Hollywood Crows

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-ONE DAYS AFTER the bodies of Bix Ramstead and Ali Aziz were put into the ground at different cemeteries, a cruise ship of Norwegian registry was docked at the port of Istanbul. The entry to Istanbul through the Bosporus, with Europe on one side and Asia on the other, had been thrilling, and Margot Aziz was looking forward to exploring the Turkish port city with other passengers she’d met.

Margot had had no trouble at all finding passengers, especially among the single men, who wanted to be her escort whenever they’d gone ashore at other ports. But none of them interested her very much, and she’d decided to visit the Topkapi Museum and the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul with Herb and Millie Sloane, a married couple from San Francisco.

At the end of their exhausting day, they decided to dine at a highly recommended restaurant rather than return to the ship at the dinner hour. They enjoyed a feast, sampled local wine, and had a very pleasant time. When they got back to the ship, Margot told the Sloanes that she was tired and didn’t feel like going to the shipboard nightclub show that her friends planned to attend. The last thing she said to them was that she needed a good night’s sleep.

The only thing that had spoiled things for Margot that day was the need to respond to a few annoying calls from Jasmine McVicker, whining about how she should have been invited along as a companion. Margot couldn’t make her understand how suspicious it would have looked at this time and decided that the girl was an idiot. She’d have to pay her off and get Jasmine out of her life sooner rather than later. But for now Margot needed rest.

An hour later, Margot Aziz staggered from her stateroom and screamed for the steward. He was a German named Hans Bruegger, who said in his statement that Margot Aziz seemed to be experiencing muscle spasms. He said that her backbone arched and she went into convulsions. She was taken from the ship and rushed to the finest hospital in Istanbul but died of asphyxiation in less than an hour.

The Turkish authorities made immediate inquiries, and at the request of the U.S. State Department, Margot’s body was released and flown to California for the postmortem and time-consuming toxicology tests. However, a Turkish pathologist publicly ventured an opinion, based on symptoms and a cursory examination, that he saw indications of something akin to the poison used to kill rats and other pests. The word strychnine appeared in news reports. The restaurant where Margot had dined was visited by Turkish health officials, but they could find nothing amiss. And the Sloanes gave statements saying that they’d experienced no ill effects from what they’d eaten and drunk at the restaurant. No rat poison was found anywhere. Nor was pesticide containing strychnine found anywhere on the ship.

When the body of Margaret “Margot” Osborne Aziz arrived home, local reporters engaged in lots of speculation about whether her cruel death could be another case of an American being mysteriously poisoned abroad. It didn’t take long for TV reporters to introduce a sinister suggestion that infuriated Turkey’s tourist industry, namely that Americans were no longer safe from extremists in any Muslim country, democracy or not.

An angry spokesman for the Turkish Consulate General in Los Angeles said that in his opinion, Margot Aziz’s death had nothing to do with Muslims and that suicide should at least be considered as a motive for her poisoning. He suggested that the recent tragic shooting of her husband may have been too much for her to bear. That statement outraged Margot Aziz’s lawyer, who called it preposterous, and it brought another furious response from James and Teresa Osborne, Margot’s parents in Barstow, California, who were in the process of becoming legal guardians of their wealthy grandson, Nicky Aziz.

There were two people in the city of Los Angeles who were nearly as upset as her parents over the death of Margot Aziz. One was a beautiful Amerasian dancer whose only payday for her nerve-racking work had been the $4700 she’d stolen from the desktop in Ali Aziz’s office on the night he was murdered. Jasmine McVicker spent three days in bed grieving after the report of Margot’s death appeared on the TV news. She would forever wonder if somehow Margot could have been a murder victim herself. The thought of it terrified her.

The other Los Angeles resident who was profoundly distressed by Margot Aziz’s death was a Mexican pharmacist on Alvarado Street. He had no idea if his former client Ali Aziz could have been a murder victim, but he feared that Margot Aziz probably was. And he thought he knew how it might have happened.

His wife noticed that the pharmacist seemed obsessed with news concerning the case, and she wondered why he had become so diligent about attending Mass, not just on Sunday but sometimes during the week as well. She often saw him on his knees in front of a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, his fist pressed to his heart, as though begging forgiveness.

And at Hollywood Station, Detective Bino Villaseñor said to the homicide D3, “When spouses commit murder, the women use poison, the guys use guns. In this case, the woman used a gun and the guy-”

“Is dead,” the D3 said. “Ghosts can’t poison people, not even in Istanbul. Let it go, Bino. This case is closed.”

“I guess I’ll have to,” said the old detective. “But something’s wrong here, and somebody knows it.”

That week, Leonard Stilwell decided that it was time to launch his legitimate business enterprise. He’d also decided that Junior the Fijian was to be his partner, but Junior didn’t know it yet. Early in the afternoon, the time when Junior usually woke up, Leonard knocked on the door of his apartment to spring it on him.

“Junior,” Leonard said to the still sleepy giant when he got him out of bed. “You and me, babe. We’re going into business!”

Junior, who was sitting there barefoot in his baggy shorts and wife beater, said, “Bidness, bro?”

“Yeah, it’s time for both of us to start a new life. I’m taking a piece of what I got from that job I done with your lock picks, and I’m setting us both up in legit business.”

Junior grinned big, showing two gaps in his grille, and said, “My daddy is gonna be proud! Whadda we do?”

“We’re selling something, that’s what. And people are gonna buy it.”

“Whadda we sell?”

“Happiness,” Leonard said.

“You mean like crack? Or crystal meth?”

“No, I said legit business. We’re selling goodwill. We’re gonna be Characters.”

“Everybody say you already a character, Leonard,” Junior said, grinning again.

“No, no, I mean Street Characters. Like up at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. That kind of Character.”

“I wanna be Spider-Man!” Junior said.

“Jesus Christ, Junior!” Leonard said. “Where the fuck would you get a Spider-Man costume big enough? And would anybody buy into the idea of a spiderweb holding your big ass? The fucking thing would have to be made of steel cable.”

“Okay. Superman, then,” Junior said.

“Right, a Superman that looks like someone who eats missionaries? I don’t think so,” Leonard said. “What I got in mind is retro. Know what that means?”

“No,” Junior said.

“Back to basics,” Leonard said. “See, all these Street Characters are trying to one-up each other. Trying to keep up with whoever’s hot right now. That’s why there’s so many Batmans and Spider-Mans. We ain’t gonna go that route.”

“Who we gonna be?”

“Mickey Mouse and Pluto, his dog,” Leonard said.

“I get to be Mickey Mouse!” Junior said.

“Oh, yeah, a ’roided-up megarodent,” Leonard said. “No, dude, I’m the main man.”

“You mean the main mouse,” Junior said with a giggle.

“I’m Mickey,” Leonard said. “You’re Pluto the dog. Pay attention!”

Junior stopped picking goop from his toenail with a dinner fork and said, “I hear you, bro.”

“Okay,” Leonard said. “See, everybody loves Mickey Mouse, but nobody out there on Hollywood Boulevard has ever had a first-class Mickey costume like you see at Disneyland. Well, now I got enough bucks to buy me the best. And we’re gonna get a real break on the Pluto costume because the Pluto that was out there had a first-class outfit. But he got busted by the narcs a while back for stashing dope in his head. I know who’s taking care of his crib, and we’ll buy the Pluto costume cheap. He’s gonna be needing bucks for crystal the minute he gets outta jail, so he won’t give a shit. Lucky he’s a real big guy, so the costume should fit you, no problem.”

“What’s Pluto do?” Junior wanted to know.

“He barks. He’s a fucking dog!”

“How do I make it sound?”

“You just say what a dog says. What’s a dog say in Fiji? ‘Woof!’ Right?”

“No,” Junior said. “I seen ‘woof’ in American cartoons, but in Fijian cartoons, dogs don’t say ‘woof.’”

“Well, you’re an American dog, so you say ‘woof,’ okay?”

“Okay, bro,” Junior said. “Woof.”

“Now, here’s the deal,” Leonard said. “We always go straight to the little kids. The little kids don’t really give a shit about Darth Vader and Frankenstein and all those other scary Characters. And the cute Characters, like SpongeBob and Barney? They’re boring. But the little kids love Mickey Mouse. Their parents love Mickey Mouse. Their grandparents love Mickey Mouse. You and me, we’ll steal the business from all those other jerkoffs by going back to cartoon roots.”

“Whadda you do when I say ‘woof’?” Junior asked.

“Let’s rehearse it,” Leonard said. Then, in as squeaky a falsetto as he could manage, Leonard said to an imaginary tot, “Hello! My name is Mickey Mouse! What’s yours?”

“Junior,” said Junior.

Leonard said, “No, I ain’t asking your name, for chrissake!”

“Okay, okay, I get it. Do it again,” Junior said.

“Wait for your cue,” Leonard said. Then, again in a squeaky falsetto to an imaginary tot, Leonard said, “Hello! My name is Mickey Mouse! What’s yours?”

“Pluto!” said Junior.

“Oh, fuck,” said Leonard Stilwell. “This is gonna take some work.”

Hollywood Nate Weiss had occasion to make a call in Laurel Canyon that afternoon. A resident had been complaining to the Community Relations Office about a neighbor’s yard sales. They’d been happening at least once a week, and it was, according to the complainant, “unbecoming” to other property owners in Laurel Canyon. After Nate spoke to the neighbor, who agreed to curtail the activity, Nate was driving back when something made him take a left turn up to Mt. Olympus.

He drove to the former home of Ali and Margot Aziz and parked in front. He thought about Margot and about Bix Ramstead. If only he’d obeyed the impulse and gone up to the door and rung the bell on that last night, when he’d seen Bix’s minivan in the driveway. He didn’t like thinking about Bix. Nate believed the way Bix died had unnerved all of them. But they’d never admit it. It couldn’t happen to them. They were tough guys.

Then the front door opened and two young children ran out, a boy and a girl, followed by their pregnant mother. They were heading for the mailbox when they noticed the black-and-white, and the woman said, “Is there anything wrong, Officer?”

Nate smiled and said, “Not anymore. You’ve got a beautiful house.”

“We’re very excited about it,” she said. “And we know about its history.”

“You’ll write your own history,” Nate said, and they all waved as he drove back down from Mt. Olympus.

When he got to the stop sign at Laurel Canyon, a Porsche 911 flew past him southbound, cutting off a car that had been trying to make a safe left turn. Nate pulled in behind the Porsche, turned on the light bar, and tooted his horn.

She had all the markings of a Hills bunny, with highlighted hair curled and tousled like Sarah Jessica Parker’s. She had violet eyes and a sprinkle of freckles across her nose and cheekbones under one of those salon tans like Margot’s. Her saline-enhanced bustline reached out and touched the steering wheel.

“Your license, please,” Nate said.

“Was I going too fast?” she said with a blazing orthodontic smile. Her license showed her to be thirty-two years old, and she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“Yes, and that was a very unsafe pass,” Nate said. “We’ve had several bad traffic collisions on this road.”

“I recently got this car,” she said, “and I’m not used to it. I hope you don’t have to write me a ticket!”

He noticed her fingers tugging subtly at her skirt until her athletic thighs were exposed. Then she said, “We just moved in. Guess I need someone local to show me the lay of the land.”

“Just a moment,” Nate said and walked to his shop.

When he returned, the Hills bunny’s skirt was almost up to her seat belt, and she said, “I think that if an officer wanted to get to know a girl better, he wouldn’t write her a ticket.”

Hollywood Nate said, “I think you’re right. Sign here, please.”