Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Moon

“Not since… not for a couple of weeks,” he said.

They took their coffee outside, and Sergeant Hermann said, “I’d like to ask you something personal. Did you go to temple after Dana Vaughn was killed?”

“What?” Nate said sharply. “Has the federal judge put a box on our ratings reports for religious attendance?”

“I’m just saying.” Sergeant Hermann held up her palm in a peace gesture.

Hollywood Nate took a sip of coffee and said, “Okay, since I went to temple for the first time since my bar mitzvah and said my half-assed version of Kaddish when the Oracle died, maybe I oughtta do more mumbo-jumbo to mourn another Gentile cop. I guess it’s no dopier than touching the Oracle’s picture every day, and we all do that. So what’s your point, Sergeant?”

“That sometimes gestures like that help us to keep old connections with ourselves, that’s all,” Sergeant Hermann said. “So we don’t go adrift and get lost.”

Nate was silent, but Sergeant Hermann had more. She said, “I’m gonna tell you what nobody but a woman who wears this badge truly understands. Thirty-seven years ago, when I served at the old stations, there weren’t even proper locker rooms for women. I remember at one station I dressed in the janitor’s broom closet. There was an air vent in there, and I could hear the guys in their locker room talking about us women, and what they said wasn’t nice. We woman got buried in shit every day and pretended it was sunshine. We had to be better than the men but keep our mouths shut so they wouldn’t notice when we passed them by. To think I’ve lived long enough to see cup holders in police cars.”

“Is this about Dana?” Nate said impatiently.

“It’s about you,” Sergeant Hermann said. “You don’t get it that Dana Vaughn and all the other women with time on the Job understand our history because they still live it to some extent. She was senior to you. She was on the sergeants list and might’ve been your supervisor one day. It’s not your job to stay Velcro-close to a partner unless you’re a training officer with a probationer. If you’d been partnered with a man that night, you’d still be feeling deep sorrow but not what else you’re feeling.”

“You don’t know what I’m feeling,” Nate said.

“Nathan,” she said, “there was danger out there that night, and your job was to stop the son of a bitch who started shooting, and you did it. You wouldn’t be punishing yourself now if you’d been partnered with a senior officer like R.T. Dibney, or Johnny Lanier, or one of the surfers, because you can’t get past thinking of Dana Vaughn as a woman. And thinking that you shoulda been Super Glued to her before, during, and after the gunfight. Well, son, she wasn’t only a woman, she was a cop, and a good one. And she’d be ashamed of you for feeling you somehow failed her. And she’d hate it because that… diminishes her.”

After a long pause, he said, “Anything else, Sergeant Hermann?”

“Yeah,” she said, tossing her cup in a receptacle. “Why’re old farts like me such creatures of habit? Why the hell didn’t I take you to Starbucks? I won fifty bucks in a scratch-off yesterday. I could afford that freaking designer coffee.”

When they were back at Hollywood Station and Nate had returned to the front desk, Sergeant Hermann entered the sergeants’ room, where Sergeant Murillo was writing a report.

She said to him, “Lee, how about we let Nate work third man in a car for the rest of the night rather than vegetating at the desk? Maybe with Flotsam and Jetsam?”

Sergeant Murillo considered it and said, “Very good idea.”

After placing a call for 6-X-32 to come to the station, Sergeant Murillo called Hollywood Nate to the sergeants’ room and conjured a quick story, saying, “Nate, I just got another call from a citizen that the Street Characters are doing some real aggressive panhandling in front of Grauman’s. One of them grabbed a woman by the arm to complain about his tip, and another got in somebody’s face and intimidated them. How about you go up there with Flotsam and Jetsam and walk the boulevard for a few hours? Maybe a show of force will convince Batman, Darth Vader, and the rest to curtail their dark and evil ways.”

The only thing that Sergeant Lee Murillo said to Flotsam and Jetsam privately was “Take Nate with you for a few hours. Help him get his mojo back.”

“How do we do that, boss?” Flotsam asked.

“Be your usual zany selves,” said Sergeant Murillo.

Twenty minutes later, Nate was sitting in the backseat of 6-X-32 when it parked on Orange Drive. The panhandlers, hustlers, and purse picks didn’t like the sight of three cops getting out to stroll among the tourist throngs, so a few of the curb creatures decided to call it a night, pronto.

One of these was Two-Dollar Bill, so named because you know he exists but you seldom run into him. He was a bug-eyed scarecrow Nate’s age who looked older than Sergeant Hermann. His grille was gapped and yellow, his eyes were rheumy, and the rusty tumbleweed frizz growing from his head was sprinkled with psoriasis. Two-Dollar Bill was the kind of tweaker who was better off in jail, and a part of him knew that, because in recent months he was always unconsciously running to, instead of away from, the law. And nowadays he was always ready to allow searches and ready to make admissions from the git-go.

“Oh, shit!” Flotsam said when Two-Dollar Bill practically ran into them.

Since the physical condition of this tweaker made cops automatically glove-up, Flotsam reached into his pocket and drew on a latex glove in case touching was necessary. “Bill,” he said, “somehow I think you ain’t never gonna earn a blood bank T-shirt.”

“Just going home,” Two-Dollar Bill said. “Don’t wanna miss American Idol .”

“It ain’t on, Bill,” Flotsam said. Then to Nate, “Last year we popped Two-Dollar Bill when he had a pay-and-owe sheet stuffed in one sock and thirty-three grams of flake in the other. They kicked Bill outta jail too soon.”

Two-Dollar Bill said, “It wasn’t my flake or my owe sheet. I was holding it for some guy. I don’t know his real name but everybody calls him Planters.”

“Why do they call him Planters?” Flotsam asked.

“Because his body’s shaped like a peanut,” said Two-Dollar Bill.

“I don’t suppose your socks are dope-free tonight, are they, Bill?” Jetsam said, but Flotsam quickly clamped his gloved hand over the tweaker’s mouth to keep him from answering.

“Didn’t you learn anything in court last time, Bill?’ Flotsam said sotto. “Cop a ’tude or something. We got other business tonight.”

Flotsam shot Jetsam a look that said wasting their time by popping Bill again was not gonna help Hollywood Nate.

Jetsam nodded subtly, and when Flotsam took his hand away, Two-Dollar Bill said, “You won’t find nothing in my socks but a few tits-up bedbugs. I can’t keep them outta my socks and underwear. When I got underwear.”

“Home is where the heart is, dude,” Flotsam said, giving Two-Dollar Bill a little shove, sending him scurrying off into the night.

While they continued along the boulevard, Flotsam and Jetsam were as garrulous as usual, talking about getting Nate out to Malibu for evening surfing, but Nate was generally unresponsive, still mulling over the import of what Sergeant Hermann had said to him.

As they approached the Kodak Centre, Flotsam said to him, “Dude, when was the last time you rented a midget to bowl with?”

“I only did it once,” Nate said.

“We been thinking,” Jetsam said. “If we gave you the rental fee, could you get your midget and bring him back to the bowling alley in the Kodak Centre on Wednesday night? We figure he’d attract enough bowling alley Sallys for all of us.”