Authors: Joseph Wambaugh
The place was very dark and more upscale than he’d expected, way above the dump where he’d found Lita. The bar itself wasn’t long and welcoming, probably because they wanted people at the tables or lining the stage, which would mean more tip money for the dancers. There were some faux-leather booths along the far walls, and the stage was first-rate, with lighting that followed the blond dancer, who straddled the pole and waved to a hooting male customer seated stageside. Dinko noted that some of the tables could accommodate four and several only a deuce, and he was surprised to see half a dozen youngish couples at the tables for two.
Then Dinko noticed a waitress bringing a tray of tapas to one of the tables—to be expected, because they had to serve food in these clubs in order to get a liquor license. He was surprised that so many lounge lizards actually brought girlfriends to watch other girls show their tits, but then this was Hollywood, where every kind of freak hung out. In a little room on each side of the main room, a girl was giving a geezer a lap dance. He knew that the seating there faced outward toward the main room per legal requirements, so that any vice cop or ABC agent could see into the room to determine if lewd conduct was occurring. It was the same in the titty bars down in Wilmington.
He took an empty bar stool and ordered a draft beer, just pointing to the closest of the three beers on tap they offered. When the bartender brought the brew, Dinko said, “Is Samara the name of the owner here, or what?”
The menacing bartender, with dark hair slicked back and pointing down his forehead in a widow’s peak like Count Dracula, said in heavily accented English and a voice fathoms deep, “Is a great city on the bank of the Volga. Better city than this one.”
His lip curled as he said it, so Dinko replied, “No offense, man. My geography’s a little rusty.”
The bartender turned and walked to the other end of the bar, where a customer was holding up two fingers for him and his buddy. No tip for you, Russkie asshole, Dinko thought.
Other than the ethnicity of the male customers here, most of them being white, he thought they weren’t a lot different from the bar customers he saw around the L.A. harbor. Nobody was dressed upscale except for a few guys in suits, who were probably downtown stockbrokers hoping for a short-lived erection before going home to momma and the kiddies somewhere on the West Side.
Dinko felt appropriate in his skinny-fit jeans and blue cotton half-zip pullover, the right style, he’d been told by a cute salesgirl at the Gap, for a guy as tall and slim as he was. The deal was sealed when she said the blue pullover enhanced the blue in his eyes, but she’d only given him a noncommittal smile when he’d asked if she’d like to meet him for coffee sometime. The outfit had cost him a Franklin, tax included, and he figured he looked okay anywhere in Hollywood, which itself was looking tackier than he remembered it from when his dad, on special occasions, would drive them up to catch a first-run movie.
He saw Lita Medina walk into the main room from a corridor leading to the restrooms and a back office. A man was walking beside her, an older man in a double-breasted, pearl-gray business suit who was definitely not a downtown stockbroker. When he got into the light Dinko saw that his dyed black hair was swept up and back like an ancient rocker’s. Christ, it even looked like he combed it in an old-time ducktail.
Dinko slid off the bar stool and scurried to the door, not wanting Lita to know that he’d come inside. As he was striding briskly along the sidewalk, he wondered why he didn’t want her to know he’d gone in there. Why should he care where this Mexican kid worked, or what she did with her life, or what she thought of him? It was none of his business. He told himself she was nothing to him, nothing at all. L.A. was full of Third World tramps like her. She’d probably be fucking those old communists the first night she showed up for work.
Dinko was seated in the Jeep by the time she reached the car, and he got out, feigning boredom, and opened the passenger door for her.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She nodded and said, “Mr. Markov says I shall begin my work on Tuesday.”
“Dancing?”
She nodded.
“Lap dancing?”
“I shall do anything to get the
propinas
. . . I mean, the tips.”
“Have you ever lap-danced?”
“No, but I shall learn.”
“This sucks.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Let’s get the hell outta Hollywood.”
They didn’t speak until they were cruising south on the Harbor Freeway, and then Dinko said, “Isn’t there some other kind of work you can do here in L.A.? You got any skills?”
“I do not know that word,” she said.
“Talents? You got any talents?”
“I dance,” she said.
“You’re no dancer,” he said, feeling unaccountably angry. “You can’t dance worth a damn. I saw you, remember?”
“I am sorry.” She stared straight ahead. “I shall learn better.”
“For chrissake!” he said, his anger growing.
“Please,” she said, now looking frightened and confused. “I do not wish you to have anger. I am sorry.”
“You’re too young!”
“I do not understand.”
“You’re nineteen years old. You shouldn’t be working in a place like that, hustling drinks. First of all, it’s against the law.”
“You promise not to tell my age,” she said, and when he looked over at her, the oncoming headlights revealed tears in her amber eyes.
“Goddamnit, don’t get weepy on me,” he said. “I won’t tell nobody, but nineteen? You’re a child!”
“I am no child,” she said.
“Tell me something,” Dinko said. “Did Hector buy you out of a contract with that bar owner in Wilmington?”
“How you mean?”
“Did you sign a paper promising to work at that bar for a period of time?”
“No,” she said, puzzled. “I do not sign nothing.”
“How did Hector find you?”
“He come and see me one day and then he bring a man on other day when I am dancing. A man I think is from China, but Hector say he is really from Korea.”
“Which one was the boss?”
“For sure, the big man from Korea. He say he look for girls to work in Hollywood. He tells me how much they pay me to work at Club Samara.”
“Was the Korean dressed in a suit with a white shirt and necktie?”
“Very much businessman,” she said. “How you know that?”
“Shit!” Dinko said. The guy standing beside the SL. Hector wouldn’t tell the truth if you took his mother hostage.
They were silent again except for Dinko’s exasperated sighs, and then she said suddenly, “And you, Dinko? How old?”
“Thirty-one.”
“I am maybe older than you,” she said. “In many ways.”
“You’ll get old real fast,” he said, “working in that place.”
“I work at more terrible one in Guanajuato,” she said.
His anger and frustration mounted again, and he asked impulsively, “Were you a hooker down there?”
She clearly did not understand the word, and she looked at him until he said, “A whore? A
puta
? Did you peddle your ass in that miserable country? Is that what you did? Is that what you wanna do in Hollywood? Work for freaks and thugs in a sleaze joint and sell your body and get diseases?”
After a very long silence she said quietly, “I must make money how I can. I am for sure not virgin, Dinko.”
Still boiling over, Dinko said, “Nobody is these days, the Virgin Mary included. Our fucking archbishop paid out more than six hundred million to cover his pervert priests. Those good padres busted a bunch of virgin cherries, I can tell you.”
She started to speak, then gave up trying to work out the meaning of the angry and ugly words he’d just uttered. Whatever he’d said, she didn’t want to understand it.
Dinko went on: “I don’t care what you had to do in a place where the cartels slaughter people by the thousands and cut off their heads, but now that you’re safe in this country, you shouldn’t be taking that slimy job in Hollywood!”
Lita Medina looked straight ahead again and said, “Please do not have concern for me.”
“Do you got a cell phone?”
“No, but I shall buy one very soon.”
“I’m gonna give you my cell number. Call me if . . . well, just call me if you want me to pick you up and take you somewhere else.”
She turned her face toward him and said, “Take me? Take me to where?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Don’t you have relatives in L.A.? You know, cousins maybe, or family friends?”
“No,” she said. “I live now with two girls from Guanajuato that clean the houses for the rich peoples in Long Beach.”
“Can’t you clean houses too?”
“For sure,” she said, “but I must make more money very fast to send to my family. They have great need, ’specially my mother.”
“Promise me you’ll keep my cell number and call me if . . . well, call me when you feel like you gotta escape.”
“What is that word?”
“Like when you gotta run. When you gotta get away from Hollywood. Call me, okay? I’ll try to help you.”
They were quiet again until she said softly, “I am no child, Dinko.”
FIVE
S
aturday night in
Hollywood was always an adventure, but on a night of a full moon, which the coppers of Hollywood Station called a “Hollywood moon,” anything could happen. After calling roll for six car assignments, Sergeant Lee Murillo told the midwatch, “You’ll be pleased to know that there is not anything even resembling a Hollywood moon tonight. Now I’ll allow time for applause.”
Fran Famosa clapped lethargically. She was not eager for busy nights of police work with her slacker partner, Chester Toles, watching her back. Sophie Branson, the oldest of the women officers, offered a few claps, but her partner, Marius Tatarescu, looked disappointed. With only half as many years on the Job, he was not as burned out as his senior partner, and he still craved the action.
The midwatch sergeant then said, “You’re not going to like this, but I have some minor roll call training to discuss with you. It has to do with constitutional policing and cameras in cars, which will soon be installed citywide.”
That brought groans from almost everyone. Sergeant Murillo waited for it to subside before saying, “What has been learned in pilot studies where they’ve been used is that you must not turn off the sound on the cameras, not for any reason. If the cameras don’t work, then get another car. Think of the camera’s visual and audio capabilities as a tool for your protection.”
Ever the movie buff, Hollywood Nate said, “Come on, Sarge! When South Bureau put them in cars with that little pinhole camera facing the backseat, you know what kind of movies got produced? The kind of cheesy bombs that go straight to video. D. W. Griffith silent flicks. Nobody says a word all the way to the station with prisoners for fear of being criticized for something. All the banter between copper and suspect that used to elicit admissions is gone, baby, gone.”
Sophie Branson said, “The inspector general is just looking for someone to hang for biased policing. It’s still killing them in the IG’s office that they had two hundred and forty-three racial-profiling complaints in a year and couldn’t sustain a single one, no matter how hard they tried to screw with the coppers named on them.”
“This is not a biased police department,” Fran Famosa said. “Can’t they get that through their heads? How come when some fool off the street comes in with a racial-profiling complaint, you gotta cut paper no matter how psycho the guy is? We get dumb questions like ‘How many people of that race do you stop?’ When the obvious answer is, As many as is necessary to do my job!”
Sergeant Murillo let them ventilate and then said, “Just remember that you truly do profile, but you do it based on the characteristics and behaviors of bad guys, not based on race or ethnicity. But, of course, if you’re on Hispanic gang turf in east Hollywood trying to curtail gang activity, you probably aren’t looking to stop and interrogate a Japanese sushi chef.”
Hollywood Nate piped up: “Even if they do drive like students at the Braille Institute.”
“That’s an ethnic stereotype, you ham actor!” said Officer Mel Yarashi, of 6-X-76, a third-generation Japanese-American. “You just offended me and made me not so sorry for Pearl Harbor and fifty-dollar sashimi appetizers.”
Sergeant Murillo waited until several cops hooted at Mel Yarashi, who subtly flipped them off; then the sergeant said, “Remember to use proper expressions, like ‘reasonable suspicion’ and ‘probable cause.’ These things give you a perfectly legal right to stop people. And there’s case law on making the driver and passenger alight for officer safety. There’re lots of subtle reasons you can use. For instance, a car can have an obstructed forward view, can’t it? Maybe one of the Eighteenth Street crew might hang baby shoes or those retro fuzzy dice, that sort of thing. It can be a reason to stop a gang car.”
“Seriously, Sarge,” Mel Yarashi said, “look at the crap that was said when the Rampart copper killed the Guatemalan drunk that was threatening people with a knife. They said the Hispanic copper shoulda told him to drop the knife in the guy’s specific Guatemalan dialect. Now Spanish is like Chinese? There’s a bunch of dialects we gotta learn?”
Sophie Branson said, “After that shooting, the reports were stacked so high you could stand on them and paint your ceiling.”
“If it ain’t the PC media, it’s the hug-a-thug race racketeers!” Anthony Doakes said.
Doakes, Mel Yarashi’s wiry twenty-eight-year-old partner, was a U.S. Army veteran of two combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, with five years on the LAPD. He was the only African-American on the midwatch, in a police division with a small number of black residents. But on weekends like this, Hollywood would see a large number of young black males on the boulevards, many of them gang members from south Los Angeles who’d arrived by subway. Because he was a garrulous talker, Anthony Doakes’s sobriquet was “A.T.,” for “Always Talking Tony.”
A.T. took a breath and continued: “Look how the Department caved when it comes to unlicensed illegal aliens on the sobriety checkpoints that impound cars of unlicensed drivers. Whoops! I shoulda said ‘undocumented immigrants.’ So we can’t impound
their
cars now because, being undocumented, they have a harder time getting a legal driver’s license and they need their uninsured cars to drive to work. At a vehicle kill rate five times higher than licensed drivers. Do I got it right?”
Hollywood Nate was surprised when his young partner, Britney Small, politely raised her hand. When Sergeant Murillo nodded to her, she said, “The LAPD had one point eight million contacts with citizens last year. Exactly two hundred and forty-eight complaints of biased policing were filed. That comes to point oh oh oh one thirty-eight. Statistically speaking, that’s virtually a zero.”
Sergeant Murillo said, “Very interesting, Britney. I’m impressed.”
Even Hollywood Nate was impressed. “How do you know that, partner?” he asked.
“I’m taking a couple of day classes at UCLA, and I wrote a paper on the subject,” she said, smiling self-consciously.
“One other thing,” Sergeant Murillo added. “We’re all supposed to be using the Pelican flashlight our former chief authorized and insisted on. I know some of you are using Streamlights, but make sure they’re the correct weight and size.”
“Right,” Nate said facetiously. “So small you couldn’t concuss a cricket if you gave it a dozen head strikes with one of them. When’re we gonna be required to trade our Glock forties for twenty-two target guns in order to give the dirtbags a
real
edge?”
After they stopped snickering and grousing, Sergeant Murillo said, “One last thing: our esteemed surfing duo happens to be working a special detail tonight. So if you see them out on the boulevards dressed in soft clothes, pretend like you don’t know them.”
“What’re they doing?” Sophie Branson asked.
“Something with the vice unit,” Sergeant Murillo said, and that got a few hoots and catcalls out of some of the younger male cops.
Those
two? As vice cops?
Chester Toles said, “I don’t think any of the curb creatures’ll take Jetsam for a copper, not if he shows them his plastic foot.”
“I think that’s the general idea,” Sergeant Murillo said, “but I don’t know the particulars of their mission. Anyway, if you see either him or his partner, don’t acknowledge, unless they’re yelling for help.”
He thumbed through his papers, remembering that there was something about drag queens and transsexuals being victimized by vandals, and when he found it he looked at Hollywood Nate and Britney Small, who patrolled the area in question. “A note for Six-X-Sixty-six. Somebody was shooting trannies and drag queens with paintballs last night while the victims were cruising for tricks on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
Hollywood Nate said, “Boss, I can account for my whereabouts at all times. Britney is my witness. Besides that, I’m an actor, and that’s a very gay profession.”
The coppers chuckled and Britney smiled, and then everyone collected their gear, careful to touch the Oracle’s picture for luck before leaving the roll call room.
Jetsam was particularly eager to get started, but Sergeant Hawthorne kept him and Flotsam in the office of the Hollywood vice unit until nightfall, going over the plan ad infinitum. Finally, Jetsam said, “Sarge, can we just land this plane? I mean, what can go wrong?”
The vice sergeant said in earnest, “I haven’t had one of my officers get hurt since I’ve been here, so that’s part of it. But it’s not only that. It’s that we might get just this one chance at the collector, Hector Cozzo, and I don’t want us to lose it. He’ll be the one who can lead us up the food chain.”
Four vice cops, their cover and security teams, breezed in and out of the office while the three men talked. All were dressed for the streets: jeans, T-shirts or other cotton shirts hanging out over their pistols and handcuffs, along with the inevitable tennis shoes for sneaking and peeking. There were mustaches, beards, shaved heads, earrings worn without piercing, openly displayed tats they’d acquired in military service before becoming cops—anything that would make it easier for them to pass easily among the denizens of Hollywood.
“Don’t you got anything at all you can bust this guy for right now?” Flotsam asked. “To put a twist on him?”
“Nothing,” Sergeant Hawthorne said. “Sure, we know he collects and arranges for immigrant girls to be housed and fed and paid, but so what? The massage parlors and nightclubs are businesses open to the public, and the girls can make any housing accommodation they choose, with anyone they want as a middleman. There’s no law against it. Of course, we’d love to prove that they’ve paid to get into this country illegally, and that they’re being virtually enslaved here by never being able to pay back what they owe, but we don’t have hard evidence on any of that. Not yet.”
“Okay, so when do we get started?” Jetsam said. “All this mission talk is making me so unchill I’ll need a massage for real just to get my neck muscles relaxed.”
The vice sergeant said, “The last reason that this operation is making me so cautious is because you’re not wired. I’ve only sent an operator into a risky massage parlor operation once since I’ve been here, and we had a wire in his clothes, so that when he stripped down and carefully laid his clothes over a chair, we could still hear almost everything.”
Leering, Flotsam said, “Sweet! That means my partner can break bad and go all sexy and nobody’s gonna know.”
Sergeant Hawthorne managed a tolerant half-smile. “Once again, this is an intelligence-gathering mission. We’re not after prostitution or lewd-conduct violations, so don’t go there. Just get your massage, convey the information we’ve agreed upon, pay the fee, and leave.”
Jetsam turned to his partner and said, “Bro, you got lots of massages when you were in the navy. Do you think I should ask for lotion or powder?”
Flotsam said, “Dude, I am definitely a lotion man, and I’ll explain. When a deep-muscle massage goes looking for new territory, you want, like, way slick and slippery little fingers doing the exploration. And I’ll tell you why . . .”
Sergeant Hawthorne looked at his watch and at the two surfer cops, and wondered if his personal ambition was not leading him into career jeopardy.
The sun was setting over the Pacific, throwing burgundy and indigo light over Hollywood Boulevard, perhaps one of the few places on earth where the ubiquitous smog actually made the sunset more beautiful. And then, in just a few short minutes, night had fallen on the boulevard and lights were turning on everywhere.
Even though the cops of Hollywood Station were cracking down on the costumed Street Characters who hustled tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the superheroes were out in force on this Saturday night. Some of the tired older ones, like Superman, Batman, and Darth Vader, were being replaced by newer superheroes, like Space Ghost, Mr. Fantastic, and Iron Man, who was the object of intense jealousy.
What aroused the ire and envy of the other Street Characters posing for photos and accepting gratuities for their work was that Robert Downey Jr. had made the Iron Man so sexy on film that his hustling doppelgänger on the boulevard was getting all the play and all the tips. There was a queue of tourists waiting for a shot with him while other superheroes, like Spider-Man, just stood back and brooded. And then the web thrower decided he’d had enough of this shit.
Spider-Man stepped in front of the next pair of tourists and said, “Come on, folks, get your picture with a
real
superhero, not some pile of rusty nuts and bolts.”
“Hey, Sticky Foot,” Iron Man said, “no poaching.”
Spider-Man replied, “Chill, Tin Man, or you might get your fenders dented.”
Iron Man, who had seen his namesake’s movie fourteen times and was feeling invincible, said, “Crawl back in your web, you fucking insect, or you might get my iron upside the head!”
And with that, he whacked Spider-Man across the skull with an iron gauntlet, except that the “iron” was really molded plastic. Spider-Man responded by kicking Iron Man in the groin, sending him crashing to the pavement on top of Judy Garland’s handprints, preserved forever in the forecourt cement.
Spider-Man, standing over the fallen superhero, said, “Better borrow a monkey wrench to loosen
those
nuts, Iron Man!”
The Wolf-Man asked Spider-Man, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?”
Spider-Man flexed and replied, “What’s your problem, Fido? Either butt out or bring it on!”
The Green Hornet, who was probably the sweetest and gentlest of the costumed panhandlers and was certainly the gayest, came to Iron Man’s aid and scolded Spider-Man, saying, “That was unkind, cruel, and totally unnecessary!”
Spider-Man said, “Buzz off, Hornet, or you’ll get swatted next.”
That sent the Green Hornet scurrying, and Marilyn Monroe—aka Regis the plumber in another life—let out a scream at the sight of Iron Man lying there writhing in pain. Captain America was the first to draw a mobile phone from his costume pocket and call 911.
It was not the first time a PSR had some fun with this kind of broadcast. The businesslike LAPD radio voice said, “All units in the vicinity and Six-X-Forty-six, a four-fifteen fight in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, between Spider-Man and Iron Man. Person reporting is . . . Captain America. Six-X-Forty-six, handle code two.”