Boulevard (6 page)

“I think I can deliver, “Jimmy said.

“Better. For both of us. This case's a monster. You nail it, I go to commander and you, man, make captain—which you deserve. So don't fuck it up.”

Jimmy smiled. It didn't sound so bad. He hadn't spent his cop life grubbing for the next spot on the totem pole, but he'd been around enough clueless brass to think he could run a precinct and fix a ton of the bullshit that he was forced to slog through.

“Hey, we're not dealing with some unsolvable Russian mob hit,” Jimmy said. “We'll get it. What do you think about the vic?”

“He may not have been an asshole,” Charles said. “We had nothing on him. There's ten thousand nutty kids in Hollywood. Not to mention the adults. He could've been legit like his prick buddy said. Wrong place, wrong time.”

Jimmy took a nibble on his thumbnail.

“I don't think so,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah? …” Charles said, “neither do I. The hotel room.”

“Absolutely. Miller's right—every day hundreds of people go to the Bar Marmont or eat in the restaurant there. But how many of them end up in a room upstairs afterward?”

“You see the paper today?” Charles asked.

“Not yet.”

“Lodge was the mayor's roommate at UCLA. And Miller was a couple of years behind them. Same frat house. Be nice to him. Or at least try.”

Jimmy looked up, to see something hurling right at him. He snapped up his arm and snagged some kind of ball out of the air. It was blue, about the size of a large egg, and had a Chinese dragon painted on it.

“What's this?”

“Chinese stress reliever. Next time you feel like the shit's gettin' to you, shake this thing instead.”

Jimmy shook it. There was something springy inside that vibrated wildly. It gave him a smile.

“I got a message from Erin Sullivan,” Jimmy said. “You know what it's about?”

“I told her to call. You know her?”

“I played ball a couple of times with her husband—best third base in the league. I thought she was out.”

“She's back. She'd just made detective and the Chateau used to be on her beat. I asked her to help you out on this one.”

“Charles—”

“Stop right there …”

Jimmy hadn't worked with a partner since Manhattan South. Better that way.

“Done deal,” Charles said.

“I don't get a say?”

“Yeah. You say ‘yes'. Shake the ball, man.”

He did. It worked. For three seconds.

12

I
t was pushing ten when Jimmy was cutting through West Hollywood heading for the Chateau. He had Erin with him. She was in her late twenties, with dark blonde hair that fell just past her shoulders, and had what Jimmy always thought was a sweet smile. Most cops seem angry—a lot angry, or a little angry—but angry all the same. Not Erin. He thought she was cute, but so did every guy in the precinct, and they all knew she had the husband, Rick, who was not only a tough, in-your-face cop, but a good guy, too. She had been through a rough time.

She pulled a Marlboro Lights pack out of her jacket.

“You mind?”

“Go ahead.”

She cracked the window a little and blew the smoke out. Jimmy stole a look over and saw the reflection of Erin's face in the dirty glass—pretty, but uneasy—floating silently over the streets of LA. She brushed a thin strand of hair off her eyes and looked out into the city—brightly lit stores selling 50's furniture; valet parkers in their red vests standing at attention in front of one trendoid restaurant after another; two ancient homeless guys, one black, one white, shuffling along with shopping carts overflowing with cans; three ultra-real, ultra-sexy mannequins on the curb outside
Trashy Lingerie
leaning over into traffic, their perfect but plastic breasts barely covered in tiny green bras. All of it drifting under the reflection of Erin's soft, sad face.

The Chateau's lobby was nearly empty. A guy dancing an unlit cigarette in his mouth hurried past them with a pony-sized Great Dane. Behind the desk was a clerk in a Nehru jacket—so far out of fashion Jimmy figured that it must be the cutting edge of fashion. He had very short bleached blonde hair and blue-tinted, tiny, round John Lennon glasses. But what the Beatle had for them was worthless. He searched the computer and came up with the earth-shattering news that the room was charged on Mark Lodge's Amex card.

“He ever stay here before?” Jimmy said.

“No.”

“He make any impression on you?”

“Impression?”

“Yeah. Was the guy happy? Sad? Pissed off? Anything?”

“In truth—I can't remember him at all.” He looked at Jimmy with a barely perceptible sneer. The kid was pissing him off. The pecking order around here was pretty obvious. Jimmy was only a lowly cop—a cop who'd taken two bullets, arrested a battalion of child abusers, pimps, and murdering assholes, and on the other side of the desk was coolness incarnate—an actor, model, singer, whatever, wannabe. He may be a twelve-buck-an-hour desk clerk, but
he
got to print the hotel bills for the stars. And that gave him the right to look down on bottom-crawling cops.

“He
was
here, right?” Erin said.

“Sure. There were about a hundred cops taking out his body.”

“But he checked in here. At the desk. With you?”

“He's registered. But you have to understand, with our clientele, no one is going to remember someone like that.”

“Like what?” Erin said.

“Vanilla.”

“Print me a copy of his bill,” Jimmy said.

They went into the huge, nearly-deserted kitchen—and the instant they came in, the back screen door bounced shut as two waiters in white jackets ran out. Jimmy followed fast after them—scooting around tables and room service carts, racing for the door, passing a rail-thin chef at the grill who barked “Fuck!” and stared at him with venom. Jimmy made it to the doorway to see the two guys disappear down the hill and into the night. Uncatchable.

Jimmy turned back around. The kitchen was something out of the thirties, with glass cabinets and floral-pattern tiles everywhere. On a long, pale-yellow tile counter, a small TV was playing a soccer game with an announcer screaming in Spanish. The chef, a tall scraggy guy with a blonde goatee that hung past his chin, and a barbed wire wrap tattoo on his upper arm, paced by the grill.

“Fuck a duck!,” he said, throwing his spatula onto the counter. “Now who's gonna take this shit upstairs. You, buddy?”

“Sorry, man,” Jimmy said.

“Bet you are.”

“Hey. We're LAPD, okay?

“Oh. Thanks for telling me. Why do you think they ran like dogs?”

“You tell me.”

“Fucking obvious.”

“People with nothing to hide don't bolt like that,” Jimmy said.

“What do they gotta hide? They're makin' five ninety-five an hour bringing trays to rooms that rent for seven hundred and fifty a night. That's what they gotta hide. Fuck a duck.”

He slammed a plate on the table in front of him. Jimmy could feel himself getting pissed, but Erin jumped in.

“It's not green card stuff,” she said. “All we want is to ask them about the night the guy was killed. His last supper came from room service.”

“That's all?”

“All. After that, they can work here forever as far as we're concerned.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Then stick around. They need the bucks. They'll be back.”

Nice job, Jimmy thought.

The Chateau pool was lit by half a dozen flood lights below the surface turning the water a cool, pale blue. It was too cold for anyone to swim, and Jimmy and Erin sat at the edge on green iron chairs. Over a tall hedge, there was a model photo shoot in the hotel driveway and one flash after another heated up the night sky, like they were next to a war—too far to hear the exploding bombs, but close enough to see the flashes. Every so often faint voices of drunken laughter could be heard going into cottages on the hill behind them—but mostly it was quiet. In front of them, past the pool, was the Sunset Strip and the lights of the city.

Jimmy glanced over at Erin and wondered what to say. He had to say something—or did he? He could avoid it altogether. That's what most of the guys were doing, and he was tempted to do it himself—but he thought it would be crummy, and it was exactly what the guys did to him about Rancher. On the other hand, what if she didn't want to talk about it?

“I heard you were off for awhile?” he said.

“You know what happened?”

“Kind of. I'm sorry.”

This was tough for him. Then he got mad at himself. Tough for him? How about her?

“How long? … Sorry, bad question.”

“It's okay. He lived for four months.”

“Sorry.”

“They were a good four months. I tried to make them good anyway. You want to see a picture?”

“Sure.”

Erin passed him a small photo of her baby from her date book. He was beautiful, with a sweet round face and wisps of light blonde hair. Erin was cradling him in her arms as she sat in a rocking chair in the infant ICU. As Jimmy held the picture he could sense Erin's sad eyes looking over at the photo too.

“He looks just like you.”

“Yeah. I always thought so. His name was Timmy.” She smiled a little.

“You got any more pictures?”

“Really?”

She reached into her date book and seemed to freeze up for a moment.

“You okay?” Jimmy said.

“It's nothing.”

“Sure?” He noticed a bit of white paint on her right thumb which she was subtly rubbing off with the other hand.

“No. Not really. But you don't wanna hear it, right?”

“No. Tell me.”

“It's just … you know … It's with you all the time … He was the most wanted baby ever. And before he was born, I painted his room with pictures of farm animals—friendly faces of sheep, ducks and cows to wake up and go to sleep to. But he was born with these big problems. And instead of us taking him home, we were meeting with heart surgeons, a lung expert, kidney doctors. Two days after he was born he was operated on, for six hours. And three weeks later they did it again. For even longer. It's the worst feeling in the world, waiting while your child is in the operating room. But he was a tough guy and hung in there until he couldn't hang on any longer. I just about lived at the hospital, holding him all day while he slept, as I fed him, as the nurses changed his IV's. He didn't have a long life, but it was filled with love, and in his own way I think he loved us back. Well, today, since I was coming back on, I went into my baby's room, which he never saw, and I took down the crib and painted over the pictures of the animals.”

They sat in silence for a moment. She turned back to him, her face lit by a gently moving blue light, reflected from the pool.

“You have kids?”

“A boy. Sixteen.”

He looked back down at the baby's picture. Jimmy didn't know why—he never knew the baby, and this was his first conversation with Erin longer than two minutes in the stationhouse hallway—but he felt his eyes becoming moist, and he was glad it was too dark out here for her to tell.

She took out her pack of smokes, but then put it away. “Trying to stop,” she said.

“Been there.”

“But you did it. Not like me. How long did you smoke?”

“Only fifteen years plus. I started when I was a kid.”

“You miss it?”

“I miss the way it sorta punctuates the day. No matter what happened at work or anything else, before I'd go to bed, I'd go outside and have a smoke. Every night. It was great.”

“I do the same thing. But Rick thinks I should be able to stop.”

“He never smoked?”

“No. He's this serious athlete and all. He thinks you should have enough control over your body to quit. When I was pregnant I stopped. It was actually pretty easy. But at the hospital, when the baby was sleeping, I'd go to this nice little courtyard they had there, smoke, and think about the baby. Sometimes I'd try to get Rick to come outside and talk. But it never happened.”

“Know how that is.”

“The person wanting to talk? Or the one not saying a word?”

“Both. But mostly the one who should've been talking, but wasn't.”

She turned towards him. Their eyes met for a moment, as though she didn't know whether or not to go on. It was quiet. Only the distant rumble of traffic from the Strip. Erin smoked. Jimmy wanted to say more. He wanted to talk about Rancher. It was different, he knew. But pain is pain. He wondered if Erin was the person to talk to about him. No one else was. Jimmy turned to her—then heard a noise by the kitchen. The screen door swung open, and both waiters were back, each with a can of Tecate.

Seconds later, Jimmy, with Erin just behind, came into the kitchen. The waiters looked over in a panic, but then held still, seeing they had no place to run. One was about twenty. The other was a couple of years younger.

“Okay. Okay. I go with you,” the older one said.

“Hold on,” Jimmy said. “We're not
migra
, we're LAPD.”

“It's about the man who was killed,” Erin said.

“The governor friend?”

“Close enough,” Jimmy said. “You brought an order up to him the night he died, right?”

“I no give it to him, sir.”

“You went to room 310?”

“Si. But I no give it to him.”

“Yeah? Who'd you give it to?”

“The girl.”

“Girl? What girl?” This was news.

“She took the tray. Gave me good tip.”

“What did she look like?”

“Brown hair. Long. She pretty.”

“How old was she?”

“Dunno, sir.”

“Take a guess.”

“Sixteen—fifteen?”