Hollywood Moon (49 page)

“That sometimes gestures like that help us to keep old connections with ourselves, that’s all,” Sergeant Hermann said. “So
we don’t go adrift and get lost.”

Nate was silent, but Sergeant Hermann had more. She said, “I’m gonna tell you what nobody but a woman who wears this badge
truly understands. Thirty-seven years ago, when I served at the old stations, there weren’t even proper locker rooms for women.
I remember at one station I dressed in the janitor’s broom closet. There was an air vent in there, and I could hear the guys
in their locker room talking about us women, and what they said wasn’t nice. We woman got buried in shit every day and pretended
it was sunshine. We had to be better than the men but keep our mouths shut so they wouldn’t notice when we passed them by.
To think I’ve lived long enough to see cup holders in police cars.”

“Is this about Dana?” Nate said impatiently.

“It’s about you,” Sergeant Hermann said. “You don’t get it that Dana Vaughn and all the other women with time on the Job understand
our history because they still live it to some extent. She was senior to you. She was on the sergeants list and might’ve been
your supervisor one day. It’s not your job to stay Velcro-close to a partner unless you’re a training officer with a probationer.
If you’d been partnered with a man that night, you’d still be feeling deep sorrow but not what else you’re feeling.”

“You don’t know what I’m feeling,” Nate said.

“Nathan,” she said, “there was danger out there that night, and your job was to stop the son of a bitch who started shooting,
and you did it. You wouldn’t be punishing yourself now if you’d been partnered with a senior officer like R.T. Dibney, or
Johnny Lanier, or one of the surfers, because you can’t get past thinking of Dana Vaughn as a woman. And thinking that you
shoulda been Super Glued to her before, during, and after the gunfight. Well, son, she wasn’t only a woman, she was a cop,
and a good one. And she’d be ashamed of you for feeling you somehow failed her. And she’d hate it because that…
diminishes
her.”

After a long pause, he said, “Anything else, Sergeant Hermann?”

“Yeah,” she said, tossing her cup in a receptacle. “Why’re old farts like me such creatures of habit? Why the hell didn’t
I take you to Starbucks? I won fifty bucks in a scratch-off yesterday. I could afford that freaking designer coffee.”

When they were back at Hollywood Station and Nate had returned to the front desk, Sergeant Hermann entered the sergeants’
room, where Sergeant Murillo was writing a report.

She said to him, “Lee, how about we let Nate work third man in a car for the rest of the night rather than vegetating at the
desk? Maybe with Flotsam and Jetsam?”

Sergeant Murillo considered it and said, “Very good idea.”

After placing a call for 6-X-32 to come to the station, Sergeant Murillo called Hollywood Nate to the sergeants’ room and
conjured a quick story, saying, “Nate, I just got another call from a citizen that the Street Characters are doing some real
aggressive panhandling in front of Grauman’s. One of them grabbed a woman by the arm to complain about his tip, and another
got in somebody’s face and intimidated them. How about you go up there with Flotsam and Jetsam and walk the boulevard for
a few hours? Maybe a show of force will convince Batman, Darth Vader, and the rest to curtail their dark and evil ways.”

The only thing that Sergeant Lee Murillo said to Flotsam and Jetsam privately was “Take Nate with you for a few hours. Help
him get his mojo back.”

“How do we do that, boss?” Flotsam asked.

“Be your usual zany selves,” said Sergeant Murillo.

Twenty minutes later, Nate was sitting in the backseat of 6-X-32 when it parked on Orange Drive. The panhandlers, hustlers,
and purse picks didn’t like the sight of three cops getting out to stroll among the tourist throngs, so a few of the curb
creatures decided to call it a night, pronto.

One of these was Two-Dollar Bill, so named because you know he exists but you seldom run into him. He was a bug-eyed scarecrow
Nate’s age who looked older than Sergeant Hermann. His grille was gapped and yellow, his eyes were rheumy, and the rusty tumbleweed
frizz growing from his head was sprinkled with psoriasis. Two-Dollar Bill was the kind of tweaker who was better off in jail,
and a part of him knew that, because in recent months he was always unconsciously running to, instead of away from, the law.
And nowadays he was always ready to allow searches and ready to make admissions from the git-go.

“Oh, shit!” Flotsam said when Two-Dollar Bill practically ran into them.

Since the physical condition of this tweaker made cops automatically glove-up, Flotsam reached into his pocket and drew on
a latex glove in case touching was necessary. “Bill,” he said, “somehow I think you ain’t never gonna earn a blood bank T-shirt.”

“Just going home,” Two-Dollar Bill said. “Don’t wanna miss
American Idol
.”

“It ain’t on, Bill,” Flotsam said. Then to Nate, “Last year we popped Two-Dollar Bill when he had a pay-and-owe sheet stuffed
in one sock and thirty-three grams of flake in the other. They kicked Bill outta jail too soon.”

Two-Dollar Bill said, “It wasn’t my flake or my owe sheet. I was holding it for some guy. I don’t know his real name but everybody
calls him Planters.”

“Why do they call him Planters?” Flotsam asked.

“Because his body’s shaped like a peanut,” said Two-Dollar Bill.

“I don’t suppose your socks are dope-free tonight, are they, Bill?” Jetsam said, but Flotsam quickly clamped his gloved hand
over the tweaker’s mouth to keep him from answering.

“Didn’t you learn anything in court last time, Bill?’ Flotsam said sotto. “Cop a ’tude or something. We got other business
tonight.”

Flotsam shot Jetsam a look that said wasting their time by popping Bill again was not gonna help Hollywood Nate.

Jetsam nodded subtly, and when Flotsam took his hand away, Two-Dollar Bill said, “You won’t find nothing in my socks but a
few tits-up bedbugs. I can’t keep them outta my socks and underwear. When I got underwear.”

“Home is where the heart is, dude,” Flotsam said, giving Two-Dollar Bill a little shove, sending him scurrying off into the
night.

While they continued along the boulevard, Flotsam and Jetsam were as garrulous as usual, talking about getting Nate out to
Malibu for evening surfing, but Nate was generally unresponsive, still mulling over the import of what Sergeant Hermann had
said to him.

As they approached the Kodak Centre, Flotsam said to him, “Dude, when was the last time you rented a midget to bowl with?”

“I only did it once,” Nate said.

“We been thinking,” Jetsam said. “If we gave you the rental fee, could you get your midget and bring him back to the bowling
alley in the Kodak Centre on Wednesday night? We figure he’d attract enough bowling alley Sallys for all of us.”

Nate said, “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Well, do you have, like, anyone else you could invite?” Jetsam asked.

“Yeah, dude,” said Flotsam. “A man with your hormonal ingenuity oughtta be able to come up with another idea to get them Sallys
mega-stoked.”

“Downright stokaboka is how we want them,” Jetsam said to Nate. “Invite anyone but a clown.”

“Dude!” Flotsam yelled it so loud at Jetsam that he startled Nate.

To change the subject, Jetsam quickly said, “Hey, this juicehead is faced.”

A balding tourist with a double chin and cheeks flushed to bubblegum pink was staggering along the Walk of Fame, definitely
tanked. The front of his “Hollywoodland” souvenir T-shirt looked like it had been washed in mai tais, and his fly was unzipped,
the tail of his tee protruding.

“Whoa there, pard,” Jetsam said, grabbing his elbow as the man tried to lurch past. “How many drinks you had tonight?”

“I’m perf… perf… fectly sober!” the tourist said, reeling.

“Don’t try to okeydoke us, dude,” Flotsam said. “Answer the question.”

“What was the question again?” said the tourist, wattles twitching.

“How many drinks you had tonight?” Jetsam repeated. “The truth bus or the bullshit bus. Which one you taking?”

The tourist hiccupped twice and said, “About fifteen or twenty drinks, maybe. Beers mostly. I been pissing barley and hops
all night.”

Flotsam said, “Dude, that answer makes you just about the most honest man in all of L.A., so we’re gonna give you a chance
to prove your sobriety. Now pay attention.”

A few minutes later they were in the privacy of the parking lot west of the tourist masses in Grauman’s forecourt, and Hollywood
Nate was mystified when Flotsam pulled a balloon from his pocket and blew it up. On his second try, the tourist actually slapped
the balloon as it dove past his nose, prompting Flotsam to say, “You got game, dude.”

Ten minutes after that, the tourist was boarding a bus to his hotel in Universal City, having put forth satisfactory effort
in a two-out-of-three balloon test to satisfy the forces of law and order that he was a real trouper.

Nate was still chortling when Jetsam said to him, “Hey, bro, let’s see if any of them Main Street Crips or Rolling Sixties
are up from south L.A. They’ll be hanging around the subway station dealing crack.”

“We might find a gun,” Flotsam said to Nate. “You down?”

“I got your back,” said Nate.

“The game’s afoot, dude!” Flotsam announced.

“Rock on, bro!” Jetsam concurred.

This was the camera’s favorite time, called “magic hour” in the movie business. The summer sun was plunging into the ocean
off Malibu, and onshore winds chased tumbling clouds to the east, inflamed by streaks of color from dying solar fire. The
sky over Hollywood Boulevard was transformed into a blazing palette where any fool could gaze up breathless and dream of painting
a new self-portrait, and maybe this time get it right. After a moment, Nate found himself stepping out with just a touch of
foot-beat swagger, slipping through the crowds, giving the stink eye to Batman and Darth Vader, striding over marble and brass
stars along the Walk of Fame. The surfer cops strolling behind him gave each other a knuckle bump, and Flotsam whispered,
“Dude, I think Nate just caught a blast of mucho mojo!”

Nate glanced into the Kodak Centre as they were passing, and he halted, turning his face to the darkening west, letting that
sea breeze cooled by the Pacific sigh in his ears and blow through his hair, bringing with it a breath of great possibility,
perhaps even redemption.

“About that Wednesday night bowling?” he said. “I’m good to go. And I’ll see about renting us a midget.”

Upon hearing this news the surfer cops beamed. “Midgets rule, dude!” said Flotsam.

“We’re gravy, bro!” said Jetsam.

Then Flotsam’s grin melted like a Slurpee on the sidewalk when Hollywood Nate said, “But will somebody please tell me, why
no clowns?”

JOSEPH WAMBAUGH
, a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the bestselling author of eighteen prior works of fiction and nonfiction. In 2004,
he was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Southern California.