Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

“They shouldn’t get away with this!” said Sergeant Treakle.

“But we can’t go off half-cocked,” replied the old sergeant.

“Half- cocked, ” said Gil Ponce, giggling, until Sergeant Treakle scowled at him.

“But I know in my gut who did it!” Sergeant Treakle said.

“Who’s that?”

“That smart-ass vice cop. The Hispanic guy with the beard. I just know it was him.”

“Look, Treakle,” the old sergeant said. “Do you want your family and friends to read a headline that says-”

“Okay, I get it!” Sergeant Treakle said, finding the headline possibilities unbearable to contemplate. “But I know it was that vice cop.”

“Maybe you should ask the captain for a transfer to some other division,” the old sergeant said. “Get a fresh start somewhere else. Does that sound okay?”

“I can’t wait,” Sergeant Treakle agreed. Then, for the first time, he was heard to utter an obscenity. He sat and pondered for a moment and said, “Fucking Hollywood!”

Sergeant Treakle refused to be transported for further medical treatment at Cedars-Sinai when Cat Song said they might need to wear biohazard outfits to clean him up. And he drove the cageless shop back to the station on his own-feathers, chicken shit, and all.

The senior sergeant then spoke with Cat and young Gil Ponce about the need to keep the incident quiet for the good of Hollywood Station. And they indicated that they understood the gravity of a situation where a prank caused injury and terror to the junior supervisor-who would likely be transferring out of the division ASAP. They assured the senior sergeant that they wouldn’t breathe a word of it.

Before an hour had passed, Cat Song had phoned Ronnie Sinclair at home, text-messaged Gert Von Braun, and managed to reach Hollywood Nate on his cell phone, knowing how much he loathed Sergeant Treakle. Everyone thanked her effusively for sharing and promised they wouldn’t breathe a word of it.

Gil Ponce, being one of the officers who had declined an invitation to participate in Bible study with Sergeant Treakle, whispered all the details to Doomsday Dan in the locker room at end-of-watch-with a theological question attached. The young cop wondered if it was possible that in the first instant of being suddenly enveloped in great dark wings and hearing unearthly screeching in his ears, Sergeant Treakle may have smelled sulfur and believed that he’d been seized by the Antichrist himself!

“It’s heartwarming to think so,” the older cop replied. Then he added, “The Oracle always said that doing good police work was the most fun we’d ever have. Well, there’s a pair of anonymous coppers out there who did some great police work tonight. I hope they remembered the Oracle.”

TWO OF THE CROWS at Hollywood South had worrisome thoughts the next day about Bix Ramstead, but neither was aware of the other’s concern. Ronnie wanted to know if Bix had fallen off the wagon and been drinking on duty the night before, and Nate wanted to know what the hell Bix Ramstead was doing up on Mt. Olympus at the home of Margot Aziz. But neither had the nerve to ask him.

That morning, Ronnie and Bix were tasked to do follow-ups to neighbors of various tanning salons, an aromatherapy salon, an acupuncturist, and a chiropractor. All complaints had come from neighborhood residents and businesspeople, and most concerned illegal parking and nighttime noise. There was an accusation of prostitution directed at tanning salons because of an excessive number of men entering and leaving all day and late in the evenings. One of the tanning salons and the aromatherapy salon had been busted in the past by vice cops posing as customers, but both businesses were said to be under new management.

As Ronnie and Bix were getting ready to hit the streets, their sergeant was involved in a peculiar debate with Officer Rita Kravitz about running an errand to the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre to pick up a generous donation check it had offered for the Special Olympics fund-raiser. Rita gave the sergeant a couple of lame excuses as to why she was too busy to handle the job and suggested he send one of the guys.

“But you might run into John Travolta or Tom Cruise up there,” the sergeant said. “Wouldn’t that make your day?”

Officer Rita Kravitz pushed her newest and trendiest-ever eyeglasses up onto her nose and with a curl to her lip said, “I might also get taken prisoner by those robots and brainwashed till I turn into a smiley-faced, twinkly-eyed cult cookie. And if you think that can’t happen, ask Katie Holmes.”

The other Crow with Bix on his mind was having a late-morning Danish and cappuccino at his favorite open-air table in Farmers Market, listening to a former director and three former screenwriters at the usual table railing about the ageism that had killed their careers and promoted mediocrity in Hollywood.

“The last meeting I took was with a head of development who was twenty-eight years old,” a former screenwriter said.

“All they wanna do is preserve their jobs,” another one said.

“They’d rather have a flop they can blame on somebody else than take a risk on their own that might produce a hit,” a third one said.

The first one said, “Every time my stuff gets rejected, they say it’s not enough ‘outside the box,’ whatever that means. Or not enough ‘inside their wheelhouse,’ whatever that means.”

The former director said, “Bottom line, they’re terrified of people our age because they think we might know something about making movies that they don’t know. And they’re right!”

There was a chorus of amens to that one.

Nate wasn’t enjoying the show business grousing. All he could think of was how Margot Aziz had looked when he’d first seen her here, and how she had not called him, as promised. He figured that Bix Ramstead might have had a lot to do with that. Nate tried rehearsing half a dozen approaches he could try with Bix to find out the truth. First, though, he’d have to get Bix alone, away from Ronnie Sinclair.

Nate finished his cappuccino and started on his rounds. He had three calls to make on apartment dwellers about chronic-noise complaints. He was already starting to think that this quality-of-life shit was way more tedious and boring than he ever thought it could be. But at least he had last night’s adventure of Sergeant Treakle and the rooster to sustain him. He would’ve loved to share the story with somebody, but so far today, he couldn’t find anyone at Hollywood Station who didn’t know all about it.

Nine hours into their ten-and-a-half-hour shift, Ronnie and Bix were tired. All they’d accomplished so far was to issue warnings to salon proprietors about the need to screen their workers to make sure that temporary employees were not turning tricks when the boss wasn’t around. Of course, they knew that most of the temps were hired precisely because they were more than eager to offer special services to safe and willing customers.

Their last tanning salon was on Sunset Boulevard near Western Avenue and was called Miraculous Tan. This one was larger than the others and seemed to be catering to an all-male clientele. The employees were saline Suzies in short shorts, Miraculous Tan T-shirts, and tennis shoes. When the bluesuits walked into the reception area, two male customers waiting on the sofa dropped their magazines and quickly departed.

The receptionist said, “Please wait, Officers. I’ll get the manager.”

“Maybe we better take a closer look at this one,” Ronnie said. “Seeing us made those dudes run faster than my Sav-on panty hose.”

Bix nodded. He had spoken very little all day and his eyes weren’t as bright and clear as they usually were. Ronnie had tentatively tried directing conversation toward the previous night, when Bix had asked her to log him out, but each time she did, he’d change the subject.