Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

Batman, having recovered from the blow to the belly, suddenly needed a bowel movement badly. He saw that the labor union pickets had a large trailer parked at the curb, along with an Andy Gump porta-potty attached to it.

Holding his wounded gut, he ran crablike to the Andy Gump, opened the door and stepped inside, and relieved himself with an eruption that could clearly be heard by the outraged pickets guarding the trailer.

When Batman emerged from the Andy Gump, one of the pickets, a diminutive fifty-two-year-old black man, who happened to be the local union representative, said, “Hey, dude, nobody said you could take a dump in our Gump.”

“Batman craps wherever he wants,” said Batman.

The little union steward said, “Batman is jist some jiveass flyin’ rat in a funky ten-dollar cape, far as I’m concerned.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t shit in your hat, you ugly little nigger,” said Batman.

The union rep, who had been a pretty good Golden Gloves bantamweight thirty years earlier, said, “Ain’t no fuckin’ bat gonna front me, not even Count Dracula!”

On the eleven o’clock news that night, the reporter who witnessed the mini-riot showed his audience a Batman cartoon panel and said that what happened next was just like in the comic books: “POW! WHAM! BAM!”

“However,” he added, “it was the caped crusader who got clocked and kissed the concrete.”

Thus, Batman became the second superhero that day to be taken to the ER for multiple contusions and abrasions.

By then, the Labor Relations cop had put out a help call, and the midwatch units just clearing from roll call, with plenty of daylight left, were on their way. Gert Von Braun and Dan Applewhite arrived first and pulled Superman and Wonder Woman away from Spider-Man, Gert grabbing Wonder Woman by the shoulder-length auburn tresses-which suddenly came off in Gert’s hand.

“Mommy!” a young girl shrieked. “Wonder Woman is bald like Daddy!”

Two other night-watch units arrived, and soon there were hundreds of tourists snapping photos like mad and a TV news van caused a traffic jam on Hollywood Boulevard. Leonard Stilwell decided that this was no place for him. He started jogging around the tourists on the Walk of Fame, heading toward the parking lot, but ran smack into 6-X-46 of the midwatch.

“Whoa, dude!” Flotsam said. “It’s him!”

Jetsam grabbed Leonard’s arm as he was hotfooting it past the cops and spun him around. “I been thinking about you, bro,” he said.

Leonard recognized them at once, those heartless, sunburned cops with the bleached-out spiky hairdos. “I got nothing to do with that ruckus back there,” Leonard said.

“Let’s see that piece of paper in your car,” Flotsam said. “The one with the address written on it.”

“What piece of paper?” Leonard said.

“Don’t fuck with us,” Jetsam said.

“I’m not!” Leonard whined. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man!”

“The paper with the address up on Mount Olympus,” Flotsam said. “Do you remember now? And you better give the right answer.”

“Oh, that paper,” Leonard said.

“Yeah, let’s go to your car so I can see it again,” Jetsam said.

“I ain’t got it no more,” Leonard said.

“Why did you have it in the first place?” Jetsam said.

“Have what?” Leonard said.

“Screw you, bro,” Jetsam said, reaching for his handcuffs.

“Wait a minute!” Leonard said. “Gimme a chance to think!”

“Think fast, dude,” Flotsam said. “My partner’s outta patience.”

“I wrote down an address that I got outta the newspaper,” Leonard said. “It was about a job. Somebody needed a housepainter.”

“You’re a housepainter?” Flotsam said.

“Yeah, but I’m outta work at the moment.”

“I been thinking about painting my bedroom,” Flotsam said. “Should I use a semigloss enamel on the bedroom walls or a latex?”

Leonard was getting dry-mouthed now. The only latex he knew about involved the gloves he used on his jobs. He said, “Depends on what you like.”

Jetsam said, “Do most people use oil-base enamel or water-base latex on their bedroom walls?”

Leonard said, “Enamel?”

“Let’s go visit your car, dude,” Flotsam said. “Maybe that piece of paper’s still there.”

When they got to the parking lot, Leonard led them to his car, parked in the far corner. “You ain’t got no right to search my car and you know it,” he said.

“Who says we’re searching your car?” Jetsam said. “We just wanna see that piece of paper again.”

“Then you’ll stop hassling me?” Leonard said.

Jetsam looked at Flotsam and said, “He says we’re hassling him.”

“I’m shocked. Shocked!” Flotsam said.

Leonard opened the car door and got in, reaching for the glove compartment.

“Wait a minute, dude,” Flotsam said.

“I’m gonna see if I put it in the glove box,” Leonard said.

“Wait till my partner gets around and can see in there,” Flotsam said. “That’s how cops get hurt.”

“Me hurt you? Your feelings or what?” Leonard said disgustedly as Jetsam opened the passenger door, his hand on the butt of his nine.

“Now go ahead and open it,” Jetsam said.

Twilight was casting long shadows by then, and Jetsam used his flashlight to illuminate the glove compartment.

Leonard remembered where the note was then and reached up under the visor, saying, “Here it is.” But Leonard didn’t remember that he’d tossed the tension bar and pick in the glove box.

“What’s this?” Jetsam said, his flashlight beam on the locksmith tools.

“What’s what?” Leonard said. And then he remembered what!

“Those strange little objects in the glove compartment,” Jetsam said. “Do you, like, use them to pry off the lids from paint cans?”

Leonard looked in the glove box and said, “They been in the car since I bought it. I don’t know what they are. Are they illegal? Like kiddie porn or something?”

“Get outta the car,” Jetsam said. “And gimme your keys. I don’t think you’ll mind if I look for more strange objects, will you?”

“What’s the use?” Leonard said. “You’ll do it anyways.”

When Leonard Stilwell was standing outside the car, and Jetsam was looking under the front seats and in the trunk, Flotsam patted down Leonard Stilwell, felt the bills in his pocket, and said, “What’s this?”

“Just my money,” Leonard said.

“How much money?” Flotsam said.

“Do I gotta answer that?” Leonard said.

“If you know how much you got, then we’ll figure it’s your money,” Flotsam said. “If you don’t know how much you got, we’ll figure you just picked a pocket or a purse in front of the Kodak Center. And we’ll go look for a victim. Might take a long time.”

“A thousand bucks,” Leonard said. “Ten Ben Franklins.”

The surfer cops looked at each other again and Jetsam said, “You got a thousand bucks in your kick? Where’d you get it?”

“Playing poker,” Leonard said.

“And you got locksmith tools,” Jetsam said, “but they just happened to be in your car when you bought it?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“And you can’t pick a lock?”

“Man, I can hardly pick my nose!” Leonard said. “You guys’re harassing me! This is police harassment!”

“Tell you what, dude,” Flotsam said. “If you can spell harassment, we’ll let you go. If you can’t, we’ll take you to Hollywood Station to talk to a detective. How’s that?”

Leonard said, “H-e-r…”

Fifteen minutes later, Leonard Stilwell was sitting with Flotsam in an interview room at Hollywood Station, and Jetsam was in the detective squad room, explaining what they’d found to Compassionate Charlie Gilford, who was irritated to be pulled away from his tape of Dancing with the Stars, where Heather Mills McCartney hit the floor but disappointed Charlie when her prosthetic leg stayed attached.