Authors: Joseph Wambaugh
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General
Andi McCrea, according to all accounts, endured it for two hours, but after listening to him say, "We ain't gonna find nobody, let's get the hell outta here and go end of watch-this is bullshit," she grimly turned north to the Hollywood Freeway, pulled onto the ramp, and stopped.
When her partner said, "What're we stopping here for?" Andi said, "Something's wrong. Get out and look at the right front tire."
He griped about that too, but complied, and when he was out of the car shining his beam onto the tire, he said, "There's nothing wrong here."
"There sure as hell is something wrong here, you worthless asshole," Andi said and drove off, leaving him on the freeway ramp, his rover still on the seat and his cell phone in his locker at the station.
Andi continued searching for another hour and only stopped when the search was called off, after which she drove to the station, still hacked off and ready to take her medicine.
The Oracle was waiting for her, and as she was unloading her war bag from the trunk, he said, "Your partner arrived about a half hour ago. Flagged down a car. He's torqued. Stay away from him."
"Sarge, we were hunting a maggot who shot a police officer!" Andi said.
"I understand that," the Oracle said. "And knowing him, I can imagine what you had to put up with. But you don't dump a body on the freeway unless it's dead and you're a serial killer."
"Is he making his complaint official?"
"He wanted to but I talked him out of it. Told him it would be more embarrassing for him than for you. Anyway, he's getting his long-awaited transfer to West L. A., so he'll be gone at the end of the deployment period."
That's how it had ended, except that it was a favorite story of cops at Hollywood Station who knew Andi McCrea. And B. M. Driscoll's whining about his flu symptoms reminded Budgie Polk of the story. It put a little smile on her face, and she thought, How far does he have to push me? Could I get away with it like Andi did? After all, there is precedent here.
And though Budgie was starting to enjoy certain things about working with Fausto now that he'd mellowed a little, wouldn't it be great to be teamed with Mag Takara? Just for girl talk if nothing else. During code 7, when they were eating salads at Soup Plantation, they could kid around about eye candy on the midwatch, saying things like, "Would you consider doing Hollywood Nate if you thought he could ever keep his big mouth shut about it?" Or, "How much would it take for you to do either of those two logheads, Flotsam or Jetsam, if you could shoot him afterward?" Girl talk cop-style.
Mag was a cool and gutsy little chick with a quiet sense of humor that Budgie liked. And being of Japanese ethnicity, Mag would no doubt be down for code 7 at the sushi bar on Melrose that Budgie couldn't persuade any of the male officers to set foot in. Of course, two women as short and tall as Mag and Budgie would be butts of stupid male remarks, along with the usual sexist ones that all women officers have to live with unless they want to get a rat jacket by complaining about it. The lamest: What do you call a black-and-white with two females in it? Answer: a tuna boat.
And while Budgie was thinking of ways to trade B. M. Driscoll for Mag Takara without pissing off the Oracle, Mag was thinking of ways to trade Flotsam for anybody at all. With Jetsam on days off, they were teamed for the first time, short and tall, quiet and mouthy. And oh god! He kept sliding his sight line over onto her every time she was looking out at the streets, and if this kept up, he'd be rear-ending a bus or something.
"Where shall we go for code seven?" he asked when they hadn't been on patrol for twenty minutes. "And don't say the sushi bar on Melrose, where I've seen your shop parked on numerous occasions."
"I won't, then," she said, punching in a license plate on a low rider in the number two lane, figuring this surfer probably takes his dates to places with paper napkins and tap water.
Hoping for a smile, he said, "For me an order of sushi is a dish containing unretouched, recently dead mollusks. Stuff like that lays all over the beach in low tide. You like to surf?"
"No," Mag said, unamused.
"I bet you'd look great shooting a barrel. All that gorgeous dark hair flowing in the wind."
"A barrel?"
"Yeah, a tube? A pipe? Riding through as the wave breaks over you?"
"Yeah, a barrel." This loghead's had too many wipeouts, she thought. He's gone surfboard-simple, that's what.
"In one of those bikinis that's just a piece of Lycra the size of a Toll House cookie."
Just get me through the night and away from this hormone monster, Mag thought. Then she did some serious eye rolling when Flotsam said, "A surfer might predict that this could be the beginning of a choiceamundo friendship."
Wesley Drubb got to drive, and he liked that. Hollywood Nate was sitting back doing what he did best, talking show business to his young partner, who didn't give a shit about the movie theater that Nate pointed out there at Fairfax and Melrose, one that showed silent films.
"There was a famous murder there in the nineties," Nate informed him, "involving former owners. One got set up by a business partner who hired a hit on him. The hit man is now doing life without. `The Silent Movie Murder,' the press called it."
"Really," Wesley said, without enthusiasm.
"I can give you a show-business education," Nate said. "Never know when it could come in handy working this division. I know you're rich and all, but would you ever consider doing extra work in the movies? I could introduce you to an agent."
Wesley Drubb hated it when other officers talked about his family wealth and said, "I'm not rich. My father's rich."
"I'd like to meet your dad sometime," Nate said. "Does he have any interest in movies?"
Wesley shrugged and said, "He and my mom go to movies sometimes."
"I mean in filmmaking."
"His hobby is skeet shooting," Wesley said. "And he's done a little pistol shooting with me since I came on the Department."
"Guns don't have it going on, far as I'm concerned," Nate said. "When I talk millimeters, it's not about guns and ammo, it's about celluloid. Thirty-five millimeters. Twenty-four frames per second. I have a thousand-dollar digital video camera. Panavision model. Sweet."
"Uh-huh," Wesley said.
"I know a guy, him and me, we're into filmmaking. One of these days when we find the right kind of investor, we're gonna make a little indie film and show it at the festivals. We have a script and we're very close. All we need is the right investor. We can't accept just anybody."
They were stopped at a residential intersection in east Hollywood, a street that Wesley remembered hearing about. He looked at a two-story house, home of some Eighteenth Street crew members.
Hollywood Nate was just about to pop the question to Wesley about whether he thought that Franklin Drubb would ever consider including a start-up production company in his investment portfolio, when a head-shaven white guy in faux-leather pants, studded boots, and a leather vest over a swelling bare chest completely covered by body art walked up to the passenger side of the patrol car and tapped loudly on Nate's window.
It startled both of them, and Nate rolled down the window and said, "What can I do for you?" keeping it polite but wary.
The man said in a voice soft and low, "Take me to Santa Monica and La Brea."
Hollywood Nate glanced quickly at Wesley, then back to the guy, shining his flashlight up under the chin, seeing those dilated cavernous eyes, and said to him, "Step back away from the car." Nate got out and Wesley quickly informed communications that 6-X-72 was code 6 at that location. Then he put the car in park, turned off the engine, tucked the keys in the buckle of his Sam Browne and got out on the driver's side, walking quickly around the front of the car, flashlight in one hand, the other on the butt of his Beretta.
The man was a lot older than he looked at first when Nate walked him to the sidewalk and had a good look, but he was wide shouldered, with thick veins on his well-muscled arms, and full-sleeve tatts. It was very dark and the street lamp on the corner was out. An occasional car passed and nobody was walking on the residential street.
Then the guy said, "I'm a Vietnam vet. You're a public servant. Take me to Santa Monica and La Brea."
Hollywood Nate looked from the guy to his partner in disbelief and said, "Yeah, you're a Vietnam vet and you got napalm eyes to prove it, but we're not a taxi. What're you fried on, man? X, maybe?"
The man smiled then, a sly and secretive smile locked in place just this side of madness. He opened his vest, showing his bare torso, and ran his hands over his own waist and buttocks and groin under the tight imitation-leather pants and said, "See, no weapons. No nothing. Just beautiful tattoos. Let's go to Santa Monica and La Brea."
Hollywood Nate glanced again at his partner, who looked spring-loaded, and Nate said, "Yeah, I see. You got more tatts than Angelina Jolie, but you ain't her. So we're not driving you anywhere." Then he uttered the Hollywood Station mantra, "Stay real, dude."
Those eyes. Nate looked again with his flashlight beam under the guy's chin. Where did he find those eyes? They didn't fit his face somehow. They looked like they belonged to somebody else. Or something else.
Nate looked at Wesley, who didn't know what the hell to do. The man hadn't broken any laws. Wesley didn't know if he should ask the guy for ID or what. He waited for a cue from Nate. This was getting very spooky. An unhinged 5150 mental case for sure. Still, all he'd done was ask for a ride. Wesley remembered his academy instructor saying as long as they weren't a danger to themselves or others, they couldn't be taken to the USC Medical Center, formerly the old county hospital, for a seventy-two-hour hold.
Nate said to the man, "The only place this car goes is jail. Why don't you walk home and sleep it off, whatever it is gave you those eyes."
The man said, "War gave me these eyes. War."
Cautiously, Nate said, "I think we're gonna say good night to you, soldier. Go home. Right now."
Nate nodded to his partner and backed toward the police car, but when he got in and closed the door and Wesley got in on the driver's side and started the engine, the transmission still in park, the man ran to the car and kicked the right rear door with those studded boots, howling like a wolf.
"Goddamn!" Nate yelled, keying the mike and yelling, "Six-X-Seventy-two, officers need help!" He gave the location, then threw open his door and jumped out with his baton, which he lost during the first thirty seconds of the fight.
Wesley jumped from the driver's side, not removing the keys, not even turning off the engine, ran around the car, and leaped onto the back of the madman who had Nate's baton with one hand and Nate in a headlock.
All those muscles that Hollywood Nate had found in his gym, that had impressed badge bunnies in the Director's Chair saloon, weren't impressing this lunatic one bit. And even when Wesley hurled his 210-pound body onto the guy, he still kept fighting and kicking and trying to bite like a rabid dog.
Wesley tried the Liquid Jesus on him but the OC can was clogged and it created a pepper-spray mist in front of his own face that almost blinded him. Then he tried again but got more on Hollywood Nate than on the suspect, so he gave up and dropped the canister.
And pretty soon they had tussled, tumbled, and rolled across the lawn of a sagging two-story residence belonging to Honduran immigrants, into the side yard, and then clear into the backyard, where Hollywood Nate was starting to panic as he felt his strength waning. And he thought he might have to shoot this fucking lunatic after he felt the guy trying to grab his sidearm.
And while the battle was raging, some of the Eighteenth Street cruisers from another two-story house looked out the window, and a few of them came out to get a better look and root for the guy to kick some LAPD ass. When their pit bulls tried to follow, they leashed them, knowing that lots of other cops would be coming soon.
The dogs seemed to enjoy the fight even more than the crew did and began snarling and barking, and whenever the leather-clad madman growled and kicked at Wesley Drubb, who was administering LAPD-approved baton strikes, the dogs would bark louder. And then Loco Lennie happened on the scene.
Loco Lennie was not a member of Eighteenth Street but he was oh, such a wannabe. He was too young, too stupid, and too impulsive even for the cruisers to use him as a low-level drug delivery boy. Loco Lennie wasn't watching the fight with the five members of the crew and their crazed dogs. Loco Lennie couldn't take his eyes off the black-and-white that Wesley Drubb had left in gear, engine running, key in the ignition, in his haste to help Hollywood Nate. And Loco Lennie saw a chance to make a name for himself that would live forever in the minds and hearts of these cruisers who had so far rejected him.
Loco Lennie ran to the police car, jumped in, and took off, yelling, "Viva Eighteenth Street!"
Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb didn't even know that their shop had been stolen. By now they had the guy pinned against the single-car garage of the ramshackle house, and young Wesley was learning that all of the leg and arm strikes he'd been taught at the academy weren't worth a shit when battling a powerful guy who was maybe cooked on PCP or just plain psychotic.