Hollywood Crows

by Joseph Wambaugh

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

When LAPD cops Hollywood Nate and Bix Rumstead find themselves caught up with bombshell Margot Aziz, they think they're just having some fun. But in Hollywood, nothing is ever what it seems. To them, Margot is a harmless socialite, stuck in the middle of an ugly divorce from the nefrarious nightclub owner Ali Aziz. What Nate and Bix don't know is that Margot's no helpless victim: the femme fatale is setting them both up so that she can pull off the perfect murder and walk away with her ex-husband's ill-won fortune. But Ms. Aziz isn't the only one with a deadly plan.

Release date: March 25, 2008

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 448

Sample

ONE

DUDE, YOU BETTER drop that long knife,” the tall, suntanned cop said. At Hollywood Station they called him “Flotsam” by virtue of his being a surfing enthusiast.

His shorter partner, also with a major tan, hair even more suspiciously blond and sun streaked, dubbed “Jetsam” for the same reason, said, sotto voce, “Bro, that ain’t a knife. That’s a bayonet, in case you can’t see too good. And why didn’t you check out a Taser and a beanbag gun from the kit room, is what I’d like to know. That’s what the DA’s office and FID are gonna ask if we have to light him up. Like, ‘Why didn’t you officers use nonlethal force?’ Like, ‘Why’d that Injun have to bite the dust when you coulda captured him alive?’ That’s what they’ll say.”

“I thought you checked them out and put them in the trunk. You walked toward the kit room.”

“No, I went to the john. And you were too busy ogling Ronnie to know where I was at,” Jetsam said. “Your head was somewheres else. You gotta keep your mind in the game, bro.”

Everyone on the midwatch at Hollywood Station knew that Jetsam had a megacrush on Officer Veronica “Ronnie” Sinclair and got torqued when Flotsam or anybody else flirted with her. In any case, both surfer cops considered it sissified to carry a Taser on their belts.

Referring to section 5150 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, which all cops used to describe a mental case, Flotsam whispered, “Maybe this fifty-one-fifty’s trashed on PCP, so we couldn’t taze him anyways. He’d swat those darts outta him like King Kong swatted the airplanes. So just chill. He ain’t even giving us the stink eye. He just maybe thinks he’s a wooden Indian or something.”

“Or maybe we’re competing with a bunch of other voices he’s hearing and they’re scarier,” Jetsam observed. “Maybe we’re just echoes.”

They’d gotten nowhere by yelling the normal commands to the motionless Indian, a stooped man in his early forties, only a decade older than they were but with a haggard face, beaten down by life. And while the cops waited for the backup they’d requested, they’d begun speaking to him in quiet voices, barely audible in the unlit alley over the traffic noise on Melrose Avenue. It was there that 6-X-46 had chased and cornered him, a few blocks from Paramount Studios, from where the code 2 call had come.

The Indian had smashed a window of a boutique to steal a plus-size gold dress with a handkerchief hemline and a red one with an empire waist. He’d squeezed into the red dress and walked to the Paramount main gate, where he’d started chanting gibberish and, perhaps prophetically, singing “Jailhouse Rock” before demanding admittance from a startled security officer who had dialed 9-1-1.

“These new mini-lights ain’t worth a shit,” Jetsam said, referring to the small flashlights that the LAPD bought and issued to all officers ever since a widely viewed videotaped arrest showed an officer striking a combative black suspect with his thirteen-inch aluminum flashlight, which caused panic in the media and in the police commission and resulted in the firing of the Latino officer.

After this event, new mini-flashlights that couldn’t cause harm to combative suspects unless they ate them were ordered and issued to new recruits. Everything was fine with the police commission and the cop critics except that the high-intensity lights set the rubber sleeves on fire and almost incinerated a few rookies before the Department recalled all of those lights and ordered these new ten-ouncers.

Jetsam said, “Good thing that cop used flashlight therapy instead of smacking the vermin with a gun. We’d all be carrying two-shot derringers by now.”

Flotsam’s flashlight seemed to better illuminate the Indian, who stood staring up white-eyed at the starless smog-shrouded sky, his back to the graffiti-painted wall of a two-story commercial building owned by Iranians, leased by Vietnamese. The Indian may have chosen the red dress because it matched his flip-flops. The gold dress lay crumpled on the asphalt by his dirt-encrusted feet, along with the cut-offs he’d been wearing when he’d done the smash-and-grab.

So far, the Indian hadn’t threatened them in any way. He just stood like a statue, his breathing shallow, the bayonet held down against his bare left thigh, which was fully exposed. He’d sliced the slit in the red dress clear up to his flank, either for more freedom of movement or to look more provocative.

“Dude,” Flotsam said to the Indian, holding his Glock nine in the flashlight beam so the Indian could observe that it was pointed right at him, “I can see that you’re spun out on something. My guess is you been doing crystal meth, right? And maybe you just wanted an audition at Paramount and didn’t have any nice dresses to wear to it. I can sympathize with that too. I’m willing to blame it on Oscar de la Renta or whoever made the fucking things so alluring. But you’re gonna have to drop that long knife now or pretty soon they’re gonna be drawing you in chalk on this alley.”

Jetsam, whose nine was also pointed at the ponytailed Indian, whispered to his partner, “Why do you keep saying long knife to this zombie instead of bayonet?”

“He’s an Indian,” Flotsam whispered back. “They always say long knife in the movies.”

“That refers to us white men!” Jetsam said. “We’re the fucking long knives!”

“Whatever,” said Flotsam. “Where’s our backup, anyhow? They coulda got here on skateboards by now.”

When Flotsam reached tentatively for the pepper-spray canister on his belt, Jetsam said, “Uncool, bro. Liquid Jesus ain’t gonna work on a meth-monster. It only works on cops. Which you proved the time you hit me with act-right spray instead of the ’-roided-up primate I was doing a death dance with.”

“You still aggro over that?” Flotsam said, remembering how Jetsam had writhed in pain after getting the blast of OC spray full in the face while they and four other cops swarmed the hallucinating bodybuilder who was paranoid from mixing recreational drugs with steroids. “Shit happens, dude. You can hold a grudge longer than my ex-wife.”

In utter frustration, Jetsam finally said quietly to the Indian, “Bro, I’m starting to think you’re running a game on us. So you either drop that bayonet right now or the medicine man’s gonna be waving chicken claws over your fucking ashes.”

Taking the cue, Flotsam stepped forward, his pistol aimed at the Indian’s pustule-covered face, damp with sweat on this warm night, eyes rolled back, features strangely contorted in the flashlight beams. And the tall cop said just as quietly, “Dude, you’re circling the drain. We’re dunzo here.”

Jetsam put his flashlight in his sap pocket, nowadays a cell-phone pocket, since saps had become LAPD artifacts, extended his pistol in both hands, and said to the Indian, “Happy trails, pard. Enjoy your dirt nap.”

That did it. The Indian dropped the bayonet and Flotsam said, “Turn and face the wall and interlace your fingers behind your head!”

The Indian turned and faced the wall, but he obviously did not understand “interlace.”

Jetsam said, “Cross your fingers behind your head!”

The Indian crossed his middle fingers over his index fingers and held them up behind his head.

“No, dude!” Flotsam said. “I didn’t ask you to make a fucking wish, for chrissake!”

“Never mind!” Jetsam said, pulling the Indian’s hands down and cuffing them behind his back.

Finally the Indian spoke. He said, “Do you guys have a candy bar I could buy from you? I’ll give you five dollars for a candy bar.”

When Jetsam was walking the Indian to their car, the prisoner said, “Ten. I’ll give you ten bucks. I’ll pay you when I get outta jail.”

After stopping at a liquor store to buy their meth-addled, candy-craving arrestee a Nutter Butter, they drove him to Hollywood Station and put him in an interview room, cuffing one wrist to a chair so he could still eat his candy. The night-watch D2, a lazy sensitivity-challenged detective known as “Compassionate” Charlie Gilford, was annoyed at being pulled away from shows like American Idol, which he watched on a little TV he kept concealed in the warren of work cubicles the size of airline restrooms, where he sat for hours on a rubber donut. He loved to watch the panels brutalize the hapless contestants.

The detective was wearing a short-sleeved, wrinkled white shirt and one of his discount neckties, a dizzying checkerboard of blues and yellows. Everyone said his ties were louder than Mötley Crüe, and even older. Charlie got fatigued listening to the story of the window smash on Melrose, the serenade to the guard at Paramount Studios’ main gate, the foot chase by the surfer cops, and the subsequent eerie confrontation, all of which Flotsam described as “weird.”

He said to them, “Weird? This ain’t weird.” And then he uttered the phrase that one heard every night around the station when things seemed too surreal to be true: “Man, this is fucking Hollywood!” After that, there was usually no need for further comment.

But Charlie decided to elaborate: “Last year the midwatch busted a goony tweaker totally naked except for a pink tutu. He was waving a samurai sword on Sunset Boulevard when they took him down. That was weird. This ain’t shit.”

When he spotted the acronym for American Indian Movement tattooed on the prisoner’s shoulder, he touched it with a pencil and said, “What’s that mean, chief? Assholes in Moccasins?”

The Indian just sat munching on the Nutter Butter, eyes shut in utter bliss.

Then the cranky detective sucked his teeth and said to the arresting officers, “And by the way, you just had to feed him chocolate, huh? This tweaker don’t have enough speed bumps?”

To the Indian he said, “Next time you feel like breaking into show business, take a look in the mirror. With that mug, you only got one option. Buy a hockey mask and try singing ‘Music of the Night.’”

“I’ll give you twenty bucks for another Nutter Butter,” the Indian finally said to Compassionate Charlie Gilford. “And I’ll confess to any crime you got.”

Nathan Weiss, called Hollywood Nate by the other cops because of his obsession, recently waning, to break into the movie business, had left Watch 5, the midwatch, eight months earlier, shortly after the very senior sergeant known as the Oracle had died of a massive heart attack there on the police Walk of Fame in front of Hollywood Station. Nothing was the same on the midwatch after they lost the Oracle. Hollywood Nate had been pulled out of trouble, usually involving women, and spared from disciplinary action more than once by the grizzled forty-six-year veteran supervisor, who had died just short of his sixty-ninth birthday.

Everyone said it was fitting that the Oracle had died on that Walk, where stars honoring Hollywood Division officers killed on duty were embedded in marble and brass just as they were for movie stars on Hollywood Boulevard. The Oracle had been their star, an anachronism from another era of policing, from long before the Rodney King riots and Rampart Division evidence-planting scandal. Long before the LAPD had agreed to a Department of Justice “consent decree” and gotten invaded by federal judges and lawyers and politicians and auditors and overseers and media critics. Back when the cops could be guided by proactive leaders, not reactive bureaucrats more fearful of the federal overseers and local politicians than of the street criminals. The day after the Oracle died, Nathan Weiss had gone to temple, the first time in fifteen years, to say Kaddish for the old sergeant.

All of them, street cops and supervisors, were now smothered in paperwork designed to prove that they were “reforming” a police force of more than ninety-five hundred souls who ostensibly needed reforming because of the actions of half a dozen convicted cops from both incidents combined. Hundreds of sworn officers had been taken from street duties to manage the paper hurricane resulting from the massive “reformation.” The consent decree hanging over the LAPD was to expire in two more years, but they’d heard that before and knew it could be extended. Like the war in Iraq, it seemed that it would never end.

The Oracle had been replaced by a university-educated twenty-eight-year-old with a degree in political science who’d rocketed almost to the top of the promotion list with little more than six years of experience, not to mention overcoming disadvantages of race and gender. Sergeant Jason Treakle was a white male, and that wasn’t helpful in the diversity-obsessed city of Los Angeles, where fifty-five languages were spoken by students in the school district.

Hollywood Nate called Sergeant Treakle’s roll call speeches a perfect meld of George Bush’s garbled syntax and the tin ear of Al Gore. During those sessions Nate could hear cartilage crackling from all the chins bouncing off chests as the troops failed to stay awake and upright. He’d hated the rookie sergeant’s guts the first time they’d met, when Sergeant Treakle criticized Nate in front of the entire assembly for referring to Officer Ronnie Sinclair as a “very cool chick.” Ronnie took it as a compliment, but Sergeant Treakle found it demeaning and sexist.

Then, during an impromptu inspection, he’d frowned upon Hollywood Nate’s scuffed shoes. He’d pointed at Nate’s feet with an arm that didn’t look long enough for his body, saying the shoes made Nate look “unkempt,” and suggested that Nate try spit-shining them. Sergeant Treakle was big on spit shines, having spent six months in the ROTC at his university. Because of his knife-blade mouth, the cops soon referred to him as “Chickenlips.”

Hollywood Nate, like his idol, the Oracle, had always worn ordinary black rubber-soled shoes with his uniform. He liked to needle the cops who wore expensive over-the-ankle boots to look more paramilitary but then experienced sweaty feet, foot fungus, and diminished running speed. Nate would ask them if their spit-shined boots made it easier to slog through all the snow and ice storms on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards.

And Hollywood Nate had given up suggesting that field training officers stop making the new P1 probationers call them sir or ma’am, as most did. The more rigid and GI of the FTOs seemed to be those who’d never served in the military and they wouldn’t think of letting their probies wear the gung-ho boots before finishing their eighteen-month probation. Nate would privately tell the rookies to forget about boots, that their feet would thank them for it. And Nate never forgot that the Oracle had never spit-shined his shoes.

Before the midwatch hit the streets, every cop would ritually touch the picture of the Oracle for luck, even new officers who’d never known him. It hung on the wall by the door of the roll call room. In the photo their late sergeant was in uniform, his retro gray crew cut freshly trimmed, smiling the way he’d always done, more with his smart blue eyes than with his mouth. The brass plate on the frame simply said:

THE ORACLE

APPOINTED: FEB 1960

END-OF-WATCH: AUG 2006

SEMPER COP

Hollywood Nate, like all the others, had tapped the picture frame before leaving roll call on the first evening he’d met his new sergeant. Then he’d gone straight downstairs to the watch commander’s office and asked to be reassigned to the day watch, citing a multitude of personal and even health reasons, all of them lies. It had seemed to Nate that an era had truly ended. The Oracle—the kind of cop Nate told everyone he had wanted to be when he grew up—had been replaced by a politically correct, paper-shuffling little putz with dwarfish arms, no lips, and a shoe fetish.

At first, Hollywood Nate wasn’t fond of Watch 2, the early day watch, certainly not the part where he had to get up before 5 A.M. and speed from his one-bedroom apartment in the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood Station, change into his uniform, and be ready for 0630 roll call. He didn’t like that at all. But he did like the hours of the 3/12 work shift. On Watch 2, the patrol officers worked three twelve-hour days a week during their twenty-eight-day deployment periods, making up one day at the end. That gave Nate four days a week to attend cattle calls and harangue casting agents, now that he’d earned enough vouchers to get his Screen Actors Guild card, which he carried in his badge wallet right behind his police ID.

So far, he’d gotten only one speaking part, two lines of dialogue, in a TV movie that was co-produced by an over-the-hill writer/director he’d met during one of the red carpet events at the Kodak Center, where Nate was tasked with crowd control. Nate won over that director by body blocking an anti-fur protester in a sweaty tank top before she could shove one of those “I’d Rather Go Naked” signs at the director’s wife, who was wearing a faux-mink stole.

Nate sealed the deal and got the job when he told the hairy protester he’d hate to see her naked and added, “If wearing fur is a major crime, why don’t you scrape those pits?”

The movie was about mate-swapping yuppies, and Nate was typecast as a cop who showed up after one of the husbands beat the crap out of his cheating spouse. The battered wife was scripted to look at the hawkishly handsome, well-muscled cop whose wavy dark hair was just turning silver at the temples, and wink at him with her undamaged eye.

To Nate, there didn’t seem to be much of a story and he was given one page of script with lines that read: “Good evening, ma’am. Did you call the police? What can I do for you that isn’t immoral?”

During that one-day gig, the grips and gaffers and especially the craft services babe who provided great sandwiches and salads all told Nate that this was a “POS” movie that might never reach the small screen at all. After she’d said it, Nate knew that his initial impression had been correct: It was a piece of shit, for sure. Hollywood Nate Weiss was already thirty-six years old, with fifteen years on the LAPD. He needed a break. He needed an agent. He didn’t have time left in his acting life to waste on pieces of shit.

On the morning after the midwatch surfer cops busted the wooden Indian, Nate Weiss was assigned to a one-man day-watch report car known as a U-boat, which responded to report-writing calls instead of those that for safety reasons required a pair of officers. At 8:30 A.M. Nate did what he always did when he caught a U-boat assignment: He went to Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax for a coffee break.

The fact that Farmers Market was a couple of blocks out of Hollywood Division didn’t bother him much. It was a small peccadillo that the Oracle would always forgive. Nate loved everything about that old landmark: the tall clock tower, the stalls full of produce, the displays of fresh fish and meat, the shops and ethnic eateries. But mostly he loved the open-air patios where people gathered this time of morning for cinnamon rolls, fresh-baked muffins, French toast, and other pastries.

Nate ordered a latte and a bagel, taking a seat at a small empty table close enough to eavesdrop on the “artistes’ table.” He’d started doing it after he’d overheard them talking about pitching scripts to HBO and getting financing for small indie projects and doing lunch with a famous agent from CAA who one of them said was a schmuck—all topics of fascination to Hollywood Nate Weiss.

By now, he was almost able to recognize them from their voices without looking at them directly. There was the features director who, due to Hollywood ageism, complained that he couldn’t even get arrested at the studios. Ditto for three former screenwriters who were regulars at the table, as well as for a former TV producer. A dozen or more of these would come and go, all males, the average age being seventy-plus, far too old for the youth-obsessed entertainment business that had nurtured them.

A formerly famous painter and sculptor, wearing a trademark black beret, wasn’t selling so well these days either. Nate heard him tell the others that when his wife asks him what he wants for dinner, his usual response is, “Get off my back, will ya?” Then the painter added, “But don’t feel sorry for us. We’re getting used to living in our car.”

A former TV character actor wearing a safari jacket from Banana Republic, whose face was familiar to Nate, stood up and informed the others he had to leave and make an important call to a VP in development at Universal to discuss a script he’d been deciding whether or not to accept.

After he’d gone, the director said, “The poor schlemiel. I’ll bet he gets a ‘Please leave a message’ recording from the VP at Universal. That’s who he discusses the project with—a machine. Probably has to call back a hundred and thirty-five times to get his whole pitch into the VP’s voice mail.”

“I’ve suspected he’s calling the number for highway information when he pretends to be talking to HBO,” the painter said, clucking sadly.

“He never was any good, even in his prime,” the director said. “Thought he was a method actor. They’d run out of money doing retakes. Twenty tics a take on average.”

“If he had more of a name, they could paint him like a whore and let him do arthritis and Geico commercials, like the rest of those has-beens,” said the has-been TV producer.

“And women?” one of the screenwriters said. “He thinks we believe his daffy seduction stories. Instead of another face-lift, the old bastard should have his balls stapled to his thigh to keep them from dropping in the toilet.”

“He could do it without anesthetic,” said the oldest of the screenwriters. “At his age it’s a dead zone down there.”

All of the geezers, who tended to talk over one another in multiple conversations, went silent for a moment when a stunning young woman paused to look into a nearby shop that sold glassware and candles. She wore a canary cotton jersey accented by hyacinth stitching, and $400 second-skin jeans, and stood nearly six feet tall in her Jimmy Choo lilac suede pumps. She had a full, pouty upper lip, and butterscotch blonde hair so luxurious it fanned across her shoulder when she turned to look at a glass figurine and then fell back perfectly into place when she continued walking. Her amazing hair gleamed when spangled sunlight pierced the covered patio and provided honey-colored highlights.

The codgers sighed and snuffled and did everything but drool before resuming their conversations. Nate watched her walk out toward the parking lot. Her remarkable body said Pilates loud and clear, and he could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. There in Hollywood, and even in Beverly Hills, Nate Weiss had not seen many showstoppers like her.

By then, Nate was ready to go back to work. It was getting depressing listening to the old guys railing about ageism, knowing in their hearts they’d never work again. He’d noticed that always around 9:30 A.M., they’d get up one by one and make excuses to leave, for important calls from directors, or for appointments with agents, or to get back to scripts they were polishing. Nate figured they all just went home to sit and stare at phones that never rang. It gave him a chill to think that he might be looking at Nathan Weiss a few decades from now.

Nate strolled to the parking lot thirty yards behind the beauty with the butterscotch hair, wanting to see what she drove. He figured her for a Beverly Hills hottie in an Aston Martin with a vanity license plate, compliments of a bucks-up husband or sugar daddy who drove a stately Rolls Phantom. It was almost disappointing when she got into a red BMW sedan instead of something really expensive and exotic.

Impulsively, he jotted down her license number, and when he got back to his black-and-white, ran a DMV check and saw that she lived in the Hollywood Hills, off Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the development called Mt. Olympus, where realtors claimed there were more Italian cypress trees per acre than anywhere else on earth. Her address surprised him a bit. There were lots of well-to-do foreign nationals on Mt. Olympus: Israelis, Iranians, Arabs, Russians, and Armenians, and others from former Soviet bloc countries, some of whom had been suspects or victims in major crimes. A few of the residents reportedly owned banks in Moscow, and it was not uncommon to see young adults driving Bentleys, and teenagers in BMWs and Porsches.

Around the LAPD it was said that mobbed-up former Soviets were more dangerous and cruel than the Sicilian gangsters ever were back in the day. Just five months earlier, two Russians had been sentenced to death in Los Angeles Superior Court for kidnapping and murder. They’d suffocated or strangled four men and one woman in a $1.2 million ransom scheme.

Mt. Olympus was pricey, all right, but not the crème de la crème of local real estate, and Nate thought that the area didn’t suit her style. Luckily, it was in Hollywood Division and he’d often patrolled the streets up there. He figured it was unlikely that this Hills bunny would ever need a cop, but after finally getting his SAG card, Hollywood Nate Weiss was starting to believe that maybe anything was possible.

At 6 P.M. that day, after the midwatch had cleared with communications and was just hitting the streets, and Nate Weiss was an hour from end-of-watch, the electronic beep sounded on the police radio and the PSR’s voice said to a midwatch unit, “All units in the vicinity and Six-X-Seventy-six, a jumper at the northeast corner, Hollywood and Highland. Six-X-Seventy-six, handle code three.”

Hollywood Nate in his patrol unit—which everyone at LAPD called their “shop” because of the identifying shop numbers on the front doors and roof—happened to be approaching the traffic light west at that intersection. He’d been gazing at the Kodak Center and dreaming of red carpets and stardom when the call came out. He saw the crowd of tourists gathering, looking up at a building twelve stories high, with an imposing green cupola. Even several of the so-called Street Characters who hustled tourists in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre were jaywalking or running along the Walk of Fame to check out the excitement.

Superman was there, of course, and the Hulk, but not Spider-Man, who was in jail. Porky Pig waddled across the street, followed by Barney the dinosaur and three of the Beatles, the fourth staying behind to guard the karaoke equipment. Everyone was jabbering and pointing up at the top of the vacant building, formerly a bank, where a young man in walking shorts, tennis shoes, and a purple T-shirt with “Just Do It” across the front sat on the roof railing, a dozen stories above the street below.

In the responding unit were Veronica Sinclair and Catherine Song, both women in their early thirties who, as far as Nate was concerned, happened to be among the better cops on midwatch. Cat was a sultry Korean American whose hobby was volleyball and whose feline grace made her name a perfect fit. Nate, who had been trying unsuccessfully to date her for nearly a year, loved Cat’s raven hair, cut in a retro bob like the girls in the 1930s movies that he had in his film collection. Cat was a divorced mother of a two-year-old boy.

Ronnie Sinclair had been at Hollywood Station for less than a year, but she’d been a heartthrob from the first moment she’d arrived. She was a high-energy brunette with a very short haircut that worked, given her small, tight ears and well-shaped head. She had pale blue eyes, great cheekbones, and a bustline that made all the male cops pretend they were admiring the shooting medals hanging on her shirt flap. The remarkable thing about her was that her childless marriages had been to two police officers named Sinclair who were distant cousins, so Flotsam and Jetsam called her Sinclair Squared. Most of the midwatch officers over the age of thirty were single but had been divorced at least once, including the surfer cops and Hollywood Nate.

The two women were met at the open door of the vacant building by an alarm company employee who said, “I don’t know yet how he got in. Probably broke a window in the back. The elevator still works.”

Ronnie and Cat hurried inside to the elevators, Nate right behind them. And all three stood waiting for the elevator, trying to be chatty to relieve the gathering tension.

“Why aren’t you circling the station about now?” Ronnie said, looking at her watch. “You’re almost end-of-watch and there must be a starlet waiting.”

Nate looked at his own watch and said, “I still have, let’s see, forty-seven minutes to give to the people of Los Angeles. And who needs starlets when I have such talent surrounding me?”

When Nate, whose womanizing was legendary at Hollywood Station, shot her his Groucho leer, Ronnie said, “Forget it, Nate. Ask me for a date sometime when you’re a star and can introduce me to George Clooney.”

That caused Hollywood Nate to whip out his badge wallet and proudly remove the SAG card tucked right underneath his police ID, holding it up for Ronnie and Cat to see.

Ronnie looked at it and said, “Even O.J. has one of those.”

Cat said, “Sorry, Nate, but my mom wants me to date and marry a rich Buddhahead lawyer next time, not some oh-so-cute, round-eyed actor like you.”

“Someday you’ll both want me to autograph an eight-by-ten head shot for you,” Nate said, pleased that Cat thought he was cute, more pleased that she’d called him an actor. “Then I’ll be the one playing hard to get.”

During the ride up in the elevator they didn’t speak anymore, growing tense even though the location of the jumper call, here in the heart of Hollywood tourism, made it likely that it was just a stunt by some publicity junkie. The three cops were trying their best not to take it too seriously. Until they climbed to the observation deck encircling the cupola and saw him, shirtless now, straddling a railing with arms outstretched, tennis shoes pressed together, head slightly bowed in the crucifixion pose. This, as tourists, hustlers, tweakers, pickpockets, cartoon characters, and various Hollywood crazies were standing down below, yelling at him to stop being a chickenshit and jump for Jesus.

“Oh, shit!” Cat said, speaking for all of them.

The three cops walked very slowly toward him and he turned around on the railing to face them, wobbling precariously, making onlookers down below either scream or cheer. His sandy, shoulder-length hair was blowing in his face, and his eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses were even more pale blue than Ronnie’s. In fact, she thought he looked a lot like her cousin Bob, a drummer in a rock band. Maybe it was that, but she took the lead and th. . .