“Did he say what the issue was this time?” Jake asked Elsa now.
“He did not,” Elsa replied. “He did ask that you give him a call on his department phone on Monday morning to discuss the situation. I have written the number down and placed it on the office desk.”
Jake sighed. “All right,” he said. “Thanks, Elsa.”
She nodded, flared her nostrils one last time, cast one more knowing look, and then retreated from the house.
“What do you think he did this time?” Laura asked as she poked at her burrito to feel if it had cooled enough for human consumption.
“God only knows,” Jake said. “I guess I should give him a call.”
“He’ll be drunk,” she said.
“And stoned as well,” Jake said, “but at least he’ll be in a reasonable mood.”
He left Laura and Ziggy to their burrito and made the walk into the office with its security camera monitors and the computer. Out of habit, he took a glance at the screens, seeing that all were showing the night vision view and that everything appeared to be in order. He then sat down at the desk and took a look at the note that Elsa had left. It listed Sergeant Cranston’s name, title, and phone number in Elsa’s disturbingly neat handwriting. He pushed it to the side and picked up the phone, dialing the area code and the number for the Granada Hills house from memory.
A male voice picked up on the third ring. It was not Matt. “Kingsley residence,” the voice said politely, though with an obvious slurring of speech.
“Hey, Jim, it’s Jake,” Jake said. “Is Matt around?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jim said. “I’ll go grab him for you.”
“Thanks.”
The phone clunked down. In the background, Jake could hear music playing from his sound system. It was the intro for Camera Eye from Rush’s Moving Pictures CD. Just as the primary riff for the tune began to play, Jake heard the sound of footsteps stomping closer. There was another clunk and then Matt’s voice was speaking to him—a little loudly and a lot slurred.
“Jake, wassup?” Matt enquired.
“I might ask the same thing,” Jake replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I just got home and was informed that Sergeant Crandall of the LAPD wants to speak to me again.”
“That fuckhead?” Matt barked. “I swear to God, he’s such a fuckin’ narc.”
“He’s a cop, Matt,” Jake explained carefully. “He’s supposed to be a narc.”
“Oh yeah,” Matt said with a laugh. “I guess that shit makes sense!”
“I’m glad you agree,” Jake said. “What happened?”
“It was no big deal,” Matt said. “Your snooty-ass neighbors called the cops again.”
“Why did they call the cops?”
“They said I was out smoking some weed with Taco and Taquito.”
“Who are Taco and Taquito?” Jake asked, rubbing at the back of his head to stave off a tension headache that wanted to form there.
“Those two beaners that do your fuckin’ landscaping,” Matt said. “The big beaner and the little beaner.”
“Ahh,” Jake said. “That would be Ramone and Miguel, not Taco and Taquito.”
“Yeah ... whatever,” Matt said.
“Were you, in fact, smoking weed with them?” Jake asked.
“Not when the cops showed up,” Matt said.
Jake closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “But, at some point during Ramone and Miguel’s visit to cut the lawn, you were smoking weed with them?”
“Yeah, of course,” Matt said. “I mean, why not? Those motherfuckers work hard. I thought they might like a little break from all that manual labor shit, so I took a doob out and shared it with them. They were very grateful—at least I think they were. I couldn’t understand a fuckin’ thing they were saying.”
Jake nodded. He knew that Miguel spoke fluent English and wondered if the man just didn’t want Matt to know that or if he had been speaking English and Matt had not been able to follow the landscaper’s thick accent. Probably the former. “What happened when the cops got there?”
“Nothing much,” Matt said. “We’d already burned the whole doob by that point and I’d swallowed the roach. The two beaners don’t speak English and the two cops didn’t speak Mexican and I just denied the shit out of the accusation and told them I was just having a friendly chat.”
“And they bought that?” Jake asked.
“Who gives a shit if they bought it?” Matt asked. “There wasn’t no fuckin’ evidence. They let Taco and Taquito go and then had that Sergeant fuckhead come out and talk to me.”
“And what did he say?” Jake asked.
“The usual bullshit that cops say when they ain’t got nothin’ on you,” Matt said. “He told me that weed is still illegal in California unless you got one of them cards from a doctor, and even if I did have one of them cards, I don’t get to smoke the shit on a public street or share the shit with a couple of beaner landscapers unless they got cards too.”
“And you replied to him politely and respectfully?” Jake asked.
“Well ... for me, yeah,” Matt said. “I told him that your fuckin’ neighbors need to mind their own goddamn business instead of mine.”
Jake sighed, giving a few more rubs of the head. “Are you deliberately trying to be a pain in my ass, Matt, or does this just come naturally to you?”
“It’s fuckin’ natural, dude,” Matt said simply. “If I wanted to be a pain in your ass I would’ve gotten in a fight with the cop.”
Matt did have a point there, Jake supposed. “All right,” he said. “Will you please refrain from smoking weed or doing anything else illegal where my neighbors can see, hear, or smell you doing it?”
“No problem, Jake,” Matt said. “And it was no big deal. I’m surprised that cop even called you about this shit.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “How’s the rehearsal coming along? Will you and boys be ready to start working for real on Monday?”
“We’re ready,” Matt assured him. “We got twelve solid tunes pretty much dialed in.”
“I can’t wait to hear them,” Jake said. “Monday at nine, right?”
“Fuckin’ A,” Matt said.
“I’ll see you then,” Jake said. “Until then, however, can you please try to avoid having the cops respond to my house?”
“Hey,” Matt said, “I never fuckin’ called them.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jake said. “Catch you later.”
“Later,” Matt said and then hung up.
Jake put his extension down and then stood up. He headed back to the kitchen to grab a couple of Tylenol tablets out of the medicine cabinet.
Jake and Laura spent the weekend doing absolutely nothing of consequence. They played no music. They did not leave the house a single time except to go out on the back deck or out to the hot tub on the cliff to watch the sunsets. Jake thawed out some baby back ribs from the local meat market and spent all day Saturday smoking them out on the Weber barbeque. They ate them with canned baked beans on Saturday and Sunday night. Jake had a few beers while they were smoking, a few glasses of white wine with the meals, and scotch on the rocks before retiring each night, but otherwise drank no alcohol. It just wasn’t fun to drink when there was no one able to drink with him. He smoked no marijuana for the same reason.