The Prostitutes Ball

Chapter 19.

The early evening set at a strip club was usually a case of the new, the old, and the ugly. It tended to be a tryout session for dancers on the way up and sympathy work for those on the way out. Even so, it s hard to put 011 an enthusiastic show when nobody is paying attention.

Two semi-bored strippers were working poles, hanging like meat in an outdoor market. They spun around lazily, occasionally arching their backs to the four-four beat of the country western music playing through the bad sound system.

The clientele was a bunch of white guys in John Deere hats. Most had sun-reddened complexions, tattoo-laden loading-dock arms, and padded waistlines. Two waitresses wearing black vests, bikini bottoms, and heels wandered around the almost empty club carrying trays.

All ten or twelve people in here would have to be removed before SWAT did the takedown. I'd have to find a way to get the half-drunk guys out without starting a head-butt festival. I didn't see Karel Sladky anywhere and hoped he hadn't been tipped by the bartender and skipped.

The guy behind the stick was an angry-looking asshole with a shaved head and water buffalo shoulders. He was watching a football game on a small TV with the sound muted under the bar top. I was sure he had some sawed-off crowd-control equipment hidden down there a bat or a 12-gauge.

I snagged a menu off one of the tables, removed my police ID from its case, and slipped it inside. Then I took a position on the far end of the bar away from the other customers. When the bartender came over to take my order I handed him the menu.

"Surprise inside," I told him.

He opened it, looked at my creds, then closed the menu and handed it back.

"I'm looking for Karel Sladky."

"Yeah. I got a call from one of your sergeants about him an hour ago."

"Since he's not in here, I'm hoping nobody alerted him. He's a suspect in a triple murder."

"He's back there." The bartender pointed to a curtain.

"Manager's office?"

"There's a cot," he said. "Ever since Karel's old lady threw him out, Brad's been letting him use it. I think Karel and Brad got some kind of drug business going out on the corner. They bag the chronic back there, but you didn't hear it from me."

"Okay. We're gonna need to empty this place without making a big deal out of it."

"Unplug the music and close off the liquor," he said. "They don't come for the atmosphere. The waitresses and the dancers, I'll take care of."

"Want to do that for me?"

"No, but I guess I don't have no choice."

He walked over and shut off the music. The girls who were on the poles swung around to look at him, holding on like tree monkeys as they waited for the music to start up again.

"That the end of my set, Lou?" one of them finally called.

"Yep," he said. "Bar's closed." Then he turned to the guys at the tables. "You guys finish up and get out."

A few of the John Deeres knocked back their shots, got up and left. One by one the rest drifted out. I found a place at the back of the bar and, after the dancers and waitresses were gone, I spoke to Hitch.

"Okay, everybody's out. The bartender's locking the register and coming out with me. He says Sladky's in the manager's office."

"SWAT is ready," Hitch said. "The lieutenant watch commander from the Hollywood station just got here, so we're good to go. They want you out. Because of all the side exits, they asked if we could help by covering the parking lot in back."

"Works for me."

I walked out with the bartender.

A SWAT entry team crossed the street heading toward the bar. As they deployed out front Hitch and I went around to the back. We were all carrying walkie-talkies set on tactical frequency six.

Two guys from SWAT covered the windows in the front. The rest of the team, all wearing ballistic body armor and helmets and carrying 9 mm H amp;K MP-5 submachine guns, headed across the street toward the entrance.

The MP-5s could be set on semi-or full-auto fire. They were great weapons, which only SWAT used to have, but in 1997 we persuaded the city to authorize them for regular cops because of how badly we got our asses kicked in the North Hollywood Bank shoot-out.

Hitch and I had found good cover positions in the back and on the side of the bar. There was a metal door in the center of the clubs back wall. Hitch wanted to cover that so I took the west side of the building, which ran along an alley that separated the strip club from Lili St. Cyr's Exotic Lingerie.

This was the way I liked to serve warrants on machine-gun-wielding psychopaths. Let SWAT do the rough stuff. I'll cover the back every time.

Then it went down. The SWAT team had intended to kick the office door, swarm in, and take Karel by surprise, but something went wrong because we suddenly heard shouting, then shooting inside. The MP-5s made a unique short burping sound produced by their three-shot bursts. This was followed by the longer, louder retort of the Bizon machine pistol.

From my position in the alley I couldn't see Hitch, who was somewhere in the parking lot behind the back door. I was beginning to worry about him.

Obviously SWAT hadn't been able to take Sladky by surprise, and the odds were now pretty good that he would try and escape the club through the back door, leaving Hitch alone with only a pistol against a fully automatic machine gun capable of putting out 800 rounds per minute.

I could hear the Bizon chattering. Sladky was putting up a deadly fight.

I left my position and moved to the rear corner of the building where I could see the back exit and the parking lot, but I couldn't see Hitch.

Where the hell was he?

"Hitch, cover your position!" I whispered into my walkie. "I got the left side."

Two squelches came back as he acknowledged my transmission, but I still couldn't see him.

I moved into the lot with my pistol up, aimed at the back door. The Springfield XD(M) automatic had a four-and-a-half-inch barrel and was not very accurate at a distance. If Sladky came out that back door I needed to get a lot closer to be effective.

I sensed movement behind me and spun around. While I'd been creeping into the parking lot with my back to the alley windows, Karel Sladky had silently slipped out of one and had moved up directly behind me.

He had the drop on me with that monster Russian ventilator.

I dove facedown on the pavement just as he let loose with a stream of bullets. The 9 mm slugs dug into the black tar asphalt surface in front of me.

I had just barely survived the first burst, but was in a terrible predicament. I was facedown, ten feet from the shooter, seconds from death.

Then I heard three shots ring out. They sounded like balloons popping in contrast to the roar of the Bizon.

I looked up just in time to see Sladky fly backward. Three red spots blossomed on the front of his white shirt. He landed on his back and the Bizon fell harmlessly from his hands.

I turned and saw Hitch. He'd taken cover inside the trash Dumpster. When Sladky fired at me, Hitch had jumped up, exposing himself. Then he'd taken the Czechoslovakian down with three well-placed shots.

Hitch climbed out of the Dumpster. Coffee grounds and orange rinds stained the cuffs of his beautiful rust-colored suit. I wanted to kiss the guy.

"Good shooting," I said, my voice a croak.

The back door burst open and two gun-wielding SWAT officers came running out. Two more rounded the corner at the side of the bar. All with their guns up and safeties off.

"We re Code Four!" I shouted. "Shooter s down."

The SWAT commander checked the body. Sladky was alive, but just barely. The Hollywood station LT called for the ambulance SWAT had standing by and seconds later it rolled into the parking lot. Sladky miraculously continued to breathe as he was loaded aboard a stretcher, leaking blood from three chest wounds. A few seconds later he was being rushed away, with sirens blaring.

The watch commander wanted Hitch and me to be transported directly back to Hollywood Division to complete a Daily Field Activity Report, which takes place immediately after every shooting where a police officer discharges his or her weapon.

A DFAR is usually done by a "shoot unit" headed by a sergeant from Internal Affairs. Afterward Hitch would undergo a full shooting review, also standard practice after an officer-involved gunfight.

When I finished with the lieutenant, he went in search of Hitch, who was supposed to be isolated in the back of a patrol car.

The watch commander couldn't find him and was starting to freak out. Hitch wasn't supposed to have contact with anyone until after his DFAR. The idea was to keep participants from getting together and organizing their versions of what happened.

"I'll find him, LT," I said, trying to calm the guy. "He's around here somewhere. Give me a minute."

I found Hitch behind the strip club in the very alley where Karel Sladky had gotten the drop on me and then been gunned down.

When I spotted him I thought he was cleaning the garbage out of the cuffs of his rust-colored suit. But he wasn't doing that at all.

He was bent over, throwing up on his Spanish leather shoes.