Hollywood Station

EIGHTEEN

THE BLUE PINTO was registered to a Samuel R. Culhane who lived on Winona Boulevard. Viktor Chernenko was sitting in the backseat of the black-and-white, concerned about whiplash with Hollywood Nate still driving in his high-speed redemption mode.

Wesley said to Viktor, “You know, Detective, the only problem here is that the first time we talked to Trombone Teddy he said the guy’s name sounded like Freddy or Morley.”

“Maybe Samuel sold the car to a Freddy,” Nate said. “Stay positive.”

“Or lent the car to Morley,” Viktor added.

The house was almost a duplicate of Farley Ramsdale’s old Hollywood bungalow except it was in good repair and had a small lawn in front with geraniums along the side of the house and a bed of petunias by the front porch.

Wesley ran to the rear of the house to prevent escape. It was dusk, and he didn’t need a flashlight yet. He took cover behind the garage and waited.

Viktor took the lead and knocked, with Nate standing to his left.

Samuel R. Culhane wasn’t as thin as Farley but he was in a late stage of methamphetamine addiction. He had pustules on his face and a permanent twitch at the corner of his right eye. He was several years older than Farley and balding, with a bad comb-over. And though he couldn’t see Hollywood Nate standing beside the guy at the door, he knew instantly that Viktor was a cop.

“Yeah?” he said cautiously.

Viktor showed his badge and said, “We need to talk to you.”

“Come back with a warrant,” Samuel Culhane said and started to close the door, but Viktor stopped it with his foot and Nate pushed past and into the room, touching the badge pinned to his shirt, saying, “This is a brass pass, dude.”

When the back door opened and Nate whistled to him, Wesley entered and saw the tweaker sitting on the couch in the living room looking glum. Viktor was formally reading the guy his rights from a card that every cop, including Viktor, had memorized.

Nate handed Samuel Culhane’s driver’s license to his partner and said, “Run him, Wesley.”

After Viktor had finished with the rights advisement, he said to the unhappy homeowner, “You are not pleased to see us?”

“Look,” Samuel Culhane said, “you ain’t searching my house without a warrant, but I’ll talk to you long enough to find out what the hell this is all about.”

“We must find out where you were on a certain night.”

“What night?”

“Three weeks ago. You were driving your Pinto with a lady friend, no?”

“Hah!” Samuel Culhane said. “Driving with a lady friend? No! I’m gay, dude. Gayer than springtime. You got the wrong guy.”

Persisting, Viktor said, “You were driving on Gower south of Hollywood Boulevard that evening.”

“And who says so?”

“You were seen.”

“Bullshit. I got no reason to drive down Gower in the evening. In fact, I don’t even go out till around midnight. I’m a night person, man.”

“There was a woman in your car,” Viktor said.

“I told you I’m gay! Do I gotta blow you to prove it? Wait a minute, what crime was I supposed to’ve done?”

“You were seen at a mailbox.”

“A mailbox?” he said. “Oh, man, now I get it. You’re gonna try to fuck me with a mail theft.”

Wesley came in then and handed an FI card to Viktor on which he’d scribbled some of Samuel R. Culhane’s rap sheet entries.

Reading, Viktor said, “You have been arrested for fraud… one, two times. Once for counterfeiting. This is, as they say, consistent with the theft of U.S. mail from a public mailbox.”

“Okay, fuck this,” Samuel Culhane said. “I ain’t spending a night in jail till you guys get your shit together and figure out you got the wrong guy. I’ll come right out and tell you what’s what if you’ll go away and leave me be.”

“Proceed,” Viktor said.

“I rented my Pinto for a week to a guy I know. I got another car. He lives down there off Gower with an idiot tweaker who calls herself his wife but they ain’t married. I warned them both, don’t fuck around and do any deals in my Pinto. They didn’t listen to me, did they? I’ll show you where he lives. His name’s Farley Ramsdale.”

Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb looked at each other and said it simultaneously and with such gusto that it startled not only Samuel Culhane but Viktor Chernenko as well.

“Farley!”

That goddamn Olive, she never puts anything in its proper place. Farley was still thinking of Olive in the present tense although he knew in his heart that she was in the past. He had to admit there were things he was going to miss. She was like those Bedouin women who walk through minefields while the old man stays fifty yards behind on the donkey and follows in her footsteps. Never less than obedient. Until now.

Finally he found the key cards in the bottom drawer of the kitchen together with the egg timer she’d never used and a badly burned skillet that she did use. They were the best key cards they’d ever stolen, and they had always fetched a good price. Just the right size and color, with just the right mag code to look exactly like a righteous California driver’s license once they slapped the bogus facsimile on the front. He was going to have to find another woman partner to hang around that particular hotel and get more of them. Maybe a halfway classy woman who would never arouse suspicion. He tried to think of a halfway classy woman he might know but gave up trying immediately.

Of course he knew that the junkyard rendezvous was very dangerous and might be a trick of Cosmo’s to kill them, but after he’d told Cosmo that Olive had boogied and Cosmo still wanted him to make delivery, he figured it was probably okay. That fucking Armo wouldn’t dare try to kill him with Olive out there able to dime him to the cops if Farley went missing. Would he?

He might. Farley had never dealt with anyone as violent as Cosmo, so that’s why he’d devised a little plan of his own. Sure, he was going to drive to that lonely junkyard on that lonely fucking road in east L.A., where no white man in his right mind would roam around at night. But he wasn’t stepping one toe out of his car, no way. He was going to drive up, wrong side of the road to that fence, reach out, and grab the paper bag. And if the money was in there, he’d pull into the yard, spin a sweeping U-turn, blow his horn until Gregori came out, toss him the paper bag with the key cards in it, and zip on out of that yard and back to white man’s country-if Hollywood could be called white man’s country these days.

And if there wasn’t a trap at all and Gregori got insulted by his method of delivery and threatened not to do business with him anymore, too fucking bad. Gregori shouldn’t hang with gun-packing Armos like Cosmo. He should stick with thieving, chiseling, blood-sucking Armos like himself. Yeah, Farley thought with waxing confidence as he fantasized about the glass he’d be smoking tonight, where’s the glitch in that plan?

Suddenly he was hungry from all that thinking, but he couldn’t bear the thought of a cheese sandwich. He had a yearning for Ruby’s doughnuts, especially for a couple of those big fat cream-filled, chocolate-covered specials. He found the emergency twenty-dollar bill he had stashed in his underwear drawer, where Olive would never look, then propped up the broken back door as best he could and left for Ruby’s. Like Pablo’s Tacos and the cybercafé, Ruby’s Donuts was one of the last stops on the Tweakerville Line.

He saw a couple of tweakers he knew in the parking lot, looking hungry but not for doughnuts. Come to think of it, this was the first time he’d ever gone to Ruby’s looking for something to put in his stomach. The Hollywood nights were growing more and more strange and weird and scary for Farley Ramsdale, and he couldn’t seem to stop it from happening.

They didn’t really need Samuel R. Culhane to lead them to Farley’s house. A call took care of that. The FI file was full of shakes involving Farley Ramsdale and Olive O. Ramsdale, and it also had their correct address as shown on his driver’s license. Like other tweakers, they were always getting stopped and FI’d. But Viktor pretended that Culhane’s presence was needed just to be sure that if left alone, he wouldn’t make a warning call to Farley.

Driving his Pinto, Samuel R. Culhane did as he was told and led 6-X-72 and Viktor Chernenko to Farley’s house, where he slowed and indicated the house with his left-turn signal. Then he took off for home while the cops parked and piled out of the black-and-white, approaching the house with their flashlights off.

As before, Wesley went to cover the back door. He found it partially ajar, one hinge hanging loose, and propped in place by a kitchen chair. Nate and Viktor got no response and there were no lights on in the house. Wesley checked the empty garage.

“He’s a typical tweaker,” Nate said to Viktor. “Out hunting for crystal. When he finds it he’ll come home.”

“I must arrange for a stakeout,” Viktor said. “I feel very strong that this Farley Ramsdale stole the letter from the mailbox that led to the jewel robbery. Yet it is only a feeling. But I am positive that the jewel robbers are the ATM killers. This shall be the biggest case of my career if I can prove that I am correct.”

“This could be one for the TV news and the L.A. Times,” Hollywood Nate said.

“It is more than possible,” Viktor said.

Hollywood Nate paused for a moment and only one word came to him: “publicity.” He thought about walking into a casting office with a Times under his arm. Maybe with his picture in it.

“Viktor,” he said, “since we’ve been in on this with you so far, how about calling us if the guy shows up? We’d be glad to transport for you or help you search for evidence-whatever. We were there during the grenade trick and we sorta feel like this is our case too.”

“Detective,” Wesley added. “This could be the biggest thing I’ve ever accomplished in my whole life. Please call us.”

“You may be sure,” Viktor said, “that I shall personally call you. I am not going home tonight until I have a talk with Mr. Farley Ramsdale and his friend who calls herself Olive O. Ramsdale. And if you wish, you can go now and look for them at tweaker hangouts. Perhaps we do not have enough to tie them into crimes but we do not have to just sit back and cool our toes.”

Now Ilya was lecturing Cosmo as she would a child, and he sat there with a cigarette in his nicotine-stained fingers, taking it gladly, a man bereft of ideas.

“Understand me, Cosmo, and trust,” she said. “Olive is gone and Farley will not get out of his car in the junkyard of Gregori. He will not, because of you. Do not think all people are as stupid as…” She stopped there and said, “You must kill him in his car. Outside the yard.”

“Ilya, I cannot find no place to hide myself outside. It is open road and no cars parked on the road at night. Where can I hide myself?”

“Think on it,” Ilya said. “Use the brain. After you kill him you take him away in his car. You park one mile away. You leave. You go back to the yard and get our car.”

Interrupting, “How must I get back to the yard? Call taxi?”

“No!” she said. “You do not! You want police to find out that taxi takes somebody from a scene of dead body to the junkyard of Gregori? Goddamn, Cosmo!”

“Okay, Ilya. Sorry. I walk back.”

“Then you and me, we drive to Dmitri. You have some diamonds in your pocket. Not too many. You give diamonds to Dmitri. His man inspect diamonds. You say, please bring money downstairs to the nightclub. Give to Ilya. I shall be sitting at the bar. He give me money, I go to ladies’ room and get the remaining diamonds from where I hide them in a safe place. Lots of people around in the nightclub. We shall be safe.”

“But Ilya,” Dmitri said. “You forget about ATM money.”

“No, I do not forget. You must tell Dmitri mostly truth.”

“Ilya! He shall kill me!”

“No, he wants ATM money. You tell him we know where to find Olive. You tell him we shall find her tomorrow. We shall get money and kill her. We shall bring half of money to Dmitri like our deal say we do.”

“He shall be very angry,” a despairing Cosmo said. “He shall kill me.”

“Dmitri wish to kill someone? Tell him to kill his goddamn Georgian who give us a goddamn car that don’t run!”

“Then, what we do tomorrow? We cannot find Olive. We cannot get money to Dmitri.”

“The Americans have saying, Cosmo. I am not for sure what each word mean but I understand the idea. Tomorrow we get the fuck out of Dodge.”

The Oracle was having a bad night. The lieutenant was off and he was watch commander, so he had to deal with the angry phone call from the lawyer, Anthony Butler.

“Mr. Butler,” he said, “the detectives have gone home, so if you’ll just call back tomorrow.”

“I have been waiting all day for your detectives!” the lawyer said. “Or rather my daughter has. Do you know she was given a date rape drug at a place called Omar’s Lounge?”

“Yes, I’ve pulled the report and looked it over as you requested, but I’m not a detective.”

“I talked to your nighttime detective twenty minutes ago. The man’s an idiot.”

The Oracle didn’t argue with that one but said, “I will personally make sure that the detective commander knows about your call, and he will send someone to your office tomorrow.”

“The man Andrei who tried to drug my daughter knows she got in the wrong car. He probably knows the police were called. And how do we know that he’s not a friend of the Iranians? Maybe he can identify them. What if this was a filthy little plot involving Andrei and the Iranian pigs? I’m shocked that nobody has been to the Gulag to at least identify this Andrei.”

The Oracle said, “If he’s really the manager of the Gulag, he’s got a good job and he’s not going anywhere. He’ll be there tomorrow. And being an attorney, you must understand how impossible it would be to prove that she’d been given a drug last night.”

The lawyer said, “I want to know if the man has a history of this sort of thing. Sara is my only child, Sergeant. A security officer from our corporation is going to accompany me and my daughter to the Gulag this evening, and she’s going to point him out if he’s there, and we’re going to get his name and address. I intend to make the bastard’s life a misery with or without the help of detectives from Hollywood Station.”

“No, no, Mr. Butler,” the Oracle said. “Don’t go to the Gulag and stir things up. That’ll just end up a real mess for everyone. Tell you what, I’ll go there myself tonight and talk to the guy and get all the necessary information that the detectives can act on. How’s that?”

“You give me your personal guarantee, Sergeant?”

“You have it,” the Oracle said.

After he hung up, the Oracle called 6-X-76 to the station while he read through the report in its entirety. This was the kind of petty crap that wore him down more than anything, that made him feel old.

Whenever anybody asked him how old he was, the Oracle always answered, “I’m the same age as Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, and Dustin Hoffman.”

He’d always figured that ageless images of Hollywood stars would somehow mitigate what the mirror was showing him: jagged furrows running down his cheeks and encircling his neck, a sagging jawline, deepening creases between his hazel eyes.

But the trick didn’t work anymore. Many of the young coppers would say, “Who’s Warren Beatty?” Or ask what movie Jane Fonda ever played in. Or say, “Jack Nicholson’s the dumpy old guy that goes to the Laker games, right?” He opened the desk drawer and swallowed a dose of antacid liquid from the bottle.

When 6-X-76 entered the watch commander’s office, the Oracle said, “This so-called kidnapping at Omar’s Lounge is a piece of shit, right?”

“A smelly one, Sarge,” Budgie said. “The woman insisted on a kidnapping report. She threatened lawsuits. She called a TV news crew, but I didn’t hear anything more, so I guess they also figured it was a piece of shit. Her old man’s some kind of politically connected lawyer, according to her.”

“He just called.”

“She’s an actress,” Fausto said, and at Hollywood Station that explained a lot.

The Oracle nodded and said, “Just to keep the peace I’ll run up to the Gulag later tonight and get Andrei’s name and address so that when her daddy calls, the detectives can pacify him. We don’t need any more personnel complaints around here.”

“What time you going?” Fausto asked.

“In a couple hours.”

“We’ll meet you there and take you to Marina’s.”

“What’s that?”

“New Mexican restaurant on Melrose.”

“I’m not rich enough for Melrose.”

“No, this is a little family joint. I’ll buy.”

“Is there a rehab for Tex-Mex addiction? I’ve got permanent heartburn.”

“Whatever you say.”

The Oracle hesitated and said, “Home-made tortillas? And salsa fresca?”

“I been hearing good things,” Fausto said.

“Okay, I’ll call and let you know when I’m at the Gulag,” the Oracle said.

“Catch you in five, Fausto,” Budgie said, obviously going to the bathroom.

When she was gone, the Oracle said, “I’m doing car assignments for the next deployment period. How do you feel about Budgie?”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“You didn’t want to work with a woman, but you did me a favor. I don’t wanna ask for a favor two months in a row if you still feel the same way.”

Fausto didn’t speak for a moment. He looked up at the ceiling and sighed as though it were a tough decision and then said, “Well, Merv, if you’re on the spot again and need me to help out…”

“We’re so shorthanded that figuring out deployment is awful hard these days,” the Oracle said. “It would make things easier for me.”

“She’s a good enough young copper,” Fausto said, “but I think she could benefit from having an old dog like me as a shepherd for a while longer.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, Fausto,” the Oracle said. “Thanks for helping me out.”

“Well, I better go collect her,” Fausto said. “These split tails take a long time to get unrigged just to take a pee. We oughtta come up with some kind of loincloth uniform for them.”

The Oracle saw Fausto go out the back door to the parking lot to wait, and he caught Budgie coming out of the bathroom.

“Budgie,” he said, “you got any objections to working another deployment period with the old walrus?”

“No, Sarge,” she said, smiling. “We have an understanding, Fausto and me. We’re actually a pretty good team.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Working with you has done wonders for him. He looks and acts ten years younger. Sometimes I think I’m a genius.”

“We all know that, Sarge,” Budgie said.

Farley arrived at the junkyard at the appointed time and parked fifty yards away with his lights out. If any shadow figure that even slightly resembled Cosmo Betrossian walked up to that fence, he was going to drive away, money or no money. But in ten minutes nothing moved. He had to get close to see if the gate was open and a paper bag was stuffed through the chain link, so he drove slowly toward the yard, lights still out. He heard dogs barking at another yard closer to his car. It reminded him of Odar, the oversize Doberman guard dog that was named for non-Armenians.

He was on the wrong side of the road now, but there was so little nighttime traffic on the junkyard road that it didn’t matter. Behind the fences were stripped and wrecked cars on both sides of the road as well as huge cranes. He saw small office buildings, or RVs serving as office buildings, and larger buildings where cars could be dismantled or reassembled. And all was dark except for security lights on some of the buildings and along some of the roadside fences.

When he was drifting close to Gregori’s car gate, lights out, he could see by moonlight that it was open. And he could see something white in the chain-link mesh. Apparently the bag containing the money was there.

He lowered his window, snatched the bag from the wire, and drove back up the road a safe distance, where he parked. He opened the bag and turned on the overhead light, and there it was-$150 in tens and twenties. He counted it twice. Then excitement began to replace his fear. He thought about the ice he’d be smoking tonight. That was all he could think about for a moment, but then he realized he had to deliver.

Farley drove back boldly now and wheeled into the junkyard with his lights on and his windows rolled up and the doors locked. Odar, tied to a long wire line that allowed him to run from the gate to the office, was barking and snarling, but there was nobody around the gate at all, nothing except an oil drum up against the fence. Farley felt so safe that he made a leisurely U-turn in the yard, blew his horn three times, lowered the window, and tossed the bag of key cards onto the asphalt and headed back to the gate.

His headlight beams caught just enough of Cosmo Betrossian climbing out of the empty drum! Farley had time to step on the accelerator hard, but by the time he got to the gate, Cosmo had swung it closed!

The Corolla slammed into the gate and stopped, its left headlight broken and its front fender driven into the tire. The engine died, and in utter panic Farley turned the key off and on as Cosmo ran up to the car, a pistol in his hand.

“Stop, Farley!” Cosmo yelled. “I shall not hurt you!”

Farley was sobbing when the engine finally kicked over, and he slammed the shift into reverse and backed all the way across the yard, bashing into the door of the office, breaking both taillights and jerking his head back.

Odar was going mad! The dog was snapping and snarling and barking hoarsely, his muzzle white with froth. He was lunging at the car that was crashing and smashing things. Lunging at the running man who had showed up two hours after his master leashed him to the wire and left him. Odar wanted to attack! Anybody! Anything!

Farley dropped the shift into low and gunned it, aiming at Cosmo, who leaped aside and fired a shot through the passenger window behind Farley’s head. Farley drove for the gate and rammed it a second time. The car shuddered and recoiled again but the gate still stood. He looked in his side-view mirror and saw Cosmo running toward the car, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other.

Farley reversed it again and floored the accelerator. The tires spun and burned and smoked and the car jetted in reverse and Cosmo leaped out of the way again and fired a second shot and a third, the recoil taking both rounds over the top of the Corolla’s roof.

The car was hurtling backward with its driver not knowing which way to turn, but turn he did, this time avoiding a rear-end crash into the office building. Then Farley slammed on the brakes and spun to a stop, his head still reeling.

He could see the blur in his headlights and knew it was Cosmo Betrossian coming to kill him, so he dropped it in low and gunned it and jerked the wheel left, uncertain if Cosmo was still there, even though he could hear the gunfire and see muzzle flashes coming at him. Farley’s damaged left front fender just clipped Cosmo on the hip and he flew twenty feet across the asphalt, landing on that same hip, losing his pistol in a jumble of scrap metal and grease rags.

Farley knew he’d hit Cosmo and he floored it again, driving right at the gate, but at the last second he mashed on the brakes, got out, and ran to the gate, expecting to be struck in the back of the head by a bullet. Farley threw back the steel bolt and swung the gate almost open but when he turned he saw Cosmo staggering toward him, without a pistol now but carrying a metal bar that he’d picked up from the scrap heap. Cosmo was limping and cursing in his language. And coming at him.

Farley got the gate all the way open and headed for the driver’s seat but he was too late. Cosmo was on him and the bar smashed the driver’s side window after Farley ducked. Then Farley was running with Cosmo after him, running into the darkness, running toward the rows of stacked cars waiting to be crushed, then toward another row waiting to be stripped and sold for parts.

Odar had had all he could handle. These two intruders running through his yard were too much for him. His canine adrenaline was overflowing and he took a run, a long run at both men, and the leash drew as tight as piano wire and the overhead line that held the leash snapped. And Odar, eyes aflame, fangs bared, his entire face covered in foam, narrowed those demon eyes and came at them.

Farley saw Odar first and scrambled on top of a wrecked Plymouth, pulling himself onto the roof. Cosmo saw Odar too but had no time to swing at him with the bar, and taking a cue from Farley, he leaped onto the deck lid of a wrecked Audi, scuttling up onto the roof with Odar behind him, his black coat glistening in the moonlight.

The dog vaulted up, slipped, fell from the car onto the ground, then tried again and in a few seconds was standing on the Audi roof dragging his leash. But Cosmo had jumped from the roof of the Audi to the hood of a Pontiac and from the Pontiac across to the roof of a nearly stripped Suburban. Suddenly, Odar abandoned the chase of Cosmo and switched his attention to Farley, who was also leapfrogging cars and partially stripped car bodies, until he turned around, horrified to see the goddamn dog doing the same and coming after him!

Cosmo’s injured hip began to freeze up on him now, and Farley caught his breath on the roof of an old Cadillac while the confused dog crouched on the hood of a Mustang between them, looking from one man to the other, uncertain which he should attack.

Cosmo began speaking to the dog in Armenian then, trying to win him over with the language the animal was used to hearing. He began issuing gentle commands in his mother tongue.

Farley, who was not as badly injured as Cosmo but every bit as exhausted, also tried persuading the dog, but when Farley tried to speak, he was blubbering and hysterical and tears ran down into his mouth as he cried, “Don’t listen to him, Odar! You’re like me! I’m an odar, too! Kill him! Kill the fucking Armo!”

Odar started for Farley then and Farley screamed like a woman. The scream of terror triggered something in the attack animal. The dog whirled, hurtled from deck lid to hood to roof, flying at Cosmo like a missile, driving Cosmo off the car onto the ground. The dog’s momentum took him with Cosmo and he landed on the ground at a twisting angle, yelped in pain, and came up limping badly. Within seconds he was unable to walk at all on his left rear leg, and hardly at all on his right.

By then Farley was running for his car, and he made it and jumped in but was unable to start it. Weeping, he flooded the engine, then turned off the ignition and locked the door as Cosmo limped to the scrap heap where he’d lost the pistol. But Cosmo’s flashlight was gone too, and he could only dig his hands into the twisted metal until he found the gun, cutting a finger to the bone in the process.

Farley tried the ignition again and the car started! He dropped it into low and stomped the accelerator at the same instant that Cosmo appeared at the passenger window and fired five rounds through the glass, missing with the first four. The fifth and last round entered through Farley’s right armpit as his hand was cranking the wheel left and the car was digging out and burning rubber.

Out of the fight, the dog sat on his right hip, snarling and howling at Cosmo, who limped to his Cadillac which had been concealed behind the office building, started it up, and tried to drive after Farley. But Cosmo hadn’t driven a quarter of a mile before he had to pull off the road, rip off his T-shirt, and use it to stem the blood that was flowing from a nasty head gash and running into his eyes and blinding him.

Farley is a quarter of a mile down that junkyard road before he knows he’s been shot. He reaches down with his left hand, feels the warm wetness, and begins bawling. Still, he keeps driving, one headlight lighting the road in front, smashed fenders scraping both front tires.

Farley loses track of time but just follows his instincts onto east Sunset Boulevard, where it begins near downtown Los Angeles. Sometimes Farley stops for traffic lights, sometimes not, and he never sees the police car that spots him cruising through a red light at Alvarado as several motorists slam on brakes and blow horns and yell at him.

He is driving leisurely now through all those ethnic neighborhoods where people speak the languages of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Far East as well as Russian and Armenian and Arabic and a dozen other languages he hates. Heading west, heading toward Hollywood, heading home.

Farley Ramsdale does not hear the police siren either and of course has no knowledge that a Rampart Division unit has broadcast a pursuit of a white Corolla along with his license number and his location and direction, causing Hollywood Division cars to start heading for Sunset Boulevard, everyone convinced that this incredibly reckless drunk will blow at least a.25 on the Breathalyser because he’s weaving along Sunset at only thirty miles an hour, causing oncoming traffic to veer right and stop, and is apparently oblivious to the sirens and the queue of black-and-whites that have joined in behind the pursuit car.

At Normandie Avenue Farley crosses into Hollywood Division, still heading west. But he’s not in a car any longer. Farley Ramsdale is fifteen years younger and is in the gymnasium at Hollywood High School shooting hoops in an intramural game, and they are all three-pointers that find only net. Swoosh! And that cheerleader who always disses him is now giving him the big eye. He’ll be boning her tonight, that’s for sure.

At the corner of Gower Street his foot slips from the accelerator and the car drifts slowly into the rear of a parked Land Rover and the engine dies. Farley never sees the officers of Hollywood Division midwatch who know him-Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb and B.M. Driscoll and Benny Brewster and Budgie Polk and Fausto Gamboa-and those who don’t.

All out of their cars, guns drawn, the cops run very warily toward the Corolla now that Nate’s broadcast has alerted all units that the pursued car is wanted in connection with a robbery investigation. They are yelling things, but Farley doesn’t hear that either.

Hollywood Nate was the first to reach the car, and he smashed the rear driver’s side window open and unlocked the driver’s door. When Nate jerked open the door and saw all the blood, he holstered his nine and yelled for someone to call an RA.

Farley Ramsdale’s eyes were rolled back showing white, his eyelids fluttering like wings as he went into shock and died long before the rescue ambulance reached Sunset Boulevard.