the Delta Star (1983)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Not much for wine and cheese and open houses," she said. "I've worked here for fifteen years. Been to too many of them."

  "In that case, there's only one thing to do. Come with me tonight for margaritas and carne asada and I'll tell you all about how I became a counterfeit Mexican with the L. A. P. D."

  "A counterfeit Mexican," she said, with some interest.

  "You're not married, are you?"

  "Divorced."

  "Me too. Twice."

  "I suppose twice is about average for a cop."

  "You ever go out with cops?"

  "Before I got married one of my boyfriends was a cop."

  "Oh oh," he said. "You know cops. Does that mean I don't have a chance?"

  She grinned and said, "You're not going to believe it, but I was thinking about a Mexican restaurant for a quick bite."

  "I believe it," he cried. "Pick you up at seven?"

  "Afraid not."

  "Six? Five? Ten? Eleven?"

  "Have to get home early tonight," she said. "My fourteen-year-old daughter's cramming for a history test and I'm supposed to quiz her."

  "How about a very early supper when you get off work? A quick bite and a few margaritas? You can be home by six o'clock."

  "A few margaritas?"

  "Sure. Why not?"

  "It's okay if you're an alcoholic."

  "That's me," he said cheerily. "Borderline alcoholic, I like to think."

  "You're sort of honest-I'll have to say that."

  "Lupe," he said, "I'm middle-aged, not much to look at, got nothing in the bank. And the only thing I'm halfway good at is catching bad guys. I figure I gotta be honest."

  "Honesty deserves to win once in a while," she said, not knowing that except for the personal data, every single thing he had told her was a lie.

  "What time should I pick you up?"

  "I'll meet you. Where do you want to eat?"

  "You know where York and Figueroa is?"

  "York y Feeg" she said with an affected Spanish accent. "Of course I know. I told you I'm an East L. A. Mexican."

  "There's a restaurant about a block from the police station. The Villa Sombrero. I'll meet you there."

  "Is it a cop hangout?"

  "Lady, you are not a person I'd take to a cop hangout. The last woman I dated from a cop hangout looked like Golda Meir. Or maybe Menachem Begin, I can't quite remember. This is the best Mexican restaurant I know. I wouldn't kid you about anything."

  "That remains to be seen," she said. "See you there at five-thirty."

  ***

  And while Mario Villalobos was telling a lie that would fly, Dolly and Dilford were about to meet yet another person who would affect Dilford's testicles.

  She would be described on television that night as a Bel-Air housewife. She was seen by one witness strolling along Bonnie Brae Street directly over the southbound Hollywood Freeway. The wind gusted that smoggy overcast afternoon. The wind blew her chestnut hair across her face and whipped it in strings around her sparkling green eyes. She wore a wine-red cloak with a hood which she had bought in London on one of several trips abroad.

  She was forty-one years old, had three children, and had been married to the same man for twenty years. He sold commercial real estate and had it made. He dealt with Iranian and Arab investors who couldn't care less about Reaganomics and high interest rates, and who could buy mink horse blankets from Bijan in Beverly Hills and use them as bath mats.

  The Bel-Air housewife owned a Mercedes 450SL and lots of diamonds, round brilliant cuts, of course, and coveted nothing on earth except a Ferrari which her husband refused to buy her. It caused a problem or two in their marriage, resulting in an occasional five-Valium day, but nothing to prepare her friends or family for what happened on Bonnie Brae Street.

  In fact, no one on Rodeo Drive where she shopped could understand why the Echo Park area. Even tacky people who lived in the 500 block well south of Sunset wouldn't go bananas in such a low-rent neighborhood. This was a woman, everyone knew, who could get into Spago's for Wolfgang Puck's show biz pizza with only one day's notice!

  It was as though anyone could understand someone doing what she did but they couldn't begin to comprehend someone doing it in a district that advertised cheapie trips to Manila. It was a low-rent neighborhood full of Filipinos, Mexicans, Cubans and other wogs.

  The first witness driving southbound on Bonnie Brae saw her climbing the guardrail and drove straight to a pay phone to call the cops. The second witness was a Good Samaritan and he leaped out of his car and ran toward her, but froze and retreated when she let go of the guardrail with one hand, pointed a bejeweled finger directly at his face and unleashed a spine-arching scream.

  By then, unit Two-A-Ninety-nine was exploding onto the scene like a cruise missile, and two hot dogs, Stanley and Leech, were running toward the Bel-Air housewife, who was looking at the speeding cars on the freeway below.

  The second police unit contained Dilford and Dolly, who had the presence of mind to radio communications and request that the Highway Patrol stop all traffic on the southbound Hollywood Freeway approaching the Queen of Angels Hospital.

  With sparkling green eyes, the woman watched the hot dogs running toward her, running hellbent for heroics and maybe a medal of valor. They stopped when Dilford cut them off and screamed, "Stop, you assholes!" right in their faces.

  For an instant the two hyped-up hot dogs took a look at their jumper and saw quite clearly that she was watching them. Her chestnut hair was whipping in the wind, and her wine-red cloak was flapping around her slender shoulders, and her hands were cupped in front of her. Which meant that she was holding on to the stanchions with her knees.

  The Bel-Air housewife then looked directly at Dilford, who had one hand on each hyper hot dog. And, still holding her hands cupped in front for whatever gift she thought she was about to receive, she looked at the tall young cop with the bulging blue eyes and the taffy-colored hair blowing straight back from an already clammy forehead.

  She said to Dilford, "Come here."

  By now six cops and several civilians and one roach wagon were all gathered on Bonnie Brae and all traffic was stopped both ways except that the traffic southbound on the Hollywood Freeway continued to roar beneath them. Nonstop from the north. From the blind side.

  The Mexican on the roach wagon, who had lost many pesos lately due to The Bad Czech's voracious appetite for free burritos, tried to make a buck or two from selling soda pop to the gathering crowd, who only stopped yelling, "Jump, lady!" when Dolly said she'd shove her stick down the throat of the next son-of-a-bitch to open his mouth.

  "Don't do this," Dilford pleaded with the woman in the wine-red cloak. "Let's talk about it. I know it can be worked out."

  Her voice was calm. She said to Leech and Stanley, "You two. Go away."

  And then she suddenly unleashed another eerie shriek, as piercing as a sparking knife blade on a grinding stone. And she began to sway in the wind. At which time Stanley and Leech thought they might be getting in over their wired-up heads, and what the hell, maybe they ought to just boogie on out of here and get their medals some other time.

  "Come closer to me," the Bel-Air housewife said to Dilford, whose taffy hairstyle was going electric. He was looking for a sergeant. He was alone.

  "Don't do this to me, lady," Dilford pleaded. Which was something many cops before him had said in such a moment. Don't do this to me.

  "Closer," she said calmly, her eyes bright as a bird's. She even smiled for an instant. A beatific smile. The smile of a martyr marching to glory.

  Dilford was advancing ever so slowly and the wind began to moan on the overpass, or so he thought. Her wind-blown hair hid her face like a mask. Except for the sparkling green eyes.

  "Maybe if we talk about it?" Dilford said. He looked like he was going to cry. "Let me go get a sergeant. Please. I'm just a ..."

  "Closer, closer," she coaxed with her beatific smile.

  She began breat
hing hard then, facing the Queen of Angels Hospital up on the hill in the distance. And perhaps that's how she perceived herself. The Queen of Angels. The Virgin of Bonnie Brae. The Madonna of the Wogs.

  "Don't, lady. Please don't," Dilford said, with his hand outstretched. He inched closer until he was only two feet away.

  And that's when she gave herself to eternity. With outstretched arms, she imitated every painted plaster saint and martyr she had ever seen.

  "Don't, lady!" Dilford shrieked, leaping forward and grabbing a fold of the cloak for an instant.

  She looked at him with the sparkling eyes and sanctified smile of every fanatic who ever quested for crucifixion or drank soda pop in Jonestown. Her body remained still and rigid as though indeed it were painted plaster. With arms outstretched in forgiveness for the world, she did her back dive, head first, and gave up her spirit. To the Hollywood Freeway.

  As often happens, the frustrated, smog-burned, crazed drivers on the Hollywood Freeway didn't even know they had mutilated The Madonna of the Wogs. The first three who ran over the wine-red bundle didn't know what the hell it was. One thought he'd hit an Irish setter. Another thought it was a plastic trash bag. A third heard something bump into the bottom of his car and thought he'd dropped his transmission.

  Dilford had a delayed reaction to his meeting with The Madonna of the Wogs. He and Dolly did a creditable job on the reports at the station. Except that Dilford kept wondering over and over why The Madonna of the Wogs had chosen him and not the hyper hot dogs. And whether he had done enough, or too much, or said enough, or not enough, or chosen the wrong words.

  "Was it something I said?" he asked Dolly while they sat penciling out their report.

  "What?"

  "I thought she was going to take my hand. She looked like she was going to take my hand. Why did she reject me?"

  "You did just right. Even the sergeant said so. Forget it, Dilford."

  "I often wonder if my personality alienates people," Dilford mused, staring with sweat-rimmed, bulging blue eyes. "Was it something I said?"

  Dilford's delayed reaction hit him later, almost the moment he walked inside The House of Misery after work. Dolly was following him in her car and she noticed nothing unusual about his driving. But once inside The House of Misery, in the presence of Leery, The Bad Czech and Cecil Higgins, an odd thing happened.

  Dilford said, "I feel like I got a jock full a popsicles. And my hands. They're like ice. Turn down the air conditioner, Leery."

  "It ain't on," Leery said. "I ain't even got the smoke eaters going."

  "It's freezing!" Dilford said. And suddenly he felt his jaw twitching. His teeth started clattering together.

  Dolly put her cold hand on Dilford's cold hand.

  "I'm freezing!" Dilford said. "I must be getting the flu!"

  "Give him a double," The Bad Czech said.

  "A jock full a popsicles," Dilford laughed, but his teeth were chattering. "It's c-c-cold!"

  "It probably wasn't even real, kid," The Bad Czech said to Dilford. "Give him another one, Leery."

  "He ain't paid for that one yet," Leery said.

  "Bring the fuckin drink or I'll squeeze your turkey neck till ya gobble!" Then The Bad Czech said to Dilford, "Just shut your eyes and swallow it down."

  Dilford had three double shots of Leery's bar whiskey, guaranteed to make you go blind, before his teeth stopped chattering and his balls thawed out.

  The second strange thing that happened to Dilford was that Dolly matched him drink for drink and neither of them got particularly drunk. She even talked civil to him and continued to hold his freezing hand. In the evening they ate a bowl of Leery's disgusting clam chowder together and talked about movies.

  ***

  Mario Villalobos had already drunk three vodkas by the time Lupe Luna arrived at the Mexican restaurant.

  "Hi, Sarge," she said, sitting with him at a table in the barroom.

  It was a surprising little restaurant to find on the barrio fringe. The waiters wore jackets and black ties and each table had a linen tablecloth, cut glass and a long-stemmed rose. The women's rest room was full of flowers, another surprising touch Lupe Luna noted. Of course there was the inevitable painting of an Aztec chief weeping over his dead maiden, proving that even Aztecs needed a little soap opera in their lives. Mexican music played on a tape deck and the salsa was fresh and hot, as were the tortilla chips with which Mario Villalobos ladled the salsa.

  "Does a waiter help me lift this margarita?" she asked.

  It was a fishbowl-sized snifter. He licked the salt off the rim of his glass and said, "Have two of them. I'm capable of any dirty trick with a woman like you. I'd even take you out to my car and play the police radio if I thought it would help."

  "Yeah?" She smiled, showing him the overbite that was driving him crackers. "Does cops 'n robbers usually help?"

  "Lady, nothing helps at my time of life," he said. "All my neurons're almost petrified. About the only pleasure I get these days is from solving murders."

  "Murders? I thought it was a jewel theft?"

  "Yeah, well ... I prefer solving murders is what I meant. Right now it's a jewel theft."

  "I don't know how sexy I might find a police radio," she grinned, lifting the enormous glass with two hands. "But I confess to liking cop shows. And I read mysteries."

  "I hate any kind of mystery," he said. "Mysteries drive me bonkers. In fact, I might go bonkers if I don't solve the one I'm working on. It's making me work. I'm too tired to work. I haven't worked so hard in years."

  "Nothing very mysterious about it, is there? You just have to find out which professor was chasing around with a young girl in the restaurant that night. Pretty straightforward."

  "Pretty straightforward," Mario Villalobos said. "How do you like the salsa?"

  She scooped up a portion on a tortilla chip and said, "Just like mother used to make. Even better."

  The music and conversation was interrupted occasionally by the whirring blender mixing margaritas, a not unpleasant sound to a borderline alcoholic like Mario Villalobos. He was starting to glow.

  "Are you being nice to me so I'll help you with your investigation?" she asked.

  "Cops're like basketball players," he said. "We peak early and then we drop like a sandbag. I'm being nice because I don't have much time left. And I love white teeth and an overbite."

  She chuckled and said, "Do you have kids?"

  "Two," he said. "I know a cop named Ludwig with eyes as big as yours. But his're yellow and yours're chocolate."

  "Yellow? He must look like an animal."

  "He does," Mario Villalobos said, and he was getting more than a glow. "Alfonso!" he called to the waiter. "One more margarita. The big one!"

  "Do your kids live with you?"

  "They live with my ex," he said. "My first ex. My second ex wasn't around that long, lucky for her."

  "What's it like having sons?"

  "I don't know," he said. "One of them ignores me. The other hates me."

  "Hates you?"

  "Yeah, I give him a target. That way he doesn't hate himself. How about another margarita?"

  "You're a curious person."

  "Whadda you expect from a counterfeit Mexican?" the detective said, and he was getting bagged in a hurry. "How do you like the huge American flag at York and Figueroa? Patriots, us Mexicans. No wonder we win so many Medals of Honor."

  "Okay," she said. "Tell me about your Hispanic name and how you came to be a counterfeit Mexican."

  "First, there's absolutely no chance of my making a move on you, is there?"

  "Not tonight," she grinned. "I'm going straight home to my daughter."

  "In that case I may as well get wrecked and tell you how I became a counterfeit Mexican. It's a boring story but it's all I got. I can tell you one thing: everybody dumps on poor beaners. Even on counterfeit beaners ..."

  ***

  Jane Wayne came to Leery's from a beauty parlor appointment after work.
She looked startlingly new-wave when she stalked into the bar in leather pants, boots, cleavage for days, and a steel-banged hairdo that shocked the crap out of everybody but The Bad Czech. He said she looked sweet and cute and adorable, even if she did sort of resemble Adolf Hitler.

  She played some heavy-metal rock on the jukebox and the two of them got up on the dance floor and started doing some play-punk which involved make-believe slams. It ended in an erotic slow dance that got everyone except Leery and Ludwig aroused, and excepting Dilford, who was just happy that his teeth stopped chattering and his body temperature got back up to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

  The only thing that almost ruined the evening was that The Gooned-out Vice Cop showed up. He wasn't wearing a headband or thong this time. His long sandy hair was parted in the middle and hung softly around his rather delicate face. He wore an old army shirt and faded jeans and hiking boots, and he went straight to his favorite barstool.

  Before he took his first drink of Leery's bar whiskey, he looked strangely at Dilford, and Dilford thought he knew. But he couldn't have known. Dilford had by now stopped shivering and Dolly was no longer warming his hands with hers.

  Dilford got nervous when The Gooned-out Vice Cop looked at him. Dilford suddenly made an unsolicited statement. He said, "The suicide rate is terrifying these days."

  Dolly followed with a non sequitur of her own. She said, "Homicide is one of the leading causes of death of children in America."

  Jane Wayne, who had returned to the bar with The Bad Czech, said, "When parents start killing their children, it's the most unnatural thing imaginable."

  "Kiddy porn, child murder, suicide," Cecil Higgins said, looking up from the bottom of his glass. "Maybe it's the end a the world."

  The odd thing was that they were not so much looking at each other when they made these uncharacteristic, unsolicited remarks. They were looking at The Gooned-out Vice Cop, who was looking at nothing but his own bifurcated image in the broken shards of pub mirror. His face was green from the neon, and his mirror image resembled a Cubist portrait. His eyes were like bullet holes.

  The Gooned-out Vice Cop had two shots of bar whiskey, never grimaced when he downed them, paid Leery, and left without comment.