Hollywood Moon (21 page)

Eunice had snuffed out her cigarette and said, “You wanna stay in this hot smog belt after we earn the retirement fund? It’s
fine with me. Because Momma left her heart in San Francisco and can very easily leave your ass in Hollywood. Let’s hear you
sing that one, Tony Bennett.”

It was an erection killer and the beginning of what he was certain would be an attempt by her to squeeze him out of the big
payoff when the target was reached. Moreover, Dewey no longer believed he could stay out of jail long enough to accomplish
her goal. He felt like the bomber pilots in the old war movies who had to fly during daylight hours over Germany, knowing
that survival odds were getting longer with each mission flown. He was now ready to settle for far less than a million bucks,
especially if he could ever devise a scheme where it went to him.

In the locker room prior to roll call, Jetsam resisted all attempts from his partner to find out what had transpired at Malibu
Beach the morning before with the waitress from IHOP. While Sergeant Murillo was reading the crimes to the watch, Flotsam
was relentlessly chattering in his partner’s ear to no effect.

“Come on, dude,” Flotsam whispered. “Something musta happened out there on the foamy for you to go all lock-jawed. Dial me
in!”

Sergeant Murillo looked up from the reports at Flotsam and said, “Would you mind discussing surf reports later. We’ve got
a roll call to get through here.”

It wasn’t until they’d been out on patrol for thirty minutes that Jetsam relented and said, “Okay, bro, you carried the load
when I went home early two nights ago, so I guess I oughtta tell you what went down with the IHOP hottie yesterday.”

“Go, dude!” Flotsam said. “I got my ears on.”

“Okay, bro, but I gotta tell ya, I’m noodled. I been beat down and rag-dolled and launched by kamikaze waves in my time, but
it ain’t nothing compared to how that salty sister cranked me. And taking last night off didn’t revive me.”

“Are we talking chocka coolaphonic nectar sex?” Flotsam asked excitedly.

“No, bro, she showed up with a Barney in a sausage sling!” Jetsam said.

“What?” Flotsam cried, almost rear-ending a car in front of him on Highland Avenue.

“She tells me he’s her cousin, out here on summer break from college in Kansas or Missouri or some fucking place where there
ain’t no ocean. And she apologizes and says she had no choice but to bring him, and would I, like, teach him some basic surfing
maneuvers.”

It was almost too grotesque for Flotsam to contemplate. “A shoobie in a Speedo? And she expected a real Kahuna to be seen
on the same beach with him?”

“Roger that,” Jetsam said. “A DayGlo green Speedo.”

“Dude,” Flotsam said with genuine sympathy. “I feel ya.”

“First thing I did was I took that Benny aside and I go, ‘Bro, you try to go out there amongst a horde of surf rats wearing
that DayGlo banana hammock, and they just might banzai you with their boards and send you home to Iowa or wherever you come
from in wires and plaster casts.’ I ask him if he didn’t bring some board trunks to wear on the beach and he tells me everybody
wears Speedos where he comes from. And I go, ‘Peachy, bro, but this ain’t the Piney Woods YMCA swimming pool, or summer fun
at Lake Suck-a-hot-one. This is Malibu-fucking-California!’ ”

“I can’t adjust the focus here,” Flotsam said. “That slammin’ server from IHOP told us she surfs twice a month. She oughtta
know the minimum fucking dress code for admittance.”

“Maybe you just shouldn’t trust someone who wears rings on her index fingers,” Jetsam said. “And this dorky cousin of hers,
he don’t understand basic English. He blanks about half the time I’m talking to him. So I take our breakfast bunny aside and
I go, ‘Okay, I’ll put your cousin out on a board and slip him into a nice gentle chubbie that don’t have much of a break,
but if them surf Nazis out there start looking at him with a kill-the-hodad death ray, I’m towing him back to sandy safety.”

“So did you?” Flotsam asked.

“Yeah, I put him on the old log I keep in my truck and I rolled him around in the foamy. He tried standing up a few times,
and he’s all splashing and squealing and I’m thinking to myself, Why me? I drive to Oxnard twice a month to visit my mother
and to Pacoima to visit the old man. And I send checks to both my ex-wives, mostly on time, even though the kid I thought
was mine turned out to have the DNA of my ex-wife’s dentist, who drilled into a lot more than her root canals. And I still
stop and play Frisbee with my former girlfriend’s dog, even though I can’t say hello to my former girlfriend without getting
spit at. So I, like, try to live a decent life, bro. What I wanna know is, why does God treat me like a butt crumb?”

“Dude,” Flotsam said, “sometimes it just seems like God takes a day off to go to the track or something.”

“Anyways, when I think it can’t get no bleaker, the squid manages to stand halfway up on a mini-bump and he starts screaming,
‘Cowabunga! Cowabunga!’ ”

“I’m speechless, dude!” Flotsam said. “Were you soooooo tempted to throw a choke hold on him?”

“Bro, I was, like, half a heartbeat from C-clamping his scrawny neck and letting him drift on down to San Pedro. But I see
this pair of water monkeys paddling their boards right at us and I’m all, like, ‘Okay, crusher, you and me’re about to get
spiked by a pair of seriously ugly sado creeps, so let’s push the off button.’ ”

“You are truly lucky to be alive, dude,” Flotsam said. “Bobbing on the briny unarmed with some spazzed-out hodad yelling,
‘Cowabunga.’ Next time get a Navy SEALs killing knife and Velcro it to your ankle.”

“There ain’t gonna be no next time,” Jetsam said, “After we cruised on back to the IHOP honey, we find her all stretched out
on these humongous beach towels under a big umbrella. But now she’s all stripped down from her shorts and jersey into a sort
of, like, old-school bikini.”

“What, no thong?” Flotsam said. “That ain’t right, dude.”

“The retro bikini ain’t the half of it,” Jetsam said. “So we, like, sit there, and the cousin’s all fired because he thinks
he’s ready now to star in
The Endless Summer, Part Four,
and then I catch a break, or so I think. The cousin says he’s gotta be bumping on home, and I almost stand up and cheer.
Turns out they came in two cars, and after, like, another eternity of surf questions, he bounces. The last thing he yells
at me is, ‘Farewell, O great wave rider! Farewell!’ And at last I’m alone with my bodacious babelini.”

“Oh, man!” Flotsam said. “This is the good part!”

“Just wait,” Jetsam said. “She like, knew she owed me big time for what she put me through with cousin Horace, or whatever
the fuck his name is, and she could see I’m all stoked from looking at her voluptuaries. And my inner slut is now totally
in charge. And pretty soon I’m all sprawled there on the towel under the umbrella kissing her shoulder like somebody on the
Lifetime channel.”

“Wooka, dude!” Flotsam said. “Now you’re rockin’!”

“So by and by I’m sort of eager for, like, harmless foreplay, given that our GPS location is not totally secluded. And then
I find out why no thong bikini.”

“Why is that?”

“She just had butt implants, and the incisions ain’t healed up enough.”

Flabbergasted, Flotsam said, “You mean that booty ain’t the babe’s?”

“No, it belongs to Dr. Strangelove or whoever the fuck gave it to her,” Jetsam said.

“Then what?” Flotsam said, fearing the worst.

“I’m all heading upstairs on those magnificent mammaries, and she goes, ‘Cease and desist, surfer boy!’ ”

“Don’t tell me the bimbo decided to play Our Lady of Malibu?”

“No, the problem was, her saline or silicone or whatever they used to construct her implants was all leaking. And she’s suing
the plastic surgeon and can’t stand to have them touched, let alone fondled.”

“I gotta feeling this is gonna get worse,” Flotsam said, getting sympathy pangs and gingerly feeling his own breasts.

“Roger that,” Jetsam said. “Because by now I’m scared to touch any more of her below her chin for fear of what I might find
that ain’t really hers. Or like, maybe some part of her will fall off in my hand! And now she’s all laying there with her
eyes shut, and I’m, like, confused, sort of. So I say to myself, Go for it. And I pounce like a panther, and she is the recipient
of one of those mega-long, steamy-hot, summertime movie kisses that the women in the chick flicks all swoon over.”

“I never could see that part of the game,” Flotsam said with a shrug.

“Me neither,” Jetsam said, “but I locked on because her lips are, like, Scarlett Johansson–huge. Think of two all-meat tire
tubes pressed together. And bro, I kissed and I nibbled and I licked with the darting tongue of a cobra! And then I started
some sinister sucking on her lower lip with mucho enthusiasmo. But when I got no applause, no response, no nothing, I go,
‘Don’t you like this?’ And she goes, ‘Like what?’ And I go, ‘That ain’t no casual kiddie kiss you just got, wahini. That was
cooleoleol kissing designed to propel a lucky chickie to an advanced state of beach blanket bliss.’ ”

“And what did she say to that, dude?” Flotsam asked. “Though I’m almost scared to hear the answer.”

Jetsam shook his head slowly and said, “She tells me that her lips are so plumped with implants gone bad, she didn’t feel
a thing. And that when she gets through with her lawsuit, her plastic surgeon’s gonna be dressing as Alvin the Chipmunk and
posing for tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.” Jetsam sighed then and added, “Bro, I ain’t got my mind in the
game tonight. I am like, way, way woefully noodled.”

They rode for a while in silence, and finally it was Flotsam who said somberly, “Dude, we all know that Mother Nature is a
pitiless cunt.”

“A heartless bitch, bro,” Jetsam concurred.

Waxing philosophical, Flotsam added, “But when a person chooses a surgical body shop to rebuild their own chassis, it’s, like,
bound to wreak collateral damage on innocent bystanders like you. Only one thing we can say about Spare-parts Suzie and your
tale of terrible despair.”

Flotsam paused and looked toward Jetsam, who took the cue. And they uttered the station mantra in unison: “This… is… fucking…
Hollywood!”

Dewey got to the duplex/office just after 6
P.M
. He hadn’t had any jobs for the Mexicans in the last few days, so the place was unoccupied. He unlocked the door and had
to sit there and wait twenty minutes before Creole and Jerzy showed up with a disappointingly small bag of mail.

“That’s all you have?” he said in his German accent when they entered, looking almost as tired as he was.

“Yeah, but it’s good stuff, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said, even though he didn’t know what the hell they’d grabbed from the curbside
mailboxes that afternoon.

“It isn’t even sorted,” their boss said.

“We been busy lately,” Tristan said. “All we had time to do was toss the junk mail. I took a quick look and I know you’ll
be happy with some of the stuff we got for you.”

Since Jakob Kessler never used obscenities, Dewey didn’t tell them what he was thinking when he withdrew $100 from his wallet
and grudgingly handed it over. “And now I would like to go home,” he said.

“So would we, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said as he quickly left the apartment, with his partner shuffling along behind him.

They were in Tristan’s old Chevy Caprice half a block away and spotted their employer exit the apartment, set the dead bolt,
and walk to his car as though his feet were killing him, as indeed they were with those three-inch lifts in his shoes.

There was still plenty of daylight left by the time they were three cars behind him on Sunset Boulevard, and Jerzy said to
Tristan, “I don’t know what the fuck this superspy shit is gonna do for us.”

“I don’t either,” Tristan said. “But I got real good instincts, wood.”

They almost lost his car when, after turning north on Cahuenga, their target turned quickly west on Franklin Avenue. Tristan
caught the red light and slammed on his brakes too late. They were in the middle of the intersection, initially blocked from
a left turn by swift moving southbound traffic. Tristan made it all stop for him by making a reckless left turn that got brakes
screeching and horns honking.

“Fuck!” Tristan said. “We lost him.”

After barely escaping a head-on, Tristan was driving westbound on Franklin, when he encountered a stalled car half a block
ahead. A dozen other cars were trapped behind it in traffic, their employer’s car among them.

“We got him!” Tristan said, getting into the queue of cars that were waiting for the stalled car to move. Three Latinos who
looked like gardeners got out of the car and pushed it to the curb.

Tristan drove past the traffic snarl just in time to see Jakob Kessler’s car pull into a wide driveway, and when the gate
opened, it continued under the upscale apartment building into the parking garage.

And that was when he heard a horn tooting behind him and looked up to see a light bar flashing.

“Shit!” he said and pulled over.

A moment later he was looking into the face of Dana Vaughn, while Hollywood Nate walked up on the passenger side of the car.

“License and registration, please,” Dana said to Tristan.

“Did I do something wrong, Officer?” Tristan asked, deciding whether to show his real license or the bogus license he’d used
to rent the van.

“Nothing except blow a red light and make a left turn against oncoming traffic that almost caused a head-on collision as well
as a couple rear-enders. You were very lucky.”

Tristan decided not to fuck with this bitch, so he gave her his legitimate driver’s license and reached into the glove box
for his registration. That’s when Hollywood Nate made his presence known by coming right up to Jerzy and peering over his
shoulder into the glove compartment as Tristan removed the registration and handed it to Dana.

“It’ll be a few minutes, Mr. Hawkins,” Dana said. Returning to the car, she checked on Tristan for wants and warrants, ready
to write the citation for the red light and the left turn.