Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

“What?” Ronnie said.

“All I said was,” Jetsam said to Flotsam, “you should cap the little surf Nazi if you wanna turn him into part of the food chain. Not torpedo him till he’s almost dead in the foamy.”

“There’s just too damn many languages spoken in this town,” Ronnie said rhetorically. “Did you bring me out here for today’s surfing highlights, or what? I got a meeting inside.”

“Take a few minutes tonight or tomorrow night,” Jetsam said quickly. “Phone the woman about the Arabs at the repair shop. They got the joint vacuum-packed with some slammin’ SUVs. I think they gotta be hot. You could warn them about blocking the alley and maybe take down some license and VIN numbers.”

“I’m not a detective,” Ronnie said. “Call the auto theft detail.”

“Been there,” Jetsam said. “They’re about as lazy as Compassionate Charlie Gilford. A blocked alley affects everybody in the apartment house. I need a quality-of-life cop to get this thing kick-started.”

“That’s not my area,” Ronnie said.

“You’re the only Crow I know real well,” Jetsam said, “except for Hollywood Nate. This is a job for a real cop. They couldn’t have morphed you into a teddy bear already. If you want, we could meet you tomorrow at the body shop as backup, say around sixteen hundred hours? Right before they close.”

“ You can meet her,” Flotsam said to his partner. “I go on duty at seventeen-fifteen.”

“Dude…,” Jetsam said in exasperation to his partner.

“This one ain’t on my desktop,” Flotsam explained to Ronnie. “Him and me, we’re close, but we ain’t Velcro close. I ain’t down for this one.”

“Okay, okay!” Ronnie said, relenting. “I’ll give her a call later tonight and maybe I can stop by the body shop tomorrow afternoon. If I can, I’ll give you a call on your cell. Will you be hanging ten at Malibu or remaining on dry land?”

“I’ll be home,” Jetsam said. “And ready to jam.”

After Ronnie went back inside, Flotsam said, “You know you wouldn’t be doing any of this if Ronnie was a yuckbabe instead of totally mint. Get over yourself, dude. She ain’t never gonna be your fuck puppet.”

“This might be too much for you to download, bro,” Jetsam said, “but this ain’t about hose cookies. This is about what the Oracle always said to us: Doing good police work is the most fun we’ll ever have in our entire lives. I know there’s something going down in that repair shop. And whadda you got to do tomorrow except crawl along the sand and sniff around some salty sister whose whole life is smoking blunts and chugging coolers?”

Flotsam thought it over and said, “Okay, dude, you’re totally frenzied. I guess we better stop there on the way to work. Just to get it outta your system.”

“You’re down?” Jetsam said.

“I’m down,” Flotsam said, with no more enthusiasm than Jetsam had heard from the auto theft detective or from Ronnie Sinclair.

After they were back cruising their beat, Jetsam said dreamily, “Dude, ain’t there something about Ronnie that’s like…like being all flattened in dead water, and, like, here comes a beautiful peel breaking so clean from the top? And next thing, you’re flying down the lane smelling that Sex Wax, and you get the blood surge? Know what I’m saying, bro?”

“You could LoJack that chick and still not park her in your crib,” Flotsam said. “Look for a date on MySpace. She’s too tall for you.”

“We’re about the same height.”

“She puts on sky-high stilettos, then what? You’ll look like Sonny and Cher.”

“But she’s, like, smokin’ hot,” Jetsam said. “I bet that girl and me could put some antic in romantic! I’ll bet she could make me harder than Gramma’s biscuits!”

“You two would look like Tom Cruise and every babe he marries,” Flotsam said dryly.

Officer Tony Silva got the meeting off to a good start with his soothing and reassuring manner. He’d instructed Ronnie to maintain a “calm and professional smile,” no matter what happened. But he was getting close to the hazardous part of the meeting, when questions from the floor were permitted.

One of the eldest of the regulars, who couldn’t get to the bathroom fast enough at the prior meeting, was responsible for a rules change. Tony Silva’s Crow assistant, Officer Rita Kravitz, whose trendy eyeglasses said “I am smarter than you,” was asked by Tony Silva to help with the cleanup last time, but she said to him, “Instead of you sitting up there popping bubble wrap while you look calm and professional, go find yourself a goddamn mop!”

Cuckoo’s Nest Rule 1 was enacted: “No punch is to be served at Wednesday meetings.”

Ronnie was warned about “Deputy Dom,” always the first to arrive and the last to leave. He was in his sixties, with a fringe of gray hair, and always wore an odorous, food-stained security guard uniform.

“Dom was absent for the first time last week,” Tony Silva told Ronnie. “He was in jail, but the City Attorney’s Office decided not to prosecute. He tried to pepper spray an entire Laotian family: father, mother, four kids, and a grandma. He said none of them were carrying passports, and that made them security risks.”

Ronnie learned that the cross-eyed guy in a bowling shirt with “Regent Electrical Supply” across the back and “Henry” over the front pocket was the one they’d dubbed “Henry Tourette.” He was an unintentional disrupter, because he’d yell out “Fucking-A-Bertha!” to every single statement offered by anyone. It was worrisome in that it provoked angry retorts from other borderline personalities.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that the Crows could do about any of it, not in the land of diversity, where all behavior that was not overtly criminal must be understood and respected. Where people were never to be considered “sick,” but only “different.”

The sole “weapon” that the Crows found somewhat effective was the Community Service Completion Certificate. The CRO sergeant first encountered it when a young man who had attended meetings for three months without ever uttering a peep approached the sergeant and presented him with a folded document, saying it was given to him by a motorcycle officer.

“The officer wrote me a jaywalking ticket on Hollywood Boulevard,” the young man explained. “My mother paid the ticket, and then the officer stopped me again a week later in the same place.”

“For jaywalking?” the sergeant asked.

“Yes, but this time I told him about the voices.”

“What voices?”

“The ones that tell me when to cross the street.”

“What did the motor officer say about that?”

“He said, ‘Why don’t the voices ever tell you to cross on a green light?’”

“That sounds like Officer F.X. Mulroney,” the sergeant said. “Did he write you another ticket?”

“No, he gave me this certificate and told me that I would have to attend every Wednesday night Hollywood Community Meeting for ninety days, and to stay away from Hollywood Boulevard. And if I did it, you’d sign my certificate.”

Thus, a tradition was started. The CRO sergeant signed the “certificate” and announced to the entire assembly that the young man had completed three months’ community service for jaywalking, and the other members at the meeting gave him a standing ovation.

Things started well at Ronnie’s first meeting. Everyone seemed calm, even bored. They ate copious amounts of donuts, and Ronnie later wondered if elevated blood sugar had something to do with what happened later. Things started going sideways when one of the homeowners, a meticulously groomed gentleman with a dyed transplant, stood and said, “I’d like something done about the gay men who park in front of my house after the bars close and commit sex acts.”