Hollywood Moon

SIX

AWARNING POSTED on the board said, “Don’t go to Taco Bell!” That was because a cook who worked there had gotten booked by vice cops the previous night for snogging a hooker in his car. The cook had been an extremely resentful arrestee, since many of the cops ate at Taco Bell regularly and he’d figured that gave him a get-out-of-jail-free card. The midwatch feared he’d take his revenge in their tacos.

Sergeant Lee Murillo was conducting the midwatch roll call without any other supervisors present, so the troops were really airing it out. The bitching started this time because an officer on Watch 2 was being disciplined for choking out a combative suspect. The carotid restraint, or “choke hold,” had been the salvation of cops since the forming of the LAPD, but in the era of the federal consent decree, it was considered a use of lethal force. It would trigger the same sort of exhaustive investigation as an officer-involved shooting. This resulted in cops believing that if things came down to one or the other, they’d be better off using guns. Or, as the troops put it, “If you can choke ’em, you can smoke ’em.”

After the kvetching had drained off most of the bile, Sergeant Lee Murillo read the crimes and talked about the sexual assault on Sharon Gillespie in the parking garage the prior evening. He read the description of the assailant and said, “The victim believes the suspect was of Middle Eastern descent, so you might keep that in mind.”

“That only takes in half the employees of every liquor store, gas station, and taxi company in Hollywood, Sarge,” Flotsam said.

Jetsam said, “Not to mention the wealthier nightclub patrons from countries where donkeys and camels are beasts of burden and occasional lovers. They park their Beemers and Benzes in every freaking no-parking zone within two blocks of the boulevards.”

“No ethnic wisecracks,” Sergeant Murillo said. “All I need is another complaint to investigate.”

Rather than sounding off like the surfer cops, Dana Vaughn raised her hand, and when Sergeant Murillo nodded at her, she said, “I’m not sure about the Middle Eastern part of it. The young guy had dark, curly hair, a dark complexion, and dark eyes, but he had no accent of any kind.”

R.T. Dibney chimed in and said, “That description fits Sanchez, Sarge.” Then he pointed to the former rookie partner of P3 Johnny Lanier and said to the black cop, “Sorry to racially profile your boy, but where was he last night at -”

“Okay, Dibney,” Sergeant Murillo said, while several of the troops sniggered, “save your humorous asides for the next retirement party.”

While Dana Vaughn dead-stared R.T. Dibney for interrupting her, Sergeant Murillo said, “What was the point you wanted to make, Vaughn?”

“Actually, Dibney just made it,” she said. “The description does fit lots of Hispanics as well. My opinion is that the box cutter influenced her. She mentioned the nine-eleven hijackers more than once. So the suspect could be a young guy of Middle Eastern descent or maybe of Hispanic descent, or maybe something else.”

Sergeant Murillo said, “Okay, one thing is certain. Guys like that don’t stop on their own, so give a little extra patrol in the early evening to streets with likely apartment buildings, especially around that area. The citizens in those reporting districts get a little jumpy about people roaming around with cutting instruments.”

When he saw some quizzical looks, he added, “For you people who weren’t around here a few years ago, the location is close to where we had a pair of real bogeyman murders. A former dancer and personal trainer entered the house of a ninety-one-year-old retired screenwriter, someone he’d never seen before, and cut the guy’s head off with a meat cleaver he found in the kitchen.”

Hollywood Nate, ever the cinematic authority, added, “That old man was one of the first screenwriters to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era-not that you dummies know anything about movie history.” He stirred some interest when he added, “He also cowrote Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

“Yeah?” R.T. Dibney said. “I saw that on TV a hundred times when I was kid. What a great movie. The Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein, they were all in it.”

Sergeant Murillo continued, “Then he carried the old screenwriter’s head and some of his organs over a back fence onto the next street, entered another house, and slashed a sixty-nine-year-old doctor to death. The doctor was making airline reservations at the time, and after he was killed, the nut job picked up the phone and said to the airline employee, ‘Everything’s fine now.’ Then he went to Paramount Studios and tried to get in.”

“He musta been, like, writing a way weird movie in his head and figured Paramount would give him a job,” Flotsam observed.

“Back when the poor old guy wrote about movie monsters, I bet he never thought he’d meet a real one,” Sergeant Murillo said. “It’s something to always keep in mind. There’re real monsters out there.” Then he noticed R.T. Dibney turned sideways in his chair, whispering on his cell phone, no doubt to this week’s bimbo of choice, and he said, “Dibney, the city is paying for both of your ears. Now, let’s go to work.”

The dozen cops that made up the shorthanded midwatch gathered their war bags and headed for the door. And every one of them, even those who’d never known the man, stopped to touch for luck the framed photograph of the late sergeant they called the Oracle, whose frame bore a brass plate that said

THE ORACLE

APPOINTED: FEB 1960

END-OF-WATCH: AUG 2006

SEMPER COP

Many things had changed at LAPD since back in the day when the Oracle was doing street police work. The shooting of a black teenager in a stolen car that nearly ran over an officer introduced a policy of not shooting at moving vehicles. The striking of a combative black suspect with a five-cell flashlight by a Latino officer resulted in the firing of the cop and a massive purchase of little ten-ounce flashlights for the entire Department.

All of this was designed to alter what the L.A. Times had long called the “warrior cop ethos” of the LAPD. Much hand-wringing at City Hall resulted in wholesale policy changes by the police commission, whose African-American president had spent a good deal of his prior life as head of the Urban League, denouncing the LAPD’s proactive policies. This was one reason that the LAPD cops referred to him, and the rest of the Mexican-American mayor’s police commission appointees, as the “anti-police commission.”

Despite all this, some of the cops, especially those of a “frisky disposition,” which is how R.T. Dibney described himself, kept their old five-cell flashlights in their nylon war bags and still used them when there wasn’t a supervisor around. The zipper compartment of the war bag also contained a ticket book, notebook, and a street guide. In the other compartment was a helmet and chemical face mask. The surfer cops had observed R.T. Dibney on several occasions searching alleys and yards, walking behind the beam of the old five-cell flashlight.

The midwatch units, including Mindy Ling and R.T. Dibney, were busy loading up their cars with rover radios as well as PODDs, the handheld devices in which they could enter all sorts of useless data, some of it fictitious, for the auditors and overseers. The kit room also provided them with Tasers, Remington 870 shotguns, and beanbag shotguns. Mindy’s war bag was actually a huge carrier on wheels, like a flight attendant’s.

While all of this was going on, Jetsam was outside the parking lot, scurrying around a growth of curbside planting where he’d observed something interesting.

When he came back inside the lot to his waiting partner, he said, “Got it! Sweeeeet!”

“You are easily amused, dude,” Flotsam said.

“Wanna see it? Or are you scared of these too?”

“Fucking donk,” Flotsam said.

“You are seriously aggro, bro. Chill and enjoy. It’s showtime.”

Jetsam ran over to the black-and-white belonging to 6-X-46 and said, “My partner thinks he might have an idea who the rapist with the box cutter is. He’d like to talk to you.”

Mindy Ling said, “Yeah?” and immediately walked toward Flotsam, who was standing outside his car.

“He said he’d like to share it with both of you,” Jetsam said, so R.T. Dibney shrugged, and followed his partner to the surfers’ black-and-white.

When they were gone, Jetsam quickly opened the door on the passenger side and, reaching under the seat, found R.T. Dibney’s five-cell flashlight tucked away there. He removed the D-cell batteries from the big flashlight, replaced them with what he’d recovered from the planted area, dropped the batteries into the still-open trunk, and then strolled back over to Flotsam, who was just finishing up with his “clue.”

“So anyways,” Flotsam was saying, “I saw this dude hanging beside the parking gate of that other building half a block north of where the deal went down last night. He could be the same guy.”

Mindy Ling said, “You say that was last Tuesday when you saw him?”

“Yeah,” Flotsam said. “Right, partner?”

Jetsam, who had just arrived on cue, said, “Tuesday, yeah.”

“Did you talk to the sex crime detectives at West Bureau?”

“Not yet,” Flotsam said. “Coulda just been a guy trimming the bushes. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s nothing, but he was right on. Light blue T-shirt and all.”

“Okay,” Mindy Ling said, “we’ll be cruising that RD for the next few nights.”

When they were walking back to their shop, R.T. Dibney said, “Some clue. The description fits half the gardeners from here to Malibu. Which is where those two belong, hanging ten and chasing surf bunnies instead of trying to do real police work.”

R.T. Dibney acted highly critical of slackers and pranksters now that he was working with super serious Mindy Ling. But she wasn’t impressed by much of anything that R.T. Dibney did or said. She was determined that she’d work another car for the next deployment period.

The first part of their watch was routine. They got a few calls on their MDC and dealt with them. One was a family dispute in southeast Hollywood involving a Latina with eight children, all of them boys. The woman was being driven to near violence by her two oldest, high school dropouts who were not working and didn’t care to try. The yelling in that house had alarmed the neighbors. Their second call involved perennial parking problems everywhere near Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards.

After writing a speeder on Highland Avenue just before sunset, they got their first hotshot call. The RTO’s voice said, “All units in the vicinity and Six-X-Forty-six, see the woman. Prowler there now…”

The address given was close to the area of the previous night’s violent sexual assault, and as with most hotshot calls these days, the designation was code 3. The current chief had initiated this code 3 policy in order to keep other speeding responders, who were not using sirens, from crashing into one other. The cops enjoyed code 3 rides.

“Let’s hit it,” R.T. Dibney said, and Mindy Ling turned on the light bar and, with her usual caution, drove only as fast as she ever did, cutting off the siren when they got close to the address in order to arrive quietly.

When they parked, it was dark enough that lights were on in most of the apartments on the street, and the passing traffic was using headlights.

As Mindy Ling was removing the key, R.T. Dibney said, “I want some real light for this one.”

He reached under the seat for his five-cell flashlight and said, “Hey, this feels lightweight. Where’s the batteries?”

He clicked the switch, then unscrewed the battery cover, and out jumped a very pissed-off lizard. It landed in the lap of Mindy Ling, who screamed and leaped from the car with the lizard right behind her, the reptile hightailing it into the nearest vegetation.

This happened just as the surfer cops were pulling up in front of the apartment building, and Jetsam said, “Maybe this wasn’t a good time for it.”

“I warned you, dude,” Flotsam said. “What if it happened when she was driving?”

“Jolly up, bro,” Jetsam said. “The Oracle always said that doing police work was the most fun we’d ever have in our whole lives.”

“Correction, dude,” said Flotsam. “The Oracle said good police work. This don’t exactly qualify.”

It turned out that whoever had been roaming through the darkened parking area behind the building was long gone, but three cops from the midwatch and four more from Watch 3 had the opportunity of seeing Mindy Ling shaking and sputtering, trying to pull herself together.

R.T. Dibney looked with suspicion at the surfer cops and said, “Somebody put a lizard in my flashlight.”

“Heavens!” said Flotsam.

“Gracious!” said Jetsam.

“Goddamn son of a bitch! I want the name of the asshole that did this!” Mindy Ling said to R.T. Dibney, who’d never heard her swear like this.

“Don’t look at me!” he said. “I didn’t do it to my own flashlight!”

She shivered and looked a bit nauseous as she turned abruptly and headed to the apartment of the person reporting.

R.T. Dibney hung back for a moment and said to the surfer cops, “Whoever did it better not brag about it. Mindy’ll hunt them down and they will die a slow death by chopstick torture. After working with that babe, I am sure that China will eventually rule the world.”

“I think it was a way juvenile prank,” Flotsam said.

“Childish to the max,” Jetsam said.

“I ain’t mad at whoever did it,” R.T. Dibney said. “This incident taught me something important. Mindy Ling is a girl. She’s a real girl, after all. Now I might even start to like her a little bit.”

After a few minutes, Mindy Ling returned, and when all officers were heading for their cars, she said to R.T. Dibney, “You ready to go, or do you wanna stay here and look for your lizard?”

“Hey, it wasn’t my lizard!” R.T. Dibney said, his mustache twitching. “I was the intended victim of this here outrage.”

Jetsam said, “Mindy, don’t, like, go all bleak about your lizard phobia. I know a copper that’s scared of clowns.”

“Dude!” Flotsam said, reddening.

“Get outta my face, you surf rats,” Mindy Ling blurted, storming to her car.

After 6-X-46 had driven away, Jetsam walked to the lushly planted area in front of the apartment building, shined his flashlight beam under a camellia bush, and said, “Bro, you are one lucky reptile. Your travel accommodations sucked, but this is a way cooler ’hood than the one you left behind.”

Business was good at Pablo’s Tacos early that evening. Parking was scarce in the little strip mall on Santa Monica Boulevard, and Malcolm Rojas, who had recently gotten off work at the home improvement center, had to park two blocks away on a residential side street. He knew from his prior visits to the taco stand that cops cruised by regularly and hassled any tweakers who looked like they might be holding or scoring crystal meth or other drugs. Malcolm had never eaten the lard-fried tacos from Pablo’s and seldom ate Mexican fare at all, intent on leaving the Latino part of him back in Boyle Heights.

Still, Malcolm decided maybe he should try smoking a blunt when the anger grew too fierce. Before he got out of his Mustang, he took the box cutter from his pocket and put it under the front seat in case the cops stopped by and started jacking up people. He’d buy a little bit of weed and get out of there fast.

He’d gotten paid today, so he had plenty of money, no thanks to his mother. She was always yammering about him paying room and board now that he was almost twenty years old, as if their apartment was a damn boardinghouse or something. She still had settlement money left from his father’s accidental death, and she was making good tips working part-time at Du-par’s coffee shop in Farmers Market, so he couldn’t understand why he should have to pay her.

It was just like his mother. Everything was all about her. He told her if she’d quit drinking a quart of Jim Beam every other day, she’d have more money, and she told him he was being cruel. Malcolm longed for the day when he could leave her, cut all ties, be his own man. That day would come.

There was nobody hanging around Pablo’s that he’d seen or dealt with in the past. Pablo’s mostly did a takeout business, but there were a few small tables inside, so he decided to sit and wait for a pot dealer to arrive. He needed something to make him feel more in charge of his emotions. He was still troubled about what had happened in the parking garage-troubled, but also more excited than he’d ever been in his entire life.

He’d wanted to come in that bitch’s mouth, that’s what he’d wanted to do, but he’d been too scared. There had been too many cars passing by, and he’d feared that at any minute one of the other residents would drive in. Then he might’ve had to fight for his life. How would that have been? With only a box cutter against a grown man? That’s how Malcolm Rojas saw himself in such an encounter. Fighting for survival against a grown man.

But he didn’t think he’d ever need to do that again. He’d never again let the anger rule him. He’d masturbate or smoke a blunt and everything would be okay.

Yet he’d brought his box cutter from the home improvement store again today. Why did he do that? He didn’t want to think about it now. He just wanted a taste, only something to take the edge off. And if his mother bitched about him smoking it, maybe he’d tell her to go dive in her bottle of Jim Beam and shut the fuck up. Malcolm ordered a cup of coffee and sat down at one of the little tables inside to watch and wait for a dealer to show.

Dewey Gleason had been Bernie Graham all day. Bernie Graham was no challenge at all and in fact was a bit boring to his creator. Bernie was an L.A. guy, born and raised, and as Dewey saw him, Bernie had come from money, the son of a successful plastic surgeon who catered to a glamorous Westside trade. Bernie had an MBA from USC and had been a highly successful investment adviser, but he had suffered through two bad marriages with a gambling problem that necessitated his foray into illegal activity.

Dewey felt he had to establish this plausible backstory when dealing with college kids. They asked questions that the likes of Creole and Jerzy would never ask. The college boys were paranoid about getting caught and mentioned their parents a lot, and Dewey had to share fictional background information to reassure them. Or rather, paternalistic Bernie Graham had to.

At least Bernie Graham didn’t need to be imposing, so Dewey didn’t have to wear the shoes with lifts and suffer from ankle pain for two days, as he did when he was Jakob Kessler. Nor did he need the contact lenses, because Bernie Graham seldom needed to intimidate anybody. And Bernie Graham didn’t have to be an older man, so Dewey could lose the gray wig. About all he’d done for Bernie Graham was use a rinse in his hair to make it a few shades darker and apply a stick-on mustache along with trendy eyeglasses.

His Bernie Graham character always dressed well-thanks to Nordstrom’s no-questions-asked return policy-usually in a blazer and chinos. Dewey had considered creating a small but noticeable scar across Bernie’s forehead that a college kid would undoubtedly describe for the cops if the kid was ever arrested. Ultimately, he’d decided that the scar would be overkill, but he affected a right-legged limp that he claimed was the result of a skiing accident on Mammoth Mountain, where he’d gone with fraternity brothers.

Meeting college kids wasn’t hard to do. The previous year, Dewey had cultivated one who’d been working part-time at a Starbucks in West L.A., and he’d parlayed that meeting into several others with students who were cash-strapped. Soon he knew a dozen kids he could nurture and train. To begin with, he’d simply buy their debit cards and their PINs. The card-selling student would have to be in good standing with his bank. Dewey could almost always buy the card for $300 or less, but sometimes the more assertive kids chiseled another $100 out of him.

Then Dewey as Bernie Graham would use a “deposit runner” unknown to the first kid to deposit several of Eunice’s counterfeit checks into the account of the kid who’d sold him the card. The deposit runner would have good bogus ID created by Eunice, so that any photo taken by a bank security camera would not match the student who’d sold Dewey the card. Then a third student, one who Dewey called his “ bucks-up runner,” not known by either of the first two, would be hired to travel to San Diego County, or out to the Palm Springs area, where there were some very big Indian casinos. That student, with another of Eunice’s bogus IDs, would gamble a little, and through a clever phone call to override the card’s daily limit, he would loot the debit account until it was dry. Any security video taken at the casinos would likewise not match the legitimate owner of the debit card, nor the one who’d deposited the bogus checks.

When the bank finally contacted the original student, the kid would say, “Oh, my gosh, my debit card isn’t in my wallet! And I had my PIN number taped to it! Oh, my gosh!”

When the bank tried telling the kid that he owed the bank payback for the thousands they’d lost, the kid would recite lines fed by Bernie Graham: “But I didn’t even know it was missing until you called me!”

The security at Indian casinos was generally lax, and none of Bernie’s runners had gotten arrested so far. The security people at the casinos were concerned with customers cheating the house, not with cheating the banks. They’d look diligently for elaborate devices designed to beat the slot machines, but ATM scams were of little concern to them, and, most important, there were no close-up cameras at the ATM machines in the casinos, which made them desirable targets.

Dewey Gleason’s favorite line as a closer to a new college kid was, “Look, the banks take the hits, so the Injuns don’t give a shit. You think the banks can’t afford to lose a few thousand here and there? Who needs it more, you or Bank of America?”

Dewey had no doubt that every one of the students skimmed some of the cash they were supposed to be returning to their mentor. Most of them would say something like, “Mr. Graham, there was a guy eyeballing me, so I had to gamble more than I wanted to. But I didn’t lose too much.”

But what they ended up giving him made the whole gag surprisingly profitable. The college kids didn’t want to lose this new and fascinating source of income, so they were careful not to kill the golden goose. It made Eunice happy, but Dewey complained that he’d ended up being nothing more than a coach and collector. There was no challenge for a man who’d spent most of his adult life chasing casting agents and reading for uninterested TV producers and auditioning for parts he never got. At least with Jakob Kessler he got to give a real performance, and it was exhilarating, especially when he turned those pale contact lenses on someone like Creole and talked about greed. That’s when he felt he was doing what he was born to do. He was giving a great performance every time, no matter what that jealous bitch had to say about it.

His last stop late that afternoon was in West Hollywood, but after a long day spent collecting, Dewey got a phone call on one of the eight GoPhones he kept on his person and in his briefcase.

Eunice, who could never resist belittling him, said, “Hello. Am I speaking with the tall and fearsome Jakob Kessler or gimpy little Bernie Graham?”

“How do I hate thee?” Dewey replied. “Let me count the ways.”

“What?” she said. “You’re breaking up.”

“Get to the fucking point, Ethel,” he said, using her GoPhone name. “Whadda you want?”

“Stop by the Mexican joint after you’re all done,” she said, which they both knew to mean Pablo’s Tacos, the notorious Santa Monica Boulevard meeting place for tweakers, crackheads, and others with illicit goods to sell. “Look for a black guy who calls himself John. He’s supposed to show up at around eight fifteen with the goods I talked to you about on Monday.”

Eunice had never shut her fucking mouth on Monday or any other day, and most of what she’d said had passed him by. She had one idea after another, one job after another for him to do, while she just sat there in the apartment and “created,” and smoked herself into an early grave. The last part would be just fine with him if it could happen sooner. Monday? Which gag was that? Finally, he had to admit the truth and take what she’d surely dump on him.

He said, “Okay, Ethel, I don’t remember what you told me on fucking Monday, okay?”

“You don’t remember. Why doesn’t that surprise me?” she said. “Why do I knock myself out for you?”

“Please let me knock you out sometime,” he said, slamming on the brakes after almost blowing the light at Cahuenga and Sunset because she had him so upset.

“The guy with the goods from his office? Sweet Jesus! Do I have to spell it out for you on the goddamn phone?”

Then he remembered. A Nigerian night janitor who was acquainted with one of Dewey’s Mexican runners claimed to have access to his company’s checks, and he’d suggested that some checks could temporarily disappear from the office, no problem. His company employed several hundred Latino workers, and Eunice intended to make duplicates of the paychecks and then have the janitor return the originals to the check file. She was curious to see how many could be cashed by Dewey’s Mexicans with bogus IDs she supplied before the company and the company’s bank discovered that some paychecks were being cashed twice.

“Okay, Ethel, I’m all dialed-in now,” Dewey said after he remembered her instructions regarding the Nigerian. “I’ll go by the joint and look for some black dude, which might include half the people I see in the parking lot, what with so many silverbacks coming up to Hollywood from South L.A. every goddamn night. Do you have a better description?”

“Your runner said he’s forty, fat, and nervous, remember?” Then she said, “No, of course you don’t remember. Offer one Franklin to him and see how it goes from there.”

“This is just great,” Dewey said. “Somebody walks into that parking lot looking suspicious and the first cop cruising by will be on him like maggots on the horse meat they sell in that joint. And of course, being a black foreigner from his fucked-up country, he’ll be an hour late.”

Ignoring his complaints, Eunice said, “And after you finish with that job, stop and get me a Whopper with fries. No, make it two Whoppers. I’m hungry.”

Then she clicked off, and Dewey threw the phone on the seat beside him, muttering all the way to West Hollywood, for what he’d previously thought would be the last stop of the day.

Dewey was leery about dealing with a Nigerian. They had their own scams and didn’t work well with outsiders. Dewey thought that by now everyone with the brain of a chicken would be onto the big Nigerian eBay scams, such as the one where an item, like a golf cart, would be listed for sale by a legitimate US seller. The Nigerians would send a check to the seller made out for five times the asking price of the item. Many honest but gullible sellers would send the item and the balance of the huge check to the Nigerian, who the seller figured was just not attuned to our American way. Of course, the seller’s check would be legitimate but the Nigerian’s original check would be bogus.

Dewey had seen a notice on the online classifieds site craigslist from a seller who’d been stung. He’d posted a message saying that his item was “not for sale to any Nigerian.” Dewey figured he should be cautious when dealing with the Nigerian tonight and would look and listen very carefully to determine if the sheet of checks was legitimate.

He was lucky to find a parking space for his Honda Civic just off the Sunset Strip, and he spotted his depositor runner sitting outside at a sidewalk table, where he could sip a $5 cup of coffee and pretend that he was going to amount to something in the world as soon as he got his degree in anthropology or whatever useless fucking thing he was studying. Dewey hadn’t met one yet who he thought would end up as anything but a valet parking attendant or a busboy at some Wolfgang Puck restaurant, if he got lucky.

This one was a smallish kid, and of course he was wearing wraparound shades, cargo pants, and a baseball cap pulled low, as if he were someone who didn’t want to be recognized by the adoring public. Dewey wondered where he got the T-shirt with the Warner Bros. logo on the back. That, the cargoes and retro sneakers, and the inability to get out of his car without a bottle of designer water said, “I am employed in some capacity at the studio!” Dewey Gleason was sick to death of doing business with these pathetic little fucks.

When Dewey took the chair across the table, the kid smiled nervously and said, “Hi, Mr. Graham. I’m ready to go to work.”

Dewey, ever cautious, removed the envelope he was carrying inside the pocket of his summer blazer, holding it by the corner between the tip of his thumb and forefinger, and slid it across the table.

“Everything is there, Michael,” he said quietly after glancing to his right at a young woman with a leopard headband who might have overheard them if she hadn’t been jabbering on her cell phone.

“Mitchell,” the student corrected.

“Yes, Mitchell,” Dewey agreed. “You’ll find two checks each for three banks. The debit cards and the driver’s licenses are in the name of Seymour Belmont, Josh Davidson, and Ralph Tanazzi. Instructions are very clear. Make sure you carry the correct ID and debit card for each bank and then deposit the checks as though you do it every day. The PIN number is taped on the card for you.”

“I’m sorta blonde,” Mitchell said, concerned. “I don’t look like a Ralph Tanazzi.”

“You look like the photo ID,” Dewey said. “That’s all you have to worry about.”

“I hope the pictures on the driver’s licenses turned out okay,” Mitchell said. “That guy in the camera shop you sent me to was drunk.”

“He did a good job,” Dewey said. “Don’t sweat it.”

“And my… pay?”

“Is in the envelope,” Dewey said. “Three hundred dollars for walking into three banks. A couple hours of your time, driving included.”

“You said four hundred dollars, Mr. Graham,” Mitchell said.

“Did I?” said Dewey disingenuously. He withdrew his wallet from the pocket of his blazer, removed a $100 bill, and put it on the table, saying, “My mistake.”

An Asian waiter approached and said to Dewey, “Sir, what can I get you?”

“You’ll buy me a coffee, won’t you, Mitchell?” Dewey said.

Happily the kid replied, “Of course, Mr. Graham. And how about a croissant?”

Later, while driving to Pablo’s Tacos, Dewey had to admit that Eunice had some impressive talents she’d learned from her first husband, Hugo. She could legally shop on the Internet and buy whatever she needed. Legitimate companies sold her magnetic ink and high-end printers with different color inks, as well as other card-altering devices. Dewey was amazed the first time he watched her redo a mag number and slide a new mag strip in place of the old one.

She had very valuable information that she sometimes kept in the virtual storage she got when buying new computers. She claimed that the cops were able to get links to Internet sites, but that was all, and that Dewey, who was nearly computer-illiterate, should stop worrying and leave the thinking to her. Of course, a deprecating crack or two would top off any admonishment she directed his way.

Eunice kept much of her information in a Yahoo account, including names, credit-card numbers, and Social Security numbers, so that she could just log in and bring up the information as needed. Sometimes she went to Office Depot to buy Mips VersaChecks with computer programs, along with plenty of check stock. With that she could produce her own checks, account numbers, and routing numbers. She believed it was risky and didn’t like to do it too often, but Eunice had never spent a day in jail, except for a DUI, and Dewey had been jailed only twice, for traffic warrants back when he was a struggling actor, before meeting Eunice.

When Dewey parked in the little strip mall and walked inside Pablo’s Tacos, he saw no black man who was forty, fat, and nervous. The people at the tables were a Latino couple with two small children, all of them eating tacos and refried beans, and a young Latino guy sitting by himself, drinking coffee.

Dewey ordered a taco he didn’t really want and a Coke. Then he sat at the table next to the young man, who was no older than Dewey’s college kids. In fact, this boy could very well be in college. He was a good-looking, slender young guy with great curly hair, wearing a red T-shirt, clean jeans, and Adidas running shoes. He had no tatts, earrings, or face jewelry, but being at Pablo’s Tacos in an apparently expectant mode might mean that he had a drug issue and could use some fast and easy bucks.

While waiting for the Nigerian, Dewey figured he might as well work the kid and see what was what. Dewey nibbled at the taco and felt the heat instantly. He grabbed his Coke, took a couple of gulps, and said, “Damn, they didn’t warn me about the jalapeños!”

Malcolm Rojas said, “You have to tell them no heat.”

“I can’t eat this,” Dewey said, dropping the taco onto the paper plate.

“Take it back to the counter,” Malcolm said. “They’ll give you another.”

“I’m not hungry anyway,” Dewey said with an affable smile, “but thanks for the tip.”

Malcolm looked at him curiously. In Hollywood, when a middle-aged white stranger started being friendly, Malcolm figured he was probably gay. This guy looked straight enough, but you never knew, especially on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Dewey said to Malcolm, “I’m looking for ambitious young college students who’re interested in some very profitable part-time work. Would you be a student by any chance?”

Malcolm, who hadn’t taken a single course even at a community college since graduating from high school, now figured the guy for some kind of pervert and said guardedly, “What kind of work?”

“Just some easy jobs to help with tuition and books, with a lot of money left over.”

Even more curious now, Malcolm lied and said, “I’m only a part-time student at City College. Does that work for you?”

“Certainly,” Dewey said. “If I told you that you could make between five hundred and a thousand dollars working just a couple of days a week, would you be interested?”

Now Malcolm was sure the guy was a perv. He said, “I don’t do fuck films, man.”

Dewey chuckled and said, “You wouldn’t make such easy money in such a short time doing fuck films.” He broke off a piece of the fried taco shell and said, “Are you willing to work with cards?”

“How do you mean?” Malcolm asked.

“Do you have a debit card?”

“No,” Malcolm said.

“How old’re you?”

“Nineteen,” Malcolm said truthfully.

“That’s fine,” Dewey said. “You can pass for twenty-one, no problem.”

“Whadda you mean, ‘pass’?”

“If I gave you a debit card, a PIN number, and good ID with your picture on it, but with a bogus name, would you be willing to use it to draw out money at certain places that’re very safe? Or would you be willing to go on a fun shopping trip and buy all kinds of great things with a credit card that has someone else’s name on it?”

“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “I got a job. I never done anything with debit cards or credit cards.”

“I’ll bet your job pays minimum wage,” Dewey said.

A bit offended, Malcolm said, “It’s a living.”

There was something about this young man. He had a straightforward sincerity about him that Dewey seldom found in young people these days. Something told him that he could use this forthright young Latino to great advantage. He drew a business card from his wallet with the name Bernie Graham on it along with the number of one of his GoPhones, and slid it across the table to Malcolm.

“Think about a shopping trip as a starter,” Dewey said. “Buying great merchandise is what it amounts to. You’d buy things at places I send you to, and you’d deliver the items to a place that I select. Call me tomorrow at five P.M. if you’re interested. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll figure it’s a no-go.”

“I work till five,” Malcolm said. “Can I call you at five thirty?”

“Certainly,” Dewey said, confident that he’d hooked his fish. “I’m Bernie Graham. What’s your name?”

“You can call me Clark,” said Malcolm, standing up to leave. “Clark Jones.”

“I hope to hear from you, Clark Jones,” said Dewey as the young man exited the taco shop.

Six-X-Thirty-two was driven by Flotsam, whose partner had gotten permission from Sergeant Murillo to go home early after telling the supervisor that his dog had disappeared from the yard and his landlady was in a panic. It was a lie hastily dreamed up by the surfer cop after his waitress du jour at IHOP agreed to go surfing with him the next morning at Malibu but only if the surfer cop could get to the beach by 8 A.M. Because Watch 5 didn’t end until 0400 hours, Jetsam had been in a tizzy, worrying about sleep deprivation that might make him less than magnificent the next day. So he concocted the dog story for Sergeant Murillo, even though the only pet he had was a turtle.

Flotsam, who of course was privy to his partner’s scheme, asked the sergeant what he should do for the remainder of the watch, and it turned out that P1 rookie Harris Triplett’s usual field training officer was on a special day off. The probationer had been assigned to assist the desk officer that night, just to give him something to do, so Sergeant Murillo decided to let him work with Flotsam for the remainder of the watch. The sergeant would ordinarily have been reluctant to put even a last-phase probationer like Harris Triplett with either of the surfer cops, but being down to five cars on the midwatch, he thought he’d take a chance.

Young Harris Triplett found himself riding the rest of the watch with Flotsam, and they happened to be cruising past Pablo’s Tacos when Malcolm Rojas was walking away from the strip mall. Malcolm didn’t interest Flotsam at all. What interested Flotsam was a portly black man driving an old Toyota who’d managed to find a parking place in the mall and who emerged from his car with a small paper-wrapped parcel in his hand, which he tucked under his jacket before approaching the entry door.

“First thing, dude,” Flotsam said. “That year Toyota you can start with a screwdriver or a pair of scissors. Anything will turn the ignition on. So we’re suspicious right away that the car could be hot, right?”

“Yes, sir,” said the unsuspicious boot.

“And we know from long experience that Pablo’s is a place where tweakers, baseheads, and every other kind of doper hangs out and does deals, right?”

“Yes, sir,” said the rookie, who had no long experience about anything but who agreed with everything a P2 or P3 said.

“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ It makes me feel like a shoobie.”

“A what?”

“A lame-oh that wears socks and sandals on the beach.”

“Oh,” Harris said.

“Sometimes they bring their baloney sandwiches in a shoe box. Shoobie, get it? Way wack.”

“I see,” Harris said.

“So okay, for a dude in a place like this to be sticking a small package under his coat, that, like, sets off all kinds of alarms on our blue radar, don’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” Harris said, with conviction this time.

“Goddamnit!”

“Sorry, sorry!”

Flotsam said, “Something about the way that dude dresses says to me he’s an immigrant. It’s like all these Armenian gangsters? Unibrows in Armani Exchange and Members Only jackets, right? You know they ain’t from around here.”

“Got it.”

“Look at that dude’s shoes. Are they plastic or what? And those pants pulled up to his chest bone? And a white dress shirt and horse-blanket coat? He’s from somewheres else too.”

“Got it,” Harris said.

“What if this black guy turns out to be Puerto Rican or Dominican?” Flotsam said. “I heard you can speak Spanish, right?”

“Yes,” the rookie said. Then he hesitated and added, “Well, I get a two-point-seventy-five-percent pay bump for speaking Spanish. I minored in Spanish at Cal State L.A., but I’m not so good at the reading and writing.”

“We won’t have to write to the guy,” Flotsam said.

“To be honest, I sort of speak Spanglish.”

“Close enough,” Flotsam said. “Let’s go hear his story, whatever language it’s in.”

Flotsam parked the car in the red zone in front of the strip mall, and both cops collected their batons and entered the parking lot.

The Nigerian and Dewey Gleason made eye contact the moment the man entered the taco shop. Dewey was about to speak, when he spotted two uniformed cops-one a tall blond with gelled hair, and a younger athletic-looking partner-walking fast across the parking lot. His instincts told him to avert his gaze from the Nigerian’s and to get the hell out of there ASAP.

Sure enough, the cops entered and the tall cop said to the Nigerian, “Sir, we’d like you to step outside for a minute.”

“What for?” the Nigerian said in accented English, eyes widening.

Flotsam said, “We need to have a few words, sir.” Then more firmly, “Step outside, please.”

Reluctantly, the Nigerian walked outside with the cops, and after the glass door swung shut, Dewey Gleason rose and dumped his uneaten taco plate into a trash receptacle. He exited in time to see the cops walking the man toward an old Toyota at the far side of the parking lot. Dewey saw a parcel drop from under the man’s checked sport coat and fall onto the asphalt. The younger cop picked it up and the Nigerian acted as though he’d never seen it before.

Dewey slowed when passing the trio, and he could see that the package had torn open and several sheets of checks had spilled onto the ground. The dumb shit had only needed to bring one sheet of checks for Eunice to duplicate! Dewey quickened his pace, not bothering with the Bernie Graham limp and not looking back. He wasn’t sure, but when he reached the street, he thought he could hear the sound of handcuff ratchets chattering closed. It was a sound that chilled his blood.