After she showered and did her makeup, hiding the damage that Jerzy and his duct tape had done, she felt positively giddy. Wearing a new lace-trimmed bra and thong panties like those she’d bought for her dinner at Musso & Frank, Eunice went to the kitchen, lit a smoke, and poured herself a Bombay martini. She felt her excitement grow while waiting for Clark to arrive. She couldn’t decide what to wear for the trip. She felt free. She felt… young.
“I wish I had the Polack here instead of you,” Tristan said to Dewey Gleason as they staggered from the storage room to the van, carrying a thirty-six-inch TV console that required two rest pauses before they could move the box fifty feet.
“I might be able to pull my own weight if that son of a bitch hadn’t driven my ribs halfway to my backbone,” Dewey said, leaning on the box and panting.
It was almost impossible to contemplate that the goods he had stored in this room were the sum of all he possessed in life. He was certain that Eunice was already leaving the Franklin Avenue address, now that her elaborate security was blown. He didn’t know for sure if she’d get out of Los Angeles or find another Dewey Gleason and set up at another location, but he believed she might’ve bought herself a gun by now and would shoot him dead if she ever set eyes on him again. Dewey had a passing thought that if he had a gun of his own, he might save her the trouble. He was alone. He was lost.
“You ready, Bernie?” Tristan said. “We shoulda had this job done hours ago.”
“I got pain shooting through me,” Dewey said.
“You’re gonna have a bullet shootin’ through you if we don’t get back to the office before dark. The Polack ain’t a patient man.”
“That actually sounds comforting,” Dewey said, picking up his end of the load with a moan that sounded like the lowing of a cow.
Jerzy Szarpowicz was literally bouncing from wall to wall in the little duplex/office. He would stride across the room, turn his back to the wall, and push off toward the other wall. He was muttering aloud, mostly a string of incoherent obscenities, aimlessly directed at Bernie Graham’s woman, at Bernie Graham himself, at Creole, and at the Mexican at Pablo’s Tacos who wouldn’t front him a little crack or crystal after he’d done business with the greaseball for three years. The taxi rides had eaten up almost all his cash, and in fact, he was $1.45 light on the fare after he had the driver take him from Pablo’s parking lot to here. The taxi driver, one of those camel fuckers Jerzy despised so much, had started bitching about it until he got a good look at Jerzy’s snarling face and red-rimmed blazing eyes, and then he’d just dropped it in gear and sped away.
Jerzy had been pacing with the buck knife in his hand, indulging in violent fantasies until he tired of that. Then he pulled the snub-nosed revolver from his jeans and passed the time by aiming it at the imaginary heads of those he hated. Two of those he hated interrupted him by driving up to the curb in the rented van and in the Honda just as the Hollywood moon began to rise.
Tristan and Dewey each carried a box containing a laptop to the door, which was held open by Jerzy, who’d tucked his weapons inside the waistband of his jeans, under his T-shirt.
“Where the fuck you been?” Jerzy growled.
“Don’t start,” Tristan said. “I might as well’ve loaded the van by myself, all the help Bernie gave me. My ass is scrapin’ the ground.”
“I need money right now,” Jerzy said to Dewey. “Call your fence and start sellin’ this shit.”
“I have a call in to him,” Dewey said, “but I don’t think my receiver’s gonna run right over here this minute.”
“Come on, dawg,” Tristan said to Jerzy. “Help me carry all those boxes inside. Bernie, you keep callin’ the guy till you reach him. Tell him this is like a big garage sale if he’s got plenty of cash.”
Dewey sat down on a kitchen chair, cell phone in hand, and said, “I’ll keep trying.”
Jerzy looked like his central nervous system was short-circuited, and he seemed ready to start tearing the wallpaper off the walls. Dewey tried his best to avoid eye contact, but Jerzy said to him, “Bernie, if you don’t get me some money tonight, I’m gonna start rememberin’ how much I hated Jakob Kessler.”
Dewey tried speed-dialing Hatch one more time while Tristan and Jerzy walked to the van under an unusually clear summer sky in a bright glow of moonlight.
“Yeah, we got us a Hollywood moon up there, dude,” Flotsam said when he walked back to the shop with the license belonging to the driver of a Lexus hardtop convertible. “Did you see what that guy’s wearing?”
Jetsam, who had walked up on the passenger side, flashing the beam from his mini-light onto the dash to let the driver know he was there, said, “I think I saw a coat and tie, right?”
“You didn’t look low enough. He ain’t wearing pants. But he’s got nice wingtip shoes on and socks.”
“Where’s his pants, bro?” Jetsam said as Flotsam put the ticket book and flashlight on the hood of the black-and-white and started writing.
“On the seat beside him,” Flotsam said. “With his underwear. He was probably jerking off, and that’s why he was late on the red light.”
“What did you say to him, bro?”
“I asked to see his license.”
“What did he say?”
He said, ‘Yes, officer.’ ”
“Is that, like, okay with you, bro? I mean, maybe he was flashing somebody in the lane next to him.”
“That’s a seventy-thousand-dollar ride. If he wants to jizz all over it, that’s his business.”
As Flotsam finished writing the ticket, Hollywood Nate and Dana Vaughn turned the corner onto Gower, dimmed the headlights, and pulled next to the surfer cops.
“Keep looking for an old red Mustang with a Latino kid driving,” Dana said. “I just checked where they’re setting up and they don’t have him yet.”
“That was great work, Dana,” Jetsam said. “You rock, girl.”
Dana said, “I’m gonna be notified by detectives if he goes home, but I think it’d be super-cool if one of us busts him on the street before they do. Stay on the air and listen for Six-X-Seventy-six.”
“Roger that,” Flotsam said. “We’ll be all over it.”
When Dana and Nate were gone, Flotsam said, “Now, dude, you wanna waste our time investigating a possible weenie waver who’s, like, suffering the effects of a Hollywood moon? Or do you wanna be ready to jump with Dana and Nate if the big ping happens somewheres around us?”
“You’re right, bro,” Jetsam said. “Why should I give a shit if a driver don’t have pants on? Sometimes I forget where I’m at.” Then he looked at his partner and they said in unison, “This is fucking Hollywood!”
When the driver signed the citation, Flotsam tore off a copy, handed it to the man, and said, “Drive carefully, sir, and please try to keep both hands on the wheel.”
Eunice, having started on her third Bombay martini, was wearing a tiger lily silk blouse and Ralph Lauren white jeans that she could hardly squeeze herself into, and toeless wedges. She’d had trouble deciding on a lipstick but had finally settled on something called Flirty Burgundy. She hoped it didn’t draw attention to the damage that the duct tape did to the skin around her mouth. She was considering another change when the phone rang.
She picked up and heard him. “Hi, Ethel,” he said. “It’s Clark.”
“Come on up,” she said and touched a phone button to open the gate.