“I only got about ten of the primo cards left,” Farley said.
“Is enough,” Cosmo said. “Gregori got a bunch new worker who must have driving license. Gregori so cheap his old worker not stay long. Always new worker.”
“Is that dog in the yard?”
“I tell Gregori to tie up dog. No problem.”
“You tell Gregori to call me. If he says come, I come. He ain’t a violent type. He’s a businessman. You I ain’t so sure about.”
“Okay, I call Gregori now,” Cosmo said. “And if he say come?”
“Then I’ll be there at nine o’clock. Tell Gregori to put the money in a bag and stick the bag between the links of the gate. If the money’s there, I’ll drive in and give him the cards.”
“Okay, Farley,” Cosmo said. Then he added, “Call me if Olive come home.”
“Why?”
“I think I got good job for her.”
“You better have my big bucks this weekend, Cosmo,” Farley said. “Let me worry about Olive if she comes home.”
When Cosmo closed the cell, Ilya took a great puff from her cigarette, sucked it into her lungs, and with her words enveloped in smoke clouds said, “If he go to junkyard tonight, he don’t know nothing about ATM robbery.”
“But I shall kill him anyways. The diamond blackmail shall end.”
“Blackmail still there, Cosmo. Olive has our money and Olive know all about both our jobs. Olive is full of danger for us. Not Farley so much.”
“But I shall kill him anyways?”
“Yes, he must die. Olive may give up the blackmail. She got lot of money now. She buy lot of drugs and die happy in two, three years.”
“Our money,” he said.
“Yes, Cosmo. She got our money, I think so. Call Gregori now. Say again and make him to believe you only scare Farley to pay a debt he owe you. Tell Gregori you will pay money for the Mazda on Monday.”
Before phoning Gregori, Cosmo said, “Ilya, you tell me. When Gregori come to bring key to junkyard, you fuck him. No?”
“Of course, Cosmo,” she said. “Why?”
“If he getting scared about Farley, scared about Mazda that I want to crush to scrap, is okay if I tell him you wish to make him glass of tea one more time? To make him calm?”
“Of course, Cosmo,” she said. “My tea is best in all of Hollywood. Ask Gregori. Ask anybody who taste my tea.”
Six-X-Seventy-two got the call twenty minutes after they’d left the House of Chang. Hollywood Nate spun a U-ee and floored it. He craved redemption.
When they got back to the restaurant, Mrs. Chang tossed her head in the direction of the kitchen. And there they found Trombone Teddy sitting at the chopping block by the back door, happily scarfing down a huge bowl of pan-fried noodles.
“Teddy,” Nate said. “Remember us?”
“I ain’t causing no trouble,” he said. “They invited me in here.”
“Nobody says you’re causing trouble,” Nate said. “A couple questions and you can sit and enjoy your noodles.”
Wesley said, “Remember the fight you had on the boulevard? We’re the officers that got the call. You gave me a card with a license number on it. Remember?”
“Oh yeah!” Teddy said, a noodle plastered to his beard. “That son of a bitch sucker-punched me.”
“That’s the night,” Nate said. “Do you still have the card? With the license number?”
“Sure,” Teddy said. “But nobody wants it.”
“We want it now,” Wesley said.
Trombone Teddy put down his fork and searched inside his third layer of shirts, dug into a pocket with grimy fingers, and pulled out the House of Chang business card.
Wesley took it, looked at the license number, and nodded to Nate, who said, “Teddy, what kind of car was it that the mail thief was driving?”
“An old blue Pinto,” Teddy said. “Like I wrote down on the card.”
“And what did the guy look like?”
“I can’t remember no more,” Teddy said. “A white guy. Maybe thirty. Maybe forty. Nasty mouth. Insulted me. That’s why I wrote down the license number.”
“And his companion?” Wesley said.
“A woman. That’s all I can remember.”
“Would you recognize either of them if you saw them again?” Nate said.
“No, they was just dark shadows. He was just a dark shadow with a nasty mouth.”
“Tell us again what she called him,” Wesley said.
“I don’t remember,” Teddy said.
“You told me Freddy,” Wesley said.
“Did I?”
“Or Morley?”
“If you say so. But it don’t ring a bell now.”
“Have you seen them either before or after that?”
“Yeah, I saw them try to hustle a clerk in a store.”
“When?”
“A few days after he insulted me.”
“What store?”
“Coulda been like a Target store. Or maybe it was RadioShack. Or like a Best Buy store. I can’t remember. I get around.”
“At least,” Nate said, “you got another good look at them, right?”
“Yeah, but I still can’t remember what they look like. They’re white people. Maybe thirty years old. Or forty. But they could be fifty. I can’t tell ages no more. You can check with the guy at the store. He gave me a ten-buck reward for telling him they were crooks. They had a bogus credit card. Or bogus money. Something like that.”
“Jesus,” Nate said, looking at Wesley in frustration.
Wesley said, “If we can find the store and find the guy who saw them, at least you can say that they’re the same two people who stole from the mailbox, isn’t that right?”
“He stole from the mailbox,” Teddy said. “She didn’t. I got a feeling she’s okay. He’s a total asshole.”
Wesley said, “If the detectives need to talk to you, where can they find you?”
“There’s an old empty office building on that street on the east side of Hollywood Cemetery. I’m living there for now. But I come here a few nights a week for supper.”
“Can you remember anything else?” Hollywood Nate said, taking a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and putting it on the chopping block.
“Hell, half the time I can’t remember what day it is,” Teddy said. Then he looked at them and said, “What day is it, anyways?”
Viktor Chernenko was known for working late, especially with his obsession to solve the jewelry store robbery and the ATM robbery-murder, and most of the veteran cops from Hollywood Station were aware of it. Nate knew it and was busting stop signs and speeding to the station faster than he’d driven to the House of Chang.
They ran into the detective squad room and were overjoyed to see Viktor still there, typing on his computer keyboard.
“Viktor,” Nate said. “Here it is!”
Viktor looked at the business card, at the license number and the words “blue Pinto” written on it, and he said, “My mail thief?”
Since he had been on the initial callout, Brant worked all day in southeast L.A. with Andi on the Gulag homicide. Doobie D, whom they had identified through data received from his cell provider, was Latelle Granville, a twenty-four-year-old member of the Crips with an extensive record for drug sales and weapons violations. He had begun using his cell in the afternoon.
With a team of detectives from Southeast Division assisting, the cell towers eventually triangulated him to the vicinity of a residence on 103rd Street known to be the family home of a Crips cruiser named Delbert Minton. He had a far more extensive record than Latelle Granville and turned out to be the Crip who had been fighting with the slain student. Both were arrested at Minton’s without incident and taken back to Hollywood Station for interview and booking. Both Crips refused to speak and demanded to call their lawyers.
It had been a very long day, and the detectives were hungry and tired from working well into an overtime evening. Then Andi returned a phone call from a cocktail waitress, one of the people she’d interviewed at the Gulag on the night of the murder. At that time, the waitress, Angela Hawthorn, had told Andi she was at the service bar fetching drinks when the fight broke out and had seen nothing. So why was she calling now? Andi wondered.