I just sit there.
“It’s okay. Come on out, I don’t bite.”
Then he peeks in closer, smiling, showing me his teeth, like trying to prove they’re not for biting kids. The pervert grandpa smiled that way, too.
He’s giving me room to get out, but I can’t move, I just can’t move.
He starts saying it’s okay, if I’m hungry I should eat right, not junk.
I figure if he gives me troubles I can just push him down. Even with those big, thick hands, he’s an old guy.
Finally, my body relaxes and I crawl out. He grabs my arm and he’s pretty strong and I try to kick him and he lets go and I run to the front of the synagon, but the door’s locked with one of those locks you need a key for so now I’m stuck.
I go back. He’s sitting down on a church bench. He laughs, holds out a box of chocolate doughnuts, tries to give it to me, but no way will I get close enough to him to take it.
Not just because he’s Jewish, because he’s a person and you can’t trust anyone.
He starts talking again, telling me he’ll unlock the back door for me, I don’t have to crawl through the window.
Then he pulls out money! Two twenty-dollar bills-forty dollars!
What’s he trying to buy?
I don’t take it, and he puts it down on the floor along with the doughnuts and gets up and unlocks the door and goes to the bathroom.
I grab up everything and race out of there.
Outside, I breathe again. Inside my pocket, the money weighs a ton and the first doughnut I eat, walking through the alley, tastes fantastic. I eat another one. Then my stomach starts to hurt, and I decide to save the rest for later.
Stores are opening and more people are walking and skating, and the first thing I do is buy a hat, a Dodgers hat with an adjustable band in back. I fit it to my head and bend the brim over my face so it’ll keep the sun off, and also to hide it.
Because buying it is a strange experience. The place I find it is this little shack a ways up from the synagon. The guy who sells it to me is ugly, with bad skin, mirrored sunglasses, and long greasy blond-and-gray hair. He looks at me funny. Like he knows me.
I guess he could be from Hollywood, but I never saw him before. He’s got a weird accent, like a bad guy from a spy movie-Russian, he sounds like a Russian spy.
So why’s he looking at me like that? I mean, I can’t be sure he really is, because of the mirrored sunglasses. But it seems like he is-the way he turns his head toward me and just keeps it there. Taking a long time to give me my change.
As I turn away, he says, “Hey, you, kid,” but I leave, pushing the hat down over my face. When I turn around a few moments later, he’s in front of the shack, still looking in my direction, so I duck between some buildings and walk through the alley a little, then back to Ocean Front, too far for him to see me.
The ocean has turned pure blue, and my bones finally feel warm. I smell corn dogs and popcorn, know I have money to buy them, but I’m still full from the crackers and the doughnuts. All these people, and I’m walking along with them, like it’s a moving sidewalk and we’re all together doing some dance; no one’s bothering anyone.
The corn-dog smell makes me feel I’m at a carnival. I was at a school carnival once. Had no money to buy corn dogs or anything. This feels like a warm bright dream.
I reach the end of the walkway and there’s no place to go but sand.
The whole beach is like the end of the world.
I figure I’ll try the other end, turn around, walk for a while, until I spot the ugly Russian guy coming my way. He’s in the crowd, but he’s not part of it. Everyone else seems to be having a good time. He looks angry. And his eyes are all over the place. Looking for something-me?
Another perv?
I don’t want to find out. Slipping back over to the alley, I walk back in the direction I came from, checking over my shoulder a few times. I see a couple of people, but not him. Then the alley’s empty again and here’s the synagon. There’s a huge old white Lincoln Continental with a brown top parked there. Must be the old guy’s.
Jew canoes, Moron called them. Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals.
Soft cars, he used to say, for soft people.
But the old guy had a strong grip.
The way he just gave me all that money-forty dollars, like it was nothing. So the Jews are rich. But he didn’t want anything from me.
Maybe I can get some more money from him.
I’m still out in the alley thinking about it when he comes out, sees me, and gives a surprised smile. He’s really short. This time I notice that his teeth are too white; they have to be false.
Mom had some false teeth made up for the back of her mouth where the rotten ones fell out, but she never put them in and her face started to get saggy.
He holds out his hands, like he’s confused.
“What?” he says. “You already spent it all?”
CHAPTER
43
Stu let her comfort him, then, abrupt as a power failure, he broke the embrace. It was the first time they’d ever touched.
“Back to work,” he said.
Back at their desks, he told her, “I heard from one of my studio sources.”
Scott Wembley had called last night. He gave her the basics, leaving out the whining in the A.D.’s voice: “It’s no big deal, Detective, but you said call for anything.”
“What do you have, Scott?”
“A few of us were sitting around schmoozing and Ramsey came up and someone said they thought his show sometimes shot in Griffith Park. Mountain areas, the horse trails-it’s just across the freeway from Burbank.”
“Recent shoot?”
“I don’t know. That’s all I know.”
“Who brought it up?”
“Another A.D., and don’t ask me where she heard it from, ’cause I didn’t pump her-you said be subtle, right?”
“Did she know this for a fact, or was she guessing?”
“She said she thought so. Thought she’d heard it somewhere. It was like… casual talk. People giving their opinions.”
“What kinds of opinions?”
“One, really: Ramsey’s the white man’s answer to O.J.”
“Okay, Scott. Thanks.”
“Thank me by leaving me alone.”
Petra said, “So maybe Ramsey knows Griffith.”
“But then why wouldn’t he pick a more secluded area of the park?”
“Because then he’d have to drag Lisa along on foot. Using the parking lot meant he could drive in, get out of the car, ostensibly to talk, then stab her by surprise.”
“You think he planned it.”
“I think at some time during their time together he planned it. Also, the car may have had some significance-psychologically. Ramsey collects cars, Lisa liked to have sex in them. Where better to end their
