EIGHTEEN
THE NEXT DAY WAS to be the most momentous in his life. At such a moment, he could face and admit who Dewey Gleason really was: failed actor, failed screenwriter, mediocre forger and thief. At such a time, all denial was stripped away. He thought of his brother and sister in Seattle, a civil engineer and a schoolteacher. Both had spouses and children and were ostensibly happy, yet he’d always felt he was smarter and more accomplished than either of them. For years he’d blamed his failures on the show-business bug that bit him during his high school years. Then later, he’d decided it wasn’t a bug, it was a goddamn vampire bat that sucked Seattle right out of him and eventually steered him to Hollywood. And this was where it would all finally end, one way or the other.
Of course, Dewey had slept intermittently, and the sleep he did get was clouded by bizarre and unremembered nightmares. There were so many things that could go wrong, he’d finally stopped listing them. He’d faced the certain truth that if this didn’t work, he and Eunice were finished as a team, whether or not she guessed he’d engineered the gag. She’d probably pack up and head for San Francisco without him. That is, if she survived. And that made him think of Jerzy Szarpowicz, and of how much he hated even being in the cretin’s presence, let alone having his own freedom depend on him. As he faced his fiftieth birthday in extreme desperation, he felt old, as old as original sin. Dewey knew that his plan could lead to extreme violence. And that made him get out of bed before daybreak and make his fourth trip to the bathroom.
When he was sitting on the toilet, he made a mental note to call Creole to tell him that when they got their kidnap victim into the apartment in Frogtown, they must not let Eunice have a cigarette, no matter how much she begged. Dewey hoped that nicotine deprivation might be the torture that would break her faster than anything they could inflict.
Tristan Hawkins and Jerzy Szarpowicz met at the house near Frogtown that Jerzy shared with his woman and her kids. After that, they spent an hour renting a van, using the same bogus ID that Tristan had used before, and then drove to a thrift shop, where they bought a roll-away bed with a pancake mattress of jail quality. The bed was old but the frame was made of heavy steel that would fit their needs. They didn’t bother buying a pillow and certainly didn’t purchase sheets. The thrift shop manager threw in a blanket with cigarette burns in several places, and having seen their victim, Tristan figured that cigarette burns would probably make her feel at home.
Next they bought some lengths of chain at a hardware store, along with two padlocks, a roll of duct tape, and some large cleaning rags to serve as blindfolds. They made a trip to a sporting goods store for two sleeping bags for themselves, and then to a supermarket for cans of soup, packages of lunch meat, three loaves of bread, mayonnaise (because Jerzy insisted), an ice chest, bags of ice, bottled water, toilet paper, one bar of soap, and several rolls of paper towels. They bought a box of lawn-and-leaf bags to haul away all debris from the apartment after they were finished with their gag. And that completed the shopping list.
Or so Tristan thought until Jerzy said, “We forgot something.”
“What?” Tristan said.
“We gotta go back to the thrift shop and get an old rug.”
“We ain’t settin’ up housekeepin’, dawg,” Tristan said. “Next thing, you’ll be wantin’ a few pots of geraniums.”
“The rug’s for jist in case,” Jerzy said.
“In case of what?”
“In case we gotta roll her up in it if things don’t work out right.”
Tristan started to say something but changed his mind. What good would it do? He’d told both Jerzy and Bernie enough times that he wasn’t going to stand for violence, but he knew in his heart that he wouldn’t be able to stop it if it got started. He’d grown up in the ’hood. He knew how nobody could stop violence once it really got started. He refused to go back inside the thrift shop, so Jerzy bought the threadbare rug for $65 and carried it to the rental van by himself.
Eunice was absolutely bubbly when she went off to Henri’s for all the beauty work. She even mentioned to Dewey that she might stop by Macy’s and pick up something to wear.
“We’re only going to Musso’s,” Dewey said. “I’ve seen guys in T-shirts and tennis shoes having dinner there. In fact, that’s the dress code for most of the half-ass movie and TV people around this fucking town.”
“You’re grouchy this morning,” Eunice said. “And you got bags under your eyes.”
“That’ll provide a marked contrast to our young dinner guest,” Dewey said.
“I forgot we even have one,” Eunice said, and Dewey controlled the urge to smirk. “I don’t suppose Clark’ll be dressed up, will he?”
“Not ghetto-fabulous or anything like that, I wouldn’t think,” Dewey said, and added with feigned enthusiasm, “Okay, then, see you later when you’re beautiful.”
Malcolm Rojas brought a clean shirt and jeans to work and put them in a locker. He thought he’d shower and shave there at the end of the day. Actually, he really only had to shave every other day, and he’d shaved yesterday for that little bitch Naomi, but tonight was a special occasion. His mother hadn’t been awake when he left in the morning, so at least he was spared her nagging, or an interrogation as to why he hadn’t called her when he’d failed to come home for supper last night.
It had been hard for Malcolm not to tell someone at work about what had happened to him. He’d bought an L.A. Times, hoping to find some mention of the cop getting dunked in a swimming pool, but there was nothing there. He hadn’t even thought to look in the paper to see if the other incidents had been mentioned. That’s because he wasn’t proud of how he’d failed on both of those occasions, but nobody could say he’d failed last night. He’d gotten away when it looked like half the cops from Hollywood Station were looking for him. It made Malcolm smile every time he thought about it.
When they awoke late that morning in her double bed, Sheila Montez said to Aaron Sloane, “How about some tortillas and eggs? I still cook like a Mexican. Hollywood hasn’t changed me.”
“Anything you say,” Aaron said with his moonstruck smile. “I think I’m still dreaming.”
When she got out of bed and walked naked to the bathroom, he looked at her and said, “You’re even more beautiful in the daylight. If I ever run into that prowler again, I think I’ll kiss him.”
Sheila glanced over her shoulder with the dusky, sloe-eyed look that always enchanted him. Her heavy dark hair, no longer pinned up so as not to touch the lower edge of her uniform collar per regulations, was draped across one shoulder.
She paused at the bathroom door and said, “After my bad marriage, I promised myself that I’d absolutely, positively never get involved with another cop. And I’ve kept my promise until now.”
“You’ll never have a problem with me, Sheila,” Aaron said earnestly, propped up in bed on one elbow, his blue eyes wide and artless. “I’m crazy for you and have been since our first night as partners. Now I can’t wait to take you to my folks’ house in Van Nuys for Sunday dinner. They’re gonna fall in love with you too. In fact, I predict that my accountant father will tell us how much money we could save if we take the proper steps to file a joint tax return next year.”
After digesting the import of his words, Sheila turned away from Aaron for a moment and he couldn’t see her face, and it alarmed him. The besotted young cop had been so overwhelmed by the rapture of the moment that the words had just poured from his lips. But now he feared he’d said too much too soon, and he was trying to think of something, anything, to tell her that he was patient and he’d wait, and that he hadn’t meant to blurt out what he was feeling so profoundly.