Hollywood Crows

SIX

ONCE 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.

The problems began almost immediately for the Hollywood Division CRO because, according to unofficial reports to the office of the chief of police, Hollywood was not like anywhere else. In fact, the unofficial report referred to Hollywood as “America’s kook capital.” Because it was a community meeting, residents of Hollywood could not be segregated or excluded due to irrational behavior, unless the behavior turned dangerous. Many of the same people showed up regularly at the meetings for free coffee and donuts. And, more often than not, havoc ensued.

Special arrangements had to be made to accommodate the Hollywood Division CPAB meetings, and it was decided that a second meeting would be held the day after the official CPAB meeting. The names and addresses of the more peculiar and troublesome residents were culled from sign-in sheets at the CPAB meetings, and letters were sent telling them that their meetings would now be held on the last Wednesday of the month. The Wednesday gathering was officially renamed the “Hollywood Community Meeting.” But the cops unofficially referred to it as the “Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Crows would say to one another, “Are you going to CPAB or Cuckoo’s Nest?”

The Cuckoo’s Nest meeting was not run by the captain or any member of the command staff. Sometimes even the CRO sergeant wasn’t in charge, preferring to leave it to one of the senior lead officers. The Crow would try to arrange for interesting guest speakers, such as a narcotics detective or a gang officer or a vice cop. In order to entice speakers, the Crow told them that this was a very low-key community meeting that the speakers would find enjoyable. Once the speakers discovered the truth, they never came back.

Ronnie Sinclair was tasked to assist at her first Cuckoo’s Nest meeting the day after Jetsam became convinced that he might have stumbled onto an al Qaeda cell operating in Hollywood. Jetsam had phoned the auto theft team the moment he woke up that morning, but they were in court or otherwise occupied and away from the station. When one of them finally returned his call, the detective, whom Jetsam didn’t know personally, was less than enthusiastic.

After hearing Jetsam’s terrorist theory based upon spotting one Arabic newspaper at a body shop that worked on expensive SUVs, the detective said to him, “Do you know Arabic from Farsi?”

“Well, no,” Jetsam had to admit.

“The newspaper could have been left there by an Iranian,” the detective suggested.

“All the more reason to check it out,” Jetsam said. “Remember the case last year where LAPD and the FBI popped those Chechens who had a racket where they got people to report expensive cars stolen and collect insurance payoffs? And then the cars were smuggled in big shipping containers to their country to help Muslim terrorists? Remember that one? Well, these SUVs were too newish and expensive to be worked on in a repair joint in East Hollywood.”

The detective was silent for a moment and then said, “Are you saying you think these people are Chechen terrorists?”

“No, but maybe they’re copycats pulling the same scam, and they’re gonna smuggle hot SUVs to places like…”

“Baghdad?”

“Or like…”

“Tehran?”

“Aw, shit,” Jetsam said.

“You have my blessing if you wanna check it out yourself,” the detective said. “But you catch ’em, you clean ’em. Right now I’m due in court, so I gotta run.”

After hanging up, Jetsam said to the phone, “And we thank you for your call. Fuck you very much.”

Detective indifference and condescension is what brought Jetsam and his reluctant partner to the Cuckoo’s Nest meeting on Wednesday night. Of course it was a bonus for Ronnie Sinclair to observe a meeting conducted by an experienced Crow. The sergeant told Ronnie that Tony Silva would be a good one to emulate because he was patient and had a calming effect on most of the regulars if things turned violent.

“Violent?” Ronnie said in astonishment, but her sergeant only shrugged and walked away. She thought he must be kidding.

Twenty minutes before the Cuckoo’s Nest was to start, Ronnie was surprised to see Jetsam enter the meeting room and wave her outside.

“What’s up?” she said, walking with him to the black-and-white, where Flotsam sat behind the wheel.

Flotsam looked out at her and said, “Don’t blame me for this, Ronnie. Watch five only has three cars in the field tonight and he’s got me beached. If Treakle finds out, he’ll have us castrated.”

“I got something for a Crow to check out, Ronnie,” Jetsam said, giving her a piece of notebook paper with the address of the auto body shop and the address and phone number of the Guatemalan woman who phoned about their cars blocking the alley.

“What’s all this?” she said.

“It’s a quality-of-life deal,” Jetsam said. “And it’s an opportunity for you to go to this body shop and maybe, just maybe, end up with something pretty big.”

“It’s Osama bin Laden,” Flotsam said. “My pard thinks he’s there, pounding out dents on Beemers and Benzes.”

“Dude, can you stop hacking on me for two minutes?” Jetsam said to his partner. “You’re spiking me like you spiked those barneys at Malibu this morning.”

Ronnie, who knew that Flotsam and Jetsam surfed almost every day before going on duty, said, “Spiking? Barneys?”

Flotsam said, “He thinks I shouldn’t do surfboard self-defense on four squids that flipped us off and stole my juicies when I was rippin’. They thought it was cooleo till one of them caught my log upside his head when I snaked him on the next wave.”

“What?” Ronnie said.

“All I said was,” Jetsam said to Flotsam, “you should cap the little surf Nazi if you wanna turn him into part of the food chain. Not torpedo him till he’s almost dead in the foamy.”

“There’s just too damn many languages spoken in this town,” Ronnie said rhetorically. “Did you bring me out here for today’s surfing highlights, or what? I got a meeting inside.”

“Take a few minutes tonight or tomorrow night,” Jetsam said quickly. “Phone the woman about the Arabs at the repair shop. They got the joint vacuum-packed with some slammin’ SUVs. I think they gotta be hot. You could warn them about blocking the alley and maybe take down some license and VIN numbers.”

“I’m not a detective,” Ronnie said. “Call the auto theft detail.”

“Been there,” Jetsam said. “They’re about as lazy as Compassionate Charlie Gilford. A blocked alley affects everybody in the apartment house. I need a quality-of-life cop to get this thing kick-started.”

“That’s not my area,” Ronnie said.

“You’re the only Crow I know real well,” Jetsam said, “except for Hollywood Nate. This is a job for a real cop. They couldn’t have morphed you into a teddy bear already. If you want, we could meet you tomorrow at the body shop as backup, say around sixteen hundred hours? Right before they close.”

“You can meet her,” Flotsam said to his partner. “I go on duty at seventeen-fifteen.”

“Dude…,” Jetsam said in exasperation to his partner.

“This one ain’t on my desktop,” Flotsam explained to Ronnie. “Him and me, we’re close, but we ain’t Velcro close. I ain’t down for this one.”

“Okay, okay!” Ronnie said, relenting. “I’ll give her a call later tonight and maybe I can stop by the body shop tomorrow afternoon. If I can, I’ll give you a call on your cell. Will you be hanging ten at Malibu or remaining on dry land?”

“I’ll be home,” Jetsam said. “And ready to jam.”

After Ronnie went back inside, Flotsam said, “You know you wouldn’t be doing any of this if Ronnie was a yuckbabe instead of totally mint. Get over yourself, dude. She ain’t never gonna be your fuck puppet.”

“This might be too much for you to download, bro,” Jetsam said, “but this ain’t about hose cookies. This is about what the Oracle always said to us: Doing good police work is the most fun we’ll ever have in our entire lives. I know there’s something going down in that repair shop. And whadda you got to do tomorrow except crawl along the sand and sniff around some salty sister whose whole life is smoking blunts and chugging coolers?”

Flotsam thought it over and said, “Okay, dude, you’re totally frenzied. I guess we better stop there on the way to work. Just to get it outta your system.”

“You’re down?” Jetsam said.

“I’m down,” Flotsam said, with no more enthusiasm than Jetsam had heard from the auto theft detective or from Ronnie Sinclair.

After they were back cruising their beat, Jetsam said dreamily, “Dude, ain’t there something about Ronnie that’s like…like being all flattened in dead water, and, like, here comes a beautiful peel breaking so clean from the top? And next thing, you’re flying down the lane smelling that Sex Wax, and you get the blood surge? Know what I’m saying, bro?”

“You could LoJack that chick and still not park her in your crib,” Flotsam said. “Look for a date on MySpace. She’s too tall for you.”

“We’re about the same height.”

“She puts on sky-high stilettos, then what? You’ll look like Sonny and Cher.”

“But she’s, like, smokin’ hot,” Jetsam said. “I bet that girl and me could put some antic in romantic! I’ll bet she could make me harder than Gramma’s biscuits!”

“You two would look like Tom Cruise and every babe he marries,” Flotsam said dryly.

Officer Tony Silva got the meeting off to a good start with his soothing and reassuring manner. He’d instructed Ronnie to maintain a “calm and professional smile,” no matter what happened. But he was getting close to the hazardous part of the meeting, when questions from the floor were permitted.

One of the eldest of the regulars, who couldn’t get to the bathroom fast enough at the prior meeting, was responsible for a rules change. Tony Silva’s Crow assistant, Officer Rita Kravitz, whose trendy eyeglasses said “I am smarter than you,” was asked by Tony Silva to help with the cleanup last time, but she said to him, “Instead of you sitting up there popping bubble wrap while you look calm and professional, go find yourself a goddamn mop!”

Cuckoo’s Nest Rule 1 was enacted: “No punch is to be served at Wednesday meetings.”

Ronnie was warned about “Deputy Dom,” always the first to arrive and the last to leave. He was in his sixties, with a fringe of gray hair, and always wore an odorous, food-stained security guard uniform.

“Dom was absent for the first time last week,” Tony Silva told Ronnie. “He was in jail, but the City Attorney’s Office decided not to prosecute. He tried to pepper spray an entire Laotian family: father, mother, four kids, and a grandma. He said none of them were carrying passports, and that made them security risks.”

Ronnie learned that the cross-eyed guy in a bowling shirt with “Regent Electrical Supply” across the back and “Henry” over the front pocket was the one they’d dubbed “Henry Tourette.” He was an unintentional disrupter, because he’d yell out “Fucking-A-Bertha!” to every single statement offered by anyone. It was worrisome in that it provoked angry retorts from other borderline personalities.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that the Crows could do about any of it, not in the land of diversity, where all behavior that was not overtly criminal must be understood and respected. Where people were never to be considered “sick,” but only “different.”

The sole “weapon” that the Crows found somewhat effective was the Community Service Completion Certificate. The CRO sergeant first encountered it when a young man who had attended meetings for three months without ever uttering a peep approached the sergeant and presented him with a folded document, saying it was given to him by a motorcycle officer.

“The officer wrote me a jaywalking ticket on Hollywood Boulevard,” the young man explained. “My mother paid the ticket, and then the officer stopped me again a week later in the same place.”

“For jaywalking?” the sergeant asked.

“Yes, but this time I told him about the voices.”

“What voices?”

“The ones that tell me when to cross the street.”

“What did the motor officer say about that?”

“He said, ‘Why don’t the voices ever tell you to cross on a green light?’”

“That sounds like Officer F.X. Mulroney,” the sergeant said. “Did he write you another ticket?”

“No, he gave me this certificate and told me that I would have to attend every Wednesday night Hollywood Community Meeting for ninety days, and to stay away from Hollywood Boulevard. And if I did it, you’d sign my certificate.”

Thus, a tradition was started. The CRO sergeant signed the “certificate” and announced to the entire assembly that the young man had completed three months’ community service for jaywalking, and the other members at the meeting gave him a standing ovation.

Things started well at Ronnie’s first meeting. Everyone seemed calm, even bored. They ate copious amounts of donuts, and Ronnie later wondered if elevated blood sugar had something to do with what happened later. Things started going sideways when one of the homeowners, a meticulously groomed gentleman with a dyed transplant, stood and said, “I’d like something done about the gay men who park in front of my house after the bars close and commit sex acts.”

One of the trannies, the best-dressed person at the meeting, said, “If they’re on the street, it’s public property. Are you jealous?”

“Yeah,” said a woman wearing a lip ring, an eyebrow spike, and a tongue stud. The face jewelry seemed peculiar in that she was seventy-five years old if she was a day. “Just stay in your house, and that way you won’t know there’s people blowing each other in this world.”

“Fucking-A-Bertha!” Henry yelled.

That set off the one they called “Rodney the Racist,” a fiftyish Nazi wannabe, whose shaved skull was decorated with a backward swastika that he’d created with a mirror and Magic Marker.

Rodney raised his hand, and when Tony Silva acknowledged him, he stood and said, “It’s all these goddamn illegal aliens causing the problems.”

A burly senior citizen who resided in Little Armenia and was said to have made a few bucks before alcoholism rotted his brain stood and said, “Immigrants make America great!”

The play Nazi said, “What’re you, an illegal alien?”

“I come to this country legal, you son of bastard!” the Armenian yelled.

“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.”

Gert Von Braun said to Gil Ponce, “I’ll see you at the station.”

“I think maybe there is one real man on the midwatch,” Flotsam said, watching Gert get in her shop. “At least we didn’t get spit at.”

Finally having negotiated her way through the traffic on Hollywood Boulevard, Cat Song double-parked across from the parking structure and trotted over to the group of cops, where she saw the purse snatcher wipe something on the front of his T-shirt and then use both hands to do something to his face.

But her mind was on her young boot, who had nearly gotten himself killed, and she was very mad when she pulled Gil Ponce aside and said quietly, “You almost got pancaked by that head-up-ass tourist in the Ford. You were very lucky. Dumb and lucky.”

“I misjudged his speed,” Gil Ponce said.

“Listen, man of steel,” she said, “you can play Russian roulette, date Phil Spector, or otherwise self-destruct on your own time, but not on mine. There’s no place for a kamikaze kid in my shop.”

“I’m sorry, Cat,” Gil said. “But we got him. We got the guy!”

Jetsam walked over to Cat Song and pointed at Gert Von Braun driving away. “She dunked an eyeball in my Gatorade!” he said. “And swished it around!”

“What?” said Cat Song.