"Come on, Fausto," the Oracle said. "It's only for the May deployment period."
Like the Oracle, Fausto still carried an old six-inch Smith & Wesson revolver, and the first night he was paired with this new partner, he'd pissed her off after she asked him why he carried a wheel gun when the magazine of her Beretta 9-millimeter held fifteen rounds, with one in the pipe.
"If you need more than six rounds to win a gunfight, you deserve to lose," he'd said to her that night, without a hint of a smile.
Fausto never wore body armor, and when she asked him about that too, he had said, "Fifty-four cops were shot and killed in the United States last year. Thirty-one were wearing a vest. What good did it do them?"
He'd caught her looking at his bulging chest that first night and said, "It's all me. No vest. I measure more around the chest than you do." Then he'd looked at her chest and said, "Way more."
That really pissed her off because the fact was, Budgie Polk's ordinarily small breasts were swollen at the moment. Very swollen. She had a four-month-old daughter at home being watched by Budgie's mother, and having just returned to duty from maternity leave, Budgie was actually a few pounds lighter than she had been before the pregnancy. She didn't need thinly veiled cracks about her breast size from this old geezer, not when her tits were killing her.
Her former husband, a detective working out of West L. A. Division, had left home three months before his daughter was born, explaining that their two-year marriage had been a "regrettable mistake." And that they were "two mature people." She felt like whacking him across the teeth with her baton, as well as half of his cop friends whom she'd run into since she came back to work. How could they still be pals with that dirtbag? She had handed him the keys to her heart, and he had entered and kicked over the furniture and ransacked the drawers like a goddamn crack-smoking burglar.
And why do women officers marry other cops in the first place? She'd asked herself the question a hundred times since that asshole dumped her and his only child, with his shit-eating promise to be prompt with child-support payments and to visit his daughter often "when she was old enough." Of course, with five years on the Job, Budgie knew in her heart the answer to the why-do-women-officers-marry-other-cops question.
When she got home at night and needed to talk to somebody about all the crap she'd had to cope with on the streets, who else would understand but another cop? What if she'd married an insurance adjuster? What would he say when she came home as she had one night last September after answering a call in the Hollywood Hills, where the owner of a three-million-dollar hillside home had freaked on ecstasy and crack and strangled his ten-year-old step-daughter, maybe because she'd refused his sexual advances, or so the detectives had deduced. Nobody would ever know for sure, because the son of a bitch blew half his head away with a four-inch Colt magnum while Budgie and her partner were standing on the porch of the home next door with a neighbor who said she was sure she'd heard a child screaming.
After hearing the gunshot, Budgie and her partner had run next door, pistols drawn, she calling for help into the keyed mike at her shoulder. And while help was arriving and cops were leaping out of their black-and-whites with shotguns, Budgie was in the house gaping at the body of the pajama-clad child on the master bedroom floor, ligature marks already darkening, eyes hemorrhaging, pajamas urine-soaked and feces-stained. The step-father was sprawled across the living room sofa, the back cushion soaked with blood and brains and slivers of bone.
And a woman there, the child's crack-smoking mother, was screaming at Budgie, "Help her! Resuscitate her! Do something!"
Over and over she yelled, until Budgie grabbed her by the shoulder and yelled back, "Shut the fuck up! She's dead!"
And that's why women officers seemed to always marry other cops. As poor as the marital success rate was, they figured it would be worse married to a civilian. Who would they talk to after seeing a murdered child in the Hollywood Hills? Maybe male cops didn't have to talk about such things when they got home, but women cops did.
Budgie had hoped that when she returned to duty, she might get teamed with a woman, at least until she stopped lactating. But the Oracle had said everything was screwed during this deployment period, with people off IOD from an unexpected rash of on-duty injuries, vacations, and so forth. He had said, she could work with Fausto until the next deployment period, couldn't she? All of LAPD life revolved around deployment periods, and Fausto was a reliable old pro who would never let a partner down, the Oracle said. But shit, twenty-eight days of this?
Fausto longed for the old days at Hollywood Station when, after working the night watch, they used to gather in the upper parking lot of the John Anson Ford Theater, across from the Hollywood Bowl, at a spot they called the Tree and have a few brews and commiserate. Sometimes badge bunnies would show up, and if one of them was sitting in a car, sucking face with some cop, you always could be sure that another copper would sneak up, look in the window, and yell, "Crime in progress!"
On one of those balmy summer nights under what the Oracle always called a Hollywood moon, Fausto and the Oracle had sat alone at the Tree on the hood of Fausto's VW bug, Fausto, a young cop back from Vietnam, and the Oracle, a seasoned sergeant but less than forty years old.
He'd surprised Fausto by saying, "Kid, look up there," referring to the lighted cross on top of the hill behind them. "That'd be a great place to have your ashes spread when it's your turn. Up there, looking out over the Bowl. But there's even a better place than that." And then the Oracle told young Fausto Gamboa about the better place, and Fausto never forgot.
Those were the grand old days at Hollywood Station. But after the last chief's "Reign of Terror," nobody dared to drive within a mile of the Tree. Nobody gathered to drink good Mexican brew. And in fact, this young generation of granola-crunching coppers probably worried about E. coli in their Evian. Fausto had actually seen them drinking organic milk. Through a freaking straw!
So here she was, Budgie thought, riding shotgun on Sunset Boulevard with this cranky geezer, easily older than her father, who would have been fifty-two years old had he lived. By the number of hash marks on Fausto's sleeve, he'd been a cop for more than thirty years, almost all of it in Hollywood.
To break the ice on that first night, she'd said, "How long you been on the Job, Fausto?"
"Thirty-four years," he said. "Came on when cops wore hats and you had to by god wear it when you were outta the car. And sap pockets were for saps, not cell phones." Then he paused and said, "Before you were on this planet."
"I've been on this planet twenty-seven years," she said. "I've been on the Job just over five."
The way he cocked his right eyebrow at her for a second and then looked away, he appeared to be saying, So who gives a shit about your history?
Well, fuck him, she thought, but just as night fell and she was hoping that somehow the pain in her breasts would subside, he decided to make a little small talk. He said, "Budgie, huh? That's a weird name."
Trying not to sound defensive, she said, "My mother was Australian. A budgie is an Australian parakeet. It's a nickname that stuck. She thought it was cute, I guess."
Fausto, who was driving, stopped at a red light, looked Budgie up and down, from her blond French-braided ponytail, pinned up per LAPD regulations, to her brightly shined shoes, and said, "You're what? Five eleven, maybe six feet tall in your socks? And weigh what? About as much as my left leg? She shoulda called you `Storkie.'"
Budgie felt it right then. Worse breast pain. These days a dog barks, a cat meows, a baby cries, she lactates. This bastard's gruff voice was doing it!
"Take me to the substation on Cherokee," she said.
"What for?" Fausto said.
"I'm hurting like hell. I got a breast pump in my war bag. I can do it in there and store the milk."
"Oh, shit!" Fausto said. "I don't believe it! Twenty-eight days of this?"
When they were halfway to the storefront, Fausto said, "Why don't w
e just go back to the station? You can do it in the women's locker room, for chrissake."
"I don't want anyone to know I'm doing this, Fausto," she said. "Not even any of the women. Somebody'll say something, and then I'll have to hear all the wise-ass remarks from the men. I'm trusting you on this."
"I gotta pull the pin," Fausto said rhetorically. "Over a thousand females on the Job? Pretty soon the freaking chief'll have double-X chromosomes. Thirty-four years is long enough. I gotta pull the pin."
After Fausto parked the black-and-white at the darkened storefront substation by Musso & Frank's restaurant, Budgie grabbed the carryall and breast pump from her war bag in the trunk, unlocked the door with her 999 key, and ran inside. It was a rather empty space with a few tables and chairs where parents could get information about the Police Activity League or sign up the kids for the Police Explorer Program. Sometimes there was LAPD literature lying around, in English, Spanish, Thai, Korean, Farsi, and other languages for the polyglot citizenry of the Los Angeles melting pot.
Budgie opened the fridge, intending to put her blue ice packs in the freezer, and left her little thermal bag beside the fridge, where she could pick it up after going off duty. She turned on the light in the john, deciding to pump in there sitting on the toilet lid instead of in the main room, in case Fausto got tired of waiting in the car and decided to stroll inside. But the smell of mildew was nauseating.
She removed the rover from her Sam Browne, then took off the gun belt itself and her uniform shirt, vest, and T-shirt. She draped everything on a little table in the bathroom and put the key on the sink. The table teetered under the weight, so she removed her pistol from the gun belt and laid it on the floor beside her rover and flashlight. After she'd been pumping for a minute, the pain started subsiding. The pump was noisy, and she hoped that Fausto wouldn't enter the storefront. Without a doubt he'd make some wisecrack when he heard the sucking noise coming from the bathroom.
Fausto had clicked onto the car's keyboard that they were code 6 at the storefront, out for investigation, so that they wouldn't get any calls until this freaking ordeal was over. And he was almost dozing when the hotshot call went out to 6-A-77 of Watch 3.
The PSR's urgent voice said, "All units in the vicinity and Six-Adam-Seventy-seven, shots fired in the parking lot, Western and Romaine. Possibly an officer involved. Six-A-Seventy-seven, handle code three."
Budgie was buttoning her shirt, just having stored the milk in the freezer beside her blue ice packs. She had slid the rover inside its sheath when Fausto threw open the front door and yelled, "OIS, Western and Romaine! Are you through?"
"Coming!" she yelled, grabbing the Sam Browne and flashlight while still buttoning her shirt, placing the milk and the freezer bags in the insulated carryall, and running for the door, almost tripping on a chair in the darkened office as she was fastening the Sam Browne around her waspish waist.
There were few things more urgent than an officer-involved shooting, and Fausto was revving the engine when she got to the car and she just had time to close the door before he was ripping out from the curb. She was rattled and sweating and when he slid the patrol car around a corner, she almost toppled and grabbed her seat belt and . . . oh, god!
Since the current chief had arrived, he'd decided to curtail traffic collisions involving officers busting through red lights and stop signs minus lights and siren while racing to urgent calls that didn't rate a code 3 status. So henceforth, the calls that in the old days would have rated only a code 2 status were upgraded to code 3. That meant that in Los Angeles today the citizens were always hearing sirens. The street cops figured it reminded the chief of his days as New York's police commissioner, all those sirens howling. The cops didn't mind a bit. It was a blast getting to drive code 3 all the time.
Because the call wasn't assigned to them, Fausto couldn't drive code 3, but neither the transplanted easterner who headed the Department nor the risen Christ could keep LAPD street cops from racing to an OIS call. Fausto would slow at an intersection and then roar through, green light or not, making cars brake and yield for the black-and-white. But by the time they got to Western and Romaine, five units were there ahead of them and all officers were out of their cars, aiming shotguns or nines at the lone car in the parking lot, where they could see someone ducking down on the front seat.
Fausto grabbed the shotgun and advanced to the car closest to the action, seeing it belonged to the surfers, Flotsam and Jetsam. When he looked over at Budgie trailing beside him, he wondered why she wasn't aiming hers.
"Where's your gun?" he said, then added, "Please don't tell me it's with the milk!"
"No, I have the milk," Budgie said.
"Just point your finger," he said and was stunned to see that, with a sick look on her face, she did it!
After a pause, he said, "I have a two-inch Smith in my war bag. Wanna borrow it?"
Still pointing her long, slender index finger, Budgie said, "Two-inch wheel guns can't hit shit. I'm better off this way."
Fausto came as close to a guffaw as he had in a long time. She had balls. And she was quick, he had to give her that. Then he saw the car door open, and two teenage Latino boys got out with their hands up and were quickly proned-out and cuffed.
The code 4 was broadcast by the PSR, meaning there was sufficient help at the scene. And to keep other eager cops from coming anyway, she added, "No officer involved."
Fausto saw one of those surfers, Flotsam, heading their way. Fausto thought about how back when he was a young copper, there was no way in hell bleached hair would be allowed. And what about his partner, Jetsam, swaggering along beside him with his dark blond hair all gelled in little spikes two inches long? What kind of shit was that? It was time to retire, Fausto thought again. Time to pull the pin.
Flotsam approached Fausto and said, "Security guard at the big building there got hassled by some homies when he caught them jacking up a car to steal the rims. Dumb ass capped one off in the air to scare them away. They jumped in the car and hid, afraid to come out."
"Sky shooting," Fausto snorted. "Guy's seen too many cowboy movies. Shouldn't allow those door shakers to carry anything more than a bag of stones and a slingshot."
"You should see the ride they were working on," Jetsam said, joining his partner. "Nineteen thirty-nine Chevy. Completely restored. Cherry. Bro, it is sweet!"
"Yeah?" Fausto was interested now. "I used to own an old 'thirty-nine when I was in high school." Turning to Budgie, he said, "Let's take a look for a minute." Then he remembered her empty holster and thought they'd better get away before somebody spotted it.
He said to Flotsam and Jetsam, "Just remembered something. Gotta go."
Budgie was thrown back in her seat as they sped away. When she shot him a guilty look, he said, "Please tell me that you didn't forget your key too."
"Oh shit," she said. "Don't you have your nine-nine-nine key?"
"Where's your freaking keys?"
"On the table in the john."
"And where is your freaking gun, may I ask?"
"On the floor in the john. By the keys."
"And what if my nine-nine-nine key's in my locker with the rest of my keys?" he said. "Figuring I didn't have to bother, since I have an eager young partner."
"You wouldn't leave your keys in your locker," Budgie said without looking at him. "Not you. You wouldn't trust a young partner, an old partner, or your family dog."
He looked at her then and seeing a tiny upturn at the corner of her lips thought, She really has some balls, this one. And some smart mouth. And of course she was right about him-he would never forget his keys.
Fausto just kept shaking his head as he drove back to the storefront substation. Then he grumbled more to himself than to her, "Freaking surfers. You see that gelled hair? Not in my day."
"That isn't gel," Budgie said. "Their hair is stiff and sticky from all the mai tai mix getting dumped on their heads in the beach bars they frequent. They're always sniffing
around like a pair of poodles and getting rejected. And please don't tell me it wouldn't be like that if there weren't so many women officers around. Like in your day."
Fausto just grunted and they rode without speaking for a while, pretending to be scanning the streets as the moon was rising over Hollywood.
Budgie broke the silence when she said, "You won't snitch me off to the Oracle, will you? Or for a big laugh to the other guys?"
With his eyes focused on the streets, he said, "Yeah, I go around ratting out partners all the time. For laughs."
"Is there a bathroom window in that place?" she asked. "I didn't notice."
"I don't think there's any windows," he said. "I hardly ever been in there. Why?"
"Well, if I'm wrong about you and you don't have a key, and if there's a window, you could boost me up and I could pry it open and climb in."
His words laden with sarcasm, Fausto said, "Oh, well, why not just ask me if I'd climb in the window because you're a new mommy and can't risk hurting yourself?"
"No," she said, "you could never get your big ass through any window, but I could if you'd boost me up. Sometimes it pays to look like a stork."
"I got my keys," he said.
"I figured," she said.
For the first time, Budgie saw Fausto nearly smile, and he said, "It hasn't been a total loss. At least we got the milk."
At about the same time that Fausto Gamboa and Budgie Polk were gathering her equipment at the substation on Cherokee, Farley Ramsdale and Olive Oyl were home at Farley's bungalow, sitting on the floor, having smoked some of the small amount of crystal they had left. Scattered all around them on the floor were letters they had fished out of seven blue mailboxes on that very busy evening of work.
Olive was wearing the glasses Farley had stolen for her at the drugstore and was laboriously reading through business mail, job applications, notices of unpaid bills, detached portions of paid bills, and various other correspondence. Whenever she came across something they could use, she would pass it to Farley, who was in a better mood now, sorting some checks they could possibly trade and nibbling on a saltine because it was time to put something in his stomach.
Hollywood Station (2006) Page 4