Hollywood Hills

by Joseph Wambaugh

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

The legendary Hollywood Hills are home to wealth, fame, and power. Passing through the neighborhood, it’s hard not to get a little greedy.

LAPD veteran “Hollywood Nate” Weiss could take or leave the opulence, but he wouldn’t say no to onscreen fame. He may get his shot when he catches the appreciative eye of B-list director Rudy Ressler, and his troublemaking fiancée, Leona Brueger, the older-but-still-foxy widow of a processed-meat tycoon. Nate tries to elude her crafty seductions but consents to keep an eye on their estate in the Hollywood Hills while they’re away.

Also minding the mansion is Raleigh Dibble, a hapless ex-con trying to put the past behind him. Raleigh is all too happy to be set up for the job. as butler-cum-watchdog, by Nigel Wickland, Leona’s impeccably dressed art dealer. What Raleigh doesn’t realize is that. under the natty clothes and posh accent, Nigel has a nefarious plan; two paintings hanging on the mansion’s walls will guarantee them more money than they’ve ever seen.

Everyone’s dreams are just within reach. The only problem is this is Hollywood. A circle of teenage burglars that the media has dubbed The Bling Ring has taken to pillaging the homes of Hollywood “celebutants” like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and when a pair of drug-addled young copycats stumbles upon Nigel’s heist, that’s just the beginning of the disaster to come. Soon Hollywood Nate, surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam, and the rest of the team at Hollywood Station have a deadly situation on their hands.

Hollywood Hills is a raucous and dangerous roller-coaster ride that showcases New York Times bestselling author Joseph Wambaugh in vintage form.

Release date: July 1, 1984

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 448

Sample

“Vivid… a cogent reminder that he remains on the beat, and as effective as ever… Wambaugh is like English historian Edward
Gibbon, recording the rise and fall of a great empire. And, like Gibbon, he will be read long after those who follow him are
forgotten. Authors such as James Ellroy rightly treat Wambaugh’s novels as their ur-texts, but few have managed to capture
the truths that fill Wambaugh’s books.”


—Los Angeles Times

“Mr. Wambaugh is a brilliant writer who never lets the reader down but does make us sorry when this whirlwind read comes to
an end. We can only hope that No. 5 in the collection comes along quickly.”


—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Wambaugh mixes the light and dark in a unique way… HOLLYWOOD HILLS is a keeper.”

—Denver Post

“An entertaining and starkly realistic ride-along with the LAPD… His carefully drawn characters are colorful but utterly believable…
No writer describes the cop world’s twin masks of comedy and tragedy as well as Joseph Wambaugh.”


—Philadelphia Inquirer

“If James Joyce had imagined Finnegans Wake as a crime story, it might have turned out something like HOLLYWOOD HILLS.”


—Kansas City Star

“Rollicking… an absurdist take on crime, as well as plotlines and sentences that perform buoyant loop-de-loops all over the
page before making flawless landings.”


—Newsday

“Dark slapstick—with rimshot dialogue worthy of Jay Leno… Wambaugh continues to get the job done.”

—Wall Street Journal

“The multiple story lines and initially bewildering cast of characters may leave some readers disoriented at the beginning,
but Wambaugh is a masterful storyteller and it’s not long before the elements coalesce into a dazzling mosaic that offers
caper-style comedy, downbeat heroics, heartbreakingly authentic detail, and unconventional but effective police procedural
work.”


—Irish Times

“We get to ride again with the crew of the most colorful cop-shop under the sun.”

—Scotsman

“[This] rollicking entry in the series visits the usual lineup of colorful cops and wacky lawbreakers.”

—Sacramento Bee

“A fun romp… HOLLYWOOD HILLS is funny and sad, eloquent and simple. Anyone who knows anything about real police work knows
that Wambaugh’s portrayals are true to life and that he remains a true master of the police story.”


—BookReporter.com

“[A] deliciously convoluted caper.”

—Publishers Weekly

“You do not want to miss this fun book.”

—BookLoons.com

“Deliciously entertaining… Wambaugh’s writing style remains clear and vivid.”

—Denver Post

“Full of hilarious anecdotes that ring absolutely true.”

—Stephen King

“Hilarious, poignant, and thrilling… a masterful novel.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Grotesquely sad and funny… Here, cops rule.”

—New York Times Book Review

“One of the most accomplished crime writers of our time… continues his string of splendid police procedurals.”


—San Diego Union-Tribune

“A strong plot… The book has a fast pace, the mood swings pleasingly from tragic to darkly comic, and the characters are memorable
and believable.”


—Associated Press

“Darkly comic, gritty… packs an emotional wallop at its finale.”

—Orlando Sun Sentinel

“Wambaugh makes his bad guys just as fascinating as his cops.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Entertaining… provides lots of laughs and gasps along with a few tender sighs… Spare and punchy prose fuels descriptions
so on target that readers will feel they are riding shotgun, gazing out on Tinseltown’s tawdry landscape.”


—Publishers Weekly

“Wambaugh consistently turns out taut, suspense-laden thrillers… Like life, his novels are by turns comical, whimsical, tense,
gripping, and tragic… Wambaugh is a master of the genre, and he just keeps getting better.”


—BookPage

“A master of the police procedural… For nonstop action and enjoyable characters, it’s hard to beat Hollywood Moon. Wambaugh’s many fans will read this book with unadulterated pleasure.”


—Library Journal

“Hollywood Moon has everything I love about Joseph Wambaugh—it’s funny, then surprising, then suddenly shocking… The master of the police
story just keeps getting better and better.”


—T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Renegades

“A fast, fun read… There’s a shocker at the end. But that only adds gravitas to a novel that brims with life.”

—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Wonderfully drawn characters… a well-told and emotionally moving story.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Exuberant… Exhibit A for the case that the [MWA Grand Master Award] was well deserved.”

—Washington Post Book World

“Wambaugh’s abundantly black humor and social satire will make you laugh—and think.”

—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Combining slapstick, sardonic wit, and a large dollop of reality… Wambaugh once again proves that, despite fame and fortune,
he is still a cop at heart.”


—Orlando Sentinel

“Wambaugh knows his turf.”

—Associated Press

“Excellent… What elevates this exceptionally fine read is the intuitive understanding it provides of the way big-city cops
think and operate.”


—Grand Rapids Press

“This novel is long on Wambaugh’s stock in trade: anecdotes of a cop’s life, some funny, some unusual, some wrenching… redeeming
humanity emerges.”


—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Blisteringly funny police procedural… exhilarating… colorful… a pleasure… It has all the authority, outrage, compassion,
and humor of the great early novels.”


—New York Times Book Review

“Highly entertaining… outrageous and hilarious… all of Wambaugh’s trademark jet-black humor is intact.”

—Washington Post Book World

“Cops just want to have fun! As you turn the pages of Wambaugh’s newest offering on the subject of the foibles and ferocities
of the LAPD, you are going to have quite a good time yourself.”


—San Francisco Chronicle

“Sharp characterization, fine plotting, and irreverent humor that mark Joseph Wambaugh’s best work.”

—Dallas Morning News

“Offers all the characteristic Wambaugh magic: unlikable and conflicted characters we grow to love; a perfect mix of good
guys and bad; and small vignettes that tie together seamlessly by the end.”


—Atlantic Monthly

“The freedom to imagine allows a writer to create truer pictures than do portraits of real people and factual events—at least
when the writer is a wise and masterful storyteller like Joseph Wambaugh.”


—San Diego Union-Tribune

THE BUTT-FLOSS BUNNY’S busted, bro,” said the alliteration-loving, sunbaked blond surfer. He was already in his black wet suit, lying on the sand
and ogling the photo shoot thirty yards farther south on Malibu Beach on a late summer day that made Southern California’s
kahunas wonder why the rest of the world lived anywhere else.


“They can’t jam her, dude,” his taller surfing partner said, hair darker blond and also streaked with highlights, as he squirmed
into his own black wet suit. “The ordinance says no nude sunbathing. Well, she ain’t sunbathing and she’s wearing a gold eye
patch over her cookie and a pair of Dr. Scholl’s corn pads over her nibs. So she ain’t technically unclothed, even though
she is, like, hormonally speaking, as naked as Minnie the mermaid who haunts my dreams.”


“Anyways, everybody can see she ain’t no surf bunny,” said the shorter surfer. “Even her toenails are way jeweled up and all perfectamundo. So if chocka chicks wanna go denuded for a professional photo op, they deserve a pass.”


“She deserves more than that for putting up with that met-sex woffie, for sure,” the tall surfer said, referring to the skeletal
metrosexual photographer in a tight pink T-shirt, with a fall of so casual highlighted hair draped over his non-camera eye. The photographer was yapping orders to his perspiring young male
assistant, whose gelled hair was combed up from the sides in a faux-hawk ’do, almost as fast as he clicked photos of the redhead.


“If she gets a ticket, it should be for littering a public beach with those two hodads in rainbow rubber, not for displaying
her fabuloso physique,” the shorter surfer replied, alluding to the two male models sharing the photo session as mere backdrop.


One was wearing a cherry-red wet suit with a white stripe up one leg, and the other a lemon-yellow wet suit equally offensive
to the observing ring of sneering water enforcers who claimed this part of Malibu as kahuna turf. They viewed anyone wearing
anything but a solid black or navy wet suit as dissing surfing traditions, and as a legitimate target to be surfboard-speared
if they dared enter the water to claim a wave.


That lip-curling judgment was further confirmed by the leashes attached to the spanking-new longboards being used as props,
surfboard leashes being almost as objectionable as colored wet suits to the gathering group of surfing purists watching the
goings-on. The longboards, one turquoise, one violet, were positioned directly behind the magnificent redhead, who kept changing poses for the photographer. He was carefully framing provocative body shots fore
and aft, unfazed by the L.A. Sheriff’s Department black-and-white pulling into a parking space reserved for emergency vehicles.


“Here comes five-oh,” said the taller surfer to his partner when two uniformed deputies, a young man and an older woman, got
out and strode across the sand toward the photo shoot.


“Never a cop when you need one, bro,” the shorter surfer noted. “And we don’t need one now. The last time the little scallywag
jiggled, one of her corn pads popped loose, which was like, too cool for school.”


The taller surfer said, “Roger that. She is fully hot. Fully! But personally, right now I’m all dialed in to see what happens
if the pair of rainbow donks actually hit the briny on their unwaxed logs. The surf Nazis’re gonna go all return-of-Jaws berserk when they smell that kooker blood in the water.”


“Get your happy on, bro,” his partner said. “Forget the two squids. Just wax up and enjoy the gymnosophical gyrations of that
slammin’ spanker.”


“Gymno…?” said the tall surfer. Then, “Dude, I hate it when you take community college classes and go all vocabu-lyrical instead
of speaking everyday American English.”


Just then, the woman deputy, a tall Asian veteran with her black hair pulled into a tight bun, moved ahead of her burly young
Latino partner to confront the photographer, who reluctantly stopped shooting and faced her.


“This is attracting an unruly crowd,” she said. “It’s not the time or place for a photo session of this nature on Malibu Beach. I’d like you to shut it down and take it to a more private location.”


As the deputy said this, the redhead was performing splits on the yellow surfboard that one of the male models had placed
flat on the sand as a pedestal for the next flurry of shots. But when the redhead got into the splits position, she lost control
of her eye patch thong, attached by a string that rode over her hips and disappeared between the cheeks of her liquid-tanned
buttocks. When the eye patch got crumpled against her upper thigh, her shaved genitalia was exposed, and a cheer went up from
the raucous ring of twenty young men, most of them in wet suits, now completely surrounding the photo shoot. A salvo of lascivious
commentary followed as the young men pushed in closer.


“See what I mean?” said the woman deputy to the photographer. “Shut this down now.”

“About her thong,” the photographer said. “If she puts one on that’s made of wider material, will we be all right? I mean,
I’ve been told that if there’s a patch over her tulips and enough material in back so that her cheeks don’t touch each other,
it cannot be considered nudity on a public beach.”


The giggling redhead, seemingly aroused by the male effluvium enveloping her like funky smoke, said to her boss, “You mean
it’ll make my costume legal if my cheeks don’t touch?”


And with that, she arched her back, grabbed a buttock in each hand, and spread them slightly, all the while winking at her
play-surfer colleagues in rainbow suits. Both of them had declined her offer to whiff a few lines just before the photo shoot and now looked unnerved by her coke-driven behavior.


The one in the lemon-yellow wet suit whispered in her ear, “Gloria, this is not risqué, this is fucking risky. We’re surrounded
by testosterone-crazed animals.”


“That’s it,” said the woman deputy as the model rearranged her thong. “You’re in violation of the law. Get off this beach
and stand by our car. Do it now.”


The photographer sighed in disgust, hands on his narrow hips, and gazed up, muttering to the vast cloudless sky over Malibu
and the Pacific Ocean before reluctantly saying, “Okay, kids, it’s a fucking wrap.”


“I was just getting into it!” the redhead cried, snatching a towel from a folding chair.

And though alcohol consumption was prohibited on the beach, the grungiest of the nonsurfers were hammered, and an open can
of beer was thrown from the back of the crowd. It soared over the heads of the nearest surfers, striking the deputy on the
back of the head just above her bun of hair, splashing beer onto her tan uniform shirt.


“Owwww!” she yelped, whirling toward the mob.

“I saw which one did it!” her partner said, barging through the ring of wet suits, running down the beach after a fleeing
teen in a torn T-shirt. As a result of having sloshed down two 40s of Olde English and a six-pack of Corona, the teen tripped
over an obese, snoring tourist in plaid golf pants who was tits up and turning bubblegum-pink under the late afternoon sun.


The deputy wrestled the kid to the sand, looking as though he were trying to decide whether to grab handcuffs or pepper spray,
when his partner, blood droplets wetting the collar of her uniform shirt, ran up and pounced on the thrashing teen, who yelled, “I didn’t mean to hit nobody! It was
just a lucky shot!”


“Unlucky for you, asshole,” the Latino deputy said.

“I can hook him up,” the woman deputy said to her partner as they grappled, “if you’ll get his goddamn arm twisted back.”

“I’m suing you!” the kid hollered. Then to the milling crowd of onlookers, “You people are witnessing police brutality! Give
me your names and phone numbers!”


After their prisoner was handcuffed, they jerked him upright and started dragging him toward the parking lot.

Then another of the grungier beach creatures, in board shorts, inked-out from his neck to his knees with full-sleeve tatts
on both arms and missing an incisor and two bicuspids in his upper grille, yelled, “Let him go. He didn’t do nothing. Some
nigger threw the beer and ran off.”


He drunkenly slouched toward the deputies, full of booze and bravado, holding the neck of an empty beer bottle like a hammer,
and the young deputy drew his Taser and pointed it at him. The female deputy immediately talked into her rover and requested
backup while she kept her eyes on the increasingly rowdy mob, at the same time trying to decide which of the half dozen nonsurfing
sand maggots could be a real threat.


She didn’t realize that backup was much closer than she thought, and it arrived in a violent explosion of energy that stunned
everybody. The tall blond surfer and his shorter partner issued no warnings, but running full speed, the taller one surged
in low like a blitzing linebacker and slammed his shoulder into the lower spine of the guy with the beer bottle, who sailed forward, back bowed,
and crashed hard against two surfers, knocking both of them flat on the sand. One of the other sleazed-out beach lice in ragged
jeans instantly leaped on the back of the tall surfer as he was getting to his feet and tried for a stranglehold. He let go
when the shorter surfer grabbed his hair, jerked his head back, and dug three piston punches into the guy’s kidneys, which
made him drop to the sand, howling louder than his wounded mate.


“Get him to your car fast!” the tall surfer yelled to the deputies.

He picked up and brandished the beer bottle, standing shoulder to shoulder with his partner, facing off the jeering gaggle
of now-hesitant surfers as the deputies continued dragging their handcuffed prisoner across the warm white sand of Malibu
Beach.


The remainder of the surfing crowd suddenly had to rethink the whole business after seeing the two beach rats get cranked
by the dynamic duo, whoever the fuck they were. And besides, since the wicked wahini and her crew were scampering to their
SUV, the sexy rush was over. They figured that pretty soon there’d be more cops.


And anyway, they’d been out of the water too long. Adrenaline started gushing and synapses snapping when they saw half a dozen
other surfers digging through the breakers. The surf was peaky and a young ripper came slicing in on a hugangus juicy while
other surfers hooted him on. So what the fuck were they doing on dry land dicking around with these cops anyway?


Suddenly, as though on command, they all turned and began scrambling toward the ocean like a raft of clumsy sea lions, but once in the water and on their boards, they were transformed,
and they darted, sleek as otters, through the shore break, with cops and even the redhead utterly forgotten. Their only concern
was not getting cut off as they paddled from break to break in waves punchy and raw, waiting for a big one because this… this was what it was all about. They had discovered the meaning of life.


After the deputies got their handcuffed prisoner strapped into the backseat of the caged patrol unit, the tall surfer and
his shorter partner heard the yelp of sirens as the LASD black-and-white units came roaring into the parking lot.


“Dude, I mighta rearranged a few disks in that sand maggot’s back,” the tall surfer said to his partner. “If we don’t wanna
get bogged to the ass in paperwork and lawsuits and shit, I think we should, like, fade out at this point and maybe frequent
Bolsa Chica Beach for the next few weeks.”


“I hear ya, bro,” his partner said. “The sleazed-out surf rat that I nailed is gonna be pissing blood for a few days, so I
ain’t ready to answer a bunch of questions about why we didn’t ID ourselves and advise them of their rights and give them
all a chance to kick the shit outta the deputies and us, too. I say, let’s bounce.”


The younger, Latino deputy was busy corralling the photo crew as witnesses for his reports, and the older, female deputy was
gingerly touching her injured head and scanning the growing crowd of looky-loos, but she couldn’t find the surfing pair who’d
decked the beach rats. She definitely needed them for the arrest and crime reports now that they were going to book their prisoner for the
felony assault on a peace officer, but the arriving backup units caused a traffic snarl and she had to direct cars out of
their way. This allowed the tall blond surfer and his shorter blond partner, hiding behind the throngs of beachgoers, to slip
away, collect their boards, and scurry unobserved to their pickup truck in the parking lot.


They drove off and headed for the closest In-N-Out Burger, where they each devoured two cheeseburgers and fries. They arrived
at work in time for a shower, a shave, an allowable application of hair gel, and a quick change into uniforms, ready for the
5:15 P.M. midwatch roll call.


All of the other police officers at Hollywood Station referred to this team of surfer cops as Flotsam and Jetsam.

FOR YEARS, HE had been dubbed “Hollywood Nate” because he carried a Screen Actors Guild card and was forever seeking stardom, as were thousands
of Los Angeles bartenders, waiters, parking attendants, receptionists, window washers, dog walkers, and even people with vocations
and professions, all nurturing similar hopes and dreams. Hollywood Nate’s mother and older sister had always maintained that
if only he had not been cast in a couple of TV movies early in his police career—back when Hollywood still made TV movies—the
bug might not have bitten him so hard. Lots of cops from Hollywood and other police divisions worked the red carpet events
or were hired as off-duty technical advisers on feature movies or TV shows, and that was the end of their emotional involvement
with show business. But Nate was different.


Hollywood Nate’s handsome hawkish profile and wavy dark hair, now going gray at the temples, along with his penetrating liquid brown eyes and iron-pumping build, had gotten him more than just sleepovers from below-the-line female
employees on nearly every production he’d worked. Nate had also been given lots of paying jobs as an on-camera extra, and
he’d even gotten those few speaking parts in TV productions, soon gathering enough credits to get a SAG card, which he proudly
kept in his badge wallet beneath his police ID card. The “Hollywood” moniker would be his for the rest of his police days
because the LAPD had always loved having a “Hollywood Lou” or a “Hollywood Bill” among its ranks, and since the seventeen-year
LAPD veteran “Hollywood Nate” even had a SAG card, that made it better.


The thirty-eight-year-old cop had been somewhat indulged for a few months by his fellow coppers on the midwatch during a time
of deep sadness for all of them. It came after Nate’s partner, Dana Vaughn, had been shot dead by a thief whom Nate then killed
with return fire. Nate had grieved intensely for Dana Vaughn and had needed to surmount overwhelming feelings of survivor
guilt and deep regret for never having told her certain intimate things, like how she had touched his heart and what she had
meant to him in the short time they had worked together as patrol partners. Now he had recurring dreams of telling her those
things, and in the dreams, she never answered him but would smile and chuckle in that special way of hers that always made
him think of wind chimes.


It was during that mournful and restless period that Hollywood Nate had been offered an audition that came from working the
red carpet on a warm summer night at the Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. There were thirty cops there that night, all happily drawing overtime pay. Rudy Ressler, a second-rate director and producer who
once had coproduced an Oscar-nominated movie, attended that affair with an up-and-coming pair of young beauties known only
to people who spent their lives watching nighttime TV designed for Gen X-ers. Ressler’s personal escort that evening was a
UCLA theater major skinnier than Victoria Beckham and younger than his own daughter. When the event ended and the Kodak was
disgorging the multitudes, Nate had occasion to apply some muscle to the stampeding paparazzi that had crowded in on the foursome
as they walked to the director’s rented limo.


It wasn’t that the aggressive paparazzi were interested in shooting photos of the director, but Brangelina, moving fast, had
emerged from the crowd right behind the Ressler foursome. Things got very unruly very quickly, and the frightened UCLA coed
began whimpering when an obese paparazzo with a camera hanging from a strap around his neck and a Styrofoam cup in his hand
backed against her, mashing her into Ressler’s hired limousine.


Nate had stepped in then with pap pressing on all sides and hooked a low elbow very hard into the belly of the fat guy, causing
him to let out a woooo, double over, and spew Jamba Juice all over other paparazzi. Nobody in that crush of nighttime fans, including other pap,
had seen the surreptitious elbow chop, and even the groaning paparazzo didn’t know what had hit him. But Rudy Ressler saw
it, as did one of the security aides of the LAPD chief of police. The aide waited by the chief’s ominous-looking SUV with
its dark-tinted windows.


When the Ressler party got into their limo, the director turned and said to Nate, “Thank you for helping us, Officer. If there’s
anything I can ever do for you…” And he handed Nate a business card.


Hollywood Nate said, “You may regret that rash remark, sir.” And he took the badge wallet from his pocket to show Rudy Ressler
his SAG card, and said, “At the station they call me Hollywood Nate because of this.”


“I’ll be damned,” the director said. He laughed out loud, turning to his companions and saying, “This officer is a SAG member.
Only in Hollywood!”


“Have a good evening, sir,” Nate said with a hopeful smile.

“Call me when you get a chance, Officer. I’m serious,” the director replied, looking at Hollywood Nate appraisingly this time.

Before the limousine pulled away, Nate heard Rudy Ressler say to the driver, “We’re dropping Ms. Franchon at her sorority
house and then you can take the rest of us to Mrs. Brueger’s home in the Hollywood Hills. Do you remember where it is from
last time?”


“Yes, sir, Mr. Ressler,” the driver said.

The limousine drove off, leaving the other cars blowing horns and flashing their high beams at the inevitable traffic jam,
and the paparazzi still snapping pictures. Hollywood Nate decided to take a better look at the chief’s SUV and at the LAPD
security aide standing beside it, who looked familiar. When he got closer, he recognized the wide-bodied, balding, mustachioed
Latino cop in the dark three-piece business suit. It was Lorenzo “Snuffy” Salcedo, an old friend and classmate who had served
with Nate in 77th Street Division when they were boots fresh out of the police academy, as well as later, when Snuffy had worked
patrol at Hollywood Station for two years.


Snuffy had served nine years in the navy before becoming a cop and was ten years older than Nate. But he wasn’t showing the
effects of his forty-eight years. He had competed in power lifting in the Police Olympics and had a chest like a buffalo.
Snuffy had acquired his nickname from his habit of tucking a pinch of Red Man chewing tobacco inside his lower lip and spitting
tobacco juice into a Styrofoam cup. Some cops mistakenly thought that he was dipping snuff. Nate remembered that their training
officers at 77th had threatened to make Snuffy drink the contents of his cup if they caught him, but at Hollywood Station,
once he was off probation, he’d kept his lip loaded most of the time. He was always the division champ when it came to chatter
and gossip, in a profession where gossip was coin of the realm.


Back then, their late sergeant, whom they’d called the Oracle, was often tasked by the watch commander to deal with Snuffy’s
droopy ’stash. But the Oracle would simply say to him, “Zapata is dead, Snuffy. Trim the tips off that feather duster next
time you’re clipping your nails.”


Snuffy seldom did and the Oracle didn’t really care. Then Nate thought of how much he missed the Oracle, who’d died of a massive
heart attack on the Walk of Fame in front of Hollywood Station. The stars in marble and brass on that part of Wilcox Avenue
were not there to commemorate movie stars but as memorials to the Hollywood Division coppers who had been killed in the line
of duty.


Nate’s reminiscing stopped when Snuffy Salcedo left the LAPD chief’s SUV at the curb and jogged toward the red carpet parking
area, arms outstretched. Under the mustache his toothy grin was glinting arctic white from all the lights on Hollywood Boulevard.


Nate said, “Snuffy Salcedo, I presume?”

Snuffy said, “Hollywood Nate Weiss! Where the fuck you be