Hollywood Crows (17 page)

The information that GIT had was that the 18th Street crew were going to cruise south in their lowriders into Southeast L.A. to help other Hispanic gang members mete out street justice to some black gangsters who were suspected of shooting a Latino. More than half of the Los Angeles homicides in the prior calendar year were gang related. The informant indicated that the 18th Street homeboys would be waiting by a chain-link fence next to an apartment house in Southeast Hollywood, where most of them lived. When the cops arrived, eleven of the cruisers were perched on the top of the fence or leaning on the portion that was pulled from the posts and rolled in a tangle of steel wire. At a prearranged signal on the police tactical frequency, the patrol units swooped in, led by two teams of Hollywood gang cops.

None of the homies had seemed particularly disturbed and nobody ran. Several who were smoking cigarettes continued smoking. Nobody tried to toss any crystal or crack. They kept chatting among themselves as though the cops were putting on a good show for their benefit. The crew were not proned out on the ground due to the deep rain puddles that had formed under and around the fence, so the usual commands were modified:

“Turn and face the fence!”

“Interlock your fingers behind your head!”

“Do not move or talk!”

Then the cops began patting down each homie and pulling them aside to write FI cards. The gang cops took various members of the crew to their cars for more private conversations, but all in all it was a disappointment. The consensus was that the information had somehow leaked and the crew were expecting to be jacked up. The gang cops were mad and embarrassed.

During the first twenty minutes of the episode, when a few of the crew were copping attitudes, a cruiser dressed homie-hip in a baggy tee and khakis — with the usual face tatts consisting of spiderwebs and teardrops — turned to his crew and grinned, proudly displaying two gold caps. Like several of the others, he wore a red-and-white bandana around his shaved head.

He said, “Yo, this ain’t right,” to one of the Hispanic gang cops who’d arrested him in the past.

“What ain’t right,
ese
?” the gang cop said.

“We’re just hangin’, man. Ain’t no law being broke around here.”

“Homes, I would never accuse you of law breaking,” the gang cop said.

The cruisers were all grinning at one another, and the gang cops became more certain that somehow they had anticipated this sweep.

Flotsam wasn’t the least bit surprised and said to Jetsam, “Dude, have you ever heard of a cop keeping a secret?”

“Might as well give it to
Access Hollywood
,” Jetsam agreed. “You want it out there? Telephone, telegram, tell-a-cop.”

The surfer cops were waiting for the gang unit to give them the okay to clear, when a motor cop pulled up. He wasn’t just any motor cop. He was Officer Francis Xavier Mulroney, a hulking, craggy, old-school veteran who still wore reflector aviator sunglasses and black leather gloves. He had thirty-seven years on the LAPD, thirty of it riding a motorcycle. He was usually assigned to the Hollywood beat, where his nickname “F.X.” seemed wildly appropriate. He stepped off his bike and walked through the standing puddles, boots splashing any cops who didn’t get out of his way.

With his helmet and those boots and his paunch and those glasses, he looked to Jetsam like the guy that played General Patton in that old World War II movie. In fact, he even sounded like the guy, kind of gravelly.

What’s this cluster fuck all about?” he said to the nearest of the two Hispanic gang cops.

The gang cop shrugged and said, “Nothin’ much, looks like.”

Then the motor cop said, “Why ain’t these
vatos
facedown in the fucking water instead of standing around giggling like girls? What, you don’t prone out these hanky heads when it’s rained?”

The gang cop smiled agreeably and said, “Roger that message, F.X. I wish we could still do things like back in the day.”

Referring to the May 1 immigration rally in MacArthur Park, which got negative national attention when the LAPD used force on demonstrators and reporters, F.X. Mulroney sneered and said, “This is May Day all over again. Like, oh, dear me, let’s not rough people up. Shit! Sister Mary Ignatius tuned us up worse than that when I was in the third fucking grade!”

“Roger that,” the gang cop said patiently.

The motor cop said, “When I came on the Job, we were taught, ‘When in doubt, choke ’em out.’ This is why when I retire next year, I’m driving my bike onto the freight elevator at Parker Center and I’m running it right up to the sixth floor and leaving it in front of the door to the chief’s office. With a sign addressed to all LAPD brass, the police commission, and the mayor. A sign that says, ‘Put this crotch rocket between your legs. You got nothing else there.’ That’s what I’m gonna do.”

Clearly, nobody doubted him. Then one of the cops from the night watch turned toward his car to stow his beanbag shotgun.

The old motor cop snorted and said, “Beanbags. When I came on the Job, beanbags were used by little kids to throw at cutout clowns. That’s what they’ve turned LAPD into, a bunch of clowns!”

“Roger that too,” the gang cop said with a sigh. “We hear you, F.X. Loud and clear.”

Now the other cops were even more eager to get away from there, what with F.X. Mulroney on the scene. But the homeboys perched on the fence or leaning against it were giving the old motor cop the stink eye. A few of them actually laughed at him. And then a big mistake was made.

The homie with the gold teeth said in a stage whisper to one of his crew, loud enough for F.X. to hear, “He’s so old they should have training wheels on his baby hog.”

All of the 18th Street cruisers chortled at that one.

The motor cop took three big strides in those black, shiny boots toward the night-watch cop standing by the open trunk of his shop, where he was putting away his beanbag gun.

“Lemme borrow this for a minute,” F.X. said, and he pulled the cop’s Taser from his Sam Browne.

“Hey!” the cop said. “Whadda you think you’re doing?”

“We only got those bulky old piece-of-shit Tasers in our saddlebags. This is the new one, ain’t it?”

“What’re you doing?” the cop repeated.

The old motor cop showed the young night-watch cop what he was doing.

“Homes,” the motor cop said to the banger with the gold teeth, and to all the other food-stamp homeboys in their $200 Adidas, “don’t ever keep an electric appliance around your bathtub. And don’t
ever
stand in a rain puddle and lean on a chain-link fence. A bolt from heaven could strike.”

And he fired a dart that was attached to the gun by a twenty-one-foot copper wire, right into the tangle of fencing.

When the prongs bit and hooked onto the wet steel, fifty thousand volts made a crackling sound and arced a blue dagger like in Frankenstein’s lab. And the cops watched in astonishment as the homies started doing the Taser dance.

Two dropped off the fence and three fence leaners fell ass-first in the rain puddles. The rest leaped clear after experiencing shocks, mostly imagined, and everyone began screaming and cursing.

“He fucking electrocuted me!”

“I’m suing!”

“All you cops are witnesses!”

“I got a burn on my ass!”

And F.X. Mulroney joined in the chorus, crying out, “But I was only doing a spark check! Shit happens!”

“
Pinchi
cop!” Gold Tooth yelled. “He shocked us! You saw it!”

“My lawyer!” a homie yelled. “I’m calling my lawyer!”

Flotsam and Jetsam stared as Officer Francis X. Mulroney spread his arms wide, looked up at the darkening sky, and cried, “God knows I’m innocent! Even Bill Clinton had a premature discharge!”

“I’m fucking suing!” Gold Tooth yelled.

F.X. Mulroney bowed his head then and murmured, “Oh, the horror. The horror!”

Flotsam whispered to Jetsam, “F.X. always goes over the top. He’s, like, way dramatic.”

Jetsam whispered back, “In Hollywood everybody’s an actor.”

All the drama caused Flotsam and Jetsam to walk quietly to their shop, start the engine, and drive away before anyone noticed they were gone.

Most of the other bluesuits were doing the same, and the gang cop pulled Gold Tooth aside and said, “Homes, I think you better forget all about this… accident.”

“Accident, my ass!” the homie said.

The gang cop said, “Can you imagine what’ll happen if this story gets out? That crazy old motor cop can retire anytime. You can’t hurt him. But everybody’ll be laughing like hyenas. At you, dude. At your whole posse. MS Thirteen will laugh. White Fence will laugh.
El Eme
will laugh. All the Crips and Bloods from Southeast L.A. that done your people wrong, they’ll laugh the loudest. You’ll hear fucking laughter in your sleep!”

Gold Tooth thought it over and huddled with his crew for a minute or two. When he returned, he said, “Okay, but we don’t want nobody to know about this, right? All your cops gotta keep their mouths shut.”

“If there’s one thing cops can do, it’s keep a secret,” the gang cop said.

When they were two blocks from the scene, Flotsam said, “Dude, do you realize we were a witness to Hollywood history being made? That old copper just brought down a whole crew with one fucking shot!”

“We didn’t see nothing, bro,” Jetsam said. “We were already gone when history was being made.” After a pause, he said, “When he’s ready to pull the pin, do you think that loony old motor cop will really, like, drive his bike up to the chief’s office and leave it there with a sign on it?”

“What motor cop?” Flotsam replied.

I
T WORRIED RONNIE SINCLAIR
that her partner, Bix Ramstead, was so troubled by the encounter with the Somalians. They were at Starbucks on Sunset Boulevard, both doing some paperwork before going end-of-watch. Bix, never garrulous, had been unusually quiet all day.

The third time he brought it up he said, “Sometimes I think being a copper turns you into an animal in more ways than one. The hair on my neck hasn’t settled down since we first laid eyes on that scar-faced Somali. That guy’s fifty-one-fifty, for sure.”

“He’s way out there, no doubt,” Ronnie said, “but what could we do about it? There was no evidence of violent behavior. I gave her every chance to walk outta there and she flat-out refused. What could we do?”

“Nothing, I suppose,” Bix said. “But wasn’t your blue radar blinking? That dude’s gonna hurt that girl.”

“He’s probably hurt her already,” Ronnie said. “Lots and lots of times. He owns her, according to their customs. You know we couldn’t pick her up and bundle her out on the basis of blue radar, Bix.”

“Of course,” he said, “but it still bothers me.”

“The way I look at stuff like that is, it’s not my tragedy. I have to see it, but I don’t have to take it home with me. I let it go.”

“My wife’s told me that for years,” Bix said. “That’s one of the reasons I got into CRO. Her telling me I was bringing too much shit home with me for too many years.”

“She was right,” Ronnie said, thinking that every once in a while she’d run into a cop like Bix Ramstead, someone who didn’t have the right temperament for the Job. Somebody who couldn’t let it go.

He suddenly looked a bit embarrassed, as cops do when they indulge in uncoplike self-revelatory talk. He turned the conversation to her. “You ever gonna get married again, you think?”

“I’m not in the market,” Ronnie said. “I’ve proven to be a bad shopper. Besides, I’m concentrating on passing the sergeant’s exam. But if I ever get married again, it will
not
be to another cop.”

Bix smiled and said, “Smart girl.”

And Ronnie thought, If you weren’t already bought and paid for, buddy, I might make an exception. She was surprised by how much she liked Bix. Those sensitive, dusky gray eyes of his could make a girl’s knees tremble.

She said, “Will you be staying on the Job until the bitter end?”

“Until I’m fifty-five, at least,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of teenagers who’ll have to get through college, and my daughter is talking about becoming a physician. I won’t be retiring any time soon, that’s for sure.”

Ronnie almost suggested that he might consider an inside job somewhere, one that would keep him from the likes of Omar Hasan Benawi and his pitiful wife, but she thought she shouldn’t be offering career advice to a veteran like Bix. Besides, the Community Relations Office was the next best thing to an inside job. How much real police work would they ever have to do as Crows?

She said, “A couple of us are heading up to Sunset after work for a few tacos and a tequila or two. Wanna come?”

Bix hesitated, but he obviously trusted Ronnie and could confide in her in ways he might not to a male officer. He said, “I’d better not join you. I have a bit of a problem.”

“Problem?”

“I haven’t had a drink for almost a month, and I’m reluctant to go places where everyone else is powering them down.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know,” Ronnie said.

“It’s nothing major,” Bix said. “I’ve been dealing with it for years. On the wagon, off the wagon. I deal with it.”

“I hear you,” Ronnie said. “My first ex was an alcoholic in denial. Still is.”

“I’m not an alcoholic,” Bix said quickly. “I just don’t handle booze very well. When I drink, my personality changes. My wife, Darcey, put me on notice last month when I came home hammered, and I’m grateful she did. I feel a lot better now. Getting too old for that nonsense.”

Ronnie didn’t know what else to say, and Bix obviously thought he’d said too much. They finished their cappuccinos and their reports silently.

Hollywood Nate Weiss could not wait to log out at 7:30
P.M
. He’d changed from his uniform into a pricey white linen shirt, and black jeans from Nordstrom’s. He’d thought about really dressing up but figured it might make him look like some schmuck who’d never had a private supper at the home of some flaming hot, bucks-up chick in the Hollywood Hills. Which was the case exactly.