Hollywood Crows (10 page)

So far, Ronnie Sinclair and Bix Ramstead had experienced an uneventful ten hours. In furtherance of their quality-of-life mission, they’d been involved in crackdowns on some of the nightclubs on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards that were generating numerous complaints from other businesses and residents in the area. Nightclub customers parked wherever they found curb space, ignoring the color of curbs or whether portions of their cars might extend into the driveways of residential property. The nightclub patrons, especially those who frequented the topless clubs where booze was sold, also urinated and vomited on sidewalks and in planted areas and threw trash anywhere that was handy.

Those who preferred all-nude dancers would emerge with more sobriety, since ordinances prohibited booze to be served in those clubs, but the more enterprising customers found ways to flavor their soft drinks and setups with secreted containers of liquor. Some of the customers went so far as to make frequent trips to the restroom, where they’d withdraw plastic bottles of spirits from under their clothing and fill their mouths before returning to their tables, then spit it into their half-empty soft drinks. Bolder ones just poured it under the table into the setups. Still others just forgot about booze and ingested or snorted other drugs, which did the trick well enough.

The vice unit would work these clubs and cite or arrest for all sorts of violations, from prostitution to alcoholic beverage violations, but Ronnie and Bix were attending to the needs of the neighbors. In the short time she’d been a Crow, Ronnie was already getting to know the roster of chronic complainers by name. One of these was Mrs. Vronsky, who owned a twenty-nine-unit apartment building near the Leopard Lounge, one of the clubs that used the word
class
in all of its commercials.

“Officer Ramstead, thank you for being so prompt,” the old woman said in slightly accented English when they found her standing in front of her building. She was in her mideighties, short, still full-figured, her white hair coiffed, and she wore slacks with a matching jacket that Ronnie thought would exceed her own budget.

“Of course, Mrs. Vronsky,” Bix said. “I’d like you to meet one of our new community relations officers. This is Officer Sinclair.”

“Very nice to meet you, dear,” Mrs. Vronsky said, then turned to Bix. “I have asked that man Mr. Aziz a thousand times to tell his employees not to park in our spaces here, but when they see a parking space open, they grab it. And then my tenants come home at midnight after getting off the swing shift, and what happens?”

“You have to call Hollywood Station to have them cited or towed,” Bix said sympathetically. “I do understand, Mrs. Vronsky.”

“I’ve been patient, Officer Ramstead,” she said, her pale eyes watery. “But the man ignores my calls.”

“We’ll just have to keep citing and towing, won’t we?” Bix said, patting the old woman gently on the shoulder. “But for now we’ll go have a talk with him.”

“Thank you, Officer Ramstead,” she said. “The next time I see you I shall have some of my homemade piroshki. Just the way you like it.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Vronsky,” Bix said. “Officer Sinclair is in for a treat.”

When they were walking toward the front door of the Leopard Lounge, Ronnie said, “The look that old lady was giving you said, If only I were forty years younger. As it is, she’d gum you to death given half a chance.”

Bix smiled and said, “It’s just as easy to be patient with them. Last year she donated a thousand dollars to the L.A. Police Memorial fund along with a thank-you to ‘that nice Officer Ramstead at Hollywood Station.’ The boss gave me an attaboy for that. Wait’ll you meet Mrs. Ortega. She’s Puerto Rican and always makes me sit down and eat some baked fish and rice. And she never fails to suck the eyeballs out of the fish head.”

“Yikes!” Ronnie said, then followed Bix through the darkened doorway into the nightclub, finding the Leopard Lounge to be more posh than she’d imagined.

A burly Latino bouncer nodded at the uniformed cops and stepped aside when they entered. There were three bartenders pouring drinks with both hands, and a busboy was running trays of dirty glasses through swinging doors into the kitchen. The place was dark, but light enough that all customers and their tableside activities could be monitored by undercover cops as well as by the bouncer. The banquettes looked comfortable and the tabletops were clean, thanks to Latino busboys in white shirts and bow ties, working hard.

Ronnie was surprised by how pretty the cocktail waitresses were, and the two girls dancing onstage were knockouts. One of them looked to be part Asian and part white, her glossy hair hanging down nearly to her G-string as she gyrated under strobe lights.

A busty cocktail waitress walked toward the cops, smiled, and said, “Table for two, Officers?”

“I gotta warn you, I don’t like tropical toys in my mai tais,” Bix said, smiling back at her. “Is the boss around?”

“He’s in his office. Just a minute, I’ll tell him you’re here.”

She was gone for a moment, returned, and said, “You can go in.”

Ronnie noticed the cocktail waitress giving Bix the big eye when they squeezed passed her in the narrow corridor leading to the office, but he didn’t seem to notice. Ronnie had decided by now that Bix was the elusive Monogamous Male Cop, a creature she thought was extinct, if it had ever existed in the first place.

Ali Aziz was sitting at his desk, which was covered with file folders, bills, and photos of prospective dancers, most of them topless. He was yelling in Arabic at someone on the phone. When he looked up at them, he forced a polite smile and motioned them to the two client chairs.

Ronnie thought the office was very nice, not at all what she’d expected. The wall coverings were subtle, mostly pale colors that complemented the earth tones in the carpeting, and drapes that concealed the single small window facing the alley. The only bling was on the person of Ali Aziz himself, who wore a creamy silk blazer with a monogrammed pocket, a black shirt and matching black trousers, a gold Rolex, and pinkie rings on both hands. He was middle-aged, balding, swarthy, and wasn’t likely to get invited to the Jonathan Club downtown, she thought. But he’d fit in okay on the Nightclub Committee of the Community Police Advisory Board.

When Ali Aziz hung up the phone, he stood and reached across the desk to shake hands with both cops. He was several inches shorter than Bix and looked up with all of the cordiality he could muster, saying, “Welcome, Officers. I hope there is nothing wrong? We are friends of Hollywood Station. I am knowing your captain well, and each year I give from my heart to the Children’s Holiday Party and the Tip-A-Cop fund-raiser.”

“It’s the same complaint, Mr. Aziz,” Bix said.

“Parking?” With his accent he pronounced it
barking
.

“Yes, parking.”

“Fucking Mexicans!” Ali Aziz said, then looked at Ronnie and said, “Sorry. I am sorry, Officer. I have so much anger with my Mexicans. I shall fire them. They do that illegal parking. I am sorry for my rude mouth.”

Ronnie shrugged and Bix said, “We wouldn’t like to get anybody fired. We just want your employees to stay out of the parking places belonging to the apartment building across the street. Even though the spots look empty, people who work late hours come home to find your employees’ cars in their spaces.”

“Yes, yes,” Ali said. “The old Russian lady, she is right. She calls me all the time. I have police coming here all the time. I do not mind. I wish for my customers to see the police here. They know this is a respectable club. But I am sorry for you to waste your time. I shall fix this problem. I am going to send flowers to the old Russian lady. Do you need money for anything? I shall give you some cash for the — how you call it? — Pals Program.” He turned the
p
into a
b
again.

“No cash,” Bix said, standing up. “If you like, you can make a donation by check to the Police Activity League.”

“I shall do that tomorrow, god willing,” Ali said, standing to shake hands.

Ronnie was looking at the framed photos on a shelf over a big-screen TV. Three were studio shots of a beautiful boy, one taken when he was about two and another when he looked to be about five years old, wearing a suit, white shirt, and necktie in both photos. The third studio photo was of the boy posing next to his mother, he wearing a blazer and tie, she a basic black, V-neck dress with only a string of pearls hanging at her throat. She was a striking beauty, with hair the color of, what? Golden chestnut, maybe, full and heavy hair that any woman would die for.

Ronnie carefully touched the frame and said, “Your family is very beautiful.”

“My little son,” Ali said, smiling genuinely for the first time. “My heart. My life. My little Nicky.”

“Your wife should be in movies,” Ronnie said. “Don’t you think, Bix?”

“Uh-huh,” Bix said, hardly glancing at the photo.

Ali’s smile turned sour then and he said, “We are in a divorce battle.”

“Oh, sorry,” Ronnie said.

“No problem,” Ali said. “I shall obtain my son from her. I have the best divorce lawyer in all Los Angeles.”

They said their good-byes, and when they left the nightclub, Bix said, “So what’s your opinion of Ali Aziz?”

“I wouldn’t wanna work for him,” she said.

“Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth when he’s talking to cops,” Bix said.

“Please,” Ronnie said, “make that nonfat yogurt.”

As they were getting in their car to go end-of-watch, she said, “He won’t be a problem for long. That dude’s so golded up, he’ll probably drown in his pool someday if he goes in the deep end.”

And that’s how their uneventful watch would have ended if they had not driven to the station by way of Sunset Boulevard. Traffic was only moderate that evening, but Sunset was blocked at Vine Street by a confusing flare pattern that a motorist had placed. They saw a black-and-white that had been speeding north on Vine Street come screeching to a stop at the intersection. Bix turned on the light bar and drove west in the eastbound lane, turning south on Vine, and there it was: a major traffic collision.

“The TC must’ve just happened,” Ronnie said, as two cops from Watch 3 were running from their shop to a flattened old Chevy Caprice that had rolled more than once after having been slammed broadside by a two-ton flatbed truck that had blown the traffic light while racing southbound, driven by a teenage driver with a cell phone glued to his ear. The kid was bleeding from facial lacerations and was leaning against a door that was folded like a wallet from the force of the collision.

Bix leaped out and ran to the old car, Ronnie following. And one of the young Watch 3 cops yelled to them, “Two RA’s on the way! There’s a woman and kid in there! They’re bleeding bad and we can’t get them out!”

The other cop, a bigger man, was kicking at the jammed rear door of the Caprice where they saw a child’s head inside, gashed open from the crown to the forehead, blood running across her face from deep channels that had been opened to the bone.

“God!” Ronnie said. “God almighty!”

And she began kicking the door also, after the big cop stopped and drew his baton. He tried using it as a pry, trying to muscle open the door while yelling to his partner, “Get me a tire wrench! Anything to pry with!”

Bix could see through the shattered glass that the Asian woman behind the wheel was dead. Her chest had been crushed by the steering column and she stared lifelessly at the black sky through what was left of the roof.

Ambulance sirens were getting closer and Bix heard several voices shouting, and then he saw something move. He shined his light inside and realized that another child had been in the backseat of the car.

“There’s another kid in there!” he yelled, just as the big cop succeeded in prying the rear door open, and Ronnie saw clearly that the little girl’s shattered skull was attached to her neck only by a few shredded knots of red, slimy tissue.

“God almighty!” she repeated and ran around the car to Bix and the other child he had found, hoping that this one was alive.

Bix, his mini-flashlight on the asphalt, was down on his knees, crawling under the car, trying to lift the portion of wreckage that had the child pinned. Ronnie could hear him grunting and saw him lifting with his back, and when she shined her light under the car, she lit the face of a four-year-old girl who turned out to be the second daughter of young Cambodian immigrants who had been in Hollywood for nearly five years.

The child’s body was twisted and bloody, but her face and head were unmarked. She had a delicate, very pale beauty, and Ronnie crawled under the wreckage to help Bix try to lift the twisted metal.

It was then that the thing happened, the thing that Ronnie knew she’d remember for the rest of her career. Perhaps for the rest of her days. The little girl opened her eyes and looked directly into the straining face of Bix Ramstead, who had at last raised the chunk of wreckage high enough for Ronnie to pull her free.

Just before Ronnie grabbed her, the child said to Bix, “Are you my angel?”

Controlling his labored breathing, Bix managed to say, “Yes, darling, I am your angel.”

When they got back to Hollywood Station, Bix changed out of his uniform much faster than Ronnie did. When she left the women’s locker room she saw him sprinting across the parking lot to his minivan, and she was pretty sure she knew where he was going.

After Ronnie arrived at work the next morning, she learned that the child had survived the ambulance ride to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center but died in the ER moments before her angel came running to her side.

O
NCE A MONTH
every patrol division of the LAPD was required to hold a CPAB meeting, pronounced
see-pab
, for Community Police Advisory Board. Hollywood Division held its CPAB meeting on the last Tuesday, the idea being to bring together community leaders, neighborhood watch captains, the City Attorney’s Office, the Department of Transportation, the L.A. Fire Department, and others, all to discuss crime and quality-of-life issues in the respective police divisions. The meeting was run by the division captain along with the CPAB president, whoever that might be.