SEVENTEEN

TERRIBLE EVENTS were to take place on Hollywood Boulevard early that evening, events that left tourists screaming and children in tears. And Leonard Stilwell, flush with greenbacks and desperate for rock, walked right into it.

Things hadn’t been peaceful along the Walk of Fame in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for some time. There was always a Street Character getting busted for something or other by the Street Character Task Force. Arrests had involved the red Muppet Elmo and Chewbacca and Mr. Incredible, to name a few. And the Crows had meetings where they tried to gather the hundred freelancing Street Characters-many of whom duplicated the same cartoon icons, and many of whom were drug addicts-to warn them that laws against aggressive panhandling would be enforced to the letter.

And it wasn’t that the Street Characters were only fighting the law, they were fighting one another too. For example, when a tourist was snapping photos of a Superman, a SpongeBob SquarePants might hop into the shot and try to hustle half the tip. This caused clashes among the Characters, some of them physical, as well as the forming of cliques. On a given day, one or two of the Spider-Man Characters might align with a Willy Wonka, who might be feuding with a Catwoman or a Shrek. And that might torque off Donald Duck, or the Wolf Man, or one of the many Darth Vaders. It could get ugly when teams like a Lone Ranger and Tonto or a Batman and Robin got hacked off at each other, especially since their tips from tourists depended in no small measure on the partnership itself. What was a Robin without a Batman?

But that was what happened on that Thursday evening, a few hours after Ali Aziz had been so busy perpetrating the future murder of his ex-wife. And shortly after Leonard Stilwell, with a thousand bucks in his kick, could not score at the cyber café or at Pablo’s Tacos because of a mini-task force of narcs who were jacking up every tweaker or street dealer anywhere near those two establishments.

It could have been that everyone, including Street Characters, was particularly gloomy from the announcement that there would no longer be a Hollywood Christmas Parade, an event inaugurated by the Hollywood chamber of commerce in 1928. The popular parade had featured Grand Marshal superstars such as Bob Hope, Gene Autry, James Stewart, Natalie Wood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Charlton Heston. But as Hollywood had lost much of its glamour in recent years, so did the parade. Recent Grand Marshals included Tom Arnold, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Fonda. And it had finally gotten so bad that they even had to settle for a local politician, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. That was probably the parade’s death knell.

So, on Hollywood Boulevard, on a scorching summer evening when the bone-dry air hit you in the face like a blast from a hair dryer, and the temperature inside Street Characters’ costumes was unbearable, the stage was set for riot. And to make things worse, a labor dispute was going on, and a local union had a group of members with signs and pickets demonstrating in front of the Kodak Center because of nonunion workers being employed there. A woman officer in plainclothes from LAPD’s Labor Relations Section was monitoring, but that was the only police presence.

Just after sunset, when Hollywood takes on its rosy glow, and the hundreds of tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre feel the buzz that says, anything can happen here, something did. Some said that Robin started it, others blamed it on Batman. Either Robin called Batman “a big fat chiseling faggot” or Batman called Robin “a whiny little sissy punk.” Nobody was ever sure where the truth lay, but there was no doubt that Robin threw the first punch at his partner. It was a hook to Batman’s ample gut and Batman’s plastic breastplate didn’t protect him much.

He went, “Oooooof!” And sat down on Steve McQueen’s footprints, preserved in the cement of the forecourt.

Then a Spider-Man, one of the larger ones who had been aligned with that particular Batman during a recent Street Character feud, put a hand on Robin’s face and shoved him down onto the concrete imprint of Groucho Marx’s cigar.

Then Superman and his pal Wonder Woman-who was actually a wiry transvestite with leg stubble-called Spider-Man a “pukey insect” and proceeded to beat the living shit out of him while tourists screamed and children quaked in fear.

Leonard Stilwell had parked his Honda in the parking lot closest to the Kodak Center. He didn’t give a damn about the excessive parking charges, not with all those Franklins in his pocket. He figured to catch up with Junior tomorrow and give the Fijian back his tools, along with a President Grant.

He was surprised to discover that no matter how much money he had, sometimes there were things that money couldn’t buy. And so far that afternoon and evening, he could not buy rock cocaine anywhere. He hoped that one of the hooks from South L.A. who hung around the subway station might have a few rocks on him. If not, he could risk trying one of the Street Characters in front of the Chinese Theatre, but only as a last resort. He still remembered clearly what had happened at the Kodak Center to big Pluto when he had the dope in his head.

The woman officer from Labor Relations Section had run to the melee, holding up her badge and yelling, “Police officer!” but Superman and Wonder Woman wouldn’t back off and Spider-Man was moaning in pain. And the trouble was far from over.

Batman, having recovered from the blow to the belly, suddenly needed a bowel movement badly. He saw that the labor union pickets had a large trailer parked at the curb, along with an Andy Gump porta-potty attached to it.

Holding his wounded gut, he ran crablike to the Andy Gump, opened the door and stepped inside, and relieved himself with an eruption that could clearly be heard by the outraged pickets guarding the trailer.

When Batman emerged from the Andy Gump, one of the pickets, a diminutive fifty-two-year-old black man, who happened to be the local union representative, said, “Hey, dude, nobody said you could take a dump in our Gump.”

“Batman craps wherever he wants,” said Batman.

The little union steward said, “Batman is jist some jiveass flyin’ rat in a funky ten-dollar cape, far as I’m concerned.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t shit in your hat, you ugly little nigger,” said Batman.

The union rep, who had been a pretty good Golden Gloves bantamweight thirty years earlier, said, “Ain’t no fuckin’ bat gonna front me, not even Count Dracula!”

On the eleven o’clock news that night, the reporter who witnessed the mini-riot showed his audience a Batman cartoon panel and said that what happened next was just like in the comic books: “POW! WHAM! BAM!”

“However,” he added, “it was the caped crusader who got clocked and kissed the concrete.”

Thus, Batman became the second superhero that day to be taken to the ER for multiple contusions and abrasions.

By then, the Labor Relations cop had put out a help call, and the midwatch units just clearing from roll call, with plenty of daylight left, were on their way. Gert Von Braun and Dan Applewhite arrived first and pulled Superman and Wonder Woman away from Spider-Man, Gert grabbing Wonder Woman by the shoulder-length auburn tresses-which suddenly came off in Gert’s hand.

“Mommy!” a young girl shrieked. “Wonder Woman is bald like Daddy!”

Two other night-watch units arrived, and soon there were hundreds of tourists snapping photos like mad and a TV news van caused a traffic jam on Hollywood Boulevard. Leonard Stilwell decided that this was no place for him. He started jogging around the tourists on the Walk of Fame, heading toward the parking lot, but ran smack into 6-X-46 of the midwatch.

“Whoa, dude!” Flotsam said. “It’s him!”

Jetsam grabbed Leonard’s arm as he was hotfooting it past the cops and spun him around. “I been thinking about you, bro,” he said.

Leonard recognized them at once, those heartless, sunburned cops with the bleached-out spiky hairdos. “I got nothing to do with that ruckus back there,” Leonard said.

“Let’s see that piece of paper in your car,” Flotsam said. “The one with the address written on it.”

“What piece of paper?” Leonard said.

“Don’t fuck with us,” Jetsam said.

“I’m not!” Leonard whined. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man!”

“The paper with the address up on Mount Olympus,” Flotsam said. “Do you remember now? And you better give the right answer.”

“Oh, that paper,” Leonard said.

“Yeah, let’s go to your car so I can see it again,” Jetsam said.

“I ain’t got it no more,” Leonard said.

“Why did you have it in the first place?” Jetsam said.

“Have what?” Leonard said.

“Screw you, bro,” Jetsam said, reaching for his handcuffs.

“Wait a minute!” Leonard said. “Gimme a chance to think!”

“Think fast, dude,” Flotsam said. “My partner’s outta patience.”

“I wrote down an address that I got outta the newspaper,” Leonard said. “It was about a job. Somebody needed a housepainter.”

“You’re a housepainter?” Flotsam said.

“Yeah, but I’m outta work at the moment.”

“I been thinking about painting my bedroom,” Flotsam said. “Should I use a semigloss enamel on the bedroom walls or a latex?”

Leonard was getting dry-mouthed now. The only latex he knew about involved the gloves he used on his jobs. He said, “Depends on what you like.”

Jetsam said, “Do most people use oil-base enamel or water-base latex on their bedroom walls?”

Leonard said, “Enamel?”

“Let’s go visit your car, dude,” Flotsam said. “Maybe that piece of paper’s still there.”

When they got to the parking lot, Leonard led them to his car, parked in the far corner. “You ain’t got no right to search my car and you know it,” he said.

“Who says we’re searching your car?” Jetsam said. “We just wanna see that piece of paper again.”

“Then you’ll stop hassling me?” Leonard said.

Jetsam looked at Flotsam and said, “He says we’re hassling him.”

“I’m shocked. Shocked!” Flotsam said.

Leonard opened the car door and got in, reaching for the glove compartment.

“Wait a minute, dude,” Flotsam said.

“I’m gonna see if I put it in the glove box,” Leonard said.

“Wait till my partner gets around and can see in there,” Flotsam said. “That’s how cops get hurt.”

“Me hurt you? Your feelings or what?” Leonard said disgustedly as Jetsam opened the passenger door, his hand on the butt of his nine.

“Now go ahead and open it,” Jetsam said.

Twilight was casting long shadows by then, and Jetsam used his flashlight to illuminate the glove compartment.

Leonard remembered where the note was then and reached up under the visor, saying, “Here it is.” But Leonard didn’t remember that he’d tossed the tension bar and pick in the glove box.

“What’s this?” Jetsam said, his flashlight beam on the locksmith tools.

“What’s what?” Leonard said. And then he remembered what!

“Those strange little objects in the glove compartment,” Jetsam said. “Do you, like, use them to pry off the lids from paint cans?”

Leonard looked in the glove box and said, “They been in the car since I bought it. I don’t know what they are. Are they illegal? Like kiddie porn or something?”

“Get outta the car,” Jetsam said. “And gimme your keys. I don’t think you’ll mind if I look for more strange objects, will you?”

“What’s the use?” Leonard said. “You’ll do it anyways.”

When Leonard Stilwell was standing outside the car, and Jetsam was looking under the front seats and in the trunk, Flotsam patted down Leonard Stilwell, felt the bills in his pocket, and said, “What’s this?”

“Just my money,” Leonard said.

“How much money?” Flotsam said.

“Do I gotta answer that?” Leonard said.

“If you know how much you got, then we’ll figure it’s your money,” Flotsam said. “If you don’t know how much you got, we’ll figure you just picked a pocket or a purse in front of the Kodak Center. And we’ll go look for a victim. Might take a long time.”

“A thousand bucks,” Leonard said. “Ten Ben Franklins.”

The surfer cops looked at each other again and Jetsam said, “You got a thousand bucks in your kick? Where’d you get it?”

“Playing poker,” Leonard said.

“And you got locksmith tools,” Jetsam said, “but they just happened to be in your car when you bought it?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“And you can’t pick a lock?”

“Man, I can hardly pick my nose!” Leonard said. “You guys’re harassing me! This is police harassment!”

“Tell you what, dude,” Flotsam said. “If you can spell harassment, we’ll let you go. If you can’t, we’ll take you to Hollywood Station to talk to a detective. How’s that?”

Leonard said, “H-e-r…”

Fifteen minutes later, Leonard Stilwell was sitting with Flotsam in an interview room at Hollywood Station, and Jetsam was in the detective squad room, explaining what they’d found to Compassionate Charlie Gilford, who was irritated to be pulled away from his tape of Dancing with the Stars, where Heather Mills McCartney hit the floor but disappointed Charlie when her prosthetic leg stayed attached.

“What we got here is some lock picks and a thousand bucks and a guy with a four-five-nine record,” Charlie said, never eager to do any work whatsoever. “That’s pretty thin for a felony booking. How about that wrong address note? Can’t we pull a victim outta that somehow?”

“The burglary dicks might be able to do it tomorrow,” Jetsam said. “That’s the reason we lock him up tonight, right? To give them forty-eight hours. Come on, this guy’s dirty. I just know it!”

“Lemme get a coffee and think about it,” Charlie said.

Since the federal consent decree had gone into effect six years earlier, the nighttime detective could no longer approve a felony booking. Now the detective could only “advise” a booking, and then it went to the patrol watch commander for a booking “referral.” It seemed that the federal government and its legion of overpaid civilian auditors and overseers didn’t like declaratory phrasing and active verbs that sounded too aggressive. Their preferences created a lot more paperwork, as did everything about the consent decree. But in the end, it all amounted to the same thing. A felony suspect went to the slam for forty-eight hours while the detectives tried to make a case that they could take to the district attorney’s office.

Jetsam was disgusted. While Charlie was gone, the surfer cop took out his notebook and, sitting at one of the desks, dialed the cell number of Hollywood Nate Weiss just before Nate went end-of-watch.

Jetsam explained what had gone down and said, “Did you ever get a chance to ask that friend of yours on Mount Olympus about this guy Stilwell?”

“No, I didn’t,” Nate admitted. “But I talked to someone who knows her a lot better than I do and he said he’d ask her about it.”

“Did that someone ask her?”

“I don’t know,” Nate said uncomfortably.

“Look, bro, you gotta help us,” Jetsam said. “I was hinked-out by this dude the first time I saw him. He’s a burglar. I just know he pulled a job where he stole a thousand bucks, but we got no report on it yet. I think it happened up there on Mount Olympus at the house where you were, or close by there.”

The line was silent for a moment and Nate said, “I’ll make a call right now and get back to you.”

“Thanks, bro,” Jetsam said. “That house up there? It gives off bad juju.”

Nate rang the home of Margot Aziz, who had just pulled into her garage with her son, Nicky, who was asleep in his car seat. She got Nicky out of the car and was carrying him to the door on the first ring. She tried the handle but the door was locked.

“Damn!” she said. The door was never locked. Lola had forgotten so many times that Margot had stopped reminding her. This had to be the one time Lola had locked it, now, when Margot was hoping for a call from Bix Ramstead, whom she’d been trying to reach all day.

Margot managed to dig her keys from her purse while still carrying her sleeping five-year-old and got the door open just as the phone stopped ringing. She punched in her alarm code to shut off the electronic tone and ran to the kitchen phone, picking it up after the voice message had concluded.

She played it back, but it was the wrong cop. She heard a voice saying, “Margot, this is Nate Weiss. Please call me ASAP. This is about a police matter that might concern you.”

A police matter? She picked up his card from the desk in the little office by the kitchen but put it down again. A pussy matter, more like it. After their evening together she had never called him as promised, and now he’d obviously decided to press her. He’d probably tell her that he wanted the job of moving in as her house protector during the remainder of the escrow period.

You had your chance, bucko, she thought. It was too bad he wasn’t a boozer like Bix Ramstead. She liked Nate’s looks and his sexy manner.

Hollywood Nate made a decision. He was going to do the show-and-tell with Bix Ramstead. He was positive that Bix must have something going with Margot Aziz, and he knew Bix was married with two kids. Well, that was too bad. Nate didn’t like embarrassing the guy, but this Stilwell thing had gone on long enough. He was going to tell Bix everything about his evening with Margot, and then either he or Bix was going to find out if anything peculiar had happened around her house lately. Anything that might explain why a lowlife burglar with an address written down that was close to hers had lock picks and a thousand dollars in his pocket. Nate knew from experience that Margot was a smart woman. If the Stilwell business made any sense at all, she might be able to figure it out for them.

Of course, Nate was aware of the Somali murder the prior evening and that Bix had had a long night and was not on duty today. He dialed Bix’s home and cell numbers but was taken to voice mail at both of them.

“Bix, it’s Nate Weiss,” he said on each voice mail. “I’ve gotta talk to you about Margot Aziz ASAP. It might be very important. Call me.”

He looked in the office and discovered that Ronnie had just signed out. He went to the women’s locker room, stuck his head in the door, and yelled for her.

He was relieved when she said, “Yeah, I’m here.”

A few minutes later Ronnie emerged in her street clothes, and Nate said, “Do you know how I can reach Bix?”

She shook her head and said, “I’ve tried four times today with no luck. I think that weird murder last night had an effect on him. I’m kinda worried, to tell the truth.”

“Doesn’t his wife know where he is?” Nate said.

“The wife and kids are outta state, visiting her parents. They won’t be back till after the weekend.”

“So I won’t be able to talk to him till tomorrow?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “He called the sergeant today and took tomorrow off as well. He’s got a lotta comp time on the books and said he needed a couple days to do family business.”

“You think he went outta town?”

“I don’t know, Nate,” Ronnie said. “Bix is a mysterious guy. And so are you these days.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You and Bix. What’s the secret you’re sharing? Or is it a guy thing?”

Nate paused for a few seconds and said, “There’s this woman who lives up on Mount Olympus. She may have been burglarized today. It’s a long shot, but Flotsam and Jetsam got themselves a suspect, and you know how obsessive they are. They want somebody to talk to her right now, but she’s not home. I just called.”

“What’s Bix got to do with it?”

“We both know her and I think Bix probably has her cell number. It’s a long story.”

“So it is a guy thing,” Ronnie said, deeply disillusioned. Bix Ramstead, the last of the monogamous cops. An alcoholic in denial. And a womanizer to boot?

“Good luck,” Ronnie said. “I gotta go home.”

Nate found Flotsam and Jetsam in the detective squad room and said to them, “Okay, you guys know that I’m familiar with the woman who lives at the Mount Olympus address, but I’m not as familiar as you guys think I am. I tried to reach her and I left a message. Why don’t you just book the asshole and let the dicks sort it all out tomorrow when the lady’s at home?”

“Our sentiments exactly, bro,” Jetsam said, “but Charlie Gilford’s acting all PMS-ey tonight and don’t wanna give us a booking approval without an eyeball witness, a videotape, and a confession signed in blood.”

Just then Compassionate Charlie came out of the interview room where he’d been talking to Leonard Stilwell. He had a 5.10 report in his hands, which made the surfer cops hopeful. He wouldn’t be doing paperwork if he was going to kick the crackhead out the door.

“Okay, I’ll five-ten him and advise a booking for four-five-nine,” Charlie said. “Book the lock picks and the thousand bucks, and we’ll let the burglary team deal with it tomorrow.”

“All right!” Jetsam said.

“He said he won the thousand betting on the Giants against our Dodgers with a stranger he met at a pool hall,” Compassionate Charlie said with disgust. “Any resident of this town who’d even think up such a disloyal fucking story deserves to go to jail.”

Margot Aziz tried reaching Bix Ramstead yet again. She was acutely aware that his wife and family would be returning home in a few days. That’s all the time she had. All the time she would ever have with that man, she was sure of it. If it didn’t work with Bix, she’d have to come up with an entirely new plan. But would Jasmine hold still for it? Her greed was being overwhelmed by fear and she was already talking about aborting the scheme, even after Margot had put so much time and effort into Bix Ramstead in recent months. Never once in all that time would Bix agree to spend the entire night in her bed. Never once did she have the opportunity to put the plan in motion. It was giving her a headache thinking about it. The stress was getting unbearable.

People thought she could survive forever on a $7 million net worth. Her lawyer estimated that $7 million, more or less, would be her share after all the real property and other assets, including a growing stock portfolio, were divided. But this was before the lawyer’s exorbitant fees would be deducted at the end of the ordeal.

The attorney had told her that with proper investments, she and Nicky could live “comfortably.” And she’d laughed in his face.

Margot had reminded him that hundreds of homes in the Hollywood Hills were presently for sale for more money than the “comfortable” amount, a few of them for twice that. How could Nicky be raised in his present living standard if she had to spend at least four or five million on a decent house? And did the lawyer know what house maintenance costs were around here? And did the bachelor lawyer have any idea what a trustworthy au pair charged? And how about the fees at a good school? Nicky would be in kindergarten come September, and the annual fees would cost more than the Barstow home her parents bought when they’d gotten married. Margot told him that she understood very well what a day-to-day money struggle was all about, but she was determined that Nicky never would.

About Nicky. That’s where she and her lawyer had their biggest disagreements. He told her that when he was through with Ali Aziz, the nightclub proprietor would be afraid to ever be a day late with child support payments. She’d told him that was a joke, that she knew Ali Aziz as well as she knew herself. And there was no doubt whatsoever that he would secretly divest himself of his entire net worth and make clandestine plans to convert all his holdings to cash. And then to take his son away from her, away from America, forever.

The lawyer had insisted that Ali Aziz, a naturalized citizen, would never do any such thing. Living in a Middle East country again after having lived a lavish Hollywood lifestyle was beyond the attorney’s imagining.

Margot had reminded the lawyer that Osama bin Laden had also been rich and had given it up to live in a cave. And she doubted that Osama would have to spend big bucks on cocaine in order to get his blow jobs. And then she’d asked the lawyer to verify a supposition. She’d asked it casually enough: If Ali passed away at any time during or after the divorce settlement, would his fortune go to Nicky with her as executor?

The lawyer had answered that, as far as he knew, Ali’s new will named his attorney as executor, but that, yes, his fortune would go to Nicky. And then she thought about Ali’s attorney. He seemed like a reasonable man, as lawyers go. He’d blush when she’d stare at him for too long. She could work with him on behalf of her son. There would be approximately $14 million for her and Nicky. They could get by on that. She was still young, still had her looks. There’d be lots of wealthy men out there after she extracted Jasmine from her life.

And even if she never found the right man, Nicky would come into his inheritance in thirteen years. Margot could not guess what his $7 million, properly invested by Ali’s lawyer/executor, would look like by that time. Nicky would take care of his mother then. She’d be forty-three years old and her ass would be falling like a bag of wet laundry, and she’d need someone to take care of her.

Margot looked in Nicky’s room and saw that he was sound asleep. She went to her bedroom and undressed, then had a hot shower, and, turning on the bedroom TV, channel surfed. She gave up and switched to one of the easy-listening cable channels, then set the burglar alarm, deciding to turn in early.

Margot went to the closet and brought down the jewelry box where she’d been keeping her sleep aids after catching Nicky one afternoon up on her bathroom sink rummaging through her medicine cabinet looking for cough drops. She got a glass of water from the bathroom and sat in front of her vanity mirror, brushing her hair for a few minutes. Then she removed the top from the vial.

Margot thought of Ali then, of how he didn’t like her taking the sleeping capsules for fear that any drugs would cause her to revert to the cocaine use that she’d conquered years before. She turned the vial on its side in order to shake a capsule into her hand. And at that very moment, when she was thinking of Ali, Rod Stewart began singing “We’ll Be Together Again.” And she felt a shiver jetting through her neck and shoulders.

Margot thought, No, we will never be together again. Not in this world, not in the next, if there is one. The very thought of Ali Aziz and what she must do made her hands tremble. She dropped the vial on the dresser top and all of the magenta-and-turquoise capsules spilled out.

Margot scooped the capsules back into the vial. One was left on the dresser top and she put it in her mouth and swallowed it. Then she swallowed another, despite her doctor’s admonition that one was enough. Tonight she needed to sleep uninterrupted.

Before retiring for the night, she called Bix Ramstead’s private cell number one more time and left a message saying, “Bix, I beg you to call me!”

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