Hollywood Moon (37 page)

“They don’t even know about you, Clark. It’s the way I feel. I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I know you’ll find a girl your age
and —”

“You little bitch!” he cried, his face reddening and his voice quaking. “I thought you were different!”

Stunned, Naomi Teller said, “Clark! I’m hanging up now! Please don’t ever call me again!”

“You’re just like —” But she clicked off before he could finish. He was in a rage. He tossed the cell phone onto the seat
beside him and opened the glove box, taking out the box cutter. He snapped out the cutting blade. This was the same fury he’d
last felt when he’d beaten that bitch with his fists. He withdrew the blade into the grip, put the box cutter in the pocket
of his jeans, and sped from the parking lot of Hamburger Hamlet, heading west.

The code 2 call on Ogden Drive was given to 6-X-76, Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate. It came out as “See the woman, prowler
there now.” Backing up 6-X-76 were Mindy Ling and R.T. Dibney, who’d just cleared from code 7.

The responding car pulled up to the curb with lights out in case the prowler was still at the scene, but Dana and Nate saw
the exterior house lights were on. A man and woman Dana’s age were standing on the front porch. As the backup unit parked
behind their car, Dana and Nate got out and Nate said, “What happened?”

Martha Teller was small-boned and fair, like her daughter. Her husband was taller, prematurely bald, with rounded shoulders
and the beginning of a paunch. He said, “I heard what sounded like footsteps on the front walkway. Then I heard someone yell,
‘You bitch!’ I looked out but I didn’t see anybody. Then a minute later, this came flying through an upstairs window.”

He held out his hand, and the cops saw a baseball-size rock similar to the decorative stones in the Tellers’ front flower
garden.

“How long ago did it happen?”

“Less than five minutes ago,” Mrs. Teller said. “You got here fast.”

“Who lives here with you?” Dana asked.

“We have two daughters,” Mrs. Teller said.

Nate said, “Do they have any idea who it might’ve been?”

“Our ten-year-old daughter, Shelly, is on a sleepover with my parents,” Mrs. Teller said. “That’s her bedroom window. Naomi’s
fourteen, and she said she hasn’t any idea who could’ve done such a thing.”

With that, Dana turned toward Mindy and R.T. Dibney, who were out of their car, and held up four fingers, indicating code
4, no further assistance needed.

Mindy nodded and said, “We’ll cruise the neighborhood, Dana.”

“I’d like to talk to Naomi privately, if you don’t mind,” Dana said to the Tellers, and the cops followed the couple into
the house.

“She’s very upset,” Mrs. Teller said.

“I understand,” Dana said. “I have a daughter who’s eighteen. Believe me, I’m sensitive to teenage issues.”

Ogden Drive was a pleasant residential street with lots of trees on both sides. Shop 6-X-46 wasn’t cruising for more than
three minutes when R.T. Dibney craned his neck sharply to the right, and Mindy uttered the line so often said by one partner
to another when on patrol: “What’d you see?”

“Nothing,” R.T. Dibney said, turning forward again, but when Mindy looked over her shoulder, she observed a shapely woman
in a T-shirt and shorts walking from her car to a lighted portico.

“For God’s sake!” Mindy said. “Can’t you at least get your inner creep under control when we’re actually looking for a suspect?”

“The kid’s long gone,” he said. “Just some brat pissed off at his girlfriend. Dana’ll get the girl to give up his name, and
they’ll call his parents. It might make them reduce the little bastard’s weekly allowance from fifty bucks to forty.”

“What’s this?” Mindy said, seeing the silhouette of a car coming south in their direction with lights out. Then the headlights
flashed on and she saw it was another police unit, searching slowly. Both cars stopped, facing opposite directions, and Mindy
was looking at Sheila Montez.

“A rock thrower,” Mindy explained. “Busted out an upstairs window and GOA.” By which she meant
gone on arrival
.

“We didn’t see any peds roaming around,” Sheila said. “Maybe it was a neighbor kid.”

“I think I’ll just cruise for another few minutes,” Mindy said, to which R.T. Dibney grumbled something unintelligible.

“We may as well check around for a while too,” Sheila said to Aaron. “Even the alleys around here are nice. No mattresses
or fish heads.”

“And people wave at you with all five fingers,” Aaron said.

There were several cars parked in front of residences on Ogden Drive during the early evening hours, and 6-X-66 drove past
one of them. An old red Mustang was parked all the way north, almost at the corner of Sunset Boulevard. Sheila Montez and
Aaron Sloane were heading south and were parallel with a house two doors from the Teller home, when Sheila saw a silhouette
move across a lawn, heading away from the Tellers’.

“I saw something!” she said, hitting the brakes.

“What is it?” Aaron said, head on a swivel.

Sheila pulled into a driveway, backed out, and turned north, saying, “On your side. Turn the spot on the yards. I think I
saw somebody moving through the trees.”

Aaron turned on the spotlight as she slowed, and he said, “I see him! A rabbit!”

Sheila saw him too, a slender male figure darting into the darkness beside a property on the east side of the street.

“I’m bailing!” he said, and when Sheila stopped for an instant, he was out of the car, flashlight in one hand, baton in the
other, running east through a residential property into the darkness.

Meanwhile, R.T. Dibney, in 6-X-46, was complaining to Mindy Ling, saying, “What’s the use of trying to look for prowlers anyways
with these politically correct little mini-lights?”

Mindy didn’t answer. She was too busy counting the days left in this deployment period, after which she was definitely going
to ask for a partner reassignment. She thought she might even take a few special days off in order to shorten what had come
to seem like a jail sentence.

But then she heard the RTO’s radio voice say, “All units in the vicinity of Ogden Drive between De Longpre and Sunset, officer
in foot pursuit of prowler, eastbound through residential property, toward Genesee. Six-X-Forty-six, handle, code three.”

Hollywood Nate, unaware of the prowler sighting, was writing a crime report and having a cup of coffee in the living room
of the Teller home with Naomi’s father, who he learned was a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Naomi’s mother was
up in the bedroom, cleaning up broken glass and patching the window with cardboard. Dana and Naomi were alone in Dr. Teller’s
study, where Dana had closed the door for privacy.

Naomi had continued to adamantly deny knowing who had yelled and thrown a rock through the upstairs window. Nor had Naomi
told Dana Vaughn how guilty she felt because her bedroom was in the rear of the residence, and the bedroom that was attacked
belonged to her younger sister. Something had made her lie defensively when Clark had asked if that was her bedroom facing
the street, and now she felt cowardly and remorseful for having done it.

Naomi thought that the police officer was a very attractive woman with eyes that were alert, yet calm and patient. Even though
she was fairly certain this officer would understand, Naomi just couldn’t bring herself to look at her while they chatted.

Finally, Dana said, “Naomi, I think you might have some idea who threw the rock. Someone could’ve been hurt. Certainly your
family is frightened. Why don’t you tell me who you think it might’ve been. We won’t go charging over to the person’s house,
but we’ll take some steps to see that it doesn’t happen again.”

Naomi looked straight into Dana Vaughn’s eyes and started to speak. But she stopped, looked away again, and said, “I just
don’t know who he was. Maybe some crazy boy from middle school that just doesn’t like me. I really don’t know.”

Dana said, “Naomi, I’m sure you have a cell phone, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to give you my card with my personal cell number on it. I’d like you to give me your cell number. If you think
very hard about it and decide you might have an idea who the rock thrower is, please give me a call. You don’t have to tell
your parents about it if you don’t want to. We’ll keep this between the two of us until we’re sure we can quietly determine
who actually did it. Is that a deal?”

“Okay,” Naomi said in a voice barely audible.

“We’ll help you, honey,” Dana said to Naomi Teller.

R.T. Dibney had been dropped off on Sunset Boulevard. He was out with his mini-flashlight, searching in an alley east of Ogden
Drive, not just for the prowler, but for Aaron Sloane, who hadn’t been heard from since he’d leaped from the car and started
running. There was plenty of chatter on the tac frequency that he was picking up on his rover but nothing from Aaron. He’d
heard Sheila Montez talking to Mindy Ling twice, and Sheila’s voice was growing desperate.

Then he heard Aaron’s voice in bits and pieces, and Sheila’s voice said, “You’re breaking up!” and Aaron’s voice said, “Can
you… lost… can’t… radio!” And everyone but Sheila Montez thought that at least he was probably okay even if his rover wasn’t,
but where in the hell was the prowler? And within moments, two more black-and-whites from Watch 3 were cruising slowly along
streets and alleys, searching with spotlights.

R.T. Dibney saw an open gate in a rear yard. He entered and heard a dog bark but realized it was coming from the house next
door. By now, several homes in the area had their exterior lights on, and residents were outside, trying to see what was going
on. Then another dog barked, and it sounded like a big one. R.T. Dibney was ready to draw his nine, when he thought he heard
a sound behind him. Before he could turn, somebody slammed a shoulder into him and he was propelled forward right into the
unlighted swimming pool, where he sank to the bottom and lost both his rover and his flashlight. By the time he came up, sputtering,
choking, and gasping for air, he neither saw nor heard anything but the dog next door barking wildly.

When Aaron Sloane finally showed up on Ogden Drive, his uniform dusty from climbing into three yards after a shadow, he was
limping and frustrated, and he slashed at a hedge with his baton. He’d been close enough to the prowler to see that the guy
had dark hair and wasn’t very big, but that was all he’d seen.

When Sheila Montez spotted him standing alone in the moonlight beside a purple flowering jacaranda tree, she jammed on the
brakes, leaped from the car, and ran straight at him, not knowing or caring that Mindy Ling was out on foot less than thirty
yards away, shining her light into cars parked on the street.

Aaron was massaging his leg when he saw Sheila, and he said, “I pulled my hamster.”

Sheila threw her arms around Aaron’s neck, and he was astonished. He was even more astonished to see her eyes glistening and
to hear her say, “When I couldn’t reach you on your rover, I thought… I thought…”

“I’m okay, Sheila!” he said. “I’m okay.” And now he wasn’t even thinking about the prowler, or his injured hammy, and he didn’t
want her to stop holding on to him, and all of his anger at the prowler and his malfunctioning rover had morphed into unbridled
joy.

Mindy Ling pretended to be searching very intently when the partners of unit 6-X-66 got back in their shop, and Mindy saw
the silhouette of their profiles only inches apart and closing.

Driving east on Sunset Boulevard, Malcolm Rojas was more excited than he’d ever been in his life. He couldn’t contain himself
and began laughing, overwhelmed by the unimaginable thrill of what he’d accomplished that night. He wished there were a way
he could share it with someone, but of course he could not. He wished they all could’ve seen what he did to the cop. Especially
all those
cholo
punks in Boyle Heights who’d bullied him and called him Li’l Hondoo. He wished Naomi could’ve seen it.

There was just a twinge of anger left in him when he thought about Naomi, but most of it was gone now. He’d go home and relive
this evening in his mind and masturbate. And now he was actually looking forward to having a meal at a nice restaurant on
Hollywood Boulevard tomorrow evening with Bernie Graham and his secretary, Ethel. That was exciting too because it would mark
the beginning of his job. He felt now like he could accomplish anything he wanted to do. This was the start of a new life
for Malcolm Rojas. He felt like a man. Then he thought he might legally change his name to Clark Jones.

Some of the cars belonging to residents and visitors previously parked on Ogden Drive had driven away by the time the searchers
were ready to give up. A few of the drivers getting into those cars had been interrogated by police, but most had not, including
the driver of an old red Mustang, who by then was nearly home.

It was 6-A-35 from Watch 3 that first spotted R.T. Dibney standing on Sunset Boulevard in his socks, holding his shoes in
his hand as heavy traffic sped by and headlights lit him. His Sam Browne and holstered pistol were slung over his shoulder,
and his uniform was still dripping. As soon as the extraordinary encounter between the prowler and R.T. Dibney was described
on the tac frequency by 6-A-35, at least four cars sped to the pickup location. Half a dozen cops from Watch 5 and Watch 3
jumped from their shops to take cell phone shots of the soppy cop, now stripping off his T-shirt, with his Kevlar vest and
uniform shirt spread across the roof of the first black-and-white to arrive.

There, under a bright summer moon and a relatively smogless sky over Hollywood, they chattered and chuckled and clicked photos
like crazy while R.T. Dibney shook his fist and cursed them and the mothers who’d spawned them.

Dana Vaughn was one of the cops taking photos, and Hollywood Nate said to her, “I wish we had a video cam with a zoom lens.
R.T.’s normally twitchy mustache is vibrating like an electric toothbrush.”