later, another bus came along and I was ready with the right coins, like someone who belonged.
The bus made a lot of stops and there was so much traffic I could see the sky turning grayish-pink through the tinted bus windows by the time the driver called out, “Hollywood Boulevard.”
It didn’t look that much different from where’d I’d just been: old buildings with cheap-looking stores and theaters. Same noise, too. Waves of noise that never stopped. Watson has its sounds-dogs barking, trucks rumbling over the highway, people yelling when they’re mad. But each noise is separate; you can make sense of things. Here in L.A., everything’s one big soup.
At the trailer park, I could walk around at night, look in windows. I’ve even seen people doing sex-not just young people, old ones, too, with white hair and flabby skin, moving around under a blanket with their eyes closed and their mouths open, holding on to each other like they’re drowning. I knew places in the groves where it was always quiet.
Hollywood didn’t look like a place where I could find quiet, but here I was.
I walked up Hollywood Boulevard, looking out for the freaks Chuck had warned me about, not sure who they really were. I saw a big tall woman with huge hands that I realized was a man, and that sure qualified; teenagers with rooster hair and black lipstick; more drunks, some of them pushing shopping carts; black people, brown people, Chinese, whatever. The restaurants sold stuff I’d never heard of, like gyros and shwarma and oki-dogs. The stores sold clothing, costumes and masks, souvenirs, boomboxes, fancy underwear for girls.
Lots of bars. One of them, called the Cave, had a row of Harleys parked in front and guys coming in and out, big and ugly, dressed like Moron. Seeing them made my stomach burn. I went past there really fast.
I saw a hamburger stand that looked normal, but the guy inside was Chinese and he didn’t look up when I stood there. One hand kept frying meat, and his face was half hidden by smoke and steam.
Two dollars forty-two cents for a burger. I couldn’t spend anything till I had a plan, but I did manage to take some ketchup packets lying out on the counter. I ducked behind a building, opened them, and sucked out the ketchup, then I kept walking to a street called Western Avenue and turned right, because I saw some mountains in the distance.
To get to them I had to pass a porno theater with XXXXX’s all over the front and posters of blond women with big, open mouths, then some really dirty buildings with wood over the windows. I saw women in short shorts talking on pay phones and giving each other cigarettes and guys hanging nearby smoking. The mountains were pretty and by now the sun was behind them, with a yellow-orange glow shooting up and spreading on top, like a hat made of melted copper.
A block later I had to cross the street because teenagers were laughing and pointing at me. I passed another alley. No weird drunks here, just lots of garbage Dumpsters and the back doors of stores and restaurants. A sweating fat guy wearing a stained white apron came out of a place called La Fiesta holding armfuls of bread wrapped in plastic. He threw them in a Dumpster and went back inside.
I waited for him to come back, but he didn’t. Looked around to make sure still no one was watching and went over to the Dumpster. To get a look inside, I had to stand on a cardboard box that didn’t feel too strong and keep hitting flies away. Once I got up there, the smell was terrible. The bread sat on top of rotten-looking vegetables with brown edges, wet paper, scraps of meat and bones and hunks of uncooked white fat. Little white worms crawled all over the meat, which smelled worse than a dead dog. But the bread looked clean.
Hot dog buns, still totally wrapped. Probably stale. When people go to restaurants they want everything superfresh. One time-the only time-Mom and Moron and I went to a restaurant, it was a Denny’s in Bolsa Chica and Moron sent his fried chicken back because he said it tasted like “warmed-over shit.” The waitress called the manager, who told Moron not to use that language. Moron stood up to show he was taller than the manager, with Mom holding on to his arm, saying, “Cowboy, c’mon, c’mon.” Finally, the manager agreed to give us our food to go for free if we left.
I reached in and grabbed two packages of buns, almost falling into the Dumpster and getting some crud on my T-shirt.
But I had the buns, and they were clean. After looking around some more, I walked a ways into the alley, found a dark spot between two other Dumpsters, tore open the first package, bit into a bun.
Stale, all right, but my chewing mushed it up and by the third mouthful it started to taste sweet. Then the smell of the Dumpster came back to me and I started to gag.
I got up, walked around, took deep breaths, and told myself it was my imagination; pretend these were homemade buns right out of the oven, baked by some TV commercial mom with a wide-awake smile and a strong interest in nutrition.
It worked a little. The rest of the bun didn’t taste great, but I got it down. Back to the mountains.
As I climbed, the road got steeper and I started to pass houses. Mowed lawns, and all sorts of trees and plants and flowers, but no people I could see, not a one. Now, after four months in L.A., I’m used to that. People here like to stay inside, especially at night, and anyone out there after dark is probably prowling for something.
At the top, Western curved and turned into another street called Los Feliz and these houses were huge, behind high walls with fancy metal gates and surrounded by pine trees and palms. This must have been what Hollywood was like when the movie stars lived here.
The mountains were still far away, but in front of them was a big stretch of clean green grass, a few people lying on blankets, some of them sleeping, even with all the traffic noise. Behind the grass, tons of trees.
A park.
I waited for traffic to slow down and ran across the street.
GRIFFITH PARK, the sign said.
The only park in Watson is a dry little square in the center of town with one bench, an old cannon, and a brass sign saying it’s dedicated to men who’ve died in wars. This was different. Humongous. You could get lost in here.
CHAPTER
8
“Interesting,” said Stu, hearing about the library book, but he sounded distracted.
He’d been on the phone and now it went back in his pocket. “West L.A. uniforms are with Lisa Ramsey’s maid, it’s not Beverly Hills, a few blocks away. Sunday was the maid’s day off, she just got back, Lisa hadn’t slept in her bed. Lisa’s Porsche isn’t in the garage, so it looks like she drove herself somewhere, either hooked up with the killer and switched to his vehicle or got jacked. We’ve got to hustle over to Ramsey’s place in Calabasas to do the notification, then return to interview the maid. He wasn’t at his studio office, and protocol says we make every attempt to notify in person. He lives in one of those gated-estate deals; I’ve got the address.”
They walked to their white Ford. It was Stu’s day to drive and he got behind the wheel.
“Calabasas is tan-shirt territory,” said Petra as he started the engine. He drove slowly. As usual. More slowly than any cop she’d known.
“Tan as an anchorman,” he said. “Schoelkopf called the boss sheriff out at the Malibu station to define some ground rules, but seeing as it’s a 187, they punted to their downtown Homicide boys. The jurisdiction’s ours, but they want to be there when we notify, ’cause Ramsey’s house is their turf-they don’t want to be perceived as out of the loop. A couple of their downtown Homicide investigators will meet us outside the gates.”
“Big drive from downtown to Calabasas,” said Petra. “So on some level they do think they’re investigating it?”
“Who knows. Maybe they can help us.”
“As in getting hold of Ramsey’s domestic-violence history?”
“That. Anything.”
As they got on the stretch of road that ran between the park and the 5 freeway, Stu said, “Schoelkopf gave me the kind of lecture I haven’t heard since I rookied: Don’t go in without permission, don’t climb any walls, treat him a hundred percent like a grieving ex, not a suspect. No searching of any kind, don’t go to the john if it can be construed as a search. No asking questions that might incriminate anyone, because then you’d have to Mirandize
