Harbor Nocturne (26 page)

The more Hector considered those moneymaking schemes, the more he figured it’d always end the same way if he chose to deal with beaners and coons. There were other options for a smart white man around the harbor if he took the time to check things out. The Armenians from Hollywood had made a bundle when they’d shipped in imported vodka in fifty-five-gallon drums labeled “window-washing fluid.” They knew that the LAPD didn’t investigate international smuggling, and that at worst it would be a tariff violation that nobody else would really bother with. If necessary, he could hook up on some deals with the Hollywood Armos, and then maybe he’d never get his ride keyed again.

He dozed off just after 10:00
p.m
. and awoke thirty minutes later, startled to see a black-and-white police car cruising slowly past the Babich house, which was still dimly lit.
He started up the Mercedes and began the tiring drive north. When he was on the Harbor Freeway, heading to the city, he looked at the beacon lights on the east side of the highway, thousands of lamps on the tops of tall poles glowing burnt orange, announcing that this was the Port of Los Angeles. There was money to be made out there for an angle
man like Hector Cozzo. He was sure of it.

He was acutely aware that he’d used one day of the three he’d been allotted, but the better part of him was strangely content with that. Part of him even wanted to fail. Part of him wanted to be free of his overwhelming lust for money. Yet as far back as he could remember, he’d always been Hector the hustler. It had
always
been about money, and he was willing to take risks for it.

Then, for a reason he could not explain, he began thinking about how many people came to Pedro to die. He recalled an Asian woman and her daughter who’d tied themselves together and jumped from the Vincent Thomas Bridge, reaching terminal velocity before missing the water but hitting the parking lot. And another buckethead who’d thrown her kids off the docks at berth 22 and dove in after slashing her own throat.

And there was always someone doing a swan dive off the Point Fermin cliffs. He remembered reading about two young white chicks that were all into Goth, misery and depression. They held hands on the top of the cliffs reciting doggerel that they considered intensely poetic. When they were spotted and surrounded by emergency responders, the girls had two last words for all of them: “Life sucks.”

A cop asked them, “How old are you two?”

One of them answered, “Thirteen.”

It was reported that someone tried gallows humor, telling them, “Hang in a while. It gets worse.”

But they didn’t care to wait and they jumped, ending up among the litter from a car at the foot of the cliffs, which two months earlier had sped from the Hollywood Bowl all the way down Western Avenue in a police pursuit that had lasted forty minutes. The pursuit ended when the driver of the car, who’d smoked a shit pipe full of high-quality ice and didn’t know there were cliffs there, did a Thelma and Louise into space, perhaps seeing a few Catalina Island lights twinkling in the distance on his way down.

A lot of people came to Pedro to die. That concept made Hector think of Lita Medina, and he did not like what he was thinking. He was getting a headache and had a craving for some zannies and booze. It made him drive faster in his leased car back to his leased house in Encino.

EIGHTEEN

B
oth 6-X-32 and
6-X-76 received calls to phone the station at just about the time that Hector Cozzo arrived at his house with a stress headache so severe he was almost in tears. Sergeant Murillo had told the midwatch cops that there were reports of very excessive panhandling going on at Hollywood and Highland, and not involving the Street Characters in superhero garb. In fact, it was Darth Vader who’d made the cell call to the Hollywood Station desk to alert the cops that a quartet of Gypsy women and a clutch of homeless male transients were wrecking the business for everyone else by harassing the tourists.

Shop 6-X-76 arrived first at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and as soon as the group of Gypsies spotted the black-and-white, they decided it was time to stop working the crowd and get the hell out of there. One of them dug into the enormous swag purse she was carrying, found her cell, and made a call for a fast pickup. In less than two minutes, a fifteen-year-old Dodge station wagon that had been circling the block swiftly pulled in at the curb in front of the famous Hollywood landmark to pick up the four women. As they pulled out, the radio car fell in behind them with its blue and red lights winking and honked them over before they’d gone half a block.

Mel Yarashi was driving, with Always Talking Tony riding shotgun. The last citation had been written by Mel, so he said to A.T., “You’re up.”

All four Gypsy women were in their forties and appeared slightly rotund. That was because they all wore very full skirts and baggy cotton tops hanging out over their hips in case someone got lucky and grabbed a purse, a wallet, or a camera and needed a place other than an obvious booster purse in which to stash the loot if the cops were called. There were no golden hoop earrings or other Gypsy clichés to mark them. An observer might’ve taken them for some recently arrived immigrants in slumdog couture.

Mel Yarashi approached on the passenger side of the station wagon, shining his flashlight beam into the car as a safety distraction, and A.T. advanced on the driver and said, “License and registration, please.”

The driver, who was perhaps a decade older than the four tourist-hustlers, flashed an obsequious smile and said, “Of course, Officer, anything you say. I hope I didn’t break the law?”

“That was a no-stopping zone,” A.T. said. “And you parked there.”

“But, Officer,” the woman said, “it was just long enough to pick up the ladies. I didn’t block traffic or anything.”

“And your right taillight isn’t working,” A.T. said, looking at her license and registration, which were okay. “Have you paid all your prior tickets?”

“I only got one in the last two years,” the woman said. “And I paid it.”

“I’ll check on that,” he said. “Please wait in your car.”

Mel Yarashi stayed put at the right rear of the station wagon while A.T. checked for wants or warrants. Finding none, he got out of the car with his citation book and started writing the ticket.

The Gypsy woman looked in her rearview mirror, saw what was happening, and quickly leaped from the car, leaving her smile behind.

“What’re you doing?” she cried.

“Writing you a citation for parking in the no-stopping zone and for having a burned-out taillight.”

The Gypsy woman said, “But you told me you were going to check to see if I paid my tickets!”

“I did. You don’t have any traffic warrants, and I’m citing you for the violations.”

“Wait a goddamn minute!” she said, and the sudden change in tone and volume made him pause.

Mel Yarashi took a few steps in her direction, saying, “You better get back in the car, ma’am.”

“I got one of those no-stopping tickets before!” she said, glaring at A.T. “That’s an expensive ticket. You can’t write me for that. Haven’t I been cooperative?”

“Up until now,” A.T. said. “Now please wait in the car.”

She said, “Why can’t you give me a warning?”

A.T. said, “Okay, I’m warning you to go wait in your car or you might get yourself in serious trouble here!”

A.T. saw the Gypsy woman grow silent; then she raised herself up to a more erect stance and almost seemed to levitate. The fawning smile and fleshy chin were replaced by a hardened, wrathful set of the jaw. Wisps of dyed black hair growing out gray at the roots appeared to spring up like the horns of a goat, from the onshore summer wind blowing across Hollywood. As she stared into the face of Always Talking Tony, he went rigid. Mel Yarashi took a slightly defensive posture, as if anticipating a physical attack on his partner.

But the Gypsy woman’s weapon was words. She said, “If you write that ticket to me, your first child will be born with a terrible birth defect. And you will contract testicular cancer one year after that, and have both testicles surgically removed.”

Mel Yarashi said to the Gypsy, “Okay, you had your say. Now I’m telling you to get back in the car.”

The Gypsy ignored the Asian cop and drilled the black cop with her smoldering eyes. Then she moved slowly to the station wagon, opened the door, and got inside. A.T. turned to look toward her, his pen poised in midair.

Mel Yarashi said, “Come on, A.T., let’s get the ticket done and bump on outta here.”

A.T. glanced at his partner without comment, then walked to the driver’s window and said sotto to the Gypsy, “This is no way for a citizen and a police officer to communicate with each other. I know you wanna take back what you said, right?”

“About what?” she said.

“About the baby and my . . . body parts.”

“What’s done is done,” the Gypsy said.

“How about just the part about my . . . cancer surgery?” A.T. whispered. “Take
that
part back.”

She stepped out of the car and said quietly to the cop, “Would you take the ticket back?”

“I can’t,” he said, “I got it half-written. I can’t just stop. These things’re numbered, and we gotta account for them.”

She said, “I see. You are telling me that as far as you are concerned, what’s done is done.”

“Wait a minute!” A.T. said. “I can just write you for the taillight. You get the taillight fixed and the ticket can get signed off. I won’t write you for the red zone, okay?”

“I can accept that,” she said.

Always Talking Tony finished the citation and the Gypsy woman signed it and said to him, “The curse is lifted.”

Mel Yarashi stood speechless in the street, watching the station wagon drive away. When they were back in their car he said, “I don’t believe what I saw. You looked like you thought she was gonna sprout fangs and bite your neck!”

“Don’t start!” A.T. said. “I seen shit in Afghanistan. You can’t fuck with tribal people. They got special juju, and it don’t pay to dis them.”

“You musta taken crazy pills today!” Mel Yarashi said. Then, referring to section 5150 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, which describes involuntary commitment for dangerous psychos, he said, “If you ain’t fifty-one fifty, you’re at least fifty-one forty-nine and a half. You totally bought into a fucking Gypsy curse, is what you just did!”

“So riddle me this,” A.T. argued. “The Gypsy mentioned my firstborn because she somehow knew I don’t already have kids. How could she know that I don’t have kids?”

“You’re not wearing a wedding ring,” Mel said, “and you’re young. It was a good guess.”

Knowing what gossips coppers are, A.T. said, “Now, before you go spreading this story around the whole midwatch, lemme ask you something. Did you touch the Oracle’s picture before we hit the streets tonight?”

“Of course,” Mel said.

“Well, then?”

“That’s different. It’s kind of a prayer when we touch the Oracle’s image. She’s nothing but a Gypsy grifter.”

“Are you gonna touch the Oracle’s picture tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“Why? Because you don’t wanna get shot or something, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Always Talking Tony said, “That means
you
believe in juju. You don’t wanna get shot, and I don’t wanna have my balls removed. I rest my case.”

It was nearly midnight when 6-X-32 handled the other part of the problem with panhandlers, not half a block from where the Gypsy woman had delivered her aborted curse. Three homeless transients had been working the more obvious tourists, especially the ones with cameras hanging from their necks, who were the easiest touches.

The transients were about a decade younger than Trombone Teddy, but they had the ancient faces and watery eyes of hopeless juiceheads. Their only real difference from Teddy was that they usually slept at homeless shelters rather than in dumpsters. The mild summer nights precluded layered clothing, but even without the layers they still gave the impression of growing their clothes rather than wearing them. Their shirts and trousers were so stained and filthy they’d lost their color and seemed to sprout from them like fungus. Two had splotchy skin with open sores, and there were not twenty teeth among them. As younger transients, they’d covered more territory than Lewis and Clark, but as they got older they’d begun to vaporize into specters that nobody really saw until they spoke. The unholy ghosts of Hollywood Boulevard.

All three were staggering drunk as they sidled among the thinning throngs of tourists, hoping to get enough for a few forties of Olde English, saying, “Any spare change for a hungry man?” Or “Help a disabled veteran?” Or “Some Christian charity for a man down on his luck?”

Flotsam and Jetsam parked their shop in the lot, got out, and corralled all three before they could scatter. The cops took them to the car, and while Jetsam lit them with his flashlight, Flotsam patted them down, wearing latex gloves. Two of the transients had half-pints of cheap whiskey in the pockets of their trousers. Jetsam took down their names, birth dates, and descriptions on FI cards, and got in the radio car to run them for wants and warrants.

It turned out that the oldest of the three, a seventy-five-year-old bearded beanpole named Jerome Darwell, had an outstanding traffic warrant for crossing against a red light. Which likely meant that some cop got pissed off watching these bums run across Hollywood Boulevard during busy nighttime traffic and wrote Jerome Darwell a ticket that he knew very well would never get paid. Then it would go to warrant and eventually land the transient in jail for a couple of days the next time he got checked like this.

Jetsam was happy to get the warrant information because it had been a boring night so far, and now they’d get to play their favorite game.

Flotsam looked equally pleased when Jetsam nodded to him, then said to the three drunks, “Who wants to play Panhandler Jeopardy?”

“What’s that?” asked Daniel, the shortest one, who was book-ended by his fellow drunks. As he spoke he lurched into Spencer, causing Spencer to say, “Hey, you stepped on my foot!”

Flotsam told them, “Don’t squabble, and pay attention. See, our problem is, we gotta arrest one of you to set an example here. But we don’t wanna have to, like, dick around with all three of you, so we’ll take the loser of the game, okay? Do you ever watch the
Jeopardy
show on TV?”

The three bums looked blankly at the cops and at one another, so Jetsam said, “It’s real easy. We’ll pick a category of questions and we’ll ask you for answers. But you gotta give the answer in the form of the question.”

Jetsam said, “You’ll get the hang of it. So, Daniel, Spencer, and Jerome, what’ll we choose for our first category?”

More blank looks. Flotsam said, “I got it. Any of you guys been in the navy?”

Spencer said, “Army,” but the other two just shook their heads.

Jetsam said, “Okay, so you’re all equally ignorant about seagoing vessels. Our category is Name the Ships. First question to you, Daniel. This ancient wooden vessel in the Bible was, like, all crammed full of farting, shitting, stinking animals and birds and fleas.”

Daniel looked like he wanted to just lie down in the parking lot and go to sleep, but Jerome said, “I got it!”

“No, not your turn, Jerome,” Jetsam said. “How about you, Spencer? Any idea?”

“Noah’s ark,” Spencer said.

“Okay,” Flotsam said, “but you gotta give your answer in the form of a question. You gotta say, ‘What is Noah’s ark?’ Get it?”

“What is Noah’s ark,” Spencer said, lurching again, this time into Daniel, who yapped at him.

Jetsam said, “Okay, settle down for the next question about a boat or vessel. This ship became the name of a song that a cute little movie star with big dimples used to sing about maybe a hundred years ago, when you guys were in the third grade and probably still sober most of the time.”

No answers whatsoever, so Jetsam said, “Okay, I’ll give you a hint because you guys are really dumb contestants. The name of the boat in the song is the good ship . . . ? Any guesses?”

Nothing, except that now all three drunks looked like they wanted to lie down in the parking lot, so Jetsam said, “
Lollipop
! Goddamnit, the good ship
Lollipop
! What the fuck’s wrong with you guys?”

“We’re drunk!” Daniel said.

“Next question,” Jetsam said. “There was this big humongous boat that, like, crashed into an iceberg and went all swirly before it nose-dived right down the fucking drain. They made a movie outta the story starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who happens to be a babe I, like,
really
get off on every time I lay eyes on her.”

“I know it!” Jerome said.

“Not your turn, Jerome,” Flotsam said.

“Why not?” Jerome said. “When’s it my turn?”

Jetsam said, “Daniel, what’s the name of the big boat?”

Daniel didn’t have a clue, so Jerome said, “The
Titanic
.”

Jetsam shook his head. “You gotta give the answer in the form of a question, so you’re disqualified, Jerome.” Then he stepped in front of Daniel, who was reeling, and said, “Now you try it.”

Daniel pulled himself together just enough to mumble, “The
Titanic
.”

“He’s disqualified too!” Jerome said.

“Give it in the form of a question!” Jetsam said.