Hollywood Moon (36 page)

A moment passed and Naomi said, “How did you get the scrapes on your knuckles, Clark? And that little bruise on your face?”

“I got in a fight at work,” Malcolm said. “Two big guys in the warehouse were picking on a little guy, and I stepped in and
took care of business. I can’t stand bullies, and I clocked both of them. They ended up in the ER.”

Naomi did not comment further and was more than apprehensive during their ride and only spoke when she had to direct him to
her house on Ogden Drive. He, on the other hand, chattered nonstop about music, often referring to the latest songs he’d heard
on KROQ. When they were a few blocks from her house, he turned up the volume and began singing along with “Love Me Dead.”

He knew the entire lyric, and he turned his brilliant smile on her when he sang about “the mark of the beast.” And again when
he sang, “You’re born of a jackal.” He smiled even bigger when he said, “That song’s about me!”

Naomi Teller had begun trembling by then and felt enormous relief when he pulled up in front of her house, a well-tended home
in an area where homes were upper-middle class, but to Malcolm Rojas they looked like mansions.

She got out of the Mustang quickly, closed the door, peered through the open window, and said, “Clark, I really can’t invite
you in now. I need time to tell my mom and dad how nice you are, even though you’re an older guy. I just need… well, like,
time.”

“That’s a beautiful house,” he said. “Which room is yours? Upstairs in front, I bet, so you can see the street.”

“Yes, you’re a good guesser, Clark,” she said. “Well, bye-bye.”

“Next time I wanna meet your family and see how you live,” Malcolm said. “Promise me, Naomi.”

Naomi said, “Okay, Clark.”

“Don’t forget me, Naomi,” Malcolm said. “Don’t ever forget me.”

“I won’t,” Naomi said. “That’s for sure.”

When she was feeling the security of her front door just a few yards away, she paused, turned again, and, looking back at
the handsome young man in the Mustang, said, “Jones isn’t a French name. You said your dad was a French chef.”

Malcolm said, “You’re right, Naomi. He changed it when he came to America because his name was too hard to pronounce.”

“I took French in middle school,” Naomi said, feeling bold enough now to challenge him. “I bet I could pronounce it. What
is it?”

“I don’t like to talk about my family,” he said. “They both died in a car crash.”

“Oh, that’s sad,” Naomi said. “Who raised you?”

“I was raised by jackals,” Malcolm said, and he began laughing.

The laughter grew in intensity until he had tears in his eyes. Naomi Teller imagined she could still hear that laugh when
she ran inside her house and turned the dead bolt.

Night fell with a thud, thanks to the summer smog. It got very dark very fast. Sergeant Miriam Hermann in 6-L-20, the senior
sergeant’s designated car, was cruising Hollywood Boulevard when she spotted the shop belonging to 6-X-32 parked on Las Palmas
Avenue, just north of the boulevard. She saw that the surfer cops were talking to a white male pedestrian, so she pulled over
to the red zone on the boulevard, showed herself on the radio as being code 6, and left her car to observe unseen.

Flotsam and Jetsam were both facing north and didn’t notice their supervisor standing thirty yards behind them in the darkness
of a doorway. Sergeant Hermann could see that the guy facing the two cops was hammered to the point of oblivion. She doubted
that they’d gotten him out of a car, because he looked too smashed to walk, let alone drive.

Flotsam looked at the fiftyish fat guy, whose souvenir Universal Studios cap, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with dark socks
said “tourist.” He was doing his best to stand without staggering to one side or the other, and Sergeant Hermann heard the
tall cop say, “Well, Stanley, even though you’re more bombed than Baghdad, we’d like to give you a break and let you walk
home. But I don’t know if you can manage it. Where’s home?”

“The R-R-R-Roosevelt Hotel,” Stanley managed to say, with a pronounced slur and a stutter like Porky Pig’s. “I… c-c-c-can
do it! Honest!”

Jetsam looked at his partner and said, “I dunno either, partner.” Turning to the drunk, he said, “Where you from, Stanley?”

The man looked at them like he couldn’t remember, but he said, “Indi… Indi… Indian… aw, fuck it… apolis.” Then he got the
hiccups.

“Well, your hometown makes a difference,” Flotsam said. “Most surfers have heard about the USS
Indianapolis
. It got torpedoed in the Big War. A lotta brave sailors got taken by the men in gray suits.”

“What?” said Stanley, utterly perplexed.

“Sharks,” Jetsam said. “Surfers don’t like the men in gray suits. We know all the stories about them.”

“Oh,” Stanley said without the slightest idea what the hell they were talking about.

“I say we give him a chance,” Flotsam said. “In memory of the
Indianapolis
. You down, partner?”

“I’m on it, bro,” Jetsam said. Then he looked at the drunk and said, “It’s a balloon test. Pass it and we’ll let you go. You
good with that?”

Stanley said, “L-L-L-Lemme blow in the b-b-b-balloon. I ain’t that… that…” And he lurched to starboard, but Jetsam grabbed
his arm before he crashed to the pavement, and said, “I think
drunk
is the word you’re searching for, Stanley.”

Flotsam said, “Anyways, you ain’t the one that has to blow, Stanley.” With that, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a
yellow balloon.

He put it to his lips and blew it to the size of a cantaloupe, after which he pinched off the neck, held it in front of the
drunk’s face, and said, “Game on, Stanley. If you can catch it, you’re a free man.”

Then he let it go. The balloon soared and dove and smacked the pavement while Stanley pawed the air in a futile attempt to
grab it, with Jetsam holding his collar so he didn’t kiss the concrete.

“Best two out of three, dude?” Flotsam said to Stanley, who nodded eagerly and said, “Let her r-r-r-rip!”

Jetsam picked up the balloon, readying for another test, when Sergeant Hermann startled both cops by walking up behind them,
saying, “What in the hell are you surfer goons up to this time?”

Both cops spun around, and Flotsam said, “Oh, hi, Sarge. We’re just, uh, trying to, uh, figure out how drunk this man is.”

Stanley said, “Come on, let’s d-d-d-do it!”

“Let’s not,” Sergeant Hermann said. Then to her cops, she said, “You can’t book him now, not that you ever intended to. You
might have a bit of a problem explaining your balloon test to a judge.”

“Well, Sarge… ,” Jetsam said, trying to come up with something plausible.

“Where do you live?” Sergeant Hermann asked Stanley.

“The R-R-R-Roosevelt Hotel,” he said, swaying precariously, “for a f-f-f-few days. Then I’m going home to Indi… Indi… Indi…
aw, fuck it.”

“Take this man to the Roosevelt Hotel,” Sergeant Hermann said. “And don’t ever let me catch you two playing with balloons
again.”

Without a word, both surfer cops got Stanley by the arms and marched him to the backseat of their shop.

When they got him inside the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, Stanley said, “Don’t leave. Let’s have a n-n-n-nightcap in honor
of the
Indi
…
Indi
…
Indi
…”

“Aw, fuck it,” Flotsam said, finishing it for him.

M
ALCOLM WAS GOING
to treat himself to his second burger of the day, this time at Hamburger Hamlet, and he was also thinking about going to
a movie. When his cell phone chimed, he felt sure it was Naomi Teller and didn’t bother to look, so he eagerly said, “Hi!”

“Clark, it’s Bernie Graham,” Dewey said.

“Oh, yeah, how you feeling, Mr. Graham?”

“I’m a lot better than yesterday,” Dewey said. “In fact, my secretary, Ethel, asked me to call. We’d like to take you to dinner
as a sort of reward for what you did.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “You don’t have to do that. I only hope we can start working together soon.”

“We will,” Dewey said. “I need to mend a bit longer, but in the meantime, we’d like to take you someplace for a bite to eat
after you get off work tomorrow. Do you know Musso’s on Hollywood Boulevard east of Highland?”

“No,” Malcolm said, “but I’ll find it.”

“It’s a very old place with good, wholesome food like your mother used to make.”

“My mother. Yeah,” Malcolm said.

“What about meeting us at Musso and Frank at five thirty? Pull around to the back and park in their lot. Come in and look
for Ethel and me at one of the tables near the bar.”

Malcolm thought it over and said, “Okay, Mr. Graham, but I sure hope we can get started on my job real soon. I need the money.”

“We will, Clark, we will,” Dewey said and clicked off.

After Eunice returned from her banking excursion, one of many that seemed to last an unusual amount of time, Dewey said matter-of-factly,
“Eunice, I made an early dinner reservation for tomorrow at Musso’s. I thought we could use a little R & R.”

As expected, she was dismissive. “Knock yourself out, Dewey. I’ll stay here and earn a living for both of us. Bring me two
Whoppers after you’re through.”

Then he said, “I was hoping you’d come this time. I invited the kid, like we discussed.”

“Kid?”

“Yeah, the new boy, Clark. It’s the least I can do for the way he rescued me after I got beat up by that meth-crazed runner.
I think he’ll turn out to be a good little moneymaker.”

“Did the kid say he’d come?” Eunice said, her voice rising in anticipation.

“Yeah, he’s coming,” Dewey said. “It’ll be fun to see the lad in a nice restaurant. A real treat for him. I wish you’d come
along too. We haven’t had a night out together in a long time.”

She paused for only a few seconds before saying, “Well, it has been a while. I guess I can use an evening off. But why do
you have to eat at the old places? Christ, drive down Melrose and pick one of the hot ones: Lucques or Bastide or All’ Angelo.
You think you can recapture your youth by dining at Musso and Frank or the Formosa Café? Get real, Dewey. Old Hollywood is
gone with the wind.”

He stared at her. There was nobody else on the planet who could come close to turning an invitation into an insult the way
Eunice could. There was so much he would’ve liked to say, but all he said was, “The kid’ll feel more relaxed in one of the
old places that serve comfort food. Let’s think of him.”

“Okay, have it your way,” Eunice said and lit another cigarette.

“Good,” Dewey said. “I made an early reservation because the boy works at his job all day and he’ll be starved.”

“I guess we really should do this,” she said. “He did you a big favor, all right.”

Dewey went to his bedroom and left the door slightly ajar and turned on the shower in the bathroom. Then he crept to the open
door and listened.

He heard Eunice dial a number, and when it was answered, she said, “Hello, Henri, this is Eunice Gleason. You gotta take me
tomorrow for a cut and dye. And I’ll need one of the girls for a manicure and pedicure as well.”

Dewey listened while she got her response, and then she said, “No, Henri. It has to be tomorrow. It’s important to me. I’ll
give you a tip that’ll make you very happy.”

There was another silence and she said, “Eleven o’clock, and noon for the nail work. Terrific! Thanks, sweetie!”

When she hung up, Dewey heard her actually start humming a tune. He had to close the door when she came toward the hallway,
so he couldn’t make out the song. With a grim smile he wondered if it was one from her childhood, like “Puppy Love.”

Malcolm finished his hamburger and paid the bill, and when he was in the parking lot, he started thinking of Naomi. He was
surprised how disappointed he’d been when it had been Bernie Graham on the phone instead of his girl. He’d been thinking about
what it would be like to kiss Naomi and have her kiss him back. He intended to find out next time.

The only girls he’d ever kissed were those sluts he went to school with in Boyle Heights. Those
cholas
with their eyebrows plucked bare, wearing eye shadow and mascara that made them look like those old punk rockers with painted
faces. The making-out part and the gropes he got from them had never excited him much, not even on the few occasions when
one of them would strip naked in his bedroom when his mother was at work. They’d certainly never excited him enough that he
could keep an erection long enough to get the thing done, and after one of them taunted him and asked if he was a homo, he
never even tried again. That was just before Malcolm and his mother moved to Hollywood, and it was one of the reasons the
move had secretly been such a relief to him. Those little bitches were spreading lies about his failed performances, he was
sure of it.

There would be no such problems with Naomi Teller. He got hard just imagining how she’d look naked. Thinking of those developing
little breasts and her narrow hips was thrilling. At her age, she was built more like a boy. And her nipples would be pink,
not brown like the ones on those little east-side bitches who’d mocked him. But he would not rush things sexually. He only
wanted to kiss Naomi romantically, and tell her she was his girl, and hear her say that he was her guy and that she would
never forget him.

Malcolm sat in his car and impulsively phoned her. It rang four times, and just before he clicked off, she said, “Hello?”

“It’s me,” he said, smiling.

“I know,” she said.

“I was wondering if you were thinking of me,” Malcolm said. “I was thinking of you.”

“In a way I was, Clark,” she said, and her tone was not happy.

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that I’m too young to be seeing you. My parents would be very upset, so I think you shouldn’t call me anymore.”

The silence on the line lasted ten seconds before she heard him say, “Tell me the truth. Did your parents put you up to this?”