Hollywood Station (39 page)

Wesley said to Viktor, "You know, Detective, the only problem here is that the first time we talked to Trombone Teddy he said the guy's name sounded like Freddy or Morley."

"Maybe Samuel sold the car to a Freddy," Nate said. "Stay positive."

"Or lent the car to Morley," Viktor added.

The house was almost a duplicate of Farley Ramsdale's old Hollywood bungalow except it was in good repair and had a small lawn in front with geraniums along the side of the house and a bed of petunias by the front porch.

Wesley ran to the rear of the house to prevent escape. It was dusk, and he didn't need a flashlight yet. He took cover behind the garage and waited.

Viktor took the lead and knocked, with Nate standing to his left.

Samuel R. Culhane wasn't as thin as Farley but he was in a late stage of methamphetamine addiction. He had pustules on his face and a permanent twitch at the corner of his right eye. He was several years older than Farley and balding, with a bad comb-over. And though he couldn't see Hollywood Nate standing beside the guy at the door, he knew instantly that Viktor was a cop.

"Yeah?" he said cautiously.

Viktor showed his badge and said, "We need to talk to you."

"Come back with a warrant," Samuel Culhane said and started to close the door, but Viktor stopped it with his foot and Nate pushed past and into the room, touching the badge pinned to his shirt, saying, "This is a brass pass, dude."

When the back door opened and Nate whistled to him, Wesley entered and saw the tweaker sitting on the couch in the living room looking glum. Viktor was formally reading the guy his rights from a card that every cop, including Viktor, had memorized.

Nate handed Samuel Culhane's driver's license to his partner and said, "Run him, Wesley."

After Viktor had finished with the rights advisement, he said to the unhappy homeowner, "You are not pleased to see us?"

"Look," Samuel Culhane said, "you ain't searching my house without a warrant, but I'll talk to you long enough to find out what the hell this is all about."

"We must find out where you were on a certain night."

"What night?"

"Three weeks ago. You were driving your Pinto with a lady friend, no?"

"Hah!" Samuel Culhane said. "Driving with a lady friend? No! I'm gay, dude. Gayer than springtime. You got the wrong guy."

Persisting, Viktor said, "You were driving on Gower south of Hollywood Boulevard that evening."

"And who says so?"

"You were seen."

"Bullshit. I got no reason to drive down Gower in the evening. In fact, I don't even go out till around midnight. I'm a night person, man."

"There was a woman in your car," Viktor said.

"I told you I'm gay! Do I gotta blow you to prove it? Wait a minute, what crime was I supposed to've done?"

"You were seen at a mailbox."

"A mailbox?" he said. "Oh, man, now I get it. You're gonna try to fuck me with a mail theft."

Wesley came in then and handed an FI card to Viktor on which he'd scribbled some of Samuel R. Culhane's rap sheet entries.

Reading, Viktor said, "You have been arrested for fraud . . . one, two times. Once for counterfeiting. This is, as they say, consistent with the theft of U. S. mail from a public mailbox."

"Okay, fuck this," Samuel Culhane said. "I ain't spending a night in jail till you guys get your shit together and figure out you got the wrong guy. I'll come right out and tell you what's what if you'll go away and leave me be."

"Proceed," Viktor said.

"I rented my Pinto for a week to a guy I know. I got another car. He lives down there off Gower with an idiot tweaker who calls herself his wife but they ain't married. I warned them both, don't fuck around and do any deals in my Pinto. They didn't listen to me, did they? I'll show you where he lives. His name's Farley Ramsdale."

Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb looked at each other and said it simultaneously and with such gusto that it startled not only Samuel Culhane but Viktor Chernenko as well.

"Farley!"

That goddamn Olive, she never puts anything in its proper place. Farley was still thinking of Olive in the present tense although he knew in his heart that she was in the past. He had to admit there were things he was going to miss. She was like those Bedouin women who walk through minefields while the old man stays fifty yards behind on the donkey and follows in her footsteps. Never less than obedient. Until now.

Finally he found the key cards in the bottom drawer of the kitchen together with the egg timer she'd never used and a badly burned skillet that she did use. They were the best key cards they'd ever stolen, and they had always fetched a good price. Just the right size and color, with just the right mag code to look exactly like a righteous California driver's license once they slapped the bogus facsimile on the front. He was going to have to find another woman partner to hang around that particular hotel and get more of them. Maybe a halfway classy woman who would never arouse suspicion. He tried to think of a halfway classy woman he might know but gave up trying immediately.

Of course he knew that the junkyard rendezvous was very dangerous and might be a trick of Cosmo's to kill them, but after he'd told Cosmo that Olive had boogied and Cosmo still wanted him to make delivery, he figured it was probably okay. That fucking Armo wouldn't dare try to kill him with Olive out there able to dime him to the cops if Farley went missing. Would he?

He might. Farley had never dealt with anyone as violent as Cosmo, so that's why he'd devised a little plan of his own. Sure, he was going to drive to that lonely junkyard on that lonely fucking road in east L. A., where no white man in his right mind would roam around at night. But he wasn't stepping one toe out of his car, no way. He was going to drive up, wrong side of the road to that fence, reach out, and grab the paper bag. And if the money was in there, he'd pull into the yard, spin a sweeping U-turn, blow his horn until Gregori came out, toss him the paper bag with the key cards in it, and zip on out of that yard and back to white man's country-if Hollywood could be called white man's country these days.

And if there wasn't a trap at all and Gregori got insulted by his method of delivery and threatened not to do business with him anymore, too fucking bad. Gregori shouldn't hang with gun-packing Armos like Cosmo. He should stick with thieving, chiseling, blood-sucking Armos like himself. Yeah, Farley thought with waxing confidence as he fantasized about the glass he'd be smoking tonight, where's the glitch in that plan?

Suddenly he was hungry from all that thinking, but he couldn't bear the thought of a cheese sandwich. He had a yearning for Ruby's doughnuts, especially for a couple of those big fat cream-filled, chocolate-covered specials. He found the emergency twenty-dollar bill he had stashed in his underwear drawer, where Olive would never look, then propped up the broken back door as best he could and left for Ruby's. Like Pablo's Tacos and the cybercaf,, Ruby's Donuts was one of the last stops on the Tweakerville Line.

He saw a couple of tweakers he knew in the parking lot, looking hungry but not for doughnuts. Come to think of it, this was the first time he'd ever gone to Ruby's looking for something to put in his stomach. The Hollywood nights were growing more and more strange and weird and scary for Farley Ramsdale, and he couldn't seem to stop it from happening.

They didn't really need Samuel R. Culhane to lead them to Farley's house. A call took care of that. The FI file was full of shakes involving Farley Ramsdale and Olive O. Ramsdale, and it also had their correct address as shown on his driver's license. Like other tweakers, they were always getting stopped and FI'd. But Viktor pretended that Culhane's presence was needed just to be sure that if left alone, he wouldn't make a warning call to Farley.

Driving his Pinto, Samuel R. Culhane did as he was told and led 6-X-72 and Viktor Chernenko to Farley's house, where he slowed and indicated the house with his left-turn signal. Then he took off for home while the cops parked and piled out of the black-and-white, approaching the house with their flashlights off.

As before, Wesley went to cover the back door. He found it partially ajar, one hinge hanging loose, and propped in place by a kitchen chair. Nate and Viktor got no response and there were no lights on in the house. Wesley checked the empty garage.

"He's a typical tweaker," Nate said to Viktor. "Out hunting for crystal. When he finds it he'll come home."

"I must arrange for a stakeout," Viktor said. "I feel very strong that this Farley Ramsdale stole the letter from the mailbox that led to the jewel robbery. Yet it is only a feeling. But I am positive that the jewel robbers are the ATM killers. This shall be the biggest case of my career if I can prove that I am correct."

"This could be one for the TV news and the L. A. Times," Hollywood Nate said.

"It is more than possible," Viktor said.

Hollywood Nate paused for a moment and only one word came to him: "publicity." He thought about walking into a casting office with a Times under his arm. Maybe with his picture in it.

"Viktor," he said, "since we've been in on this with you so far, how about calling us if the guy shows up? We'd be glad to transport for you or help you search for evidence-whatever. We were there during the grenade trick and we sorta feel like this is our case too."

"Detective," Wesley added. "This could be the biggest thing I've ever accomplished in my whole life. Please call us."

"You may be sure," Viktor said, "that I shall personally call you. I am not going home tonight until I have a talk with Mr. Farley Ramsdale and his friend who calls herself Olive O. Ramsdale. And if you wish, you can go now and look for them at tweaker hangouts. Perhaps we do not have enough to tie them into crimes but we do not have to just sit back and cool our toes."

Now Ilya was lecturing Cosmo as she would a child, and he sat there with a cigarette in his nicotine-stained fingers, taking it gladly, a man bereft of ideas.

"Understand me, Cosmo, and trust," she said. "Olive is gone and Farley will not get out of his car in the junkyard of Gregori. He will not, because of you. Do not think all people are as stupid as . . ." She stopped there and said, "You must kill him in his car. Outside the yard."

"Ilya, I cannot find no place to hide myself outside. It is open road and no cars parked on the road at night. Where can I hide myself?"

"Think on it," Ilya said. "Use the brain. After you kill him you take him away in his car. You park one mile away. You leave. You go back to the yard and get our car."

Interrupting, "How must I get back to the yard? Call taxi?"

"No!" she said. "You do not! You want police to find out that taxi takes somebody from a scene of dead body to the junkyard of Gregori? Goddamn, Cosmo!"

"Okay, Ilya. Sorry. I walk back."

"Then you and me, we drive to Dmitri. You have some diamonds in your pocket. Not too many. You give diamonds to Dmitri. His man inspect diamonds. You say, please bring money downstairs to the nightclub. Give to Ilya. I shall be sitting at the bar. He give me money, I go to ladies' room and get the remaining diamonds from where I hide them in a safe place. Lots of people around in the nightclub. We shall be safe."

"But Ilya," Dmitri said. "You forget about ATM money."

"No, I do not forget. You must tell Dmitri mostly truth."

"Ilya! He shall kill me!"

"No, he wants ATM money. You tell him we know where to find Olive. You tell him we shall find her tomorrow. We shall get money and kill her. We shall bring half of money to Dmitri like our deal say we do."

"He shall be very angry," a despairing Cosmo said. "He shall kill me."

"Dmitri wish to kill someone? Tell him to kill his goddamn Georgian who give us a goddamn car that don't run!"

"Then, what we do tomorrow? We cannot find Olive. We cannot get money to Dmitri."

"The Americans have saying, Cosmo. I am not for sure what each word mean but I understand the idea. Tomorrow we get the fuck out of Dodge."

The Oracle was having a bad night. The lieutenant was off and he was watch commander, so he had to deal with the angry phone call from the lawyer, Anthony Butler.

"Mr. Butler," he said, "the detectives have gone home, so if you'll just call back tomorrow."

"I have been waiting all day for your detectives!" the lawyer said. "Or rather my daughter has. Do you know she was given a date rape drug at a place called Omar's Lounge?"

"Yes, I've pulled the report and looked it over as you requested, but I'm not a detective."

"I talked to your nighttime detective twenty minutes ago. The man's an idiot."

The Oracle didn't argue with that one but said, "I will personally make sure that the detective commander knows about your call, and he will send someone to your office tomorrow."

"The man Andrei who tried to drug my daughter knows she got in the wrong car. He probably knows the police were called. And how do we know that he's not a friend of the Iranians? Maybe he can identify them. What if this was a filthy little plot involving Andrei and the Iranian pigs? I'm shocked that nobody has been to the Gulag to at least identify this Andrei."