Hollywood Crows (40 page)

“Yes,” Ali said. “I shall pay you the bonus. You are a good girl.”

She was losing him again. She had seen the rage rise and fall and rise again. Now it was ebbing. She’d given him too much to process. He was beaten down by it. He looked like he might start weeping and not stop. She was watching it slipping away. All the money she and Margot would share. It was time to play her last card: the ace of spades.

She said, “There’s something else, Ali…. No, never mind.”

Wearily he said, “What? Tell me all, Jasmine. Please.”

“I don’t know if I should. I don’t have proof of anything, and there’s nothing you can do about it anyways.”

He raised his eyes from his desk and looked up at her, his dark-rimmed eyes boring into hers. “Tell me,” he said.

“Well, there was one point when I heard Nicky hollering for his mom. It’s when Lucas was outside in the pool and I was in the bedroom with Margot, telling her she had to get herself together, that her son was calling for her.”

“Yes, yes?” he said, his voice pleading to hear, and not wanting to hear.

“She was too into the blow. I couldn’t get through to her. Then I heard Lucas come from the pool. I heard him coming up the stairs. I heard him walk down the hall to Nicky’s room. I peeked out and saw him, wearing only the Speedo, open Nicky’s door and go in and close it behind him.”

“Oh, god!” Ali said. And then he began murmuring in Arabic. Jasmine guessed it was a Muslim prayer. After a few seconds he stopped.

“I’m not saying anything terrible happened in there, Ali,” Jasmine said. “But he was in there for quite a while. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe longer. When he came out, Nicky wasn’t yelling anymore.”

“Then you did
what
?” Ali demanded.

And there was no doubt about it. This was pure rage. He was scaring her. She said, “Ali, I did what I could! When that man went into Margot’s bathroom, I ran down the hall to Nicky’s room and I opened the door and looked in.”

“He is okay?” Ali said. “Please, Jasmine. My Nicky is okay?”

“The room was dark and he was under the covers, crying. I said his name but he wouldn’t come out from under the covers. He knows me, but he wouldn’t come out. Then I had to leave him because Lucas was out of the bathroom, asking Margot where I went. I ran back into the bedroom and said good night to both of them and came here as fast as I could.”

Ali’s fists were clenched so tightly the knuckles were white as bone. He began to rise from his chair, and if he had been looking directly at her, she would have run for the door in fright. He said, “Thank you, Jasmine.”

“Are you going there, Ali?” she said. “Oh, I’m afraid. It could be dangerous for you!”

“And for Nicky,” he said quietly.

Jasmine stood and said, “Are you taking your bouncer with you? You could, but it might trigger a confrontation.”

“Thank you,” Ali said, walking stiff-legged toward the door. “I must go there in peace. Alone. I shall only demand to see my son. If they do violence on me, I shall have a reason to call the police.”

“Wait!” she shouted, and it caused him to stop. “You can’t go there like that. Take your gun with you.”

Ali said, “I do not threaten nobody. I shall take my son away. Nobody is going to stop me.”

“But, Ali!” Jasmine said frantically. “You can’t do it unarmed! That man is big and creepy and young. He won’t let you take Nicky. He’ll hurt you bad. Maybe Nicky too. Maybe you won’t even be able to call the police. Then what? Take the gun as protection for
both
of you. Just in case of emergency!”

Ali stood motionless, then returned to his desk and unlocked a lower drawer and, removing a .32 caliber, semiautomatic pistol, put it inside the waistband of his trousers. And then Ali Aziz did the most amazing thing that Jasmine had ever seen him do. He walked out the door, leaving her in the office with the desktop stacked with money. She went to the door and spoke to him as he was walking down the passageway.

She said, “I had a feeling it would come to this if I told you everything, Ali. So when I went out Margot’s front door, I took off the knob lock. And they were both too ripped to have set the burglar alarm. You can just walk in, Ali. But for god’s sake, be careful!”

He never turned around but said, “Thank you, Jasmine. You are a good girl.”

When she was sure Ali was gone, Jasmine ran back inside his office and scooped all of the money from the desktop into her purse.

I
T HAD BEEN
an uneventful night for 6-X-66, but that was okay with them. Lately, they’d had enough of what Hollywood cops called Star Wars Nights to last awhile. The pursuit of an ice-cream truck ending up as a shooting in the Hollywood cemetery, along with the Somalian woman who’d been painted white, had practically given them carpal tunnel by the time they got through writing all of the reports.

They’d just handled a call that had taken them out of their area and into the Hollywood Hills. It hadn’t amounted to much, only a jittery resident worrying about a parked car on Laurel Canyon Boulevard that turned out to belong to a neighbor’s nephew visiting from Montana. Gert Von Braun and Doomsday Dan Applewhite were on their way down the canyon, Gert driving, when they saw a Jaguar make a hard right turn onto the lovely tree-lined road leading up to Mt. Olympus.

“That guy almost rolled it,” Dan said.

“Let’s check him out,” said Gert.

She whipped a left and floored it, turning on her light bar. In a moment, the black-and-white had closed on the Jaguar, which pulled over in front of a palatial home halfway up the hill.

Ali Aziz was in the crisis of his life. If the police got him out of his car and spotted the pistol inside his belt, he’d no doubt be arrested for carrying the concealed weapon, even though he had legally purchased the gun several years ago at a gun shop. If he put the loaded pistol on the seat, he’d still have a lot of explaining to do and perhaps be taken to Hollywood Station for further investigation. If he tried to hide it under the seat and they noticed it, he’d be arrested for certain.

In that fateful moment, he even considered telling them the terrible things that Jasmine had said and asking them to accompany him to his home. But he knew that would end with Margot reassuring the cops that everything was fine and that they were in a bitter divorce and custody fight. And the cops would tell him to go home and speak with his lawyer and to the appropriate detectives in the morning. He had learned from experience how the laws of this country worked against people who were trying to do what is right. And in the meantime his son would be left in his bed, weeping in terror, and perhaps from unspeakable harm done to him.

Ali didn’t have time and couldn’t risk it. He decided in that brief moment to get his emotions under control and to run the bluff of his lifetime. Ali Aziz willed a small smile onto his face when the burly woman cop came up on his side of the car while her male partner stood at the passenger side, shining his light in the window.

“In a hurry, are we, sir?” Gert said.

“I am so sorry, Officer,” Ali said. “I am Ali Aziz, proprietor of the Leopard Lounge on Sunset Boulevard. I am in big hurry to the house of my ex-wife to collect my son.”

He gingerly reached into his coat pocket for his wallet while both cops shined their flashlight beams on his left hand. He prayed to god that they would not spot the gun when he removed his license for Gert. He also removed business cards bearing the name of the Hollywood Station captain as well as one from the division captain.

“I am always first to give plenty of my time to the Community Police Advisory Board,” he said. “I give always donations to the holiday party for children. Everyone knows Ali.”

“Just curious,” Gert said. “Why’re you picking up your son at this time of night? Won’t he be asleep?”

“Yes, you are correct,” Ali said. “I work late at the nightclub and this is how I must do. Nicky is going to sleep in my car when I drive with him to my condo.”

Gert Von Braun didn’t like his plastered-on smile and she didn’t like the beads of sweat forming at his hairline. Her blue antenna was sending signals, but the address on his license was up the hill near the top of Mt. Olympus, and everything he said made sense. She looked over the roof of the Jaguar to Dan Applewhite, who shrugged.

“Drive more carefully when you have your son in the car, Mr. Aziz,” she said, handing Ali back his license.

“Yes, yes, Officer,” Ali said. “I shall drive with great care.”

When the cops returned to their black-and-white, Ali drove slowly up the hill to the house on Mt. Olympus.

Margot had received the two-ring warning call from Jasmine twenty-five minutes earlier. It meant that Ali was on his way. The go phone was on vibrate and she didn’t need to answer it. She had been seated naked on the lounge in the darkened master bedroom, on the opposite side of the king-size bed in which Bix Ramstead slept. She got up, went to his side of the bed, and removed his pistol from the holster on the nightstand. She walked back around the bed and out to the terrace through the sliding door that she’d kept open. After she got to the railing, she looked out into the canyon and hurled the throwaway phone into the brush below.

She walked softly to her walk-in closet for a robe and laid it across the lounge. But she would not put it on. Bix had last seen her naked, not that he’d remember. Then she sat back down on the lounge and waited for the sound of a car in front.

Ali Aziz parked in the driveway rather than on the street in case he had to get away fast, with his son in one hand and a gun in the other. He closed the door of the Jaguar quietly and walked to Margot’s door, grateful that the security lights in the garden had not been turned on but there was moonlight. He looked up at the bright, glowing moon.

The door was unlocked and Ali blessed Jasmine for it. He entered, leaving the door open for his fast exit. He’d decided to go straight to Nicky’s room, take him out of bed, and run with him down the stairs and out. Tomorrow, he and his lawyer, with Jasmine’s help — and she would help when he offered her $25,000 — would go to the police, as well as to the judge who’d presided over their divorce proceedings. And if there was any justice at all, he would never have to return Nicky to her again. He prayed that the drug-dealing monster had not harmed his son.

There was a light on. The lamp at the top of the staircase on a marble table under the huge mirror that had cost him a fortune. He ascended, turned left, and crept along the hallway to Nicky’s room, finding the door wide open. He stepped inside, but the bed was made and Nicky was gone! What had they done with him? He returned along the hall to the master bedroom. Could Nicky be in bed with them? The double doors were wide open. He adjusted the gun inside his belt so that it was more accessible. A few more quiet steps and he’d be through the double doorway into the master bedroom.

He stood in the doorway. He could hear faint snoring, but it was very dark in there. He took another step forward. There was only one person lying there, sleeping on what he knew to be her side of the bed. Was it Margot? Was she alone in the bedroom? Where was the man? Where was Nicky? He was confused. He took another step inside. And another, his pupils adjusting to the darkness. And then he heard the loudest shout he had ever heard from the lips of Margot Aziz.

“ALI, DON’T SHOOT! PLEASE DON’T SHOOT! DON’T SHOOT!”

“What?” he said. “What? Margot?”

And Ali Aziz saw three fireballs and perhaps heard three explosions, but perhaps not. He was slammed down onto his back by the fireballs. It was a tight pattern fired from a distance of four feet after Margot stepped from behind the closet door and stood between Ali and the bed, crouching slightly and firing two-handed, just as the instructor had shown her at the pistol range. Ali’s chest heaved and began leaking blood, then bubbled from an arterial spurt. His heart stopped almost instantly, pierced by one of the 9-millimeter rounds.

The explosions that smashed Ali Aziz to the floor also brought Bix Ramstead onto the floor, feet first. He leaped from bed and stumbled to his knees, not knowing where he was.

“Bix! Bix!” Margot screamed. “The lights! Turn on the lights!”

But Bix didn’t know where the lights were. Bix was trying to decide where
he
was, and he wasn’t even sure who was yelling his name. He saw a lamp and reached for it but knocked it from the nightstand.

Margot Aziz did not want light. She had dropped Bix’s pistol onto the floor and, with tissue in her left hand, was feeling around Ali’s waist and in his pockets. But there was no gun! Where was the fucking gun? Working frantically in the darkness, she managed to get her hand under him but it wasn’t there either! Then she accidentally touched his crotch and felt hard metal inside. The gun had slipped down inside his briefs when he’d fallen.

Bix Ramstead figured out that he was in the bedroom of Margot Aziz, and he yelled, “Margot! Where are you! Where’s the light switch!”

She saw him lurching naked toward the open doorway, toward the lamp outside, just as she got her hand down inside Ali’s crotch and worked the gun up and out, using the sheets of tissue between her fingers and the steel. She picked up the pistol and placed it beside Ali’s outstretched right hand.

Margot wadded the tissue in her left hand and, putting her right hand on Ali’s bloody chest, smeared some blood on her own chest and cheek for dramatic effect, screaming, “Ali! Ali! Bix, I think he’s dead!”

Bix Ramstead found the wall switch by the door, turned on the bedroom lights, and said, “Get away from him! Don’t touch him!”

Margot stood up, put her bloody hand to her face, and screamed, “He’s dead! Ali’s dead! Oh, dear god!”

Bix Ramstead swayed and scrutinized the scene in horror, saying, “Where’s my clothes? Where’s my goddamn clothes?”

“Ali!” Margot screamed, running into the bathroom, kneeling at the toilet, and making gagging sounds, while Bix found his clothes in the closet and picked up the telephone that had fallen onto the floor beside the bed.