“You know that, Farley, then you know I ain’t paying more than five dollars for cards,” Gregori said, taking out his wallet.

When Farley accepted the deal and was driving back to the boulevard to score some crystal, he said to Olive, “That cheap communist cocksucker. You see what was up on that lift?”

“A new car?” Olive said.

“A new Escalade. That Armo gets one of his greasers to steal one. Then they strip it right down to the frame and dump the hot frame with its hot numbers. They search every junkyard in the county till they find a wrecked Escalade. They buy the frame, bring it here, and reassemble all the stolen parts right onto their cold frame, then register it at DMV. It’s a real Armo trick. They’re like fucking Gypsy tribes. Cosmo’s one of them. We shoulda nuked all the Soviet puppet states when we had the chance.”

“I’m scared of Cosmo, Farley,” Olive said, but he ignored her, still pissed off at the price he got for the key cards.

“Hear what he called his dog? Odar. That’s what Armenians call us non-Armos. Fucking goat eater. If I wasn’t a man of property, I’d get outta Hollywood and away from all these immigrant assholes.”

“Farley,” Olive said. “When your mom left you the house, it was paid for, right?”

“Of course it was paid for. Shit, when my parents bought the house, it only cost about thirty-nine grand.”

“You could sell it for a lot now, Farley,” Olive said. “We could go somewhere else and not do this thing with Cosmo and Ilya.”

“Pull yourself together,” he said. “This is the biggest score of my life. I ain’t walking away. So just deal with it.”

“We could stop using crystal,” Olive said. “You could go into rehab, and I really think I could kick if you was in rehab.”

“Oh, I see,” he said. “I’ve led you into a life of drugs and crime, is that it? You were a virgin cheerleader before you met me?”

“That ain’t what I mean, Farley,” she said. “I just think I could kick if you did.”

“Be sure to tell that to the casting director when he asks you to tell him all about yourself. You were a good girl seduced into the life by a wicked, wicked man. Who, by the way, provides you with a house and car and food and clothes and every fucking thing that makes life worthwhile!”

Farley parked four blocks from Hollywood Boulevard to keep from getting a ticket, and they walked to one of the boulevard’s tattoo parlors, one owned by a member of an outlaw bikers gang. A nervous young man was in a chair being worked on by a bearded tattoo artist with a dirty blond ponytail wearing a red tank top, jeans, and sandals. He was drawing what looked like a unicorn on the guy’s left shoulder.

The artist nodded to Farley, dabbed some blood from his customer’s arm, and said to him, “Be right back.” Then he walked to a back room, followed by Farley.

When Farley and the tattoo artist were in the back, Farley said, “A pair of teens.”

The artist left him, entered a second room and returned in a few minutes with the teeners of crystal in plastic bindles.

Farley gave the guy six twenty-dollar bills and returned to the front, where Olive stood admiring the design on the young man’s shoulder, but the guy just looked sick and full of regret.

Olive smiled and said to him, “That’s going to be a beautiful tattoo. Is it a horse or a zebra?”

“Olive, let’s go,” Farley said.

Walking to the car, Farley said, “Fucking bikers’re lousy artists. People get bubbles under the skin. All scarred up. Hackers is what they are.”

They were halfway home and stopped at a traffic signal when Olive blurted, “Know what, Farley? Do you think it might be a little bit big for us? I mean, trying to make Cosmo give us ten thousand dollars? Don’t it scare you a little bit?”

“Scare me?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I been thinking. I been thinking about pulling the same gag on that cheap fucking Gregori, that’s what I been thinking. Fuck him. I ain’t doing business with the cheap bastard no more, so I wonder how he’d like it if I phoned him up and said I was gonna call the cops and tell them what I know about his salvage business. I wonder how he’d like reaching in that fat wallet and pulling out some real green to shut me up.”

Olive’s hands were sweating more now. She didn’t like the way things were changing so fast. The way Farley was changing. She was very scared of Cosmo and even scared of Ilya. She said, “I think it will be just awful to meet with Cosmo and collect the money from him. I’m very worried about you, Farley.”

Farley looked surprised and said, “I’m not stupid, Olive. The fucker robbed the jewelry store with a gun. You think I’m gonna meet him in some lonely place or something? No way. It’s gonna happen in a nice safe place with people around.”

“That’s good,” Olive said.

“And you’re gonna do it, of course. Not me.”

“Me?”

“It’s way safe for you,” Farley said. “It’s me he hates. You’ll be just fine.”

At seven that evening, Gregori phoned his business acquaintance Cosmo Betrossian and had a conversation with him in their language. Gregori told Cosmo that he had had a visitor and had bought some hotel key cards from Farley, the dope fiend that Cosmo had introduced to him last year when identification was needed for employees working in Gregori’s salvage yard.

“Farley? I have not seen the little freak in a very long time,” Cosmo lied.

“Well, my friend,” Gregori said, “I just need to know if the thief can still be trusted.”

“In what way?”

“People like him, they sometimes become police informants. The police trade little fishes for big whales. They might consider me to be a whale.”

Cosmo said, “You can trust him in that way. He is such a worthless addict that the police would not even want to deal with him. But you cannot lend him money. I was stupid enough to do that.”

“Thank you,” Gregori said. “Perhaps I could buy you and your lovely Ilya a dinner at the Gulag some evening?”

“I would like that, thank you,” Cosmo said. “But I have an idea. Perhaps you can do something for me?”

“Of course.”

“I would be very grateful next month on a night I shall designate if you would call Farley and tell him you need more key cards because several new employees have arrived from Mexico with family members. Offer him more than you paid today. Then tell him to deliver the cards to your salvage yard. After dark.”

“My business is closed before dark. Even on Saturday.”

“I know,” Cosmo said, “but I would like you to give me a duplicate gate key. I will be at the salvage yard when Farley arrives.”

“Wait a moment,” Gregori said. “What does this mean?”

“It is only about the money he owes me,” Cosmo said reassuringly. “I want to scare the little dope fiend. Maybe make him give me what money he has in his pocket. I have a right.”

“Cosmo, I do not do violence, you know that.”

“Of course,” Cosmo said. “The most I will do is to keep his car until he pays me. I will take his keys and drive his car to my place and make him walk home. That is all.”

“That is not a theft? Could he call the police?”

Cosmo laughed and said, “It is a business dispute. And Farley is the last man in Hollywood to ever call the police. He has never worked an honest day in his life.”

“I am not sure about this,” Gregori said.

“Listen, cousin,” Cosmo said. “Drop the key at my apartment after work this evening. I cannot be there because of other business, but Ilya will be there. She will make you her special tea. In a glass, Russian-style. What do you say?”

Gregori was silent for a moment, but then he thought of Ilya. That great blond Russian Ilya with her nice plump, long legs and huge tits.

He was silent too long, so Cosmo said, “Also, I will give you one hundred dollars for your trouble. Gladly.”

“All right, Cosmo,” Gregori said. “But there must not be violence on my property.”