Hollywood Station (37 page)

Farley knew they didn't buy the wrong-address story, but he stuck with it. And he was pretty sure they were starting to think he hadn't been involved in the warehouse burglary but was just some tweaker with exactly $3.65 in his pocket, hired only to pick up and deliver.

He would have given up Little Bart instantly if he thought it would help him, but something in good cop's tone last time around told him he was going to be released. Except that bad cop came in and walked him to a holding tank with a wooden bench, where they locked him in. And every cop walking by could look through the big glass window and gawk at him like he was a fucking spider monkey at the Griffith Park zoo.

When Watch 5 left roll call at 6 P. M., several of them passed by the holding tank and did gawk at him.

"Hey, Benny," B. M. Driscoll said to his partner. "Is that the tweaker we wrote the ticket to?"

"Yeah," Benny Brewster said. Then he tapped on the glass and said to Farley, "What happened, man? They catch you selling ice?"

"Fuck you," Farley mumbled, and when Benny laughed and walked away, Farley growled, "You're the one oughtta be in a zoo with the rest of the silverbacks, you fucking ape."

Budgie and Fausto saw Benny talking to someone in the holding tank, and Budgie looked in and said, "Fausto, that's the guy we FI'd at the taco stand."

Fausto looked at Farley and said, "Oh yeah, the tweaker with the skinny girlfriend. Bet they got him doing a deal at Pablo's. They never learn, they never change."

When Hollywood Nate and Wesley walked past the holding tank, Nate heard Fausto's remark, took a look inside, and said, "Shit, everyone knows that dude. Hey, Wesley, check this out."

Wesley looked in and said, "Oh yeah. That's what's-his-name-Rimsdale? No, Ramsdale."

"Farley," Nate said. "Like the old movie star Farley Granger."

"Who?" Wesley said.

"Never mind," Nate said. "Let's go look for Trombone Teddy. We gotta find him or I'll have stress dreams tonight about chasing an old geezer who keeps holding me off with the slide of his gold trombone."

"Do you really have dreams like that?"

"No," Nate said, "but it would make a good dream sequence in a screenplay, don't you think?"

One of the sergeants on Watch 2 was a forty-year-old black woman, Wilma Collins. She had a good reputation with the troops but had a persistent weight problem that the coppers at Hollywood Station joked about. She wasn't actually obese but they called her a "leather stretcher." Her Sam Browne had a lot to hold in place.

Everyone knew that a few hours before end-of-watch, Sergeant Collins liked to sneak into IHOP and load up on buttermilk pancakes swimming in butter, with sausages and fried eggs and butter-drenched biscuits. They made lots of cholesterol and clogged-arteries jokes about Sergeant Collins.

When the surfer team were loading their war bags and getting ready to hit the streets, the entire parking lot and the watch commander's office suddenly erupted. Some of those who heard it had to sit for a moment until they could gain control. It became a Hollywood Station moment.

It seems that Sergeant Collins had left her rover behind on the counter at IHOP, because a message was sent on the Hollywood frequency by a Mexican busboy who had keyed the mike and talked into the rover.

The busboy said, "Hello, hello! Chubby black police lady? Hello, hello! You leave radio here! Hello! Chubby black lady? You there, please? Hello, hello!"

Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb didn't say much to each other when they left roll call. Nate was driving and Wesley had never seen him so intent on watching the street.

At last Wesley said, "I had to mention Trombone Teddy at roll call."

"I know you did," Nate said. "The real mistake I made was I shoulda told you to take Teddy's license number and at least write the info on the FI card."

"I shoulda done that on my own," Wesley said.

"You're barely off probation," Nate said. "You're still in the yessir boot-mode. It was my fault."

"We'll find Teddy," Wesley said.

"I hope he still has the card," Nate said. Then, "Hey, it was a business card, right? What was the business?"

"A Chinese restaurant. Ching or Chan, something like that."

"House of Chang?"

"Yeah, that was it!"

"Okay, let's pay them a visit."

The tow truck was parked in front of Farley Ramsdale's house and the Mexican driver was knocking on the door when Cosmo Betrossian came squealing down the street in his old Cadillac. The traffic had disrupted everything.

He got out and ran toward the porch, saying to the driver, "I am friend of Gregori. I am the one."

"Nobody home here," the Mexican said.

"Is not important," Cosmo said. "Come. Let us get the car."

He ran to the garage, opened the termite-eaten door, and was relieved to see that the garage was just as he'd left it.

"Let us push it out to the street," Cosmo said. "We must work fast. I have important business."

The Mexican and Cosmo easily pushed the car back down the driveway, Cosmo jumping in to steer after they got it going. The driver knew his job and in a few minutes had the Mazda hooked up and winched. It was all that Cosmo could do to keep from running back up the driveway and snatching the big can full of money from under the house.

Before he got in the truck to drive away, the driver said to Cosmo, "I call you in thirty minute?"

"No, I need more time. Call me in one hour. Traffic very bad tonight. I give you time to get to the yard of Gregori. Then you call, okay?"

"Okay," the Mexican said, waiting for the promised bonus.

Cosmo opened his wallet and gave the driver fifty dollars and said, "Put it back where junk cars go. Okay?"

As soon as the truck was halfway down the block, Cosmo went to the trunk of the Cadillac and removed the bag of killing tools. He was going to wait at least an hour for them to show up.

He walked quickly back up the driveway to the rear yard of the house and was shocked to see the little access panel hanging open. He dropped the bag and threw himself onto the dirt, crawling under the house. The can of money was gone!

Cosmo screamed an Armenian curse, got up, took the gun from the bag, and ran to the back porch. He didn't even bother slipping the lock with his credit card like last time. He kicked the flimsy door open and ran inside, prepared to kill anybody in the house after he tortured the truth out of them.

There was no one. He saw a note on the kitchen table in a childish scrawl. It said, "Gone to eat with Mabel. Will bring delishus supper for you."

His alternate plan to lure them to Gregori's junkyard, where they could easily be killed, was finished. They had his money. They would never go near him now except to collect the blackmail money from the diamond robbery. They would ask for even more now that they knew about the ATM robbery and the murder of the guard. They must have discovered the Mazda too. Farley had stolen their money, and he would want more money to keep his mouth shut about everything.

Maybe all he could do was give the diamonds to Farley. Give him everything and tell him to do the deal with Dmitri himself. Then beg Dmitri to kill both addicts after they were forced to tell where the money was, and beg Dmitri to be fair with the money split even though so many things had gone wrong. After all, if Dmitri's Georgian bartender hadn't given him a stolen car that could barely run, this would not have happened.

Or maybe he should just go home and get Ilya and the diamonds and head for the airport. It was too much for him to work out. He needed Ilya. She was a very smart Russian and he was far out of his depth. He would do whatever she wanted him to do.

Cosmo took his killing bag and went out to his car. He had never been so demoralized in his life. If the Cadillac failed to start, he would just take the pistol from the bag and shoot himself. But it started and he drove home to Ilya. When he was only two blocks from their apartment his cell rang.

He answered and the driver's voice said, "Mister, I am at Gregori's with the car. No problem. Everything okay."

The stolen car was okay, but of course everything else was far from okay.

At 7:15 P. M. Farley was released from the holding tank and told that he was free to go.

Bad cop said to him, "We know you're connected to those computers, but right now we're gonna let you walk. I suspect you'll see us again."

"Speaking of walk," Farley said. "My car's there where you grabbed me. How about a ride back up there?"

"You got a lotta 'tude, dude," bad cop said. "We're not running a taxi service."

"Man, you hassle me, you keep me here for hours when I ain't done nothing wrong. The least you can do is take me back to my car."

The Oracle heard the bitching and came out of the sergeant's office, saying to Farley, "Where do you need to go?"

Farley looked at the old sergeant and said, "Fairfax, just north of Hollywood Boulevard."

The Oracle said, "I'm going out now. I'll give you a lift."

Fifteen minutes later, when the Oracle dropped him at his car, Farley said, "Thanks a lot, Sergeant. You're okay."

The Oracle offered the Hollywood mantra: "Stay real, Farley. Stay real." But he knew that this tweaker would not. Who in Hollywood ever did?

"Teddy?" Mrs. Chang said when Hollywood Nate had a Latino busboy call her from the kitchen. "He eat here?"

"He's a bum," Nate said.

"Bum?" she said, grappling with the English meaning.

"Homeless," Wesley said. "Street person."

"Oh, street person," she said. "Him I know. Teddy. Yes."

"Does he come here?"

"Sometime he come to back door," Mrs. Chang said. "Come at maybe seven o'clock, sometime later. And we give him food we got to throw away. Teddy. Yes. He sit in kitchen and eat. Nice man. Quiet. We feel sorry."

"When did you last see him?" Wesley asked.

"Tuesday night maybe. Hard to remember."

Nate began writing in his notebook and said, "When he comes again, I want you to call this number. Ask that Six-X-Seventy-two come right away. I've written it down for you. We don't want to arrest him. We just have to talk to him. Understand?"

"Yes, I call."

The house was dark when Farley got home, and the garage door was open. Why would Olive go in the garage? There was nothing in there but junk.

He unlocked the front door and entered, yelling, "Olive! You here?"

She was not, and he went into the kitchen to see if there was any orange juice left and found the back door kicked open!

"Son of a bitch!" he said.

This was the first time that burglars had struck his house, although several houses on the block had been hit by daytime thieves in the past two years. But the TV was still there. He went into the bedroom and saw that the radio-CD player was still there. Nobody had ransacked the bedroom drawers. This wasn't like house breakers. It wasn't the way he worked when he himself was a daytime burglar fifteen years ago.

Then he saw the note on the kitchen table. Mabel. He should have known. The fucking old ghost probably was reading tarot cards for Olive and time had gotten away from the skinny moron. He went into the bedroom to strip down and take a shower and then he saw that something was different. The closet was half empty. All of Olive's clothes were missing, including the jacket he'd shoplifted for her Christmas present. He opened the drawer and saw that her underwear and socks were gone too. She'd bailed on him!

The note. He ran out the front door and across the street to Mabel's. It was such a warm evening that her door was open, and he could see that the TV was on. He put his hands up to the screen door to peer inside and said, "Mabel!"

The old woman shuffled in from the back bedroom of the cottage, wearing pajamas, a bathrobe, and fuzzy slippers, and said, "Farley? What're you doing here?"

"Do you know where Olive is?"

"Why, no."

"She left a note saying she was having supper with you."

"Yes, she did. And Olive found Tillie under your house where she'd made a nice little den for herself. Tillie's in my bedroom now, the little brat. I never have completely domesticated her."

"Did Olive say where she was going when she left?"

"Yes, home."

Farley had to sit down and ponder that when he got back to the house. Everything was going wrong lately. His entire world was upside down. Without a dollar to her name, that toothless fucking scarecrow had abandoned his ass! This was impossible! That imbecile Olive Oyl had actually dumped Farley Ramsdale, who'd given her everything!

This time it was Cosmo who was lying on the bed trying to quell a throbbing headache. He had quickly briefed Ilya on what had happened and then fell on his knees beside her chair and kissed her hands.

He is beaten, Ilya thought. Cosmo is crying for Mommy. He would never strike her again.

Ilya prepared her third glass of hot tea and lit a cigarette with the butt of the last and finally said, "Cosmo, all is a fuckup."

"Yes, Ilya," he murmured painfully.