Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

“Thing is,” Flotsam said. “She’s a him. You might call her a ‘shim.’”

“I didn’t know!” Milt Zimmerman said. “She looks like a woman!”

“This is Hollywood,” Flotsam said, “where men are men and so are the women.”

Back by the liquor store Rhonda was starting to reveal more details, causing Trombone Teddy to shuffle closer, his hearing not what it used to be. When Cat came on the Job, she was trained by old male coppers who scorned latex gloves, which cops didn’t have back in the day. But looking at Trombone Teddy made Cat glad she was carrying a pair tonight.

She said to the old eavesdropper, “Get your butt away from here. Now!”

“But I always liked soap opera,” Trombone Teddy said.

Cat reached in her pocket and said, “Don’t make me glove up. If I do, you’re going to jail.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Teddy muttered and walked back toward Flotsam, where he knew it wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining.

“So what exactly went on in that alley?” Cat asked Rhonda. “The details.”

Rhonda said, “At first he seemed real nice. He stopped the car the second we was in the alley. He turned off the motor and started kissin’ me. Hard. I said somethin’ like, ‘Easy, baby, give a girl a minute to breathe.’ Next thing I know, the pants came off.”

“Yours?”

“His. Then he made me do something that I would never do. He said if I didn’t do it, he’d get violent. He had very strong hands and I was afraid. When he said it, he reached under my skirt and pulled my panty hose down and my thong clear off!”

“Was it anal sex? Did he bugger you?”

“No! He made me bugger him! It was humiliatin’. I was so scared, I done it. I don’t know how I managed, but I did. And I didn’t have no condom neither.”

“I see,” Cat said. “Then what?”

“Then, when I was through, he said he wanted more and I said no way and tried to get outta the car. And he started cussin’ and said he oughtta run over me with his Cadillac. So I jist grabbed his keys, got out, and ran while he was tryin’ to pull his pants back up.”

Rhonda took out a tissue and wiped at her mascara then, and Cat wasn’t sure if it was for her benefit or if Rhonda was really getting weepy.

Cat said, “Rhonda, don’t make us do a lot of paperwork for nothing here. Tell me the truth. Was there money involved in this incident?”

Rhonda put the tissue back in the purse and said, “He offered me thirty-five dollars.” Then Rhonda quickly added, “I didn’t ask him for it. He jist offered to give it to me. Not for sex, but like a gift, sorta.”

“If you went dancing with him?”

“Uh-huh,” Rhonda said, sniffling again.

“Stay right here.”

Seeing Cat walking toward him, Flotsam told Milt Zimmerman to stay put, and he met Cat halfway, where they could talk in whispers. Trombone Teddy tried to sidle closer, but when Cat gave him a look, he scuttled away to his doorway bed, muttering, “I been scared to death of them ever since Pearl Harbor.”

“She’s Korean, Teddy. You’re safe,” Flotsam informed him.

“North or South?” Teddy asked anxiously.

When Cat and Flotsam were huddled, Flotsam said, “He claims he picked up the dragon in front of the liquor store by the phone booth. The dragon offered sex for fifty bucks but said okay to thirty-five. They drove to the alley, where he got his steam released from a head job, then the dragon demanded twenty more. He refused and the dragon up and grabbed his keys and ran back to the liquor store.”

“Did he say why Rhonda wanted twenty more after it was over?” Cat asked.

“No, why?”

“If Rhonda’s telling most of the truth, it’s because the guy wanted something that the more fem dragons like Rhonda are seldom asked to do.”

“Dragons and trannies do anything you want,” Flotsam said, “which is why they got every kind of plague and pestilence. So what was it?”

“Anal sex,” Cat said.

“So? The dragon found that peculiar?”

“Milton was the catcher, not the pitcher.”

Flotsam said to Cat, “Lemme track this. You’re telling me that Milton ended up being Rhonda’s bitch?” He turned to gawk for a moment at the outraged businessman impeccably clothed by Armani, then said, “Sometimes it gets way too confusing out here.”

All that was left to do was to mollify both of the complainants. The two cops walked over to the businessman, and Flotsam said, “Mr. Zimmerman, do you really wanna make a crime report? Before you answer, lemme tell you that the person over there in the torn skirt says that you paid to be…”

“Buggered,” Cat finished it abruptly. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be a victim of an attempted car theft, but it might get embarrassing for you and your family if it went to court. Of course, we could disprove Rhonda’s allegations by taking you to Hollywood Presbyterian and having a doctor swab your anus for DNA evidence. Whadda you think?”

After a long hesitation, Milt Zimmerman said, “Well, I’m okay with just forgetting the whole thing and getting the hell away from that lunatic.”

Flotsam said, “Just stand by for a minute until we see if the other party is satisfied with this outcome.”

When they walked back to the liquor store, Rhonda was hanging up the receiver on a public phone attached to the wall. Cat said, “Rhonda, you might wanna think this over before you insist on reports for kidnapping or sexual assault. You see, there was money involved here, regardless of whether he decided to give it or you asked him for it. Sex and money usually means prostitution.”

“And after all, he’s the one that got boned,” Flotsam said to Rhonda. “So even if we arrested him for assaulting you, his defense lawyer would say he took it in the chute, not you. That this is just a case of tit for tat.”

“Okay,” Rhonda said with a sigh. “But I will always know that I was the victim, not that freak. And my tits had nothin’ to do with it!”

While Milt Zimmerman walked to the alley with the car keys that Cat had retrieved, Rhonda removed the broken silver pump and hobbled down Santa Monica Boulevard in the other direction, disappearing into the night.

“No such thing as rape in Hollywood,” Cat said to Flotsam. “Just a lot of business disputes.”

Flotsam had the last word, two words, actually. It was what was always said by officers in that unique police division, there in the very heart of Los Angeles. He shook his head in utter bewilderment and said, “Fucking Hollywood!”

Just then the public phone rang. Cat was heading for their car but Flotsam said, “They’re all afraid of cell phones from watching The Wire on TV.”

Flotsam picked it up and in a voice as close to Rhonda’s as he could manage said, “Heloooo.”

As expected, a male voice said, “Is this Rhonda?”

“It certainly is,” Flotsam said in falsetto.

“I’m the guy who had a little party with you at my apartment three weeks ago,” the caller said. “Lance. Remember?”

“Ohhhh, yes,” Flotsam said. “Remind me of your address, Lance.”

Before he hung up, Cat heard him say, “Get ready to shed those pants, Lance!”

“What’s going on in that water-logged brain?” Cat asked with a sloe-eyed glance.

At eleven-thirty, 6-X-32 pulled up in front of an apartment building on Franklin, an upmarket neighborhood where Flotsam and Cat wouldn’t have expected a dragon streetwalker to have an outcall date.

Flotsam said to Cat, “I thought we’d find the guy somewhere like that building near Fountain and Beachwood. That’s where a lotta trannies and dragons do business. My partner and me call it Jurassic Park.”