Hollywood Moon hs-3

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Hollywood Nate was looking at the tatted-out, surly-looking fat guy in the passenger seat, trying to decide whether to bother getting these two out of the car for a little more intensive investigation.

  Then he saw the driver with the dreads turn to him with a pained expression and say, “Officer, I’m real sorry about what I done back there. I’m sure your partner is checking to see if I got any traffic warrants, but I don’t. I’m really a safe driver, but my father died yesterday and I was thinkin’ about Daddy and… well, it’s not an excuse, but that’s what happened. I wonder if you could gimme a break and only write me for just one thing instead of two?”

  Nate leaned down and looked at Tristan’s Mr. Sincerity expression and said, “Tell you what, have your friend drive.”

  “Good idea,” Tristan said, nudging Jerzy.

  “Okay by me,” Jerzy said.

  Nate said, “I’ll tell my partner about it.” Then to Jerzy, “And as long as you’re gonna do the driving, let’s just make sure your license is up to date.”

  Jerzy shook his head in disgust as he pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and gave Hollywood Nate his legitimate driver’s license.

  “You wouldn’t have any tickets out there that you haven’t paid, would you?” Nate said, looking at the unpronounceable name and the photo on the license.

  “I’m sure you’re gonna check to see,” Jerzy said in resignation.

  After Nate had walked back to the black-and-white to have Dana run the passenger for wants and warrants along with the driver, Jerzy said to Tristan, “Well, a lotta fuckin’ good that done you.”

  “You ain’t got no traffic warrants out there, do you?” Tristan said.

  Jerzy said, “I did have, but I cleared it up last month. Cost me over four hundred bucks. Otherwise my ass’d be in the Hollywood jail tonight thanks to you and this dumb fuckin’ Mission Impossible shit you got me into.”

  When Dana and Hollywood Nate were back on either side of the car, Dana said, “My partner told me about your recent tragedy, so I only cited you for failing to stop for the red light. And you’d better get your right taillight fixed. Sign here.”

  After Tristan scrawled his name on the citation, Dana tore off his copy, handed it to him, and said, “Now you can switch seats.”

  Both cops took a good look at Tristan and Jerzy when they got out of the car, walked around the front of it, and traded places. Jerzy was inked, but not sleeved-out with jailhouse tatts. Their movements and gaits did not indicate recent booze or drug use, so Nate gave Dana a your-call gesture.

  “Our sympathies to your family,” Dana said to Tristan and then winked at Nate before walking back to their shop.

  While Jerzy was driving away, Tristan said, “We got the crib scoped out, even if it did cost me a traffic ticket.”

  “Do the rest of your spy chase on your own time,” Jerzy said. “And by the way, neither of those cops believed for one minute about old Daddy. They used that to get my license and check me out for warrants, thanks to your big mouth.”

  “A little more inconvenience for you got me only one violation to pay for instead of two,” Tristan said. “It was worth it, wood.”

  “Where is your old man, by the way?” Jerzy asked. “Alive or dead?”

  “I never met him,” Tristan said.

  “Does your momma know which one he was?” Jerzy asked.

  “Don’t woof on my momma,” Tristan warned.

  That evening, shortly after most of the midwatch teams were getting ready for code 7, an eighteen-year-old Marine from Camp Pendleton was having a conversation with a street prostitute on the Santa Monica Boulevard track. That was a street normally used for unusual sexual encounters. There were always older gay men cruising in cars, looking for younger men walking. And the women, or those who appeared to be women, were usually transsexuals, either pre-op or post-op, or drag queens-some of who were obviously men-and a few others who could pass.

  Whenever potential tricks would ask gender questions before closing the deal, the trannies and dragons would almost always say, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” to reassure the tricks that it wasn’t really the same as a gay experience. A few of the dragons looked quite plausible, and even quite attractive, as women.

  The Marine, whose name was Timothy Ronald Thatcher, had managed to hook up with one of the latter. The dragon was a slender, green-eyed, caramel blonde whose street name was Melissa Price. But in a prior life in a suburb of Denver, he was Samuel Allen Danforth, nicknamed “Sad” because of his initials and because of his loneliness as a bullied gay boy. In his high school yearbook, he’d said he was “going to Hollywood for a new and happy life where he would never be Sad again.”

  It was later learned by police that Melissa Price was lively and chatty and well liked by the other hookers who worked the Santa Monica track. Melissa had a tiny two-room apartment in Thai Town, where all tricks were taken. Friendly competitors of Melissa Price later told homicide investigators that after striking an acceptable deal with a john, Melissa would say, “Okay, darling, your Price is right, and she’s all yours.” Melissa Price, aka Samuel Allen Danforth, had been selling sex for a little over two months before meeting Timothy Ronald Thatcher, who was seven months younger.

  Timothy Thatcher had come to Hollywood early in the evening with two other Marines, who were old enough to drink in the nightclubs on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. Young Timothy had asked to borrow the ten-year-old Dodge sedan belonging to one of the older Marines, saying he was “going out onto the boulevard to get me a hot woman.”

  The owner of the Dodge later told police that “as a joke on him” they suggested that Timothy Thatcher try cruising Santa Monica Boulevard, thinking he would notice that the hookers on the street had shaving bumps. One of the two older Marines later told police that he believed that Timothy Thatcher was probably a virgin and was trying to prove something to his senior companions.

  Under subsequent intense questioning by military investigators, both older Marines stuck to their story and swore that they didn’t know there was an M9 USMC-issue, semi automatic pistol in the car. They claimed that PFC Timothy Thatcher must have put it there as protection for his first trip to Los Angeles. LAPD investigators believed that one of the older Marines, who had easy access to the sidearm, probably brought the pistol along, but their suspicions could never be proven.

  The last witness to have seen Melissa Price, aka Samuel Allen Danforth, alive was a tranny with an eggplant-colored shag who’d been working the same block when Melissa got into the Dodge sedan. In fact, Melissa Price waved at the tranny with an OK sign that Melissa always gave after catching a trick who was cute or rich. In this case the trick certainly was not rich.

  It was later debated whether Timothy Thatcher was overcome by remorse after his tryst with Melissa Danforth, or whether he truly did not know until it was too late that Melissa Price was not a female, but in the end it didn’t matter much. Just before 8 P.M., the landlady of the small apartment building in Thai Town heard terrible screams and glass breaking and heavy objects striking walls in the little two-room apartment. And then a gunshot, followed by another, terrified every tenant in the building, and several calls were made to the police.

  Timothy Thatcher did something extraordinary. He dialed his mother in Billings, Montana, on his cell, and when she answered, he said to her through tears, “Mom, I shot somebody! I didn’t mean to do it, but when I found out this person was not a girl, I lost it!”

  The Marine talked to his shocked and terrified mother for one minute and fifty seconds, telling her that he was “somewhere in Hollywood,” and ended with, “Tell Dad and Billy and Mary Lou that I love them all.” After that, he ran down the stairs and out to the street.

  Six-X-Sixty-six was on the way to code 7 at Sheila and Aaron’s favorite Vietnamese restaurant for tofu bun vegetarian salad and 360 Degree Beef. They were only a few blocks from Thai Town when the code 3 “shots fired” call was given to
a unit from Watch 3.

  “Let’s jump this one,” Sheila said, and she switched on the light bar long enough to get around boulevard traffic, then stomped on the accelerator. They arrived at the scene before the designated unit, just in time to be almost T-boned by the Dodge sedan driven by the escaping Marine.

  “Hang on!” Sheila said to Aaron. “Gotta burn a U-ee!”

  The black-and-white Crown Vic made a smoking, tire-scorching U-turn, and the pursuit was on.

  An electronic tone sounded, followed by the announcement from a female RTO to all units that always set hearts racing: “Six-X-ray-Sixty-six is in pursuit!”

  Timothy Thatcher, who did not know the area, drove in utter panic west on Hollywood Boulevard and then south on Western Avenue where he lightly sideswiped a Ford Explorer in the intersection, breaking his own right headlight, then headed west again on Sunset Boulevard where he encountered lanes clogged by nighttime Hollywood traffic. He made a squealing turn south on Van Ness that nearly lifted two wheels, skidded sideways, righted the car, and sped to Melrose Avenue where he turned west once again, brakes screaming. Unit 6-X-66 was sometimes as close as five car lengths behind, and Aaron broadcast the street names they were passing as well as the license number of the vehicle driven by a “white male.” And as in all LAPD pursuits in the most car-strangled city in North America, there were moments when it was maddeningly slow.

  Then they heard someone on the tactical frequency say, “Airship up!”

  The Marine blew past Paramount Studios and made a tire-ripping right turn onto Gower Street, where he saw two black-and-whites coming at him from the north. The lead car belonged to the surfer cops, who’d switched on the light bar upon seeing him. That made a northbound Lincoln Navigator in front of Timothy Thatcher slam on the brakes, causing the Marine to crash into the SUV, giving the lone male driver of the Navigator a slight whiplash and all but demolishing the Dodge.

  The Marine limped out of the car and ran north on the sidewalk away from Sheila Montez and Aaron Sloane but right at Flotsam and Jetsam and the Watch 3 team, who’d double-parked beside them.

  Timothy Thatcher speed-dialed his mother once again, and when the panic-stricken woman answered, he said, “I love you, Mom. I love you!”

  The mother of Timothy Thatcher later said that she got hysterical when she heard police officers shouting, “Get down! Down on the street!” And then the cell phone clicked off.

  Johnny Lanier and his partner, Harris Triplett, had leaped from their car faster than the surfer cops, and the chunky black cop had a Remington shotgun at port arms as he raced forward. When he got behind Flotsam and Jetsam’s car, Johnny Lanier aimed the shotgun over the roof, while a spotlight from one of the later responders lit the Marine.

  Flotsam yelled to Jetsam, “Johnny’s benching up with a tube! Get the fuck outta the kill zone!”

  Then Jetsam shouted again to Timothy Thatcher, “Get down on your belly, goddamnit! Get down!”

  And only then did all cops present see the M9 pistol that had been tucked inside the Marine’s belt in the small of his back. PFC Timothy Ronald Thatcher swiftly drew that pistol and pointed it in the general direction of Johnny Lanier and his shotgun, only ten feet from the Marine. It was over in an instant: a roar, a flame, a fireball in the darkness, and a massive round of double-aught buckshot crashed into the Marine’s throat and lower face, blasting chunks of bone and flesh all over the sidewalk beside the Hollywood Cemetery.

  The senior sergeant Miriam Hermann was the first supervisor to arrive. By then, several other units were on the scene, trying to get traffic moving on the street. Johnny Lanier had returned the shotgun to their shop and was standing quietly with the surfer cops when the sergeant got there.

  She had a few words with Sheila Montez and Aaron Sloane and walked over to Johnny Lanier’s young partner to say, “Triplett, you and Lanier go to the station and I’ll be there as soon as I can. You’ve got a long night of report writing ahead of you and lotsa face time with FID. The DA’s rollout guys will be there as well.”

  “There was nothing we coulda done, Sergeant!” the rookie said, his voice quivering. “He didn’t give us a choice!”

  “I know, son,” Miriam said, patting the young man on the shoulder. “Just get yourselves to the station now.”

  The magazine from the pistol was found on the floor of the Dodge, along with a live round that the Marine had ejected from the chamber. Timothy Thatcher apparently had wanted to make sure that no one else would die with him and Melissa Price that night.

  It took thirty minutes for the mother of Timothy Thatcher to get through to the watch commander’s office at Hollywood Station.

  Sergeant Lee Murillo later said he would never forget that phone call, not as long as he lived.

  The woman, becalmed by grief and from fearing the very worst, simply said to him, “Sergeant, I am the mother of Timothy Thatcher, who phoned me to say he’d shot someone tonight. I know that your officers caught up with him.”

  Sergeant Murillo was speechless for a moment, then stammered, “Ma’am, I, uh, I really don’t have any details about the… the event. May I please have your number? Someone will call you as soon as we know something. Right now I just don’t… I don’t have — ”

  Her voice was controlled and implacable when she interrupted him to say, “Please, Sergeant, I must know one thing, and I won’t trouble you further. Did your officers kill my son?”

  After notifying the on-call homicide team to get on this suicide-by-cop ASAP, Detective Charlie Gilford grabbed his coat and car keys. If one thing could get the night-watch D2 out of the squad room, it was anything macabre or gory. Charlie Gilford sped directly to the scene of the officer-involved shooting to take a quick cell-phone photo of what was left of PFC Timothy Thatcher, whose face he described as looking like “a beef enchilada with way too much cheese and salsa.”

  Then he proceeded to the little apartment in Thai Town, where uniformed officers were protecting the scene until the detectives, criminalists, and body snatchers arrived. He stepped inside to take a peek at Melissa Price, aka Samuel Allen Danforth, lying on the floor, shot once in the chest and once in the face. The latter round caused grotesque damage to the left orbit but nothing like the trauma inflicted on Timothy Thatcher by the Remington shotgun at close range. The detective snapped another camera-phone photo and returned to the office, satisfied that he’d seen everything worth looking at.

  By the time the first homicide detectives had arrived back at Hollywood Station from both scenes, they found that Compassionate Charlie Gilford had downloaded the grisly photos of both young men and had printed out and taped the images to the homicide team’s computer. Below he had typed, “Sometimes it just don’t turn out like that pup tent romp on Brokeback Mountain.”

  ELEVEN

  While at his job the next morning, Malcolm Rojas decided to call the man he knew as Bernie Graham and ask him once and for all about that job. The man had been unreliable so far and had not called him last evening as promised. Malcolm had not slept well, his thoughts returning again and again to that woman who’d nearly gotten him caught. Every time he thought of the experience, anger welled. They were all alike and he hated them. But when he looked at his swollen left hand and the abrasions on his knuckles, the anger was mixed with stabs of fear and even shame. When she’d started screaming, he’d been terrified and hadn’t known what to do. He should’ve slashed her throat with the box cutter to shut her up, and now he wished that he had.

  Then he forced himself to think of Naomi, that tender, young girl with the shy smile who really liked him. Would she grow up to be one of them? Somehow he didn’t think so. She had natural blonde hair, not like theirs, and she was sweet and kind, not like them. Her number was in his cell phone, and several times he’d been tempted to call her and see if she wanted to hang out. He thought he just might do that, but first he needed money. What he cleared from his job as warehouse helper was pitiful, now that he had to give his mothe
r a third of his take-home pay. As soon as he made some real money, he’d call Naomi and take her to the beach in his Mustang. The car needed tires, but soon he’d have the money to buy tires, and lots else.

  He dialed Bernie Graham, got his voice mail, and said, “Mr. Graham, this is Clark, the guy you met at Pablo’s Tacos. I wanna talk to you about the job. Please call me.”

  After leaving his cell number, he resumed slashing open the tape on one side of the boxes, removing the merchandise, and slashing the tape on the other side to flatten the boxes for recycling. When he worked up a sweat, the intensity of his feelings became manageable.

  Dewey got to sleep in late that morning, only because Eunice had an appointment with her gynecologist for a regular checkup. She’d tried to get him out of bed at seven thirty even though he had no morning meetings with runners, and of course that started the bickering.

  Before she left the apartment at 8 A.M. Eunice had popped her head into his bedroom once again and said, “Dewey, if I call here in thirty minutes and you don’t answer, I’ll know you went back to sleep.”

  “Can’t I sleep in for once, Eunice?” Dewey whined. “For once in my fucking life?”

  “No!” she yelled. “You gotta go to the bank and write a check on the deposit I made from that rental gag. One measly rental check is all we get from that account because you couldn’t manage to hook up with a housebreaker who was dumber than you. That means, Dewey, now you gotta open another account at another bank, unless you wanna risk using the same one and hope the renters haven’t yet figured things out and called their bank. So get your ass outta bed!”

  “Gimme a break, Eunice!” he’d moaned with his pillow over his head. That voice! She sounded like an old parrot with bronchitis. “One fucking break, one time. That’s all I ask.”