Hollywood Hills hs-4

by Joseph Wambaugh

  He took the pistol with him and bailed out the door and limped toward the brush, where he thought he’d be safe. Where they’d never find him. Where he’d have time to wait them out and then go home. He had money. If he could just get away from this place. If he could get to a taxi, he could still make it!

  But Jonas didn’t make it to the thick brush on the hillside. He almost limped right into a small figure with a flashlight. He heard a woman’s voice behind the beam of light yelling, “Drop it! Drop it!”

  He didn’t drop it. He raised the pistol toward the flashlight, toward the voice, and Britney Small fired her Glock from ten feet away.

  Jonas Claymore saw the first fireball and that was all. Two of the.40 caliber rounds missed him completely but three slammed into his bony chest and sunken belly. He went down on his back, eyes open, and they never closed again.

  There was pandemonium then, with Della Ravelle running to Britney, her shotgun pointed at the supine body of Jonas Claymore. And Viv Daley came running with her shotgun, and Georgie Adams pointed his pistol at the unmoving body.

  Hollywood Nate and Snuffy Salcedo helped pry open Flotsam’s door. He had blood on his face and on one hand, but he wouldn’t get out of the car. He was yelling at them, “Get an RA! Now, goddamnit!” Then he turned to Jetsam, who was moaning in agony, his right foot trapped by mangled metal, and Flotsam said, “Easy, bro! Easy, partner! We’ll get you outta here!”

  It took both Hollywood Nate and Snuffy to pull and pry at the passenger door of 6-X-32’s Crown Vic before they got it open, and when Nate shined his light onto Jetsam’s right foot, he yelled to Viv Daley, “Get me a tourniquet or a belt or anything!”

  By the time the rescue ambulance arrived, Jetsam was lying on the roadside and was going gray. Kneeling beside him, Flotsam waved away Della, who’d torn open a first-aid kit and wanted to tend to the bleeding contusion at Flotsam’s hairline.

  He kept saying to his partner, “Easy, bro. Stay with me. Don’t go nowhere, bro. Stay here with me. I ain’t gonna leave you, so don’t you leave me!”

  The tall surfer cop insisted on riding in the back of the ambulance when they loaded Jetsam aboard, and he talked to him all the way to Cedars-Sinai, even when the paramedic said that the officer was showing signs of shock and wouldn’t understand him. Flotsam remained outside the ER until Hollywood Nate and Snuffy Salcedo came to get him and transport him to Hollywood Station.

  Before they were separated and before Force Investigation Division arrived at the station, Della Ravelle took her rookie partner to the women’s locker room and said to the shaken young woman, “You have nothing to fear from FID or anybody else, Britney. It was an in-policy shooting, a good shooting.”

  “Funny thing,” the young cop said. “It doesn’t seem right to call killing somebody a good shooting. It doesn’t feel good. I don’t feel good.”

  “He’s dead and you’re alive,” Della said. “That’s good. Very good.”

  “He was my age,” Britney said.

  “And you would never have gotten a day older if you hadn’t done what you did,” Della said. “Now listen to me. After you get interrogated and after they say you can return to duty, you’re gonna be treated different. The male cops, particularly the macho OGs, will pat you on the back and praise you and show you some deference. You won’t get treated like a rookie anymore.”

  “Because I killed somebody?” Britney said.

  “Because you’ve proven yourself to them,” Della said. “Just go with it and smile politely and you’ll find that your job will go better in this man’s world we live in. From now on, you won’t be a little female boot they make fun of. They’ll respect you and even admire you. Like it or not, girl, you’re now an authentic and bona fide gunfighter.”

  By daybreak, both Hollywood Division and Beverly Hills homicide detectives had worked out what had transpired at Wickland Gallery on Wilshire Boulevard. Their reports said that Jonas Claymore, who had recentely been arrested for felony possession of controlled substances, had probably been in a drug-induced state when he’d entered the gallery and caught Nigel Wickland by surprise in a blitz attack, cutting his face with a knife that was found in the wrecked van. There were signs of a life-and-death struggle in which Nigel Wickland apparently managed to get his hands on a Smith amp; Wesson 9-millimeter pistol registered to him. However, he was overcome in the struggle and was shot dead by the assailant, who then stole the gallery owner’s wallet and wristwatch, which were found in Jonas Claymore’s pocket after he was shot and killed.

  Because an art gallery wasn’t the kind of business that would be a normal target for this kind of attack, the detectives made a note that the gallery owner was openly homosexual. They surmised that because Jonas Claymore was a handsome young man, he may have had a past intimate relationship with the victim, a relationship that had soured and turned violent. The fact of the van having been in Jonas Claymore’s possession on at least one other occasion when officers of Hollywood Division had questioned him tended to validate the theory of an intimate relationship between victim and assailant.

  By the next afternoon, Ruth Langley, the only employee of the Wickland Gallery, told detectives through copious tears that she was led to believe that the young man who had borrowed her employer’s van on the prior occasion was his nephew. Nigel Wickland had described him as a kind of black sheep. But the deceased killer’s mother, who lived in Encino, denied that they were related to Nigel Wickland. She could offer no explanation for her son’s bizarre behavior other than that he had been using drugs heavily and had lately been living with a young woman whose name she did not know. Jonas Claymore’s mother suggested that the young woman had no doubt enticed her son into the drug use that led to his death.

  Ruth Langley of Wickland Gallery could not account for the poster-board photographs of two Impressionist paintings that were found in the wrecked van. She told detectives that they must have been something that Nigel Wickland had picked up from one of the many art dealers he knew, perhaps to frame and hang in his condominium. She told the detectives that the pictures had no value other than as decorative art and that she would like to have them as mementos of her years working at the Wickland Gallery.

  Two days after the murder of Nigel Wickland, Hollywood Nate Weiss went to Cedars-Sinai before reporting for duty at Hollywood Station. The floor nurse told him that the patient’s mother and two sisters had just been there, and the patient’s father had visited separately. She added that the police partner of the patient was in his room now and that the patient should only have visitors for brief periods of time.

  She asked Nate if he was aware that the patient’s foot could not be saved, and Nate said that everyone at Hollywood Station knew about it. She said that if he wished, he could join the officer and the patient’s partner for a little while but added that the patient would soon need to rest.

  Hollywood Nate walked down the corridor and was surprised that his palms were moist. He didn’t know what he’d say to Jetsam other than something trite: “You’re looking great. Are they treating you okay? Everyone sends their best. Is there anything you need? Anything at all?”

  Nate stopped at the door to Jetsam’s room to try to think of something better to say and he heard the voices from inside. He decided to listen to them for cues on how he should handle this. Flotsam’s voice sounded somber even though his words were meant to be uplifting. Jetsam just sounded feeble.

  Flotsam said, “Dude, I talked to the captain, and you don’t have to worry about only working the desk when you come back. You’ll be working in the field with me just like always.”

  “With one foot? They might as well retire me,” Jetsam said.

  “I been talking to people,” Flotsam said. “LAPD once had a cop with one hand. He got it blown off by a bomb. He got a cool prosthesis. The gangsters started calling him Captain Hook. He was, like, kinda famous after that. And we had some coppers that got an eye shot out. They stayed on the Job and did good work.
”

  “A cop’s gotta be able to walk, bro. A cop’s gotta be able to run.”

  “You’ll walk. You’ll run. I been talking to people about the kind of prosthetic foot they can give you. It’s gonna be better than your old foot, dude. You’ll be good to go. You’ll see.”

  “My foot, it hurts bad sometimes, but it ain’t there. They call it phantom pain.”

  “I know,” Flotsam said.

  “I wouldn’t mind so much but… but I’m a surfer.”

  “You’re a great surfer,” Flotsam said. “You’re way better than me, dude. You’re way better than I ever could be. Why, I seen you do chocka backsides that nobody at Malibu could do. You’re a crusher. Nothing can stop you.”

  “I don’t wanna lay on the beach like a stranded seal and just watch,” Jetsam said. “I wouldn’t wanna do that.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen,” Flotsam said. “Sure, maybe at first we gotta take it easy. I’m gonna take you to Malibu every day if you wanna go, and we’ll let the ocean heal you. The ocean is a great healer. And soon as you’re ready, we’re gonna get you that new foot. They can make you a prosthesis that’ll grip that board like Elmer’s Glue.”

  “What’ll I do at the beach till it heals, bro?”

  “We’ll bodysurf or boogie board.”

  “I ain’t no booger, bro. Can you see me, like, sponging-in on a real kahuna and getting in his way like some snarky squid?”

  “Dude, the boogie board would be temporary till we heal,” Flotsam said. “Till we get our new foot.”

  “I guess the Wedgie Bandit’s safe now, bro,” Jetsam said.

  Flotsam said, “Trust me. Real soon it’s gonna be us two kahunas ripping like always. And we’ll get that Wedgie Bandit, you and me. Don’t cry, dude.”

  “You’re the one that’s crying, bro,” Jetsam said. “In case you didn’t notice.”

  Hollywood Nate turned then and walked back down the corridor past the nurse’s station, heading for the exit.

  The floor nurse said, “Aren’t you going in?”

  “Not today,” said Hollywood Nate. “Not today.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The second year of the Obama presidency saw big changes at the Los Angeles Police Department. The Eastern chief had resigned and moved back to New York to take a top job with the private security firm that had been overseeing the federal consent decree under which the LAPD had suffered for so many years. Some said that his connection to that security firm had been a conflict of interests, but the fact was, he was gone for good.

  The new chief was not an outsider, far from it. He was second-generation LAPD. His father had been a deputy chief. His son and daughter were both LAPD officers, and his wife was retired from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department. Even his sister was a retired cop. They didn’t come more insider than this one. He inherited the tough job of being chief in the great recession that had just about bankrupted the state of California, and the city of Los Angeles right along with it. There had to be lots of maneuvering of personnel, including sending a large number of officers from the elite Metropolitan Division back to patrol.

  But there was at least one officer going from patrol back to Metro. One quiet evening on patrol, Snuffy Salcedo said to Hollywood Nate, “I went downtown and talked to a few people and I’m gonna be taken back as a security aide to the new chief.”

  “Is it my deodorant?” Nate said. “What brought this about?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, partner,” Snuffy said. “I’ve really enjoyed working here at Hollywood Station, and it hasn’t been too awful having you as a partner.”

  “I’ll put that in my diary,” Nate said.

  Snuffy said, “But I think for the next few years, till I pull the pin and say adios, I should take it easy. And the new chief ain’t nothing like Mister. So I see myself driving for him for three more years and then I’ll retire and spend the rest of my life cutting grass and trimming trees like a typical Mexican gardener, except it’ll be my grass and my trees.”

  “Was it stuff like the rumble at Goth House that made you wanna leave Hollywood?” Nate asked.

  “Naw,” Snuffy said. “It was fun tuning up Rolf Thunder, sort of. I even got a new and better nose out of it. It’s just that patrol needs people who have real thick skin. Young people. So they can look at stuff like that baby in Little Armenia and go home and say, That’s not my tragedy. That’s somebody else’s tragedy. That has nothing to do with me. When you get old like me, the skin thins out and bleeds.”

  “Who’s gonna bring me homemade enchiladas then?” Nate said. “Tell me that.”

  “You’ll find some other Mexican whose mother can cook,” Snuffy said.

  Nate said, “On this sad occasion I’d like to devote a few minutes to my own future. Would you mind if I stop by a house in the Hollywood Hills? I gotta see a director about making me a star.”

  “Anything you wanna do,” Snuffy Salcedo said. “I’m just a short-timer along for the ride.”

  Nate drove up Mulholland Drive to the vicinity of the crash that had cost Jetsam his foot and Jonas Claymore his life. He stopped at the gate of a particularly large estate and pressed the button.

  A man’s voice answered and Nate said, “This is Officer Nate Weiss. I’d like to see Mr. Ressler if he’s there.”

  The male voice spoke to someone and came back, saying, “Come in.”

  Nate and Snuffy Salcedo entered the gate, driving over the faux-cobblestone driveway, then circled around the fountain and parked next to the front door.

  “Just be a minute,” Nate said and got out.

  “Take your time,” Snuffy said. “I’ll have a siesta.”

  Raleigh Dibble opened the door and said, “Good to see you again, Officer Weiss. Mrs. Brueger is in the great room.”

  Nate found her in silk pajamas and a matching peignoir, sitting on a lounge with a glass of wine beside her and a copy of Cosmopolitan in her lap. The music coming from surrounding speakers was Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” one of Nate’s favorite background melodies for any movie that promised glamour and sophistication.

  “My, my, Nathan,” she said. “You’re even more handsome in uniform.”

  “Evening, Mrs. Brueger,” Nate said.

  She said, “It’s Leona, remember? Can Raleigh get you anything to drink? Coffee, maybe?”

  “No, thanks,” Nate said. “My partner’s waiting.”

  “Bring him in,” Leona Brueger said. “Or her.”

  “Can’t stay but a minute,” Nate said. “The reason I’m here is that I’ve called Mr. Ressler half a dozen times in the last few months and only hooked up with him once. He said he’d be starting to prep his movie in February, but here it is March and I haven’t heard anything. He hasn’t returned my calls lately. You said you might be able to help me get this job and, well, here I am. Hopes and dreams, remember?”

  Leona took another sip of wine and said, “Oh, Nathan, I’m so glad I’m not an actor. The truth of it is, after we got back from Europe, things went from bad to worse for poor Rudy. His investors pulled the plug on him and the project died, but he doesn’t want to admit it to anyone. That’s probably why he’s dodging your calls. He’s scratching and clawing and trying to stay afloat, but the fact of the matter is, his career is circling the drain. He’s drifting into irrelevancy, and in Hollywood that’s Hell’s last circle. A living death. I’m sure you know that the irrelevant are Hollywood’s zombies.”

  Nate was silent for a moment and said, “I see.”

  “Aren’t you used to it yet, Nathan?” Leona Brueger asked. “The rejection?”

  “I should be,” Nate said.

  The phone buzzed and Nate heard Raleigh Dibble answer it in the butler’s pantry, and then Raleigh entered the great room.

  He said, “Mr. Brueger needs his heating pad and perhaps a back rub. I’ll be in the cottage, Mrs. Brueger.”

  “Fine, Raleigh,” Leona said.

  After Raleigh was gone, she said
to Nate, “My brother-in-law had a stroke last year but he’s doing pretty well for a codger his age. I think he’d be dead without Raleigh. I can’t imagine a more dedicated caregiver, not to mention that he’s a fine butler and a divine chef. I’m so lucky to have him. I’ll never let him go.”

  “Give my regards to Mr. Ressler, please,” Nate said and turned to leave.

  “Oh, he’s gone the way of all second-raters,” Leona said boozily. “He was only going to marry me for my money, which was okay with me until his limited charm ran out in Tuscany. I’ve decided not to move to Napa. I’ll just drink wine and forget about making it. I think this house in the Hollywood Hills is a good place to grow old in. What do you think, Nathan?”

  “It’s a beautiful home,” Nate said.

  “Money is an answer,” she said. “How soothing money is when we can’t attain our real dreams. Thousands of failed actors will never know that because they’ll never see enough of it.”

  “That sounds like me you’re talking about,” Nate said. “If I was a method actor, I’d think of a grapefruit or something else I hate and start crying now.”

  “Why don’t you visit me from time to time, Nathan?” she said. “Who knows? I might meet another director. Maybe even a first-rate director who could actually promote you. Maybe I can help you keep your dream alive. Would you like that?”

  He was silent for a moment and remembered what this fire-proof aging woman had said to him when they’d first met: that in Hollywood everything is for sale if you know how to shop. Then Nate said, “Somehow I don’t think I’m ever gonna see my name on the curb at one of the studios. Thank you anyway,… Mrs. Brueger. I gotta get back to my beat now.”

  Leona Brueger gave him a long look, and then with a sigh of resignation and sadness she said, “Bye-bye, gorgeous.”