Hollywood Moon

TWENTY-ONE

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN and those of you who do not fit either category, I have an announcement to make,” Sergeant Lee Murillo said by way of beginning roll call. “There is a real Hollywood moon tonight. And as you know, a full moon over Hollywood brings out the beast rather than the best in our citizens. The car that comes back with the weirdest encounter of the night will get an extra-large pizza with the works. And now to training material. Last time it was how to address our Hollywood citizens of various nationalities who speak many languages. This time it’s how to address our Hollywood citizens of various genders who speak our same language. For example, you must never address or refer to a transsexual as a tranny.”

R.T. Dibney raised his hand and said, “Is it okay to call them trans-testicles?”

After the guffaws died down, Sergeant Murillo said, “And you must not address or refer to drag queens as dragons.”

“If they’re ugly, can we call them drag-goons?” Flotsam asked.

Sergeant Murillo ignored him, saying, “And post-op transsexuals will be searched by female officers, pre-op by male officers. Booking in either the men’s or women’s jail will also depend upon their medical status and condition. And you will not refer to Santa Monica Boulevard as Sodom-Monica because of the number of male prostitutes there.”

Jetsam said, “Boss, it’s way confusing out there. We need an organization chart to know how to talk to these people.”

Flotsam pointed to young Harris Triplett, back from his loan to the vice unit, and said, “The last night Triplett was working for the vice unit, a deaf guy on Santa Monica Boulevard handed him a note that said, ‘Can I have a blow job?’ ”

That actually got people interested, and Hollywood Nate said, “Did you bust the poor guy, Harris?”

Reluctantly the young cop said, “Uh-huh.”

Then several of the saltier cops booed and chimed in with remarks like “Harris the Harsh!” and “Harris the Horrible!” and “Enemy of people with disabilities!”

While everyone was jeering and having a rollicking good time, R.T. Dibney leaned over to Harris Triplett and said, “Kid, always be careful how much you drink if you do the Hollywood nightclub scene. You might get hammered and pick up with what you think is some smokin’ hot chick and wake up with a hairy scrotum across your nose.”

Sergeant Murillo flapped his hands palms-down to get them quieted, then pointed to a license number and car description on the board behind him and said, “We do have some real police work to take care of tonight. Dana Vaughn has done some work that might result in the arrest of the box-cutter rapist who we think is Ruben Malcolm Rojas, Hispanic, nineteen, five eight, one forty-five, brown and brown. He lives with his mother on Maplewood, just west of Kingsley. West Bureau detectives, assisted by our gang units, are out there right now, waiting for cell phone pings that could very well track the guy right to your beat. Listen to the tac frequency and watch for that old red Mustang. I think it’d be just dandy if one of you midwatch units took him down. And remember, the Oracle said that doing good police work is the most fun you’ll ever have in your lives. So go out there under that Hollywood moon tonight and have yourselves some fun.”

At the end of the forty-five-minute roll call session, everyone touched the picture of the Oracle for luck as usual, like parishioners dipping their fingers into a font of holy water, and headed downstairs to the kit room to line up for their nonlethal weapons. When Hollywood Nate was loading the war bags into the trunk of their shop in the parking lot, he heard the surfer cops jawing with intensity.

“Did I or didn’t I?” Jetsam asked Flotsam.

“Dude, I wasn’t watching, but it’s, like, something you always do, so I’d say you did it.”

“Did what?” Dana Vaughn asked.

“Touch the Oracle’s picture,” Flotsam said.

“You were behind me, Dana,” Jetsam said. “Did I touch it?”

“I was talking to Nate,” Dana said. “I didn’t see.”

Hollywood Nate said, “I didn’t notice either.”

“I better go back up and touch it,” Jetsam said.

“Dude!” Flotsam said. “Ain’t that taking superstition a little too far?”

Jetsam paused and looked as though he was about to get into the car, until Dana with a wink at Nate said to Jetsam, “It’s a tradition and it’s about luck. And tonight there’s a Hollywood moon. I wouldn’t tempt fate, honey.”

That did it. He ran back inside Hollywood Station.

When the taxi delivered Eunice to her apartment on Franklin, she was so sure that Dewey and his friends had fled that she didn’t ask the driver to accompany her inside. However, after entering, she did take a cursory look in every room before closing the door. It was only the irrational doper, Jerzy Szarpowicz, who worried her at all.

The fact that they’d ransacked the place did not surprise Eunice. Her gag with the key was enough to make the morons conduct a frantic search. She removed the hard drive from each computer and then pulled three flattened cardboard boxes from under her bed, which she kept for this purpose. She put them together and began loading them with hard drives, files, credit cards, and forgery paraphernalia that littered her worktable. She planned to drop each box in one of several trash Dumpsters behind various commercial establishments on the way to the airport.

She then sat down and wrote a letter to the apartment manager, describing how the sudden death of her father in Florida had made it necessary to leave immediately to care for her aging mother. She invited the manager to keep the security and deposit fees and to dispose of all property left behind as she saw fit, including clothing and personal items belonging to her husband. She broke into a smile when she wrote that part of it. After finishing the letter, there wasn’t much to do but pack as much as she needed, leaving older articles of clothing behind. San Francisco definitely required a whole new wardrobe anyway.

After she showered and did her makeup, hiding the damage that Jerzy and his duct tape had done, she felt positively giddy. Wearing a new lace-trimmed bra and thong panties like those she’d bought for her dinner at Musso & Frank, Eunice went to the kitchen, lit a smoke, and poured herself a Bombay martini. She felt her excitement grow while waiting for Clark to arrive. She couldn’t decide what to wear for the trip. She felt free. She felt… young.

“I wish I had the Polack here instead of you,” Tristan said to Dewey Gleason as they staggered from the storage room to the van, carrying a thirty-six-inch TV console that required two rest pauses before they could move the box fifty feet.

“I might be able to pull my own weight if that son of a bitch hadn’t driven my ribs halfway to my backbone,” Dewey said, leaning on the box and panting.

It was almost impossible to contemplate that the goods he had stored in this room were the sum of all he possessed in life. He was certain that Eunice was already leaving the Franklin Avenue address, now that her elaborate security was blown. He didn’t know for sure if she’d get out of Los Angeles or find another Dewey Gleason and set up at another location, but he believed she might’ve bought herself a gun by now and would shoot him dead if she ever set eyes on him again. Dewey had a passing thought that if he had a gun of his own, he might save her the trouble. He was alone. He was lost.

“You ready, Bernie?” Tristan said. “We shoulda had this job done hours ago.”

“I got pain shooting through me,” Dewey said.

“You’re gonna have a bullet shootin’ through you if we don’t get back to the office before dark. The Polack ain’t a patient man.”

“That actually sounds comforting,” Dewey said, picking up his end of the load with a moan that sounded like the lowing of a cow.

Jerzy Szarpowicz was literally bouncing from wall to wall in the little duplex/office. He would stride across the room, turn his back to the wall, and push off toward the other wall. He was muttering aloud, mostly a string of incoherent obscenities, aimlessly directed at Bernie Graham’s woman, at Bernie Graham himself, at Creole, and at the Mexican at Pablo’s Tacos who wouldn’t front him a little crack or crystal after he’d done business with the greaseball for three years. The taxi rides had eaten up almost all his cash, and in fact, he was $1.45 light on the fare after he had the driver take him from Pablo’s parking lot to here. The taxi driver, one of those camel fuckers Jerzy despised so much, had started bitching about it until he got a good look at Jerzy’s snarling face and red-rimmed blazing eyes, and then he’d just dropped it in gear and sped away.

Jerzy had been pacing with the buck knife in his hand, indulging in violent fantasies until he tired of that. Then he pulled the snub-nosed revolver from his jeans and passed the time by aiming it at the imaginary heads of those he hated. Two of those he hated interrupted him by driving up to the curb in the rented van and in the Honda just as the Hollywood moon began to rise.

Tristan and Dewey each carried a box containing a laptop to the door, which was held open by Jerzy, who’d tucked his weapons inside the waistband of his jeans, under his T-shirt.

“Where the fuck you been?” Jerzy growled.

“Don’t start,” Tristan said. “I might as well’ve loaded the van by myself, all the help Bernie gave me. My ass is scrapin’ the ground.”

“I need money right now,” Jerzy said to Dewey. “Call your fence and start sellin’ this shit.”

“I have a call in to him,” Dewey said, “but I don’t think my receiver’s gonna run right over here this minute.”

“Come on, dawg,” Tristan said to Jerzy. “Help me carry all those boxes inside. Bernie, you keep callin’ the guy till you reach him. Tell him this is like a big garage sale if he’s got plenty of cash.”

Dewey sat down on a kitchen chair, cell phone in hand, and said, “I’ll keep trying.”

Jerzy looked like his central nervous system was short-circuited, and he seemed ready to start tearing the wallpaper off the walls. Dewey tried his best to avoid eye contact, but Jerzy said to him, “Bernie, if you don’t get me some money tonight, I’m gonna start rememberin’ how much I hated Jakob Kessler.”

Dewey tried speed-dialing Hatch one more time while Tristan and Jerzy walked to the van under an unusually clear summer sky in a bright glow of moonlight.

“Yeah, we got us a Hollywood moon up there, dude,” Flotsam said when he walked back to the shop with the license belonging to the driver of a Lexus hardtop convertible. “Did you see what that guy’s wearing?”

Jetsam, who had walked up on the passenger side, flashing the beam from his mini-light onto the dash to let the driver know he was there, said, “I think I saw a coat and tie, right?”

“You didn’t look low enough. He ain’t wearing pants. But he’s got nice wingtip shoes on and socks.”

“Where’s his pants, bro?” Jetsam said as Flotsam put the ticket book and flashlight on the hood of the black-and-white and started writing.

“On the seat beside him,” Flotsam said. “With his underwear. He was probably jerking off, and that’s why he was late on the red light.”

“What did you say to him, bro?”

“I asked to see his license.”

“What did he say?”

He said, ‘Yes, officer.’ ”

“Is that, like, okay with you, bro? I mean, maybe he was flashing somebody in the lane next to him.”

“That’s a seventy-thousand-dollar ride. If he wants to jizz all over it, that’s his business.”

As Flotsam finished writing the ticket, Hollywood Nate and Dana Vaughn turned the corner onto Gower, dimmed the headlights, and pulled next to the surfer cops.

“Keep looking for an old red Mustang with a Latino kid driving,” Dana said. “I just checked where they’re setting up and they don’t have him yet.”

“That was great work, Dana,” Jetsam said. “You rock, girl.”

Dana said, “I’m gonna be notified by detectives if he goes home, but I think it’d be super-cool if one of us busts him on the street before they do. Stay on the air and listen for Six-X-Seventy-six.”

“Roger that,” Flotsam said. “We’ll be all over it.”

When Dana and Nate were gone, Flotsam said, “Now, dude, you wanna waste our time investigating a possible weenie waver who’s, like, suffering the effects of a Hollywood moon? Or do you wanna be ready to jump with Dana and Nate if the big ping happens somewheres around us?”

“You’re right, bro,” Jetsam said. “Why should I give a shit if a driver don’t have pants on? Sometimes I forget where I’m at.” Then he looked at his partner and they said in unison, “This is fucking Hollywood!”

When the driver signed the citation, Flotsam tore off a copy, handed it to the man, and said, “Drive carefully, sir, and please try to keep both hands on the wheel.”

Eunice, having started on her third Bombay martini, was wearing a tiger lily silk blouse and Ralph Lauren white jeans that she could hardly squeeze herself into, and toeless wedges. She’d had trouble deciding on a lipstick but had finally settled on something called Flirty Burgundy. She hoped it didn’t draw attention to the damage that the duct tape did to the skin around her mouth. She was considering another change when the phone rang.

She picked up and heard him. “Hi, Ethel,” he said. “It’s Clark.”

“Come on up,” she said and touched a phone button to open the gate.

Eunice took one more look in the mirror before opening the door with a huge smile.

“Hi!” she said, thinking he looked very hot, sweaty, and tired. But also thinking there was something very sexy about that. She had an image of herself helping him out of his T-shirt and drying his chest and shoulders with a towel. She imagined that his skin would be hairless. She knew his body would be firm and smooth. She said, “You look like you could use a cold drink, Clark.”

“Is Mr. Graham here?” Malcolm asked.

“Mr. Graham is definitely not here,” she said. “And won’t be coming back.”

“He won’t?” Malcolm said. “Where is he?”

“Like old Hollywood, he’s gone with the wind,” Eunice said.

“I don’t get it,” Malcolm said. “I’m supposed to work for him. He promised!”

“You can work for me,” Eunice said, finishing the martini in a gulp. “At least for today. We gotta get these boxes and luggage down to your car. I need you to take me to the airport.” As he looked at the suitcases waiting by the door, she said, “I hope we can fit all my bags in your Mustang. Is the trunk very big?”

“I gotta see Mr. Graham!” Clark said. “He made a lotta promises to me. Is he at the office?”

“The office?” she said. “Oh, yeah, the apartment where he meets with the runners. He might be there, but he can’t help you.”

“He’s gotta help me!” Malcolm said. “I better drive over there and talk to him.”

“Look, Clark,” Eunice said. “Lemme get you a cold drink. How about a martini? Bet you never tasted a real Bombay martini.”

“I gotta go find Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said and started for the door.

“Sit down, Clark,” Eunice said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

Malcolm hesitated while she pushed a computer chair on wheels toward him and lit a cigarette. The smoke in the apartment was making him nauseated and she looked like she’d had too many martinis, but she had urgency to her voice, so he sat.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m sitting.”

“Clark,” Eunice said, “Mr. Graham isn’t in charge of our business. Mr. Graham is just a glorified runner. I’m the boss of our operation, and I’m shutting things down for a while. I’m leaving town and won’t be back for a few months.” Then she added, “I’m going to New York.”

“How about Mr. Graham?” Malcolm said.

“Fuck Mr. Graham!” Eunice said. “Pardon my French. He tried to cheat me, so I fired him. He’s out.” Malcolm looked so distressed that she felt sorry for him and said, “I’m gonna come back here and start a new business in a few months, and I could use a smart boy like you. I’ll stay in touch and tell you when and where to meet me. But for now, I want you to help me get rid of everything in those boxes. We’ll have to find Dumpsters for them and then return here to get my bags. I can see now that we’ll never be able to squeeze the boxes and the luggage into your car.”

Malcolm’s disappointment was palpable even to Eunice in her deliriously happy, three-martini state.

“You called me here to be your taxi?” Malcolm said, hardly moving his lips when he spoke.

“Not my taxi, my loyal employee,” Eunice said. “It’s important that we get rid of all the stuff in those boxes. I’m gonna pay you two hundred dollars, Clark. With maybe a bonus if we can dispose of everything and get me to the airport in two hours.”

“This is not right,” Malcolm Rojas said. “I gotta go to the office and talk to Mr. Graham about this. This is not fair.”

When he stood abruptly, Eunice said, “Clark, Clark, cool down. I’ll pay you three hundred. And after I get settled, I might just send you a plane ticket to come visit me. How would you like that?”

She stood and reached up slowly and buried her left hand in the beautiful curls over his ear. His dark eyes were so fiery and intense she felt her own heat rising.

“You can make plenty of money with me, sweetheart,” she said with a long sigh, tugging at his curls, thinking his nose was cute and pert and his dimples were divine.

When she pushed closer to him he could smell the gin, and it disgusted him, and her touch disgusted him, and when she called him sweetheart, it enraged him. “I’m not your sweetheart,” he said.

“What… what’s wrong?” she said, looking at his face flush. “I’ll bet you never had a mature woman treat you right, have you, Clark? I’ll treat you right and pay you good money to boot. All for a little help this evening.”

Malcolm felt her left hand scratching and tugging, and then her right hand moved down his body to the front of his jeans, and he felt her touching his crotch, rubbing it, feeling gently with her fingers, her recent manicure badly damaged by the chains that had bound her. “Just sit back down, Clark,” Eunice said. “And let Momma teach you a few tricks.”

With that, Malcolm Rojas shoved her so hard in the chest that she staggered back and fell onto the kitchen floor. “You bitch!” he said. “Don’t you ever put your hands on me! You fat old filthy bitch!”

Eunice was livid. She pulled herself up by grabbing the kitchen counter, unsteady from the martinis, and yelled, “Who the fuck do you think you are, you Mexican dimwit? Get the fuck outta my apartment! Get out, you pathetic little greaser!”

She started for the door to jerk it open when she felt the strike to her throat-an instant of burn, and then she couldn’t breathe. She threw her hands up and blood washed over them, running down her arms. She instinctively started to run, trying to breathe, but she could not breathe. Nor could she scream. She ran to her bedroom, slammed into the doorjamb, and fell to her knees. There was no air! She tried harder to breathe but nothing entered her lungs except blood.

Malcolm stood with the box knife down by his leg, looking at her. The tiger lily top was now a burgundy that matched her lipstick. She toppled onto her side, hands clutching at the air, as though she were trying to paddle up and away from there, blood streaming and finally bubbling from the widening gap in her throat. In less than a minute she stopped thrashing. Her body jerked twice and then was still except for little twitches. Malcolm couldn’t take his eyes off her, utterly amazed. It was the most astonishing thing he’d ever seen. And then he turned and ran for the door, hurtling down the steps, running to his Mustang.

While driving aimlessly east on Franklin Avenue, he was startled by the dried spatter on his right hand. He started to wipe it onto his jeans but then paused and looked at it. The blood was arousing conflicting emotions in him. He knew that later tonight in bed he would have to relive this event as best he could. Right now he was too rattled to remember the instant that he’d slashed her. He hoped he could remember it while lying alone in the dark. He did not feel remorse. She had left him no choice, the way she’d screamed at him and handled him like he was nothing. Like he was a helpless child that she could fondle as she wished. He was only sorry there wasn’t some way he could tell his mother what he had done-not to grieve but to gloat.

But then fear began to overwhelm him. He didn’t know what the police could find at crime scenes. On TV it was like magic. The scientist-cop could almost trap your shadow and use it to catch you somehow. He hadn’t worried about things like fingerprints when he’d attacked those other bitches. He never really touched anything but their fat bodies. And since he’d never been arrested, they couldn’t find him, even if he left a bit of fingerprint somewhere. But this was different, what he’d done today. He was trying to think of what he’d touched in that apartment. Nothing. Only the door handle. It was a lever and he’d opened it with his palm wrapped around it. Could they get a print from his palm?

Then he remembered! He’d braced himself against the wall when she was trying to swim away from him through the air. His entire left hand with all five fingers might be imprinted on the wall beside her body! Did they take a thumbprint when he got his driver’s license? He couldn’t remember. If they did, was it the left thumb or the right thumb? Or was it his index finger? Would they have that to compare with the handprint he’d left in the apartment?

He took his cell from the charger and clicked it on to call Bernie Graham. Maybe the man was leaving Los Angeles too, just like Ethel. Malcolm needed someone to tell him what to do. Maybe Bernie Graham would take him along, and they could set up the business in some other city. Then he remembered the office. She said he might be there. Malcolm was more frightened than he’d ever been in his life. The fear was exploding into outright panic.

Dana Vaughn, who was riding shotgun with her cell phone pressed to her ear, closed the cell and said to Hollywood Nate, “Flo Johnson said they got a ping!”

“Where is he?” Nate asked.

“She doesn’t know exactly. She’s being given quadrants. Santa Monica Boulevard between Wilcox and Cahuenga.”

“Better get on tac and tell Flotsam and Jetsam and Sheila and Aaron.”

“How about Mindy and R.T. Dibney?”

“Okay,” Nate said, “but we may have to taze R.T. to keep him from shooting the guy on sight.”

By the time Malcolm reached the duplex in east Hollywood, the moon was large and full and high enough to make the street glow, the way he’d seen the boulevard glow in reflected glare from the huge spotlights during red carpet events. There was a van parked in front and no parking for half a block north, where he managed to find a space. He wondered if any of Bernie Graham’s runners were there. He needed to speak to the man alone. He was feeling light-headed and giddy, like when he smoked pot. His thoughts were fragmented, and he kept seeing her doing her dog paddle, trying to swim away while the blood splashed onto the floor.

He dialed the Bernie Graham number.

Dewey Gleason felt a sliver of hope when the cell rang. He didn’t even look at the caller ID. It had to be Hatch, the man with the money!

“Bernie Graham,” Dewey said anxiously.

“Mr. Graham, it’s Clark,” he heard the voice say.

“Oh, shit,” Dewey said. “I can’t talk to you now. Call tomorrow.”

“You have to talk to me, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’m outside the office in my car.”

“Get outta here, Clark!” Dewey said. “I’m busy. Call tomorrow.”

“You’ll wanna talk to me,” Malcolm said. “It’s about Ethel. I was with her.”

Dewey was silent for a moment and then said, “Okay, come in.”

“Are you alone?” Malcolm asked.

“No, but we’ll talk privately. Come in.”

Malcolm closed his cell and put it in the glove compartment with the box cutter. He thought about it for an instant, then put the box cutter in the pocket of his jeans. He felt calmer just having it there. The box knife made him feel… large. When he stepped from the car, a dagger of moonlight stabbed at his eyes. He looked away from the glowing white ball in the black-velvety sky over Hollywood.

“Who the fuck was that?” Jerzy Szarpowicz asked.

“A runner,” Dewey said. “He’s outside.”

“You told him to come in?” Tristan said. “I can’t believe it.”

“You’ll wanna hear what he has to say,” Dewey said. “It’s something about my wife.”

That silenced them. All three were waiting when Malcolm tapped on the door. Dewey opened it, and Malcolm stepped inside, out of the bright moonlight. He looked at the boxes and crates stacked wall-to-wall.

“Hello, Mr. Graham,” he said with a shy smile. “I knew you were still in business.”

“Whadda you know about his wife?” Jerzy said to Malcolm.

Malcolm looked warily at the ferocious man and back at Dewey. “This is real confidential, Mr. Graham,” he said.

“Okay, let’s go in the other room,” Dewey said.

Dewey led Malcolm around the maze of stolen merchandise to the single bedroom at the rear of the apartment.

Dewey turned on the ceiling light, and before he closed the door he heard Jerzy say, “I ain’t happy about this.”

He heard Tristan reply, “I ain’t happy about nothin’ right now.”

After the door was closed, Dewey said to Malcolm, “What about Ethel?”

“She lied to me, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “She told me your business was all through, and she wanted to pay me to drive her and all her stuff to the airport. But I didn’t do it.”

Flabbergasted, Dewey said, “She called you?”

Nodding, Malcolm said, “She said she was the boss and you were… nothing. She was in a hurry to leave and go to New York. I bet she stole some of your money.”

“All of this happened at our apartment?” Dewey said.

“Yeah,” Malcolm said. “I came straight here afterwards. I’m glad to see everything’s okay. I can help you sell the stuff in there and then we can leave L.A. and start making real money like you said. You can find another secretary better than Ethel.”

This boy! Dewey could only gape at him, at his earnest and intense gaze, the dark, liquid eyes somehow different tonight, with a kind of… glint in them. “Did she say anything else, Clark? Anything about… about how she spent the night after the three of us had dinner?”

“No,” Malcolm said.

“How did she look? The same as at dinner?”

Malcolm thought and said, “She had a lot more makeup on.”

“Okay,” Dewey said. “So you left her and came here?”

“That’s right,” Malcolm said.

“That’s fine, Clark,” Dewey said. “But you can run along now. I’ll call you on Monday and we’ll get some jobs going. Okay?”

“I can’t wait, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I want you to leave L.A. with me and teach me the business. We’ll be a good team.”

“I couldn’t leave L.A. even if I wanted to,” Dewey said. “I’m short on cash right now.”

“You have to,” Malcolm said.

Dewey was losing patience. He said, “Why do I have to?”

“Because you’ll be in trouble when they find Ethel in your apartment.”

“Whadda you mean, ‘find her?’ ”

“Find her dead.”

Neither spoke until Dewey said, “What the hell’re you talking about, boy?”

“She made me kill her,” Malcolm said. “I had no choice.”

Dewey could only shake his head in exasperation. He could see from the beginning that the kid was a bit strange and creepy, but he should’ve realized sooner that the boy was a real mental case. He opened the bedroom door and said, “Then she won’t be needing the apartment anymore, will she? Maybe I’ll just move back in until the rent runs out.”

“Don’t go out there yet,” Malcolm said. “You think I’m making this up, but I’m not. I cut her throat. She bled all over the place. She’s dead, Mr. Graham. You and me, we gotta make plans.”

“This is ridiculous,” Dewey said, but he felt an ominous shiver in the sweltering room on this warm summer night. He shook it off. “Ridiculous,” he repeated.

Dewey walked out to the room where Jerzy and Tristan waited. He said to Jerzy, “Clark’s leaving. He needs to go home and rest. I think maybe he’s having some kind of… episode.”

Less than a block away, no fewer than three unmarked cars were double-parked, including one containing D2 Flo Johnson. Behind the most recent arrival were 6-X-32, Flotsam and Jetsam, and 6-X-76, Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate. Two detectives were on the front porch of a residence adjacent to the red Mustang with the pinging cell phone in the glove box. Three detectives were covering the rear of the house, and the bluesuits were backing the detectives in front.

A very old immigrant from the Dominican Republic who did not speak English and was thoroughly confused opened the door. Flo Johnson spoke to him in Spanish for a few minutes and then said to the others, “This isn’t where he is. Do you wanna set up on the Mustang or start knocking on doors?”

The detectives were trying to decide on their next move when 6-X-66, Sheila Montez and Aaron Sloane, arrived, followed by R.T. Dibney and Mindy Ling in 6-X-46.

Dana looked at the cops emerging from their shops and said, “The midwatch is well represented. Let’s find this bastard. He’s gotta be in one of the houses on this block.”

The surfer cops approached Dana and Nate, and Flotsam said, “On Wednesday we got a call half a block south on this side of the street to an apartment almost empty of furniture. There were two guys there with bad news written all over them. Might be setting up a crack house or something.”

“A big fat white guy that looks like a biker,” Jetsam said, “and a light-skinned black guy with dreads.”

Dana looked at Nate and said, “We wrote a ticket to a pair like that. The driver’s name was… let’s see… Tristan something.”

“That’s him!” Flotsam said. “We wrote shakes on both of them.”

“What the hell,” Dana said, “shall we stroll down the street and see if they have a guest tonight?”

“Why not?” said Hollywood Nate. “Birds of a feather?”

“Be careful, honey,” Dana said.

“What did I jist hear you say?” Jerzy Szarpowicz said to Malcolm Rojas.

“I said I’m not leaving,” Malcolm said. “I got nowhere to go. I’m in trouble.”

“You’re gonna be in a lot more trouble if you don’t get your ass outta here,” Jerzy said.

“Look, kid, run along,” Tristan said. “We’re expectin’ an important call.”

“I promise I’ll phone you tomorrow and give you a real job,” Dewey said. “Go home, Clark.”

“I left a whole handprint on the wall,” Malcolm said, emotionless. “I can’t go home. The police might be there already.”

Tristan looked at Dewey in puzzlement, and Dewey tapped his head and said, “He claims he murdered Ethel.”

“I ain’t got time for fuckin’ bullshit!” Jerzy said. “We got business to do, and if I don’t get me a dime of rock pretty soon, I’ll be doing the killin’, and I’ll start with you!”

With that, he grabbed Malcolm by the back of his neck and swung him toward the door, which he crashed into, and he dropped to his knees.

“Get out, Clark!” Dewey said.

Malcolm stayed on one knee, looking up at Jerzy Szarpowicz, and said, “I’m not afraid of you because you’re big. I can deal with big men now. I can deal with anybody.”

“You little fuckhead!” Jerzy said, and he stepped forward, intending to kick Malcolm with his boot, but Malcolm was on his feet, leaping sideways and swiping through the air with his box cutter.

It didn’t catch Jerzy in the throat, as Malcolm had intended, but sliced open a deep gash across his right cheek, and Jerzy screamed in pain and fury. When Malcolm lunged at him again with the box cutter, Jerzy had the two-inch.38 revolver out of his waistband, and he fired two rounds a few feet away into the young man’s chest. Malcolm Rojas looked down at his body, dropped the box knife, and fell into a sitting position, leaning against one of the crates. Then he gazed up with shuddering breaths, while the other three, their ears ringing from the explosions, screamed incoherent obscenities at one another.

Tristan was the first to recover and shouted, “I’m outta here!”

But when he jerked open the door, he saw a crew of uniformed police running toward the sound of gunfire. The street was hemorrhaging blue!

“Cops!” he yelled, slamming the door. And then he shoved Dewey aside and ran for the back door, with Jerzy right behind him, gun in hand.

The police heard the back door crash open, so Dana and Nate sprinted along the walk beside the duplex to the rear of the lot, followed by the surfer cops.

R.T. Dibney and Aaron Sloane kicked in the front door of the duplex and found Dewey Gleason with his hands up and Malcolm Rojas dying on the floor.

Tristan Hawkins tried to leap the chain-link fence dividing the properties but fell back hard, and Hollywood Nate shined a light on him and yelled, “Stay down or die!”

Jerzy Szarpowicz powered through the doorway at that instant, firing his last four rounds at anything that had a human form, on his way to the rear alley. Hollywood Nate returned fire almost simultaneously, and the last thing Jerzy Szarpowicz saw were three orange fireballs that lit the darkness, two rounds hitting him in the right chest and one in his forehead, killing him instantly.

The surfer cops were yelling, and Hollywood Nate was yelling, and Tristan Hawkins was facedown on the walkway, crying, “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

In a moment, he was handcuffed tight, palms outward, dragged to his feet, and hustled along the walkway to the front of the house, while Hollywood Nate, still leaking adrenaline from the gunfight, yelled into the house, “Is it okay in there?”

“Okay!” Sheila Montez shouted, and she appeared backlit in the doorway, holstering her Glock.

Hollywood Nate then shakily holstered his Beretta and trotted along the walkway to the front of the house, where Dewey Gleason had now become convinced that what the boy had told him must be true, and Dewey was yelling at anyone who’d listen, “I had nothing to do with her murder! Clark did it!”

Tristan said to Jetsam, who clutched his arm, “Officer, get me to a detective quick! I wanna make a deal. I’ll tell you everything I know about these crazy fuckin’ people.”

It was then that Hollywood Nate said, “Where’s Dana?”

Mindy said, “Didn’t she cover the back door with you?”

By now all of the detectives had arrived and were milling around the property and talking on cells, while the bluesuits were gathered in front of the duplex with their two handcuffed prisoners.

And Hollywood Nate said again, “Where the hell’s Dana?” Then he switched on his flashlight and ran back along the walkway to the rear of the duplex, with the surfer cops right behind him.

Flotsam spotted her first with his flashlight beam. She was lying in a flower bed behind a short hedge that partially concealed her body.

“Here!” Flotsam yelled. “Call an RA!”

Hollywood Nate leaped the hedge and was down on his knees in the dirt, turning her onto her back, and crying out, “Partner! Partner!”

Flotsam shined his light onto her face and saw her eyes open in slits, and he said, “It’s bad, Nate! It’s bad!”

“No!” Nate shouted in denial, unable to see a bullet wound. He started doing chest compressions through her Kevlar vest, when Jetsam came running toward them, and Flotsam showed a distraught face to his partner and shook his head.

Then Nate stopped the chest compressions and, tilting her head back, raised her chin and placed his mouth over hers. He began breathing into her mouth, his left hand now wet with blood leaking from the bullet wound that severed her spinal cord at the cervix, just above her vest, killing her in seconds. By now other cops were there, lighting the scene with flashlight beams, and both Sheila Montez and Mindy Ling were crying.

Nate began doing the chest compressions again, his left hand slippery with her blood, and he began sobbing and murmuring, “Please don’t, Dana! Please don’t!” And both surfer cops turned way, Flotsam looking up at the Hollywood moon while the yelp of the ambulance siren drew closer and Hollywood Nate begged Dana Vaughn not to die.