Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

Her lipstick was a creamy raspberry to match her jersey, and her perfect teeth were probably whiter than nature intended. Nate blurted, “I won’t call you ma’am if you don’t call me Officer. My name is Nate Weiss.”

She had him and she knew it. The smile widened and she said, “Do you patrol this area all the time, Nate?”

“Actually, I’m what the other cops call a Crow. I work the Community Relations Office. I don’t do regular patrol.”

“You don’t look like a crow,” Margot Aziz said. “More like an eagle, I would say.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d blushed, but his face felt hot. He said, “Yeah, I do have a bit of a beak, don’t I?”

“No, my husband has a beak,” she said. “Your nose is barely aquiline. It’s very strong and manly. Actually, quite…beautiful.”

He wasn’t even aware that he’d handed her back her license and registration. “Well,” he said, “drive carefully.”

Before he could turn to leave, she said, “Nate, what does a Crow do?”

He said, “We deal with quality-of-life issues so that the officers on patrol don’t have to. You know, stuff like chronic-noise complaints, graffiti, homeless encampments up near where you live. Stuff like that.”

“Homeless encampments!” she cried, like calling a winning Bingo. “This is an amazing coincidence because I was going to call Hollywood Station about that very thing. I can see them from my patio. They make noise up there and they light campfires. It’s terrible. How lucky to run into you like this. Sometime I’d like you to come by my house and let me point them out. Maybe you can do something about it.”

“Sure!” Nate said. “Absolutely. When, today?”

“Not today, Nate,” she said quickly. “Can I have your phone number?”

“Of course,” Nate said, reaching for his business cards. “I can come and talk to you-and to your husband-anytime up to eight P.M., when I usually go home.”

“My husband and I are separated, in the middle of a divorce,” Margot Aziz said. “You’ll just be talking to me when you come.”

Nate Weiss couldn’t give her the card fast enough. He had ordered a custom-made business card with the Hollywood sign across the front of it, alongside an LAPD badge. And under that was his name, serial number, and the city phone number he’d been assigned by the CRO sergeant.

He hesitated for only a few seconds, then wrote his private cell number on the back of the card and said to Margot Aziz, “It might be better for you to call me on my cell. Sometimes we don’t pick up the calls on our city line right away, but I always pick up my private cell.”

“Good,” she said. “Let’s keep it personal, Nate.” And she showed that gleaming smile again, then turned her head to look for eastbound traffic. Her amazing hair caught another sunbeam and danced for Nate Weiss. And she drove away.

A few minutes after he was back in his car, Nate thought, That Hills bunny just flirted her way out of a ticket that I was never going to write in the first place, and I feel like a chump. Separated from her husband? She’ll show that card to him tonight over dinner and they’ll both have a laugh. On Nate Weiss!

Then he thought about her surname, Aziz. Some kind of Middle East name. She was married to an Arab, maybe. It didn’t feel good for a Jewish cop to think of this fantastic woman married to a rich Arab. Nate Weiss wondered how that might have happened.

After leaving Hollywood Nate, Margot Aziz drove to a nightclub called the Leopard Lounge on Sunset Boulevard. It was a strip club but topless only, so liquor could be sold. Her estranged husband also owned a totally nude strip club, but in that one, no alcoholic beverages were allowed by the state. In that nightclub, Ali Aziz had to make money from hugely overpriced soft drinks, minimums, and cover charges. He spent most of his time in the Leopard Lounge but frequently drove to the other club to pick up the cash from his manager.

Margot had made a phone call to be sure that Ali would not be at the Leopard Lounge at this time of day, and she avoided the Mexican employees preparing for the early-evening business, heading for the dressing room. It was not a typical strip club with dim lights and dark colors. Not like Ali’s totally nude nightclub, which had faux-leather banquettes, faux-granite columns, and faux-walnut soffits. That one was claustrophobic, with nude prints in gilded frames that Ali thought would provoke fantasies and erections. Margot had been in that kind of strip club often enough.

She’d designed the Leopard Lounge interior herself, despite her husband’s complaints about how much money she was spending. This one featured woven-leather chairs surrounding the stage, with terra-cotta walls and a sandy tile pattern cutting through chocolate brown carpeting that Ali had insisted on because he’d gotten it cheap. This club had a more open feeling, more inviting to female patrons. At least that was Margot’s intent when she did the interior design.

She opened the dressing-room door without knocking, and a lovely Amerasian, twenty-five years old, wearing a terry robe and sitting at the makeup table applying eyeliner, looked up.

“What time’s he coming back, Jasmine?” Margot asked.

She walked up behind the young woman and swept Jasmine’s long black hair onto one of her surgically enhanced breasts, whose nipples and areolas were rouged. Then she massaged the dancer’s neck and shoulders, kissing the right shoulder lightly.

“About seven, seven-thirty,” Jasmine said, placing her delicate fingers over Margot’s. “Not so hard,” she said. “I strained my shoulder on that goddamn pole last night.” Then she asked, “Have any luck with your friend? Will he be visiting again soon?”

“Not as soon as I’d like,” Margot said, stopping the shoulder rub and sitting on a chair next to the makeup table. “He gets attacks of remorse. I think I can pull him out of it, but how soon, I can’t say.”

“Shit!” Jasmine said.

“Don’t be discouraged,” Margot said. “I had a lucky break today.”

“Yeah, what kinda break?” Jasmine said listlessly.

“A cop stopped me for a ticket,” Margot said. “Of course he didn’t write it. A handsome, horny cop with no wedding ring on his finger.”

“So what? It’s not too hard for someone like you to talk a cop out of a ticket. I’ve done it myself.”

“There was something about this one,” Margot said. “I think it could work with him.”

“A substitute?”

“If a second-stringer is needed,” Margot said. “But let’s not give up on our number-one draft pick. He’s perfect.”

“Did today’s cop try to make a date?”

“I have his cell number,” Margot said. “If we need it.”

“Tell me something about your husband that I gotta know,” Jasmine said.

“What’s that?”

“Does that fucking Arab asshole ever get enough blow jobs?”

WATCH 5 HIT THE STREETS with a bang that evening. The bang came from a twelve-year cop with a sporty blonde haircut, rosy dumpling cheeks, and just a hint of makeup, whose Sam Browne belt was rumored to be a size 44. Gert Von Braun had recently transferred to Hollywood from Central Division, where she’d been in an officer-involved shooting that cops refer to as a “good” shooting. Gert had encountered an armed bandit running out of a skid row liquor store, loot and gun in hand, at the same moment that Gert, working alone in a report car, was pulling up in front. Steering with her left hand, Gert had fired one-handed through the open passenger window and hit the parolee-at-large with four out of five rounds, killing him instantly, thus making herself a celebrity gunslinger at Central Station.