Hollywood Crows (5 page)

“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.”

“Why?” Cat asked.

“Because of the occupants. We don’t know
what
the hell they are.”

Flotsam shined his spotlight along the second-floor balcony until he spotted Lance’s apartment number, then got on the PA and said, “Attention, Lance! Miss Rhonda regrets she is indisposed and unable to keep her date with you tonight. It’s her recurring prostate infection.”

R
ONNIE WASN
’
T SURE
how she felt about working at the CRO. It surely wasn’t police work, and yet she couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d felt when her mother and father and married sister had ganged up on her. It had happened when she’d mentioned her new job to them during a family dinner at her parents’ home in Manhattan Beach, where her father owned and operated a successful plumbing-supply business.

“I don’t even like what they call us,” Ronnie said to them.

“Crows?” her mother said. “That’s cute.”

“How would you like to be called a crow?” Ronnie said.

“I’m too old to appreciate it,” her mother said. “But on you it’s cute.”

Ronnie had felt exceptionally tired that evening, and while her mother and her sister Stephanie were preparing a dinner of roasted halibut and wild rice, Ronnie was sprawled on the sofa with her niece Sarah sitting on her stomach. She’d tried without much success to enjoy a glass of pinot while Sarah prattled on, bouncing incessantly.

After the meal, Ronnie’s mother urged her just to relax and listen to her mom’s favorite Sting CDs and her father’s Tony Bennett albums while the others tidied up. She should have been suspicious of the extra solicitude. Then they all entered the living room and sat down, her mother and sister with a glass of wine each, her father with a beer. And they started in on her.

“The Community Relations Office is where you belong, Ronnie,” her father began. “You should stay there until you make sergeant. It’s a good stepping-stone and there’s no reason for you to leave.”

Her mother said, “You’ve done your share of dangerous work, honey.”

Stephanie said, “Do a year or two as a community relations officer, study, and get promoted. I know you think being a street cop is more fun, but you gotta think of the future.”

Her sister had assured her own future by marrying a computer geek who made three million dollars from selling his start-up company and investing it in another computer business, which was soaring.

“What is this, an intervention?” Ronnie said. “When did you all decide to do good-cop, bad-cop on me?”

“We’ve been talking about you, it’s true,” her mother said. “We know you’re not thrilled with your new job, but you’re smart. You can climb the ladder and end up—”

“In a safe desk job somewhere,” Ronnie said, ruefully. “Build them a desk and they will sit, right?”

Stephanie, who bore a family resemblance to her older sister, said, “I’ll never understand your fascination with being a cop anyway. What’s it got you except two failed marriages to other cops?”

“But they were both Sinclairs, so I didn’t even have to change my driver’s license,” Ronnie said with a smirk, pissed off as she always was when Sanctimonious Stephanie spouted off about Ronnie’s bad choices. Both Sinclair husbands had fooled Ronnie at first, but she felt she hadn’t gotten enough credit for dumping each of them quickly, as soon as she discovered that one was a secret drinker and the other a philanderer.

“Give your new job a chance,” her father said.

“You might start liking it,” her sister said. “Making your own hours to suit your own schedule.”

“And I could quit worrying about you,” her mother said.

After that evening, Ronnie decided to give it all she had at the CRO, especially since the sergeant had teamed her with an experienced senior lead officer, Bix Ramstead, to whom Ronnie had been drawn instantly.

Forty-five-year-old Bix Ramstead was thirteen years her senior, on both the Job and the calendar. At six foot one, he was fit and good-looking, with a warm and kindly smile. He had a head full of curls the color of pewter, and smoky gray eyes, and though Ronnie had never dated a man his age, she would have jumped at a chance with Bix. Except that he was married with two children he adored, a sixteen-year-old girl named Janie, and Patrick, who was twelve. Their photos were on his desk and he talked of them often, worrying about whether he’d have enough for their college tuition when the time came. Because of that, he worked as much overtime as he could, and the citizens in his area liked him.

When Ronnie had mentioned Bix to Cat, she’d said, “Yeah, I was teamed with him a few times, maybe six years ago, when he was working patrol. A complicated guy who never wanted to make sergeant. Not as much fun as some of the gunfighters when you’re working the streets. Back then I was always happier with carnivores than with grazers, but I don’t need kick-ass partners anymore. Now he’d probably suit me fine. Plus, he’s very cute.”

When Ronnie said it was too bad that Bix was married, Cat said, “He’s a little too old for you, and besides, didn’t you learn your lesson marrying two cops? I learned from marrying one. Do like me and look for a rich attorney next time. Hang out in lawyer-infested bars. Shysters are all over the place, like Starbucks cups.”

The first appointment Ronnie took with Bix Ramstead was at “The Birds,” as the cops referred to the Doheny Estates, in 6-A-31’s area. It was late morning as they cruised up the hills, surrounded by seven-figure homes on streets named Warbler Way, Robin Drive, Nightingale Drive, Thrush Way, and Skylark Drive. Many movie and rock stars owned high-dollar houses in the Hollywood Hills, some of them serving as occasional homes when their owners were in L.A. Many had great open views, some were on secluded properties. The showbiz residents were fearful of stalkers, burglars, and paparazzi.

“Occasionally, we do burglary walk-throughs,” Bix Ramstead explained to Ronnie while they drove the streets. “We just point out all the vulnerable places that need protection.”

“Quality of life,” Ronnie said, repeating the CRO mantra.

“You got it,” Bix said with a grin. “The quality-of-life calls we get up here in the hills are a bit different from the quality-of-life calls in East Hollywood, you’ll notice.”

Ronnie looked at the luxury surrounding her and said, “Their quality is a lot different from my quality, for sure.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “We still look like police officers, still think like police officers, but we aren’t doing police work.”

Bix Ramstead said to her, “When I was a cop, I spoke as a cop, I understood as a cop, I thought as a cop. But when I became a Crow, I put aside cop-ish things.”

“Who’s line is that?” Ronnie said.

“St. Paul to the Corinthians. More or less.” Then he said, “This is a good job, Ronnie. You’ll see. Don’t fight it.”

The call to the Community Relations Office that had come from The Birds was from a drummer in a rock band who was definitely on his way down. At one time he’d been hot and mentioned in the same breath with Tommy Lee, but internal dissension between the singer and the lead guitarist, who wrote their material, had broken up the group. The drummer lived with a singer whose career had taken a similar dive. She was known on the Strip as a very bad drinker whose cocaine addiction had gotten her arrested twice.

When they rang the bell, Bix said to Ronnie, “Look for
Scarface
. He’s an icon.”

“Who?” Ronnie said.

It took the rocker a minute to come to the door, and when he did, he looked pale and puzzled. His ginger ringlets hung in his face. He had a week’s growth of whiskers, and the wispy, dark soul patch under his lip was plastered with dried food. He wore a “Metallica” T-shirt and battered designer jeans that Ronnie figured had cost more than the best dress she owned. His arms were covered with full-sleeve tatts and he appeared malnourished.

“Oh, yeah, thanks for coming,” he said, stepping back in bare feet, obviously just recalling that he’d called the police the day before.

When they entered, Ronnie saw his singer girlfriend sprawled in a huge wicker chair inside a garden room just off the foyer. She was listening trancelike to speakers built into the walls on each side of the chair. Ronnie figured it was her voice on the CD singing unintelligible lyrics. Behind her on the wall was a framed one-sheet movie poster of
Scarface
, starring Al Pacino.