Hollywood Station

SEVENTEEN

COSMO BETROSSIAN CURSED the traffic. He cursed Los Angeles for being the most car-dependent, traffic-choked city in the world. He cursed the Georgian bartender who gave him the stolen car that almost got him captured. But most of all he cursed Farley Ramsdale and his stupid woman. He sat in traffic on East Sunset Boulevard looking at all of the signs around him in the languages of the Far East, and he cursed them too.

Then he heard the siren and for a few seconds it terrified him until he saw an ambulance weaving through traffic on the wrong side of Sunset, obviously trying to get to the traffic accident that had him gridlocked. Glancing repeatedly at his Rolex knockoff, he cursed.

First, they left him in an interrogation room for what seemed like an hour, only letting him go to the bathroom once and then watching him piss, just like the goddamn probation officer who used to make him piss in a bottle twice a month. With no sympathy for the fact that it was hard to piss with someone watching to make sure you piss from your own dick and not from a bottle of clean piss stashed in your underwear.

Then one of the two detectives came in and gave him a bad-cop interrogation about a goddamn warehouse burglary of electronic equipment that he knew nothing about. Then the other detective played good cop and came in and gave him a cup of coffee. Then the bad cop took over and played the game all over again until Farley’s hands were shaking and his pulse was vibrating.

Farley knew they didn’t buy the wrong-address story, but he stuck with it. And he was pretty sure they were starting to think he hadn’t been involved in the warehouse burglary but was just some tweaker with exactly $3.65 in his pocket, hired only to pick up and deliver.

He would have given up Little Bart instantly if he thought it would help him, but something in good cop’s tone last time around told him he was going to be released. Except that bad cop came in and walked him to a holding tank with a wooden bench, where they locked him in. And every cop walking by could look through the big glass window and gawk at him like he was a fucking spider monkey at the Griffith Park zoo.

When Watch 5 left roll call at 6 P.M., several of them passed by the holding tank and did gawk at him.

“Hey, Benny,” B.M. Driscoll said to his partner. “Is that the tweaker we wrote the ticket to?”

“Yeah,” Benny Brewster said. Then he tapped on the glass and said to Farley, “What happened, man? They catch you selling ice?”

“Fuck you,” Farley mumbled, and when Benny laughed and walked away, Farley growled, “You’re the one oughtta be in a zoo with the rest of the silverbacks, you fucking ape.”

Budgie and Fausto saw Benny talking to someone in the holding tank, and Budgie looked in and said, “Fausto, that’s the guy we FI’d at the taco stand.”

Fausto looked at Farley and said, “Oh yeah, the tweaker with the skinny girlfriend. Bet they got him doing a deal at Pablo’s. They never learn, they never change.”

When Hollywood Nate and Wesley walked past the holding tank, Nate heard Fausto’s remark, took a look inside, and said, “Shit, everyone knows that dude. Hey, Wesley, check this out.”

Wesley looked in and said, “Oh yeah. That’s what’s-his-name-Rimsdale? No, Ramsdale.”

“Farley,” Nate said. “Like the old movie star Farley Granger.”

“Who?” Wesley said.

“Never mind,” Nate said. “Let’s go look for Trombone Teddy. We gotta find him or I’ll have stress dreams tonight about chasing an old geezer who keeps holding me off with the slide of his gold trombone.”

“Do you really have dreams like that?”

“No,” Nate said, “but it would make a good dream sequence in a screenplay, don’t you think?”

One of the sergeants on Watch 2 was a forty-year-old black woman, Wilma Collins. She had a good reputation with the troops but had a persistent weight problem that the coppers at Hollywood Station joked about. She wasn’t actually obese but they called her a “leather stretcher.” Her Sam Browne had a lot to hold in place.

Everyone knew that a few hours before end-of-watch, Sergeant Collins liked to sneak into IHOP and load up on buttermilk pancakes swimming in butter, with sausages and fried eggs and butter-drenched biscuits. They made lots of cholesterol and clogged-arteries jokes about Sergeant Collins.

When the surfer team were loading their war bags and getting ready to hit the streets, the entire parking lot and the watch commander’s office suddenly erupted. Some of those who heard it had to sit for a moment until they could gain control. It became a Hollywood Station moment.

It seems that Sergeant Collins had left her rover behind on the counter at IHOP, because a message was sent on the Hollywood frequency by a Mexican busboy who had keyed the mike and talked into the rover.

The busboy said, “Hello, hello! Chubby black police lady? Hello, hello! You leave radio here! Hello! Chubby black lady? You there, please? Hello, hello!”

Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb didn’t say much to each other when they left roll call. Nate was driving and Wesley had never seen him so intent on watching the street.

At last Wesley said, “I had to mention Trombone Teddy at roll call.”

“I know you did,” Nate said. “The real mistake I made was I shoulda told you to take Teddy’s license number and at least write the info on the FI card.”

“I shoulda done that on my own,” Wesley said.

“You’re barely off probation,” Nate said. “You’re still in the yessir boot-mode. It was my fault.”

“We’ll find Teddy,” Wesley said.

“I hope he still has the card,” Nate said. Then, “Hey, it was a business card, right? What was the business?”

“A Chinese restaurant. Ching or Chan, something like that.”

“House of Chang?”

“Yeah, that was it!”

“Okay, let’s pay them a visit.”

The tow truck was parked in front of Farley Ramsdale’s house and the Mexican driver was knocking on the door when Cosmo Betrossian came squealing down the street in his old Cadillac. The traffic had disrupted everything.

He got out and ran toward the porch, saying to the driver, “I am friend of Gregori. I am the one.”

“Nobody home here,” the Mexican said.

“Is not important,” Cosmo said. “Come. Let us get the car.”

He ran to the garage, opened the termite-eaten door, and was relieved to see that the garage was just as he’d left it.

“Let us push it out to the street,” Cosmo said. “We must work fast. I have important business.”

The Mexican and Cosmo easily pushed the car back down the driveway, Cosmo jumping in to steer after they got it going. The driver knew his job and in a few minutes had the Mazda hooked up and winched. It was all that Cosmo could do to keep from running back up the driveway and snatching the big can full of money from under the house.

Before he got in the truck to drive away, the driver said to Cosmo, “I call you in thirty minute?”

“No, I need more time. Call me in one hour. Traffic very bad tonight. I give you time to get to the yard of Gregori. Then you call, okay?”

“Okay,” the Mexican said, waiting for the promised bonus.

Cosmo opened his wallet and gave the driver fifty dollars and said, “Put it back where junk cars go. Okay?”

As soon as the truck was halfway down the block, Cosmo went to the trunk of the Cadillac and removed the bag of killing tools. He was going to wait at least an hour for them to show up.

He walked quickly back up the driveway to the rear yard of the house and was shocked to see the little access panel hanging open. He dropped the bag and threw himself onto the dirt, crawling under the house. The can of money was gone!

Cosmo screamed an Armenian curse, got up, took the gun from the bag, and ran to the back porch. He didn’t even bother slipping the lock with his credit card like last time. He kicked the flimsy door open and ran inside, prepared to kill anybody in the house after he tortured the truth out of them.

There was no one. He saw a note on the kitchen table in a childish scrawl. It said, “Gone to eat with Mabel. Will bring delishus supper for you.”

His alternate plan to lure them to Gregori’s junkyard, where they could easily be killed, was finished. They had his money. They would never go near him now except to collect the blackmail money from the diamond robbery. They would ask for even more now that they knew about the ATM robbery and the murder of the guard. They must have discovered the Mazda too. Farley had stolen their money, and he would want more money to keep his mouth shut about everything.

Maybe all he could do was give the diamonds to Farley. Give him everything and tell him to do the deal with Dmitri himself. Then beg Dmitri to kill both addicts after they were forced to tell where the money was, and beg Dmitri to be fair with the money split even though so many things had gone wrong. After all, if Dmitri’s Georgian bartender hadn’t given him a stolen car that could barely run, this would not have happened.

Or maybe he should just go home and get Ilya and the diamonds and head for the airport. It was too much for him to work out. He needed Ilya. She was a very smart Russian and he was far out of his depth. He would do whatever she wanted him to do.

Cosmo took his killing bag and went out to his car. He had never been so demoralized in his life. If the Cadillac failed to start, he would just take the pistol from the bag and shoot himself. But it started and he drove home to Ilya. When he was only two blocks from their apartment his cell rang.

He answered and the driver’s voice said, “Mister, I am at Gregori’s with the car. No problem. Everything okay.”

The stolen car was okay, but of course everything else was far from okay.

At 7:15 P.M. Farley was released from the holding tank and told that he was free to go.

Bad cop said to him, “We know you’re connected to those computers, but right now we’re gonna let you walk. I suspect you’ll see us again.”

“Speaking of walk,” Farley said. “My car’s there where you grabbed me. How about a ride back up there?”

“You got a lotta ’tude, dude,” bad cop said. “We’re not running a taxi service.”

“Man, you hassle me, you keep me here for hours when I ain’t done nothing wrong. The least you can do is take me back to my car.”

The Oracle heard the bitching and came out of the sergeant’s office, saying to Farley, “Where do you need to go?”

Farley looked at the old sergeant and said, “Fairfax, just north of Hollywood Boulevard.”

The Oracle said, “I’m going out now. I’ll give you a lift.”

Fifteen minutes later, when the Oracle dropped him at his car, Farley said, “Thanks a lot, Sergeant. You’re okay.”

The Oracle offered the Hollywood mantra: “Stay real, Farley. Stay real.” But he knew that this tweaker would not. Who in Hollywood ever did?

“Teddy?” Mrs. Chang said when Hollywood Nate had a Latino busboy call her from the kitchen. “He eat here?”

“He’s a bum,” Nate said.

“Bum?” she said, grappling with the English meaning.

“Homeless,” Wesley said. “Street person.”

“Oh, street person,” she said. “Him I know. Teddy. Yes.”

“Does he come here?”

“Sometime he come to back door,” Mrs. Chang said. “Come at maybe seven o’clock, sometime later. And we give him food we got to throw away. Teddy. Yes. He sit in kitchen and eat. Nice man. Quiet. We feel sorry.”

“When did you last see him?” Wesley asked.

“Tuesday night maybe. Hard to remember.”

Nate began writing in his notebook and said, “When he comes again, I want you to call this number. Ask that Six-X-Seventy-two come right away. I’ve written it down for you. We don’t want to arrest him. We just have to talk to him. Understand?”

“Yes, I call.”

The house was dark when Farley got home, and the garage door was open. Why would Olive go in the garage? There was nothing in there but junk.

He unlocked the front door and entered, yelling, “Olive! You here?”

She was not, and he went into the kitchen to see if there was any orange juice left and found the back door kicked open!

“Son of a bitch!” he said.

This was the first time that burglars had struck his house, although several houses on the block had been hit by daytime thieves in the past two years. But the TV was still there. He went into the bedroom and saw that the radio-CD player was still there. Nobody had ransacked the bedroom drawers. This wasn’t like house breakers. It wasn’t the way he worked when he himself was a daytime burglar fifteen years ago.

Then he saw the note on the kitchen table. Mabel. He should have known. The fucking old ghost probably was reading tarot cards for Olive and time had gotten away from the skinny moron. He went into the bedroom to strip down and take a shower and then he saw that something was different. The closet was half empty. All of Olive’s clothes were missing, including the jacket he’d shoplifted for her Christmas present. He opened the drawer and saw that her underwear and socks were gone too. She’d bailed on him!

The note. He ran out the front door and across the street to Mabel’s. It was such a warm evening that her door was open, and he could see that the TV was on. He put his hands up to the screen door to peer inside and said, “Mabel!”

The old woman shuffled in from the back bedroom of the cottage, wearing pajamas, a bathrobe, and fuzzy slippers, and said, “Farley? What’re you doing here?”

“Do you know where Olive is?”

“Why, no.”

“She left a note saying she was having supper with you.”

“Yes, she did. And Olive found Tillie under your house where she’d made a nice little den for herself. Tillie’s in my bedroom now, the little brat. I never have completely domesticated her.”

“Did Olive say where she was going when she left?”

“Yes, home.”

Farley had to sit down and ponder that when he got back to the house. Everything was going wrong lately. His entire world was upside down. Without a dollar to her name, that toothless fucking scarecrow had abandoned his ass! This was impossible! That imbecile Olive Oyl had actually dumped Farley Ramsdale, who’d given her everything!

This time it was Cosmo who was lying on the bed trying to quell a throbbing headache. He had quickly briefed Ilya on what had happened and then fell on his knees beside her chair and kissed her hands.

He is beaten, Ilya thought. Cosmo is crying for Mommy. He would never strike her again.

Ilya prepared her third glass of hot tea and lit a cigarette with the butt of the last and finally said, “Cosmo, all is a fuckup.”

“Yes, Ilya,” he murmured painfully.

“I think we must pack the suitcase and make ready to fly away.”

“Yes, Ilya,” Cosmo said. “What you say, I do.”

“On other hand,” she said, looking from one palm to the other for emphasis, “we do not know for absolute truth that Farley has our money.”

“Ilya, please!” Cosmo said. “The money is gone. Farley is gone. I cannot get to Farley with cell. Farley always have cell with him. He is addict. Addict must have cell.”

“One way we find out,” she said. “Sit up, Cosmo!”

He obeyed instantly.

“Call Farley. Go with plan. Tell him Gregori need key cards. Many more. Will pay top money. Let us hear what he shall say.”

Cosmo’s head was aching too much for this but it was impossible not to obey her. He felt as though he was back in Soviet Armenia and the Comrade Chairman himself had spoken. He was afraid of her now. He dialed.

“Hello!” Farley yelled into his cell.

Cosmo was stunned. He couldn’t speak for a moment and Farley said, “Olive? Is that you?”

Looking at Ilya, Cosmo said, “Is me, Farley.”

“Cosmo?” Farley said. “I thought it was Olive. That fucking tweaker has up and disappeared!”

“Olive?” Cosmo said. “Gone?”

He saw the wry smile turn up the corners of Ilya’s mouth, and he said, “You know where she go to?”

“No,” Farley said. “The cunt. I ain’t got a clue.”

Ilya was mouthing the words “Ask him,” and Cosmo said, “I very sorry, Farley. You know Gregori? He need more cards right away.”

“Key cards? Cosmo, you forgot that you and me got a little business deal coming up? You think I’m gonna keep waiting? You think I’m gonna fuck around with key cards?”

“Please, Farley,” Cosmo said. “Do this for me. I owe big favor to Gregori. Just drop off cards at his junkyard tonight. He work to midnight. He will give you fast hundred fifty. You buy crystal.”

The word “crystal” struck a chord with Farley. He wanted to smoke ice more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. This was the kind of deal where he desperately needed Olive. If she were here, he’d drive her over there to the junkyard and send her in. If Cosmo had a plan to waste them, he’d have to settle for Olive. Goddamn her!

“I only got about ten of the primo cards left,” Farley said.

“Is enough,” Cosmo said. “Gregori got a bunch new worker who must have driving license. Gregori so cheap his old worker not stay long. Always new worker.”

“Is that dog in the yard?”

“I tell Gregori to tie up dog. No problem.”

“You tell Gregori to call me. If he says come, I come. He ain’t a violent type. He’s a businessman. You I ain’t so sure about.”

“Okay, I call Gregori now,” Cosmo said. “And if he say come?”

“Then I’ll be there at nine o’clock. Tell Gregori to put the money in a bag and stick the bag between the links of the gate. If the money’s there, I’ll drive in and give him the cards.”

“Okay, Farley,” Cosmo said. Then he added, “Call me if Olive come home.”

“Why?”

“I think I got good job for her.”

“You better have my big bucks this weekend, Cosmo,” Farley said. “Let me worry about Olive if she comes home.”

When Cosmo closed the cell, Ilya took a great puff from her cigarette, sucked it into her lungs, and with her words enveloped in smoke clouds said, “If he go to junkyard tonight, he don’t know nothing about ATM robbery.”

“But I shall kill him anyways. The diamond blackmail shall end.”

“Blackmail still there, Cosmo. Olive has our money and Olive know all about both our jobs. Olive is full of danger for us. Not Farley so much.”

“But I shall kill him anyways?”

“Yes, he must die. Olive may give up the blackmail. She got lot of money now. She buy lot of drugs and die happy in two, three years.”

“Our money,” he said.

“Yes, Cosmo. She got our money, I think so. Call Gregori now. Say again and make him to believe you only scare Farley to pay a debt he owe you. Tell Gregori you will pay money for the Mazda on Monday.”

Before phoning Gregori, Cosmo said, “Ilya, you tell me. When Gregori come to bring key to junkyard, you fuck him. No?”

“Of course, Cosmo,” she said. “Why?”

“If he getting scared about Farley, scared about Mazda that I want to crush to scrap, is okay if I tell him you wish to make him glass of tea one more time? To make him calm?”

“Of course, Cosmo,” she said. “My tea is best in all of Hollywood. Ask Gregori. Ask anybody who taste my tea.”

Six-X-Seventy-two got the call twenty minutes after they’d left the House of Chang. Hollywood Nate spun a U-ee and floored it. He craved redemption.

When they got back to the restaurant, Mrs. Chang tossed her head in the direction of the kitchen. And there they found Trombone Teddy sitting at the chopping block by the back door, happily scarfing down a huge bowl of pan-fried noodles.

“Teddy,” Nate said. “Remember us?”

“I ain’t causing no trouble,” he said. “They invited me in here.”

“Nobody says you’re causing trouble,” Nate said. “A couple questions and you can sit and enjoy your noodles.”

Wesley said, “Remember the fight you had on the boulevard? We’re the officers that got the call. You gave me a card with a license number on it. Remember?”

“Oh yeah!” Teddy said, a noodle plastered to his beard. “That son of a bitch sucker-punched me.”

“That’s the night,” Nate said. “Do you still have the card? With the license number?”

“Sure,” Teddy said. “But nobody wants it.”

“We want it now,” Wesley said.

Trombone Teddy put down his fork and searched inside his third layer of shirts, dug into a pocket with grimy fingers, and pulled out the House of Chang business card.

Wesley took it, looked at the license number, and nodded to Nate, who said, “Teddy, what kind of car was it that the mail thief was driving?”

“An old blue Pinto,” Teddy said. “Like I wrote down on the card.”

“And what did the guy look like?”

“I can’t remember no more,” Teddy said. “A white guy. Maybe thirty. Maybe forty. Nasty mouth. Insulted me. That’s why I wrote down the license number.”

“And his companion?” Wesley said.

“A woman. That’s all I can remember.”

“Would you recognize either of them if you saw them again?” Nate said.

“No, they was just dark shadows. He was just a dark shadow with a nasty mouth.”

“Tell us again what she called him,” Wesley said.

“I don’t remember,” Teddy said.

“You told me Freddy,” Wesley said.

“Did I?”

“Or Morley?”

“If you say so. But it don’t ring a bell now.”

“Have you seen them either before or after that?”

“Yeah, I saw them try to hustle a clerk in a store.”

“When?”

“A few days after he insulted me.”

“What store?”

“Coulda been like a Target store. Or maybe it was RadioShack. Or like a Best Buy store. I can’t remember. I get around.”

“At least,” Nate said, “you got another good look at them, right?”

“Yeah, but I still can’t remember what they look like. They’re white people. Maybe thirty years old. Or forty. But they could be fifty. I can’t tell ages no more. You can check with the guy at the store. He gave me a ten-buck reward for telling him they were crooks. They had a bogus credit card. Or bogus money. Something like that.”

“Jesus,” Nate said, looking at Wesley in frustration.

Wesley said, “If we can find the store and find the guy who saw them, at least you can say that they’re the same two people who stole from the mailbox, isn’t that right?”

“He stole from the mailbox,” Teddy said. “She didn’t. I got a feeling she’s okay. He’s a total asshole.”

Wesley said, “If the detectives need to talk to you, where can they find you?”

“There’s an old empty office building on that street on the east side of Hollywood Cemetery. I’m living there for now. But I come here a few nights a week for supper.”

“Can you remember anything else?” Hollywood Nate said, taking a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and putting it on the chopping block.

“Hell, half the time I can’t remember what day it is,” Teddy said. Then he looked at them and said, “What day is it, anyways?”

Viktor Chernenko was known for working late, especially with his obsession to solve the jewelry store robbery and the ATM robbery-murder, and most of the veteran cops from Hollywood Station were aware of it. Nate knew it and was busting stop signs and speeding to the station faster than he’d driven to the House of Chang.

They ran into the detective squad room and were overjoyed to see Viktor still there, typing on his computer keyboard.

“Viktor,” Nate said. “Here it is!”

Viktor looked at the business card, at the license number and the words “blue Pinto” written on it, and he said, “My mail thief?”

Since he had been on the initial callout, Brant worked all day in southeast L.A. with Andi on the Gulag homicide. Doobie D, whom they had identified through data received from his cell provider, was Latelle Granville, a twenty-four-year-old member of the Crips with an extensive record for drug sales and weapons violations. He had begun using his cell in the afternoon.

With a team of detectives from Southeast Division assisting, the cell towers eventually triangulated him to the vicinity of a residence on 103rd Street known to be the family home of a Crips cruiser named Delbert Minton. He had a far more extensive record than Latelle Granville and turned out to be the Crip who had been fighting with the slain student. Both were arrested at Minton’s without incident and taken back to Hollywood Station for interview and booking. Both Crips refused to speak and demanded to call their lawyers.

It had been a very long day, and the detectives were hungry and tired from working well into an overtime evening. Then Andi returned a phone call from a cocktail waitress, one of the people she’d interviewed at the Gulag on the night of the murder. At that time, the waitress, Angela Hawthorn, had told Andi she was at the service bar fetching drinks when the fight broke out and had seen nothing. So why was she calling now? Andi wondered.

“This is Detective McCrea,” Andi said when the woman answered her cell.

“Hello,” Angela Hawthorn said. “I’m at home. I don’t work at the Gulag anymore. Dmitri fired me because I wouldn’t put out for one of his rich Russian customers. I have some information that might help you.”

“I’m listening,” Andi said.

“Up in the corner of the building by the window to Dmitri’s office there’s a video camera that sees everything on the smoking patio. During the party I’m pretty sure it was there like it always is. But when you showed up it wasn’t there. Dmitri probably took it down so you wouldn’t see it.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He’s paranoid about bad publicity and cops and courtrooms. And he doesn’t want trouble with black hoodlums. In fact, he doesn’t want black customers. He just wouldn’t want to be involved in your murder case. Anyways, if you get that camera from him I’ll bet you’ll see that black guy sticking the knife in that kid. Just keep my name out of it, okay?”

When Andi hung up, she said to Brant, “Do you need money?”

“Why?”

“You’re going to be getting even more overtime. There might be video at the Gulag with our murder shown right there on it!”

Brant looked around, but all the other detectives had gone home. Only the night-watch detective Compassionate Charlie was there, with his feet up on the desk, sucking his teeth as usual, reading the L.A. Times sports page.

“I’m all you got?” he said.

“Don’t be a wuss. This is more fun than being an IA weasel, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m starting to miss the Burn Squad. At least I got fed every once in a while.”

“When we’re all through tonight, I’m making you a very late supper with a bottle of good Pinot I’ve been saving. How’s that sound?”

“Suddenly I’m renewed,” he said.

“One thing, though,” Andi said. “I think I should call Viktor. We might find a Russian translator very useful if this nightclub owner starts lyin’ and denyin’ like he probably will. Viktor is a master at handling those people, a kick-ass skill he learned in the bad old days with the Red Army.”

“He’s just getting home by now,” Brant said. “He won’t be pleased.”

“He owes me,” Andi said. “Didn’t I do a dumpster dive for him? Didn’t it cost me a busted bra strap?”

Eavesdropping as usual, Compassionate Charlie said, “Hey, you guys looking for Viktor? He left in a hell of a hurry with Hollywood Nate and that big kid Nate works with. I love to watch Viktor run. Like a bear on roller skates.”