Hollywood Crows (22 page)

When the Salvadoran woman returned to the kitchen, she picked up the trap and drowned the rodent in a bucket of water on the back porch. Then she continued reciting her many complaints about her neighbors.

After completing that visit, Bix said, “Let’s go back to the office and get another car. I think we should split up and deal with as many calls as we can for the rest of the day. We’ve gotta get our backlog caught up.”

Ronnie agreed but couldn’t help wondering what Bix had meant when he’d spoken those words to a doomed mouse.

In recent years, Alvarado Street in Rampart Division had come to resemble a commercial thoroughfare in Tijuana. Most of the shops and businesses displayed goods that spilled out onto the pavement, and those sidewalks were mobbed by Spanish-speaking pedestrians at all hours of the day and most of the evening. The sights and sounds and smells were all from beyond the imaginary line that marks the southern boundary of the United States of America.

There was a particular
farmacia
in that neighborhood that had been frequented by Ali Aziz since 9/11, when he had had to give up his trips to Tijuana. Prior to that catastrophe, he’d found it well worth a drive across the international border for all the prescription diet drugs, tranquilizers, and stimulants required by his dancers. But after 9/11, he got sick of being directed to the secondary inspection area every time he was coming back and subjected to interrogations and searches the moment he answered the question “Where were you born?”

On the last occasion, the prescription drugs he’d bought in Tijuana were confiscated by a U.S. Customs officer who rightly doubted the legitimacy of Ali’s prescriptions issued on the spot by Tijuana doctors who worked with the
farmacias
. After that, Ali talked with his Mexican employees and was directed to the Alvarado Street pharmacy owned and operated by Jaime Salgando, who would sell anything without a prescription to Ali Aziz for three times what a legitimate pharmacy would charge. Prescriptions required expensive office visits to physicians by his entire stable of dancers, and Ali did not want to pay for those, especially when they wouldn’t prescribe large enough quantities of the drugs that the dancers needed.

So far, Ali had never been turned down by Jaime Salgando, but today would be a test of the pharmacist’s loyalty, and of his greed. Ali had with him a single capsule, something he had stolen from the medicine cabinet in his former Mt. Olympus home. That theft had occurred on the day that he had removed all of his clothes and personal property under the humiliating scrutiny of a security guard hired by Margot to see that he took only what they had agreed upon through their respective lawyers.

When the guard was not watching, Ali had impulsively removed a single magenta-and-turquoise 50-milligram capsule from Margot’s vial of sleeping aids. This was shortly after he’d read a news account in an Arabic-language newspaper about a rich Egyptian who had been arrested for trying to poison his elder brother by doctoring his sleeping medication. The prescription drug was the only one that Margot had ever used for occasional insomnia, and it was prescribed by her doctor in West Los Angeles. Ali had never known her to take more than a single capsule once or twice a week, usually on nights when she claimed to be under stress. The vial held thirty capsules, and she would replace it about every four months.

He had been very frightened the day he’d opened that medicine cabinet and shaken out one capsule and slipped it into his pocket. But having that capsule all these months had somehow bolstered his confidence and quelled his frustration and outrage with the American system of justice and with American women who knew how to manipulate the system. Having that capsule made him feel less impotent while he was being ground down by that baffling legal machinery. The capsule told him that he had the power to end it should things ever become intolerable. If she ever made him fear for the safety of his son.

There were a dozen Latino people in the small pharmacy when Ali entered. A young woman working at the forward cash register said something to him in Spanish and smiled. Ali did not understand but smiled and pointed to the lone pharmacist at the rear of the store. Ali was glad to see that there were only two customers waiting for prescriptions. He took a seat in a chair surrounded by shelves full of vitamin bottles and herbal cures and waited. When the second woman had paid for her prescription, he stepped to the counter and smiled at Jaime Salgando, a balding, sixty-year-old Mexican with drooping eyelids, a thin pebble gray mustache, and an air of total confidence.

With barely a trace of a Spanish accent, the pharmacist grinned and said, “Ali! Where have you been hiding?”

“Hello, brother Jaime,” Ali said with an insincere grin of his own.

They shook hands and Jaime said, “What’s the problem? You need more Viagra to keep up with all your gorgeous employees who fight to take you to bed?”

“God willing,” Ali said, maintaining the grin.

“I think I have everything you might need,” Jaime Salgando said. “How can I help you, my friend?”

Ali gave him a list of the usual meds: diet pills for Tex and anti-anxiety for Jasmine. And because Margot always had her prescriptions filled at a pharmacy near her doctor’s office, her needs were unknown to the pharmacist, so Ali asked for a specific 50-milligram sleep aid, supposedly for Goldie.

When Ali handed the list to Jaime Salgando, the pharmacist said, “Goldie has switched to a different medication?”

Ali shrugged and said, “I pay no attention. You got that one?”

“Yes,” said the pharmacist. “And how are you keeping, Ali? Your health is good?”

“Very good,” Ali said.

As the pharmacist worked, Ali said, “How is business, brother?”

“Not as good as yours, Ali,” Jaime said. “And my employees do not look like your employees.”

Twice Jaime had enjoyed dates with Tex, compliments of Ali Aziz for pharmaceutical services rendered. Ali said, “Tex is missing you. When shall you come back to see her, Jaime?”

The pharmacist sighed and said, “Next time I must double up on Viagra. One tablet is not enough when I am with that girl.”

Ali forced a laugh that was more nervous than he wished it to be and said, “You tell me when, brother. She is there for you.”

“At my age that is very nice to know,” Jaime said.

When Jaime Salgando was finished with Ali’s entire order, Ali paid him and said, “Jaime, I got a terrible problem and I need more help.”

“That is what I am here for,” Jaime said.

“I need a capsule of poison. Fifty milligrams.”

“What for?” the astonished pharmacist said.

“I got to kill a dog. I must put poison in the meat.”

“What dog?”

“My Russian neighbor on Mount Olympus is very rich. He is a very bad gangster. He got this big dog. Fifty kilos. The dog is a killer. Last week the killer dog almost got my Nicky. My son! The housekeeper carried Nicky inside the house just in time. I went to this Russian. He tells me go to hell.”

“Did you call Animal Control? Or the police?”

“No, I am afraid of this Russian. He is a very dangerous man. All my neighbors are afraid of the Russian and his dog. All neighbors talk. We say we shall poison this Russian dog. Next time the dog gets out, we give it poison. The Russian must never know who done it.”

“I don’t know, Ali,” Jaime said. “This is not a good idea.”

“You read about the Russians in Los Angeles who kidnap and murder the people for money? He is a connection to them. He is a dangerous man. His house is for sale now. He shall be moving away, god willing. We are all scared of him, but right now we are more scared of his dog. Please help us.”

“This is a crime.”

“Everything is a crime in this goddamn country,” said Ali.

“Yes, but this is different. My drugs are to help, not to kill.”

“One of my neighbor gave the idea. We put the poison capsule into the meatball. I do not care what kind of poison.”

“Why did you say fifty milligrams?”

“My neighbor thinks we need fifty milligrams of stuff they put into pest poison to kill this big dog. And fast, so the dog don’t suffer. We have no wish to be cruel people.”

“I think your neighbor might be talking about strychnine,” said the pharmacist. “When I was a boy working on a ranch in Mexico, we used to bait coyotes and kill them, but with less strychnine than fifty milligrams. Far less.”

“The Russian dog is big like two, maybe three coyotes,” Ali said.

“I don’t know about this,” Jaime Salgando said.

Ali was ready for him. He put five $100 bills on the counter and said, “Please, brother, for me. I’ll make the date for you with Tex and Goldie. Both at the same time. You shall never forget the date. You need lots of Viagra for this one!”

Ali felt his chin tremble, but he fought to keep the sly smile in place as Jaime Salgando mulled it over.

Then the pharmacist said, “I’ll have to get what you need from a supplier I know. I’ll drop it at your club on Thursday evening at six o’clock.”

“That is good, brother,” Ali said. “But please make sure, one capsule that we can stick inside the little meatball. I see this Russian many times feed him little Russian meatballs from his hand.”

“I’ll tell my friend what is needed for the bait,” the pharmacist said.

“When you want the three-way date, brother?”

“On Saturday evening,” the pharmacist said. Then he added, “Nobody must ever know about any of this, Ali.”

“No,” Ali said. “Nobody must ever know, or this Russian shall kill me! And thank you, brother, thank you. You have save the life of my son!”

“I’ll see you on Thursday with your order,” Jaime said. “At the Leopard Lounge.”

Affecting a lighthearted farewell, Ali said, “Yes, my brother! And Tex shall wear her cowboy hat and cowboy boot for you on Saturday night, I promise!”

When Ali got to his car, he tore open the paper bag and was relieved to see that Goldie’s sleep aids were identical to the turquoise-and-magenta capsule in his pocket. It had cost him $200 just to be sure that the manufacturer of Margot’s sleep aids had not changed the colors or size of the capsule in recent months. He might have to put a few extra capsules of the sleep aid in her vial so that things didn’t happen too soon. He wanted her to die when he was ready, and not before.

On his drive from Alvarado Street back to Hollywood, Ali began to fret about Jaime Salgando. But the closer he got to Hollywood, the more his fears seemed irrational. If three months from now Margot were to die, why wouldn’t it be considered a suicide over her affair with that new boyfriend, whoever he was? Or, if murder was suspected, why wouldn’t the new boyfriend be the object of the inquiry? Who knows what intrigues the boyfriend may have been plotting with Margot. The police might surmise that she had threatened to leave the boyfriend and he was punishing her. Her pig boyfriend would be the target of the police investigation, not Ali Aziz.

Even the most fearful scenario did not hold up when he looked at it with courage and reason: that Jaime Salgando might have a terrible attack of Christian conscience and inform the police that on one hot summer day he had supplied Ali Aziz with 50 milligrams of poison, ostensibly to kill a dog. But that was the silliest fear of all. If Jaime did such a thing, what would happen to his license, his business, his life? Jaime was a man who had taken money from Ali for years, unlawfully dispensing drugs for dancers at the Leopard Lounge. Jaime, the loving father and grandfather who had bedded a number of those dancers to whom he was unlawfully providing drugs. And how could Jaime ever prove that he gave Ali Aziz a 50-milligram capsule of poison? No, Jaime Salgando had committed too many crimes behind the counter at his
farmacia
. Jaime was the least of the worries of Ali Aziz.

His main concern would be to gain legal custody of Nicky when Margot was found dead. Ali knew that her family, those insignificant people in Barstow, California, would fight for custody in order to have control over their grandson, the heir to Margot’s fortune. Or rather, Margot’s half of Ali’s fortune, the wealth that the bitch had stolen from him through all her trickery. And truth be told, he would let them have everything she had stolen from him — all of it — if only they would not initiate any custody fight for Nicky. All that Ali Aziz wanted was his son.

When Ali got to the Leopard Lounge that afternoon, he went to his office, locking the door behind him. He sat at his desk, turned on the desk lamp, dried his hands, and drank a shot of Jack to steady them. Ali found it absolutely astonishing how, despite his fear, the thought of soon possessing that deadly capsule made him feel extremely powerful. He would have the power of life and death. With the unexpected gifts of drugs that he would be giving to his dancers, he felt entitled to special blow jobs with no complaints. Ali decided to call one of the girls into his office. And he wouldn’t be needing Viagra. Not today.

Ronnie and Bix Ramstead’s ten-hour duty tour — excluding the half hour for a meal break referred to as code 7 — was to end at eight that evening. But when Ronnie signed out, Bix still hadn’t returned. She’d called him on his cell twice but couldn’t reach him. She was so worried that she was about to mention it to the sergeant prior to his leaving for a meeting with the Graffiti Committee. Then her cell rang.

“It’s me,” Bix said when she answered.

“I was getting concerned,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said. “I got tied up.”

Ronnie thought she detected a slight slurring of speech but hoped she was wrong. She said, “You coming in now?”

Bix said, “Check me out, will you? I’ll be back later to turn the car in.”

Now she was sure of it. She said, “Why don’t I come where you are? We could get a bite to eat.”

“No, I’m gonna grab a burger with a cop I know from my North Hollywood days. Just check me out. I’ll be back soon.”

And that’s how it was left. If it had been anyone other than Bix Ramstead, Ronnie Sinclair, being so new to the Community Relations Office, would not have complied. She thought about talking to one of the other Crows about it, but she did not. Ronnie liked Bix as much as any cop she’d ever known at Hollywood Station. She was feeling very nervous and worried when she checked out both Bix and herself that evening. Ronnie knew she’d have a restless night, worrying about the possibility of Bix Ramstead and his LAPD car getting involved in a DUI collision.