Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

“It’s not him I’m thinking about. It’s that Crow, Bix Ramstead. How well do you know him?”

“I’ve seen him around for years, but I never worked partners with him,” Dan Applewhite said.

“He’s through, for sure,” Gert said.

“Bix Ramstead made his choices, just like Ali Aziz,” Dan said. “What happened to both those guys has nothing to do with you and me.”

“I guess so,” Gert said. “But I don’t feel right about it.”

“We’re off tomorrow,” Dan Applewhite reminded her. “So how about doing a Hollywood thing? How about going with me to one of those old movies I told you about? Maybe one starring Tyrone Power. If you wouldn’t mind going out with a geezer.”

“You’re not so old,” she said.

It was still an hour from sunrise when Bino Villaseñor was seated across the table from Bix Ramstead in one of the interview rooms at the Hollywood detectives’ squad room. They had talked for forty-five minutes uninterrupted, all of it recorded.

Bix Ramstead’s eyes seemed sunken in their sockets. He still had the unsettling stare when he wasn’t directly answering a question, what the detective called “the stare of despair.” His mouth was dry and gluey, and when he spoke, the dryness made his lips pop.

Bino Villaseñor said, “You must need a cold drink bad. And so do I.”

The detective left the interview room for several minutes, and Bix put his head down on his arms and closed his eyes, seeing strange images flashing in his mind. When the door opened again, Bix could hear voices outside talking quietly.

Bino Villaseñor put two cold sodas in front of Bix, who was dehydrated from so much alcohol. Bix popped one open and drank it down, then the other. The detective sipped at his and watched Bix Ramstead.

“Is that better?”

Bix nodded.

“We’ve pretty much covered it,” the detective said, “unless you have any more to offer.”

Bix took a deep breath and said, “No. To summarize: I was stinking blind drunk and I don’t remember much of anything after going upstairs. I did hear her yelling ‘Don’t shoot.’ I’m sure of that much. And I damn sure heard the shots. And I saw him dead on the floor, or seconds from death, with blood gushing from chest wounds, and a gun by his hand. Nothing could’ve saved him. I did not talk to Margot about anything after that and did not contaminate the scene in any way. I told her to sit in her son’s room until police arrived. I went downstairs and waited. And I’d give my right arm or both of them if I could set the clock back to seven last night, when I decided I could handle one shot of vodka.”

“Okay, Bix,” Bino Villaseñor said. “I believe you.”

Bix looked up then, the first time the detective could see some life in his eyes, and he said, “Don’t you believe her? ”

“I guess I’ll have to,” the detective said. “The stories fit like a glove. A latex glove. But I’ll always wonder about a few things. That woman told no less than half a dozen cops from Hollywood Station and Hollywood South that her husband was threatening her. She may as well have made a video for YouTube entitled My Husband Wants Me Dead. She even took a shooting lesson and wanted to buy a gun. And finally, she managed to get the greatest corroboration in the world. A veteran married police officer, with nothing to gain and everything to lose, was right there as a witness to the event.”

Bix looked at the detective and said gravely, “Do you actually think we conspired to murder her husband?”

“No, I don’t think you conspired with anybody,” the detective said. “You wouldn’t be dumb enough to put yourself right in the bedroom during a capital murder. There’d be lots better ways for you to get it done. But buddy, you were dumb enough to destroy your career. Yet I got this very uneasy feeling about a woman who manages to get her boyfriend in bed for the first time on the very night that her husband decides to murder her in her sleep.”

“I’m not her boyfriend,” Bix said.

“What are you, then?”

“I don’t know what I am anymore,” Bix Ramstead said. “Are we through here?”

“We’re through, except that Internal Affairs is outside, waiting to get at you next.”

Bix gave the detective a bitter smile then and said, “Why would I bother to talk to IA? As you’ve pointed out, my career is over. My pension is lost. My children will be seeing this filthy story on the news. Their classmates will ask them humiliating questions. And my wife, she…”

He stopped there and Bino Villaseñor said, “You’re not gonna talk to them?”

Bix took his badge and ID card from his badge holder, put them on the table, and said, “You talk to them.”

Bino looked in those despairing eyes and instantly thought of the Behavioral Science Services shrink. “Okay, Bix, screw IA. But there’s a couple of news teams outside, waiting to jump all over you. How about letting me call the BSS guy for you? You need to talk to somebody right now, buddy.”

Bix said, “No, I have to go home now and feed Annie.”

Before the detective could say anything further, Bix Ramstead stood and walked out the door of the interview room, out of the detectives’ squad room, and out the front door of the station, toward his minivan in the north lot, where the surfer cops had driven it.

He hadn’t gotten to the parking lot when one of the on-scene reporters, a tall guy with a full head of flaxen hair, wearing light foundation that had smudged the collar of his starched white shirt, leaped from a van, holding a mike. He ran after Bix Ramstead with a camera operator trailing behind.

Bix looked around for a moment until he spotted where the surfer cops had parked his van and was halfway to it when the reporter caught up with him, saying, “Officer Ramstead! Officer Ramstead! Can you tell us how long you and Margot Aziz have been lovers?”

Bix ignored him and kept walking.

The reporter matched him stride for stride and said, “Do you and Mrs. Aziz have future plans?”

Bix ignored him and kept walking.

The reporter said, “Have you phoned your wife about this yet? Have you spoken to your children?”

Bix ignored him and kept walking.

As they reached Bix’s minivan, the reporter asked the ultimate cliché question that Bix Ramstead had personally heard a hundred media hacks ask victims at terrible events.

The reporter said, “How do you feel right now?”

And that got Bix Ramstead’s attention. He turned and said, “How do you feel right now?” And he swung a roundhouse right that caught the reporter on the side of the jaw, knocking him back against the camera operator and sending them both sprawling onto the asphalt of the parking lot.

As Bix was driving away, the reporter picked himself up and yelled, “Man, you are really in trouble now!”

It was late morning by the time Bix got home. The killing of Ali Aziz had happened too late to make the morning newspaper, but he was certain it would’ve been on the morning TV news. He had feared that his brother might be waiting for him.

When he unlocked the door, Annie ran from the bedroom and leaped on him with energy he hadn’t thought she had at her age. She was bursting with joyful whimpers, licking him and bouncing like a puppy. He knelt down and held her in his arms and said, “Oh, Annie, I didn’t feed you last night. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

Then Bix sat down on the floor, his face in Annie’s fur, his arms around her neck, and wept.

When he was able to get up, Bix ignored the flashing on his answering machine. Instead, he went to the kitchen and prepared a huge breakfast for Annie, giving her two hard-boiled eggs, several ounces of boiled chicken breast, and her kibble. He mixed some nonfat cottage cheese in the bowl and put it down on the kitchen floor.