Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

The codgers sighed and snuffled and did everything but drool before resuming their conversations. Nate watched her walk out toward the parking lot. Her remarkable body said Pilates loud and clear, and he could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. There in Hollywood, and even in Beverly Hills, Nate Weiss had not seen many showstoppers like her.

By then, Nate was ready to go back to work. It was getting depressing listening to the old guys railing about ageism, knowing in their hearts they’d never work again. He’d noticed that always around 9:30 A.M., they’d get up one by one and make excuses to leave, for important calls from directors, or for appointments with agents, or to get back to scripts they were polishing. Nate figured they all just went home to sit and stare at phones that never rang. It gave him a chill to think that he might be looking at Nathan Weiss a few decades from now.

Nate strolled to the parking lot thirty yards behind the beauty with the butterscotch hair, wanting to see what she drove. He figured her for a Beverly Hills hottie in an Aston Martin with a vanity license plate, compliments of a bucks-up husband or sugar daddy who drove a stately Rolls Phantom. It was almost disappointing when she got into a red BMW sedan instead of something really expensive and exotic.

Impulsively, he jotted down her license number, and when he got back to his black-and-white, ran a DMV check and saw that she lived in the Hollywood Hills, off Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the development called Mt. Olympus, where realtors claimed there were more Italian cypress trees per acre than anywhere else on earth. Her address surprised him a bit. There were lots of well-to-do foreign nationals on Mt. Olympus: Israelis, Iranians, Arabs, Russians, and Armenians, and others from former Soviet bloc countries, some of whom had been suspects or victims in major crimes. A few of the residents reportedly owned banks in Moscow, and it was not uncommon to see young adults driving Bentleys, and teenagers in BMWs and Porsches.

Around the LAPD it was said that mobbed-up former Soviets were more dangerous and cruel than the Sicilian gangsters ever were back in the day. Just five months earlier, two Russians had been sentenced to death in Los Angeles Superior Court for kidnapping and murder. They’d suffocated or strangled four men and one woman in a $1.2 million ransom scheme.

Mt. Olympus was pricey, all right, but not the crème de la crème of local real estate, and Nate thought that the area didn’t suit her style. Luckily, it was in Hollywood Division and he’d often patrolled the streets up there. He figured it was unlikely that this Hills bunny would ever need a cop, but after finally getting his SAG card, Hollywood Nate Weiss was starting to believe that maybe anything was possible.

At 6 P.M. that day, after the midwatch had cleared with communications and was just hitting the streets, and Nate Weiss was an hour from end-of-watch, the electronic beep sounded on the police radio and the PSR’s voice said to a midwatch unit, “All units in the vicinity and Six-X-Seventy-six, a jumper at the northeast corner, Hollywood and Highland. Six-X-Seventy-six, handle code three.”

Hollywood Nate in his patrol unit-which everyone at LAPD called their “shop” because of the identifying shop numbers on the front doors and roof-happened to be approaching the traffic light west at that intersection. He’d been gazing at the Kodak Center and dreaming of red carpets and stardom when the call came out. He saw the crowd of tourists gathering, looking up at a building twelve stories high, with an imposing green cupola. Even several of the so-called Street Characters who hustled tourists in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre were jaywalking or running along the Walk of Fame to check out the excitement.

Superman was there, of course, and the Hulk, but not Spider-Man, who was in jail. Porky Pig waddled across the street, followed by Barney the dinosaur and three of the Beatles, the fourth staying behind to guard the karaoke equipment. Everyone was jabbering and pointing up at the top of the vacant building, formerly a bank, where a young man in walking shorts, tennis shoes, and a purple T-shirt with “Just Do It” across the front sat on the roof railing, a dozen stories above the street below.

In the responding unit were Veronica Sinclair and Catherine Song, both women in their early thirties who, as far as Nate was concerned, happened to be among the better cops on midwatch. Cat was a sultry Korean American whose hobby was volleyball and whose feline grace made her name a perfect fit. Nate, who had been trying unsuccessfully to date her for nearly a year, loved Cat’s raven hair, cut in a retro bob like the girls in the 1930s movies that he had in his film collection. Cat was a divorced mother of a two-year-old boy.

Ronnie Sinclair had been at Hollywood Station for less than a year, but she’d been a heartthrob from the first moment she’d arrived. She was a high-energy brunette with a very short haircut that worked, given her small, tight ears and well-shaped head. She had pale blue eyes, great cheekbones, and a bustline that made all the male cops pretend they were admiring the shooting medals hanging on her shirt flap. The remarkable thing about her was that her childless marriages had been to two police officers named Sinclair who were distant cousins, so Flotsam and Jetsam called her Sinclair Squared. Most of the midwatch officers over the age of thirty were single but had been divorced at least once, including the surfer cops and Hollywood Nate.

The two women were met at the open door of the vacant building by an alarm company employee who said, “I don’t know yet how he got in. Probably broke a window in the back. The elevator still works.”

Ronnie and Cat hurried inside to the elevators, Nate right behind them. And all three stood waiting for the elevator, trying to be chatty to relieve the gathering tension.

“Why aren’t you circling the station about now?” Ronnie said, looking at her watch. “You’re almost end-of-watch and there must be a starlet waiting.”

Nate looked at his own watch and said, “I still have, let’s see, forty-seven minutes to give to the people of Los Angeles. And who needs starlets when I have such talent surrounding me?”

When Nate, whose womanizing was legendary at Hollywood Station, shot her his Groucho leer, Ronnie said, “Forget it, Nate. Ask me for a date sometime when you’re a star and can introduce me to George Clooney.”

That caused Hollywood Nate to whip out his badge wallet and proudly remove the SAG card tucked right underneath his police ID, holding it up for Ronnie and Cat to see.

Ronnie looked at it and said, “Even O.J. has one of those.”

Cat said, “Sorry, Nate, but my mom wants me to date and marry a rich Buddhahead lawyer next time, not some oh-so-cute, round-eyed actor like you.”

“Someday you’ll both want me to autograph an eight-by-ten head shot for you,” Nate said, pleased that Cat thought he was cute, more pleased that she’d called him an actor. “Then I’ll be the one playing hard to get.”

During the ride up in the elevator they didn’t speak anymore, growing tense even though the location of the jumper call, here in the heart of Hollywood tourism, made it likely that it was just a stunt by some publicity junkie. The three cops were trying their best not to take it too seriously. Until they climbed to the observation deck encircling the cupola and saw him, shirtless now, straddling a railing with arms outstretched, tennis shoes pressed together, head slightly bowed in the crucifixion pose. This, as tourists, hustlers, tweakers, pickpockets, cartoon characters, and various Hollywood crazies were standing down below, yelling at him to stop being a chickenshit and jump for Jesus.