Hollywood Station

NINETEEN

COSMO COULD NOT stop cursing as he drove west toward Hollywood. He kept looking at his watch without knowing why. He kept thinking of Ilya, of what she would say, of what they would do. He kept wondering how long it would take that miserable addict Farley to phone the police and tell them about the jewelry store robbery. At least Farley couldn’t tell them about the ATM robbery and the killing of the guard. Ilya was correct. Farley did not know about that or he would not have come to Gregori’s tonight. But that was very little consolation now.

His finger was throbbing and so was his head. He had a laceration just inside the hairline and it was still oozing blood. His finger would need suturing and maybe his head would as well. Almost every bone and muscle ached. He wondered if his hip was broken. Should he go home? Would the police be waiting for him there?

Tonight he had used the Beretta 9-millimeter pistol that he’d taken from the guard. He thought it would be much more accurate than the cheap street gun he had used in the robberies. And what good did it do him? But at least he still had rounds left in the magazine. He had no intention of living his life in prison like an animal. Not Cosmo Betrossian.

He opened his cell and phoned Ilya. If she did not answer, it meant that the police were already there.

“Yes?” Ilya said.

“Ilya! You are okay?”

“Yes, I am okay. Are you okay, Cosmo?”

“Not okay, Ilya. Nothing is correct.”

“Shit.”

“I am bleeding on my hand and head. I need bandage on my wounds and I need a new shirt and I need a cap to hide blood. Not the cap from that day.”

“I threw the baseball cap away, Cosmo. I am not so stupid.”

“I shall be home soon. I must be putting gas in my car. I think there is more safety if we drive to San Francisco.”

“Shit.”

“Yes, Farley may be calling police now. Make all things ready to travel. I shall see you soon.”

Before she began packing their clothes Ilya went to the closet shelf and removed the bag of rings and earrings and loose diamonds. She left a sufficient sampling of each for Cosmo to show to Dmitri. Then she put the rest in a very safe place.

The intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street was a very busy place, completely blocked off by police. Viktor Chernenko was there, having left the stakeout at Farley Ramsdale’s house. The house would now be the object of a hastily written search warrant as soon as Viktor got back to the office. After Hollywood Nate told him that the homicide victim was definitely his person of interest, Farley Ramsdale, Viktor began to think of Farley as having been much more ambitious than a petty mail thief. Whatever his connection to the Russian robbers it had gotten him killed.

And when word got to the detective squad room that the pursuit suspect had ended up dead, shot at some location east of Hollywood Division but wanted by Viktor Chernenko, it stirred a lot of interest from the usually disinterested night-watch detective Compassionate Charlie Gilford.

Andi McCrea and Brant Hinkle were just getting ready to leave for the Gulag to follow up on their own homicide case and try to get their hands on Dmitri’s videotape, when Compassionate Charlie looked their way.

Andi said, “Don’t even think about it, Charlie. The guy was shot somewhere outside Hollywood, and I’ve got all I can handle anyway.”

Compassionate Charlie shrugged and started making calls. When he was through, he put on his checked sport coat and headed for Sunset and Gower so as not to miss a chance to offer commentary on another Hollywood dream gone terribly wrong.

Wesley Drubb was so excited that Hollywood Nate told him to hang on to his seat belt for fear of levitation. Viktor Chernenko had spoken to Robbery-Homicide Division detectives from the Bank Squad who were on the ATM case and had phoned his lieutenant at home. Things were happening so fast it was hard to decide what to do next other than to write a search warrant for the Ramsdale house and hope that they could locate the woman who called herself Olive Ramsdale. Another Hollywood robbery team had the house under surveillance, waiting for her.

There wasn’t anything else for 6-X-72 to do at the moment, so Nate and Wesley reluctantly had to go back to the streets and return to ordinary police work.

Viktor said to them, “I shall write you a commendation for your good performance whether or not we solve this case. And do not forget Olive. You know her. You might see her at the taco stand or the doughnut shop or the cybercafé.”

“We’ll be looking,” Nate said.

“Keep the eyes skinned,” Viktor said. “And thank you.”

Andi and Brant had decided to have a quick bite before going to the Gulag. One thing about Russian nightclubs, they stayed open until the last minute the law allowed, so Andi figured they had plenty of time left.

They were in Thai Town, Andi working on a green papaya salad and Brant devouring a red curry with chicken, his eyes watering from the chilis. They each drank two Thai iced coffees, both to soothe their burning mouths and because they needed the caffeine jolt, having had so little sleep in the past two days.

Brant said, “Since I’m the new kid on the block and bouncing from robbery team to helping you, I think I’ll talk to the lieutenant about working homicide full-time. You’re shorthanded.”

“Everybody’s shorthanded,” Andi said, sipping the iced coffee through a straw.

“It’s not that anybody would fight over me,” Brant said. “The boss knows I’ll only be around here until the promotion list gets down to me and I’m appointed.”

“Lieutenant Hinkle,” Andi said. “It has a nice sound. You’ll be a good watch commander.”

“Not as good as you,” Brant said. “I expect you to knock ’em dead and be near the top of the next list. The troops will love working for you.”

“Why is that?”

“You have a good heart.”

“How do you know what’s inside? You’ve only seen the outside of me.”

“Cop instinct.”

“Careful, buddy. I’m at the age where I get all giddy when a man flatters me like that. I might do something stupid. Like taking you seriously.”

“I’m several years older than you. I’m ready to be taken seriously.”

“Let’s postpone this conversation until end-of-watch,” Andi said, “when I can focus on it.”

“Whatever you say, partner.”

“I say, let’s go get a videotape and clear a homicide.”

“Is Viktor still gonna meet us there for a little Russian fast talk?”

“He’s a very busy guy tonight but he said he would.”

“To the Gulag, comrade,” Brant said with a smile that crinkled his heavily lashed green eyes and made Andi’s toes curl under.

Cosmo was a shocking sight to Ilya when he limped up the stairs. She helped him clean up the head wound and stanch the ooze of blood. As to his finger, she did her best to hold the laceration together with butterfly Band-Aids, then wrapped and taped the finger until they could get to a doctor tomorrow and have it sutured. Where they would have that done, where they would be tomorrow, was anybody’s guess. Ilya just wanted to concentrate on getting the money from Dmitri tonight.

“We may run away now, Ilya,” Cosmo said. “We have diamonds. We find somebody in San Francisco.”

“We are very much hot,” Ilya said. “Too much happening. We got no time no more. The police shall be coming when Farley informs to them about us. No time to fish for diamond people in San Francisco. We need money now. You know, Cosmo, I may run clear back to Russia. I do not know.”

He didn’t know either. All he knew was that he was very much afraid to face Dmitri tonight without the ATM money. And to try to sell him a lie. Dmitri was very smart. More smart than Ilya, he thought.

He made the phone call to the cell number Dmitri had given to him.

“Yes,” Dmitri answered.

“Is me, brother,” Cosmo said.

“Do not say your name.”

“I shall like to come in thirty minute.”

“Okay.”

“You ready to finish business?”

“Yes, and you?”

Cosmo swallowed and said, “Ready, brother.”

“See you in thirty,” Dmitri said, and somehow Cosmo could see that smile of his.

Cosmo put on the black beret to hide his head wound. It was something that Ilya wore with her black sweater and boots when she wanted to look very sexy. He wore a pale white sport coat and blue slacks and his best cordovan shoes. He tucked the Beretta inside his waistband in the small of his back. He cinched the leather belt tight to hold the pistol there.

Ilya was wearing the tightest red skirt she owned, and a shell with a deep V neckline, the one that made her breasts swell out, and a short black jacket over that, one trimmed with sequins. And since they were going to a Russian club she wore her black knee boots with three-inch heels. She was not short on bling, she thought. Ilya liked that American word: “bling.”

Cosmo forced a brave smile and said, “We go to get our thirty-five thousands, Ilya. We go to the Gulag.”

The Oracle looked at the clock. He was getting hungry and this had been a very busy night what with the pursuit driven by a dead man, and Viktor Chernenko tying up one of his midwatch cars, along with more ordinary Hollywood madness breaking out here and there as though there was a full moon. He felt a stab of heartburn and popped a couple of antacid tablets.

He said to the Watch 3 sergeant, “I gotta go do a PR job to keep some dirtbag of a lawyer from making a personnel complaint on everybody in Hollywood Division who met or failed to meet his goofy daughter who’s made a bogus crime report. I just gotta get the name and address of the manager of a nightclub, if the guy really is the manager. Maybe he just has business cards made up to impress the chicks he meets in bars.”

“Which nightclub you going to?” the sergeant asked.

“A Russian joint called the Gulag. You know it?”

“No, but I imagine it’s a Russian Mafia hangout. They change owners and names more often than they change underwear.”

The Oracle said, “After that, I’ll be taking code seven with Fausto and his partner. They found a hot new mama-and-papa Mexican eatery. Call if you need me.”

When the Oracle drove out of the Hollywood Station parking lot, he sent a message to 6-X-76 telling them he was on his way to the Gulag and shouldn’t be there for more than fifteen minutes.

The Gulag parking lot was jammed when Cosmo wheeled his Cadillac in. He had to park in the far corner by the trash containers.

“Dmitri should hire valet boys,” Ilya observed nervously.

“Too cheap,” Cosmo said.

They could hear the place rocking the moment they stepped out of their cars. Cosmo snuffed out his cigarette, touched the pistol under his coat, and limped to the entrance with Ilya.

Ilya went to the bar, joined the rows of drinkers trying to get service, and called to the sweaty bartender, “Excuse me, please.”

A boozy young guy sitting at the bar turned and looked at her face, then at her tits, got up from the bar stool, and said, “I’ll give you my seat if you’ll let me buy you a drink.”

Ilya gave him her best professional smile, took his bar stool, and said, “That is lovely, darling.”

Smiling at her accent, he said, “Are you Russian?”

“Yes, darling,” she said.

“How about I order you a Black Russian?”

“I prefer a white American,” she said, and the young guy laughed out loud, drunk enough that anything was funny.

Ilya wished that the world had not stopped smoking. She would have given a diamond for a cigarette at this moment.

As busy as he was, Viktor Chernenko had made a promise to Andi McCrea, and a promise was a promise. He looked at his watch and told Compassionate Charlie that he had to quickly run to a Russian nightclub called the Gulag to do a verbal muscle job for Andi in the proprietor’s own language. As for the outside detectives who were on their way to the station to help piece together the puzzle of the Ramsdale murder and Hollywood robberies, Viktor planned to stay tonight as long as there was hope of finding Farley Ramsdale’s woman. He had a copy of her minor rap sheet for petty theft and drug possession and saw that the name “Olive Ramsdale” must be a recent alias. She’d given the name “Mary Sullivan” when she’d been arrested, but who could say if that was her true name?

Then he put in a quick phone call home and got his wife, Maria, on the phone.

“Hello, my darling,” he said. “This is your most loving husband.”

Compassionate Charlie said, “What the hell?” and looked at Viktor like he’d just burped pepper spray. Charlie couldn’t bear telephone canoodling.

“I am working on the most important matter of my entire career, my little sweetheart,” Viktor said. “It is possible that I shall be sleeping here in the cot room tonight. I do not know for sure.”

Then Viktor listened with a dopey smile on his broad Slavic face, said, “Me too!” and actually did kisses into the receiver before he rang off.

“Is this your first marriage, Viktor?” Charlie asked him.

“My first, my last,” Viktor said.

Charlie shook his head and said, “Must be a Russian thing.”

“I am not Russian,” Viktor said patiently. “I am Ukrainian.”

Compassionate Charlie said, “Bring me back some kielbasa if the Gulag looks like a clean joint.”

“That is Polish, not Russian,” Viktor said, heading for the door.

“Polish, Russian, Ukrainian. Gimme a fucking break, Viktor,” Compassionate Charlie whined.

Cosmo knocked at the door to Dmitri’s office and heard “Come.”

When he limped into the office, he saw Dmitri in his high-back chair behind the desk, but not with his feet up this time and not watching exotic porn on the computer screen. An older man in a dark suit and a striped necktie, bald except for a scraggly fringe of gray, was sitting on the leather sofa against the wall.

Standing by the window that looked down on the smoking patio where the murder had occurred was the Georgian bartender, wearing a starched white shirt, a black bow tie, and black pants. His wavy black hair was even thicker than Cosmo’s and he had a square, dark jaw that no razor could ever shave clean. He nodded to Cosmo.

Dmitri smiled that unreadable smile and said, “The happen-ink guy is here! Please to meet Mr. Grushin, Cosmo. And show to him your goods for sale.”

“I have some sample,” Cosmo said, and Dmitri’s smile faded and his face seemed to grow pale around the corners of his mouth. So Cosmo quickly added, “All other diamonds downstairs with Ilya. Not to worry, brother.”

“I do not worry,” Dmitri said, smiling again. “Why are you so injured?”

“I shall explain after,” Cosmo said. Then he removed a plastic sandwich bag from his jacket pocket and poured out two rings, three sets of earrings, and five loose diamonds onto Dmitri’s desk.

Mr. Grushin got up and walked to the desk. The Georgian pulled the client chair close so he could sit. Mr. Grushin took a jeweler’s loupe from his pocket and examined each item under the light of the desk lamp and when he was through nodded to Dmitri, got up, and left the office.

“I may see money now, brother?” Cosmo said.

Dmitri opened the top desk drawer and withdrew three large stacks of currency, placing them on the desk in front of him. He did not ask Cosmo to sit.

“Okay, my friend,” Dmitri said. “Tell me of ATM. And when I shall receive my half of money you got from there.”

Cosmo felt the dampness under his arms, and his palms were wet when he pointed his uninjured hand at the Georgian and said, “He gave us a no-good car. The car die when we leave ATM!”

The Georgian said something quickly in Russian to Dmitri that Cosmo couldn’t understand, then turned a scowl toward Cosmo and said, “You lie! The car is good car. I drove car. You lie.”

Now Cosmo felt his stomach gurgle and his bowels rumble and he said, “No, Dmitri. This Georgian, he lie! We have to drive the car away from ATM and park at the house of guy I know. We almost get caught by police!”

“You lie!” the Georgian said, taking a menacing step toward Cosmo until Dmitri held up his hand and stopped him.

“Enough,” Dmitri said to both men.

“I tell you truth, brother,” Cosmo said. “I swear.”

“Now, Cosmo, where is money from ATM?” Dmitri asked.

“The man where we must take no-good car, his woman steal our money and run away from her man. But not to worry. We shall find her. We get money.”

“This man,” Dmitri said calmly, “he does not know noth-ink of me? Noth-ink of the Gulag?”

“No, brother!” Cosmo said. “Never!”

“And what of this man? What is his name?”

“Farley Ramsdale,” Cosmo said. “He is addict.”

Dmitri looked in disbelief at Cosmo, then at the Georgian and back to Cosmo, and said, “You leave my money with addict?”

“No choice, brother!” Cosmo said. “This Georgian give us car that don’t run. And Farley not at home so we got to hide car in his garage and hide money under his house. But goddamn addict woman, she find it and run away!”

Cosmo’s mouth was dry as sand now and it made a popping sound each time his lips opened. The Georgian was glaring at him dangerously but Cosmo could hardly take his eyes from the thirty-five thousand dollars. It was a bigger pile of money than he’d imagined.

“Go get Ilya,” Dmitri said. “Brink her up and I buy you drinks and we complete diamond deal and you tell me how you catch addict woman and tell me when you goink to get me my money from ATM.”

This was the moment he dreaded. This is what Ilya said he must do regardless of the outcome. Cosmo swallowed twice and said, “No, brother. I take money now and your Georgian come with me down to the bar and Ilya go to bathroom and get diamonds from safe place and give to this Georgian. Lot of peoples down there. Safe for everybody.”

Dmitri laughed out loud at that and said, “Cosmo, is information on TV and in newspaper correct? How much you find in the box?”

“Ninety-three thousands,” Cosmo said.

“TV lady say hundred thousand,” Dmitri said, “but never mind, I believe you. So this mean you owe to me forty-six thousand and five hundred dollars and I owe to you thirty-five thousand dollars. So we do mathematics and we discover eleven thousand, five hundred dollars you owe to me. And the diamonds, too. Is very simple, no?”

Cosmo was dripping sweat now. His shirt was soaked and he kept wiping his palms on his trousers, standing there like a child, looking down at this Russian pervert and up at the Georgian thug standing beside him. And he wanted badly just to touch the Beretta, cold against the sweat on his back.

Cosmo said, “Please to give me three minute to explain how the car this Georgian steal for us is reason for every problem!”

The Oracle was very surprised to see the detective car parked in the red zone on the east side of the nightclub, where he too was forced to park, the packed parking lot being an impossibility. He wondered which detective was in there and why. As he was walking toward the door, a black-and-white slowed and stopped and Fausto gave a short toot to get his attention. The Oracle walked over to the curb, bent down, and said, “I won’t be long, Fausto.”

“Want some company?” Budgie said. “I’ve never been inside one of these Russian glam palaces.”

“Okay, but we’ll scare the crap outta them,” the Oracle said. “There’s already a detective team in there.”

“For what?” Fausto said.

“Maybe the murder the other night,” the Oracle said. “Five cops? They’ll think they’re back in the USSR.”

When the Oracle entered, followed by Fausto and Budgie, he spotted Andi and Brant standing back by the restrooms talking to a guy in a tuxedo who the Oracle figured might be the manager Andrei.

The decibel level was astounding and multicolored lights and strobes were playing all over the dance-floor pit, where couples, mostly young, were “get-tink down,” as Dmitri called it. From her seat at the end of the bar, Ilya couldn’t see the three uniformed cops who entered and headed toward a narrow corridor by the kitchen. The Oracle, Fausto, and Budgie attracted some attention but not much, and they surprised the detectives.

Andi had to shout over the music. “What’re you doing here? Don’t tell me there’s another murder on the patio I haven’t heard about?”

The Oracle said to the unhappy-looking guy in the tuxedo, “Are you Andrei?”

“Yes,” the manager said.

“We’ll give you cuts in line with this one,” Andi said to the Oracle. “We’re waiting to see Dmitri, the proprietor.”

The Oracle said to Andrei, “I need to have a chat with you and get your name and address. I’ll explain when we get to a quiet place, if such a thing exists around here.” Then, with a wink at Andi, he indicated Fausto and Budgie and said to Andrei, “These two’re my bodyguards. I take them with me wherever I go.”

Andrei had a what-else-can-go-wrong look on his face then. Just as something else was about to go very wrong.

Dmitri’s eyes were half closed as Cosmo glossed over the aftermath of the ATM robbery, leaving out his confrontation tonight with Farley Ramsdale.

And when Cosmo was through, Dmitri said, “You had to shoot the guard?”

“Yes, Dmitri,” Cosmo said. “He did not give up money like you say.”

Dmitri shrugged and said, “Sometimes information on enemy is not correct. Ask President Bush.”

Cosmo was getting his hopes built until Dmitri turned to the Georgian and said, “Okay, maybe is a little piece of truth about the car. Maybe the car is not so good as you think.”

“Dmitri!” the Georgian said, but he saw the look in Dmitri’s eye and stopped his protest.

“So, Cosmo,” Dmitri said, “you are going to get ATM money tomorrow when you catch addict woman, no?”

“That is exactly correct,” Cosmo said.

“Okay, here is what I do for you, Cosmo,” said Dmitri. “You owe me eleven thousand, five hundred plus diamonds. I am go-ink to cancel the money what you owe me! You get Ilya up here and give me all diamonds and we are even. Tomorrow when you catch addict woman, you keep all ninety-three thousand dollars. Your share, my share. I could not be more generous with my own brother, Cosmo.”

Then Dmitri looked up at the Georgian for validation and got a nod of agreement that said Dmitri was a very reasonable and very generous man.

It was hopeless. Cosmo was the image of despair. As Cosmo was staring at the money on Dmitri’s desk, the Russian opened the top drawer and put the first stack back inside. When he reached for the second stack, Cosmo felt that he was outside his body and watching himself pull his coat back and reach behind him for the Beretta.

“Dmitri!” the Georgian yelled, coming up with a small pistol, from where, Cosmo didn’t see.

And Dmitri shouted in Russian and opened a second drawer and reached inside for a gun of his own.

Andi said to the other cops and to Andrei the manager, “We’ve waited long enough. I’m going to knock on Dmitri’s door.”

She was interrupted by one shot followed by two more followed by five! And the two detectives and three uniformed cops ran upstairs. Andi was getting her pistol out of her purse when Fausto and Budgie passed her and both crouched down on one knee, guns extended in two hands aimed at the door of Dmitri’s office. The Oracle ran to the other side of the door, and with his old six-inch revolver extended, he backed up, so that all guns, high and low, were deployed diagonally, pointed at the door.

Inside the office, Cosmo Betrossian had pain in his left arm that far exceeded anything he’d suffered this night either from Farley Ramsdale or the killer dog. Cosmo had a through-and-through wound in the biceps that had chipped the bone before exiting, and it burned like liquid fire.

The Georgian was sprawled across Dmitri’s desk, spurting blood from an arterial penetration in the neck. But his chest wounds were even more devastating.

Dmitri was sitting back in his chair with a hole in his forehead that was actually a coup de grâce delivered by Cosmo as Dmitri lay dying, having fired the round that wounded Cosmo.

The thundering sounds from the pit below Dmitri’s office had actually muffled the sound from the patrons’ area, and everyone rocked on. From time to time Ilya gazed across the dance floor, wondering why Cosmo had not returned.

Cosmo hoped he didn’t faint before he got down to Ilya with the stacks of money inside his shirt against his skin. The money felt good. He was about to put his gun back into his waistband, but thinking that an employee from the kitchen might have heard the shots, he held the gun in front of him with his one good hand and opened the door.

In such confined space it sounded to Fausto like automatic weapon fire that he’d heard in Nam. Budgie later said that it sounded to her like one huge explosion. She couldn’t differentiate the separate weapons firing.

Cosmo Betrossian got off exactly one shot, which hit the wall above their heads. He in turn was shot eighteen times with nine rounds missing him, probably as he was twisting and falling. All five cops shot him at least twice, with Fausto and Budgie scoring the most hits.

This being her first shooting, Andi McCrea later said during the FID investigation that it truly was like a slow-motion sequence. She could see, or thought she could see, hot shell casings ejecting into the air from various pistols and slapping against her face.

The Oracle said that in forty-six years, this was the first time he’d ever fired his weapon outside of the police pistol range.

Budgie had the most interesting commentary. She said that in such close confines, all the muzzle blasts and gun smoke had created a condition that, with her mouth wide open and sucking air, got her chewing gum full of grit.

The pandemonium that followed was worse than what occurred on the night of the patio stabbing. The customers did hear the roar of the multiple gunshots from the upstairs hallway. Budgie and Fausto ran down the stairs to grab the manager and anybody else who looked like he might know what the hell had happened upstairs to cause the original gunfire. The Oracle made urgent calls on his rover.

By the time Viktor Chernenko pulled up in front, people were pouring from the front door and running for their cars. The parking lot was in such chaos that the cars in the back of the lot could not move. Headlights were flashing and horns were honking. Viktor bulled his way through emerging hysterical customers and took the stairs two at a time.

When he got to the scene of carnage, he said to the Oracle, “One of these Russians may be the one I am looking for! Maybe the one who shot Farley Ramsdale!”

The Oracle, who was pale and had the worst heartburn of his life, said, “A busboy told us the one in the chair is the owner. The one lying across the desk is a bartender. The one we shot…”-and he pointed to the ragged, bloody heap lying in the corner just beyond the door-“I don’t know who he is. He killed the other two.”

Viktor said, “You have latex gloves?” and when the Oracle shook his head, Viktor said, “Hell with it!” and pulled Cosmo’s wallet from his back pocket and ran back down the stairs, his hands stained by Cosmo’s blood.

When he got to the sidewalk in front he could hear sirens wailing as patrol units were arriving from all directions.

“Come with me!” Viktor yelled to Wesley Drubb, who had just leaped from their car as Nate was double-parking it.

Wesley followed Viktor to the parking lot, where Viktor looked inside each and every car with his flashlight as the cars took turns trying to funnel out of the narrow driveway. Most cars had couples in them or single men. Less than ten percent of the cars were driven by single women, but for every one that was, Viktor’s flashlight beamed squarely into the driver’s face.

He was starting to think that he’d been wrong when he got to the last row of cars, but then he saw a big blond woman with huge breasts behind the wheel of an older Cadillac. Viktor turned to Wesley, his flashlight on Cosmo’s driver’s license, showing Wesley the name. Then he shined his light on the Cadillac and said, “Please get a DMV on this license plate! Very fast!”

Viktor hung his badge on his coat pocket, walked up to the driver’s door, and tapped on the window with his flashlight, his pistol in hand concealed just below the window ledge. And he smiled.

The woman rolled down the window, smiled back at him, and said, “Yes, Officer?”

“Your name, please,” Viktor said.

“Ilya Roskova,” she said. “There is a problem?” Then she looked to see if the queue of cars was moving, but it was not.

“Maybe,” Viktor said. “And is this your car?”

“No, I borrow this car from a friend. She is a neighbor. I am so stupid I do not even know her family name.”

“May I see the registration?”

Ilya said, “Shall I look in glove box?”

“By every means,” Viktor said, shining his light on her right hand as well as the glove compartment. His gun coming up a bit higher.

“No,” she said. “No papers in there.”

“This car belongs to a woman, then?”

“Yes,” Ilya said. “But not to this woman who sits before you in traffic.” Her smile broke wider, a bit coquettish.

Hollywood Nate and Wesley came running back, and Wesley whispered, “Cosmo Betrossian. Same as on that driver’s license.”

“So you know the owner of the car, then?” Viktor said to Ilya.

“Yes,” Ilya said cautiously. “Her name is Nadia.”

“Do you know Cosmo Betrossian?”

“No, I do not think so,” Ilya said.

Viktor raised his pistol to her face and said in Russian, “You will please step from the car with your hands where we can see them at all times, Madame Roskova.”

As Wesley handcuffed Ilya’s hands behind her back, she said, “I shall be calling my lawyer immediately. I am completely full of outrage!”

When they were transporting her to Hollywood Station, Nate said to his partner, “Well, Wesley, what do you think of your misdemeanor division now?”