Boulevard (2 page)

“I didn't kill the asshole. And I got two cops asking me all this bullshit like I did.”

“What planet you on, man? I see you on the Boulevard, you're the
first
one I ask.”

Casey stared over at the counter, anything to avoid being sucked in. By the window, Joey was lighting a cigarette and at the same time reading the sports section while he filled the coffee maker. Passing right by Joey's window, was a cruiser. A minute later, another one.

“Chill, Doggie,” Dream threw in between bites. “They'll get the guy who done it and this shit'll be over.”

“Got that right,” said Jumper. “One thing I learned in County—crime makes you stupid. Look at O.J. Leaves his glove, his blood, his hat, everything.”

“O.J. beat it, man,” Dog-Face said.

“O.J. had the million-dollar lawyer. Ninety-nine point nine percent of everyone else don't. He still done it. And they're gonna try him over again, right? You gotta be good to pull off the perfect crime and not get caught. You get pissed off and kill some dude, it don't make you the perfect criminal—it just makes you a killer. Everyone's guaranteed to fuck up. Watch—a week from now—they'll bust the guy who greased the mayor's buddy. And you ain't gonna find no million-dollar lawyer there to get him off.”

Casey kept looking ahead. Just look out the window. Better to see the cruisers and cops than the eyes of the kids. She felt something. Dream's hand on her wrist.

“You alright, girl?”

“Yeah.” Casey said it strong and tough, but even as she said it, she thought, that's one shitty acting job. She kept telling herself:
just make it till tonight and they'll forget about it. It'll be just another jerk who got taxed in Hollywood. Make it through tonight …

“You sure? 'Cause—”

There was a loud bang on the restaurant's window. Casey spun around … It was only Tulip, slapping the glass with the heel of her palm. She was wearing her usual battered leather miniskirt and torn fishnet stockings. Tulip was yelling over the noise of the kids talking inside, and the traffic going by outside. Casey could barely make out what she was saying:

“You gotta do me a favor.”

Outside, Tulip leaned against the glass and lit a Marlboro. She had dirty blonde hair, sort of a cute face, and Casey always thought if she'd been hanging out in some suburban mall instead of on the street, she'd probably actually look seventeen—that was her real age—but nobody here would ever guess it. She offered Casey a smoke which Casey was happy to take.

“You gotta do me a favor. See that girl—”

Tulip pointed down the block to a girl who looked about sixteen or seventeen. She was pretty, wearing clothes that were cool—not LA cool—but cool if you were from someplace else, which everyone was, and unlike all the other kids, she looked clean—her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, her jeans were nice, her backpack was just a little ratty. She couldn't have been out too long. The girl looked over at Casey and Tulip. Casey's and her eyes met. She knew they were talking about her and looked away.

“I found her, like an hour ago. By the bus station,” Tulip said as Casey stole another glance back at her.

“Another one?”

“She don't know nothing. Like you was when I first seen you.”

“Yeah, right,” Casey said.

“That
is
right … Just take care of her for a coupla hours, okay?”

“I can't.”

“I got a date. C'mon.”

“Don't do this to me. Not now. Not today.”

“You gotta. Date. Money. C'mon—”

“Please—

Before Casey could say anything else, Tulip was off down the street, waving back over her shoulder. As she went, she called back, “Her name's Robin—at least for now.”

4
Jimmy

J
immy McCann always thought the place looked a little sad. He had been coming to the Peking for years, and as much as he liked it, he really didn't
like
it. It was a dive. The place smelled like a window hadn't been cracked in a decade; it was dark, and when he first started coming, Jimmy thought the darkness was intentional, a mood thing, but later, he came to realize, they just never got around to changing the bulbs. For 20 bucks worth from Thrifty's, you might actually be able to see the food on your table—but on the other hand, maybe that wasn't such a good idea at the Peking. The walls were lined with headshots of actors, almost all of them no one ever heard of, but who might have had a bit part thirty years ago in some long-forgotten television show. Sometimes you found the same actors at the bar, but with a lot more mileage on them. That was a little sad too, because there it was, framed on the wall, proof that once they had their golden smiles, perfect hair and teeth, and dreams unshattered. Now, when Jimmy looked at them, they were nursing Bloody Marys and watching a basketball game that no sane person gave a shit about. The crowd didn't change much, but every few years the place would get trendy for fifteen minutes, and Jimmy would have to fight a bunch of kids, pierced and inked from head to toe, to get a seat. But for all the regulars bitching about the new arrivals, Jimmy liked the kids, and they often came over to his booth or sat beside him at the bar. The kids never knew what to make of him; he had a warm, round face, thick hair that was once dark red but now brown, and looked in his early thirties, but in truth, he was thirty-nine. He wore jeans and flannel shirts like it was a uniform and was cool to knock down beers with and talk about anything from the Dodgers' hopes for winning the division, to how the CIA screwed the pooch on everything they touched. But he was also a cop so they never felt completely comfortable around him. That was okay with Jimmy, he already had plenty of friends. Besides, part of Jimmy's theory of life was, everybody needed a place to escape, and his was this shit-hole bar on the corner of Santa Monica and Hibiscus.

In a dark booth, where long tears in the red leather were patched with fraying gray gaffer's tape, Jimmy took a pull on a Rolling Rock. Across from him, was a full bottle, untouched. He glanced up at the game, finished his beer, and wondered whether the time had come to go for the other bottle. A hand dropped down in front of him and lifted the bottle.

“Hard at work?” Christian said, as he slid into the booth.

“Meeting with you, right?”

“Most detectives come to my office, you know.”

“That would make far too much sense.”

Christian threw his backpack on the table. He was tall enough to have to duck through half the doors in LA, in his early-thirties, and in good enough shape to be the guy to beat in the killer basketball games down on Venice Beach. Jimmy never could figure him out. He was good looking, got the girls, went to medical school, and now spent his days around the stiffs? A couple of months ago Christian confessed to him—and it seemed to Jimmy that everybody was always confessing to him, so much that he sometimes felt like a street-corner priest—that his dream was to become Thomas Noguchi. Noguchi? Yeah, Christian told him, he did the autopsies on Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Tate, Natalie Wood, and every rock or movie star that kicked in LA. If you're gonna be in the autopsy biz, Christian told him, this is ground zero, the greatest place on earth. Some dream, Jimmy thought.

“I've been thinking about this,” Christian said, “and I think I got it all figured out … The problem with you guys is, you're always behind the goddamn curve. Never ahead. The slimeballs you're after always know what you're up to, because you're always following behind them.”

“I'll have to remember to get to the murder
before
it happens next time.”

“You know what I'm talking about. If the perps weren't such dolts, you guys would really be screwed out there.”

“How's work?”

“We got bodies stacked up like CD's at Virgin. I even got a dog to do.”

“An autopsy on a dog?”

“Yeah. Some genius was smuggling dope by putting the shit in balloons, and had his dog swallow them. Bright, huh? Acid in the dog's stomach popped the balloons, and the pooch went toxic and kicked. I said to my boss, why don't you get a vet to do it?”

“Wha'd he say?”

“He said most of our customers are complete low-lifes. A dog's a step up for you.”

“Who's gonna argue with that?” Jimmy said.

“Can't. But you know what's weird? Right before I came over here, when I looked at the pooch stretched out on the table—it was this real pretty golden retriever—I felt kinda, you know, bad about it.”

“You felt bad?”

“I felt bad.”

“I don't believe it.”

“Yeah. I got more goddamn feelings for a dead dog, than for the average gangbanger that shows up every night.”

Jimmy shrugged, “How about my guy. Any feelings for him?”

“Man, it's a hot case. I can't believe they gave it to you.”

“Hey—thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean. Just, you know, I figured they'd give it to some buddy of the chief's.”

“I don't make the call. They say do it, I do it.”

“What was the vic doing at the Chateau, anyway?” Christian said.

“No crime being there. Right? Maybe he had a squeeze.”

“He was a big deal over at city hall.”

“The mayor's oldest buddy, or some such shit,” Jimmy said.

“He an asshole?”

“Dunno yet.” On every other case, Jimmy would be the first to call this guy an asshole. What was he doing at the Chateau, when he had a wife and kid at home? But on this one, even with Christian, he'd better be careful with what he said. And the reality was, mayor's best buddy, trash collector's best buddy—anyone can be an asshole. Jimmy thought about when he coached little league, back when they were all together. In his first meeting with the parents, he would always say to them, “As parents, you gotta be super careful who you trust your kids with. How do you know I'm not a coach
and
a child abuser?” The parents would say things like, “You're a parent yourself,” or “You're a police detective.” Jimmy would answer back, “We arrested an officer for child abuse right out of my own stationhouse last year. The guy had been at it for years.” As far as Jimmy was concerned, everybody was an asshole—until proven otherwise.

He looked back at Christian, “How's my dead guy? Got anything wonderful for me?”

“Know something, he really must've pissed someone off …”

Christian reached into his backpack and pulled out a large chest x-ray. He held it up to a faded, red Chinese lantern sconce. Jimmy leaned closer to the dim light.

“
That
is one hell of a lot of cuts. Big ones, little ones and lots in between. He was way-dead and the knife kept going in and in and in. Twenty-nine times.”

“Nasty shit.”

“Way nasty. This was no stick it, and grab the wallet.”

“What time did it go down?”

“I got the death between one and four a.m. Knife, of course. Serrated edge, very thin, pretty small. Just under four inches.

“The blood?”

“Tons of the vic's. A-pos',” Christian said. “But they also found some B-pos' which came off the backboard. Have to figure that's the killer's. Probably got sliced with the blade.”

“What else on the perp?” Jimmy said.

“Not much. But it's a southpaw, which you get a lot less of. Anything come back on the prints?”

“Nothing in the computer. A virgin.”

5

T
he car was unmarked, but if you spent more than five minutes on the street, you'd have to be pretty dense not to know a slow-moving Crown Victoria had to have a cop inside. Jimmy suddenly pulled the car hard to the right, jerking to a stop in front of Tulip. She eyed the car suspiciously, slowly drifting away. Then she recognized Jimmy, slid up to the door, and crouched down beside it as she looked in the window.

“Tulip. Get in.”

She pulled open the door, and at the same time, tossed her gum into a garbage-strewn parking lot. He knew her for years, and last winter she gave him the I.D. on a psycho pimp who killed one of his whores over sixty bucks. Tulip saw it all go down, and when the public defender read her statement, the pimp instantly plead out.

“Long time,” Jimmy said. “Keeping out of trouble?” As Jimmy talked to her, his head rested on his crossed hands on the top of the steering wheel.

“Trying.”

Tulip checked behind her, and then out the window. She reached for Jimmy's fly and tugged the zipper. Jimmy pulled back.

“What are you doing?”

“Whaddya think I'm doing?”

“Not interested.”

“Right. Only cop in Hollywood who isn't.”

“Come on,” Jimmy said.

“Come on? You wanna work, gotta pay.”

“That's bullshit.”

“No. That's for real.”

“Yeah? Who's been asking you for it?”

“Who hasn't? You want the list?”

“Goddamn right I want the list.”

“How about Sergeant Cooper, Coop or whatever you call him. Duran, that jerk, gets it all the time. And the new guy with the mustache and real short blond hair and—”

“Stop. I don't wanna know … I do, but not right now. Sometime, I promise. What I do want, is something on who greased the mayor's pal.”

“Like I got the 4-1-1?”

“You hear shit,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, someone's really walking the Boulevard saying ‘I taxed the dude'.”

“No, but there's lots of big-mouths out here, who might have dropped something they didn't mean to.” He passed Tulip a card. “My beeper. You hear something, you let me know.”

“Why should I help you out?”

“'Cause there's a killer out here and you're sharing the street with him.”

“There's lots of killers here, you still ain't offering shit.”