On The Grind

Chapter 15

I arrived back at the stereo shop on Sixth Street at a little past seven A. M. Harpo was in his office, hunched over a Mexican breakfast of refried beans and rice.

"Want some of this?" he asked, pushing the plate across his desk and offering me a plastic fork out of a box. "This guy Gonzales, on the corner, is a genius with a frying pan."

I grabbed one of the forks and took a bite. Amazing.

"Find anything?" I asked.

"Your Acura has better recording capabilities than the big room over at Capitol Records. Whoever installed that shit knew what they were doing." He led me over to my car, still carrying the plate of beans, then leaned in and pointed at two carefully concealed microphones. One was in the rearview mirror light sensor, the other was tucked up under the dash on the passenger side out of sight.

"It s all voice-activated. I erased the recording back to the spot just before you pulled in here, then turned it all off." He elosed the car door and we stepped back. "All of the units are high-frequency radio bugs. They have receivers in the trunk, stuck to the inside of your spare tire. I left it all right where it is just like you wanted. For the fun of it, I installed a separate voice-activated radio unit of our own. It's buried up in the passenger side of the front seat piggybacking off their mikes."

"Thanks, Harpo. You're the best."

"Then how come I got busted?" He grinned.

I took a few more bites of the refried beans while he reactivated the digital recorders, then paid him in cash.

I pulled out of the Sixth Street garage and tuned the radio to an angry rap station, then set the volume at the threshold of pain just to piss off the dirtbag who eventually had to listen to all this.

My guess is they would go into my trunk and switch out the recorder late at night while I was sleeping, or when I was out on patrol with Alonzo and the MDX was unguarded in the police parking lot at the elementary school.

The big disadvantage of hanging a wire on someone is, if the bug ever gets discovered, it's very easy to get fooled by your own trickery. I started thinking of ways to get something on that recorder that would help my cause.

After pondering my top five options, I finally decided to give Sammy from Miami a call. Sammy Ochoa was a forty-year-old Cuban street character whose grind was every low-end street hustle ever worked on the ice-cream eaters from Minnesota who wandered the tarnished streets of Hollywood searching for scraps of movie glamour. He would sell these marks everything from a counterfeit Best Picture Oscar to fake Britney Spears memorabilia. He ran his business out of a gay movie theater he owned on Melrose Boulevard. I'd first busted Sammy when I was still in patrol, right after he got here from Miami Beach. Something about his flat-footed, take-no-prisoners larceny was comically appealing to me and we'd entered into an uneasy friendship where mutual benefit and cash were the glue. He slipped me street intel, which I paid for out of my snitch fund. I also kept Hollywood Vice off his back, claiming him as a street informant.

As I drove back to Haven Park, I decided to put on a little theater production, with Sammy from Miami as my featured guest star.

I got back to the Haven Park Elementary School before eight and parked in the police parking lot that adjoined the school. After I locked the Acura I hurried up the sidewalk.

I had to show my driver's license to the old guy at the gate, who didn't seem to remember me from yesterday.

The locker room was in turmoil like all police shifts getting ready for a tour-guys dressing in patrol uniforms, talking too loud, horsing around, slamming lockers.

Once I was down to my shorts and T-shirt, Alonzo Bell, already in harness, ambled over. Without warning he threw a beefy arm around my shoulders, then turned me roughly and presented me to the room of about ten other patrol officers. "Meet my new boot, Hardwood Scully," he announced. "He fucks movie stars."

The cops in the room hooted. "He's a beaut, Al!" one said. "Tiffany Roberts was fucking that?" Another laughed.

Alonzo suddenly slipped me into a headlock. Before I knew it, he was wrestling me playfully around the locker room, giving me a painful head noogie.

"This is the guy." He joked as he threw me roughly against a locker, pushing his huge right palm into the middle of my chest, pinning me there. "Let's check out the merchandise here." Then he ran his hand quickly across my chest.

The cops in the room hooted with laughter. One shouted, "Leave him be, Al. He's got an ass like a forty-dollar cow!"

I was grinning, pretending I was having fun while at the same time trying to keep from punching Bell's lights out. But I knew exactly what he was doing. He was checking me for a wire.

"You about through?" I asked, forcing a smile.

He grinned and turned me loose as the rest of the room laughed. "For now. Let's get you in harness. We got some important shit to attend to. You and me are working fire and health this morning."

I went to my locker feeling the eyes of the squad on me as I put on the rest of my uniform. Sergeant Bell was a strong flavor. The other cops took their lead from him.

"Where's your hat?" Alonzo asked, coming back from the men's room just as I closed my locker and slipped on my combination padlock.

"Arnie Bale is ordering one. Didn't have my size."

"Let's go, then," he said. "Roll call."

I carried my equipment duffel, known in police circles a war bag, and followed the stragglers into the gymnasium, where I sat beside Alonzo on the bleachers with other members of the day watch. I'd been told that in Haven Park, like in most departments, the patrol force was divided into three shifts. The day watch went from eight A. M. to four P. M. Mid-watch, from four to midnight. The graveyard was from midnight to eight. The shifts rotated every month. Haven Park now had forty-two patrol officers plus command staff.

In Haven Park, cops rode in single-man cars, what we'd call an L-unit in L. A. This facilitated business in the cafeteria line because with just one cop in a car there was never a corroborating witness. Since I was a probationer being trained by a sergeant, Alonzo and I were the only X-unit, or two-man car, on the day watch.

Our watch commander was a skinny bald guy with narrow shoulders and a little bit of a potbelly who was standing sway-backed on the shiny varnished-wood basketball floor before us, wearing lieutenants bars on his blue collar and holding a clipboard. His name was Harry Eastwood. Without even asking, I knew his handle had to be Dirty Harry.

"Okay, shut the fuck up," he started by saying. "We expect to get some blowback from that Crip shooting two nights ago, so look for Crip mother ships cruising in your areas." The room quieted down. "Bust any black guy in a Chrysler four-door wearing a red head-wrap. Pull 'em all in and we'll sort the fashion victims from the assholes later."

He looked clown at his clipboard. "We've got some homeless guy lighting cooking fires on the L. A. River bank," he went on. "Keep an eye out for this dink. Whoever he is, we need to get that to stop. We're in high fire season and don't want some brain-dead shopping cart driver burning clown our cafeteria." Cops were taking notes.

"The midweek update on the hot car sheet is posted on the bulletin board. Write down the tag numbers for all those G-rides. The night shift reports there's a white Corolla that just started holding up liquor stores over in Fleetwood — couple a border brothers in stocking masks. You know that's gotta be tweakers, 'cause only meth addicts would use a getaway car with a fucking leaf-blower for an engine." Scattered laughter from the cops gathered on the bleachers.

Tm hearing from Blue Light we're still not up to quotas on our tow tickets. Let's get with the program, guys. I'm looking for every one of you to write at least three, maybe four boot jobs a clay. Keep the flow going here."

Then he stopped and looked at us. "Anybody have anything?"

"Me and Scully are gonna be working fire and health codes this morning, so somebody needs to cover Sector Four till around ten o'clock," Alonzo said.

"I got it," a guy with red hair and a rosy complexion said. I thought I recognized him from L. A. or maybe from a joint op I did once in Santa Monica. Something Larson — a drinker.

"Okay, that's it," the WC said. "Get out there and try and make Haven Park the safest place on earth for assholes to multiply." He turned and walked back to his office.

We left the elementary school gym. I stood in the hallway with the other patrol officers and copied car tags off the hot sheet posted up on the cork bulletin board. Then everyone moved as a group through the front doors onto Pine Street, heading to city hall to collect our patrol cars.

We walked single file, right through two residential blocks, carrying gear, flashlights, and duffels. I couldn't help but think, if you wanted to eliminate the Haven Park day shift, one quick drive-by with a street ventilator 011 full-auto would pretty much do it.

When we got to the parking lot Alonzo led me to Car Nine and opened our patrol unit. The midnight-to-eight guys who had been using it were just walking away.

"Those fuckers on graveyard always leave this shop looking like a dirty ashtray. Look at this shit," Alonzo growled angrily as he pulled out the floor mat and shook sunflower seeds, gravel, and gum wrappers off the plastic onto the asphalt. Then he brushed off the seats. We stashed our stuff in the trunk while all around us blaek-and-whites were driving into the lot. Graveyard shift cars were one by one being turned over to day watch officers. Finally, Bell slid behind the wheel and I got in the passenger side.

"I decommissioned the air bags in this shop so we won't eat a ton of plastic if we ram anyone who tries to take off."

"Sounds good."

Then he smiled at me. "Ready to help change the political landscape in Haven Park?"

"That's why I signed on."

"Good, 'cause this morning Rocky Chacon makes a mistake he can't walk away from."