“Why not?” Farley said.
“Would there be anything in your house that you wouldn’t want us to find?”
“Wait a minute,” Farley said. “Are you talking about searching my house?”
“How many times have you been in jail for drug possession?” Benny asked.
“I been in jail three times,” Olive said. “Once when this guy I used to know made me shoplift some stuff from Sears.”
“Shut the fuck up, Olive,” Farley said. Then to Benny he said, “If you don’t write me the ticket, you can search me and search this car and you can search Olive here and you can come to my house and I’ll prove whatever you want proved, but I ain’t letting you do a fishing expedition by looking in my underwear drawer.”
“Underwear floor, you mean,” Olive said. “Farley always throws his underwear on the floor and I gotta pick them up,” she explained.
“Olive, I’m begging you to shut up,” Farley said.
Benny looked up and saw B.M. Driscoll returning with the citation book and said, “Too late. Looks like the citation’s already written.”
B.M. Driscoll looked over the roof at his tall partner and said, “Mr. Ramsdale has a number of arrests for drug possession and petty theft, don’t you, Mr. Ramsdale?”
“Kid stuff,” Farley mumbled, signing the traffic ticket.
“I didn’t write you for not having a registration,” B.M. Driscoll said. “But tell your friend, Samuel Culhane… where does he live, by the way?”
“On Kingsley,” Olive said. “I don’t know the number.”
B.M. Driscoll nodded at Benny and said, “That checks.” Then to Farley he said, “Have a good evening, Mr. Ramsdale.”
When they were once again on their way to the taco stand to score some ice that Farley now needed desperately, he said to Olive, “You see what happens when you pin a badge on a nigger? That fucking Watusi wanted to go on a fishing expedition in my house.”
“Maybe we shoulda just invited them home to see that you’re a property owner and the stuff on your driver’s license is correct,” Olive said. “And it wouldn’ta mattered if they searched. We got nothing but a glass pipe at home, Farley. That’s why we’re out here. We got no crystal, no nothing at home.”
Farley turned and stared at her until he almost rear-ended a pickup in front of him, then said, “Invite cops home to search? I suppose you’da made coffee for them?”
“If we had any,” she said, nodding. “And if they didn’t write the traffic ticket. It’s always best to be friendly with the police. Being mean will just bring you more trouble.”
“Jesus Christ!” Farley cried. “And then what? Maybe you woulda told them you were going to fuck them both to be friendly? Well, I hope not, Olive. Because making terroristic threats is a felony!”
FOURTEEN
BUDGIE AND FAUSTO were the first of the midwatch teams to break away from the hunt for the red Mazda. Virtually every car had driven east toward gang territory and the less affluent neighborhoods where most of Hollywood’s street criminals resided, but the suspects’ descriptions could have put them anywhere. By now the cars were looking for a male, white or possibly Hispanic, in his midforties, of medium height and weight, with dark hair. He was wearing a Dodgers cap and sunglasses, a blue tee, and jeans. His companion was a female, white, also about forty, tall and full-figured, with red hair that two Latino women said looked like a cheap wig. The woman with the gun wore sunglasses also, a tight, multicolored cotton dress, and white espadrilles. Both witnesses commented on her large “bosoms.”
A supplemental description was given to the communications operator by Viktor Chernenko during an on-scene interview thirty minutes after the shooting, when the area around the ATM machine was taped off and controlled by uniformed officers. Even though Viktor knew that the Bank Squad from Robbery-Homicide Division would be handling this one, he was confident that these were the suspects from the jewelry store.
When the report call came in on their MDT, Fausto said to Budgie, “Well, by now they’re in their hole. Best we could hope for is to spot the abandoned Mazda. They probably dumped it somewhere.”
The report they were assigned was for attempted murder, which in Hollywood could mean anything. This was, after all, the land of dreams and fantasy. They were sent to a quite expensive, artsy-craftsy, split-level house in Laurel Canyon, certainly not an area where attempted murders occurred frequently. The fact that there was no code assigned to the call made them think that whoever took the call at Communications didn’t think it was worthy of urgent response.
The caller was waiting on his redwood balcony under a vaulted roof. He waved after they parked, and they began climbing the outside wooden staircase. It was still nearly an hour before sunset so they didn’t need to light their way, but it was dark from shadows cast by all of the ferns and palms and bird of paradise plants on both sides of the staircase.
Fausto, who was getting winded from the steep climb, figured that the gardeners must make a bundle.
The caller held open the door and said, “Right this way, officers.”
He was seventy-nine years old and dressed in an ivory-white bathrobe with satin lapels, and leather monogrammed slippers. He had dyed-auburn transplants and a gray mustache that used to be called a toothbrush. He introduced himself as James R. Houston but added that his friends called him Jim.
The inside of the house said 1965: shag carpets, lime-green-flowered sofa, Danish modern dining room furniture, and even an elaborate painted clown in a gilded frame resembling the ones that the late actor-comedian Red Skelton had painted.
When Fausto said, “By any chance is that a Red Skelton?” and got a negative reply, Budgie said, “Who’s Red Skelton?”
“A famous comic actor of yesteryear,” the man said. “And a fine painter.”
Only after their host insisted did they agree to have a glass of lemonade from a pitcher on the dining room table. Then he said to Fausto, “Even though I don’t have the honor of owning a Red Skelton clown painting, I did work with him in a movie. It was in nineteen fifty-five, I think. But don’t hold me to that.”
Of course, he was implying that he was an actor. Budgie Polk had learned by now that in Hollywood Division, when a suspect or victim says he’s an actor, a cop’s automatic response is “And what do you do when you’re not acting?”
When she said this to him, he said, “I’ve dabbled in real estate for years. My wife owns some rental property that I manage. Jackie Lee’s my second wife.” Then he corrected himself and said, “Actually, my third. My first wife died, and my second, well…” With that he made a dismissive gesture and then said, “It’s about my present wife that I’ve called you here.”
Budgie opened her report binder and said, “Is someone trying to murder her?”
“No,” he said, “she’s trying to murder me.”
Suddenly his hand holding the glass of lemonade began to tremble, and the ice cubes tinkled.
With his long experience in Hollywood crime, Fausto took over. “And where is your wife now?”
“She’s gone to San Francisco with her sister-in-law. They’ll be back Monday morning, which is why I felt safe to call you here. I thought you might like to look for clues like on…”
“CSI,” Fausto said. These days it was always the CSI TV show. Real cops just couldn’t measure up.
“Yes,” he said. “CSI.”
“How is she trying to kill you?” Fausto asked.
“She’s trying to poison me.”
“How do you know that?” Budgie asked.
“I get a stomachache every time she cooks a meal. I’ve started going out to dinner a lot because I’m so frightened.”