Then he proceeded to the little apartment in Thai Town, where uniformed officers were protecting the scene until the detectives, criminalists, and body snatchers arrived. He stepped inside to take a peek at Melissa Price, aka Samuel Allen Danforth, lying on the floor, shot once in the chest and once in the face. The latter round caused grotesque damage to the left orbit but nothing like the trauma inflicted on Timothy Thatcher by the Remington shotgun at close range. The detective snapped another camera-phone photo and returned to the office, satisfied that he’d seen everything worth looking at.
By the time the first homicide detectives had arrived back at Hollywood Station from both scenes, they found that Compassionate Charlie Gilford had downloaded the grisly photos of both young men and had printed out and taped the images to the homicide team’s computer. Below he had typed, “Sometimes it just don’t turn out like that pup tent romp on Brokeback Mountain.”
ELEVEN
WHILE AT HIS JOB the next morning, Malcolm Rojas decided to call the man he knew as Bernie Graham and ask him once and for all about that job. The man had been unreliable so far and had not called him last evening as promised. Malcolm had not slept well, his thoughts returning again and again to that woman who’d nearly gotten him caught. Every time he thought of the experience, anger welled. They were all alike and he hated them. But when he looked at his swollen left hand and the abrasions on his knuckles, the anger was mixed with stabs of fear and even shame. When she’d started screaming, he’d been terrified and hadn’t known what to do. He should’ve slashed her throat with the box cutter to shut her up, and now he wished that he had.
Then he forced himself to think of Naomi, that tender, young girl with the shy smile who really liked him. Would she grow up to be one of them? Somehow he didn’t think so. She had natural blonde hair, not like theirs, and she was sweet and kind, not like them. Her number was in his cell phone, and several times he’d been tempted to call her and see if she wanted to hang out. He thought he just might do that, but first he needed money. What he cleared from his job as warehouse helper was pitiful, now that he had to give his mother a third of his take-home pay. As soon as he made some real money, he’d call Naomi and take her to the beach in his Mustang. The car needed tires, but soon he’d have the money to buy tires, and lots else.
He dialed Bernie Graham, got his voice mail, and said, “Mr. Graham, this is Clark, the guy you met at Pablo’s Tacos. I wanna talk to you about the job. Please call me.”
After leaving his cell number, he resumed slashing open the tape on one side of the boxes, removing the merchandise, and slashing the tape on the other side to flatten the boxes for recycling. When he worked up a sweat, the intensity of his feelings became manageable.
Dewey got to sleep in late that morning, only because Eunice had an appointment with her gynecologist for a regular checkup. She’d tried to get him out of bed at seven thirty even though he had no morning meetings with runners, and of course that started the bickering.
Before she left the apartment at 8 A.M. Eunice had popped her head into his bedroom once again and said, “Dewey, if I call here in thirty minutes and you don’t answer, I’ll know you went back to sleep.”
“Can’t I sleep in for once, Eunice?” Dewey whined. “For once in my fucking life?”
“No!” she yelled. “You gotta go to the bank and write a check on the deposit I made from that rental gag. One measly rental check is all we get from that account because you couldn’t manage to hook up with a housebreaker who was dumber than you. That means, Dewey, now you gotta open another account at another bank, unless you wanna risk using the same one and hope the renters haven’t yet figured things out and called their bank. So get your ass outta bed!”
“Gimme a break, Eunice!” he’d moaned with his pillow over his head. That voice! She sounded like an old parrot with bronchitis. “One fucking break, one time. That’s all I ask.”
“I don’t get a break,” she snapped. “I gotta work from the crack of dawn till midnight sometimes. Why’re you so special?”
“Speaking of cracks,” Dewey said wearily, “are you having your annual pap smear?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Tell your doctor to say hello to your gizmo for me,” Dewey said. “She sees it more often than I do.”
“Asshole!” Eunice said, slamming the door behind her.
But at least she hadn’t called to check on him. The 9:15 A.M. call on the Bernie Graham cell phone was what woke him. He picked it up but did not recognize the number before saying, “Bernie Graham speaking.”
He heard a youthful voice say, “Mr. Graham, this is Clark, from Pablo’s?”
“Clark?” he said, pausing until his head cleared. “Oh, yeah. Clark.”
“I left a message for you. You said you’d call, and I thought maybe you lost my number.”
“Sorry, Clark,” Dewey said. “I’m very busy. Look, why don’t I meet you today after you get off work? How about you come to the donut shop next to the cyber café on Santa Monica Boulevard at quarter after five? Know where it is?”
“I’ll be there, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said.
After Dewey made his date with the kid, he lay there staring at the ceiling. He was losing his nerve and he knew it. So far he’d been very lucky. He’d felt confident that the trouble he went through, juggling his identities to keep his runners in the dark, was worth it, despite Eunice’s constant belittling.
The incessant opening and closing of bank accounts with bogus IDs, and depositing bogus checks as well as legitimate checks from gags they’d pulled-all of that was bad enough. But having to be present for merchandise deliveries that Eunice ordered online or on the phone was nerve-racking. Yesterday, for example. Look how exposed and vulnerable he’d been on that porch in Los Feliz, but she didn’t care. She was confident, cocky, even, because she was never out on the streets dealing with vermin, any one of whom might be cutting a secret deal with the cops to nail their employer: Jakob Kessler or Ambrose Willis or Bernie Graham.
He felt sure that none of the runners could direct the cops to a Dewey Gleason if they became police snitches. Even his car had been bought and registered under a bogus name at a bogus address, so if a runner gave the cops his license number, it wouldn’t help them. No, it was those times when he had to be there to do the pickups and collecting that were making him old before his time. What if the college kid at the Pacific Dining Car had been popped at an Indian casino by security officers and had flipped? What if cops had been concealed out there in the parking lot, watching them when the kid had given back to him the bogus cards and other ID, along with his share from the casinos?
He’d been totally exposed that night for a very small payoff, but trying to explain that to Eunice was like talking to her ugly little bull terrier that keeled over dead last year, probably from a lifetime of breathing secondhand smoke. Dewey figured that’s how he’d check out one of these days, gasping for breath and expiring in agony. One thing for sure, though, if he was ever diagnosed with a lung disease, he was going to lace her Whoppers and fries with potassium cyanide. There was no way that bitch was going to live after she’d killed him with exposure to those fucking death sticks.
When Dewey Gleason as Bernie Graham left his apartment that morning, he had another unpleasant task to perform. He had to meet his receiver at the storage lockers to complete the transaction he’d made telephonically for the merchandise that he’d put in storage the day before. What Dewey hated most about this aspect of his business was that he was especially terrified of the people involved in fencing the goods. The man who called himself Hatch was no exception.