Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Moon

As Jetsam led the handcuffed miscreants out to their car to await the arrival of the coroner’s van, Flotsam bought a pint of Jack for Trombone Teddy to show that generosity still exists in this ungrateful, goddamn world.

The woman officer with the smartest mouth at Hollywood Station was Dana Vaughn, and Hollywood Nate was stuck with her for at least one deployment period, an unhappy way to spend his first month back on the midwatch. He’d spent a year at the Community Relations Office (acronym CRO, pronounced “crow”), tending to touchy-feely quality-of-life issues and getting a little bump in pay for the easy work. But when fellow crow Bix Ramstead shot himself after being involved in a scandal, a lot of the fun was gone from the job and Nate felt like returning to real police work. Besides, he needed to work nights in order to keep his days free to pursue and torment casting agents. At age thirty-seven, it was now or never.

With sixteen years on the LAPD, Nate Weiss figured he’d have to stick around for at least four more years to ensure a vested pension, but one he couldn’t draw until the age of fifty, which kept most cops on the job long past twenty years. He wondered what he’d do if his acting career finally caught fire in the next four years? Would it be worth it to resign from the LAPD and lose that pension for an uncertain career as an actor? He might damn well need the pension after he turned fifty and his pecs were falling and he couldn’t suck in his gut any longer. Hollywood Nate felt that he was way too handsome to make it as an older character actor, and the mere thought of it made Nate unconsciously pass his hand over his abdominals, well covered by a T-shirt, a Kevlar vest, and his uniform shirt.

Dana Vaughn, also a P2, who was driving 6-X-76’s Ford Crown Vic late that afternoon, hadn’t missed it. She never missed a thing, which was one of the reasons Hollywood Nate didn’t quite feel relaxed around her.

After noticing that subtle move to his belly, Dana said, “Yeah, you’re ripped, Nate. Abs to die for. Must be tough being as smokin’ hot as you. Who cleans all the mirrors in your house?”

“I just have a slight stomachache is all,” said Hollywood Nate lamely.

“Sure, honey,” Dana said with that throaty, tinkling chuckle of hers, which irritated him all the more because he actually liked the sound of it.

When he muttered, “I’d sure hate to work for you when you make sergeant,” she laughed, and that pissed him off more than when she snarked him about his vanity.

Another thing he disliked about Dana Vaughn was that she called him honey in the way that his aunt Ruthie called him honey. Like the old woman at the donut stand in Farmers Market, his usual destination for a croissant and coffee in the morning.

Dana was six years older than Nate, with twenty-one years on the job, but she acted like she was from the WW II generation or something. Almost every damn thing she said to him somehow sounded patronizing and made Nate feel like a kid. And to make matters worse, she still looked good. She was fit, with great shoulders and only faint lines starting around her alert golden-brown eyes and at the sides of her mouth when she smirked at him.

Dana used the workout room nearly as much as Nate, always in a tight tank and spandex shorts. She didn’t even bother to dye her salt-and-pepper ear-length bob, and it looked just right on her, emphasizing the woman she was, not the girl she had once been. If she’d been what the surfer cops called a yuckbabe or one of those always griping about “JFH,” meaning just-fucked hairdo, instead of an older woman who still looked hot and knew it, Nate figured she’d have been easier to take.

The first time Nate had ever seen Dana was in the station parking lot when he happened to be loading his war bag and shotgun into his shop after he’d just come back to patrol from his stint at the Community Relations Office. Dana was also new to Watch 5, the midwatch, and had been working for the first time that night with young Harris Triplett, a phase-three probationer whose field training officer was on a day off. Since the P1 was in the last phase of his eighteen months of probation, he could be put with a P2 like Dana instead of with a P3 FTO. In fact, Harris was scheduled to complete his probation in a matter of days, and Nate had intended to buy him a burger to celebrate.

Nate remembered seeing her dead-stare the kid just before she got behind the wheel that first night, and he heard her say to Harris, “Boy, I need to know right out front. Do you intend to fanny burp in my presence or in our shop?”

“Of course not, ma’am!” Harris Triplett said, stunned.

Then Dana said, deadpan, “Do you intend to crank up loogies? You got loogie problems, I suggest you swallow them. To spit them out the window and have them blow back on our shop would be highly unprofessional and might jeopardize your probation.”

“I don’t do things like that!” Harris said.

“I want you to remember a few basics about curb creatures,” she said. “Rock cocaine is either in their mouths or in their butts. Watch the breathing of the chest for a tip-off. It’s a built-in lie detector. And throw their keys on the roof of their car if you’re gonna return to our shop to run their records.”

“Yes, ma’am. Okay,” Harris said.

“And if they got booty rock, it’s your job to deal with it. There are dark and scary places where I won’t go.”

“Right,” Harris said earnestly.

Dana wasn’t through. “One more thing: Most males have no shame, but you need to remember there’re EEO laws on the books regarding age and gender. Do you resent working with me because my badge and handcuffs’re older than you? And do you think you can get away with making sexual innuendos and maybe touching me in an inappropriate way because I’m an old woman?”

His face flushed, Harris Triplett looked around for help at that moment, and the passing surfer cops stepped in to save him.

“She’s just honking on you, dude,” Flotsam said to the boot.

Still deadpan, Dana continued, “On second thought, I’m pretty much EEO-proof. You can fanny burp if you want to, but no loogies. And about the sexual harassment, if I happen to touch you in a lewd or offensive way, you have every right to complain to the watch commander.” A long pause. “But tell me you won’t, honey. Please tell me you won’t!”

“Get in the car, bro. She won’t hurt you… very much,” Jetsam said to the utterly bewildered rookie, and for the first time, Hollywood Nate got to see Dana Vaughn flash that annoying half-smile of hers when she slid in behind the wheel.

Remembering that episode, Hollywood Nate had to admit that Dana was sometimes entertaining, even though she could be a major pain in the ass. A good thing about her was that, like Nate, she preferred Starbucks latte with biscotti to the usual Winchell’s cuppa joe with two sugars, two creams, and a raspberry jelly donut. Moreover, Nate knew that she’d been in a fatal shooting the month prior, when she’d worked Watch 3.

That late-night watch was a graveyard shift for three days a week, lasting twelve hours. It overlapped the hours of the four-day-a-week, ten-hour midwatch. Two weeks after the shooting, Dana had asked to be assigned to the midwatch, and her request was granted. As an authentic gunfighter and a senior officer on the sergeants list, she was entitled to great respect.

For twelve years prior to her assignment to night-watch patrol at Hollywood Station, Dana Vaughn had been away from patrolling the streets. She’d worked at the police academy for eight years as an instructor, teaching computer classes and report writing and reviewing the academic curriculum. Then, after leaving the academy, she’d spent four more years across the street from Hollywood Station in the Hollywood narcotics unit, housed in a small building at the corner of De Longpre and Wilcox. There she did mostly administrative chores and helped the UC coordinators who handled the undercover officers.