by Paul Bishop
“Unknown Trouble, my ass,” he said, making an illegal U-turn in front of traffic to head toward the call. “Niggers are too stupid even to tell communications why they need the police.”
The citizens of Newton Division weren’t the only people that hated Olbretch. Rhonda hated him as well. She hated his racist attitude, his chauvinism, his smug belief that Olbretch’s Law was the law of the land.
“Olbretch’s Law,” he’d told her when they first started working together. “Courts ain’t got nothing to do with justice,” he said, and then held up his wooden nightstick and pointed the scarred end toward her. “This is justice. And when some scumgbag’s brains and blood are flowing down the gutter because they’ve just been introduced to Mr. Hickory, that’s justice in action.”
Rhonda just figured Mr. Hickory was an extension of Olbretch’s dinky dick and tried to ignore him as best she could. As a rookie, she had no standing. If she complained or asked for another partner, she’d be instantly branded as a troublemaker, someone not to be trusted, and she was not going to let Olbretch hang a jacket on her. Somehow, someway, she had to put up with Olbretch until a natural partner rotation came around.
On the night of the unknown trouble call, Olbretch had been particularly obnoxious. He was nursing a bad cold and kept hacking up phlegm, spitting it out the window. It was the spitting action, however, that saved his life when the first bullet whizzed over his head as he bent forward to hawk a lugee. The bullet hit the door post and ricocheted around the car before burying itself in the rear seat cushion.
“Holy, crap!” Olbretch yelled. He floored the accelerator, bullying the ten-year-old patrol car into sluggish action. He reached for the microphone, but this time Rhonda was faster.
More bullets riddled the vehicle as she reported the ambush and gave their location to communications. She was surprised at the lack of panic she felt in the situation. It was as if her entire body had leapt into a time-space continuum in which everything moved in slow motion except for her own actions.
A fuselage of bullets poured through the front windshield of the patrol car, shattering glass and buzzing around the car’s interior like angry bees. Two of them simultaneously tore into Olbretch. He gasped in pain, turning the steering wheel involuntarily.
The car flew up over the curb and smashed head first into a power pole in front of a brick wall. Wires flashed as the transformer above exploded, showering sparks in every direction. The street was plunged into full darkness except for the patrol car’s headlights.
As Rhonda turned to pull Olbretch back from the steering wheel, another bullet hit her in the back. The bullet was stopped by her Second Chance Kevlar vest, but the dissipated force made her feel as if she’d been hit by a sledgehammer. She fell forward against Olbretch and saw another bullet tear into his shoulder not two inches from her nose. Desperately, she hit the release on her lap belt, reached across Olbretch, and opened the driver’s side door.
Using strength she didn’t realize she possessed, she pushed Olbretch out the door ahead of her. He flopped to the ground, either unconscious, dying, or dead, and Rhonda crawled out on top of him. She had her .38 in her hand and fired three blind shots back down the street.
There seemed to be a momentary lull in the firing, and Rhonda took advantage of that factor to shove Olbretch under the car and out of the line of fire. With her left hand, she pulled Olbretch’s gun from his holster and moved to the front of the crashed police car. Once there, with the brick wall to her back, she smashed the car’s headlights with the butt of Olbretch’s gun, and then squatted down to quickly reload her own gun with a speedy loader from her belt.
She picked up the three unspent cartridges she had dumped out from her first load and shoved them in her pocket. She now had six shots in her own gun, six in Olbretch’s, six in another speedy loader on her belt, and the three in her pocket. She prayed they would be enough and cursed herself for not grabbing Olbretch’s speedy loaders as well as his gun.
The firing started again and a bullet ricocheted off of the hood of the car to tear a bone-deep graze in her right cheek. She fired two shots back in blind anger and then held her fire. She realized she still didn’t know where the shots were coming from, and couldn’t even remember if communications had acknowledged her help call. She was pinned down in front of the patrol car with no way to get back inside to the radio. Sirens sounded in the distance, and she could only hope they were on the way to her location.
Movement off to her right caught her eye as a figure bent over a rifle scurried across the street. As far as Rhonda was concerned there were no friendly bodies in the area. She capped off a round and heard the body grunt as her shot hit home. The figure stumbled and fell.
“Take that, you puke!” she screamed. “Anybody else wants some of this, they can come and get it.”
A flurry of bullets again put her head down behind the patrol car’s grill.
I’m going to die. The thought invaded her senses, her own mortality hitting home for the first time. She’d known the job was dangerous when she’d hired on, but she didn’t expect to get killed before her first year was finished. Then again, nobody did.
“I’m not going to die,” she said in defiance. “Come on, you dickless pukes!” she yelled, capping off two more rounds. “Come and get me if you think you’re good enough. Come out in the open and let’s rock n’ roll.” If I do die, she thought, I’m taking as many with me as I can.
And then she heard it; a screeching of tires, the full throated roar of a Chevy engine running flat out, and a screaming maniac blasting a shotgun indiscriminately into the shadows. Arch Hammersmith had arrived out of the darkness like hell-on-wheels.
Hammersmith had just over eight years on the job at the time. He was a newly promoted detective assigned to work the K-car out of Detective Headquarters Division – DHD. His job was to roll on all the South Bureau homicide scenes. The PM watch K-car was a two-man unit, but the morning watch car was only a one-man assignment, and that was the way Hammersmith liked it. He’d never found a partner who was willing to work as hard as he did. There were a number of cops Hammersmith respected and had learned from, but for the most part he considered partners more of a hindrance than a help.
Hammersmith had found that most cops talked about three things; cars, guns, and sex. Two of the three Hammersmith had no real interest in, and the other he didn’t talk about in public.
The first time he had verbalized that view to Rhonda, she had asked him why he didn’t like to talk about cars in public. It was one of many times that she had blindsided him with humor – an idiosyncrasy that he would come to love in her.
When he’d heard the Officer needs help call come out that evening, Hammersmith had been three blocks away. It had been a slow night, and he was simply cruising the streets waiting to see if something would happen before he had to go out and make it happen. Most K-car detectives were happy simply to roll from homicide scene to homicide scene and list the incidents for the Chief’s log. Hammersmith, however, used the down time between catching calls to catch crooks. In the past month, he’d already nailed three GTA suspects and two 211 artists wanted for a string of supermarket robberies.
Putting the pedal to the metal, he’d roared toward the location communications had put out for the help call. With his right hand, he unlocked the Ithaca twelve gauge shotgun and took it from the rack parallel to the front seat. He pushed the safety off and jacked a round into the chamber.
As he rounded the final corner, he saw the police car crashed into the power pole. He saw the silhouette of an officer pop up from behind the front of the car and fire a round at a running figure. The figure stumbled and fell.
Flashes of rifle fire came from open windows on both sides of the street.
“Hang on. Help’s coming,” Hammersmith yelled.
Hammersmith flew down the roadway, barely feeling the hits as rounds tore into the car’s body work. A tire blew, but Hammersmith didn’t stop. He fired a r
ound from the shotgun at a window showing rifle flash. He knew there was no chance of hitting anything, but maybe it would keep a few heads down.
“Heeeeee-haaaa!” He yelled out his window, a cowboy on a runaway bronco.
Standing on the brakes, he turned the car into a power slide and brought the rear end around to barely kiss the trunk of Rhonda’s disabled patrol car. He slid his body up through the driver’s side window, jacked a round into the shotgun and fired back up the street.
Rhonda had been moving fast. Taking advantage of the shooters’ concentration on the entry of Hammersmith’s stripped-down detective Chevy, Rhonda had scrambled around to drag Olbretch out from under the car. For some inexplicable reason, she felt she knew exactly what the guy driving the rescue car was going to do, and she had to be prepared for it.
Before Hammersmith’s car was even stopped, Rhonda was dragging Olbretch toward it. She yanked open the back door as Hammersmith fired another round down the street. Heaving and dragging, she backed herself into the car pulling Olbretch along with her.
“Hit it!” she yelled, even before Olbretch’s legs were completely in the car.
She rolled Olbretch onto the floor. Without thinking about it, she reached over the seat to take the shotgun from Hammersmith as he slid back into the driving seat. Later they would recognize this action as the first time their minds had linked together to work as one. They didn’t need to communicate vocally. Hammersmith had wanted and needed Rhonda to grab the shotgun, and she had already done it before he verbalized the thought.
Hammersmith floored the car again as Rhonda reloaded the Ithaca and began blasting away out the back window.
Another tire was blown out from under them, but it didn’t slow them down. Hammersmith powered around the first corner on rims and ran directly into the cavalry.
Patrol cars were flooding into the area, three of them forming a protective cordon around Hammersmith’s car as it limped forward to safety. When the car stopped, eager hands helped to ease Olbretch into the back of another patrol car and sped him away to the closest emergency room.
When all was said and done, three suspects were in custody, and Hammersmith and Rhonda found themselves nominated for the police star for bravery. Olbretch survived his wounds, but was never able to return to full duty. The three suspects were eventually convicted of attempted murder.
Olbretch was also unable to ever acknowledge Rhonda for saving his life.
But she knew and Hammersmith knew. And that was enough.
Now, after having worked as partners for over three years, the pair had developed an extraordinary efficiency that was almost telepathic. They were an inseparable team. Working Internal Affairs had cemented both their relationship and their somewhat legendary reputation as Hammer and Nails. It had also given them enough dirt on both high ranking city and police personnel to insure their continued partnership. It wasn’t quite a case of getting whatever they wanted, but it was close.
As Rhonda’s hand wandered from Hammer’s chest to his abdomen, he roused and reached a hand down to capture hers before she became carried away.
“I was thinking,” he said clearly, an indication that his eyes may have been closed, but sleep hadn’t overtaken him. “This Darcy Wyatt caper –”
“You’re not happy about it,” Rhonda said, knowing what was coming.
“It’s too trite. There’s something else there.”
“I agree. So, tomorrow we go back to square one.”
“Yeah. Reinterview all the victims. See if Wyatt will talk to us. Find out who else from the pizza joints may have had access.”
Rhonda freed her hand from Hammer’s grasp and moved it down to caress him. He was already hard.
Rhonda wanted him. Needed him. Not just anyone. Him.
“But that’s tomorrow,” she whispered into his ear, her own pulse an increasing drumbeat in her head.
“Tomorrow,” he agreed, rolling toward her.
“And this is still tonight,” she said.
Opening her legs, her hands guided him to her. She arched her back, raising her buttocks to expose herself fully to him.
As she always did, she gasped when he entered her.
Chapter 23
John Bassett fought to keep his eyes open and the patrol car between the white lines. His training officer Dick Morrison had to be tired as well, but you couldn’t tell it from looking at him.
Not only had they worked almost ten hours overtime the night before, dealing with the pizza delivery rapist, but while Bassett had gone home to collapse in bed, Morrison had gone to court and testified in a last day case. Bassett figured his older partner couldn’t have achieved more than three or four hours sleep before being due back on duty.
Any of the other older cops Bassett had worked with would have been curled up against the passenger door with their eyes closed, but not Morrison. Morrison was not just The Man, he was THE MAN. A real cop’s cop. A cop to make Jack Webb proud. Over twenty-five years on the job, the majority of it working uniformed patrol, and never a sick day taken or a court date missed.
Morrison was all the more amazing because he’d also managed to keep his personal life intact. Married to the same woman for thirty years, two sons – one a doctor, the other an airline pilot – and a daughter, who was now an LAPD rookie, much to her dad’s disgust.
Morrison pressed the glow button on his watch and checked the time. It had been a relatively slow tour; three reports, two tickets, a community meeting, and three false alarms.
“Why don’t we take a swing down along the coast to kill some time?” he said to his partner. “Then we can call it a shift and head for the barn.”
“You got it,” Bassett replied. He’d be glad to be done for the night, get off on time for a change. It seemed that when you worked with Morrison something always came up. Morrison was one of those cops who had the knack of always being in the right place at the right time. It sure made life exciting, and you sure learned a lot, but some nights you just wanted to go home and crash – or possibly grab a beer somewhere before closing time and maybe get lucky.
Bassett turned out of an upscale residential area onto Sunset Boulevard. The wide street took them westbound toward the ocean. Within a mile they were passing the entrance to Will Rogers State Park where the body of Ricky Long had been discovered the previous morning.
It was almost midnight and Sunset was quiet. The side turnings into the residential areas appeared deserted. There was one car in front of Bassett and he watched as its wheels touched the center line. Was the driver drunk or tired? Bassett wondered. He watched the car through the next curve, but the driver seemed to have his act together.
“A little toasted, perhaps,” Morrison said, as if interpreting Bassett’s thought process. “But I don’t think he’d blow enough to book.”
Bassett had learned to rely on Morrison’s judgment. He’d seen his training officer accurately predict, time and again, exactly where a drunk driver’s alcohol level would register on a GCI breathalyzer machine.
Sunset eventually brought the patrol car to the T-intersection with the Pacific Coast Highway. Beyond the wide highway were parking lots, a stretch of dirty sand, and the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean.
Stopping for the light at the T-intersection, Bassett looked across PCH at the upscale Gladstone’s 4 Fish restaurant. The parking lot was full, and most of the outside tables were occupied in the warm night air. The warm glow of the lighting expressed an invitation that everyone there was having a good time.
The restaurant was a California dream; trendy nautical interior, an impressive, immediate ocean view, and food and drink priced accordingly. You could fill your gullet with beer and seafood in an atmosphere conducive to conversation or seduction, but you paid the price when you turned over your plastic money card. It would be far cheaper to stack your old fishing tackle in your kitchen, turn on the water tap, light a hurricane lamp, throw some fish fingers in the oven, and open a bottle of the supe
rmarket’s vintage vino. Who knows, you might get points for ingenuity and get laid anyway.
Bassett thought about returning to Gladstone’s after work for a beer. Expensive it might be, but there was always a babe or two hanging around waiting to be impressed and taken home by a reasonable-looking guy.
“Go home and get some sleep,” Morrison said.
“How the hell do you do that?” Bassett scowled in frustration. “How do you know what I’m thinking all the time?”
Morrison tapped his temple with a long forefinger. “It’s not been such a long time since I was a young buck. I still remember what it’s like to have a sperm count higher than my IQ, and a thirst that could cut through leather.”
The tri-light changed and Bassett turned the patrol car left onto PCH. “So, you’re telling me you used to have those things and still went home to the little woman?” Bassett figured to stay on PCH until it changed into the beginning of the Santa Monica Freeway, which would zip them back to the station.
“No, I’m telling you I used to have those things and didn’t go home to the little woman. Not only did it almost cost me a marriage that’s been the best thing that ever happened to me, but it almost cost me my life.”
“You’re kidding?” This was a side of Morrison that Bassett was not familiar with.
“There was more than one occasion when I came to work still half cut.” Morrison paused, as was his wont, to see if Bassett was really listening. “There was one time in particular that, if I’d have gotten behind the wheel of the patrol car, I’d have been bookable for DUI.”
“Your partner know?”
“Absolutely. He’d been the one I’d been drinking with. He was only slightly less drunk than I was.” Morrison shifted in his seat, looking out the passenger window at the sand and sea beyond. “We decided to play it cool, grab a cup of coffee at the local Winchell’s, and lay low – ride the shift out, not go looking for trouble.” Morrison paused again.
“So, what happened?” Bassett prompted.