Ace flicks the razor with a quick motion. A glob of lime-scented shaving cream lands on your cheek.
The little girls laugh.
"Go away," Ace says, forming words carefully with thick lips.
You walk off, to impolite applause and catcalls. Let the law fool with them.
It goes smoother with Marta Ramirez, a fat young Hispanic woman with six or eight squalling, snot-nosed kids making a racket behind her. She lives in a rundown East L.A. apartment building that smells like it's survived a recent fire. "Que?" she says, thick eyebrows twisting as she turns the paper this way and that. "Que?"
The rest of the afternoon, weaving north through Monterey Park, Rosemead, Alhambra, Temple City, Arcadia, you meet with varying success, but catch a few welshers in Pasadena during the early evening, around dinnertime.
At last, there's only one summons unaccounted for. The one you've saved for last. The one you always save for last, like dessert, with the name on it almost as familiar as your own: Brent Wixom.
You'd been given Wixom's paper back when you first began as a process server, when you still felt bad about bringing people legal misery, when he only owed a few hundred to a loan company. You've dogged his trail ever since, following him to dozens of different ramshackle dwellings scattered around the city and surrounding suburbs. Each time, the amount of his debt grew, thanks to lawyer's fees and interest. Now, instead of hundreds, he owes thousands. You'd find his latest address. He'd be gone. You'd dig up a new lead.
From a former neighbor in Irvine, a white-haired man with a bulldog's face and an educated voice, still living beside a house Wixom once rented: "Brent? He hasn't lived next door in more than a year. If I recall correctly, he mentioned something about moving in with a friend in Pomona. Garey Avenue, perhaps?"
From the landlord of a fleabag hotel in Norwalk, a gaunt little guy with suitcases under his eyes: "S.O.B. sneaked out in the middle of the night last December. Owed two months rent. Left beer cans and pizza boxes piled two feet deep in there. Ants had a field day. Probably went to sponge off his sister, over to Tustin."
From a mail carrier with graying hair and walrus moustache:
"Here's the last address we got on him. Gimme the ten-spot."
You'd write down what you learned and turn in the paper for reprocessing. The lawyers would follow up through other channels, pin down a new number on a new street, and send you off again.
Slowly, you closed the gap. You'd started out a couple years behind him in the beginning. Over time, you narrowed it to months. Now, the trail is only weeks old.
He'd been a blank at the start, too. Now, you know what he looks like. White, about thirty, a tad over six feet tall, slender, with short, dark hair.
Sure, that description could fit thousands of guys in the city. But if you get close, you've picked up a few other things to help identify your quarry.
He smokes cigarettes. A sourpuss landlady in Pico Rivera mentions this, complaining about getting the smell out of drapes.
There's a mole at the base of his throat and a tattoo, a crude star in blue, on his right hand. These hints come from a former neighbor in a cheesy apartment building in Covina--a shapely redhead, who comes on to you while answering questions.
He drinks Corona beer and likes loud music, according to the rheumy old man with a room beneath one in Venice that Wixom used to occupy.
You want this guy. It's a matter of professional pride to nail him. You've gone after thousands of lowlife debtors and, outside of a few who croaked or a handful that fled to other states, beyond your reach, not one you went after has escaped service--not one.
Wixom won't get away, either, if you can help it. You've got your reputation to consider.
You head back downtown, drop off the bundle of served papers in the night slot at Stein & Fleisch's plush law offices at the western end of the Miracle Mile, then swing north up Fairfax.
At Hollywood Boulevard, you cruise east in no particular hurry, dodging curb-hopping skateboarders and knots of sightseers wandering the world's most famous street. You gawked along here yourself when you first arrived in town and still had big dreams.
Nowadays, your main ambition is to paper somebody on the A-list, like Harrison Ford or a big-name director, to whom you can pitch your screenplays before you're shooed off the premises. Problem is, those types never run up tabs they can't pay. So the best you can hope for is to bend the ear of the low-level production assistants, over-the-hill child stars, out-of-work character actors or broken-down stunt men who occasionally show up in the stacks of summonses.
On the boulevard, the Roosevelt Hotel, with Louis Armstrong's star embedded in the sidewalk right out front, is bustling this evening. Opposite, the Chinese Theater shines in gaudy neon splendor, illuminating tourists stepping into the footprints of dead screen legends. There's a line outside the Wax Museum, where visitors can peek up the skirt of a Marilyn Monroe figurine. Past the Egyptian's faded glory, Musso and Frank's chophouse, Frederick's purple passion palace, the staid Janes House oblivious to all the glitter, you cross the intersection of Hollywood & Vine. There's not much left to show this was once the heart of The Industry--just the Capitol Records Tower up Vine, like a stack of 45's.
Continuing east, you approach Normandie, and for a fleeting minute think of turning south to your comfy apartment below Sunset. But you've got a job to do first. Might as well get to it.
Left on Rampart. Right on Temple. Left on Alvarado and onto the Glendale Freeway. Then take the I-210 towards San Fernando. On to Lowell and Honolulu Avenue. Lots of traffic tonight.
It is after nine p.m. when you pull up to Wixom's most recent address far up Tujunga Canyon Boulevard. You coaxed the number out of a young, balding fellow who once worked part-time with the man you're after. Nice guy, if a little talkative--you wouldn't want a blabbermouth like baldy for a friend--especially with a couple of beers in him. Beers you, posing as Wixom's long-lost buddy, sprang for.
The place is on a dinky side street, where the road rises towards the bulk of the San Gabriel Mountains. It's a run-down, two-story clapboard house sitting all by itself beside a lone eucalyptus, blushed pink by the dying sun.
You wonder if you've been steered wrong again. Or set up by Wixom's chum, who maybe wasn't as loaded as he let on, and decoyed you out here to give your prey time to escape to some other hole.