degrees of separation here. We’re all part of some inscrutable plan!”

Nate was speechless until Flotsam said, “He gets like this after we been surfing. He sits out there on the water and gets, like, these visions. They make him go all surfboard simple for the rest of the day. He’ll be okay later.”

“At least you should bounce for the iced tea,” Nate said, finishing his drink.

“Yeah, dude, it’s on us,” Flotsam said. “But if you want my opinion, you oughtta shine them Hills honeys. All that sculpted flesh and five-karat diamonds look good, but there’s, like, better ways to escape your humdrum existence. Grab yourself a log and come to Malibu. We’ll be your gurus.”

Jetsam agreed, saying, “Bro, it’s way wack to go all frothy over Mount Olympus bitches, who think their shit should be gilded and hung on gold chains.”

Flotsam concurred, saying, “Yeah, they think their turds should be bronzed and kept in trophy cases, dude.”

“Come to Malibu, bro,” Jetsam said. “Maybe you’ll have a vision too and find your true self.”

Nate stood up then, nodded, and said, “Am I ever glad I came here today. All this time I’ve been buying lottery tickets and stalking talent agents, and the answer was right before my eyes. I just couldn’t see it till you sea slugs dialed me in. It all comes down to a surfboard. The stuff that dreams are made of!”

There was no better time of day in Hollywood than twilight, as far as Ronnie Sinclair was concerned. The way the setting sun blasted through the low-hanging summer smog actually burnished the pollution into garish wine-colored clouds. After which, a scarlet glare was cast over the boulevards announcing to all: This place is unlike any other. Here even the toxic gases are beautiful!

After lunch, followed by a perfunctory visual check to see if there were signs of the homeless encampment springing up again, Ronnie drove them back toward Hollywood Boulevard. Bix Ramstead answered his cell phone and the look on his face startled her.

Bix reddened and whispered into the phone, “I’m working. I can’t talk. I’ll call you later.” He snapped the phone shut and said, “My brother Pete. He’s a pain. Always borrowing money, never paying it back.”

“Yeah, my sister used to be like that till her husband made it big,” Ronnie said, looking at Bix, who was smiling but not with those heavily lashed gray eyes she loved. And she knew he was lying again. That was not brother Pete on the cell call.

“Maybe I oughtta join you guys the next time you go up to Sunset Boulevard for a Mexican dinner,” Bix said abruptly. “With my family gone, I guess I should get out and mix a bit. Gets lonely talking to a dog, even one as smart as Annie.”

“I’ll bet she’s smarter than most of the people we call on every day,” Ronnie said. “I found out that our posse won’t be doing our Mexican thing tonight after all, but if you’re not busy, I’d be glad to meet you there.”

She had never detected a sexual vibe coming her way from Bix Ramstead and she didn’t detect it now when he said, “I might do that. When, right after we go end-of-watch?”

“Okay by me,” she said. “And I’ll pop for it, since I’m a semiprosperous single copper with nobody to spend my money on but me and two goldfish.”

Then another phone call came in, this one on Ronnie’s cell. She picked it up and said, “Officer Sinclair.”

“It’s Nate,” Hollywood Nate said to her. “Can I talk to Bix?”

“Sure,” she said, handing Bix her phone and saying, “It’s Nate.”

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Bix said to him.

Then the smile was gone. His face darkened yet again. His lips turned down and he said, “Yeah, I know the resident at that address.” After a moment he said, “I, uh, I’ll see you back at Hollywood South and we can talk about it. In an hour, okay?”

When he hung up this time, he felt he definitely owed his partner an explanation, so he said to Ronnie, “Just some Hollywood Nate deal. A person on Mount Olympus that I dealt with on a prior call might be a burglary target. Some guy with four-five-nine priors had the resident’s address in his car, or a similar address to that one. It’s just bullshit, I’m sure. It’s nothing.”

The brooding look on his face said that it was not nothing to Bix Ramstead. And Ronnie Sinclair knew that he was lying to her yet again.

Ali Aziz couldn’t eat a bite all day. He mulled over his plan a dozen times and he couldn’t stop sweating. He even used the shower in the dancers’ bathroom and steamed himself clean, letting the hot water pelt his balding dome until it turned pink. He went to the closet in his office and changed into a clean silk shirt. He shaved his face, doused himself with cologne, and flopped onto the leather sofa in his office and tried to nap, but he could not.

He didn’t want food or whiskey or women. He only wanted this torment to be over. He wanted Margot to be gone forever. He wanted to have his son, Nicky, and to take him away from this terrible city, from this terrible, godless country someday. Here, there was no respect, no love, no truth. Everything here was a lie.

Jaime Salgando showed up half an hour early at the Leopard Lounge. When he entered Ali’s office, he said, “Traffic was light for once.”

Ali looked approvingly at Jaime’s double-breasted pinstriped suit, wondering if it was a Hugo Boss. And at his starched white shirt with shooting cuffs and gold links and at his sky blue necktie with a perfect knot, and he said, “This is how gentlemen dress. In my country, in your country, men have respect. In this country, no respect.”

Jaime said, “Thank you,” and sat in the client chair nervously, wanting to get the business finished.

“The girls shall arrive at eight o’clock, like you say,” Ali said.

“Yes, yes,” Jaime said, “that gives us a chance to do our business. I have an acquaintance at a compounding pharmacy who helps me with these unusual orders.”

“What is the meaning of ‘compounding’?”

“They mix a lot of drugs and medications for special prescription orders. This employee is from the village in Mexico where I used to spend my summers. He was able to help me, but it cost me six hundred dollars.”

Ali looked at him, trying to keep his smile in place. He knew that Jaime was lying to him, but he was powerless. Everyone lied to him. By forcing Jaime to come tonight instead of Saturday, he was going to pay a price. Ali took the roll of hundreds from his gold money clip and counted out six bills, placing them on the desk.

“Of course, my brother,” Ali said. “We got to pay for good service always. That is the American way.”

Jaime Salgando picked up the bills and put them in his pocket and withdrew a small pill envelope with his pharmacy’s name on it. He opened it and dropped two green capsules on the desktop, then put the envelope back in his pocket.

Ali nearly panicked. “Two?” he said. “I need two capsules to kill the dog?”

“No, you only need one of these to easily kill a fifty-kilo dog. The other is just in case the dog does not take the bait or if something goes wrong. Then you can try again some other time.”

Ali’s relief was palpable. “You are a smart man, brother,” he said. “Very smart. Yes, is good to have the, how you say, backdown?”

“Backup.”

“Yes, we got the backup now. Very good. Very good.”

“I’d like a drink while I wait for the girls.”

“Yes, yes,” Ali said. “Anything. You want champagne? I got good champagne for special customers.”

“I want a bottle of good champagne brought to the motel,” Jaime said, very businesslike and matter-of-fact. “Make it two bottles. And an ice bucket. And three glasses, of course. But for now I’d like a double shot of tequila. The Patrón Silver that you serve to your special clients.”

“You got it, brother,” Ali said, but now his forced smile had turned grim and produced white lines around his mouth. Ali was starting to loathe Jaime Salgando nearly as much as he loathed the other thieves with whom he was forced to do business. Almost as much as he loathed Leonard Stilwell.

By the time the pharmacist had finished his tequila shooter, there was a knock at the door and Tex entered with Goldie.

“Jaime, you rascal!” Tex drawled. “I’m so glad you could make it tonight!”

“Me too!” Goldie said. “This is just too cool for school!”

Both women giggled when the courtly pharmacist rose and kissed their hands. They were both dressed in black Chanel knockoffs with spaghetti straps, as though for one of their nights on the Sunset Strip. Goldie wore three-inch open-toed heels, but because the pharmacist had special needs, Tex did not wear hers. She wore lizard-skin cowboy boots that she used in her act, and a new snow-white cowboy hat with a rhinestone T across the crown.

When Jaime Salgando and the dancers were gone, Ali locked the door and took the green capsules out of his desk drawer and looked at them. For what this evening was costing him, he wished he could have put one of them in the pharmacist’s tequila.

Ali reached into the back of the drawer and brought out the magenta-and-turquoise capsule he had stolen from Margot’s medicine cabinet, along with the coke spoon and razor blade that he used when he had to give the girls a toot in exchange for services. He put the items on a clean sheet of bond paper along with the two green capsules and a funnel he’d fashioned from a sheet of heavier bond. He carefully pulled open the sleep aid and dumped the contents into the trash basket. Then he wiped his hands and held them palms down in front of him to make sure they were not trembling.

He very carefully pulled open the green capsule and poured the contents into the homemade funnel. It looked something like a mixture of cocaine and sugar might look. Then he picked up the empty magenta-and-turquoise capsule with tweezers and funneled the lethal dose into it. The green capsule contained a bit more than 50 milligrams, so there were some granules left over and it concerned him. But the pharmacist had seemed very confident that this would kill a 50-kilo animal, so there must be more than enough to do the job.

He was going to dump the remaining granules from the green capsule into his trash basket, but instead he took the residue into his bathroom and flushed it away. He washed his hands thoroughly and for no logical reason burned the paper he had used. He put the lethal capsule, which now looked like just another of Margot’s sleep aids, into an envelope along with the other deadly green sister and stored them far back in his middle drawer alongside the full vial of capsules.

His only concern now was that Margot might only have a few capsules left in her sleep aid vial. And that would mean he’d be afraid to add too many more, for fear of making it obvious. If that was the case, she’d die in the next few weeks rather than in the next few months, after she had gone to wherever it was that she was taking his son. Ali feared that outcome. He wanted her to be found dead in that other place, so that there would be little reason for investigators to look for answers back in Hollywood.

Then he felt his heart go hollow as he thought of where she might go to live when the house closed escrow, those places she had talked about. San Francisco? New York? If the judge permitted this, he might not be able to see his precious boy from the time she moved away until she died. The thought of not seeing Nicky for two months or more made Ali Aziz put his face down on his folded arms and weep.