At roll call late that afternoon, Sergeant Lee Murillo and Sergeant Miriam Hermann were both sitting at the table in front of the room. After she read the crimes, Sergeant Hermann said, “The detectives on the sex desk at West Bureau got a call from an alert officer at North Hollywood desk about a mall incident last night. A young, curly-haired Latino who fits the description of the guy that attacked the two women here in Hollywood made a try for a woman putting groceries in her car. He attempted to give her a ten-dollar bill that he claimed he found near her car. She didn’t buy into it, and he really freaked and started screaming as she drove off. If he’s our guy, he seems to be getting more out of control with each encounter. Be supercareful with any young Latinos who fit the description we gave you. A fifty-one-fifty with a box cutter should be taken very seriously, and this one’s out there stalking.”
Dana Vaughn said, “Was the woman middle-aged, blonde, and a bit overweight?”
Sergeant Hermann said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t say in the note I got.”
“Both of ours were,” Dana said. “I checked with the officer who took the report on the woman who got beat up.”
“That’s a good question. I’ll call North Hollywood and get back to you with the woman’s description,” Sergeant Hermann said. “There might be a specific MO being established here.”
R.T. Dibney guffawed and said loudly, “If the woman’s middle-aged, you can bet she’s overweight, and she’s probably blonde. All the middle-aged women I date or been married to are overweight, and all of them become bottle blondes sooner or later. It’s the easiest way to hide the gray.”
Dana Vaughn saw Mindy Ling cast a withering look at her partner for shooting off his mouth, and Mindy said, “From the looks of your sideburns and stash, R.T., you learned a few coloring tricks from your multitude of lady friends.”
Everyone had a chuckle, until Sergeant Murillo said, “Okay, if we’re all through with beauty tips by R.T. Dibney, let’s go to work.”
Of course, each of them touched the Oracle’s picture before filing out the door.
Jerzy was even more unhappy than usual when he showed up in the parking lot by the cyber café and entered the donut shop, where Tristan was sitting at a table in the back.
“Get your sugar fix,” Tristan said, nibbling on a chocolate donut covered with multicolored sprinkles. “Go ahead and load up. I’m buyin’.”
Jerzy sat down without ordering and said, “I let you talk me into some crazy shit, but this takes the cake.”
“Forget the cake. Have a donut,” Tristan said, pointing to the plate in front of him piled with five assorted donuts. “This is gonna take a high energy level from both of us.”
“I wish I had some smoke to sprinkle on the donuts,” Jerzy muttered.
“Did you get the equipment?”
Jerzy automatically lowered his voice when he said, “Yeah, we’re tooled up, and I ain’t real happy about it.”
Tristan lowered his own voice and said, “Where are they?”
“In the trunk of my car at the bottom of a box of birdseed and dog food that my old lady wants for the fuckin’ zoo she keeps in her house.”
“You can rent her a bigger house if this gag goes like I think it will. What’d you get?”
“An old snub-nosed revolver,” Jerzy said. “Couldn’t get my hands on a semiautomatic.”
“Don’t matter, dawg, it’s only a prop,” Tristan said. “It ain’t loaded, is it?”
“Of course it’s fuckin’ loaded. It ain’t that much of a prop.”
“I think you should leave it in the trunk. Maybe it was a bad idea anyways. We don’t need no gun.”
“You said you wanna scare the guy.”
“Not that much,” Tristan said. “Did you get the other… tool?”
Impatiently Jerzy said, “Yeah, the buck knife was no problem. Every biker I know carries one in his saddlebag. I think I know why it had to be a buck knife.”
“Readin’ my mind again?” Tristan said.
“You figure that O.J. Simpson diced the white bitch and her boyfriend with a buck knife, right? And O.J.’s a national hero to you and all your tribe, am I right?”
“Fuck you, peckerwood,” Tristan said. “It’s a scary-lookin’ knife, that’s why. We ain’t into force. Fear is our weapon. And the element of surprise. We’re only gonna scare him, not shoot him, and not cut him.”
“Element of surprise,” Jerzy snorted. “Okay, break it down, mastermind. You got me breathin’ hard.”
“When Kessler shows up, I start talkin’ shit for a minute and you jist make sure you’re between him and the door. You understand how important that is, right?”
With his mouth full of donut, Jerzy rolled his eyes and said, “No I’m a fuckin’ idiot.”
Tristan thought, For once we agree, you fuckin’ redneck. But he said, “Anyways, you gotta be the immovable object that the man can feel breathin’ on him every second I’m talkin’ to him. I’m gonna tell him what we know and what we want and what we’re gonna do if he don’t cooperate.”
“And you’re one hundred percent convinced he ain’t gonna call our bluff and tell us to go ahead and rat him out?”
“Look at us,” Tristan said. “We ain’t got a Ben Franklin between us. He knows we got nothin’ to lose. But Kessler and his geek got a whole lot to lose. You jist stand there like a statue and let me work it. He’s gonna get so scared of my story that if you give him a peek at the buck knife, he’ll mess his drawers.”
“Okay, but if I get tired of listenin’ to your shit, and if it ain’t havin’ the desired effect, I reserve the right to do it my way.”
“And what might that be, wood?”
“You’ll see.”
“Puttin’ your hands on the man is a last resort,” Tristan said quickly. “And then only to make him sit down. We don’t need no violence. He’s jist a pussy playin’ dress-up. He’ll take it if you piss on his shoes. No need to tune him up.”
“Maybe,” Jerzy said, shoving a whole donut in his mouth, the powdered sugar turning his lips white.
As they were preparing to leave, a black-and-white pulled into one of the open spaces by the cyber café. Aaron Sloane and Sheila Montez got out and headed toward the donut shop.
Sheila speed-dialed a cell number and said, “Gotta make a quick call.”
When she walked several paces away for privacy, Aaron felt the familiar pain. He was having a hard time with his emotions these days: sadness, jealousy, even despair. Yet, for all he knew, she was only calling her parents to set up a family dinner. He knew she came from a large Mexican family in Pacoima. It could just be that. But whenever she made a private call, he found himself imagining the worst: a yuppie stockbroker or maybe a lawyer in a perfectly tailored Hugo Boss suit, sitting at his desk in Century City with a cell phone in one hand, a bottle of Evian in the other, making plans with Sheila for a couple of days and nights on Catalina Island.
The captivated cop tried but couldn’t come close to feigning insouciance until Sheila closed her cell and said, “I’ll have coffee. You aren’t gonna catch me eating one of those lumps of grease they call donuts.”
“They’re really good when you’re hungry as I am,” Aaron said. “I haven’t had a thing all day except a bowl of cereal. These donuts really stick to your ribs.”
“They stick to your thighs,” Sheila said. “And to your butt. I think they’re made of cellulite. I’ll just have coffee and watch you harm your body.”
“You don’t have to worry about your body,” Aaron said with that same lovelorn look he continually tried to repress.
Sheila didn’t reply, but Aaron caught a glimmer of a smile in response to his compliment as they walked across the parking lot toward the donut shop, which all cops knew was frequented by hustlers and dopers from the nearby cyber café.
Tristan was giving last-minute, animated instructions to Jerzy while getting into the Chevy Caprice, when Aaron took a look at them and said to Sheila, “We can use a couple of shakes for our recap. Let’s see if these dudes have one good driver’s license between them, and maybe even a registration.”