Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

And Hollywood Nate had given up suggesting that field training officers stop making the new P1 probationers call them sir or ma’am, as most did. The more rigid and GI of the FTOs seemed to be those who’d never served in the military and they wouldn’t think of letting their probies wear the gung-ho boots before finishing their eighteen-month probation. Nate would privately tell the rookies to forget about boots, that their feet would thank them for it. And Nate never forgot that the Oracle had never spit-shined his shoes.

Before the midwatch hit the streets, every cop would ritually touch the picture of the Oracle for luck, even new officers who’d never known him. It hung on the wall by the door of the roll call room. In the photo their late sergeant was in uniform, his retro gray crew cut freshly trimmed, smiling the way he’d always done, more with his smart blue eyes than with his mouth. The brass plate on the frame simply said:

THE ORACLE

APPOINTED: FEB 1960

END-OF-WATCH: AUG 2006

SEMPER COP

Hollywood Nate, like all the others, had tapped the picture frame before leaving roll call on the first evening he’d met his new sergeant. Then he’d gone straight downstairs to the watch commander’s office and asked to be reassigned to the day watch, citing a multitude of personal and even health reasons, all of them lies. It had seemed to Nate that an era had truly ended. The Oracle-the kind of cop Nate told everyone he had wanted to be when he grew up-had been replaced by a politically correct, paper-shuffling little putz with dwarfish arms, no lips, and a shoe fetish.

At first, Hollywood Nate wasn’t fond of Watch 2, the early day watch, certainly not the part where he had to get up before 5 A.M. and speed from his one-bedroom apartment in the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood Station, change into his uniform, and be ready for 0630 roll call. He didn’t like that at all. But he did like the hours of the 3/12 work shift. On Watch 2, the patrol officers worked three twelve-hour days a week during their twenty-eight-day deployment periods, making up one day at the end. That gave Nate four days a week to attend cattle calls and harangue casting agents, now that he’d earned enough vouchers to get his Screen Actors Guild card, which he carried in his badge wallet right behind his police ID.

So far, he’d gotten only one speaking part, two lines of dialogue, in a TV movie that was co-produced by an over-the-hill writer/director he’d met during one of the red carpet events at the Kodak Center, where Nate was tasked with crowd control. Nate won over that director by body blocking an anti-fur protester in a sweaty tank top before she could shove one of those “I’d Rather Go Naked” signs at the director’s wife, who was wearing a faux-mink stole.

Nate sealed the deal and got the job when he told the hairy protester he’d hate to see her naked and added, “If wearing fur is a major crime, why don’t you scrape those pits?”

The movie was about mate-swapping yuppies, and Nate was typecast as a cop who showed up after one of the husbands beat the crap out of his cheating spouse. The battered wife was scripted to look at the hawkishly handsome, well-muscled cop whose wavy dark hair was just turning silver at the temples, and wink at him with her undamaged eye.

To Nate, there didn’t seem to be much of a story and he was given one page of script with lines that read: “Good evening, ma’am. Did you call the police? What can I do for you that isn’t immoral?”

During that one-day gig, the grips and gaffers and especially the craft services babe who provided great sandwiches and salads all told Nate that this was a “POS” movie that might never reach the small screen at all. After she’d said it, Nate knew that his initial impression had been correct: It was a piece of shit, for sure. Hollywood Nate Weiss was already thirty-six years old, with fifteen years on the LAPD. He needed a break. He needed an agent. He didn’t have time left in his acting life to waste on pieces of shit.

On the morning after the midwatch surfer cops busted the wooden Indian, Nate Weiss was assigned to a one-man day-watch report car known as a U-boat, which responded to report-writing calls instead of those that for safety reasons required a pair of officers. At 8:30 A.M. Nate did what he always did when he caught a U-boat assignment: He went to Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax for a coffee break.

The fact that Farmers Market was a couple of blocks out of Hollywood Division didn’t bother him much. It was a small peccadillo that the Oracle would always forgive. Nate loved everything about that old landmark: the tall clock tower, the stalls full of produce, the displays of fresh fish and meat, the shops and ethnic eateries. But mostly he loved the open-air patios where people gathered this time of morning for cinnamon rolls, fresh-baked muffins, French toast, and other pastries.

Nate ordered a latte and a bagel, taking a seat at a small empty table close enough to eavesdrop on the “artistes’ table.” He’d started doing it after he’d overheard them talking about pitching scripts to HBO and getting financing for small indie projects and doing lunch with a famous agent from CAA who one of them said was a schmuck-all topics of fascination to Hollywood Nate Weiss.

By now, he was almost able to recognize them from their voices without looking at them directly. There was the features director who, due to Hollywood ageism, complained that he couldn’t even get arrested at the studios. Ditto for three former screenwriters who were regulars at the table, as well as for a former TV producer. A dozen or more of these would come and go, all males, the average age being seventy-plus, far too old for the youth-obsessed entertainment business that had nurtured them.

A formerly famous painter and sculptor, wearing a trademark black beret, wasn’t selling so well these days either. Nate heard him tell the others that when his wife asks him what he wants for dinner, his usual response is, “Get off my back, will ya?” Then the painter added, “But don’t feel sorry for us. We’re getting used to living in our car.”

A former TV character actor wearing a safari jacket from Banana Republic, whose face was familiar to Nate, stood up and informed the others he had to leave and make an important call to a VP in development at Universal to discuss a script he’d been deciding whether or not to accept.

After he’d gone, the director said, “The poor schlemiel. I’ll bet he gets a ‘Please leave a message’ recording from the VP at Universal. That’s who he discusses the project with-a machine. Probably has to call back a hundred and thirty-five times to get his whole pitch into the VP’s voice mail.”

“I’ve suspected he’s calling the number for highway information when he pretends to be talking to HBO,” the painter said, clucking sadly.

“He never was any good, even in his prime,” the director said. “Thought he was a method actor. They’d run out of money doing retakes. Twenty tics a take on average.”

“If he had more of a name, they could paint him like a whore and let him do arthritis and Geico commercials, like the rest of those has-beens,” said the has-been TV producer.

“And women?” one of the screenwriters said. “He thinks we believe his daffy seduction stories. Instead of another face-lift, the old bastard should have his balls stapled to his thigh to keep them from dropping in the toilet.”

“He could do it without anesthetic,” said the oldest of the screenwriters. “At his age it’s a dead zone down there.”

All of the geezers, who tended to talk over one another in multiple conversations, went silent for a moment when a stunning young woman paused to look into a nearby shop that sold glassware and candles. She wore a canary cotton jersey accented by hyacinth stitching, and $400 second-skin jeans, and stood nearly six feet tall in her Jimmy Choo lilac suede pumps. She had a full, pouty upper lip, and butterscotch blonde hair so luxurious it fanned across her shoulder when she turned to look at a glass figurine and then fell back perfectly into place when she continued walking. Her amazing hair gleamed when spangled sunlight pierced the covered patio and provided honey-colored highlights.