Hollywood Crows (25 page)

As Ronnie and Bix were getting ready to hit the streets, their sergeant was involved in a peculiar debate with Officer Rita Kravitz about running an errand to the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre to pick up a generous donation check it had offered for the Special Olympics fund-raiser. Rita gave the sergeant a couple of lame excuses as to why she was too busy to handle the job and suggested he send one of the guys.

“But you might run into John Travolta or Tom Cruise up there,” the sergeant said. “Wouldn’t that make your day?”

Officer Rita Kravitz pushed her newest and trendiest-ever eyeglasses up onto her nose and with a curl to her lip said, “I might also get taken prisoner by those robots and brainwashed till I turn into a smiley-faced, twinkly-eyed cult cookie. And if you think that can’t happen, ask Katie Holmes.”

The other Crow with Bix on his mind was having a late-morning Danish and cappuccino at his favorite open-air table in Farmers Market, listening to a former director and three former screenwriters at the usual table railing about the ageism that had killed their careers and promoted mediocrity in Hollywood.

“The last meeting I took was with a head of development who was twenty-eight years old,” a former screenwriter said.

“All they wanna do is preserve their jobs,” another one said.

“They’d rather have a flop they can blame on somebody else than take a risk on their own that might produce a hit,” a third one said.

The first one said, “Every time my stuff gets rejected, they say it’s not enough ‘outside the box,’ whatever that means. Or not enough ‘inside their wheelhouse,’ whatever that means.”

The former director said, “Bottom line, they’re terrified of people our age because they think we might know something about making movies that they don’t know. And they’re right!”

There was a chorus of amens to that one.

Nate wasn’t enjoying the show business grousing. All he could think of was how Margot Aziz had looked when he’d first seen her here, and how she had not called him, as promised. He figured that Bix Ramstead might have had a lot to do with that. Nate tried rehearsing half a dozen approaches he could try with Bix to find out the truth. First, though, he’d have to get Bix alone, away from Ronnie Sinclair.

Nate finished his cappuccino and started on his rounds. He had three calls to make on apartment dwellers about chronic-noise complaints. He was already starting to think that this quality-of-life shit was way more tedious and boring than he ever thought it could be. But at least he had last night’s adventure of Sergeant Treakle and the rooster to sustain him. He would’ve loved to share the story with somebody, but so far today, he couldn’t find anyone at Hollywood Station who didn’t know all about it.

Nine hours into their ten-and-a-half-hour shift, Ronnie and Bix were tired. All they’d accomplished so far was to issue warnings to salon proprietors about the need to screen their workers to make sure that temporary employees were not turning tricks when the boss wasn’t around. Of course, they knew that most of the temps were hired precisely because they were more than eager to offer special services to safe and willing customers.

Their last tanning salon was on Sunset Boulevard near Western Avenue and was called Miraculous Tan. This one was larger than the others and seemed to be catering to an all-male clientele. The employees were saline Suzies in short shorts, Miraculous Tan T-shirts, and tennis shoes. When the bluesuits walked into the reception area, two male customers waiting on the sofa dropped their magazines and quickly departed.

The receptionist said, “Please wait, Officers. I’ll get the manager.”

“Maybe we better take a closer look at this one,” Ronnie said. “Seeing us made those dudes run faster than my Sav-on panty hose.”

Bix nodded. He had spoken very little all day and his eyes weren’t as bright and clear as they usually were. Ronnie had tentatively tried directing conversation toward the previous night, when Bix had asked her to log him out, but each time she did, he’d change the subject.

The manager was as tall as Bix. Her hair was ash blonde and hung over her breasts in two pigtails. She was bulging with saline implants and had heavily rouged apple cheeks, resembling the stereotypical milkmaids from porn flicks they showed at the adult stores on Hollywood Boulevard. She was dressed in a white vinyl skirt, pink long-sleeved cotton blouse, and white wedges.

“I’m Madeline. How can I help you?” she said with a toothy smile that was impossibly white next to her crimson lip gloss.

Ronnie was too tired and it was too hot a day for subtlety. She said, “We’re getting numerous complaints from your neighbors that they’re suspecting illegal activity is going on here during day and evening hours. Also, we’re hearing that your customers are causing noise disturbances at night, and parking illegally.”

“Oh, that,” Madeline said. “We’ve changed management. That was before I came here two months ago. One of the girls was doing her own thing and nobody here knew about it. The vice officers arrested her. Your Detective Support Division knows all about it.”

“We’ve gotten complaints more recently than two months ago,” Bix said.

“I’ll bet they’re from the older Asian people who have the tailor shop two doors down, right?”

“We can’t discuss who the complainants are,” Ronnie said.

“No, of course not,” Madeline said, “but they’re always complaining about something. You can ask any of the businesspeople around here.”

“When we walked in here, two of your customers almost ran over us to get out the door,” Ronnie said.

“Maybe they had some problems of their own with the law,” Madeline said.

“Mind if we have a look around at your business?” Ronnie said. “I may want to try your services sometime. Especially one of those spritzer tans.”

Madeline didn’t look happy about it but said, “Of course. Follow me.”

The cops followed Madeline into a long hallway with five doors on each side, all of them closed. She led them to an intersecting hallway and turned right, toward a large, tiled room that looked like it was meant for showers.

“This is for sunless tanning,” Madeline said. “As a matter of fact, one of our employees is getting ready to go in now. She has a heavy date tonight and wants to look her best.” She turned to Bix and said, “If you would turn your back, Officer, I’m sure Zelda wouldn’t mind demonstrating how it works.”

Bix walked a few paces farther down the hall and faced the wall.

“Zelda, honey, you can come out,” Madeline said, knocking on one of the closed doors.

The shapely, young platinum blonde was wrapped in a towel. A plastic shower cap completely covered her hair, and booties covered only the tips of her toes and the bottoms of her feet. Her eyes opened wide when she saw Ronnie standing there with the boss. She hurried to the sunless tanning room, whipped off the towel, revealing her own implants, and hung it on a hook by the doorway.

“Zelda has cream on her palms, fingernails, and toenails,” Madeline explained to Ronnie. “We don’t want the tanning liquid to get in the nail beds or on her palms or the bottom of her feet. That would look totally unnatural.”

Zelda faced a bank of spigots on the middle of the wall and pushed a button. The tanning liquid sprayed out, covering her in a mist. She pressed the button again, turned around, and tanned the other side. When she was finished, she was dripping with goop the color of buckskin, and she began patting herself dry.

“We could offer you a police discount, Officer,” Madeline said to Ronnie, “if you’d like to make an appointment sometime.”

Bix joined them when Zelda was back in her changing room, and they continued their tour of the establishment, looking into one of the little rooms with tanning beds inside.

“Looks claustrophobic,” Bix said. “Like getting in a coffin and pulling down the lid.”

“Not at all,” Madeline said. “We give you tiny dark goggles to cover your eyes, and you’re only in there for about eight minutes at any level of tanning power you choose. It’s a lot more pleasant than baking in the hot summer sun.”

Ronnie said, “Maybe I’d like this kind of power tan better than the spritzer variety. More bang for the buck.”

While she and Madeline were talking about tans, Bix continued down the hall, subtly trying doorknobs, but they were locked. Behind the third door he heard a woman moaning. It was loud and unmistakable.

Madeline noticed him listening and quickly came forward, saying, “We can’t disturb our clients, Officer. Please follow me and I’ll show you—”

“There’s somebody moaning in there,” Bix said. “A woman.”

“Maybe she fell asleep and is dreaming,” Madeline said. “Really, I must—”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Ronnie said, exchanging glances with Bix. “Somebody falling asleep under those tanning lamps?”

“They shut off automatically,” Madeline said, and now she had Ronnie’s arm, trying to guide her back down the hallway.

Then they heard a man in that room cry out, “Do it to me, baby!”

“Got a key?” Bix said.

“I’ll… I’ll look for one,” Madeline said, hurrying back toward the reception area.

Ronnie winked at Bix and knocked lightly on the door, saying, “Hey! The vice cops’re here! Split up and get in separate rooms. Hurry!”

Within seconds the door opened and a plump naked man ran out, holding all of his clothes in his arms. He saw the uniformed cops, said, “Oh, Jesus!” and dropped the clothes, his erect penis pointing directly at Ronnie.

Inside the room, an eighteen-year-old honey-haired employee with eyebrow, nose, and lip rings, wearing a Miraculous Tan T-shirt and nothing else, was trying to get her shorts pulled up over her hips.

She said, “I was just trying to tell him his tanning time was up. Honest!”

While Bix got on his radio and asked for a unit to assist, Ronnie pointed to the man’s penis and said, “I hope you had plenty of tanning lotion on that thing, sir.”

Seeing that the cops weren’t about to buy her story, the girl said, “When I went in to wake him up, he was laying there pounding the clown! I didn’t have nothing to do with it! Honest!”

“Why, you lying little bitch,” the man said, his tumescence deflating.

It was turning out to be a different sort of day for the Crow team, who didn’t often get to make a felony arrest. After questioning the customer and the young employee, both of whom clearly implicated the salon manager in soliciting acts of prostitution and signed a report to that effect, Ronnie and Bix arranged for Madeline to be transported to Hollywood Station, interviewed by the vice sergeant, and booked for pandering.

A transporting unit arrived, and it happened to be the surfer cops who’d just cleared from roll call. Jetsam jumped on this one when he realized from the broadcast which Crow needed an assisting unit.

While Jetsam was chatting up Ronnie, Flotsam looked at Madeline’s driver’s license and said, “Holy crap. Madeline’s a man! Name of Martin Lester Dilford.”

The manager was standing silent, having admitted nothing, and Jetsam took out his handcuffs, saying, “Well, I guess I’ll do the pat-down here, since she’s a guy.”

“No, you won’t,” Madeline said. “I’m not a man anymore. And I won’t be put into a cell with men. And you won’t put your hands on me.”

“You’re a tranny?” Flotsam said.

“Transsexual, if you please,” Madeline said. “I haven’t had time to change my name legally yet.”

“Pre-op or post-op?” Ronnie asked.

“Post-op,” Madeline said. “As of three months ago, and I’ll strip and prove it if you like.”

“Then I guess I’ll be doing the pat-down here,” Ronnie said. “Just relax, Madeline.”

The desperate situation of Leonard Stilwell had gotten considerably worse. He was failing at every attempt to make a buck, and Ali Aziz had not phoned him yet about doing the job on Mt. Olympus. He had even driven up Laurel Canyon one afternoon and taken the right turn into the Mt. Olympus development, not doubting that there were more Italian cypress planted there per acre than anywhere else in the world. Leonard drove the streets and thought it looked pretty formidable. There were security company signs everywhere, and he saw a few homes where uniformed security people were standing in the driveway. He was not encouraged.

Leonard had been reduced to shoplifting from discount stores, but even boosting small merchandise wasn’t so easy anymore. It was at the cyber café where Leonard got drawn into a humiliating plot to commit the most pathetic crime he could imagine.

There were more than a hundred computers for rent in the cyber café, and lots of jackals and bottom feeders whom Leonard knew, tweakers mostly, used the computers to sell stolen items and make deals for crystal meth and other drugs. Leonard had a cheap little CD player with headphones that he’d boosted and nearly got caught with when he’d bypassed the checkout counter. None of the other scavengers in the parking lot of the cyber café would trade him so much as a single rock for the CD player. One of the base heads actually sneered at him. He was about to give up when a tweaker he’d seen before but didn’t know by name gave him a nod.

The tweaker was a white guy several years younger than Leonard but in far worse condition. He was jug-eared, with small, close-set eyes and pus-filled speed bumps all over his sunken cheeks. He had only a few teeth left in his grille and he grinned at Leonard. They recognized each other’s desperation and that was enough. Names were not needed.

“I need a driver,” the tweaker said to Leonard. “I seen you getting out of that Honda. You open for a job?”

“Let’s break it down, dude,” Leonard said.

The tweaker followed Leonard to his car, which was parked in front of a donut shop in the same little strip mall. After they got in Leonard’s car, the tweaker lifted his T-shirt and showed a small-caliber revolver stuck in his waistband.

“Freeze-frame!” Leonard said. “I ain’t into guns.”

“This ain’t real,” the tweaker said. And he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It clicked. He grinned and said, “It’s a starter pistol. Unloaded.”

“I think you better get outta my car,” Leonard said.