This was brought home on their first night working together in 6-X-46. Mindy Ling, who usually stayed home on her nights off to study for a master’s degree in public administration, occasionally watched Turner Classic Movies with her parents. While R.T. Dibney was loading up their black-and-white with their gear, Mindy began conversing with the cinematic scholar, Hollywood Nate Weiss, about her partner’s style choices. R.T. Dibney saw them looking his way from across the parking lot but didn’t know they were discussing his lounge-lizard mustache and tinted puffy coif reminiscent of yesteryear’s movie stars.
Because the gossipy world of street cops brooks no secrets, Hollywood Nate was also informing her that R.T. Dibney lost his most recent wife by going to Las Vegas with his buddies after telling her he was on a fishing trip. He blew $2,000 on a weekend of fun and frolic at the tables and in hotel bedrooms, and it just about cleaned out their bank balance. Nearly broke and remorseful, he’d returned to L.A. and gone straight downtown to the diamond district, where two Iranian jewelers called Eddie and Freddie sold him a beautiful cubic zirconium ring for his last $200. R.T. Dibney told his wife that the ring had cost $2,500, and though it broke their piggy bank temporarily, he’d felt compelled to purchase it in order to renew their wedding vows, so deep was his love for her.
That particular wife had a cousin in the jewelry business, and when she showed the cousin her ring, he pointed out to her that her diamond was bogus and her husband was a conniving turd that she should flush away before spawning something that carried his genetic profile. R.T. Dibney’s divorce lawyer told the cop that he alone was putting the lawyer’s kid through college and in essence thanked him for being such a conniving turd.
Mindy Ling thanked Hollywood Nate for the information on R.T. Dibney, and by way of introduction that ultimately left her new partner gob-smacked, she got behind the wheel of their car, turned to R.T. Dibney, and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you and your devil-may-care swashbuckling exploits. Tell me, how many times have you been married?”
“I’ve been married three-point-five times,” R.T. Dibney said with a semi-leer. “It must be that I give off a certain musk that makes me a marriage target, but I’m technically still on the market… in case anyone’s interested.”
R.T. Dibney was enjoying this unexpected attention from Mindy Ling until she added, “Partner, I’m as much into nostalgia as the next girl, so I gotta respect someone in this day and age with the chutzpah to sport a toothbrush stash and a Lady Clairol blow-dried do. But while you’re with me, I’d like you to keep in mind that no matter how hard you try channeling Errol Flynn, he’s dead and gone, and nobody gives a damn how many women he balled. Now, let’s try to concentrate on good police work the whole time we’re together, shall we?”
Late that afternoon, while 6-X-46 was still in the parking lot with the rest of the midwatch, fourteen-year-old Naomi Teller was near Fairfax High School, walking home to Ogden Drive, when a slender, smiling boy in a light blue T-shirt and jeans, who she thought was at least eighteen years old, walked up behind her on the sidewalk and said, “Yo, Goldilocks, you can’t be just getting out of summer school this late.”
Naomi hesitated but was reassured by his brilliant smile, which produced deep dimples in his cheeks. She liked the way his black hair curled over his ears and on his neck, and she liked his flaming dark eyes and tawny cheeks, which sported a young man’s light growth of soft dark whiskers. She felt that he might be Hispanic, but he had no accent, so she wasn’t sure. It was flattering to have such a very cute older boy paying attention to her.
Naomi had small bones, narrow shoulders, and still-developing breasts. Eyes too large and mouth too small, she hadn’t received much attention from the boys in middle school, but this older boy was looking at her and talking to her in a way that no one had before, and it was superexciting.
“I won’t be going to Fairfax until September,” Naomi Teller said truthfully, even though she was tempted to lie about her age.
“You and me should maybe go someplace and hang out,” he said. “I’d like to get to know you and make some friends around here. Most girls with hair like yours have to dye it to get it so gold, but I can see that yours was a gift from God. My name’s Clark, what’s yours?”
“Naomi,” she said, and she couldn’t help smiling back at him, his dimpled smile was so infectious. “That’s the name of the guy in Superman, Clark Kent.”
“That’s why my adopted parents named me that when they found me near a crashed spaceship.”
Naomi giggled, and he smiled more broadly and said, “Your hair is exactly the color of the honey I spread on my peanut butter sandwiches.”
That made her laugh. “I guess that’s a compliment.”
“Yours is a natural color,” he said. “Anybody can see that. I hate all those old women who try to make their hair look like yours. They can’t do it and shouldn’t try.”
“My mom tries,” Naomi said.
“Maybe we should go to the movies sometime, Naomi,” he said. “Can I have your number?”
“Well…,” she said.
“What time do you go to bed?”
“In the summer? About eleven. My mom’s strict.”
“I’ll call you at ten forty-five to say good night,” he said.
Naomi thought those dimples and that smile were to die for. And his teeth? So straight and white, natural white, not that phony bleached white that so many older people like her father were doing these days.
She said, “Okay, you can call me.” And she gave him her cell number, which he wrote on the back of his hand with a ballpoint pen.
He looked at her quite seriously then, as though he wanted to say something more, but an older couple walked out of a nearby apartment building and looked their way. Then he smiled again and said, “Got to bounce. Call you later. I’ll think of you when I make my peanut butter and honey sandwich tonight.”
She giggled again and gave a little wave and continued home, except she hadn’t gone half a block when her cell rang. She took it out of her purse and didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?” she said, thinking it was a wrong number.
“It’s Clark,” he said.
She turned around, but there was nobody walking on the street, only lots of traffic roaring by. “I thought you were going to call me tonight,” Naomi said. “Where are you?”
“I’m watching you, Naomi,” he said. “You’re so beautiful, I can’t help it. And I called just to make sure you gave me the right number. If you hadn’t, my heart would be broken.”
She looked around uneasily then, peering through exhaust smoke from a large truck passing on the street, and said, “Where are you? I can’t see you.”
“Nowhere,” he said. “I’ll call later. Don’t forget me. Don’t ever forget me.”
The man that Tristan and Jerzy knew as Jakob Kessler was exhausted by the time he got back to his apartment on Franklin Avenue that night. His wife, Eunice Gleason, was waiting for him, poisoning the air with her chain-smoking. He entered, unlocking both dead-bolt locks, and removed his suit coat and the booster bag that contained the skimmer, the bag of mail, and the credit cards. His feet were killing him, so he took off the custom-made shoes with the three-inch lifts, and arching his back, he stretched. And he was no longer stooped.
“I’m home, Eunice,” he yelled with no trace of a German accent.
“No shit,” Eunice said, a cigarette protruding from her teeth as her hands flew over the computer keys. An ashtray beside her on the table was full of butts, and with shades drawn, under the harsh glare from the gooseneck lamp, she looked to him like she should have been onstage, maybe stirring a kettle in Macbeth.