Hollywood Moon

THREE

THERE WAS MORE THAN THE USUAL amount of complaining going on at the midwatch roll call the next afternoon, especially concerning Officer Hall from Watch 3, who had been bitten on the thumb by a gay hooker on Friday night. His taller brother, who worked Watch 5, had started the gripe session on behalf of his little brother. The cops called them Short Hall and Long Hall. The prisoner wouldn’t consent to a blood test, so a search warrant would have to be obtained in order to take the prisoner’s blood. The cop’s vacation had to be postponed, and Long Hall was so livid that Sergeant Murillo assigned him to the desk, feeling that he might go all junkyard dog if turned loose on the streets.

Long Hall said to Sergeant Murillo, “Twenty years of fighting ’roided-up street savages and my brother gets taken down by Tiny Tim with a germ in his ass. They shoulda just cut his thumb off so the AIDS bug couldn’t crawl up his arm.”

Everyone in general was grouchy too because they were only able to field six cars, what with the perennial personnel shortages at LAPD. The midwatch should’ve had a dozen. It was to be expected, given that the bulk of the probationary rookies were on Watch 2 and Watch 3, leaving the Watch 5 midwatch to the saltier cops. And then someone mentioned the name of the despised US district judge who for more than six years had been ramrodding the federal consent decree, under which the LAPD was compelled to function as a result of the Rodney King riots and the so-called Rampart scandal a decade earlier.

The federal jurist had publicly commented that a recent criminal case involving a series of home invasions where drug dealers were ripped off by a trio of cops, two from LAPD, indicated that the draconian consent decree policies should not be lifted. The judge felt that this case proved that the consent decree was an essential tool in policing the police, bringing with it an endless paper blizzard devoted to audits and oversight and micromanaging minutiae. The private “monitoring” firm, which received a cool $2.4 million a year from a teetering city budget to oversee compliance, could not have been unhappy with the judge’s comments, which implicitly encouraged more milking of the municipal cash cow with no end in sight.

“Does anybody ever point out that there were only two crooked cops in that whole freaking Rampart deal?” Flotsam rhetorically asked the acting watch commander, not expecting an answer and not getting one.

“And how about this latest case?” Hollywood Nate said. “Two cops again. We’re a police department of ninety-three hundred, for chrissake! A total of four thieving cops in ten years, and the judge thinks LAPD corruption is pervasive? I wonder how many corrupt lawyers are out there in our fair city?”

Jetsam said, “And who caught the bad Rampart cops? It was us. LAPD caught them!”

“It’s a catch-twenty-two,” Dana Vaughn said. “There’s no financial incentive for the auditing firm to ever say that LAPD’s taken all the steps required under the consent decree. We might be still using hundreds of coppers doing useless and redundant paperwork for another ten years. No wonder the midwatch can only field six cars on a weekend night!”

Sheila Montez said, “When LAPD was forced to break up the Rampart Crash unit, Mara Salvatrucha gangsters from L.A. to El Salvador were dancing in the streets.”

Hollywood Nate said, “Why can’t all those cop haters be satisfied? They broke our sword, why do they have to bury it up our ass?”

The acting watch commander was Sergeant Lee Murillo, a wiry, sharp-eyed, third-generation Mexican-American with prematurely gray wavy hair who had almost made an L.A. Dodgers farm team fifteen years prior, before his arm lost its elasticity and his fastball went from ninety-plus to a hanging balloon that his grandmother could’ve hit.

He’d been a cop for thirteen years and a sergeant for three, all of his supervisory years having been spent at Hollywood Division, now officially called Hollywood Area to sound less military. Of course, the troops said that anyone, including the brass, who would replace division with area was a pussy, and Sergeant Murillo always referred to their piece of Los Angeles geography as Hollywood Division.

The fact was, he agreed with everything they said, but being a supervisor, he wasn’t supposed to validate the bitching. He just sat in front of the room and gazed over the heads of the dozen seated troops at the one-sheet movie posters decorating the walls, posters that could be found in other parts of the building as well in case anyone didn’t know that this police station was in Hollywood, USA. In the roll call room were the posters for L.A. Confidential and Sunset Boulevard. Downstairs there was Hollywood Homicide.

Lee Murillo wondered when they’d start in on their latest complaint. That would be the brouhaha over the judge’s wanting “confidential financial disclosure” by all LAPD officers who worked gang enforcement details and narcotics field enforcement. The rant came from Johnny Lanier, the only black cop on Watch 5. Johnny was a compact, outspoken P3 with fourteen years on the Job. He was a veteran of the first Gulf War who liked to say, “This job has all the good things about the Army: a uniform, weapons, camaraderie, ball-busting fun, and I don’t have to go back to Iraq.” He was next up to work the Gang Impact Team, but he didn’t know if he wanted to work GIT now that there was the financial disclosure issue.

“Who’s the problem out there, gangbangers or us?” he said. “You think I want some gangster or his lawyer getting his hands on my bank account number? How does that keep me honest in the first place?”

“No other law enforcement agency has to reveal their assets or bank accounts,” Hollywood Nate said. “Do you think those few crooked LAPD cops put their loot in their bank accounts? The only ones that get their privacy violated here are the honest cops!”

Sergeant Lee Murillo looked at his watch then, and they took it as a cue. They ceased grumbling and settled down so he could call roll and read the crimes. But before he started, Sergeant Murillo earned a bit of applause when he said quietly, “I’d like to tell the federal judge that if I was a crooked cop, I would certainly never put the hot money in my bank account. I’d stuff it in my freezer, just like your average US congressman.”

Six-X-Seventy-six decided to write their first ticket of the watch at 6:30 P.M., shortly after clearing from roll call, when they saw a ten-year-old GMC pickup blow a stoplight on Melrose Avenue near Paramount Studios. There was still plenty of daylight on this hot summer evening, and the setting sun was certainly not in the eyes of the driver who was heading east.

Hollywood Nate was driving and said to Dana Vaughn, “You’re up.”

Dana grabbed her citation book, and after Nate tooted at the guy to pull over, he parked behind the pickup. She got out and approached the car while Nate crossed behind her and stepped up on the sidewalk to look in through the passenger window.

The driver was a wide-bodied working stiff in his late twenties dressed in a gray work uniform. His fingernails were grease-caked, and smudges showed on his ruddy cheeks, as though he’d been crawling under a car.

“Your license and registration, please,” Dana Vaughn said, and the guy fumbled with his wallet.

The smell of stale beer hit her, and when he handed over his driver’s license, she said, “How much have you had to drink today?”

The guy looked up with bloodshot, unfocused eyes, brushed his light brown hair off his forehead, and said, “The boss let me off early because my wife had twins yesterday. A boy and a girl. Two of the mechanics I work with bought me some beers to celebrate.”

“How many beers did you drink?”

“Seven,” he said. “Or eight. I’m not used to drinking.”

Dana looked over the bed of the truck at Hollywood Nate and said, “Whadda you know? A forthright man.” Then she opened the door of the pickup and said, “Step out, sir. Up onto the sidewalk.”

When the new father stepped onto the sidewalk, he stumbled, and Nate reached out, grabbing his elbow. “Whoa, cowboy,” Nate said.

“What’ve you been arrested for?” Dana asked.

“Nothing,” the young man said. “Never. You can check. And I only had one ticket for speeding in my whole life.”

“Your whole life is gonna be cut short if you keep drinking seven or eight beers and driving,” Dana said.

She looked at Nate, knowing that he hated booking drunk drivers, believing it was too much paperwork for a misdemeanor and that it probably meant court time. He was always looking for something that could get his name in the news. Something that could make a casting agent see it and remember him.

The mechanic stood on the sidewalk, facing the two cops and reeling slightly, taking out his cell phone. “I can call and have my brother come get me,” he said boozily. “I’m a father now. I can’t afford to go to jail. Besides, Officer, I’m not really drunk.”

“You’re not, huh,” Dana said. “Let’s see you count backward from seventy-five to fifty-five. If you can do it, we’ll let you lock up your truck and call your brother.”

The mechanic said, “Yes, Officer.” And turning around unsteadily until his back was to the astonished cops, he said slowly over his shoulder, “Can you please tell me again what number I should start with?”

Hollywood Nate stared dumbfounded, and when he’d recovered, he said to Dana, “Partner, there’s no way we can book this guy. I can dine out on this story.”

Dana Vaughn said to the new father, “Okay, honey, turn back around and call your brother to come get you.”

The trio standing on the sidewalk never noticed the nondescript gray Honda Civic motoring slowly past them on Melrose, where the mechanic had earned his freedom by unintentionally providing the officers of 6-X-76 with a locker-room tale. The man that Tristan and Jerzy knew as Jakob Kessler glanced their way but was not curious, checking his watch because he had to be at the restaurant before Suzie got off shift.

Suzie was waiting for Kessler when he got there. She was a recent college graduate who’d majored in art history and, like thousands before her, had gotten employment where she could, usually in Hollywood eateries. The young woman looked nervous and was fiddling with her auburn ponytail when Kessler walked into the chain eatery on Sunset Boulevard. The stools were all taken, as were most of the tables, and Jakob Kessler, wearing his usual dark suit and plain necktie, waited until a customer vacated one of the stools.

He sat, ordered a cup of coffee, and used a paper napkin when he lifted the cup to his lips, so as not to leave fingerprints when he was working a job. As for DNA on the cup, there was nothing he could do about it short of carrying a spray bottle and washing it. He dismissed his action as a silly example of his growing anxiety with the work overload being forced upon him, and he dropped the paper napkin.

Suzie brushed past him, touching his back when she took an order to the kitchen, and when she returned, she paused behind his stool, removed the skimmer from under her apron, and handed it to him. Jakob Kessler took the skimmer, which was the size of a cigarette pack, and put it under his suit coat in a small bag hanging from his shoulder. As Suzie was walking away, she had her hands behind her and held up four fingers on one hand and five on the other, meaning that she’d skimmed nine credit cards.

Jakob Kessler put money on the counter for his coffee and counted out two $50 bills for Suzie. He felt he was being overly generous, but she was new and he wanted to keep her in the game. They passed close to each other when he headed for the door and she freed her right hand from a tray of dessert and grabbed the money, slipping it into her apron pocket. He didn’t have a replacement skimmer with him and made a mental note to have his wife go on the Internet and buy several new ones. After all, they were only $50 each and worth their weight in diamonds.

For his next stop he had to drive over the hill to a mall in Sherman Oaks. Once again he considered the way he was doing business, wearing out tires and shoe leather when there were competitors doing it the easy way. He knew several Hollywood Armenians who were putting their skimmers inside service station gasoline pumps. He’d been told that it was ridiculously easy to do, since one key opened all pumps. The Armenians would simply wait until the service station was closed, then install the skimmer. After a few days they’d return to the pump and remove it as easily as they’d installed it.

The Romanians were more ingenious, and experts in Bluetooth technology. They’d simply aim their device, which would seek, find, and connect, relaying the information from the skimmer. They didn’t even have to take the risk of dealing with a device that might get discovered by a service station owner who’d then alert police. The city was full of cyber thieves trolling the airwaves.

He drove to a Hollywood shopping center and entered a hardware store, one of the chains that employed at least a hundred employees in each store. He picked out a roll of duct tape that he did not need and headed for the checkout line manned by a longtime store employee named Harold Swanson, a man who spent far too much on the horses at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita.

This was another case that caused Jakob Kessler vexation after his suggestion to install a skimmer in the POS machine was summarily dismissed by his wife as “stupid and risky.” He knew that none of the Eastern European teams would have hesitated to bribe Harold Swanson to install a skimmer there at the point of sale, to be removed at a propitious moment, thereby eliminating all these daily trips over the hill into the San Fernando Valley.

When Harold Swanson saw Jakob Kessler in line at his counter, he worked a little faster to finish with another customer and said to Kessler, “Evening, sir, is that all you’re purchasing this evening?”

“Just the duct tape,” Jakob Kessler said in his German accent.

“Yes, sir,” the clerk said. “Sometimes we have sales on duct tape where you can buy six rolls at half price. Six.”

Jakob Kessler said, “Six. I shall remember that.” Then he put down a $10 bill for the tape along with six $50 bills from his wallet.

Harold Swanson put the duct tape and the skimmer in a plastic bag, pocketed the six President Grants, and handed the bag to Jakob Kessler, saying, “Have a nice evening, sir.”

Tristan Hawkins and Jerzy Szarpowicz were waiting at the duplex/office with two of the three Latino runners that Kessler had hired for their skill in passing bogus checks at the many stores catering to illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. Tristan and Jerzy were speaking to each other by then, as much as they ever did, Jerzy sitting in one of the secondhand overstuffed chairs, when all at once he slapped at a flea and leaped to his feet.

“Goddamn it!” he yelled and did a dance, his wattles bouncing as he slapped at his belly and reached around to his back, brushing away more imaginary fleas.

“Why do you think I never sit on nothin’ here unless it’s made of wood or plastic?” Tristan said. “How ’bout you, Diego?”

One of the two young Mexicans sitting at the table in the kitchenette looked up and grinned, a gold tooth gleaming, and said, “Las pulgas. They don’ be hurting you, man. If they ain’t scorpions, I don’ say nothing.”

He was doing freelance work, “washing” a stolen check with acetone. The larger Mexican next to him, a placid mestizo teenager, was doing the same to another check, but he was washing it with nail polish remover. Both men worked with great patience and care.

Tristan said to them, “Don’t let Mr. Kessler see you doin’ that. Nobody with any class bleaches checks these days. It’s too easy to make your own.”

The smaller Mexican shrugged and said, “This how we do it back in Cuernavaca. I still make some money like this.”

Jerzy walked to the kitchen, opened the little refrigerator, found nothing but two strawberry sodas inside, and took one without asking and popped it open. He eased his bulk onto the floor, leaned against the plasterboard wall, and drank.

Tristan said to the Mexican, “Can I have one too, Diego?”

“Okay,” said the Mexican, not looking up from his work.

Tristan put two dollars on the kitchen table and took the last soda. When he sat down beside his partner, he said, “So how do you like the job, wood?”

“It’s okay,” Jerzy said. “Till somethin’ better comes along.” He gulped down the drink, crushed the can in his big beefy mitts, and said, “How long you been workin’ here, anyways?”

“Almost two months,” Tristan said. “Old Jerzy was somebody I used to see at Pablo’s Tacos when I’d go there to score a couple rocks. He told me about Jakob Kessler. Now Old Jerzy’s gone.”

“This job don’t look like a place where you form long-term relationships,” Jerzy said.

“How’d you meet the man?” Tristan asked.

“This basehead named Stella told me about him. She used to live in the room next to me at Cochran’s Hotel. Said I could make some serious coin, but I ain’t seen nothin’ serious yet.”

“I don’t know a Stella workin’ for him,” Tristan said.

“She’s brain-fried, man. Here one day, spun out and gone the next.”

“Jakob Kessler is one weird dude,” Tristan said, realizing that this was the first time in four days working together that he and Jerzy had spoken more than a dozen words at a time.

Jerzy just grunted and scratched his balls, looking as though he’d like to throw one of the Mexicans out of a kitchen chair so he could get off the floor.

“Way he got me,” Tristan said, “he saw me lookin’ at some shiny spinners on a pimpmobile at Pablo’s. He says to me in that Hitler accent of his, ‘You don’t have to steal spinners. If you want them, you can walk in a store and buy them with a credit card.’ Then he bought me a taco plate and we talked.”

“He never bought me nothin’,” Jerzy said.

“The man can talk,” Tristan said. “Do those weird eyes of his ever get on your nerves?”

“I don’t pay no attention to nobody’s eyes,” Jerzy said. “Unless I think the guy’s an undercover cop and he’s lookin’ at me too close.”

Tristan then said to the smaller Mexican, “How long you been at work here for the boss?”

The Mexican shrugged and said, “Three, four week. I think.”

“And your amigo?” Tristan said.

“The same.”

“See?” Tristan said to Jerzy. “Nobody works long for Kessler. Then they’re gone, like Old Jerzy. I’ll bet this fuckin’ apartment is rented week to week.”

“What, you were hopin’ for a pension and health plan?” Jerzy said.

“I just don’t wanna suddenly not be here someday,” Tristan said. “Like Old Jerzy.”

The Mexicans completed their check washing and hid their work in a laundry bag just before Jakob Kessler arrived. He still looked neat and eminently presentable in his suit and white shirt and tie, a businessman finishing up a long day but still ready in case a sale had to be made.

Tristan got to his feet, but Jerzy didn’t bother. Tristan pointed to a paper bag on a little table by the flea-infested chair in the living room. “We didn’t go through the real mail, Mr. Kessler. It’s all there ’cept for the junk stuff. And the two credit cards I got from -”

“Never mind where you got them from,” Jakob Kessler interrupted, glancing quickly at the two Mexicans.

“Oh, yeah,” Tristan said, remembering that Kessler kept his teams of runners segregated for security. “Anyways, it’s all there, Mr. Kessler.”

“I was hoping you’d get more than two cards,” Jakob Kessler said.

“The locker room-I mean the place was pretty busy. I’ll do better next time,” Tristan said.

Jakob Kessler picked up the bag, looked inside, and said, “How many mailboxes did you visit?”

“About fifteen or twenty,” Jerzy said, finally standing up.

“Twenty-two,” Tristan said. “There’s bound to be some good stuff in there.”

“We’ll see,” Kessler said. Then he reached into his inside jacket pocket, withdrew a leather wallet, and removed eight $100 bills, giving two to each man in the room. Then he removed one more $100 bill and gave it to Tristan, saying, “Your extra work was more risky.”

“I could cash checks for you, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said. “If you’d get me a driver’s license and a credit card. I always make a good impression, and people don’t question me. Or I could be a great shopper if you’d give me a chance.”

“I shall keep that in mind, Creole,” Kessler said. “Perhaps in a few days.”

“That’s it?” Jerzy said. “I was with him. I only get two Ben Franklins for all our labor?”

Kessler said, “If your bags of material and the credit cards work out, you are going to get ten percent of what we net from them, as promised.”

“How will I know how much you net?” Jerzy demanded.

“I shall tell you how much,” Kessler said, annoyance in his voice, turning those pale lasers on his fat mail thief.

“That don’t seem right, Mr. Kessler,” Jerzy murmured, but when he glanced at the man’s strange eyes, he looked away and was silent.

“You know where to take the merchandise after you shop tomorrow, don’t you, Diego?” Jakob Kessler said to the smaller Mexican, who looked at Tristan and Jerzy and said, “I know, boss. The new place.”

“Good lad,” said Kessler.

“When we suppose to meet tomorrow, boss?” the Mexican asked.

“I can’t do it tomorrow. Just wait for my call.”

“Okay, boss,” said the Mexican.

And then Kessler was out the door and gone.

“That man talks to people like we’re all niggers,” Jerzy said to the Mexicans.

“Fuck you, peckerwood,” said Tristan.

For the first time all day, Jerzy smiled and replied, “As a famous member of your tribe once said, ‘Can’t we all jist get along?’ ”

There was a remarkable part of the story of the Rupert Moore shooting that Dana Vaughn did not share with Hollywood Nate. He’d learned it from Sergeant Lee Murillo at end-of-watch after Dana had gone home. The story made it that much more difficult for Nate to get annoyed with her for all her witty remarks at his expense. Only a few officers at Hollywood Station knew about it, yet it was considered a small miracle by the parents of Officer Sarah Messinger.

For each of the ten days that the rookie was at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in a coma, Dana Vaughn had visited her, a woman she’d never met. Sarah Messinger was only a few years older than Dana Vaughn’s daughter, and there was something about what the rookie had undergone that made Dana bond with that helpless young woman who was sustained by feeding tubes and monitors.

Dana introduced herself to the ward nurses on the first night, nurses who knew about the incident that put Officer Sarah Messinger in their care. And each day or evening, when she was sure that there would be no one else but nurses present, Officer Dana Vaughn, usually in uniform, would go to the bedside of the young woman and speak to her for ten minutes or more. Sometimes she told Sarah Messinger about the happenings on Watch 3. Sometimes she talked about teaming up with Sarah when she came back to work and was off probation. Sometimes she just did girl talk. But she never missed a day.

On one of those visits, when Dana was in uniform, an elderly Irish priest entered while Dana was talking to the young woman. The shoulders of the priest’s black coat were flaked with dandruff, and Dana thought she could smell liquor on his breath. She stopped talking when he entered.

“Don’t stop, Officer,” he said with a thick brogue. “Please don’t let me bother you. I only make the rounds to see if I’m needed by anyone.”

Dana was embarrassed and said, “I know it’s silly of me. The nurses say she can’t hear me, but… well, I know it’s silly.”

“It’s not silly,” the priest said, and when he walked closer to the bed, Dana could see right through his wispy white hair to his scaly pink scalp, and she smelled liquor on his breath for sure. “Doctors don’t know everything. I believe that people in comas are like dolphins that dive deep into the waters, fathoms deeper than we can imagine, but they are still capable of receiving signals from the surface. You keep talking to your young friend, and she will hear you in ways that we cannot understand.”

“I’m not a Catholic, Father,” Dana said, “but I’d like to think you’re right.”

“I’m not a good Catholic,” the old priest said, “but I know I’m right.”

The remarkable event happened at 8 P.M. on the evening of the tenth day, when Sarah Messinger awakened from her coma. Dana Vaughn was on a night off and dressed in civilian clothes when she rushed from home after getting a call and hearing the wonderful news. As she entered the hospital room, the parents of Sarah Messinger and a young neurosurgeon were standing by the young woman’s bed, all overjoyed.

The Messingers had been apprised of the many visits by the police officer who’d shot the man that injured their child, and when they saw Dana Vaughn, Sarah’s mother embraced her. Sarah was lying propped up on pillows, and she looked at Dana curiously.

Dana said, “Hello, Sarah. I’m so very happy tonight! You’re looking just fine!”

“Thank you,” Sarah said faintly.

“Do you know who this is, Sarah?” her mother asked.

“No,” Sarah said, studying Dana for a moment. “But somehow I know her voice.”