Joseph Wambaugh: Hollywood Crows

The second book in the Hollywood Station series, 2008

Once again, special thanks for the terrific anecdotes and wonderful cop talk goes to officers of the Los Angeles Police Department:

Mike Arminio, Richard Blue, Tom Brascia, Ken Brower, Joe Bunch, Vicki Bynum, Paula Davidson, Francesca Flores, Maggie Furmanski, Beatrice Girmala, Brett Goodkin, Maria Gray, Craig Herron, Art Holmes (ret.), Jeff Ingalls, Roger Jackson, Jim Jarvis, Alisha Jordan, Richard Kalk (ret.), Mike Kammert, Al Lopez, Kathy McAnany, Julie Nony, Ed Pandolfo, Danny Pesqueira, Ralph Sanchez, Armen Sevdalian, Jeritt Severns, Mike Shea, Bill Sollie, John Washington, Jerry Wert

And to officers of the San Diego Police Department:

Don Borinski, Andra Brown, Joel Bryden, Rob Burlinson, Henry Castro, Kim Collier, Joe Cristinziani, Reggie Frank, Robin Hayes, Ken Impellizeri, Nick Kelbaugh, Charles Lara, Noel McElfresh, Wende Morris, Gib Ninness, Tony Puente (ret.), Joe Robertson, Dave Root, Adam Sharki, Jerry Stratton, John Tefft, Roxie Vigil, Judy Woods, Kelly Yatch, Randy Young

DUDE, YOU BETTER drop that long knife,” the tall, suntanned cop said. At Hollywood Station they called him “Flotsam” by virtue of his being a surfing enthusiast.

His shorter partner, also with a major tan, hair even more suspiciously blond and sun streaked, dubbed “Jetsam” for the same reason, said, sotto voce, “Bro, that ain’t a knife. That’s a bayonet, in case you can’t see too good. And why didn’t you check out a Taser and a beanbag gun from the kit room, is what I’d like to know. That’s what the DA’s office and FID are gonna ask if we have to light him up. Like, ‘Why didn’t you officers use nonlethal force?’ Like, ‘Why’d that Injun have to bite the dust when you coulda captured him alive?’ That’s what they’ll say.”

“I thought you checked them out and put them in the trunk. You walked toward the kit room.”

“No, I went to the john. And you were too busy ogling Ronnie to know where I was at,” Jetsam said. “Your head was somewheres else. You gotta keep your mind in the game, bro.”

Everyone on the midwatch at Hollywood Station knew that Jetsam had a megacrush on Officer Veronica “Ronnie” Sinclair and got torqued when Flotsam or anybody else flirted with her. In any case, both surfer cops considered it sissified to carry a Taser on their belts.

Referring to section 5150 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, which all cops used to describe a mental case, Flotsam whispered, “Maybe this fifty-one-fifty’s trashed on PCP, so we couldn’t taze him anyways. He’d swat those darts outta him like King Kong swatted the airplanes. So just chill. He ain’t even giving us the stink eye. He just maybe thinks he’s a wooden Indian or something.”

“Or maybe we’re competing with a bunch of other voices he’s hearing and they’re scarier,” Jetsam observed. “Maybe we’re just echoes.”

They’d gotten nowhere by yelling the normal commands to the motionless Indian, a stooped man in his early forties, only a decade older than they were but with a haggard face, beaten down by life. And while the cops waited for the backup they’d requested, they’d begun speaking to him in quiet voices, barely audible in the unlit alley over the traffic noise on Melrose Avenue. It was there that 6-X-46 had chased and cornered him, a few blocks from Paramount Studios, from where the code 2 call had come.

The Indian had smashed a window of a boutique to steal a plus-size gold dress with a handkerchief hemline and a red one with an empire waist. He’d squeezed into the red dress and walked to the Paramount main gate, where he’d started chanting gibberish and, perhaps prophetically, singing “Jailhouse Rock” before demanding admittance from a startled security officer who had dialed 9-1-1.

“These new mini-lights ain’t worth a shit,” Jetsam said, referring to the small flashlights that the LAPD bought and issued to all officers ever since a widely viewed videotaped arrest showed an officer striking a combative black suspect with his thirteen-inch aluminum flashlight, which caused panic in the media and in the police commission and resulted in the firing of the Latino officer.

After this event, new mini-flashlights that couldn’t cause harm to combative suspects unless they ate them were ordered and issued to new recruits. Everything was fine with the police commission and the cop critics except that the high-intensity lights set the rubber sleeves on fire and almost incinerated a few rookies before the Department recalled all of those lights and ordered these new ten-ouncers.

Jetsam said, “Good thing that cop used flashlight therapy instead of smacking the vermin with a gun. We’d all be carrying two-shot derringers by now.”

Flotsam’s flashlight seemed to better illuminate the Indian, who stood staring up white-eyed at the starless smog-shrouded sky, his back to the graffiti-painted wall of a two-story commercial building owned by Iranians, leased by Vietnamese. The Indian may have chosen the red dress because it matched his flip-flops. The gold dress lay crumpled on the asphalt by his dirt-encrusted feet, along with the cut-offs he’d been wearing when he’d done the smash-and-grab.

So far, the Indian hadn’t threatened them in any way. He just stood like a statue, his breathing shallow, the bayonet held down against his bare left thigh, which was fully exposed. He’d sliced the slit in the red dress clear up to his flank, either for more freedom of movement or to look more provocative.

“Dude,” Flotsam said to the Indian, holding his Glock nine in the flashlight beam so the Indian could observe that it was pointed right at him, “I can see that you’re spun out on something. My guess is you been doing crystal meth, right? And maybe you just wanted an audition at Paramount and didn’t have any nice dresses to wear to it. I can sympathize with that too. I’m willing to blame it on Oscar de la Renta or whoever made the fucking things so alluring. But you’re gonna have to drop that long knife now or pretty soon they’re gonna be drawing you in chalk on this alley.”

Jetsam, whose nine was also pointed at the ponytailed Indian, whispered to his partner, “Why do you keep saying long knife to this zombie instead of bayonet?”

“He’s an Indian,” Flotsam whispered back. “They always say long knife in the movies.”

“That refers to us white men!” Jetsam said. “We’re the fucking long knives!”

“Whatever,” said Flotsam. “Where’s our backup, anyhow? They coulda got here on skateboards by now.”

When Flotsam reached tentatively for the pepper-spray canister on his belt, Jetsam said, “Uncool, bro. Liquid Jesus ain’t gonna work on a meth-monster. It only works on cops. Which you proved the time you hit me with act-right spray instead of the ’-roided-up primate I was doing a death dance with.”

“You still aggro over that?” Flotsam said, remembering how Jetsam had writhed in pain after getting the blast of OC spray full in the face while they and four other cops swarmed the hallucinating bodybuilder who was paranoid from mixing recreational drugs with steroids. “Shit happens, dude. You can hold a grudge longer than my ex-wife.”

In utter frustration, Jetsam finally said quietly to the Indian, “Bro, I’m starting to think you’re running a game on us. So you either drop that bayonet right now or the medicine man’s gonna be waving chicken claws over your fucking ashes.”