Hollywood Crows (12 page)

“Yeah, through a drainpipe at the Tia-juana border!” a homeless transient yelled back.

“Order, please!” Tony Silva said from the front of the room. “Please, folks! Let’s stay on point and take turns!”

“He is Nazi and he eat shit!” the Armenian yelled.

“Spoken like a goddamn illegal Mexican!” the play Nazi shot back. “Get a green card!”

“I am not Mexican!” the Armenian hollered, pointing to Officer Tony Silva. “He is Mexican! I dare you call Officer Silva filthy names, you pig-shit Nazi.”

Widening his smile to no avail, Tony Silva said, “Actually, my family is from Puerto Rico.”

A stick-thin woman looking slightly Goth with a hedge-clipper do turned and said to Ronnie, “My little love dumpling claims my hemorrhoids look like Puerto Rico. Or is it Cuba?”

Tony Silva tried levity then. Sweat beads popping, he stood and said, “To quote the ex-convict philosopher and celebrity thug Rodney King, can’t we all get along? Can’t we just get—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. The Armenian geezer made as though to attack the play Nazi but was easily restrained by Bix Ramstead, who’d been sitting quietly in the back row. That officially ended the Wednesday night meeting, and the distracted cops never saw the homeless transients stealing all of the remaining donuts, stuffing them under their grimy layers of clothing.

After locking up, Ronnie and Officer Tony Silva were standing in the shadows of the parking lot when she said to him, “Tony, those people weren’t just sitting there spouting designer slogans and trendy complaints. That was truly a cuckoo’s nest. Some of those people are seriously crazy!”

“Crazier than Kelly’s cat,” Tony Silva responded with his calm professional smile frozen in place.

“Fucking-A-Bertha!” a voice yelled from the darkness.

Meanwhile, some unusual police action was about to take place on Hollywood Boulevard, and Leonard Stilwell was present to witness it. He had placed himself directly in front of the Chinese Theatre because there were more tourists than usual meandering around the theater forecourt on this warm evening, looking at the movie star handprints in cement. If desperation was forcing him to try his hand as a purse pick, this seemed like the place to do it.

Of course, Leonard was streetwise enough to have spotted a few hooks waiting by the entrance to the subway station, young black guys ready to hook up customers to partners holding crack or crystal. The hooks liked the subway for quick retreat back to South L.A., where they resided. When the foot-beat cops or the bike patrol appeared, the hooks would vanish.

Leonard was hoping to see that skinny kid who had lifted the wallet from the tourist’s purse while she was snapping pictures. The kid had moves, and if Leonard spotted him, he was going to offer him $20 just to give Leonard some tips. Leonard smoked half a dozen cigarettes while he watched and waited, feeling his palms dampen whenever he spotted a likely purse dangling from the arm or shoulder of a preoccupied tourist. He figured they were all wise to the jostling gag and would reach for their purses if someone bumped into them. That was the thing about the kid. He didn’t touch her. He just drifted in like a ghost and was gone, leaving the purse hanging open and the wallet missing.

What Leonard failed to see was the start of an incident that did not make the
L.A
.
Times
but did rate a column in one of the underground sheets beneath a provocative headline and a story yammering about “warrior cops.” The warrior cop in question was Officer Gert Von Braun, but it all got started by a sharp-eyed rookie.

Probationer Gil Ponce was teamed with Cat Song in 6-X-32 because Dan Applewhite was on days off. Gil was ecstatic to get away from his moody field training officer, and being teamed with someone as cool as Cat Song was definitely a bonus.

When Gil had occasion to work with a P3 or even a P2 whom he didn’t know personally, he’d always address them as “sir” or “ma’am.” He still had a few weeks to go on his probation and he wasn’t going to risk any negative comments from anyone.

When he got to their shop after roll call, she said, “I’m driving, you’re booking, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said to Cat.

“How old’re you?” she asked after they were in their car.

“Twenty-three,” he said. “Almost.”

“I’m thirty-three,” she said. “Almost. But if you call me ‘ma’am,’ I’ll get feeling so matronly I’ll have to kill you and blame it on hormonal hysteria. My name’s Cat.”

“Okay, Cat,” Gil said.

When she wrote his name in the log, she said, “If we need it, can you translate Spanish, Gil?”

“No, sorry. My name’s Hispanic but…”

“No need to apologize,” Cat said, raising a slender hand with manicured nails the same color as her lipstick. “Somebody’s always calling on me to translate Korean and all I can say is
kimchi
because I grew up eating the stuff.”

Later in the evening Gil Ponce was starting to mentally play How much would I give to trade Dan Applewhite for Cat Song? when they got the call to meet the foot-beat team at Hollywood and Highland.

It wasn’t much. The foot beat had a plain drunk in tow and they needed a team to transport him to jail. He was a transient who’d been begging for change in the Kodak Center and apparently had been very successful.

“He’s annihilated,” the older cop said to Gil, who wasn’t sure if he should glove up or not. He knew that some of the older cops scoffed when the young ones drew the latex gloves, but there had been roll call training about the prevalence of staph, along with some grisly photos of cops who’d picked up horrible lesions on their hands and arms and even their legs.

There was plenty of light from street lamps and headlights, and plenty of neon there on Hollywood Boulevard, but Gil shined his flashlight beam on the guy. He saw that the transient had a long string of snot dangling from one nostril and his cotton trousers were urine soaked. So Gil put on the gloves, glad to see that Cat did the same. Just before he took control of the reeling drunk, the guy started moaning, leaned forward, and vomited.

All four cops leaped back a few paces and Gil said, “He’s chunking all over his shoes! Oh, gross!”

It was this part of police work — the smell of the hanging body leaking feces or a drunk reeking from urine and vomit — that Gil Ponce feared he might never learn to accommodate. The blood and hideous trauma of every kind he could handle, but not the odors. And just as he was about to lead the drunk at arm’s length to their shop, he was saved. He looked at the mob of tourists half a block away on the Walk of Fame and spotted a young guy with shoulder-length dark hair, a red tee, baggy jeans, and flip-flops, walking fast, a brown leather purse tucked under his arm.

“Hey!” Gil said. “Look! A purse snatcher!”

Gil instantly started running south, and when the guy, who’d been glancing behind himself, turned and saw a strapping young cop sprinting his way, he wheeled and ran across Hollywood Boulevard, nearly getting creamed by an MTA bus. Four Street Characters in full costume began shouting encouragement when Gil had to stop for the fast-moving, westbound traffic.

An older woman, obviously the victim, was standing next to the Characters, screaming, “My purse. He’s got my purse!”

“Move your ass!” Conan the Barbarian shouted at Gil. “He’s running in sandals with his butt crack showing, for chrissake!”

“I’m paying your taxes!” Superman shouted. “Get it in gear!”

“Zigzag through the traffic, you big chickenshit!” the Lone Ranger shouted, minus Tonto, who was in jail.

Even Zorro chimed in, and with his bogus Spanish accent said, “
¡Ándale, hombre
! Don’t be such a wienie!”

And Gil Ponce, perhaps subconsciously spurred by the taunting of the superheroes, did just that.

Cat Song saw him nearly get hit by a Ford Taurus whose driver was busy checking out the freak show in front of the Chinese Theatre before jamming on his brakes to keep from killing the young cop.

Cat jumped in their shop and slowed traffic with her light bar and siren, turning the corner and driving west in the eastbound number one lane, stopping car traffic in front of the Kodak Center. She was broadcasting a description of the suspect and location of the foot pursuit, when a van full of tourists caused her to brake and blast them into awareness with her siren. The tourist van skidded sideways and screeched to a stop, gridlocking traffic in both directions.

Gil Ponce was amazed by the purse snatcher’s foot speed. Of course, the guy wasn’t wearing all of the gear on his belt that Gil was, but the thief was running in flip-flops. And Gil, who was in the best shape of his life, couldn’t gain on the guy, who ran a broken field pattern through and around the hordes of pedestrians on the boulevard. Gil could see the long hair floating and the head bobbing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have known where in the hell the guy was.

Then he saw more heads bobbing their way through the crowd a block away, and he knew that some cops were running his way. Short-haired bobbing heads were chasing a long-haired bobbing head like a zany board game on Hollywood Boulevard, with Gil Ponce leaping high to see over the crowds, hoping the eastbound bobbing heads would meet the westbound bobbing head and gobble him up like Pac-Man. But suddenly, the whippet in flip-flops was gone.

The decision that the thief made to zip around the corner, running south on Orange Drive, turned out to be unwise. Because after following the foot pursuit on the radio, several cops were fanning out and trying to guess where the thief would run, and one had figured correctly that it would be through the parking garage.

Some of the foot pursuit information was broadcast by Cat Song, her shop still trapped in traffic while she boiled in frustration, cursing everything, including tourism in general. Yet the more her siren howled and her light bar winked, the more confused the out-of-town motorists became, and the gridlock grew more impenetrable. The other foot pursuit information came from five cops who’d parked west of the Chinese Theatre and were broadcasting on their rovers while running through the crowds.

The one copper who had everything doped out perfectly was Gert Von Braun. There were lights all over the parking structure, but there were dark places where a wide person dressed in a navy blue uniform could hide. She was behind a concrete wall when he ran to the structure, puffing and panting, looking behind himself, the purse in his hand now.

He never slowed and never saw Officer Von Braun holding her PR-24 baton in a rising-sun samurai pose before she stepped out from the shadows and whirled in a 360-degree whip with amazing agility for a woman in a size 44 Sam Browne. She was holding her baton in a Barry Bonds two-handed baseball grip when she swung for the bleacher seats. The baton struck the purse snatcher across the chest, and he might as well have slammed into the side of a bus. His right flip-flop continued hurtling forward, along with his left eye. It popped from its socket and rolled, clicking across the pavement, scooting off the curb, and coming to rest against the tire of an illegally parked car.

The first to arrive at the scene of arrest was Gil Ponce. The purse snatcher was proned out, hands cuffed behind his back, making creaking raspy sounds as he sucked at the air but couldn’t get enough of it. His empty eye socket glistened in the neon glow from the boulevard.

Gert Von Braun handed the purse to Gil Ponce, who was still wearing the latex gloves he’d donned when asked to take charge of the putrid drunk. Gil looped the purse strap over his arm and was putting his baton back in the ring when the surfer cops pulled to the curb and parked.

The surfers alighted from their shop, and Flotsam looked at Gil, saying, “You need somebody to accessorize you, dude. That purse does not match your shoes and gloves.”

Gil quickly peeled off the gloves and stuffed them in his pocket, and Jetsam removed the cap and straw from a cup of Gatorade he’d been drinking and said, “Here, bro. Rehydrate before you pass out.”

Gil took a gulp of Gatorade and handed it back to Jetsam while Flotsam and Gert Von Braun, each holding an arm, lifted the purse snatcher to his feet.

“My eye!” he said, wheezing. “I lost my goddamn eye!”

Flotsam shined his flashlight beam on the thief’s face and said, “You did lose it, dude. There’s just a hole in your face now. Stuff it with toilet paper before you get to the slam or those jailhouse meat packers will add a whole new meaning to eye-fucking.”

“Do you know what that eye cost!” the thief yelled, his baggy jeans and boxers now down so low his penis was exposed.

Taking out her handcuff key, Gert Von Braun uncuffed his hands, saying, “You missed a belt loop. In fact, you missed the whole belt. Do me a favor, put that thing away while we look for your eye.”

Shining his flashlight beam around the pavement, Gil Ponce said, “There it is. Under the tire of that car. Gnarly!”

“Pick it up, will ya?” the purse snatcher said to Jetsam, who was sitting on the fender of his shop, looking down at the glass eyeball, sipping his Gatorade.

“I ain’t picking up nobody’s eyeball,” Jetsam said. “You can pick up your own fucking eyeball, bro.”

“Get gloved up again, boy,” Flotsam said to Gil Ponce. “And pick it up. Every man’s got a right to his own eyeball.”

“Why did I transfer to this lunatic division?” Gert Von Braun asked rhetorically and strode across the sidewalk. “There’s not a real man on the midwatch.”

And she squatted, shined her light under the car, picked up the glass eyeball, ungloved, and then strode over to Jetsam and dunked the dirty eyeball into the surfer’s drink. And swished it around.

“My Gatorade!” Jetsam cried in disbelief to all present. “She dunked an eyeball in my Gatorade!”

“Girlie men,” Gert Von Braun muttered, and she handed the eyeball to the purse snatcher, saying, “Stick this in your head, dude.”

There were two civilians watching the action from a hundred feet away. One was Leonard Stilwell, who then had decided that purse picking wasn’t for him. Along with him was a young guy who looked like a transient but was a stringer who wrote pieces for the underground rags. The stringer was thinking he might submit this piece to the editors at the
L.A
.
Times
, who were always harping about LAPD’s “warrior cop” ethos. He’d already decided on his headline: “The Eyes Have It with Warrior Cops.”