Hollywood Crows

TWENTY

I’M DRUNK!” BIX Ramstead finally admitted.

“You’re just a bit tipsy,” Margot said, removing the throw pillow between them on the sofa while Rod Stewart sang “You Go to My Head.”

“Gotta go, Margot,” he said.

Still not touching him, she said, “How about a good-night kiss for the road?”

Quickly, she slid over next to him, and he felt her breath on his neck. She kissed him with lots of tongue, and then she kissed his face and neck and ran her hands all over him while he groaned softly.

“Let’s go lie down for a while, sweetheart,” she said. “Until you’re feeling more alert.”

“I can’t-,” he said, but she cut him off with more kisses.

“You’re sweet, Bix,” she whispered. “You’re the sweetest man I’ve ever known.”

“I can’t, Margot,” he said without conviction.

“You’ve never even seen my bedroom,” she said. “Let me show it to you.”

He would’ve been surprised by her strength if he’d been sober enough to appreciate it. She half lifted him to his feet, put his arm around her neck, and led him to the carpeted staircase.

“I gotta go feed Annie!” he said, but she had an arm around his waist, and, holding up much of his weight, she started up the stairs.

“Shhhh, baby!” she said. “Wait till you see my bedroom. You can feed her later.”

Margot was panting by the time she got him upstairs and into the bedroom. She walked him to the bed, and he stood swaying when she pulled back the spread and top sheet. Then she let him fall back onto the bed. This was not how she had imagined it would happen. She thought she’d have to get him pretty drunk, but not utterly blitzed like this. After sex, sleep would naturally follow. That was how it was supposed to happen, but she’d been too fearful that he’d have an attack of conscience. She’d poured too heavily. The only bonus was that she wouldn’t have to ball him after all.

He was up on one elbow, unable to focus, seeing two Margots, when she quickly peeled off her top and stepped out of her pants.

“See!” she said cheerily, just in case he had any noncompliance left in him. “No underwear!”

He was nearly unresponsive, eyes closed, breathing through his mouth.

Naked, she worked methodically, pulling off his shoes and socks, undoing his belt, unzipping his chinos, pulling them down and off. Then she peeled off his briefs and he seemed barely awake when she unbuttoned his Oxford shirt and got him out of it.

When he opened his eyes, looking past her at the open doorway, she nearly panicked. He couldn’t get up now! He couldn’t leave now! She climbed on him, sliding along his body, moaning, uttering endearments, running her hands over him, leaning down to kiss him when he tried to raise up.

“Baby, baby,” she murmured. “I want you!”

All he said to her was “Some angel I am.”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “You are my angel. You are!”

It was more of a sex simulation than the real thing, and it required much more effort for her. She was panting from exhaustion by the time he fell into a deep slumber. She gathered his clothes, folded them, and put them in her closet. When she came back to the bed, she strained and pushed and lifted until he was under the covers, his head on the pillow, snoring softly.

She put on a robe and ran downstairs. She retrieved his holstered gun from the coffee table but left the empty vodka bottle and the two glasses on the table, pouring some vodka into her tumbler of tonic to prove that they’d both been drinking heavily.

Then she crossed the foyer to the front door and unlocked the thumb-latch, making sure that the door opened easily. She ran back up to the bedroom and put Bix’s holstered gun on the nightstand at his side of the bed, along with his car keys and wallet. Then she turned out all of the lights except a lamp on the second floor at the top of the staircase. She wanted Ali backlit when he entered her bedroom.

Gil Ponce had gotten back to regular duty in record time after the shooting of the ice-cream hijacker was found to be in policy and the BSS shrink had peeked inside his head. Gil’s quick return was probably due to the TV media’s being so quick (and incorrect) in calling the incident a suicide-by-cop, thus giving the LAPD bureaucrats plenty of cover.

Six hours into their watch, Cat Song and Gil Ponce took code 7 in a restaurant that Cat frequented in Thai Town. That meant phoning ahead for their dinners so that the food could be served the moment they sat down, giving them the whole thirty minutes to get through the courses.

Cat told Gil that the main course was named for her, and he smiled when they brought out a whole baked catfish. Cat talked to Gil about the satay and the curry, and, using a fork, she flaked off the tender flesh from the fish and spooned it onto his plate. They drank Thai iced coffee, and when the bill came, Cat insisted on paying it, leaving a good tip for the owner.

When they got back out to their black-and-white, Gil driving and Cat riding shotgun, he said, “Why’re you being so nice to me? It’s not my birthday.”

“I’m always nice to everybody,” she said. “And you’re so close to finishing your probation, I thought we should celebrate. You won’t be a probie that we can kick around anymore.”

“You’ve been especially nice,” Gil said, driving west on Sunset Boulevard at 11 P.M.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Cat said, clearing from code 7 and, seeing their MDC blinking, hitting the message-received and display button.

She opened and acknowledged the message, then hit the en route key, and Gil looked at the message on the dashboard screen, saying, “Illegal parking. That’s near that nightclub, what’s it called? The Leopard Lounge?”

“It’s a titty bar masquerading as a fancy nightclub,” Cat said. “Somebody’s always complaining about the parking around there.”

When they were still a few minutes away, Gil said, “There wouldn’t be another reason why you’ve been treating me like you’re my-”

“If you say mommy, I’ll give you a shot of whup-ass spray,” Cat said, touching the canister on her Sam Browne.

“Big sister, I was gonna say.” Then Gil added, “Is it about the shooting?”

“You tell me, Gil,” Cat said. “I haven’t seen you crack a smile since that night in the Hollywood cemetery.”

“Well, it was scary with those FID investigators jacking me up. They aren’t gentle. The shrink was okay, but I just told him what I thought he wanted to hear.”

“Who cares about any of them?” Cat said. “I told you a minute after you shot that guy that you did good. That I woulda done the same.”

“I know, but, well…”

“Well what? You shoulda had ESP and known the tweaker was packing a starter pistol? Is that what?”

“I don’t know. I just feel…different now.”

“Sure, you do,” Cat said. “You’re supposed to. You took a life-through no fault of your own. He made the choice, not you. I was there, boy. I heard you yelling at him to put his hands on his head and get down and prone out. I heard it!”

Gil Ponce said, “I don’t like the other guys slapping me on the back and calling me a gunfighter. I don’t like that.”

“Screw them too!” Cat said. “Macho dipshits. None of them ever fired their weapons outside the pistol range. Those that have wouldn’t go around patting your ass over it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want anyone else to know that you and me talked about this,” Gil said.

“That’s just your Hispanic machismo,” Cat said.

“I’m not really Hispanic,” he said.

“Let’s not go over that again,” she said. “Now, listen to me, partner, I don’t know how to dial you in except to keep saying you did exactly what any copper woulda done and shoulda done at that moment in that place. And I’d hate to think that my safety could be jeopardized from now on because you’re gun-shy.”

He said, “Cat, I don’t want you-”

“Lemme tell you a true story,” she said, interrupting him. “Five years ago, I had a partner for two months. A nice guy. We were working Watch three. He married a woman with four kids who was a peace activist, and pretty soon he decided to resign from the Department. Said he wanted to go into a line of work where he’d never have to use violence on anybody. And on the last day we worked together, he made a little confession to me. Because of his wife’s haranguing, he hadn’t loaded a round in his nine since before we started working together. It’s the closest I ever came to pulling my baton and beating another cop right into the ground.”

“Why’re you telling me this, Cat?” Gil asked.

“Did you clean your nine after the other night?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you reload it?”

“Of course.”

“Then I feel safe. Because this is all about me, not about you. I’ve got a two-year-old at home who needs his momma. I’ve got a good copper here with a loaded nine who’s got my back. So I feel safe. End of story. Any questions?”

After a moment of contemplation, Gil Ponce said, “Thanks, Cat.”

“For what?” she said.

Gil Ponce paused, then said, “For the Thai dinner, of course. It was great.”

“Don’t mention it,” Cat Song said.

There wasn’t any parking for blocks around the Leopard Lounge at 11:15 on a soft summer night like this one, when a Hollywood moon brought hordes of people out for revelry on the boulevards. Gil parked their black-and-white in a red zone on Sunset Boulevard and they walked south to the source of the call, a large apartment building with parking spaces in front.

The person reporting was a well-coiffed, well-dressed elderly woman who answered the door at the manager’s office and said with a Russian accent, “I’m Mrs. Vronsky. I’m the one who called.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gil said.

“At this time of night I should be in bed, asleep,” she said, “but if I go to sleep, I’ll get woke up when my tenants come home and can’t park. A man just pulled into space number two, and when I yelled at him, he said something ugly to me. Then after I called for you, he drove away.”

“Then there’s nobody for us to cite at the moment,” Cat said. “Call us if it happens again.”

“Do you know Officer Ramstead?” Mrs. Vronsky said. “He’s a friend of mine.”

“Community Relations Office?” Cat said.

“Yes, that’s right,” Mrs. Vronsky said. “He often comes by in the daytime and helps me with the parking problems. It’s all because of the nightclub, you know.”

“Yes,” Cat said, “we sympathize.”

“Officer Ramstead is a very kind man and he likes my homemade piroshki,” the old woman said. “If I had some, I’d invite you in and pour you some tea, and you could taste it.”

“Some other time,” Cat said, giving Gil a look that said, Lonely old lady.

“Oh, look!” Mrs. Vronsky said. “Another one.”

Sure enough, a four-year-old white Corvette that had been cruising slowly along the street, looking for parking, had wheeled into one of the vacant spaces in front of the apartment building. The driver of the car turned out the headlights but did not get out.

“We’ll check this one,” Cat said, and both cops walked out to the front of the building.

“Come back when I have some piroshki!” Mrs. Vronsky called after them.

Gil Ponce was surprised to find a young woman sitting in the car when he walked up on the driver’s side. A beautiful young woman who looked to be of mixed race, with dark Asian eyes. She jumped when he tapped on her window with his flashlight.

She lowered the window and said, “Yes, Officer?” Then a beam shone along her dashboard and she saw Cat at the passenger window.

“Do you live here, ma’am?” Gil said.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “Is there a problem?”

“You’re parking on private property in a resident’s parking space,” Gil said, thinking that this girl was smokin’ hot!

She blinked, smiled, and said, “But Officer, I’m not parking. I just stopped here because there’s no place on the street. I’m waiting for a car to leave a parking space at the Leopard Lounge. I work there.”

“May I see your driver’s license and registration?”

Jasmine looked in her purse, retrieved her wallet, opened it, and said, “Oh, crap! Today I bought some underwear at Victoria’s Secret and paid by credit card. The girl asked for my driver’s license too. I must’ve left my license and my Visa!”

“How about your registration?”

She handed it to Gil Ponce, who shined his light on it and said, “Jasmine McVicker.”

“Yes,” she said, drumming nervously on the steering wheel, looking at her watch. It was 11:25 P.M.

“Do you have anything else that proves you’re Jasmine McVicker?” Gil asked.

She said, “I only have the one credit card. Look, Officer, you can walk across the street to the Leopard Lounge and anybody’ll tell you I work there.”

Gil looked at Cat over the roof of the ’vette, and Cat gave a shrug that said, Your call.

The fact was, young Gil Ponce wanted to go inside the Leopard Lounge and see what an upscale titty bar looked like. He said, “Let’s find a place to park your car and see if you’re who you say you are. If you are, I’ll give you a warning for driving without a license but no ticket. Fair enough?”

Just then, Jasmine’s cell phone rang and she grabbed it from her purse. Margot’s voice came on in a whisper, saying, “Showtime.”

Quickly Jasmine said, “I’ll be delayed. A very nice police officer has detained me for not having my driver’s license.”

“Goddamnit!” Margot whispered. “Get rid of him!”

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Jasmine said, clicking off.

To Gil she said, “Where do I park?”

“Right up at the corner, in the red zone,” Gil said. “My partner can watch your car so you don’t get a ticket while you and me run inside for a minute.”

“But then I’ll have to come back out and move my car to some legal place before I can go back in again! I have to see one of the other dancers about something important and I’m late!”

“Better than getting a traffic citation, isn’t it?” Gil said. Then he added, “Are you really a dancer?”

Jasmine was desperate. If there hadn’t been a woman cop with him, she’d have given him her address and offered him a late date. Anything to give her fifteen minutes of goddamn parking so she could do what she had to do!

“Okay, okay!” she said. “But let’s just leave my car here for two minutes and run across the street. Please, Officer, it’ll save time!”

Gil shrugged at Cat, who gave a nod, having figured this one out. Cat had pumped up her young boot’s sagging morale to the point where he wanted to stroll into the topless bar with this hottie and check out the other flesh onstage. And who knows? Maybe get Jasmine’s phone number. They lose their innocence fast, these male rookies, Cat Song thought.

While Jasmine was locking her car, purse in hand, and Gil Ponce was making a mental list of cliché questions-such as how did such a beautiful girl end up dancing at the Leopard Lounge-Cat Song walked to their shop, opened the door, and listened for radio calls.

After they got inside the nightclub, it didn’t take thirty seconds for Jasmine to wave one of the harried, perspiring bartenders to the end of the bar to identify her for Gil Ponce, who couldn’t have cared less. He could barely hear the bartender over the erotic, pounding beat from Ali’s $75,000 sound system, and he just nodded at everything the man shouted over the nightclub din. Actually, Gil Ponce was preoccupied, gaping at two dancers onstage, pole writhing under strobes, one of whom was Ali’s stunning new star, Loxie Fox, her G-string studded with tightly folded $5 and $10 bills.

Cat Song snapped him out of it when she suddenly appeared behind him, saying in his ear, “Excuse me, Officer Casanova. I’m so glad you got your mojo back, but I thought you might like to know, there’s a hell of a pursuit coming our way from Rampart Division. Would you care to jump on it, or would you rather just sit this one out for a rainbow drink with an umbrella in it?”

Officer Gil Ponce raced out of the Leopard Lounge without asking for Jasmine McVicker’s phone number. Without even saying good-bye to her.

Jasmine hurried to the dancers’ bathroom and locked the door behind her. She opened her purse and grabbed the eyedrops she’d bought in a shop on La Brea. It supplied cosmetics to makeup artists working in film and television, drops that helped actors to cry their eyes out on cue. She poured them into both eyes, heeding Margot’s admonition to “make that mascara run.” When she was finished, her vision was so blurred she could hardly see her face in the mirror, but she knew she looked like hell. She was ready. Showtime.

Ali’s office door was locked, and Jasmine figured he was counting the cash. On big nights like this one, he made numerous trips to the bar to retrieve large currency notes, replacing $100 bills with $50s, $20s, $10s, and lots of $5s, which was the smallest tip that customers offered in this upscale nightclub.

Jasmine knew that Ali arranged for private security pickups at the end of the night when the money pile in his safe grew too large. She’d seen that often enough. She also knew that the money he took in at the Leopard Lounge was greater than the IRS, or Margot, or god almighty, would ever know about. And that if Margot thought she was getting half of Ali’s assets, she was kidding herself. Jasmine had informed Margot that she believed there was a safety deposit box, but she didn’t know where. Margot told her to work on it.

Jasmine banged on the door frantically and yelled, “Ali!”

“Who is there?” he called out.

“Jasmine! Open up!”

She knew he was looking through the peephole at her and then he opened the door, startled by her appearance.

“What has been happening to you?” Ali said, closing the door and locking it. “I thought you were having an ankle sprain?” He was looking weekend sharp, in one of his monogrammed white dress shirts and a charcoal gray Valentino suit, with black loafers.

Through a fluffy blur she could see that on the desktop there were stacks of currency. She ran to the client’s chair and sat while Ali stood between her and the desk, instinctively guarding his money.

“I just left Margot!” she said, wiping the mascara from her face, looking up at him with eyes overflowing.

“What is happening?” he said.

“You told me to spy on her!” Jasmine said, trying to sob.

“Yes, yes!” he said. “What is happening?”

“She’s Hoovering cocaine, Ali! She had lines laid out on her dressing table. There musta been three, four thousand bucks’ worth of blow! I did one line, sort of, just so I could find out what’s happening in that house.”

“What? Tell me!” he said.

“They wanted me to do a three-way,” Jasmine said. “Her and him, but I told them no way. I told him I don’t do kink. He was even more trashed than she was. I was scared of that guy!”

“Nicky!” he said frantically. “Where is Nicky?”

“He was there,” she said.

“WHAT?”

It was so loud, she jerked back in the client chair, her head thumping against the tufted leather back.

“I tried to take her aside and talk sense to her. Him, he was just roaming in and out of the house in his Speedo. He’d jump in the pool and then he’d come inside and do a line. Then he’d jump in the pool and swim some more. He kept wanting her to swim, but I kept telling her it was too risky in her condition. I kept telling her to stay in her bedroom and go to sleep.”

Ali seemed to forget the money then. He walked around the desk and sat in his swivel chair. He pushed the stacks of currency aside and put his elbows on the desk and his face in his hands. In less than a minute his face was more tearstained than hers.

She worried then that he might be too devastated to act. She was trying to provoke unbridled rage, not debilitating grief. She said, “Nicky wasn’t right there when they were doing the lines. He was in his own bedroom.”

Ali wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands and said, “Nicky has plenty energy. Nobody is going to keep Nicky in his bedroom.”

Deciding to use Nicky as the final card she’d play, Jasmine said, “The guy’s name is Lucas. He’s a big, young guy, Margot’s age. She met him at a nightclub on the Strip. I think the guy wants to take over Margot and her house, and he supplies her with coke.”

“Why is my son in the house tonight?” Ali said. “Please tell me, Jasmine.”

“As much as I could find out, this is the way it’s been ever since this guy entered the picture. He says she shouldn’t waste her money on the nanny. He says the kid should stay at home like other kids.”

“Stay home?” Ali said, and she’d never heard him sound so bleak. “Stay home to see his mommy like this? Sex, cocaine, and what more things?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you more, Ali,” she said.

“Tell me, Jasmine,” he said. “I beg you to tell me all. I must know.”

“Margot told me they been doing three-ways with other girls on a regular basis, with lots of coke to amp them up. And sometimes they do a lot more than that. Lucas brings girls and guys from the Strip and they all do cocaine, and then they all get weirded out and do one another. Anything they can think of.”

“And my Nicky,” Ali said. “Where is my Nicky when these things happen?”

“From what I can tell, he’s always in the house these days. I guess he’s in his room when the really heavy stuff is going on. I don’t think Margot would let him be in the bedroom when they start kinking it up. Unless he just walked in on it. I really can’t say for sure, Ali. I’m sorry. I tried to find out as much as I could.”

“How many people are in the house tonight, Jasmine? Only Margot and this man?”

“Yeah, that’s all there was when I left,” she said. “But Lucas was talking about calling some friend on the Strip. He’s a fucking animal and he’s ripped.”

“You are a good friend to me,” Ali said. “I thank you.”

“Are you gonna call your lawyer?” Jasmine said. “I don’t wanna get dragged before a judge. I’m telling you what’s happening, but I’m not doing a deposition for some lawyer. I’m scared of that man Lucas. And I still gotta work in this town.”

“What good is a lawyer?” Ali said. “Margot shall say you lie if we talk to my lawyer. She shall look and talk like the perfect mother when she sits down with the lawyer or the judge. Everybody looks at her and smiles. Beautiful mother.”

“I can’t see what good it would do to call the cops either,” Jasmine said. “They couldn’t go in there and check on the kid unless they had a warrant or some kind of firsthand information. And I’m not talking to cops, Ali. You can fire me, but I’m not talking to cops or to lawyers. I did what you asked me to do and now I’m out of it. I want no more to do with your ex-wife and her twisted friend. I’m real scared.”

“Yes,” Ali said. “I shall pay you the bonus. You are a good girl.”

She was losing him again. She had seen the rage rise and fall and rise again. Now it was ebbing. She’d given him too much to process. He was beaten down by it. He looked like he might start weeping and not stop. She was watching it slipping away. All the money she and Margot would share. It was time to play her last card: the ace of spades.

She said, “There’s something else, Ali…No, never mind.”

Wearily he said, “What? Tell me all, Jasmine. Please.”

“I don’t know if I should. I don’t have proof of anything, and there’s nothing you can do about it anyways.”

He raised his eyes from his desk and looked up at her, his dark-rimmed eyes boring into hers. “Tell me,” he said.

“Well, there was one point when I heard Nicky hollering for his mom. It’s when Lucas was outside in the pool and I was in the bedroom with Margot, telling her she had to get herself together, that her son was calling for her.”

“Yes, yes?” he said, his voice pleading to hear, and not wanting to hear.

“She was too into the blow. I couldn’t get through to her. Then I heard Lucas come from the pool. I heard him coming up the stairs. I heard him walk down the hall to Nicky’s room. I peeked out and saw him, wearing only the Speedo, open Nicky’s door and go in and close it behind him.”

“Oh, god!” Ali said. And then he began murmuring in Arabic. Jasmine guessed it was a Muslim prayer. After a few seconds he stopped.

“I’m not saying anything terrible happened in there, Ali,” Jasmine said. “But he was in there for quite a while. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe longer. When he came out, Nicky wasn’t yelling anymore.”

“Then you did what?” Ali demanded.

And there was no doubt about it. This was pure rage. He was scaring her. She said, “Ali, I did what I could! When that man went into Margot’s bathroom, I ran down the hall to Nicky’s room and I opened the door and looked in.”

“He is okay?” Ali said. “Please, Jasmine. My Nicky is okay?”

“The room was dark and he was under the covers, crying. I said his name but he wouldn’t come out from under the covers. He knows me, but he wouldn’t come out. Then I had to leave him because Lucas was out of the bathroom, asking Margot where I went. I ran back into the bedroom and said good night to both of them and came here as fast as I could.”

Ali’s fists were clenched so tightly the knuckles were white as bone. He began to rise from his chair, and if he had been looking directly at her, she would have run for the door in fright. He said, “Thank you, Jasmine.”

“Are you going there, Ali?” she said. “Oh, I’m afraid. It could be dangerous for you!”

“And for Nicky,” he said quietly.

Jasmine stood and said, “Are you taking your bouncer with you? You could, but it might trigger a confrontation.”

“Thank you,” Ali said, walking stiff-legged toward the door. “I must go there in peace. Alone. I shall only demand to see my son. If they do violence on me, I shall have a reason to call the police.”

“Wait!” she shouted, and it caused him to stop. “You can’t go there like that. Take your gun with you.”

Ali said, “I do not threaten nobody. I shall take my son away. Nobody is going to stop me.”

“But, Ali!” Jasmine said frantically. “You can’t do it unarmed! That man is big and creepy and young. He won’t let you take Nicky. He’ll hurt you bad. Maybe Nicky too. Maybe you won’t even be able to call the police. Then what? Take the gun as protection for both of you. Just in case of emergency!”

Ali stood motionless, then returned to his desk and unlocked a lower drawer and, removing a.32 caliber, semiautomatic pistol, put it inside the waistband of his trousers. And then Ali Aziz did the most amazing thing that Jasmine had ever seen him do. He walked out the door, leaving her in the office with the desktop stacked with money. She went to the door and spoke to him as he was walking down the passageway.

She said, “I had a feeling it would come to this if I told you everything, Ali. So when I went out Margot’s front door, I took off the knob lock. And they were both too ripped to have set the burglar alarm. You can just walk in, Ali. But for god’s sake, be careful!”

He never turned around but said, “Thank you, Jasmine. You are a good girl.”

When she was sure Ali was gone, Jasmine ran back inside his office and scooped all of the money from the desktop into her purse.