The two cops assured him that this contact would remain confidential, but by the end of watch they had each texted more than a dozen coppers, who each texted a dozen more, in a chain that didn’t end until everybody in the LAPD and beyond knew about it. It was a perfect example of how well things remain confidential in police work, and why cops howl in laughter when cop-hating commentators on TV refer to “the blue wall of silence” or “closing ranks” in controversial cases involving allegations of excessive force and other misconduct, usually involving ethnic minorities.
On that subject, Sergeant Murillo said at roll call, “I could offer to buy a brand-new car to any copper around here who could keep something on the down-low for even one day, and I’d never have to worry about ever touching my life savings. Which I think amounts to about four hundred dollars last time I checked.”
After they cleared for calls that evening, Flotsam and Jetsam were not on the street five minutes before a late-model Mustang cruising slowly in the curb lane blew a stoplight on east Sunset Boulevard and caused several drivers to jump on their brakes and yell curses.
“You’re up,” Jetsam said and did a U-ee, pulling behind the Mustang with his lights flashing. He honked the horn to get the driver to notice.
The driver was so busy talking on his cell phone and driving so erratically that they thought he was DUI. When he finally saw them in his rearview mirror, he pulled to the curb. He was fumbling around so much that they thought he might be trying to hide some contraband or even a weapon, so both cops jumped out quickly and ran up to the Mustang, Flotsam on the driver’s side with his hand on his Glock.
Jetsam approached on the passenger side, and since it was still light, they could both see well, and what they saw was a white-collar guy with his shirttail hanging out his fly.
Flotsam said, “License and registration, please.”
The tall cop looked across the Mustang roof and grimaced at his partner. Since this was sometimes a whore track after dark, it figured that the motorist was looking to pick up a hooker on the way home from work. It was reasonable to assume that maybe he was doing some phone sex at the same time and it all got to be a libido overload.
Flotsam wrote the ticket on the hood of their shop, and Jetsam said, “Bro, whatever you do, don’t shake hands with him.”
Flotsam got back to the car and handed the man the citation book and his ballpoint pen. While the driver signed the ticket, Flotsam looked at the damp spot on the man’s shirt where he’d wiped his fingers, and said, “You can keep the pen, sir. Compliments of the city of Los Angeles.”
Hollywood Nate and Snuffy Salcedo got a message on their dashboard computer regarding “a female 5150 at Hollywood and Highland” on the Walk of Fame. Snuffy punched the en route button, and Nate glanced at the message and said, “A female mental case on the Walk of Fame. How remarkable. That description could apply to anybody on Hollywood Boulevard, since gender around here is always questionable anyway.”
“I wonder which wack job it is,” Snuffy said.
“Just pick anyone that’s off the hook and making more noise than the others,” Nate said.
When they got to the famous intersection and started cruising westbound very slowly, it didn’t take long to spot her among the tourist throngs. She was a black woman about forty years of age who weighed upward of two hundred and fifty pounds. Her hair was dyed the color of a traffic cone, and her costume consisted of a man’s olive-green battle jacket, World War II vintage, complete with combat ribbons. From her ample waist south, she wore DayGlo pink tights and cowboy boots. She was banging two trash can lids together like cymbals and chanting gibberish. Of course, tourists and Street Characters scattered when she got near them, but there was one who did not move fast enough.
The cops saw her suddenly bang Wonder Woman on the head with a trash can lid, and that was enough for 6-X-66. She was an apparent danger to herself and others.
Hollywood Nate pulled to the curb and said, “This one will do, but she’s probably not the looniest on the boulevard by any means.”
“Loony but not lonely,” Snuffy said. “There’s always someone inside their heads to talk to.”
The woman was cheerful and smiling when both cops approached her on foot, and Nate said, “Could I please see your cymbals?”
She proudly handed him the trash can lids, saying, “Okey-dokey.”
“I’ll bet you have lots of cymbals,” Nate said. “How would you like to come with us and play for some nice folks?”
“Okey-dokey,” she said.
“What’s your name?” Snuffy asked.
She pondered until some cognition kicked in, and she said, “Pearl.”
“I’m Snuffy and he’s Nate.”
“Whoopdedoo!” Pearl said, happy to meet new friends.
Pearl was so affable and even cute that Nate said, “I don’t have the heart to hook her up, partner. Let’s try her out in the backseat without the cuffs. If she kills you with a hidden hat pin, it’s all my fault.”
Nate opened the rear door and Pearl got in, fastening her seat belt without being told to do it.
“She’s done this before,” Nate said.
Snuffy looked at her through the cage and said, “You really shouldn’t whack people on the bean, Pearl. It’s very naughty.”
“Very naughty, very naughty!” Pearl agreed.
Snuffy said quietly to Nate. “A good sign. Utter remorse.”
As they drove east on Sunset Boulevard at twilight, they began to realize that Pearl had a peculiar tic where she not only repeated fragments of what she’d just heard but seemed to take particular delight in it if she was told to stop.
At one point Snuffy looked at a silver Porsche cruising past and said to Nate, “Don’t you love that too-cool nine-eleven?”
Pearl said, “Too-cool!”
Nate turned to look at the Porsche and said, “Yeah, it’s sweet.”
“It’s sweet!” Pearl said.
Testing her, Snuffy said, “Don’t say it’s sweet, Pearl.”
“It’s sweet, it’s sweet!” Pearl said with more enthusiasm.
They rode in silence for a while, heading for Parker Center, to the Mental Evaluation Unit for a commitment approval. After that, they would transport her the few miles to the USC Medical Center on the grounds of the old county hospital. These were the last weeks for the venerable LAPD main headquarters building before it would be abandoned and torn down to the ground. Everything was in the process of being moved to the new Police Administration Building, literally in the shadow of City Hall.
The new PAB was across the street from the new Caltrans building, which the cops said looked like the Death Star in the Star Wars movies. There was extremely inadequate parking in the immediate area of the new PAB, and the Department of Transportation was only too eager to write tickets to any radio cars that they found temporarily parked in white and yellow zones. Of course, that produced noisy internecine bitterness.
Outside the new building were large, expensive, and controversial metal sculptures that were meant to give the impression of six bears and two monkeys. The cops figured that soon enough they’d be arresting sex offenders for humping them. The building was designed in such a way that the glass windows facing north caught the reflection of City Hall, which was directly across First Street. The coppers said that the dominant City Hall reflection seen from the new building was a chillingly sinister omen of what the future had in store for them.
As they were nearing their destination, Nate said to Snuffy, “Do you get all nostalgic going back to Parker Center, where you spent all those years driving for those sixth-floor power freaks?”
“Power freaks!” Pearl said.
Snuffy said sotto to Nate in order to keep Pearl quiet, “Mister is the one I’ll always remember. One of his favorite movies is North by Northwest. You know, the Hitchcock movie where Cary Grant and his chick get chased over the presidents’ faces on Mount Rushmore?”
Ever the movies
buff, Nate whispered back at him, “Of course. That chick was Eva Marie Saint.”
Snuffy forgot to whisper and said, “Yeah, well, I think the reason Mister loves that movie is because he always saw his face up there. He imagined they were running across his eyebrows and jumping on his upper lip.”
“His upper lip!” Pearl said.
“I wish she’d stop that,” Nate said. “It’s getting on my nerves.”
Snuffy said to Nate, “Lower her window halfway. I wanna try something.”
When the window beside Pearl came partly down, they were stopped at an intersection on east Sunset Boulevard in the Silverlake district, where there was urban renewal going on, with younger people moving into apartments and lofts. Waiting to cross the street was an attractive woman talking to a guy in a Joseph Abboud suit who had that self-important, young professional look, water bottle and all.
Snuffy said, “Pearl, do not call that man a yuppie dipshit.”
Pearl looked at the man, and when the light turned green and they were moving, she startled the couple by yelling, “Yuppie dipshit!”
Snuffy whispered, “She’ll say exactly what we tell her not to say. There’s gotta be something we can do with this.”
As it turned out, there was. When they got to Parker Center and parked underneath, Snuffy felt a chill of remembrance. Here he was, back in the place where he’d worked for so many years. The criminal element referred to it as the Glass House because of the walls of windows on the north and south exposures. The faces of the various chiefs he had driven for and protected swam before his eyes. For a moment he struggled to remember something good about those recent years. His reverie was shattered and he could hardly believe it when the door leading from the building to the parking lot opened. Snuffy saw one of his old friends and fellow security aides. And who emerged behind the aide but the Man himself!
As Nate pulled into a parking space, Snuffy said quietly, “It’s Mister! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it’s Mister!”
The chief and his aide were both wearing uniforms on this day, and the security aide paused when the chief said something and looked at his watch.
Snuffy whispered to Nate, “He’s probably trying to remember how many stoplights there are between here and where they’re going, and he’s gonna decide exactly how long it should take them to get there.”
The chief and his aide had to pass right by the space where Nate had parked their shop, and Snuffy scooted down in his seat, concealing his face with his hand, pretending to write in his log.
He whispered to Nate, “Partner, this is destiny.” Then he turned toward the cage and said, “Pearl, pay attention to this. Do not call that man an egomaniac.”
When Mister and his aide were passing the car, Pearl stuck her face out and yelled, “Igloo maniac! Igloo maniac!”
The chief of police flinched and glanced sharply to his right. He saw Pearl smiling beatifically through the open car window. He ignored her and kept on walking toward the SUV with the ominous tinted windows. His security aide opened the door for the chief and he got in.
Hollywood Nate said sotto, “So that’s your idea of get-back? Snuffy’s revenge has come down to calling the chief of police a crazy Eskimo?”
Snuffy Salcedo whispered back, “When you get right down to it, she mighta got it right. He’s been giving the L.A. media and City Hall a major snow job for the past seven and a half years.”
When they got out of the car and entered the building, Snuffy said, “Anyways, Pearl did her best. On our way to the funny place, let’s stop and buy her some ice cream.”
“Ice cream! Whoopdedoo!” Pearl cried, and yodeled merrily as she frolicked along the corridor and into the depressing basement office of the Mental Evaluation Unit, inside the doomed old building that for more than half a century lawbreakers had called the Glass House.
FIFTEEN
Marty Brueger said to Raleigh Dibble, “It’s Thursday and I’m sick of sitting around here. If I’m gonna stroke out and die, I want it to be in Chasen’s eating a big bowl of chili.”
Raleigh said, “Mr. Brueger, Chasen’s has been closed for a very long time, don’t you remember?”
“Oh, shit, that’s right,” Marty Brueger said. “Oh, my mind.”
Raleigh was removing the breakfast tray from the table in the cottage and trying to keep his game face on, even though the old coot was starting to smell ripe. It took an effort for Raleigh not to turn away when he needed to take a breath. He also wanted to trim the tufts of hair sprouting from the geezer’s ears.
“Elizabeth Taylor loved Chasen’s chili. I saw her there many times,” Marty Brueger said.
“Yes, I know,” Raleigh said.
“She was usually with her husband, Rex Harrison.”
“Richard Burton,” Raleigh said.
“What’s he got to do with it?” Marty Brueger said.
“She was married to him. Not to Rex Harrison.”
“Oh, shit!” Marty Brueger said. “Don’t ever get as old as me, Raleigh. Take the gas pipe before you do. An old man’s life is for shit!”
“There, there, Mr. Brueger,” Raleigh said. “Why don’t you take a nice bath? It’ll make you feel better.”
“All right. Then I wanna talk about going someplace. I’m sick of this fucking place.”
“Do you need help getting into the bath?” Raleigh asked.
“Raleigh, the day I can’t go into a walk-in shower and sit on a bench and turn on the water, that’s the day I’ll ask you to go out and buy me a gun.”
“Okay, Mr. Brueger,” Raleigh said. “I’ll give you an hour and then I’ll come back and we’ll talk about an outing. Maybe we could drive to the beach and look at the pretty girls. You said you used to like to do that. Or maybe we could go to the movies in Westwood. Or maybe-”
Marty Brueger interrupted Raleigh with plaintive eyes that looked somehow touching through those Coke-bottle glasses. He said, “I can’t even remember the last time I was able to get an erection. I should have had it carbon-dated.”
This time it was Megan Burke dragging Jonas Claymore out of bed. Jonas had done way too much Vicodin before going to sleep and he’d washed it all down with screw-top wine. He opened his eyes in utter disorientation when she shook him and said, “Jonas, wake up! You gotta get up right away.”
“What?” he said. “What?”
She said, “Mr. Casper’s on his way.”
Jonas raised himself on his elbows and said, “Who?”
“Your landlord, that’s who,” Megan said. “He just phoned your cell and he wants his rent money. Twelve hundred dollars.”
Jonas yawned, sat up, and said, “It ain’t no thing. Give it to him. You got it from your old lady, didn’t you?”
“Jonas, focus! I got two hundred from my mom, remember? And we spent half of it last night. Do you remember saying you wanted vike and vino?”
“Oh, Christ,” he said, vaguely remembering. “Is that all this fucking world’s about? Greedy rich people keeping people like us as serfs and slaves?”
“You have to talk to him,” she said. “He says he’ll shut off your water and have you evicted.”
“Like hell he will,” Jonas said. “That little slumlord kike can’t push us around.”
“Get dressed,” Megan said, “and think of something.”
“Okay, that does it,” Jonas said. “We’re going up to the Hollywood Hills in earnest today. No more casing. This is the real thing. Where does Paris Hilton live these days? Anybody can walk into her crib and she won’t even know it.”
While Jonas was trying to swallow a bite of scrambled egg with stale toast, Megan tried to tidy up the little apartment. She stacked the pizza boxes and paper plates on top of the fridge and piled the other debris in the kitchen sink, since the trash can was full of soft-drink cans and candy wrappers.
Then she hurried into their tiny bedroom, and Jonas said to her, “Where you going?”
“To make the bed. In case he goes in there
to check things out.”
“Get the fuck back here,” Jonas said. “You think I’m gonna let that little hebe cocksucker walk into our bedroom? He’s gonna talk to us from outside the door.”
“No, Jonas!” Megan said. “We have to invite him in. You need another rent extension, so you have to be nice to the man. You get more flies with honey, right?”
“We got more than enough flies in this fucking place,” Jonas said. “We don’t need no more.”
He was making a halfhearted attempt at brushing his teeth in the bathroom when the knock came at the door. He heard Megan say, “Good morning, sir. Come in, please. I’m a friend of Jonas and I’m visiting for a couple of days.”
Jonas was shirtless and shoeless when he entered the living room in his last pair of jeans that still had the knees intact. He gave the landlord a sulky nod and said, “Good morning.”
Contrary to Jonas Claymore’s description, Mickey Casper was not little. He was several inches shorter than his lanky young tenant, but he had impressive arms, a chest that stretched his cotton shirt, and veined hands that belonged on a larger man.
He spoke with a very slight Israeli accent and said, “Jonas, I told you last time that I don’t need this aggravation month after month. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Jonas said, “I got laid off from my job, Mr. Casper. Times are tough right now. We need you to be patient till I get another job.”
“This has been going on too long,” the landlord said. “I’m giving you notice.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Jonas said. “I got an interview today with the manager of a Starbucks. I’ll be going to work on Monday if he likes me. And I know he’ll like me. He said I’m just what he’s looking for.”
“Which Starbucks?” the landlord asked.
“The one at Sunset and Cahuenga,” Jonas said.
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