That did it. Fausto said, “Step outta the car.”
Since this had happened to Farley dozens of times in his life, he kept his hands in plain view when Fausto pulled open the driver’s door. Farley got out, shaking his head and wondering why oh why did everything happen to him?
Fausto patted him down and said, “Let’s see some ID.”
When Olive got out, Budgie looked at Olive’s scrawny torso covered only by a short T-shirt, revealing a sunken belly and bony hips. Her jeans were child size, and Budgie perfunctorily patted the pockets to see if she felt any bindles of crystal. Then Budgie shined her flashlight beam on Olive’s inner forearms, but since Olive had seldom skin-popped, there weren’t any tracks.
Farley said, “Gimme a break, amigo. Some of your compadres already rousted us tonight. They ran a make on us and on the car and then gave me a fucking ticket. Can I reach in my glove box and prove it to you?”
“No, stay here, amigo,” Fausto said, painting it with sarcasm. To Budgie he said, “Partner, take a look in the glove compartment. See if there’s a citation in there.”
She opened the glove compartment and retrieved the traffic ticket, saying, “B.M. Driscoll wrote it right after roll call. Near the cybercafé.”
“I’ll bet it never occurred to you, amigo,” Fausto said, “that maybe the reason you get stopped by so many cops is because you hang out where tweakers score their crystal. Did that ever flash on your computer screen?”
Farley thought he better lose the Spanish words because they didn’t work with this fucking greaseball, so he tried a different tack. “Officer, please help yourself. You don’t even have to ask. Search my car.”
And Budgie said, “Okay,” and she did.
While she was searching, Farley said, “Yes, I got a minor record for petty theft and possession of crystal meth. No, I don’t have drugs on me. If you want, I’ll take off my shoes. If we weren’t standing out here, I’d take off my fucking pants. I’m too tired to reason with you guys anymore. Just do what you gotta do and let me go home.”
“We even told the other officers they could come home with us,” Olive said helpfully. “We don’t care if you search our house. You can do a fishing exposition, we don’t care.”
“Olive,” Farley said, “I’m begging you. Shut the fuck up.”
“Is that right?” Budgie said. “You’re so clean you’d take us home right now and let us search your house, no problem?” To Fausto, “Whadda you think of that, partner?”
“Is that what you’d do?” Fausto asked Farley, as he wrote a quick FI card. “Take us to your crib? You’re that clean?”
“Man, at this point I’m just tempted to say yes. If you’d let me go lay in bed, you could turn the fucking place upside down, inside and out. And if you find any dope in that house, it would mean that Olive here must have a secret boyfriend who’s supplying her. And if Olive could find a boyfriend, then there really are miracles and maybe I’ll win the California lottery. And if I do, I’ll move clear outta this fucking town and away from you people, because you’re killing me, man, you’re killing me!”
Fausto looked at the anguished clammy face of Farley Ramsdale, handed him his driver’s license, and said, “Dude, you better get into rehab ASAP. The trolley you’re riding is at the last stop. Nothing left ahead but the end of the line.”
When Fausto and Budgie were back in their car, she said to Fausto, “I’m tempted to drive by the address on that FI a little later.”
“What for?”
“That guy’s gotta score some crystal. They’ll be smoking ice and getting all spun out tonight or he’ll be in a straitjacket. He’s that close to losing it completely.”
Ilya was on her feet, pacing and smoking. Cosmo was the one on the couch now, exhausted from arguing with her.
“How long we sit at this place?” he asked lethargically.
“Almost six hours,” she said. “We can’t wait no more. We got to go.”
“Without our money, Ilya?”
“Did you wipe all evidence from the car, Cosmo?”
“I tell you yes, okay? Now please shut up.”
“Did you empty the cigarette tray in the car? That is evidence.”
“Yes.”
“Get can of money out from the car.”
“You got idea, Ilya? Wonderful. You don’t like my ideas. Like we must kill the addicts.”
“Shut up, Cosmo. You will put can of money under this house. Find a little door that go under this house. Put can in there.”
She began emptying ashtrays into a paper bag from the kitchen, and he said, “Ilya, the car? It cannot travel! What are you thinking about?”
“We are leaving it.”
“Here? Ilya, you are crazy person! Farley and Olive -”
In charge now, she interrupted, “Did you take things out from garage?”
“Yes, a bike and few boxes. Goddamn garage, full of junk. Almost no room for a goddamn car.”
“As I thought,” she said. “Put all junk back in.”
“What are you thinking about, Ilya?”
“They are addicts, Cosmo. Look at this house. Trash all around. Junk all around. They do not park car in garage. They do not go in garage almost never. The car must stay for few days. They shall not even know it.”
“And us?”
“Take a shirt from Farley. Look inside bedroom. I am going to remove my wig and we shall walk few blocks from here to phone taxi. It is a little bit safe now. Then we go home.”
“All right, Ilya,” he said. “But you sleep on top of this idea tonight: The addicts must die. We got no other road to travel. You must soon see that.”
“I must think,” she said. “Now we go. Hurry.”
When Cosmo came back into the living room from the bedroom, he was wearing a dirty long-sleeved patterned shirt over his T-shirt. “Hope you happy now, Ilya,” he said. “Before we get home I shall be bit a hundred times by tiny creatures that crawl inside Farley’s clothes.”
After the cops left them in the Pablo’s Tacos parking lot, Farley said, “Olive, I think we gotta go home and white-knuckle it. We ain’t gonna score tonight.”
“There’s almost a quart of vodka there,” Olive said. “I’ll mix it with some packets of punch and you can just drink as much as you can.”
“Okay,” he said. “That’ll get me through the night. It’ll have to.”
“I just hope it won’t make you throw up,” Olive said. “You’re so thin and tired-looking.”
“It won’t,” he said.
“And I’ll make you something delicious to eat.”
“That’ll make me throw up,” he said.
When they arrived at Farley’s house, he was almost too tired to climb the porch steps, and when he did and they were inside, Olive said, “Farley, it smells like smoke in here.”
He threw himself on the couch and grabbed the TV remote, saying, “Olive, it should. We smoke crystal in here in case you forgot. Every chance we get, which ain’t often enough these days.”
“Yes, but it smells like old cigarette smoke. Don’t you notice it?”
“I’m so fucking tired, Olive,” he said, “I wouldn’t smell smoke if you set fire to yourself. Which wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“You’ll feel better after a meal,” said Olive. “How does a toasted cheese sandwich sound?”
The PSR putting out the broadcast decided to have a bit of fun with 6-X-32’s call to Grauman’s Chinese Theater. She put it out as a hotshot.
Flotsam and Jetsam listened incredulously when, after the electronic beep, she said, “All units in the vicinity and Six-X-ray-Thirty-two, see the woman on Hollywood Boulevard west of Highland. A battery in progress. Batman versus Spiderman. Batman last seen running into Kodak Center. Person reporting is Marilyn Monroe. Six-X-Thirty-two, handle code three.”
When they got to the scene, Marilyn Monroe was waving at them from the courtyard of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and tourists were snapping photos like crazy. B.M. Driscoll and Benny Brewster rolled in right behind them.