Harbor Nocturne

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  “Dinko, how you can be talking like this?” Lita said. “It is not good sense!”

  He quickly added, “And you can get some kinda work here in Pedro. My mother knows lots of old Croatian families who still own businesses. We’ll find you some work you can do. Some decent work.”

  He thought she looked heartbreakingly sad when she said, “You are right. You are more younger than me, I think. You do not know nothing about me. I am no child.”

  Dinko said, “I know you’re not a child, and I wish you’d stop saying that. You lost your childhood prematurely while I kept hanging on to mine way too long.”

  “Come on, you two! Supper’s ready!” Brigita Babich called from the kitchen.

  Dinko and Lita stayed where they were for a moment, looking at each other, but Ollie bolted for the kitchen door and the tuna treats that awaited him every day at this hour.

  TEN

  It did not qualify for the Quiet Desperation Award, but just before sundown an event happened that was the talk of Hollywood Station for a day or so, and it involved most of Watch 5.

  Shop 6-X-76, manned by Mel Yarashi and Always Talking Tony Doakes, was southbound on Gower, passing the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where stars of yore are buried. The radio car turned east on Melrose Avenue and was driving past the famous gates of Paramount Studios when a stolen Toyota 4Runner traveling eastbound well in front of them blew the stoplight at Western Avenue.

  Mel, who was driving, said, “Ticket time. You’re up.” And he switched on the light bar and hit the siren just long enough to get across Western Avenue.

  The siren alerted the driver of the 4Runner, who stomped on it.

  A.T. picked up the mike, requested a clear frequency, and announced, “Six-X-Seventy-six is in pursuit of white Toyota 4Runner eastbound on Melrose from Western!”

  The chase was on, but it was short-lived. The 4Runner made a screeching, sliding right turn onto Serrano but skidded and crashed broadside into a slow-moving northbound Chevrolet pickup. The driver of the pickup stopped and jumped out, screaming at the 4Runner’s driver, a short, thickset white guy in a T-shirt whose head was shaved and whose face was inked up with Aryan Brotherhood tats.

  The driver of the 4Runner hollered, “Fuck you,” leaped out of the disabled vehicle, and took off southbound.

  The two crashed vehicles, as well as the cars parked along both curbs, made it impossible for 6-X-76 to continue for the moment, but other units, hearing that the suspect was running south on foot, raced eastbound on Beverly Boulevard, hoping to intercept him.

  Their quarry turned a corner, and then he was gone. Just like that. Six patrol units from Watch 5 and Watch 3 searched the residential streets for twenty minutes.

  By the time Mel Yarashi and A.T. arrived at the search area, Chester Toles and Fran Famosa, along with Marius Tatarescu and Sophie Branson, were knocking on doors along the street to ask occupants if they could search their rear yards and garages.

  Mel Yarashi got out of the radio car and shouted to all the cops at the immediate scene, “The Toyota license comes back to a Ralph Monroe Rasmussen, but not at this address. We ran the name and got one with the right description who happens to be another freaking parolee-at-large. No doubt it’s him, so heads up!”

  Surprisingly, it was Chester Toles who spotted a faint blood trail on the sidewalk leading toward the side door of a nearby gray bungalow with peeling paint and a sagging roof. Within moments, Chester and Fran were at the front door, with Marius and Sophie watching the side door.

  Chester and Fran had their weapons drawn and were holding them down by their legs, standing on either side of the front door, when Fran knocked loudly and said, “Police! Open up!”

  They heard a radio playing inside, so Fran knocked again and repeated the command. It took a full two minutes before anything happened. An overweight redhead in her late twenties, wearing a turquoise tank, red shorts, and lots of eye shadow, opened the door and said, “Yes? Is there a problem?”

  Fran said, “Do you know a Ralph Monroe Rasmussen?”

  There was just a slight hesitation before the woman said, “No. He don’t live here.”

  Fran said, “Did anyone enter this house in the last twenty minutes or so?”

  “No,” the woman said, looking at the Glock .40 Fran was holding alongside her right thigh. “Nobody’s here but me. My name’s Gloria Clampett.”

  Chester Toles said, “There’s a fresh blood trail leading along the sidewalk, onto your driveway, and up to your side door. Can you explain it?”

  “I didn’t cut myself or nothing,” she said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Would you like to see it?” Fran asked.

  “No, I take your word for it.”

  “Well then, maybe somebody slipped in your side door without you knowing about it,” Fran said. “Maybe we should come in and look around.”

  The woman fiddled nervously with her desiccated, overly dyed hair, and said, “I been told I should ask if you got a search warrant before I let cops in my house.”

  “Why, are you hiding something?” Chester said.

  “I should think you’d want us to have a look around for your protection,” Fran said.

  “Okay,” Gloria Clampett sighed. “Come in and satisfy yourself.”

  Fran and Chester entered, followed by a team from Watch 3, and with four cops cautiously entering the small cottage, the woman sat in the living room, her cell phone in her hand, texting.

  When Fran looked at Gloria Clampett, she lied and said, “I’m texting my lawyer, just in case.”

  “You have a lawyer?” Chester asked. “Why, have you been arrested in the past?”

  “The lawyer’s my cousin,” she said. “He gives me a special family rate.”

  Chester opened the side door for Marius and Sophie, but as Marius was about to enter he spotted something shiny lying in the ice plant, where its owner had apparently lost it in his haste to get inside the house. He bent down and picked up a cell phone.

  The bungalow search took only a few minutes. There was a bedroom with a small closet, a bathroom, a tiny kitchen, a living room, and that was it.

  The team from Watch 3 was already out the door and Fran was about to offer an apology for the intrusion when Marius came in and said, “Everybody is lazy these days. No imaginations.”

  Sophie looked at the big Romanian quizzically. “What’re you talking about?”

  Marius said, “I was guessing that the code is one, two, three, four, and I am correct. Look.”

  Sophie squinted and read the text message aloud: “‘Stay up there until I tell you the assholes are gone.’”

  Marius grinned at the woman on the couch and said, in his heavy accent, “This clumsy asshole cop you see standing in front of your eyes is on exchange program from Russian KGB, where we learn cold war code breaking. Watch!”

  He hit the send button, and when the cell phone in her hand rang, Gloria Clampett dropped it and said, “Oh, shit.”

  Chester Toles and Fran Famosa immediately ran back into the bedroom closet and saw the attic trapdoor, behind a pile of clothes that Gloria Clampett had hastily thrown up on the shelf to hide it.

  Fran yelled, “Open that trapdoor and climb down or we’ll put a K-9 with big teeth up there to keep you company!”

  They heard some scraping and shuffling, and then a pair of legs in baggy khaki shorts showed through the trapdoor, followed by the rest of the man, his nose and lips bloodied by the traffic collision.

  When the career burglar, drug addict, and parole violator was handcuffed and led out, Fran Famosa said, “I’ll be taking your cell phone, Gloria.”

  She said, “I need my cell phone.”

  “You can use a jail phone to call your cousin the lawyer. You’re under arrest as an accessory. Now stand up.”

  It looked as though all was going to end well for Marius Tatarescu and Sophie Branson until A.T. ran in again, his rover in hand, and said to Sophie and Marius, “Hey, you g
uys, did you know that this dude left a pet in the Toyota?”

  “That’s Lenny,” Ralph Monroe Rasmussen said. “Don’t let the Animal Control people take him. They’ll put him down. He’s friendly and loves people. Take him to my mother’s house. She lives over on Willowbrook and Vermont. His leash is in the Toyota, on the passenger seat.”

  Sophie Branson, ever the animal advocate, said, “What is Lenny, your White Power pit bull mascot?”

  The prisoner said, “I outgrew that Aryan Brotherhood shit, but I’m stuck with these fucking jailhouse tats. Anyways, Lenny is sweet and lovable. I can kiss him on the mouth. Have a heart and save him!”

  Marius, who could see that his partner was ready to rescue another creature, said, “What is Lenny, a sweet and lovable rottweiler with the jaws of death?”

  The question was answered by Always Talking Tony, who grinned large and said, “Not exactly.”

  The pursuit unit was in charge of booking the parolee-at-large and his girlfriend, but, predictably, 6-X-72 agreed to take care of the “pet” that had been left in the crashed Toyota 4Runner before the vehicle got impounded. After A.T. described the pet, Sophie Branson was beside herself with excitement as Marius drove them to the crash scene.

  “I’ve seen documentaries about the Argentine black-and-white tegu!” she said. “Do you know it’s the most intelligent of all lizards? It makes a great pet!”

  “Are you knowing how big it is, Sophia?” he asked, worried. He always called her by the proper Eastern European version of her given name when she had him frustrated or irritated. And he was feeling both emotions now.

  She said, “I’m not sure, but pretty big for a lizard, I think.”

  The Romanian said, “Maybe we should call Animal Control. They got the dog poles they can use to take Lenny into custody. What if I got to shoot Lenny? What does it do to my career if I shoot a goddamn lizard? I don’t like none of this, Sophia!”

  “For chrissake, stop worrying,” Sophie said. “Think of this as an adventure.”

  “Sophia,” Marius said, “you are not the female version of Saint Francis of Assisi. You are just a cop like me. It is not our job to be lizard ropers. This is not a good thing.”

  “He’s harmless,” she said. “Didn’t the dude say he could kiss Lenny on the lips?”

  “That is what he says. But I wish to say to you that the tegu lizard is not the cute little gecko. This is the giant gecko with the dark side. You do not see this one on the TV commercials selling goddamn insurance! Are you understanding me, Sophia?”

  Their black-and-white arrived back at the crash scene just after dark, and by then, flares were already diverting traffic. Two tow trucks were hooking up both damaged vehicles, and one truck driver was peering doubtfully through the rear window of the 4Runner.

  Marius was the first out of their shop. He ran to the Toyota and shined his light onto the backseat before saying, “Sophia, you can kiss him on the lips if you want, but I think I am passing.”

  Lenny was four feet long, and Sophie thought he was gorgeous. She loved his stripes and his beaded skin. The lizard was understandably upset with what had happened and kept flicking his tongue out at them and hissing. Without hesitation, Sophie Branson opened the front passenger door, picked up the dog leash, and opened the back door, talking soothingly to the reptile.

  “There there, Lenny,” she cooed. “Pretty baby. What a pretty baby.”

  She didn’t try to put the dog leash around his neck right away but sat on the backseat for a few minutes, until the hissing diminished and Lenny crept forward, his snout only inches from her hand. “That’s the good boy,” she said. “We’ll take care of you, honey. Don’t worry.” And ever so slowly she slipped the noose around Lenny’s neck and said, “Wanna go see Grandma?”

  On the way to the house of the parolee’s mother, Sophie stayed in the backseat next to Lenny, who kept nervously snapping his tail against the metal screen dividing the front seat from the back.

  Marius Tatarescu said, “Sophia, Lenny is giving me most outrageous discomfort. Can you please make him stop doing hokey-pokey dance and smacking the cage behind my head?”

  “Did you see how docile he got once I had his leash on him?” she said. “He’s just a love.”

  “Yes, Sophia,” Marius said, “and I am sure he is more nice than any man you ever been married with, and all the boyfriends in your lifetime, but I am getting all nervous-wrecked by him.”

  Marius parked in front of the address given by the arrestee, went to the door of the modest east Hollywood home, and rang. An older woman in a pink floor-length bathrobe, with her hair in old-fashioned curlers, answered. She bore a resemblance to her son, and she was not surprised to hear what had happened.

  “I’ve been living with this kind of thing for a very long time, Officer,” she said. “Sometimes I think he’s better off when he’s safely back in prison. Thank you for telling me. I’ll deal with his car at the impound garage. It was a car I bought him, of course.”

  “And we got something out in our car for you,” Marius said. “Please say you can take him, or my partner will make me work the rest of the night with Lenny as extra partner.”

  The woman said, “Lenny? I thought he was with my son’s girlfriend! Oh, bring him in, please!”

  Marius signaled to Sophie, who walked the lizard on the leash to the front porch. The reptile tugged hard against the lead, trying to run inside, to a person and place he knew.

  The woman took the leash from Sophie, saying, “Thank you ever so much, Officers. Lenny loves to play in my backyard. This is his real home, and he gives me more pleasure and contentment than my son ever did.”

  “I understand perfectly,” Sophie said. “He’ll be a faithful companion for many years.”

  While walking to their shop, Marius said, “That guy was living okay with a girlfriend that was giving food to him and his lizard. And I am betting she paid for gasoline for him and Lenny to drive around. And then he makes one little mistake and runs through a red light. It is proof of what they say about best-laid plans of mice and rats.”

  “Men,” she said.

  “What?”

  “On second thought, what’s the difference,” Sophie said.

  When they were back patrolling their beat, Marius said, “Sophie, I am thinking that until now Lenny was living the life of quiet desperation with his master and the chubby girlfriend. I am thinking we must submit this one to Sergeant Murillo and maybe win another super-size pizza. That would make me happy as a mussel.”

  “Clam,” she said.

  Flotsam kept up a running commentary in the vice sergeant’s office the whole time Jetsam was being rigged with a wire by a tech from the Scientific Investigation Division.

  “Dude, when you get inside that house, be sure to keep in mind where the doors are at,” he told his partner. “I mean, you might, like, be all disoriented if you get to doing martinis with Ivana. You never know when a quick exit might be in order, so every minute you gotta know where you’re at. Feel me?”

  “I feel ya, bro,” Jetsam sighed. “Stop fretting.”

  He was wearing a long-sleeved navy shirt with utility pockets, which he figured would provide more room to hide the transmitter. He’d also chosen relaxed-fit chinos so he could more easily pull up the trouser leg to show the pervert his prosthesis. Flotsam was wearing a long-sleeved, white baseball T-shirt and stone-washed jeans. They both had on tennis shoes and socks in case some running might be in order.

  “I still think you should be packing a hideout gun in an ankle rig,” Flotsam said. “I ain’t so sure it’s a good idea to be in there unarmed, wire or no wire.”

  “Bro, there’s gonna be a security team half a block away, listening to everything that happens in there. I’ll be partying with my huckleberry Ivana, along with that little punk Hector Cozzo and some rich Russian. How dangerous can it be, for chrissake?”

  “A weird rich Russian,” Flotsam reminded him.

  “Bro, l
ook where we work. This is fucking Hollywood,” Jetsam pointed out. “Everybody’s weird.”

  “I’m just saying, like, I don’t wanna see a copper not packing heat no matter what kinda mission he’s on,” Flotsam said. “When things can go sideways, they usually do.”

  “Bro, we got some time before we gotta head up to Encino,” Jetsam said. “Maybe we should take you out to IHOP or somewheres and load you up on some death-wish cholesterol. It might slow down your pulse rate.”

  When the wire was rigged and the SID tech had gone out to do a radio check from the van, Sergeant Hawthorne came in. “This is something I thought only had a very remote chance of panning out,” he said.

  “Yeah, I hope it’s a career maker for you, Sarge,” Flotsam said, “but I still wish you’d let me be out on foot and on tac frequency in the yard next door.”

  “There will be seven of us out there, all close enough for any eventuality,” Sergeant Hawthorne said. “We have them outnumbered. Don’t worry.”

  “That’s what I keep telling him,” Jetsam said. “But he goes all Woody Allen mopey in orchestrated situations. Like, nothing in life is gonna go the way you think. He’s been that way ever since a Malibu rager where his week-long plan for a midnight swim ended when his surf bunny went, like, Jaws hysterical on him.”

  “My God!” Sergeant Hawthorne said to Flotsam. “You were attacked by a shark?”

  “I think it was a dolphin that bumped us,” Flotsam said, “but you can’t tell that to a chick that’s screaming like the shower scene in either version of Psycho. I didn’t get laid by her that night, and no other guy will neither, not if there’s so much as a gurgling swimming pool around when he makes his move.”

  “So my pard threw away his playbook,” Jetsam explained. “He just thinks you should go all playground and take the ball and slam it, whatever situation you’re in.”

  “Can I buy you both a bite to eat before we go to Encino?” Sergeant Hawthorne asked, suddenly fearing that Flotsam might be right.