Hollywood Crows (9 page)

“Do you think they really
could
be al Qaeda?” Jetsam said.

While Jetsam was annoying his partner with his sleuthing, Ali Aziz was counting the crowd at the Leopard Lounge and ranting at his black bartenders, his white cocktail waitresses, and even his Mexican dishwashers. Ali wasn’t worried about his rant upsetting his customers. All of them were men whose rapt attention was focused on a pair of topless dancers in G-strings, writhing around metal poles while music blared from a sound system that had cost Ali $75,000, even though he’d gotten a special discount from a customer who’d needed cash prior to beginning a prison sentence for fencing stolen property.

Ali Aziz had employed all manner of bartenders, both male and female: whites, Asians, Mexicans, now two black men whom he was going to fire next week, and even a man from the Middle East. They were all thieves, Ali Aziz believed. Ali’s bartenders and his cocktail waitresses wore starched white shirts, black bow ties, and black trousers, but Ali always said that if bartenders served drinks completely naked with a manager watching them, they would find a way to steal from him.

Of course, Ali also thought that the U.S. government stole from him, as well as the state of California, as well as the city of Los Angeles. He fought back by keeping two sets of books for both nightclubs he owned, one with the real income, the other for IRS auditors. Whenever possible in years past, Ali had bought liquor from the addict burglar he knew as Whitey Dawson, whom he had met shortly after coming to America thirty years earlier, when Ali was twenty-two years old. He’d gotten word that Dawson had overdosed on heroin and died, and Ali was prepared to deal with Dawson’s protégé, Leonard Stilwell. But soon even Leonard had stopped coming.

Of course, a prosperous businessman like Ali Aziz did not trust the late Whitey Dawson or Leonard Stilwell any more than he trusted his bartenders, and far less than he trusted his estranged wife, Margot, the thought of whom filled him with rage. Ali had always made sure that any liquor that came from thieves like Whitey Dawson was picked up by a friend or an acquaintance of one of Ali’s Mexican busboys. Or by someone else not directly connected to Ali or to his businesses.

“You, Paco!” Ali yelled at a Mexican who was busy cleaning the table at the largest banquette.

The Mexican, whose name was Pedro, not Paco, had been employed by Ali for six months and said, “I come, boss.”

“Where is my goddamn key? My key ain’t on my desk!”

“I don’… I don’…” Pedro couldn’t remember the English word for
comprendo
, his brow knitting into furrows. He kept his eyes lowered, fixed on Ali’s diamond pinkie ring and on his huge gold watch as Ali shook a finger in the Mexican’s face.

“Do not be so stupid!” Ali said. “Key.
Llave
.” Then Ali muttered, “Goddamn Mexican. I speak in Spanish. I speak in English. Goddamn stupid Mexican.”

At last Pedro understood. “Boss!” he said. “Joo not geev to me. Joo geev to Alfonso.”

Ali stared at Pedro for a moment, then said, “Go back to work.”

Ali stormed back into the kitchen to scream at the sweating dishwasher, whose arms were submerged in soapy water, his head enveloped in a mist of steam. After retrieving the key to the storage room from the apologetic Mexican, and after threatening to fire him and withhold wages for incompetence, Ali returned to the bar to check the crowd again.

He grudgingly had to admire the job that Margot had done with her interior decor. The room was first-class, and well designed to accommodate as many customers as the fire inspector allowed. Ali had balked at the price she’d paid for the wallpaper, with its wine-colored swirls bleeding into earth tones. And the wine-colored carpet she’d wanted would have cost more than the silver Rolls-Royce he’d test-driven last week, so he’d overruled her and bought chocolate brown carpet at a discount price. Now that his business had improved and customers seemed happy with the refurbishing, he was glad he had listened to Margot. And he had to admit that the bitch had many talents. But he still wished that she were dead.

Leonard Stilwell had gotten fed up and quit his short-lived job at the car wash, and he hadn’t been able to set up a sting of any kind since Whitey Dawson had died. Security had tightened everywhere and Leonard Stilwell needed rock cocaine. He was lapsing into severe depression in the rat hole of a two-room apartment he rented by the week in East Hollywood. It was what the manager called a “studio apartment.” There was a room with a hide-a-bed that closed up against the wall so he could enter the kitchenette without walking across the bed. And the kitchenette was so small, an anorexic tweaker couldn’t squeeze through it without turning sideways. To make matters worse, a biker and his biker bitch were living in the apartment next door, and they’d be outside working on their chopper at all hours, revving the engine so Leonard couldn’t sleep. The dude didn’t wear any biker colors or have shit logos attached to his leather jacket, but he was big, hairy, and ugly, and Leonard was scared to say anything to him. At times like this Leonard almost wished he were back in jail.

In fact, he was so desperate he decided to go out that evening and try to game some chump at the ATM in the shopping mall. There was a market there that he’d burglarized on two occasions back when Whitey Dawson was alive and not so heroin crazed. Whitey could disarm most of the alarms they’d encounter, and he was a master with lock picks. Leonard was no good at any of it but had always been available to Whitey. Now Leonard had fallen on very hard times and been forced to become resourceful.

He’d tried an ATM trap four times and each attempt had failed, but he’d learned a few things through failure. This time Leonard made sure he had strips of black film that would be undetectable when pressed against the black slot reader at an ATM. He folded over the ends of the film and attached glue strips on the folded portions. What he’d failed to do last time, he corrected by cutting slits on the film so the card didn’t get kicked back out the slot by the mechanism.

It was getting close to the hour when most of the stores were closing in Hollywood, so he didn’t waste time. He dressed in a clean Aloha shirt, reasonably clean jeans, and sneakers, in case he had to beat feet in a hurry. He drove his old Honda to the mall parking lot, leaving the car near enough to the ATM for a fast exit but not so close that a witness would see him jumping into it. He strolled to the ATM and pretended to be inserting a card to make a transaction. Instead he inserted the trap into the slot and pressed hard on the glue strips on the upper and lower lip of the card reader. Then he retreated and waited.

An elderly woman approached the ATM holding a child by the hand, probably the woman’s grandson, by the looks of them. They appeared to be Latinos, and Leonard cursed his luck. If they were illegal aliens who didn’t speak enough English to give up the PIN, it wasn’t going to work. But on second thought, they were too well dressed to be illegals, and it gave him hope.

The woman inserted her card, but nothing happened. She punched in her PIN and waited. Still nothing happened. She looked at the boy, who Leonard guessed was about ten years old. Then Leonard strolled closer and heard them speaking a foreign language that wasn’t Spanish.

Leonard pulled out an old ATM card he carried for this game, made sure that they saw it, and said, “Excuse me, is there something wrong with the machine?”

The boy said, “The card is stuck inside. It won’t come out.”

“Lemme try it,” Leonard said. “I’ve had this happen to me.”

The woman looked at Leonard and he gave her his biggest freckle-faced, blue-eyed, reassuring smile. She said something to the boy in that strange language and the boy answered her.

Up close, while he was trying to sell Leonard Stilwell to them, she didn’t look so old, maybe the same age as his mother, who would be fifty-eight if she were alive. And up close this woman looked smart. And wary.

“Where’re you from?” Leonard asked the boy.

“My grandmother is Persian,” the boy said. “I am American.”

He should’ve known. They were all over Iran-geles. And he’d never met a poor one, so he was feeling pretty stoked when he said, “See, I know what to do to get your card back. You punch in your PIN number at the same time that I press ‘cancel’ and ‘enter.’ Then the card should just pop out.”

The boy spoke again to the woman, and she reluctantly moved aside for Leonard, who stepped up and put his fingers on the “cancel” and “enter” keys. She looked at him and he smiled again, trying not to swallow his spit. When he did that, his oversized Adam’s apple bobbed, a sure sign of nerves.

“We have to time this right,” he said to the boy. “Tell her she has to put in her PIN number now.”

Instead, it was the boy who moved next to Leonard. He said, “I can do it. I’m ready.”

“Go,” Leonard said, and he watched the boy punch the five digits as Leonard pressed the “cancel” and “enter” keys.

And then Leonard stepped back, scratched his head theatrically, making dandruff flakes appear on his bird’s nest of rusty red hair, and said, “I’m sorry, it’s always worked before. Can’t help you, I guess.”

Leonard shrugged at the woman and, lifting his hands palms up, turned and walked toward the parked cars, where he crouched behind the first row and watched them. The woman and boy conversed for a moment and then went inside the store while Leonard sprinted to the ATM machine, carefully lifted the folded tips of the film, gently pulled, and captured the ATM card. Then he punched in the PIN, took a chance on asking for $300, the maximum daily withdrawal allowed by the bank whose name was on the card, and jackpot!

Fifteen minutes later, Leonard Stilwell was parking in the pay lot closest to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, not even pissed off by the exorbitant parking fee because he had three bills in his kick. He was looking for Bugs Bunny, not the tall Bugs Bunny who often showed up on Friday night, but the short Bugs Bunny who always kept a stash of rocks inside his bunny head as he hopped around in his rabbit suit with a big foam-rubber carrot in his paw, saying, “What’s up, doc?” to every tourist with a camera who got within ten yards of him.

The Street Characters were always out in numbers on soft summer nights like this one. He saw Superman, Batman, Porky Pig, and SpiderMan, one of several, in his predatory pose with one knee raised, looking more like a bird than a spider. Summer nights like this, when the smog conditions created a low sky, cutting heaven down to size, made people feel that paradise could be found right here on Hollywood Boulevard. They made this a magical place for anyone with hopes and dreams.

Leonard Stilwell, who knew something about Hollywood magic, watched an intent tourist with a purse dangling from a strap over her shoulder snap a photo of her husband, who was posing with Catwoman. This, while a lean and nimble teenage boy expertly opened her purse and removed her wallet, disappearing into the crowd before she’d even asked Catwoman to pose for one more.

When it was time to pay the amazon for the photo, the woman said, “Oh, Mel! Melvin! My wallet’s gone!”

Leonard hoped he’d never have to resort to the risky trade of purse and pocket picking, and as he sidled through the throngs, he heard Catwoman say, “I hope you don’t think I dress up and pose for free, Melvin. Nobody got
your
wallet, did they?”

When Leonard saw the Hulk, he was hopeful. He knew that the Hulk was a pal of Bugs Bunny because he once saw them leave together in the same car. But the Hulk was very busy at the moment with no less than six Asian tourists lining up to take photos with him. Ditto for Mr. Incredible, Elmo, and even Count Dracula, whose blood-dripping leer was too scary for photos with little kids.

Then Leonard spotted him. Bugs Bunny was doing a double shoot with the Wolf Man, both of them sandwiching an obese, fifty-something woman wearing a sequined “I Love Hollywood” baseball cap, her chubby hands caressing the heads of both Street Characters.

When Bugs had collected his tip from the woman, Leonard approached him and whispered in a two-foot ear, “I need some rock.”

“How much you got?” Bugs said.

“I can spend two bills. You good with that?”

“Good as gold, dude. I got some rock, and some ice-that’s-nice if you wanna do crystal. Wait one minute and follow me into the Kodak Center. I gotta take care of Pluto, then you.”

When Leonard looked back on that moment later in the evening, he thought it must have been his sixth sense as a burglar that saved him. All those years watching, waiting, studying people. Asking himself things like, Is that greaser looking at me the way one of the 18th Street crew would look at me? Or the way an undercover cop would look at me? Or, why is that nigger hooker working this corner tonight, when I never saw her or any hooker here before? Did that fucking little junkie from Pablo’s Tacos tell the cops that I’d be taking off his boss’s store tonight with the alarm code he gave me? Is that sneaky whore really a cop, or what?

Leonard did not like the look of the fat tourist in a new white tee with the Hollywood sign emblazoned across the front and back. Leonard didn’t like his L.A. Dodgers baseball cap either. It was too well worn to belong to an out-of-towner. The bottom-heavy guy looked like he was trying too hard to appear touristy, and he wasn’t quite fat enough for Leonard to say he couldn’t be a cop.

Leonard stayed far back and was one hundred feet away when he spotted Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto, their huge heads under their arms, standing outside a restroom. He saw the buy go down. And he saw the fat guy take off his Dodgers cap. And Leonard knew that was a signal, for sure.

The fat guy ran straight at them, and three other undercover cops came at them from other directions. Bugs Bunny tried to dump the meth from his head by tipping it upside down. Pluto took the rock cocaine he’d bought and threw it backward across the floor.

The fat guy pulled a pistol from under his tee and yelled, “Police! Drop your heads and raise your paws!”