Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

“Then I guess I’ll be doing the pat-down here,” Ronnie said. “Just relax, Madeline.”

The desperate situation of Leonard Stilwell had gotten considerably worse. He was failing at every attempt to make a buck, and Ali Aziz had not phoned him yet about doing the job on Mt. Olympus. He had even driven up Laurel Canyon one afternoon and taken the right turn into the Mt. Olympus development, not doubting that there were more Italian cypress planted there per acre than anywhere else in the world. Leonard drove the streets and thought it looked pretty formidable. There were security company signs everywhere, and he saw a few homes where uniformed security people were standing in the driveway. He was not encouraged.

Leonard had been reduced to shoplifting from discount stores, but even boosting small merchandise wasn’t so easy anymore. It was at the cyber café where Leonard got drawn into a humiliating plot to commit the most pathetic crime he could imagine.

There were more than a hundred computers for rent in the cyber café, and lots of jackals and bottom feeders whom Leonard knew, tweakers mostly, used the computers to sell stolen items and make deals for crystal meth and other drugs. Leonard had a cheap little CD player with headphones that he’d boosted and nearly got caught with when he’d bypassed the checkout counter. None of the other scavengers in the parking lot of the cyber café would trade him so much as a single rock for the CD player. One of the base heads actually sneered at him. He was about to give up when a tweaker he’d seen before but didn’t know by name gave him a nod.

The tweaker was a white guy several years younger than Leonard but in far worse condition. He was jug-eared, with small, close-set eyes and pus-filled speed bumps all over his sunken cheeks. He had only a few teeth left in his grille and he grinned at Leonard. They recognized each other’s desperation and that was enough. Names were not needed.

“I need a driver,” the tweaker said to Leonard. “I seen you getting out of that Honda. You open for a job?”

“Let’s break it down, dude,” Leonard said.

The tweaker followed Leonard to his car, which was parked in front of a donut shop in the same little strip mall. After they got in Leonard’s car, the tweaker lifted his T-shirt and showed a small-caliber revolver stuck in his waistband.

“Freeze-frame!” Leonard said. “I ain’t into guns.”

“This ain’t real,” the tweaker said. And he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It clicked. He grinned and said, “It’s a starter pistol. Unloaded.”

“I think you better get outta my car,” Leonard said.

“Don’t flare on me, dawg!” the tweaker said. “You don’t gotta do nothing but drop me off on a street. That’s it. Drive me around till I see what I’m looking for and drop me off. You don’t even gotta pick me back up at the scene of the crime.”

“At the scene of the…” Leonard rolled his eyes and said, “Why don’t you just call a taxi?”

“We might have to drive around awhile till we spot him. And if something ain’t right, we may have to follow him for a little ways. I can’t have a cab driver witness.”

“A witness to what? You’re gonna chalk a guy with a fucking starter pistol?”

“I ain’t gonna dump the chump. I’m gonna jack his truck. And afterwards, I’m gonna meet you in the truck and give you two Ben Franklins. You won’t even be there when I jack it.”

“Lemme track. You saying I’m gonna get fucking chump change for a hijacking?”

“Man, I ain’t jacking a Brinks truck.”

“What’re you jacking?”

“An ice-cream truck.”

“There ain’t a fucking sane human being left in all of Hollywood,” Leonard said to the steering wheel as he gripped it tight.

The tweaker said, “See, this greaser that drives the truck, he brings his cash payment every other week to some other greaser that lent him the money to buy the truck.”

“How much cash is he carrying?”

“That’s my business.”

“Get outta my car.”

“I’ll give you three Franklins.”

“Out.”

“Three-fifty, and that’s it.”

“Three-fifty,” Leonard said. “I risk, what? Maybe five years in the joint for chump change?”

“Later, man,” the tweaker said, opening the door.

“I’m good with it,” Leonard said quickly. “These are hard times.”

“Okay,” the tweaker said with a gap-toothed grin. “There ain’t no risk to you at all. I cased this good. You just drop me near where the guy’s selling ice cream. The cash is in the metal box he keeps behind the seat of the truck. I scare the fuck outta him and jump in his truck and drive it maybe six blocks away to some safe place where you’re waiting for me. I jump in your car, and you drive me back here to the cyber café.”

“Dude, I want my three-fifty no matter what you end up getting from him.”

“I’m cool with that,” the tweaker said.

“So when do we do it?”

“In one hour,” the tweaker said. “In the meantime, could you buy me a Baby Ruth bar? I got the craves so bad I could eat a fishbone sandwich if they’d dip it in chocolate.”

Leonard stared for a moment at the “Help Wanted” sign in the window of the coffee shop. He wanted to tell this lowlife slacker to get a fucking job. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. Three-fifty would buy enough rock to tide him over until the fucking Ay-rab called him for the housebreaking job.

He looked at the tweaker and pulled a dollar bill from his pocket. “Go in there and buy yourself a chocolate donut. Tell them to dip it in powdered sugar. It’ll get you by for a couple hours.”

The hijacking was to occur on a residential street in East Hollywood, one of the few neighborhoods where a vendor could make a few dollars. Rogelio Montez was the driver of the little white truck, which played nursery tunes from a large outdoor speaker attached to the roof as he cruised the streets. He was an immigrant from the Yucatán, and this was the best job he’d ever had in his life.

Rita Kravitz, the Crow who oversaw quality-of-life complaints in that neighborhood, had contacted 6-X-66 at midwatch roll call to help her out with this ice-cream vendor. Rita Kravitz briefed the patrol officers about a chronic complainer who lived on the street, a woman who had nine school-age grandchildren and saw pedophiles everywhere.

“The alleged suspect drives one of those Good Humor sort of trucks,” Rita Kravitz had told them, “and he comes by pretty late on summer evenings. Maybe seven o’clock. Just write a shake on the guy and make sure he’s not driving the truck with Mister Wiggly exposed. The old lady’s already accused her mailman, the meter reader, and one of the presidential contenders of being a willie wagger. Although she’s probably right about the presidential contender.”

Gert Von Braun said, “Okay, but you should call Dateline for this kinda deal. They’re the ones with all the hidden cameras and lotsa time to set up on these guys.”

Gert Von Braun and Dan Applewhite had gotten teamed again because Doomsday Dan requested it, now that Gil Ponce was just about off probation. Gert told the senior sergeant that she didn’t mind at all working with Doomsday Dan, and the astonished sergeant later told his fellow supervisors that there truly is someone for everyone in this world.

When 6-X-66 cleared, they went straight to the neighborhood, found the vendor, and flagged him down, using the excuse that he had only one functioning brake light. Instead of writing him a ticket, they wrote an FI card from the information on his driver’s license.

He spoke very little English and seemed contrite about the brake light, and grateful not to be getting a citation. He looked so threadbare and poor that Dan Applewhite insisted on paying for the ice-cream bars that the guy wanted to give to them. Then the cops remained parked at the curb while he drove off, his truck playing merry tunes enticing Latino children from their homes with coins and dollar bills in their fists, all jabbering happily in Spanglish.