“Maybe we’ve got a shot,” Dana said. “Same approximate time of attack. He’s gotta be a local guy.”
Sergeant Murillo said, “If you get him, I will also write you a fabulous attaboy, Dana. Or in your case, an attagirl. And it’ll be so effusive that Napoleon’s letters to Josephine will sound like mash notes in comparison. Now let’s hit the bricks.”
“Napoleon Harris is a good middle linebacker, but I didn’t know he’s a letter writer, did you?” R.T. Dibney said to Mindy Ling. “And who the hell’s Josephine anyways?”
As always, after everyone gathered their gear, they touched the picture frame of the Oracle for luck before they left the roll call room.
TEN
DEWEY GLEASON WANTED to hook up with the new kid, Clark, before day’s end, but that would’ve meant a costume change. He couldn’t do that now because he had to go back to the duplex/office in east Hollywood to meet Creole and Jerzy and buy the new batch of mail that Creole claimed was so excellent. Eunice estimated that only five percent of the mail they bought from runners had any value whatsoever, and less than two percent had identity information that could make significant money for them. Still, she demanded lots of it and bitched if he paid too much to get it. Dewey knew he couldn’t win with her, no matter what.
If it were up to Dewey, he’d just drive around with a laptop and pick up computer signals. He’d talked to lots of identity thieves at the cyber café, tweakers and crackheads mostly, who were doing just that. Then they’d go online and log in on the target’s Internet service provider to access his computer and retrieve information they needed. Since there were so many businesses these days offering free Internet access, they could later log in on one of those ISPs to surf the Web and buy merchandise with stolen card numbers. Most people didn’t bother to change their security codes with their ISPs, so it seemed to Dewey that it only made sense to update the way they were operating.
But would Eunice permit this safer and more sensible approach to their business? Of course not. It was too slow and uncertain for her. And she repeatedly said he wasn’t capable of handling anything technical and could barely use a computer well enough to send e-mail. She preferred that Dewey do things the old-fashioned way, the way Hugo had done it, so she could get her “retirement fund” faster, and never mind the risks he had to take to get it done.
Eunice had lately set a target of $1,000,000 tax-free, after which they would quit the game and go to San Francisco, even though she knew that Dewey hated the city. He recalled an incident back when they were still sleeping in the same room. He was singing in the shower and changed the lyric of an old standard. He’d crooned, “Hate San Francisco, it’s cold and it’s damp, that’s why the lady is a tramp!”
Then he’d dried off, grinned at Eunice, who was lying in bed, smoking, and said to her, “That’s the way Rodgers and Hart shoulda written the song. That’s the way I sang it when I did little theater in Santa Barbara. That was a great gig. Santa Barbara’s really a nice town.”
Eunice had snuffed out her cigarette and said, “You wanna stay in this hot smog belt after we earn the retirement fund? It’s fine with me. Because Momma left her heart in San Francisco and can very easily leave your ass in Hollywood. Let’s hear you sing that one, Tony Bennett.”
It was an erection killer and the beginning of what he was certain would be an attempt by her to squeeze him out of the big payoff when the target was reached. Moreover, Dewey no longer believed he could stay out of jail long enough to accomplish her goal. He felt like the bomber pilots in the old war movies who had to fly during daylight hours over Germany, knowing that survival odds were getting longer with each mission flown. He was now ready to settle for far less than a million bucks, especially if he could ever devise a scheme where it went to him.
In the locker room prior to roll call, Jetsam resisted all attempts from his partner to find out what had transpired at Malibu Beach the morning before with the waitress from IHOP. While Sergeant Murillo was reading the crimes to the watch, Flotsam was relentlessly chattering in his partner’s ear to no effect.
“Come on, dude,” Flotsam whispered. “Something musta happened out there on the foamy for you to go all lock-jawed. Dial me in!”
Sergeant Murillo looked up from the reports at Flotsam and said, “Would you mind discussing surf reports later. We’ve got a roll call to get through here.”
It wasn’t until they’d been out on patrol for thirty minutes that Jetsam relented and said, “Okay, bro, you carried the load when I went home early two nights ago, so I guess I oughtta tell you what went down with the IHOP hottie yesterday.”
“Go, dude!” Flotsam said. “I got my ears on.”
“Okay, bro, but I gotta tell ya, I’m noodled. I been beat down and rag-dolled and launched by kamikaze waves in my time, but it ain’t nothing compared to how that salty sister cranked me. And taking last night off didn’t revive me.”
“Are we talking chocka coolaphonic nectar sex?” Flotsam asked excitedly.
“No, bro, she showed up with a Barney in a sausage sling!” Jetsam said.
“What?” Flotsam cried, almost rear-ending a car in front of him on Highland Avenue.
“She tells me he’s her cousin, out here on summer break from college in Kansas or Missouri or some fucking place where there ain’t no ocean. And she apologizes and says she had no choice but to bring him, and would I, like, teach him some basic surfing maneuvers.”
It was almost too grotesque for Flotsam to contemplate. “A shoobie in a Speedo? And she expected a real Kahuna to be seen on the same beach with him?”
“Roger that,” Jetsam said. “A DayGlo green Speedo.”
“Dude,” Flotsam said with genuine sympathy. “I feel ya.”
“First thing I did was I took that Benny aside and I go, ‘Bro, you try to go out there amongst a horde of surf rats wearing that DayGlo banana hammock, and they just might banzai you with their boards and send you home to Iowa or wherever you come from in wires and plaster casts.’ I ask him if he didn’t bring some board trunks to wear on the beach and he tells me everybody wears Speedos where he comes from. And I go, ‘Peachy, bro, but this ain’t the Piney Woods YMCA swimming pool, or summer fun at Lake Suck-a-hot-one. This is Malibu-fucking-California!’ ”
“I can’t adjust the focus here,” Flotsam said. “That slammin’ server from IHOP told us she surfs twice a month. She oughtta know the minimum fucking dress code for admittance.”
“Maybe you just shouldn’t trust someone who wears rings on her index fingers,” Jetsam said. “And this dorky cousin of hers, he don’t understand basic English. He blanks about half the time I’m talking to him. So I take our breakfast bunny aside and I go, ‘Okay, I’ll put your cousin out on a board and slip him into a nice gentle chubbie that don’t have much of a break, but if them surf Nazis out there start looking at him with a kill-the-hodad death ray, I’m towing him back to sandy safety.”
“So did you?” Flotsam asked.
“Yeah, I put him on the old log I keep in my truck and I rolled him around in the foamy. He tried standing up a few times, and he’s all splashing and squealing and I’m thinking to myself, Why me? I drive to Oxnard twice a month to visit my mother and to Pacoima to visit the old man. And I send checks to both my ex-wives, mostly on time, even though the kid I thought was mine turned out to have the DNA of my ex-wife’s dentist, who drilled into a lot more than her root canals. And I still stop and play Frisbee with my former girlfriend’s dog, even though I can’t say hello to my former girlfriend without getting spit at. So I, like, try to live a decent life, bro. What I wanna know is, why does God treat me like a butt crumb?”