Hollywood Moon (29 page)

As they were preparing to leave, a black-and-white pulled into one of the open spaces by the cyber café. Aaron Sloane and
Sheila Montez got out and headed toward the donut shop.

Sheila speed-dialed a cell number and said, “Gotta make a quick call.”

When she walked several paces away for privacy, Aaron felt the familiar pain. He was having a hard time with his emotions
these days: sadness, jealousy, even despair. Yet, for all he knew, she was only calling her parents to set up a family dinner.
He knew she came from a large Mexican family in Pacoima. It could just be that. But whenever she made a private call, he found
himself imagining the worst: a yuppie stockbroker or maybe a lawyer in a perfectly tailored Hugo Boss suit, sitting at his
desk in Century City with a cell phone in one hand, a bottle of Evian in the other, making plans with Sheila for a couple
of days and nights on Catalina Island.

The captivated cop tried but couldn’t come close to feigning insouciance until Sheila closed her cell and said, “I’ll have
coffee. You aren’t gonna catch me eating one of those lumps of grease they call donuts.”

“They’re really good when you’re hungry as I am,” Aaron said. “I haven’t had a thing all day except a bowl of cereal. These
donuts really stick to your ribs.”

“They stick to your thighs,” Sheila said. “And to your butt. I think they’re made of cellulite. I’ll just have coffee and
watch you harm your body.”

“You don’t have to worry about
your
body,” Aaron said with that same lovelorn look he continually tried to repress.

Sheila didn’t reply, but Aaron caught a glimmer of a smile in response to his compliment as they walked across the parking
lot toward the donut shop, which all cops knew was frequented by hustlers and dopers from the nearby cyber café.

Tristan was giving last-minute, animated instructions to Jerzy while getting into the Chevy Caprice, when Aaron took a look
at them and said to Sheila, “We can use a couple of shakes for our recap. Let’s see if these dudes have one good driver’s
license between them, and maybe even a registration.”

“Nobody’d steal a car that crappy,” Sheila said, but she moved to the passenger side of the Chevy when Aaron approached the
driver.

“Turn off the engine, sir,” Aaron said, startling Tristan, who hadn’t seen him coming.

“Somethin’ wrong, Officer?” Tristan said, very grateful that the Polack had left the gun in his own car. But then he thought
of the buck knife. He didn’t need this shit right now.

“Your right taillight is broken,” Aaron said. “I’d like to see your license and registration.”

“Sure, Officer,” Tristan said, glancing at Jerzy, who had that not-again expression going on. Tristan feared it might piss
off the cops.

From past experience and urban legend about the LAPD, Tristan always opened the glove box very carefully, giving the cop on
the passenger side a good look before reaching his hand inside for the registration.

“Here it is, Officer,” Tristan said.

Aaron didn’t like the looks of the sullen, fat white guy and was about to ask them to get out of the car, when Tristan smiled
obligingly and said, “You’re welcome to run a make on us if you want. But Officer Vaughn already done it, day before yesterday.”

Aaron was mildly surprised. “How did you meet Officer Vaughn?”

Tristan reached inside his wallet and removed the folded copy of his traffic citation, handed it to Aaron, and said, “She
gave me this traffic ticket and she checked out both of us for warrants and such. And she also told me to get the taillight
fixed.”

Aaron looked at the citation and then glanced at Sheila, who shrugged. Aaron said, “So why didn’t you get the taillight fixed?”

“My daddy died,” Tristan said. “I been tendin’ to funeral arrangements. I’ll go straight to a Chevy dealer and get it fixed
tomorrow, Officer. So help me God.”

Aaron handed the documents back to Tristan, again looked across the roof at Sheila, who gave a chin tilt, and said to Tristan,
“Drive carefully.”

When the Chevy was motoring away, Aaron said to Sheila, “Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He’s one slick-talking dude.”

“The donuts in this joint wouldn’t melt if you hit them with a blowtorch,” Sheila said. “Are you really gonna eat one of them?”

“Two,” Aaron said. “Glazed and cream-filled, with extra sprinkles.”

Tristan hadn’t driven his Chevy two blocks before Jerzy said, “I don’t like the way our luck’s goin’. We’re runnin’ up against
too many cops these days.”

“We been in the wrong place at the wrong time, is all,” Tristan said. “We gotta be more careful where we go until this whole
deal shakes out.”

Jerzy was quiet then, thinking about the risk they were about to take, and finally he said, “You know how cops give people’s
descriptions over their radio, like ‘male white,’ or ‘male Hispanic,’ or ‘male black’? That kind of cop shit?”

“Yeah,” Tristan said. “What about it?”

“Know what I heard a cop say to another one there at the cyber café when they were roustin’ some of your south L.A. cousins?”

Tristan sighed and said, “No, but you’re gonna tell me, I’m sure of that.”

“Instead of sayin’ ‘male black,’ he said, ‘male
usual.
’ Ain’t that a giggle?”

H
OLLYWOOD NATE WAS HAVING
women troubles, and by now Dana Vaughn was growing accustomed to her role as adviser. The latest problem involved a secretary
of a casting agent who, Nate was “almost positive,” might cast him in a made-for-cable pilot for a cop show being shot on
a soundstage in the San Fernando Valley.

Dana, who was driving, interrupted him to say, “Nate, the Valley is the porn capital of the universe. Have you checked out
this production company?”

“This is a legit indie production,” Nate said. “They’re making it on a shoestring, but they’re trying to hire a good features
director.”

“Whadda they want you to do?”

“They need a cop technical adviser, but the secretary told me I’m being considered for a scene that runs for five script pages.
That’s a significant part.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Her name’s Sharon. She’s okay, but way alpha. My ex-wife was a man-eater too, and I just wanna run the other way when I meet
another one like that.”

“So what?” Dana said. “You’re trying to get a job, not trying to get laid. Or am I wrong about that part?”

“No, you’re right, but she has other ideas.”

Dana stopped at Melrose and La Brea in the middle of a rush-hour traffic snarl, with people driving home from work in all
directions, and she said, “Are you telling me that Hollywood Nate, the most talked-about male in the women’s locker room except
for George Clooney, isn’t willing to
take
one for his acting career?”

“I must be getting old,” he said. “These days I have to feel something for the women I sleep with.”

When the light changed, Dana proceeded cautiously across La Brea, trying to get around a beer truck, and said, “Would you
be mortified if I shared with one or two of the other girls that Hollywood Nate has at last got in touch with his inner child?
Who’s turned out to be that nice boy his mother always mistakenly thought he was when she glowed at his bar mitzvah?”

“Don’t even think about doing it. You’re my partner and sworn to secrecy.”

“Okay, so what’re you gonna do about this?”

“I was hoping you’d have some advice,” Nate said. “I’m not sure she could kill the job if she got really pissed off, but I
think she could make it tough. I’m expecting a call any day now with a contract offer from her boss.”

“How old is she?”

“About your age,” Nate said.

“Okay, I see your dilemma,” Dana said. “Who in the hell would go to bed with a woman my age, right?”

“That’s not what I meant, partner,” Nate said. “You’re a bona fide Betty. In fact, if I hadn’t been forced to finally become
a grown-up after the Oracle was no longer here to protect me, I’da tried leaving my house key in your ticket book.”

“My life,” Dana said melodramatically. “Always bad timing.”

“Come on, help me out,” Nate pleaded.

Dana considered it for a moment and said, “Okay, it’s gonna be hard for a dreamboat like you to manage, but you’re just gonna
have to get less attractive to her.”

“Don’t expect fanny burps,” Nate said.

“Worse than that,” Dana said. “You gotta start subtly criticizing her makeup. Like maybe she uses too much or too little.
Or maybe you don’t think the color of her lipstick is quite right for her. And if you really wanna end her lust, start inviting
her to the gym to work out with you. Tell her it’s a good way to burn off the cottage cheese that clings to the thighs of
women her age
. Within a week she’ll hate your guts.”

Hollywood Nate thought it over and said, “I don’t wanna be
that
snarky.”

“Then leave off the cottage cheese part.”

They were interrupted by a call that had just been given to 6-X-66.

“We can mosey over there as backup,” Dana said. “If I’m all through being your shiksa auntie.”

After their coffee and donut fix, the partners in 6-X-66 had been chatting pleasantly, until Sheila Montez started talking
about a cop she’d met in grappling school last year.

“There we were,” she said to Aaron Sloane, who was now driving east on Melrose Avenue, “supposedly learning street fighting.
How to protect ourselves when we’re on the ground, battling for our lives. He wasn’t a big guy at all. More like my size.
And after lying on top of each other for five days—you know, wrapping legs around each other—the sexual tension started building.
On the last day of class, he says to me, ‘Wanna go have a drink?’ ”

Feigning lighthearted curiosity, Aaron said, “And did you?”

“Of course,” she said, and he could see her smile but didn’t know how to interpret it. “Best affair I’ve had since my divorce.”

And then she glanced sideways at him, smiling even more with that dusky, sloe-eyed way of hers, and he didn’t know if she
was kidding him or not. And she didn’t appear to know about the stab he felt in his heart every time she mentioned another
man to him, or how it could depress him for hours or even days.

The call that 6-X-66 received seemed benign enough: the ubiquitous “family dispute.” It was at a medium-size shopping center
with a large supermarket as its anchor. The premier mall within the boundaries of Hollywood Division was certainly the Hollywood
and Highland mall, where the Kodak Centre loomed proudly. This particular shopping center was frequented by many of the people
who spoke one of the more than two hundred foreign languages of Los Angeles, and two of them were speaking Spanish heatedly
when Aaron and Sheila arrived.

They were a young Latino couple, both natives of Colombia, and there seemed no cause for alarm, nothing to make the cops more
cautious than usual. After they saw police, the pair stopped yelling at each other, and the pregnant twenty-year-old mother
began fussing with her thirteen-month-old baby in a stroller.

The police never did find out who placed the call and only learned later that it was a female voice speaking Spanish-accented
English that had said, “Violence might happen.”

Sheila was first out of the car, and while Aaron was emerging, she approached the young couple, who were standing quietly,
awaiting their approach. As was her custom, Sheila spoke in English until she was sure that the citizens did not understand
her, before she switched to Spanish.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “We’ve received a call that there’s a problem here.”

The well-groomed and neatly dressed young man, who turned out to be the woman’s occasional boyfriend, had no tatts, nothing
that might suggest gang affiliation. The cops weren’t sensing a threat until he reached down and grabbed a semiautomatic handgun
concealed under a bag of disposable diapers. He pointed it at the baby.

“Get back or I will kill her!” he said in slightly accented English as the baby began screaming for her mother, who began
screaming even louder.

Sheila froze, as did Aaron, who was approaching the couple from an angle to their right.

“Easy, sir!” Sheila said. “Easy! Just take it easy!”

Aaron reached for the nine on his belt, until the young Colombian yelled, “Touch it and I will shoot!”

Nobody moved then, and while the mother of the baby screamed, “Noooooooo, Arturo!” he kept the gun aimed at the baby’s head
and pushed the stroller toward the door of the supermarket, all the time turning back toward the cops as he walked forward.

Aaron was the first to grab his rover and make the call for assistance. Like all LAPD cops, he was instinctively reluctant
to broadcast an “officer needs help” call—the equivalent of a mayday, and the most desperate call in the street cop’s repertoire—especially
since he was not convinced that the gun was real. The code of machismo said that a good cop should be able to take care of
business without calling for code 3 backups, which would bring police from everywhere and mark the caller as a pantywaist
if the help call turned out to be unnecessary. And nothing was worse for an LAPD male copper than to be labeled a pantywaist.

So he said, “Officers need assistance, man with a gun!” and stated the location.

Sheila Montez, who was not burdened by male machismo, and who was utterly horrified by the threat to the baby whether or not
the suspicious-looking gun was real, cried, “Bullshit on assistance!” She grabbed her rover and said, “Six-X-ray-Sixty-six.
Officers need
help!
”

Before they heard the siren of the assigned police unit speeding their way, they were both walking along at a medium pace,
deployed wide apart, trailing the Colombian, who was still pushing the crying baby toward the supermarket door without taking
his eyes from the cops.

“Stay here and wait for the officers!” Sheila said to the hysterical mother, who was beside her, wailing.

“Look, you’re not in really serious trouble yet!” Aaron yelled to the Colombian. “Put the gun on the ground and let’s talk!”