Exactly fifteen minutes early.
Six oh three: A gray Ford pickup, rear deck crammed with gardener’s tools and bags of fertilizer, one of the hubcaps missing, drives in, takes no apparent notice of the Lexus, parks well across the lot.
In the truck’s driver’s seat sits North Hollywood plainclothes officer Gil Chavez wearing sweaty work clothes and two days of heavy stubble. Chavez turns off his engine, lights up a cigarette, and trains his camera on the cream-colored Lexus, pushing the zoom function to the max and focusing upon the square-faced middle-aged woman in the car’s driver’s seat, waiting motionless, her window open.
Her first movement comes at six oh six. Checking her watch.
Producing a cell phone, she texts.
After sending her message — later ascertained to be a reminder to her office manager to obtain more Medi-Cal and Medicare billing forms — she lets out a luxuriant yawn, doesn’t bother to cover her mouth. Returning to the phone, she dials up the Internet and examines something later ascertained to be a CNN news feed. Financials.
Later, Chavez will comment on how cool she appears.
“Like she’s there for chiles rellenos and a couple frozen Margees.”
A few other vehicles enter the lot.
The woman in the Lexus watches them with shallow interest. Glances in the vanity mirror on the underside of the driver’s sun visor. Freshens her makeup.
Chavez’s camera clicks away. Captures a smile on her lips.
Her phone drops from view. A magazine takes its place.
The zoom can’t pick up the title.
Small-print index on the cover.
The periodical is later ascertained to be Modern Pathology.
Two more vehicles drive in. The woman watches them briefly. Yawns, again. Flicks something out of the corner of her left eye.
Six fourteen p.m. — exactly a minute early — a ten-year-old black Camaro shows up. Stopping, it proceeds slowly, makes a loop of the parking lot, passes the Lexus. Two additional circuits are completed before the Camaro returns to where the Lexus is positioned and slips in next to the luxury sedan.
The new arrival’s passenger window is open, offering a direct view of the Lexus’s driver’s side. But the square-faced woman’s window is closed, wanting to study the Camaro’s driver without being studied herself.
Nevertheless, one of the four video cameras concealed in the Camaro’s black tuck-and-roll kick in. Captures a close-up of mildly tinted glass.
The Camaro’s driver leans toward his open window. A young, slim, handsome Hispanic man with pronounced cheekbones and inquisitive dark eyes, he wears a long-sleeved, plaid Pendleton shirt buttoned to the neck, saggy khakis, and white Nikes. A blue bandanna sheaths his freshly skinned head. Three hours ago, Detective Raul Biro sported a head of thick black hair so luxuriant you could mistake it for a toupée. Now, freshly cholo-buzzed by his partner, Petra Connor, with some makeup added to blend his sun-deprived scalp with the rest of his coppery dermis, he squints at the Lexus.
Expertly applied temporary tattoos litter the top of Biro’s hands and meander up his neck. The perfect blue-black hue of prison ink, also provided by Petra, a trained artist prior to becoming a cop.
Left side of the neck: a beautifully drawn blossoming rose in the center of an orange crucifix.
A teardrop under the left eye.
A crudely drawn black hand.
That much ink showing in such limited dermal terrain implies an entire body given over to adornment.
No one expects Biro to have to strip down, exposing the illusion.
He continues staring at the Lexus’s driver’s window. As if responding to his energy, the glass slides down and the square-faced woman reveals herself.
Expressionless, she studies Biro.
He returns the favor.
Finally, she says, “Juan?”
Biro says, “George. Don play games, lady.”
The square face tightens, then brightens. Eyelashes bat. “Good to meet you, George. I’m Mary.”
Different voice than I’d heard in my office. Connie Sykes is playing girly-girly with hammy abandon, laying on a Southern Belle drawl that would be comical if I was able to tolerate funny.
Neither Milo nor Millie Rivera has ever heard her real voice. They don’t react.
My stomach crawls.
She’s enjoying this.
Biro: “Anyone see you?” His voice is different, too. Lower-pitched, East L.A. singsongy, imprecise around the edges.
A refined man of perfect diction slumming for a one-woman audience.
Connie Sykes says, “Of course not.” Of cowass not.
“You sure.”
“I am, George.”
Biro says nothing.
“Cross my heart, George. So where do we do this?”
No immediate answer. Biro looks around the parking lot. “Okay, get in.”
“To your car?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Well … I suppose not.”
“So do it.”
Grimacing but bouncing back with a “Shuah, George,” Connie Sykes flips her wavy hair.
The first feminine gesture I’d ever seen her display. Absurd and incongruous. Like a tutu on a rhino.
“George” couldn’t care less about her sex appeal and Connie senses that and frowns again, as she gets out of the Lexus.
Walking to the back of the black Camaro, she sidles around, takes the passenger handle, finds it locked.
Biro unlocks it with a click. No doubt about who’s in charge.
Connie gets in. Fools with her wavy hair. Tries for a warm, flirty smile, comes up with a weirdly repellent twist of freshly painted lips.
Or maybe I’m being too harsh. She does have an X chromosome.
Millie Rivera says, “Creepy bitch.”
Biro lights up a cigarette.
Sykes barks a pretend cough. “That’s not good for you, George.”
Biro blows smoke rings. “Show me the money, lady.”
Sykes pats her bag. Same way she’d implied a gun while sitting on my leather couch. “The money’s all here, George.”
“How much?”
“What we agreed on.”
“Let me see it.”
Connie opens the bag, pulls out a wad of bills.
Biro says, “What you want me to do?”
“What do you mean?” Sykes has dropped her drawl.
“Huh?”
“I thought Ramon worked that out.”
“Yeah, right,” says Biro. “Do a guy.”
“So you do know.”
“That’s nothin’, lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do can be anything,” says Biro. “How you want it?”
“By ‘how’ you mean—”
“Shoot, cut, break the fuckin’ head.” He turns to her, exhales a bust of smoke. “They’s all kinda do, Mary.”
Sykes opens a window and breathes in fresh air. “Would you mind putting that out? You’re really asphyxiating me.”
Biro, still puffing: “You gonna tell me or what?”
“I assumed Ramon already discussed—”
“Fuck Ramon, I’m here, you’re here — you sure you got all the money, lady? You only showed me that bunch.”
“Of course I’m sure.” Peeved.
Silence.
Connie says, “I’m a busy person. Why would I bother to come here if I wasn’t serious.” She laughs.
“Something funny, lady?”
“I mean, George, you don’t impress me as the type of guy who does things just for fun. Though I imagine it must be fun for you.”
Biro stares at her. “You talk crazy, lady. Gonna tell me what you want, or what?”
Connie stares back. Her mouth is set hard.
The atmosphere in the Camaro has shifted and all of us know it.
Milo rubs his face, as if washing without water.