Joseph Wambaugh: Hollywood Crows

Of course, Hollywood Nate’s former colleagues, the midwatch officers of Watch 5, were not dreaming of being millionaires. They were just trying to cope with young Sergeant Treakle, whose administrative spanking for bringing the Big Macs to the rooftop standoff had not dampened his zeal or ambition. They knew that Hollywood Division was as shorthanded as the rest of the beleaguered LAPD, so before a supervisor like Sergeant Treakle could get a suspension without pay, he would have to do something really terrible. Such as saying something politically incorrect to a member of what had historically been considered a minority group. At least that was the thinking of the midwatch, according to all of the bitching heard around the station.

On one of those summer nights under what the Oracle used to call a Hollywood moon, meaning a full moon that brought out the crazies, Flotsam mentioned the rooftop incident to Catherine Song and said, “Why couldn’t the jumper have been black or Hispanic? That would’ve pushed Treakle’s off button.”

“What about a Korean female?” Cat said back to him. “We’re not potential PC victims?”

“Negative,” Flotsam said. “You people have got too rich and successful for victimhood. You and me’re in the same boat. We could jump off a roof and who cares?”

Sergeant Treakle had teamed them up arbitrarily for one night, assigning Jetsam to ride with a Hispanic probationer whose field training officer was on a sick day. Jetsam didn’t like working with a boot, but Flotsam wasn’t complaining, and Cat knew why. She was very aware that he had eyes for her, but so did most of the other male officers on the midwatch.

That was when the PSR’s radio voice said, “Six-X-Thirty-two, a four-fifteen fight, Santa Monica and Western, code two.”

“Why can’t we get a call in our own backyard once in a while?” Flotsam grumbled as Cat rogered the call. “Doomsday Dan’s working sixty-six with a probie partner. They should be handling it.”

“Dan probably had to run over to the cyber café to rent a computer and watch his foreign stocks tumble,” Cat said. “Doesn’t matter how good the market’s doing. He’s a great anticipator of international disasters.”

When they got to the location of the call, which turned out to be a bit east of Western Avenue, Cat said, “Doomsday Dan sure would break out the gloves for this one.”

Four onlookers, two of them Salvadoran gang members, along with a pair of white parolees out looking for some tranny or dragon ass, were watching the disturbance. Transsexuals were preferred by the ex-cons in that all of their hormone treatments and surgery made them more like women, but in a pinch the parolees would settle for a drag queen. The onlookers were watching what had been a pretty good fight between a black drag queen and a white man in a business suit, which was now down to a screaming contest full of threats and gestures.

When the cops got out of the black-and-white, four observers walked quickly away, but a fifth stepped out of the shadows from a darkened doorway. Trombone Teddy was a transient, known to Flotsam from prior contacts. He was a street person nearly eighty years old who panhandled on the boulevards.

Teddy had stayed at the fight scene to watch the denouement, knowing he was drunk enough to get busted but too drunk to care. He wore a Lakers cap, layers of shirts that were now part of him, and nearly congealed trousers the color and texture of just-picked mushrooms. Looking at Teddy made you think fungus.

“I’m a witness,” Trombone Teddy said to Flotsam.

“Go home, Teddy,” the tall cop said, putting his mini-flashlight under his arm, cursing because the little light wouldn’t stay there.

“I am home,” Teddy replied. “I been living right here in this doorway for the last few days. The cops rousted us outta our camp in the hills. Up there we could hear the concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. I was a real sideman in my time, you know. I could blow better than any I ever heard at the Bowl. Back when I was a real person.”

That made Flotsam feel a little bit sad, Trombone Teddy reminiscing about having been a real person. Back in the day.

With the police there as protection, the black dragon, wearing a mauve shell and a black double-slitted skirt, hauled off for one last shot, swinging a silver purse at the white businessman, until Flotsam stepped in and said, “Back off! Both of you!”

Reluctantly, the dragon stepped back, blonde wig askew, one heel broken off the silver pumps, makeup smeared, panty hose shredded, and yelled, “He kidnapped me! I barely escaped with my life! Arrest him!”

Flotsam had already patted down the other combatant. He was portly and middle-aged with a dyed-black comb-over that shone like patent leather. A trickle of blood dripped from his nose and he wiped it with a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket.

He handed Flotsam his driver’s license and said, “My name is Milt Zimmerman, Officer. I’ve never been arrested for anything. This person stole my car keys and took off running to here, where I caught her. My car is two blocks west in an alley. I want her arrested for attempted car theft.”

“Ask this guddamn kidnapper how we got in the alley! Jist ask him!” the dragon cried.

“Step over here with me,” Cat said to the slender drag queen, who listed to starboard on the broken silver pump.

When the combatants were separated, Trombone Teddy staggered back and forth from one pair to the other so as not to miss any of the good parts, and he heard Cat say to the dragon, “Okay, now give me some ID and tell me what happened.”

The drag queen produced a driver’s license bearing the name of Latrelle Johnson, born in 1975, from the silver purse. Cat shined her light on the photo, taken when Latrelle was without eyebrows and lipstick and wig, and Cat decided that the dragon was far better-looking as a man than as a woman.

Cat said, “Okay, Latrelle, tell me what happened.”

“Please call me Rhonda,” the dragon said. “That’s my name now. Latrelle don’t exist no more. Latrelle is dead, and I’m glad.”

“Okay, Rhonda,” Cat said, thinking that sounded kind of sad. “So what’s the story here?”

“He picked me up from the corner two blocks down Santa Monica and offered to take me to a club for some drinks and a dance or two. Me, I’m stupid. I believed him.”

“Uh-huh,” Cat said. “You just happened to be on this corner waiting for someone to go dancing with?”

“I ain’t hookin’,” said Rhonda, then after a few seconds added, “Well…I admit I got busted a couple times for prostitution, but tonight I happened to be jist makin’ a call at the public phone here by the liquor store.” Rhonda pointed to the phone box behind them.

“Okay, then what?” Cat said, deciding that there would be no kidnapping report and maybe no reports at all, except for a couple of field interrogation cards.

“I thought maybe he was takin’ me out to the Strip, but we only got a couple blocks and he whips into an alley and forces me to commit a sex act. I was scared for my life, Officer!”

Milt Zimmerman heard part of that and yelled, “She’s a liar! She wanted it! Then she grabbed my car keys and ran off with them!”

“Okay, pay attention to me, not to them,” Flotsam said, taking Milt Zimmerman by the arm and walking him several steps farther away, while Trombone Teddy drifted toward Cat and Rhonda because their conversation sounded juicier.

Milt Zimmerman said to Flotsam, “She’s lying! I told her I wanted a blow job and she gave it up willingly. Then when she’s done she wants an extra twenty. I said no way, and she grabs my keys from the ignition and starts running back here, where I first picked her up. My Cadillac’s still back there in the alley!”