Hollywood Crows (36 page)

That got her attention. She said, “Don’t tell me that if it isn’t true, Margot. I can’t deal with it no more.”

“Tonight, baby!” Margot said. “Take the night off.”

“Ali will kill me!” Jasmine said, and Margot almost laughed.

Jasmine realized what she’d just said and muttered, “Damn! That’s sick.”

“It’s your turn to sprain an ankle,” Margot said. “I’ll have my friend under control before midnight, for sure. You be ready to do what you gotta do then.”

“Midnight?” Jasmine said.

“Right around midnight,” Margot said.

“I was starting to think it was like a game,” Jasmine said. “Not real, you know?”

“It’s real, baby,” Margot said. “We’ll have it all.”

“Will you call me when it’s time?”

“You be sitting in your car a block from the club no later than eleven-thirty. Sometime after that you’ll get the call, and then you gotta be good, honey. Real good.”

“I will be,” she said.

“Make that mascara run,” Margot said.

“I can do it,” Jasmine said. “I just hope you can.”

“I love you,” Margot said, ending the call.

Margot poured a cup of coffee and called the nanny in order to have Nicky picked up for an overnighter. The nanny was used to it and got well paid for overnighters. There was nothing for Margot to do now but to prepare herself mentally.

She decided that after a few months she’d kiss off Jasmine with a nice “severance package.” Margot figured that $100,000 would be enough for her. Of course, Jasmine would rage and threaten to expose Margot, but what could she really do? Admit to being a co-conspirator and accomplice? And what could she prove if she did make such an outrageous claim? No, Jasmine would take the money and fall in love with someone else. Just like the song, she fell in love too easily, but only if the lover was very rich. That reminded Margot to retrieve Jasmine’s go phone in the next few days and dispose of it. Just in case.

Sheer emotional exhaustion kept Leonard asleep for an hour. When he got up, he showered and even shaved. He put on a clean T-shirt and faded Levi’s jeans that weren’t too grungy and his best pair of sneaks. He smoked a cigarette and amped up on coffee and began a rehearsal. He had to strike the right ’tude going in, was how he figured it. He had to be ready to be just too cool when the fucking Ay-rab started waving the verbal dagger in his face.

The Leopard Lounge had enough dancers in the stable to keep the club crowded in late afternoon, and happy hour prices were not necessary. Leonard counted more than forty cars in the parking lot at 6:10
P.M
., and it made him feel more justified than ever in making demands for a decent fee for services rendered.

He once again entered the office of Ali Aziz without knocking, and found Ali seated at his desk with a bottle of Jack and two glasses. Near the bottle were some letters and a blank envelope, along with a vial of magenta-and-turquoise capsules.

Ali, who had also been mentally rehearsing, had the toothiest smile that Leonard had ever seen on him.

“Leonard, my friend!” Ali said extravagantly. “I am very glad to see you. I have got back the important document, thanks to my friend Leonard. Everything is correct again!”

Leonard sat in the client chair and said, “Yeah, well, I’m happy you’re happy, because I think we got more business to discuss.”

“I wish to order some food for my friend. I feel like a new man. A nice steak, perhaps? T-bone? Rib eye?”

Leonard gave a head shake, not knowing what to make of the new Ali, and he said, “Naw, I ate at IHOP.”

“A drink?” Ali said, pouring two hefty shots of Jack Daniel’s.

“Okay,” Leonard said, picking up the nearest glass.

“You look like you are tired,” Ali said. “You are getting enough sleep, no?”

“I get enough,” Leonard said.

“I am getting good sleep,” Ali said. “I take sleep medicine that one of my dancers gave to me.”

“That’s good,” Leonard said, thinking he might try switching from smoking rock to booze if he could afford good stuff like this.

Ali said, “I am going home in one hour because I was awake at five o’clock this morning to do inventory. My bitch wife no longer does inventory for me, so I must do all things.”

“Yeah, life is tough,” Leonard said. “You shoulda been with me last night. Even your sleeping pills wouldn’t a helped.”

“Where you were last night?”

“In jail.”

“Oh, god!” Ali said. “What did you do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Leonard said. “Except that I did that job for you. And the cops found my tools and rousted me, and I spent the night in jail, even though they couldn’t prove nothing and had to kick me out this afternoon.”

“Oh, god!” Ali said. “You didn’t say nothing about—”

“Of course not,” Leonard said. “But I still got popped behind that business I did for you.”

“I am so sorry, my friend,” Ali said, pouring another double shot for Leonard. “That is why you look so sleepy.”

With two capsules full of powdered sugar concealed in his left hand, Ali reached for the vial of capsules on the desk. Ali unscrewed the top and appeared to shake out two capsules onto the desktop, dropping the two that he’d palmed. Then he screwed the top back on and put the vial near the bottle of Jack.

Ali made it very apparent that he was putting the capsules into his mouth and swallowing them down with a shot of the Scotch, saying, “This is very good sleep medicine. I shall be feeling very peaceful soon. And then, maybe one hour from now, I shall go to bed and sleep for ten, twelve hours. You only want eight hours, you swallow down one capsule. Wonderful sleeping.”

“Yeah, that’s nice, but maybe we oughtta talk,” Leonard said.

Still brimming with bonhomie, Ali said, “You try.” Then he unscrewed the top again.

“I ain’t ready to go to sleep,” Leonard said.

“No,” Ali said, “not for now. You try later. You shall thank me. If you like them, I get you all you want.”

Leonard had never been one to turn down drugs of any kind, and he gave a nod while Ali dumped the capsules onto the desktop and put the empty vial in the drawer. Then he pushed a plain envelope across to Leonard with his fingernail and, with a mirthless smile, said, “One hour before you wish to sleep, swallow down two.”

Leonard scooped the capsules into the envelope, folded it, and put it in his pocket. Then he said, “I been thinking that my pay for what I done for you is pathetic. You just said how much I helped you. But what happened to me? I went to the slam and spent the fucking night with maniacs and child molesters and gangbangers.”

Ali stopped smiling then. His brow wrinkled and he said, “I feel great sorrow for you, my friend.”

Leonard said, “Yeah, well, I ain’t looking for pity. I just want proper compensation.”

Ali knew he had guessed correctly. It was blackmail. He’d probably demand another two hundred. Maybe even five. And he’d be back in a few weeks. And a few weeks after that. Ali was glad he had decided to give Leonard the other deadly sister. It would be the only way to stop these petty demands that would eventually get expensive, and even dangerous.

Trying to maintain an attitude of sympathy mixed with puzzlement, Ali said, “How can I help you, Leonard?”

“I think ten thousand bucks will help a lot,” Leonard said.

Ali could not remember a time when he needed to control so much outrage. He sipped some Jack and, with a quiver in his voice, said, “You wish for me to pay you ten thousand? Am I hearing the correct words?”

“It’s only a loan,” Leonard said. “I got an idea for a small business. I need a stake.”

“A loan,” Ali said without intonation.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “I’ll pay you back in maybe a year, eighteen months tops, with twenty percent interest. That’s fair, ain’t it?”

“But Leonard, ten thousand is very big money,” Ali said.

“Not to you,” Leonard said. “I seen your ex-house. I seen this club packed to the walls, with money laying all over the bar and the tables and even on the stage. How much did you make on a case of that hot liquor I used to supply you? Come on, Ali, ten grand ain’t much for you to lend to a friend.”

“I shall have to think,” Ali said. “You come back in three, four days. We are going to talk some more.”

Suddenly Leonard said, “What would your ex–old lady say if she knew you paid me to steal a folder from her desk?”

Ali knew that his voice might betray the rage welling up from his belly, so he took another sip of Jack Daniel’s and said, “My bitch wife? She would say no, Ali has no care about documents in this house. She would not be believing such a thing, Leonard.”

Emboldened by Ali’s deferential manner and by the liquor warming him, Leonard went for it. With sweat dampening his T-shirt, he said, “What would she say if I told her you planted a bug in her house?”

Ali was genuinely perplexed and said, “A bug?”

“A listening device,” Leonard said. “I bet she’d hire a security company to sweep the joint and they’d find it. Where’d you put it? In the bedroom?”

Hanging on to a semblance of a smile, Ali said, “You talk very much shit, Leonard.”

“I hung around and saw you go in that garage, Ali,” Leonard said. “And you were carrying that folder you never wanted in the first place. And you were in there for thirteen minutes. What would the little woman say about them little nuggets of information?”

Ali Aziz blinked first, unsmiling, his teeth clenched. Then, voice trembling, he said, “I do not put no bugs in the house. I just read the document and put the folder back in the house. That is all.”

“I guess you could try to sell that to the little woman,” Leonard said. “But she ain’t gonna buy it. And after they do the electronics sweep and find the bug, you are gonna be in a world of hurt when her lawyer tells the judge. Actually, what you done was a serious crime, Ali. You committed a felony, entering that house and planting a bug.”

For a frightening moment, Ali Aziz thought about the pistol in his desk drawer. He quickly came to his senses, knowing he could never get away with that. Not here, not now. Instead, with a voice hoarse and raspy, he said, “I understand. I shall give you the business loan, Leonard. But I do not have so much money here. Come back next week.”

“I want it now, Ali,” Leonard said. “We can start with what you got on you. I seen you peel off five grand right outta your pocket one time after Whitey and me got you a load of booze.”

Without a word, Ali Aziz reached a trembling hand into his trousers pocket, pulled out his roll of $100 bills, and tossed it on the desktop, gold money clip and all.

Leonard finished his drink, poured another, and removed the money clip and pushed it back to Ali. He counted while Ali sat trying with all of his self-control not to leap across the desk and get the thief’s skinny neck in his fingers and squeeze.

After he finished counting, Leonard said, “You let me down. You only got twenty-one hundred here. Go to your safe and get the rest. Whadda you got, a floor safe?”

Ali Aziz could barely get out the words, but he managed to say, “Please go to the bar, Leonard. Have one more drink. Come back and I shall have the money.”

“Sure,” Leonard said. “But you don’t gotta worry about me seeing your safe. I never steal from a friend.”

Leonard Stilwell’s legs were rubbery when he walked down the passageway to the main room, and he knew it wasn’t the booze. He had just pulled off the biggest score of his life! It was scary but he’d stung that fucking Ay-rab with ease, and there was no reason he couldn’t do it again before Ali’s ex-wife moved out of the house.

What was it Ali had said? Escrow was closing pretty soon? After that, and after the divorce shit was all worked out, a shakedown wouldn’t work anymore. In fact, Ali could retrieve the listening device himself by then, or he might even have somebody else break into the house and get it out of there in order to get Leonard off his back. But Leonard thought he ought to be able to burn Ali Aziz one more time, maybe in a few days, before Ali had a chance to react to what had just happened to him. Leonard figured that in business, timing was everything.

He was so utterly stoked, with more money in his pocket than he’d ever had in his life, that he sat by the stage and stuffed a $20 bill into the G-string of the dancer, a big, busty babe in a cowboy hat who’d licked her lips and winked at him. Then, when he finished his drink, after tipping the cocktail waitress $10, he walked back down the passageway. But suddenly he stopped and felt a wave of fear sweep over him. It was safe enough here with all the people around, but he thought of how Ali’s face had gone deathly pale. That swarthy camel fucker had turned whiter than Leonard for a minute there. Whiter than a corpse.

Leonard grabbed the first busboy to walk past him, handed the Mexican a $10 bill, and said, “Come with me to the boss’s office.”

He knocked this time, then pushed the door open gingerly, holding the Mexican by the arm and saying, “Ali, I brought the help with me.”

Ali was sitting at the desk, staring at the doorway, his hands folded under his chin. The look on his face was as grim as Leonard had seen on the strong-arm robber last night after he got the word that their new cellie was a short-eyes kiddie raper.

Ali said, “Please come in.”

“I’ll leave the door open,” Leonard said. Then to the Mexican, “What’s your name, son?”

“Marcos,” the kid said.

“Okay, Marcos, hang there for a minute,” Leonard said, leaving the door open so that Ali knew there was a witness, in case violence was on his mind. Then Leonard hurried across the room to Ali’s desk and picked up the stack of currency awaiting him.

“Good-bye, Leonard,” Ali said. “I do not want no more loans between us.”

“Don’t be a drama queen,” Leonard said. “This is what they call squid pro quo. That’s lawyer talk and it means we’re straight with each other.”

When he left the office, he handed the busboy another $10 and said, “Thanks for being my bodyguard, son.”

Ali Aziz entered his little half bathroom, closed the door, locked it, turned on both water taps to muffle the sound, and, gripping the sink, screamed until drool ran down his chin.