Dewey paused for an even longer time. Then he said, “There’s one thing that’ll keep her from even considering the possibility that this is all a charade. It’s something that’ll keep her mind totally focused on her own survival.”
“What’s that?” Tristan asked.
“Pain,” Dewey said, turning around and looking at Jerzy. “But it’s a last resort. And I mean last.”
“Okay, Bernie,” Jerzy said with that grin again that gave Tristan chills. “I do believe we are finally arrivin’ at the same page on this here script of yours.”
“I don’t like this,” Tristan said. “I don’t fuckin’ like this. I said from the git that I don’t do violence to no woman.”
“Nobody’s askin’ you to do it,” Jerzy said.
“I don’t fuckin’ like this!” Tristan repeated.
“You’ll like the money when it comes,” Jerzy said. “And you’ll forget the rest of it.”
“It won’t have to come to violence,” Dewey said. “I’m sure of it.”
Malcolm and Naomi were seated at the counter at Mel’s Drive-In, and he was very happy with how impressed she seemed.
“It’s too cool for school!” she said. “A burger on the Sunset Strip!”
Malcolm said, “Want some ice cream for dessert?”
“I’m stuffed,” she said, pushing the plate away.
“I like chocolate,” Malcolm said.
“Me too,” she said. “Especially frozen yogurt.”
“Yeah?” Malcolm said. “I like frozen yogurt better than ice cream too. You and me, Naomi, we got lots in common.”
Naomi smiled and said, “I’m real glad you called today, Clark. I was starting to think maybe it wouldn’t happen.”
“When I make up my mind, I stick to it,” Malcolm said. “I’m gonna be getting a new job soon. Then I’ll have more time and more money to do things I wanna do.”
“What do you wanna do?” Naomi asked, and Malcolm loved the way she tossed her head to get her shoulder-length blonde hair off the side of her face.
“Oh, maybe get a newer car. I like Mustangs, but mine’s pretty old. And I wanna buy you some things. Expensive things.”
“Me?” Naomi said.
“Sure,” he said. “You’re my girl now. I feel like I know you better than anybody else in my life,” Malcolm said. Then he repeated, “You’re my girl.”
Naomi was startled and confused, and she said, “Clark, I like you. I really do. But my mother’d have a litter of kittens if she knew you called me that or if she even knew I was here with a guy your age. Especially a guy she never met.”
“I’ll go straight to your house now and meet your mother,” Malcolm said. “And I’ll tell her how I feel about you.”
He didn’t like the look on Naomi’s face then. And he didn’t like it when she lowered her gaze and said, “Clark, don’t talk crazy. I think maybe you should take me home now.”
She managed an insincere smile but remained silent for a moment when he said, “Okay, but I hope I can come in for a few minutes and see how you live.”
“See how I live?” Naomi finally said as Malcolm examined the bill and put money on the counter. “Whadda you mean?”
“I wanna see how a real American family lives. I didn’t have that kind of family. My mother was a Persian, and my father was a French chef in New York before we moved to L.A., when I was a baby.”
A moment passed and Naomi said, “How did you get the scrapes on your knuckles, Clark? And that little bruise on your face?”
“I got in a fight at work,” Malcolm said. “Two big guys in the warehouse were picking on a little guy, and I stepped in and took care of business. I can’t stand bullies, and I clocked both of them. They ended up in the ER.”
Naomi did not comment further and was more than apprehensive during their ride and only spoke when she had to direct him to her house on Ogden Drive. He, on the other hand, chattered nonstop about music, often referring to the latest songs he’d heard on KROQ. When they were a few blocks from her house, he turned up the volume and began singing along with “Love Me Dead.”
He knew the entire lyric, and he turned his brilliant smile on her when he sang about “the mark of the beast.” And again when he sang, “You’re born of a jackal.” He smiled even bigger when he said, “That song’s about me!”
Naomi Teller had begun trembling by then and felt enormous relief when he pulled up in front of her house, a well-tended home in an area where homes were upper-middle class, but to Malcolm Rojas they looked like mansions.
She got out of the Mustang quickly, closed the door, peered through the open window, and said, “Clark, I really can’t invite you in now. I need time to tell my mom and dad how nice you are, even though you’re an older guy. I just need… well, like, time.”
“That’s a beautiful house,” he said. “Which room is yours? Upstairs in front, I bet, so you can see the street.”
“Yes, you’re a good guesser, Clark,” she said. “Well, bye-bye.”
“Next time I wanna meet your family and see how you live,” Malcolm said. “Promise me, Naomi.”
Naomi said, “Okay, Clark.”
“Don’t forget me, Naomi,” Malcolm said. “Don’t ever forget me.”
“I won’t,” Naomi said. “That’s for sure.”
When she was feeling the security of her front door just a few yards away, she paused, turned again, and, looking back at the handsome young man in the Mustang, said, “Jones isn’t a French name. You said your dad was a French chef.”
Malcolm said, “You’re right, Naomi. He changed it when he came to America because his name was too hard to pronounce.”
“I took French in middle school,” Naomi said, feeling bold enough now to challenge him. “I bet I could pronounce it. What is it?”
“I don’t like to talk about my family,” he said. “They both died in a car crash.”
“Oh, that’s sad,” Naomi said. “Who raised you?”
“I was raised by jackals,” Malcolm said, and he began laughing.
The laughter grew in intensity until he had tears in his eyes. Naomi Teller imagined she could still hear that laugh when she ran inside her house and turned the dead bolt.
Night fell with a thud, thanks to the summer smog. It got very dark very fast. Sergeant Miriam Hermann in 6-L-20, the senior sergeant’s designated car, was cruising Hollywood Boulevard when she spotted the shop belonging to 6-X-32 parked on Las Palmas Avenue, just north of the boulevard. She saw that the surfer cops were talking to a white male pedestrian, so she pulled over to the red zone on the boulevard, showed herself on the radio as being code 6, and left her car to observe unseen.
Flotsam and Jetsam were both facing north and didn’t notice their supervisor standing thirty yards behind them in the darkness of a doorway. Sergeant Hermann could see that the guy facing the two cops was hammered to the point of oblivion. She doubted that they’d gotten him out of a car, because he looked too smashed to walk, let alone drive.
Flotsam looked at the fiftyish fat guy, whose souvenir Universal Studios cap, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with dark socks said “tourist.” He was doing his best to stand without staggering to one side or the other, and Sergeant Hermann heard the tall cop say, “Well, Stanley, even though you’re more bombed than Baghdad, we’d like to give you a break and let you walk home. But I don’t know if you can manage it. Where’s home?”
“The R-R-R-Roosevelt Hotel,” Stanley managed to say, with a pronounced slur and a stutter like Porky Pig’s. “I… c-c-c-can do it! Honest!”
Jetsam looked at his partner and said, “I dunno either, partner.” Turning to the drunk, he said, “Where you from, Stanley?”
The man looked at them like he couldn’t remember, but he said, “Indi… Indi… Indian… aw, fuck it… apolis.” Then he got the hiccups.
“Well, your hometown makes a difference,” Flotsam said. “Most surfers have heard about the USS Indianapolis. It got torpedoed in the Big War. A lotta brave sailors got taken by the men in gray suits.”