He was starting to get angry just thinking about it. He felt like masturbating to relax, but instead, he found himself driving around the residential streets. Then he drove to the shopping center and cruised the lanes farthest from the store. The last row of cars was in a rather dark area, and in that part of the lot, the pole light was not working. He saw some customers walking toward their cars. One was a shapely young Asian with a stylish black bob, pushing a shopping cart. He glanced at her and drove past. Another was an attractive Latina who looked to be thirty-something. He drove past her as well.
Then he saw a middle-aged silvery blonde carrying two bags of groceries. He thought about his new boss, Bernie Graham, who had put so many ideas into his head that evening. He thought about Bernie’s advice to always have a story ready when you approach someone to pull a gag, as Bernie called it. He felt it again: arousal mingled with fear. He put the box cutter in his pocket and got out. He approached behind the woman, who had the hatch open on her Volvo station wagon.
She looked alarmed when he said, “Ma’am, I think you dropped this.”
He was holding a $10 bill in his hand. His broad, dimpled smile belied the rage and the exhilaration sweeping over him.
“I didn’t drop that,” she said.
“You must have,” he said. “It was right there by your car.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not mine.”
“Finders, keepers, I guess,” Malcolm said. “Can I help you with your groceries?”
“No, thank you,” the woman said. “My husband is right behind me. In fact, here he comes.”
Malcolm saw a man walking through the next row of cars and said, “Oh, okay. Have a nice evening.” But when he was walking away, the man who she said was her husband got in a car and started the engine.
Malcolm spun around, but the woman was in her station wagon with the engine racing and the headlights on. The Volvo backed out of the parking space and sped away while Malcolm stood and screamed after her, “You bitch! You lying bitch!”
Then he looked around to see if anyone had heard him. He looked for the security officer who patrolled in a golf cart. He was trembling and felt weak and light-headed. The rage lit his face on fire. He knew he had to go straight home to his bedroom and masturbate right away and try to sleep. If his mother tried to stroke his head, he feared he might kill her.
At 11:15 P.M., Flotsam and Jetsam in 6-X-32 got a message that said, “Go to the station.” Ten minutes later, they entered the sergeants’ room, where Sergeant Lee Murillo sat at his desk. In a chair beside him sat Bootsie Brown, who’d tried to cash a dead man’s check while the deceased sat in his wheelchair outside.
“That’s the one, Sergeant!” the old black man said, still in the layered secondhand clothes he’d been wearing when last they’d seen him. He pointed at Flotsam and said, “The tall one with the funny-lookin’ hair.” Then he saw Jetsam and said, “They both got sissy-lookin’ hair, don’t they? Looks like they bleach it out, jist like the workin’ ladies on the boulevard.”
Flotsam was stunned, but before he could speak, Sergeant Murillo said, “Excuse me, Mr. Brown, let me take a few minutes with the officer to hear his side of this. While you’re waiting, would you like a cup of coffee?”
“I certainly would, Sergeant,” Bootsie Brown said. “And how ’bout a donut or somethin’? That food in jail ain’t fit for a cock-a-roach.”
Sergeant Murillo gave Flotsam a meaningful don’t-ask-questions look and said to Jetsam, “Officer, would you please get Mr. Brown a coffee and a snack from the machine?”
“What?” Jetsam said, flabbergasted.
“Just do it,” Sergeant Murillo said. “I’ll explain later.”
While Jetsam grumbled and bought Bootsie Brown his refreshments, Sergeant Murillo took Flotsam out in the hall and said, “He wants to make a one-twenty-eight on you. Says you called him a name when you arrested him.”
“What’s that grave robber doing here, Sarge?” Flotsam said. “Him and another homeless guy tried to cash a dead man’s check.”
“Yeah, I know all about that,” Sergeant Murillo said. “I’ve read the reports and I’m doing my best to talk him out of the personnel complaint. We’ve got enough paperwork to do around here.”
“But what’s he doing outta jail?”
“The DA refused to issue a complaint. Two old bums trying to get drunk and give their dead buddy an Irish wake? Nobody wanted to take that one before a jury.”
“Well, I never insulted the old bastard, not even once,” Flotsam said. “And now we gotta buy him coffee and a Twinkie? This is bullshit, Sarge!”
“I’ll reimburse you for the snack. Let’s just get through this, shall we? He says you called him ‘frogative,’ whatever that is.”
“What’s ‘frogative’?”
“I don’t know, but he thinks it’s a ten-dollar word that means he looks like a frog.”
“Sarge, I appreciate what you’re doing here, but I feel like I gotta call the Protective League and get lawyered-up! I never called that old bastard anything!”
“Okay, stay real,” Sergeant Murillo said. “Do you remember him saying he was going to sue you?”
“I guess so. Hell, half the people we pop say that.”
“And what did you say to him after that? Try to remember your exact words.”
The tall cop’s brow furrowed and he looked up at the ceiling while his supervisor waited, and then he broke into a huge grin. “Holy shit, Sarge!” Flotsam said. “Frogative!”
Three minutes later, while Bootsie Brown was contentedly munching on a Toll House cookie and sipping coffee, Sergeant Murillo and Flotsam reentered the sergeants’ room.
“Mr. Brown,” Sergeant Murillo said, “how’s the coffee?”
“Not bad, but the cookie’s stale. How ’bout a Ding Dong?”
“Let’s talk first, Mr. Brown,” Sergeant Murillo said. “Do you remember telling these officers you were going to sue them for false arrest?”
Bootsie Brown paused with the cookie halfway to his lips and said, “I mighta. It was a humbug arrest. That’s why they let me and Axel outta jail in forty-eight hours. We was jist tryin’ to have a Irish wake for good old Coleman.”
“And what did this officer say to you when you threatened to sue him?”
“He called me that name.”
“What name is that?”
“He said I was frogative.”
“Officer,” Sergeant Murillo said to Flotsam. “Please tell Mr. Brown what you said to him when he threatened to sue you and your partner for false arrest.”
“I said, ‘Your prerogative.’ ”
“Frogative, progative, it’s all uppity bullshit!” Bootsie Brown said to Sergeant Murillo. “He wants to insult somebody, he oughtta have the guts to use normal words and call me a asshole or somethin’.”
“You can go back to work,” Sergeant Murillo said to the surfer cops. Then to the transient, he said, “Mr. Brown, I’m going to explain to you how things work around here.”
“Does this mean I ain’t gettin’ a Ding Dong?” asked Bootsie Brown.
THIRTEEN
TRISTAN HAWKINS HADN’T SLEPT well and had experienced strange and troubling dreams for most of the night. He’d smoked a blunt before going to bed in his east Hollywood hotel-apartment, where he’d lived alone since the first of the year. The smoke hadn’t really mellowed him, and it came back on him later, resulting in sleeplessness and nightmares. Somehow the tropical colors that the landlord favored, along with the rank, humid cooking smells from the Cubans next door, reminded him of a whorehouse in Haiti, an unpleasant memory from his short stint as a steward on a cruise liner when he was eighteen years old. It was a good job, but he’d gotten fired for stealing $20 from one of the cabins being tended by another steward.