Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

He hesitated just long enough for her to know she could pull it off. She slid the tumbler full of vodka in front of him and said, “I’ll fix myself another.”

Then she got up and went to the kitchen. She took her time, and when she returned, she saw that the vodka level had dropped again, but this time more than a little. And she had poured a triple shot into that one.

“Darling,” she said, sitting with her fresh drink. “Thank you for coming. There was no one I could turn to. Nobody I could trust but you.”

His hand trembled when he picked up the tumbler and drank again. “I’ve gotta get away from here before sundown,” he said.

Margot chuckled again and, yes, he absolutely loved the sound of it. Just as a massive swarm of insects rose like ashes in the sky, tainting his lovely view of multicolored shards of smog over Hollywood.

The crack pipe was red-hot when Leonard Stilwell put it down on the sink counter that evening. He’d finally been able to score some rock at Pablo’s Tacos, and he’d driven straight back to his apartment with the rock and with four chicken tacos loaded with guacamole. He’d stayed well away from Hollywood and Highland for fear of running into that pair of cops who looked to him like surf rats.

The crackhead dealer who’d sold him the rock said that he had six grams for sale, and Leonard said, “Wrap it up. I’ll take it all.”

“Cool!” the dealer said. “Plastic or paper?”

Leonard had been smoking ever since, trying to watch TV but unable to concentrate. When he was feeling both mellow and elated, that combination he loved to feel, he decided to take the advice given to him by Ali Aziz and turn in early for a good night’s sleep. The envelope with the capsules was on the cheap little nightstand beside his bed and he shook out three capsules. But then he thought he’d better not push it and dropped one back inside the envelope. He popped two in his mouth and washed them down with a beer.

Then he stripped down, got under the covers, and prepared himself for sweet dreams. Nobody who saw the pile of Ben Franklins he’d stashed inside a pot in the kitchen could say that Leonard Stilwell was anything but a Hollywood success story.

The sun had flamed out unnoticed in wispy clouds of rosy smoke without Bix Ramstead giving a single thought to vampires. Two hours after he’d taken that first sip from Margot’s drink, his speech was somewhat slurred, his eyes were 80 proof glossy, and night was on them, light sparkling all over Hollywood.

A large raven flew up from the canyon into the blue-black sky with wildly beating wings, screeching at a mockingbird that was diving at the ebony flyer. Bix Ramstead watched that raven escaping from the feathered tormenter, seeing it fly away from the Hollywood Hills to the safety of its nesting place.

Margot saw him watching it and said, “It’s getting too cool and dark for ravens and crows. Let’s go inside.”

When they were seated side by side on one of the enormous pistachio green sofas, he tried to focus on the glass sculpture hanging from the travertine wall and convince himself that he was not drunk. Mellow music from several speakers surrounded them, and the lamps in the living room and foyer were on dimmers and had been turned low.

“Hope you don’t mind that it’s all Rod Stewart tonight,” she said. “I’m still an old-fashioned girl from Barstow.”

“In the oldie song ‘Route Sixty-six,’ Barstow is mentioned,” Bix said, having trouble pronouncing consonants. “You ever heard it?”

“Really?” Margot said. “Don’t think I know that one.”

“You’re too young,” Bix said. “Ask your mom and dad.”

“I think I will, next time I see them,” she said. “By the way, they’re as worried about Ali stealing Nicky from me as I am. He’s their only grandchild and they adore him. They hate his father, of course, and they hated it when I was a dancer at the Leopard Lounge. They never understood that I did what I had to do to get by. Hollywood is a pitiless place.”

“What’s your dad do?” Bix said, trying not to gulp this drink. Sip, he told himself.

“He’s retired from the post office,” Margot said.

“A civil servant,” Bix said. “Like me.”

“Bix,” Margot said, looking more serious, “would you do me a huge favor and bring your gun in here?”

“What? You wanna shoot crows on the hillside? I’m a Crow, remember?” Those consonants again, they were getting tangled on his tongue and in his throat.

But it sounded exceptionally funny to him and he laughed before taking another big hit from the tumbler. He was trying to remember if this was his fourth or fifth drink. He was sure he could handle six, but Margot poured so heavy he was going to stop after five. Was this number five?

Margot said, “I believe I told you that I took a shooting lesson at a gun store in the Valley. And I’m sure you’re right about a revolver being what I should buy, but the nine-millimeter pistol I fired in that lesson seemed comfortable to me. If that’s a word that applies to a gun. Would you mind getting yours so I can ask you a few questions? Or I can get it if you give me your car keys.”

“I’ll get it,” Bix said with a sigh. “I gotta pee anyway.”

It took him two attempts to get up from the sofa, and he weaved when he crossed the living room to the powder room off the foyer. After he’d flushed the toilet, he looked at himself in the mirror, trying to focus on his pupils. Was he drunk? He thought he’d better not have another vodka. Maybe some fizzy water. After that, he was going home.

The second he opened the door to his minivan to retrieve his holstered nine from under the seat, Bix Ramstead felt it: a hint of danger. His neck hair bristled when he touched the gun, and he shivered. Cop instincts that he’d developed over nearly two decades were telling him to get into that van and drive down that hill and never drive back up again. But he decided he was being ridiculous. He was having a pleasant time and would be flying off to his nest very soon. After one more drink.

While he was gone, Margot removed from the drawer in the butler’s pantry two magenta-and-turquoise capsules that she’d taken from her jewelry box earlier in the day. She pulled one apart and poured it into the drink, stirring it before dropping in the ice. She didn’t like the way it failed to completely dissolve, and she didn’t really think it would be needed tonight, but there was no sense taking a chance that he’d somehow summon enough sobriety to drive away from there. The granules were clinging to the ice, and she thought he’d get very little of it into his system, so she took the second capsule and added it, then flushed the empty capsules away. She prepared herself another tumbler of plain tonic, ice, and lime.

When Bix got back inside the house, a fresh drink was waiting for him on the massive glass-and-steel coffee table. He sat down heavily again and withdrew the Beretta from its holster. After taking a sip from the fresh drink, he said, “Is this the kind of gun you fired?”

“Yes,” she said. “I just liked the feel of that kind of pistol, but I’m unsure how the safety works. I wouldn’t want anything that would be too easy for Nicky to figure out if, god forbid, he ever found it.”

“It’s your job to see that he never does,” Bix said emphatically. “That’s why buying a gun is a bad idea.”

“What is that on the frame?” she said. “Is that the safety?”

“No,” Bix said with the careful articulation of the inebriate. “It’s a decocker. With this gun you don’t have to sweep a safety up from the safe position before firing. We can just draw, aim, and squeeze the trigger. The first round is double action and takes more trigger pull. Then the rest are single action while the gun ejects the empty shell casings. Afterwards, we sweep the decocker down to safely drop the hammer, then back up to the fire position, and we’re ready again.”