Fugitive Nights (43 page)

Authors: Joseph Wambaugh

“Dude,” Flotsam said to his glum partner. “Don't push the off button. Let's air this out. I wish they'd send
me
in as bait to chum up the water. I could handle whatever some Bangkok Bessie might wanna spring on me besides a back rub.” Then he leered at a buxom waitress and said, “And I could totally bring game to this here breast-aurant.”

“Keep your mind in
this
game, bro!” Jetsam said. “They're trying to shanghai me here!”

“Funny you should say that,” Sergeant Hawthorne said. “The name of our primary target is Shanghai Massage.”

“See?” Jetsam said. “There's all, like, bad juju going on here. I'm not down with this program.”

“Don't go aggro, dude,” Flotsam said to his partner. “He ain't asking for a kidney.”

“And we're not looking for a misdemeanor prostitution arrest on an individual masseuse,” Sergeant Hawthorne said quickly, pleased to have Flotsam as an ally. “This is an intelligence-gathering mission, nothing more. We're hoping that any masseuse who meets you will gossip about you to the collector, about an amputee client who tipped well and talked about having had his foot surgically removed in Tijuana by Dr. Maurice. We hope the collector might get curious enough about you to wonder if you could be a brother-in-fantasy to the big Russian. You being a somebody who had actually gone the distance with an amputation of a healthy foot. And if so, his very important Russian client might be burning with curiosity to meet you and hear all about how your Tijuana amputation went down. And if that works and you get inside, who knows what information and evidence you might be able to gather from these people?”

“That's a lotta ifs you got going here,” Jetsam said.

“What's Cozzo look like?” Flotsam asked.

Sergeant Hawthorne produced a six-year-old mug shot, put it on the table, and said, “White male, thirty-two, five-six, a hundred forty soaking wet, black hair cut in a mullet, brown eyes, teeth like a ferret, and flamboyant in the clothes he wears.”

The surfer cops barely glanced at the photo, and Jetsam said dismissively, “Everybody in fucking Hollywood's flamboyant, so what's that mean? Half the male population uses Johnny Depp guy-liner, for chrissake. And who the hell but the lamest of low-life skateboarders that wear their baseball caps sideways would have a mullet haircut in the twenty-first century?”

“How do you know this ain't just get-out-of-jail-free bullshit from your Vegas snitch?” Flotsam said, piling on.

“We've been able to corroborate some of it,” Sergeant Hawthorne said. Then he added, “I'll bet I could get your watch commander to let me borrow you both for the occasional nights we'd be needing you.”

“What the hell would I do?” Flotsam said.

“Maybe you could kind of act like security for your partner, sort of like his muscle. If he gets a foot in the door.”

“It's my stump that's gonna get me in the door,” Jetsam reminded him.

Sergeant Hawthorne managed a polite guffaw at the amputation humor and said, “Maybe a good cover story would be that you're a seller of illegal video poker machines, the kind that's springing up in residential casinos all over L.A. They're brought from Arizona and can rake in between one and two thousand per machine per week, no problem. With your highlighted blond hair and permanent suntans, you resemble each other enough for you to claim you're brothers, and I think Hector Cozzo would buy that. If he accepts the amputee, he'll accept the brother with no worries that this might be a police sting.”

“First of all, we don't use tanning parlors,” Flotsam said, his eyes narrowing.

“And we don't highlight neither,” Jetsam said, equally resentful. He touched his lightly gelled hair and said, “These streaks're what the sun does to hard-core kahunas that surf year-round.”

“I didn't mean to suggest anything untoward,” the sergeant apologized.

Flotsam grunted and turned to Jetsam, saying, “Untoward?” Then, to their host: “If we work for you, Sarge, we might need a translator.”

Sergeant Hawthorne, who was thinking exactly the same thing about
them
, said, “You can ask any of the night-watch vice officers about me. I'm a forgiving supervisor, and I'm easy to get along with. Maybe I don't look or sound the part, but I'm a pretty good street copper as well.”

Doubting that, Flotsam told his partner, “Dude, it could be nectar-neat to catch an occasional break from these bluesuits and, like, go all
Mission Impossible
for a night or two.”

“Easy for you to say, bro,” Jetsam said. “You ain't the one that'd have to get your mind into a ghoulish game of show-and-tell where some psycho pervert wants to hump your stump.”

Sergeant Hawthorne said, “It's not like that. Cozzo is basically a grifter with a rich foreign client who has a very strange Achilles' heel, that's all.”

“If he ever decides to go the distance himself, the geek won't even
have
a heel,” Jetsam reminded them with a perceptible sneer.

“We could try it once and see how it goes,” the vice sergeant said. Then: “Whoops!” as another dollop of ketchup obliterated the
A
in
UCLA
.

Jetsam shook his head. “Sarge, your sweatshirt now just says UC, as in âundercover,' with two blobs of red beside it. So you just managed to out yourself. Any denizens of the dark out there can read that you're UC, and you did it with your own ketchup.”

Sergeant Hawthorne managed an embarrassed smile and began wiping ketchup off the sweatshirt and off his face, until scraps of shredded napkin clung to his chin.

Jetsam looked at the vice sergeant and said, “What's the thread count on these things anyways? You got pieces of it hanging off your face.”

Flotsam said, “Sarge, if we let you dial us in, you gotta learn how to eat a fucking hamburger. You're making us, like, way nervous here.”

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“Cowboy Logic,” by Don Cook and Chick Rains. Copyright Â© 1987 by Cross Keys Publishing Co., Inc., and Terrace Music. All rights on behalf of Cross Keys Publishing Co., Inc., administered by Sony Music Publishing, 8 Music Square, West, Nashville, TN 37203.

“Brother Jukebox,” by Paul Craft. Copyright Â© 1976 by Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc./Black Sheep Music. All rights controlled and administered by Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc. All rights reserved. Internationally copyright secured. Used by permission.

“I'm That Kind of Girl,” by Ronnie Samoset and Matraca Berg. Copyright Â© 1990 by WB Music Corp., Samsonian Songs, Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp., and Patrick Joseph Music, Inc. All rights reserved on behalf of Samsonian Songs administered by WB Music Corp. All rights on behalf of Patrick Joseph Music, Inc., administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“A Heartbeat Away,” by Steve Bogard and Rick Giles. Copyright Â© 1990 by Chappell & Co. and Dixie Stars Music (ASCAP). All rights reserved on behalf of Steve Bogard administered by Chappell & Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“I Got It Bad,” by Matraca Berg and Jim Photoglo. Copyright Â© 1990 by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp., Patrick Joseph Music, Inc., WB Music Corp., Patrix Janus Music, and After Berger Music. All rights on behalf of Patrick Joseph Music, Inc. administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. All rights on behalf of Patrix Janus Music and After Berger Music administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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