She heard him mumble “Crazy old bitch” when he left her porch.
Olive was in the backyard of a neighbor six houses away, looking for Tillie and chatting with the neighbor about the beautiful white camellias that bordered her property. And Olive just loved the pink and white azaleas that climbed the fence. Olive told her that someday she hoped to have a garden. The woman offered to teach Olive the basics and to get her started with the proper seeds and a few young plants.
Olive thought she heard Farley’s Corolla, excused herself, and running to the street saw his taillights at the stop sign. She yelled but he didn’t hear her and was gone. Olive then went home, hoping he wasn’t mad at her.
There he was on the northeast corner of Hollywood and Fairfax, jumping around like he had to take a leak. Or had to score some tweak, more likely, Farley figured. He didn’t like any part of this. Little Bart couldn’t drive because he had no license? When did that ever stop a tweaker from driving? He couldn’t carry a computer because his back hurt? He couldn’t ride in Farley’s car to the garage where the computers were? What was this shit all about?
Little Bart walked over to his car and said, “Just follow me real slow for half a block. When I get to the house, I’ll point with my finger behind my back. Then you drive into the driveway and go to the garage. The door will open manually. Get the computers and pick me up two blocks north.”
While he was driving slowly behind Bart, he missed Olive more than he had in the eighteen months they’d been together. This was a very bad deal. Bart was scared to pick up the merchandise, which meant that Bart didn’t trust the thief who’d stolen the computers, or the fence who’d hired Bart to deliver them.
If Olive were here, there’d be no problem. He’d drop her off at the pickup address and let her go into the garage and check it out. If the cops were there and grabbed her, he’d just keep on moving down the road. If there was one thing he was sure of, Olive would never rat him out. She’d take the hit and do the time if she had to and come to him when she got out of jail, just as though nothing had happened.
But Olive wasn’t here. And that fucking Little Bart was pointing at a house, a modest one for this neighborhood. Then Bart kept walking north. Farley parked across from the house and looked at the garage.
The house wasn’t unlike his own. It was in that ubiquitous California style that everyone calls Spanish, which means nothing other than tile roof and stucco walls. The longer he looked at it, the worse he felt about the whole arrangement.
Farley got out of the car and walked across the street to the house. He went to the front door and rang the bell. When he got no answer, he went to the side door, which was only forty feet from the garage, banged on the door, and yelled, “Olive, you there? Hellooooo? Olive?”
It was then that two Hollywood Division detectives came out of the garage, badged him, put him against the wall, patted him down, and then dragged him back into the garage. There was nothing in the garage except a workbench, some tools and tires, and two boxes containing new computers.
“What is this?” he said.
“You tell us,” the older detective said.
“My girlfriend, Olive, went to lunch with a pal of hers and gave me the pal’s address. This is it.”
“Right,” the younger detective said. “What’ve you been in jail for?”
“Petty kid stuff is all,” Farley said. “What’s this all about?”
“You been busted for burglary?”
“No.”
“Receiving?”
“Receiving what?
“Don’t fuck with us. Receiving stolen property.”
“No, just kid stuff. Drug possession. Petty theft a couple times.”
“Are you going to use the S-O-D-D-I defense?”
“What’s that?”
“Some other dude did it.”
“I’m innocent!” Farley cried.
“Well, partner,” the younger detective said to the other. “Let’s take kid stuff here to the station. Looks like our surprise party is blown.”
“Hey, man,” Farley said, “I musta wrote down the wrong address is all. My girlfriend Olive’s gonna be looking for me. If you’ll let me call her, she’ll tell you.”
“Turn around, kid stuff,” the older detective said. “Put your hands behind your back.”
After they handcuffed Farley, they led him out to the street, where a detective car drove up from wherever it had been hidden. Then they searched his Corolla, but of course it was clean. There wasn’t even a roach in the ashtray.
When they got to the station, Farley saw some movie posters on a wall. What the fuck kind of police station has movie posters on the wall? Farley thought. And how did he get in this horror flick? All he knew was, if he’d had Olive with him, he wouldn’t be here. That dumb bitch just got his ass busted!
It was after five o’clock and Farley hadn’t come home and hadn’t called. Olive was tired and she was very hungry. She remembered what Mabel had said about saving some food for her. She wondered if Mabel might let her help cook the meal. She’d like that, and getting to eat and chat with Mabel.
When she got to Mabel’s the old woman was delighted to see her.
“I’m sorry, Mabel,” she said. “I can’t find Tillie.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” Mabel said. “She’ll turn up. She always does. She’s still a bit of a wild thing. Tillie’s got a touch of Gypsy in her soul.”
“Would you like me to help you cook?”
“Oh, yes,” Mabel said. “If you’ll promise to stay and have supper with me.”
“Thank you, Mabel,” Olive said. “I’ll be real happy to join you for supper.”
“Then we’ll play gin. If you don’t know how, never mind, I’ll teach you. I know all about cards. Did I ever tell you I used to make good money telling fortunes with cards? That was sixty-five years ago.”
“Really?”
“Really. There are certain legal technicalities about foretelling the future that I didn’t follow. I was arrested twice and taken to Hollywood Station for ignoring those silly technicalities.”
“You, arrested?” Olive couldn’t imagine it.
“Oh, yes,” Mabel said. “I was a bit of a naughty girl in my time. The old police station was a lovely building constructed in nineteen thirteen, the year my parents got married. When I was born, they named me for the silent-screen star Mabel Normand. I never had any siblings. You know, I used to date a policeman from Hollywood Station. He was the one who arrested me the second time and persuaded me to stop telling fortunes for money. He was killed in the war. One week after D-day.”
Loving Mabel’s stories and gossip about the old days in Hollywood, Olive hated to interrupt her, but she thought about Farley and said, “Mabel, let me run home and leave a note for Farley so he’ll know where I’m at. Be right back!”
“Hurry, dear,” Mabel said. “I’ll tell you lots of tales about life in the golden age of Hollywood. And we’ll play cards. This is going to be such fun!”
SEVENTEEN
COSMO BETROSSIAN CURSED the traffic. He cursed Los Angeles for being the most car-dependent, traffic-choked city in the world. He cursed the Georgian bartender who gave him the stolen car that almost got him captured. But most of all he cursed Farley Ramsdale and his stupid woman. He sat in traffic on East Sunset Boulevard looking at all of the signs around him in the languages of the Far East, and he cursed them too.
Then he heard the siren and for a few seconds it terrified him until he saw an ambulance weaving through traffic on the wrong side of Sunset, obviously trying to get to the traffic accident that had him gridlocked. Glancing repeatedly at his Rolex knockoff, he cursed.
First, they left him in an interrogation room for what seemed like an hour, only letting him go to the bathroom once and then watching him piss, just like the goddamn probation officer who used to make him piss in a bottle twice a month. With no sympathy for the fact that it was hard to piss with someone watching to make sure you piss from your own dick and not from a bottle of clean piss stashed in your underwear.