Authors: Lee Goldberg

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Short Stories, #Short Stories (Single Author)

Three Ways to Die (2 page)

BOOK: Three Ways to Die

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"No," I said.

That taxi scene was supposed to be Carly's big break. We'd been dating for a few months and she got the part the same week I sold my
VIP
script. We were certain our careers were on the verge of taking off. So we got married, put our money into a house, and waited for the next big break to come our way. Five years later, we were still waiting.

"That was a hot scene," he said.

"I'll be sure to let her know," I said.

"How could you let some guy finger-fuck your wife?" Titus asked.

"It was Christopher Walken and they were acting."

"That looked like a finger in her twat to me," Titus said.

"It was a stunt twat," I said.

He shrugged and took a bite out of his pizza. "No wonder you're thinking of buying your wife a dildo for your anniversary."

* * * * * *

For the next two hours, Irma told more awful jokes and gave us more wisdom from the vehicle code. We were released for another ten minute break at 3:15.

I went back outside to check on Jack. It was dark, grayer, and wetter on Hollywood Boulevard than it was before, but Jack hadn't changed.

I once asked Carly what it was that turned her on about Jack Webb. She didn't know. My theory was that he was so rigid that he was phallic, a penis in a cheap suit. His face certainly looked like a scrotum. The rhythm of his speech was like the primal beat of fucking. The more he talked, the more he verbally humped her, the closer she got to coming.

Jack Webb was a definite mood-killer for me. So while Carly watched Jack, I'd watch her. I'd get excited by her excitement, her wide eyes, her trembling lip, her quickened breathing. God, it had been a long time since I'd seen that. Lately whenever I suggested bringing out the
Dragnet
tapes, she'd just give me this look like I was the most pathetic creature on earth.

"You got a thing for Jack Webb?" Titus stood beside me, smoking another cigarette.

"No," I said.

"Then why are you hanging out around his star and keeping it clean?"

"My wife is a big fan."

"No shit?"

"He gets her hot," I said.

It's amazing the things that you'll tell a complete stranger, especially one that you'll never see again. I think I said it to make fun of Carly, to make her seem as pathetic as she made me feel lately.

But Titus didn't react the way I thought. He mulled over what I'd said for a moment, flicked his cigarette into the street, and blew out a stream of smoke.

"Then that's what you ought to get for her," he said.

"We have all the 'Dragnet' episodes."

"I'm not talking about the show. I'm talking about that," he tipped his head towards the star.

"You're kidding," I said.

"Why? You think anybody is gonna miss it? We're talking about Jack Webb, not John Fucking Wayne."

And with that, he turned and walked back into the building.

* * * * * *

I thought about what he'd said for the next two hours. The stars were imbedded in terrazzo and concrete on a public street. And not just any public street, but the Walk of Fame, right at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, one of the most famous intersections in the world.

The theft wouldn't exactly be a slick, precision operation, either. He would need a jackhammer to get that star out of the sidewalk.

It was a stupid, insane idea.

But it was just the kind of grand romantic gesture Carly would never have expected from me. Hell, I would never have expected it from myself. It would make her see me in a whole new light. It might save us.

* * * * * *

The class ended promptly at five. Irma handed out our completion slips for the traffic court and discount tickets to a comedy club where she was appearing.

I caught up with Titus outside. He was standing by Jack Webb's star, studying it, casing the joint.

"Were you serious about what you said?" I whispered.

"Hell yes," he said.

"Why would you do that for me?"

"Because you're gonna pay me a thousand bucks and I need the money, otherwise the check I wrote for my speeding ticket is going to bounce and I'll be in real deep shit."

"Deeper than if you get caught stealing that star?"

"
We
aren't gonna get caught," he said.

"We?"

"It's a two-man job, Kev. Besides, you want to be able to tell your woman that
you
did this for her, not that you hired somebody else."

He had a good point. "But it can't possibly work."

"Why not?"

"Because we're going to be out in the open, on the Walk of Fame, making a huge amount of noise."

He shrugged. "There are crews out here at night all the time working on the sidewalk, especially now with that building being renovated. We'll be in-and-out in twenty or thirty minutes. All it takes is the right tools."

"You have the tools?"

"I work for a big construction company," Titus said. "I can get a van with all the stuff we need, no problem. They'll never miss it. Anybody who sees us will think we are a work crew installing cable or something."

I looked down at Jack's star. Stealing it was a ballsy thing to do. It would make me a ballsy guy. Somebody risky. Edgy. Unpredictable. Willing to risk it all for the woman he loved.

The star was the ultimate symbolic embodiment of Jack Webb. If Carly had it, she would possess him as no other woman could. Not only that, but the star would be imbued with the danger and allure of crime, which is sexy all by itself. It would be a tantalizing secret that only the two of us shared, drawing us closer together.

"Let's do it," I said.

* * * * * *

Monday was the longest day of my life.

It's hard to concentrate on reporting crap like the debate over the selection of delegates for the Las Virgenes/Malibu Council of Governments and League of California Cities. It's even harder when you're only a few hours away from pulling off an incredible heist.

I didn't know exactly how the caper was going to go down, but the plan was already in motion. Titus was picking me up in front of my place at midnight and then he'd tell me what to do.

Somehow, I made it through the council meeting and wrote my story for The Acorn. When I got home around seven, Carly had already eaten dinner and was sitting in a tank-top and sweats at her vanity in the bedroom, studying her lines for a hemorrhoid commercial and practicing expressions of glorious relief in the mirror.

She was a natural blonde with blue eyes you could drown in. She had a band of freckles across her nose that gave her face a child-like innocence that sharply contrasted with the sensual delights promised by her curvaceous body.

I came in behind her and kissed her slender neck. Her pained, cursed-with-hemorrhoids expression returned and she looked at my reflection.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"Do you think Jennifer Aniston ever had to portray rectal itch?"

"She doesn't have your range," I said.

"I don't have her bank balance."

"Not everything can be measured with money."

"Name one thing that can't," she said.

"My love for you," I replied.

She rolled her eyes. "Is that the kind of stuff you're writing in your novel?"

"Read it and find out for yourself."

"I think I'd rather work on my rectal itch," she said, dropping her gaze back to her script.

I wanted to tell her what I was going to do for her that night. I wanted to impress her. But I controlled the urge.

I left, closing the door behind me, and went to the kitchen. I made myself a frozen pizza, read the paper, and swiped the $1000 in emergency cash we kept hidden in the freezer.

After dinner, I went to my office. The tiny room was filled with books, magazines, DVDs, and about a seven hundred manuscript pages of my unfinished novel, an epic tone-poem about the nature of human existence and two lesbian hit women. I'd been working on it for three years.

For the next couple of hours, I worked on the novel some more. I was actually on a roll, for the first time in months, when I had to stop writing at midnight. I checked on Carly. She was asleep in bed. I crept out of the house as quietly as I could.

Titus was parked out front in a Katz Construction company van. I got inside. The van smelled like an ashtray. He was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. I wondered if it reminded him of prison.

"You up for this?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Good, because I need the money and I wasn't leaving here tonight without it."

I didn't like the violent implications of that remark but it also thrilled me. He was a dangerous guy. I was a dangerous guy. We were going to do a dangerous thing.

I gave him the cash. He stuffed it in his pocket, reached behind him, and handed me an orange jumpsuit like the one he was wearing and a pair of mud-crusted work boots.

On the way to Hollywood, he explained how we were going to get the star out. It sounded pretty simple. I started to believe that we were really going to do it.

* * * * * *

Titus parked the van at the curb in front of Jack Webb's star on Hollywood Boulevard. We set up saw-horse barriers on either side of the star to keep people away, not that there were any around. The street was cold, dark and deserted. We set up some work lights, powered by a generator in van. When Titus flicked the lights on, it was as if someone was shining a spotlight directly on us.

"Turn them off," I said. "We can be seen from blocks away."

"So what?"

"It's like were standing on a stage," I said.

"I need to be able to see what I'm cutting."

"Aren't the street-lights enough?"

"Use your fucking head. Would a real construction crew work in the dark? No. They'd want to see what they were doing. Besides, it's not the lights that are going to attract attention." He leaned into the van and pulled out the Makita cordless circular tile saw with a diamond blade. "It's this."

I was starting to have second thought and I think he could see it on my face.

"Grow some balls," he said. "There's a spigot in the parking lot by the ticket booth. Go hook the hose up to it."

I took out a hose from the van and walked over to the rusty spigot. I attached the hose, turned on the flow of water, and walked back to the sidewalk.

"Your job is to keep the concrete and terrazzo wet while I do the cutting," he said. "Think you can handle that?"

I nodded.

We both put on goggles and gloves and he got to work. The noise was even louder than I expected, echoing up and down the empty canyon of buildings along Hollywood Boulevard, rousing the bums who'd been sleeping in the alcoves and doorways.

The bums yelled at us, but I couldn't hear what they were saying over the noise from the saw. After a couple of minutes, they either shuffled away to quieter spots or retreated into the darkness from which they came.

The cutting didn't take long at all, but even after Titus shut off the saw, the sound still rang in my ears. I washed away the remaining dust from the sidewalk. He'd cut a clean square that left about four inches of terrazzo around the star.

I set the hose down and Titus leaned into the truck to swap the saw for the hammer and chisel he'd need to chip away at the cut he'd made, get underneath the star and lift it out.

That's when I saw a black-and-white police car cruising down the boulevard towards us.

"Ignore'em," Titus said. "Go roll up the hose and bring it back here."

I turned my back to the street and did as I was told, but I knew the police car would stop, the cops would get out, and they would ask us questions we couldn't answer.

While I was gathering up the hose, I heard Titus hammering away. The cops had driven right by. I was never more relieved in my life.

I tossed the hose in the van, got a tire iron, and jammed the teeth into the gap in the cement Titus had made with the hammer and chisel. I jimmied up the star. Titus slipped his glove hands underneath, then I dropped the tire iron and joined him. Together we lifted Jack Webb's star out of the street and set it carefully on the floor of the van.

The theft took less than half-an-hour.

* * * * * *

I didn't sleep that night. I was too keyed up. On Tuesday morning, our fifth anniversary, I woke Carly up with a kiss.

"Go away," she mumbled.

"It's our anniversary," I said.

"I'm not in the mood."

"I have a present for you," I said. "I think you're going to like it."

She looked at me suspiciously, like she was afraid the present was in my pants.

"It's in the garage," I said.

That piqued her curiosity enough for her to throw back the sheets and put on her bathrobe.

"You're wearing what you wore last night," she said, regarding me with a sideways glance as we padded down the hall to kitchen and the door that led to the garage.

"Uh-huh," I said.

"Did you ever come to bed last night?"

"Nope," I said.

"Aren't you mysterious," she said.

"More than you know," I opened the door to the garage, turned on the light, and motioned her inside.

She looked past me at my old Toyota Corolla and her old Honda Civic.

"I didn't get you a new car," I said.

"Obviously," she said.

"I got you something better," I crouched beside a tarp on the floor.

"What is it?"

"Something no one else on earth has but you," I said. "Something as special and unique as you are to me."

She groaned. Before she had a chance to say something cutting that she'd regret later, I whipped off the tarp to reveal Jack Webb's star.