Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

Leonard Stilwell, who knew something about Hollywood magic, watched an intent tourist with a purse dangling from a strap over her shoulder snap a photo of her husband, who was posing with Catwoman. This, while a lean and nimble teenage boy expertly opened her purse and removed her wallet, disappearing into the crowd before she’d even asked Catwoman to pose for one more.

When it was time to pay the amazon for the photo, the woman said, “Oh, Mel! Melvin! My wallet’s gone!”

Leonard hoped he’d never have to resort to the risky trade of purse and pocket picking, and as he sidled through the throngs, he heard Catwoman say, “I hope you don’t think I dress up and pose for free, Melvin. Nobody got your wallet, did they?”

When Leonard saw the Hulk, he was hopeful. He knew that the Hulk was a pal of Bugs Bunny because he once saw them leave together in the same car. But the Hulk was very busy at the moment with no less than six Asian tourists lining up to take photos with him. Ditto for Mr. Incredible, Elmo, and even Count Dracula, whose blood-dripping leer was too scary for photos with little kids.

Then Leonard spotted him. Bugs Bunny was doing a double shoot with the Wolf Man, both of them sandwiching an obese, fifty-something woman wearing a sequined “I Love Hollywood” baseball cap, her chubby hands caressing the heads of both Street Characters.

When Bugs had collected his tip from the woman, Leonard approached him and whispered in a two-foot ear, “I need some rock.”

“How much you got?” Bugs said.

“I can spend two bills. You good with that?”

“Good as gold, dude. I got some rock, and some ice-that’s-nice if you wanna do crystal. Wait one minute and follow me into the Kodak Center. I gotta take care of Pluto, then you.”

When Leonard looked back on that moment later in the evening, he thought it must have been his sixth sense as a burglar that saved him. All those years watching, waiting, studying people. Asking himself things like, Is that greaser looking at me the way one of the 18th Street crew would look at me? Or the way an undercover cop would look at me? Or, why is that nigger hooker working this corner tonight, when I never saw her or any hooker here before? Did that fucking little junkie from Pablo’s Tacos tell the cops that I’d be taking off his boss’s store tonight with the alarm code he gave me? Is that sneaky whore really a cop, or what?

Leonard did not like the look of the fat tourist in a new white tee with the Hollywood sign emblazoned across the front and back. Leonard didn’t like his L.A. Dodgers baseball cap either. It was too well worn to belong to an out-of-towner. The bottom-heavy guy looked like he was trying too hard to appear touristy, and he wasn’t quite fat enough for Leonard to say he couldn’t be a cop.

Leonard stayed far back and was one hundred feet away when he spotted Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto, their huge heads under their arms, standing outside a restroom. He saw the buy go down. And he saw the fat guy take off his Dodgers cap. And Leonard knew that was a signal, for sure.

The fat guy ran straight at them, and three other undercover cops came at them from other directions. Bugs Bunny tried to dump the meth from his head by tipping it upside down. Pluto took the rock cocaine he’d bought and threw it backward across the floor.

The fat guy pulled a pistol from under his tee and yelled, “Police! Drop your heads and raise your paws!”

So far, Ronnie Sinclair and Bix Ramstead had experienced an uneventful ten hours. In furtherance of their quality-of-life mission, they’d been involved in crackdowns on some of the nightclubs on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards that were generating numerous complaints from other businesses and residents in the area. Nightclub customers parked wherever they found curb space, ignoring the color of curbs or whether portions of their cars might extend into the driveways of residential property. The nightclub patrons, especially those who frequented the topless clubs where booze was sold, also urinated and vomited on sidewalks and in planted areas and threw trash anywhere that was handy.

Those who preferred all-nude dancers would emerge with more sobriety, since ordinances prohibited booze to be served in those clubs, but the more enterprising customers found ways to flavor their soft drinks and setups with secreted containers of liquor. Some of the customers went so far as to make frequent trips to the restroom, where they’d withdraw plastic bottles of spirits from under their clothing and fill their mouths before returning to their tables, then spit it into their half-empty soft drinks. Bolder ones just poured it under the table into the setups. Still others just forgot about booze and ingested or snorted other drugs, which did the trick well enough.

The vice unit would work these clubs and cite or arrest for all sorts of violations, from prostitution to alcoholic beverage violations, but Ronnie and Bix were attending to the needs of the neighbors. In the short time she’d been a Crow, Ronnie was already getting to know the roster of chronic complainers by name. One of these was Mrs. Vronsky, who owned a twenty-nine-unit apartment building near the Leopard Lounge, one of the clubs that used the word class in all of its commercials.

“Officer Ramstead, thank you for being so prompt,” the old woman said in slightly accented English when they found her standing in front of her building. She was in her mideighties, short, still full-figured, her white hair coiffed, and she wore slacks with a matching jacket that Ronnie thought would exceed her own budget.

“Of course, Mrs. Vronsky,” Bix said. “I’d like you to meet one of our new community relations officers. This is Officer Sinclair.”

“Very nice to meet you, dear,” Mrs. Vronsky said, then turned to Bix. “I have asked that man Mr. Aziz a thousand times to tell his employees not to park in our spaces here, but when they see a parking space open, they grab it. And then my tenants come home at midnight after getting off the swing shift, and what happens?”

“You have to call Hollywood Station to have them cited or towed,” Bix said sympathetically. “I do understand, Mrs. Vronsky.”

“I’ve been patient, Officer Ramstead,” she said, her pale eyes watery. “But the man ignores my calls.”

“We’ll just have to keep citing and towing, won’t we?” Bix said, patting the old woman gently on the shoulder. “But for now we’ll go have a talk with him.”

“Thank you, Officer Ramstead,” she said. “The next time I see you I shall have some of my homemade piroshki. Just the way you like it.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Vronsky,” Bix said. “Officer Sinclair is in for a treat.”

When they were walking toward the front door of the Leopard Lounge, Ronnie said, “The look that old lady was giving you said, If only I were forty years younger. As it is, she’d gum you to death given half a chance.”

Bix smiled and said, “It’s just as easy to be patient with them. Last year she donated a thousand dollars to the L.A. Police Memorial fund along with a thank-you to ‘that nice Officer Ramstead at Hollywood Station.’ The boss gave me an attaboy for that. Wait’ll you meet Mrs. Ortega. She’s Puerto Rican and always makes me sit down and eat some baked fish and rice. And she never fails to suck the eyeballs out of the fish head.”

“Yikes!” Ronnie said, then followed Bix through the darkened doorway into the nightclub, finding the Leopard Lounge to be more posh than she’d imagined.

A burly Latino bouncer nodded at the uniformed cops and stepped aside when they entered. There were three bartenders pouring drinks with both hands, and a busboy was running trays of dirty glasses through swinging doors into the kitchen. The place was dark, but light enough that all customers and their tableside activities could be monitored by undercover cops as well as by the bouncer. The banquettes looked comfortable and the tabletops were clean, thanks to Latino busboys in white shirts and bow ties, working hard.