“Bro, this could be something he should know about.”
“It’s the wrong goddamn address!” Flotsam said. “You can tell Nate all about it tomorrow. That thief we just shook ain’t gonna be killing no residents on this street tonight. You good with that?”
“I guess I gotta be,” Jetsam said.
“Tomorrow you can call Sleuths R Us if you get more brainstorms.”
“Bro, do you think you could stop ripping on me about that?” Jetsam said. “So I made a mistake about the SUVs. Can’t you just step off?”
Flotsam said, “I’m off it. Somebody’s gotta prove there’s a drop of mercy and compassion in this whole fucking city. Are we gravy, dude?”
“Gravy, bro,” Jetsam said. “Long as you don’t mention it again.”
“I’m off it forever,” Flotsam said. “And that’s the truth, sleuth.”
ELEVEN
OF COURSE, Hollywood Nate didn’t know anything at all about the surfers’ debate taking place out on the street in front of the Aziz home. He was sitting at the dining room table, sipping wine and looking into the amber eyes of Margot Aziz, who kept topping off his wineglass and trying to persuade him that she made the best martinis in Hollywood.
Finally he said, “I’m just not much of a martini guy. The wine is great and the pasta and salad were sensational.”
“Just a simple four-cheese noodle,” she said. “Your mom called it macaroni and cheese.”
“I should help you with the dishes,” he said. “I’m good at it. My ex-wife was dishwashing obsessive and turned me into a kitchen slave.”
“No dishes for us, boyo,” she said. “My housekeeper will be here in the morning, and she gets mad when there’s not something extra for her to do.” Then she said, “Did you have kids with your ex?”
“That was the one good thing about my marriage. No kids.”
“Can be good or bad,” she said. “Nicky is the only good thing about my marriage, which will soon be officially over, praise the lord.”
Nate looked around and said, “Will you get to keep this house?”
“We’re selling it,” she said. “Which is sad. This is the only home Nicky’s ever known. Did your wife get to keep your house?”
“It was an apartment,” Nate said. “More or less a pots ’n’ pans divorce. She came out of it way better than I did. Married a doctor and now lives the way a Jewish princess was meant to live. Her father hated it when she married a cop. She shoulda listened to him. I shoulda listened to him.”
Margot said, “My Nicky is five years old and deserves to keep the lifestyle he’s always had.”
“Sure,” Nate said. “Of course.”
“I worry a lot about him, and that’s part of what I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay,” Nate said. “I’m listening.”
“I’ve become afraid of his father.” Then she stopped, took another sip of wine, and said, “Sure you won’t have a martini? I’ve just gotta have one when I talk about my husband, Ali Aziz.”
“No, really,” Nate said. “You go ahead.”
Margot Aziz got up and walked out of the dining room and into a butler’s pantry, then to the kitchen, where Nate could hear her scooping from an ice maker. He got up and joined her, watching her make the cocktail.
“I’m not a big-city girl,” she said. “I’m from Barstow, California. Where desert teens spend Saturday night dining at the historic Del Taco fast-food joint and getting deflowered at the prehistoric El Rancho Motel. I dreamed of being an entertainer. Danced and sang at all the school assemblies and plays. I was Margaret Osborne then, voted the most talented girl in the senior class.”
She was quiet for a moment, and when they reentered the dining room, she said, “A James Bond vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred. Can’t I tempt you?”
“No, really, Margot, I’m feeling just perfect.” He wondered if “tempt” was meant as a double entendre, hoping it was.
She tasted the martini, nodded in satisfaction, and said, “The problem was, when I came to Hollywood and started looking for an agent and attending cattle calls and auditions, I discovered that every girl here was the most talented girl in her school. Changing my name from Margaret to Margot didn’t glam it up much.” She gave a self-deprecating shrug.
“I suspected you were a dancer,” Nate said. “Those legs.”
“Since turning thirty I’ve gotta work harder to keep things in place.” She sipped again, put the martini down, and said, “I wasn’t born to all this. My dad worked for the post office, and it almost broke my parents to put my older sister through college. Lucky for them, I didn’t want that. I wanted to dance, and I decided I was going to give it all I had. And that I did for nearly four years. I did waitressing to buy food and keep my car running. And then I did other things.”
Nate thought he’d heard this story before. Or seen it in just about every movie ever made about showbiz wannabes. He waited while she lowered her amber eyes as if ashamed, and he finally said, “Other things?”
“I became a topless dancer at some of the clubs on the boulevards. It was good money compared to what I’d been surviving on. Sometimes I made five hundred dollars a night on tips alone.”
She looked at him as though awaiting a response, so he said, “A girl’s gotta make a living somehow. This is a tough town.”
“Exactly,” she said. “But I never danced at the totally nude clubs. Those no-liquor joints that do totally nude attract servicemen and other rowdy young guys. I’d never take all my clothes off.”
“I understand,” Nate said, but he was wondering how big a difference a G-string made. He remembered a screen-writing class he’d taken at UCLA. Reductive. This freaking story was reductive.
“And then I got a job at the Leopard Lounge,” Margot said, “and I met Ali Aziz.”
“Your husband,” Nate said.
She nodded and said, “He owned two clubs. I danced at the Leopard Lounge for more than two years and made quite a lot of money, by my standards. I moved into a very nice condo, and Ali kept taking me on dinner dates and buying me expensive presents and behaving like a real gentleman. And he kept begging me to move into this house with him, but I refused. And finally he convinced me that he would be a kind and loving husband. Fool that I am, I accepted his proposal and married him, but only when he agreed to a proper marriage with no prenuptial. By the way, have you ever heard of my husband?”
“The name’s familiar,” Nate said. “We have a Nightclub Committee that’s run by our Community Relations Office. I think maybe I’ve seen the name.”
“He makes sure he donates to all of the Hollywood police charities. You may have run into him at police events. He’s chummy with lots of the officers at Hollywood Station.”
“Yeah, I do think I’ve heard of Ali Aziz,” Nate said, wondering how chummy Ali would be with the Jewish cops at Hollywood Station.
“My parents were not thrilled when I told them about Ali, but I took him home to Barstow just before the wedding and they were very impressed by his good manners. He even assured my mother that if we had children, they would be raised Christian.” This time when she paused, she took another sip from the martini and yet again topped off Nate’s wineglass.
“Back then it was peachy, huh?” Nate said, thinking, she was the most exciting woman he’d ever shared a meal with in his entire life, but this sappy story was killing his wood!
“For sure,” Margot said. “The honeymoon was in Tuscany and he bought me a little Porsche for a wedding present, and of course I never had to set foot in the Leopard Lounge again, except to help him with the books. The last real work I ever did in that place was when I talked him into a major refurbishing and he let me do the design.”
Nate sneaked a look at his watch. It was 10:30 and they weren’t even close to getting naked. And all the goddamn wine was making him gassy. Pretty soon he’d be farting!