The Delta Star

The Bad Czech was really cranky. He had an awful headache. The base of his skull hurt, both temples hurt and the top of his head, where his heavy black hair was parted by a cord of white scar (compliments of an N.V.A. mortar fragment at Khe Sanh), hurt most of all. Even his eyebrows seemed to hurt. There was nothing like the central city, growling and farting and belching forth a pall of smoke and pollution, for intensifying an already brutal hangover. The Bad Czech lurched along his beat on smog-choked Alvarado Street with the old black cop Cecil Higgins and looked like he might commit murder. Which he tried to do within the hour.

But before attempting murder and finally succeeding, The Bad Czech had a rather normal morning. First order of business for the two beat cops was to stagger into Leo's Love Palace, an Alvarado bar frequented by Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Dominicans and Salvadorans. Leo, a Pima Indian, despised all the greasers even more than he despised the huge paleface and the old nigger now looking at him with agony in their bloody eyes. Leo started mixing up the morning Alka-Seltzer for the beat cops without being asked.

Three Salvadorans boogied out the back door before finishing their beers, causing Cecil Higgins, who had just removed his police hat and was massaging his aching bald head, to say, "Musta been a good hit on Sy's Clothing Store over the weekend. Those three was all wearin' Calvin Kleins."

"Oh, my head!" The Bad Czech moaned. "I'm feelin' Main Street pain. Don't talk too loud, Cecil."

As The Czech said it, he drank down the Alka-Seltzer, moaned again and was licking the foam from his wiry black mustache when a black Puerto Rican came finger popping through the door, listening to KROQ with two (continued on page 98)Delta Star(continued from page 94) shiny new radios blaring music in his ears. He saw the two hung-over bluecoats at the bar, said, "Uh, oh," and highballed it back out onto Alvarado.

"Shee-it," Cecil Higgins said. "That sucker's the fifth thief I seen this mornin' with brand-new ghetto blasters glued to his fuckin' ears. Raymond's Stereo Center musta got raped over the weekend."

"I gotta get some fresh smog in my lungs or I'm gonna die, Cecil," The Bad Czech whimpered and lurched out of Leo's Love Palace onto the busy sidewalk, the older cop following behind, still rubbing his loose, bald scalp.

"Jesus Christ on roller skates!" The Bad Czech suddenly cried.

"That's who it is, aw right," Cecil Higgins nodded, as the two beat cops moved off the sidewalk to let Jesus Christ on roller skates boogie on by.

He wore an ankle-length, dirty-gray sari and shoulder-length dirty-brown hair and a full beard and dilated blue eyes. He was about as skinny as the skate board he was riding and could not possibly have carried the seven-foot cross made of four-by-fours if he hadn't had the ingenuity to attach a roller skate to the toe of the cross, which Cecil Higgins said proved that he might be crazy but wasn't stupid. His mission seemed to be to stop every 20 yards or so, put the cross down and scream, "Prepare ye for my coming!" at the top of his lungs.

If that wasn't bad enough, he also had a ghetto blaster strapped around his neck, but at least it wasn't tuned in to KROQ. He was playing a cassette of That Old Rugged Cross.

"Wonder if Jesus Christ on roller skates was the chaplain for the gang that ripped off Raymond's Stereo Center?" Cecil Higgins mused.

"Maybe it's the cheap booze at Leery's," The Bad Czech groaned. "But ya know, Cecil, sometimes I ain't too sure no more what's real and what ain't."

"Huh!" Cecil Higgins grunted. "You on'y got thirteen years on the job, boy. Wait'll you got twenny-eight years, like me. Some days, I walk this here beat and I don't know my dick from a dumplin'. Tell ya the truth, Czech, I ain't been absolutely sure what's real and what ain't for maybe twenny-two years now."

"I know that Jesus Christ on roller skates was real," The Bad Czech mumbled, more to himself than to Cecil Higgins, as the two blue-suited beat cops walked gingerly on their ripple soles to reduce the pain. "Only reason I know is, that screechy roller skate hurt my head, is how I know." Then he added, "I'm pretty sure that Jesus Christ on roller skates was real."

The ravaging hangover was making The Bad Czech mad enough to commit murder. It began when he decided to hang the wino.

•

The wino was one of those real pain-in-the-ass winos. A play ragpicker who pushes a shopping cart around Pico and up Alvarado clear to the freeway, pretending to pick up trash and bottles, stealing whatever isn't chained, locked, screwed or nailed. A wino who, in addition to being a thief, also had a fetish and foraged through MacArthur Park, stealing the underwear from old women who couldn't put up a fight. One day, the wino pulled the stockings right off the old shocks of a snoozing grandma in a wheelchair and was chased by The Bad Czech clear to the water's edge, where he waded and swam to Duckie Island and had to be arrested by helicopter. The Bad Czech's uniform was covered with duck shit and had to be dry-cleaned twice. The Bad Czech didn't like that wino one little bit.

His name was Elmo McVey. He was a cadaver with a crewcut who smelled like the Vernon slaughterhouse. It was particularly frustrating, because he was ruined by alcohol, yet somehow could still outrun The Bad Czech.

The two cops spotted him while they were making their first pass through MacArthur Park, hoping they wouldn't observe any assholes pulling a pigeon drop on pensioners or mugging checkers players or purse-picking commuters on the way to the bus stop. The last thing The Bad Czech wanted to see when he was this cranky was Elmo McVey. But there he was.

The skinny wino was sneaking up on a young Guatemalan couple who were necking on the grass. They had a prize in a carrying bag next to the wooden bench some distance away. The prize was a big silver stereo, which wasn't switched on but was protruding tantalizingly from the bag. Elmo McVey was creeping toward that bag like a mangy cat stalking a grasshopper.

The Bad Czech said, "I'd like to hang that wino."

"So would I," said Cecil Higgins, not knowing that The Bad Czech was feeling mean enough to do just what he said.

As they were watching Elmo McVey wriggle along the grass 50 yards away, a toothless woman with chin whiskers came wheezing along the path through the park and said, "Officers, are you watching that dirty wino?"

"Yeah, lady," Cecil Higgins answered. "What'd he do, steal your purse?"

"He stole my bra!" the whiskered woman answered. "From the clothesline outside my window!"

Cecil Higgins took off his police hat and rubbed his loose, rubbery, bald scalp, which was beginning to lose its chocolate sheen, what with all the futile experiments with hair-growing preparations. All the cops said his head was starting to look like a moldy coffee bean. He also used Lady Clairol on his mustache, which, if left untouched, would be dead white. "Lady, even for Elmo McVey that's a new low," said Cecil Higgins. "Wonder what he'd do with a size-fifty-E cup? Pretty hard to peddle it, I imagine."

"I want you to put him in jail!" the whiskered woman demanded. "The worse kind a scum."

"He's the kind a pain-in-the-ass wino that really gives me a headache," said The Bad Czech absently. "I'd like to hang that wino."

"Too good for him, you ask me," the whiskered woman said. Then she spun around huffily and went wheezing back down the path.

He never heard them coming. Elmo McVey was suddenly lifted two feet off the ground by the back of his Army field jacket, looking into the demented gray eyes of the biggest, strongest and, unarguably, meanest cop in Rampart Division. The Bad Czech let him dangle for a moment, and he did, indeed, resemble a mangy cat, wiggling and hissing.

"I ain't did nothin'," Elmo McVey spat. "I jist wanted to hear the score a the ball game!"

"There ain't no ball game, Elmo," Cecil Higgins said, while The Bad Czech continued to suspend the wino by the scruff of the neck and glare at him.

"Well, I thought there was a ball game, is what I thought," Elmo McVey said. "Once a Met fan, always a Met fan. I thought the Dodgers was playin' in New York today. I was jist gonna tune in that radio to catch the score is what I was gonna do."

"Why don't you go back to New York, Elmo?" Cecil Higgins said as The Bad Czech lowered the wino to the ground but continued to hold him by the nape of the neck.

"Too cold in New York. L.A.'s my kind a place," Elmo McVey said, getting quite uncomfortable, what with The Bad Czech's hand, the size of a catcher's (continued on page 192)Delta Star(continued from page 98) mitt, clamped around his neck.

The Bad Czech finally spoke. "I musta asked you a thousand times to take your act downtown to Main Street, Elmo. Did I ask you a thousand times or not?"

"Don't like Main Street. Too many winos down there," Elmo McVey said, looking up fearfully into The Bad Czech's deranged gray eyes.

"Well, I ain't gonna ask ya no more," The Bad Czech said.

"Watcha gonna do?" Elmo McVey asked.

"I'm gonna hang you," The Bad Czech answered.

And while The Bad Czech walked Elmo McVey south through MacArthur Park, Cecil Higgins followed reluctantly, wondering what this latest bullshit trick was all about. He felt vaguely uncomfortable, because The Bad Czech's loony eyes looked a little loonier than usual. Just the hangover, Cecil Higgins finally decided. Until they got into the secluded alley east of Alvarado and north of Eighth Street.

"I noticed this when we walked through yesterday," The Bad Czech said to Cecil Higgins when they arrived in the alley.

"Noticed what?" Cecil Higgins looked around. The alley was away from traffic and quiet. There were some wooden boxes separating a pink-stucco apartment building full of Latin-American aliens from an auto-parts warehouse that had more alarms, barbed wire and steel bars around it than Folsom Prison. Aside from the wooden boxes and the derelict remains of a bicycle, there was nothing in the alley.

"I saw this," the monster cop said.

Tucked behind a peeling metal downspout was a 20-foot length of rope that someone had tied over the bottom step of a fire escape held in place at the second floor by a rusty cable. All business, The Bad Czech began fashioning a noose with the oily length of rope.

Cecil Higgins and Elmo McVey looked quizzically at each other, and Elmo McVey giggled uncomfortably and said, "I thought capital punishment was abolished in this state."

"They brought it back," Cecil Higgins said. "But they ain't used it in a long, long time." Then, to his partner, "Hey, Czech, what the fuck're you do in'?"

"I told him a thousand times to take his act on the road. Down to Main Street," The Bad Czech said, cinching the noose, checking the snugness of the knot as it slid down to the size of a 13-inch neck. Then he opened the noose wide and left it dangling from the fire escape while he crossed the alley in three giant steps and picked up a wooden box.

"This ain't much of a scaffold," The Bad Czech said, "but it's all we got." He placed the wooden box under the noose and said, "I asked you a thousand times to...."

"Ain't this gone far enough?" Elmo McVey whined nervously. He wisely decided to talk to the black cop, who, though an evil-looking old nigger, was nevertheless more agreeable to Elmo McVey than the gigantic madman with the eyebrows all over his face.

"Hey, Czech, let's go git some soul food," Cecil Higgins offered, also sounding a bit nervous. "Little gumbo cleans up a hangover in no----"

But suddenly, The Bad Czech lifted the mangy wino up on the box until he stood eye to badge with the beat cop's silver hat piece. Then The Bad Czech grabbed the squirming wino under the throat and quickly slipped the noose over his head and cinched it tight. The monster cop stepped back and reckoned that the wino's feet would never come closer than 12 inches to the ground.

"Boys, this is some kind a fun," Elmo McVey giggled, grabbing at the rope. "I mean, I been rousted by cops from Manhattan to Malibu. I learned to appreciate the weird sense a humor a you guys. Now kin we jist wrap this up and take me to the slam or ... or...." Then, for the first time, he looked deep into the demented gray eyes of The Bad Czech. "Or ... or beat the crap outa mel Or do somethin' reasonable!"

"Let's go git some gumbo, Czech," Cecil Higgins said. "Now!"

"Fuck it. How do ya know Elmo's real, anyways?" The Bad Czech said.

And he kicked the box clear across the alley.

When Elmo McVey dropped, so did the fire escape. The rusty cable holding it up snapped with the wino's weight, and both the fire escape and Elmo McVey crashed down into the alley. The fire escape nearly creamed Cecil Higgins, who yelped and jumped into a doorway. It missed The Bad Czech by less than a foot, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Aw, shit!" The Bad Czech said. "Let's tie it to the railing and try it again."

But by now, Cecil Higgins was prying the rope from Elmo McVey, who was gasping and squeaking and about the color of the cop's uniform.

"He ... he ..." Elmo McVey croaked and coughed and babbled and touched the rope burn and took several gulps of air and finally said, "He lynched me!"

"Take it easy, Elmo," Cecil Higgins said, dusting off the wino's Army-surplus jacket. "Don't make a big deal outa it."

"He tried to hang me!" Elmo McVey screamed hoarsely as The Bad Czech worked silently to redo the noose and find a better gallows.

"Elmo, I was you," said Cecil Higgins, "I'd forgit all about this here ... fantasy about some cop tryin' to hang ya. I mean, I was you, I'd take one more hard look at my partner and take your act on the road, right down to Main Street."

"I want a lawyer!" Elmo McVey screamed.

"Elmo," Cecil Higgins said shakily. "If ya was to make some kinda crazy complaint about bein' lynched and all, would anybody believe ya? And even if they did, whadda you think The Czech would do when he hunted ya down in a alley sometime? I bet he wouldn't hang ya by the neck next time, is what I bet."

Then Cecil Higgins reached into his pocket and took out two dollars. "Go get yourself a bottle a Sneaky Pete and forgit this fantasy. And git your shit together and take your act on the road."

Elmo McVey's eyes were still the size of poker chips, but his face was only slightly lavender when he left that alley holding his neck. "Well," he said, "Main Street's got its good points. There's a mission down there where the food ain't bad and nobody's gotta hear too much Jesus crap. And down there, stealin' bras and panties ain't a hangin' offense."

Actually, after the rope burn healed, Elmo McVey could not be sure that the hanging wasn't some terrible alcoholic dream. Even he wasn't sure that it was real.

•

After having disposed of the gallows and rope while The Bad Czech ate a beef-and-bean burrito from a taco truck, the old beat cop cadged a free cup of coffee from the Mexican vendor and decided it was time for some heavy conversation.

"Shouldn't oughta eat from these roach wagons," Cecil Higgins advised The Bad Czech, who was drinking grape soda pop and devouring a burrito like any whiskey-ravaged hangover victim.

" 'Nother one," The Bad Czech said, with his cheeks full of tortilla, to the Mexican, who, having served burritos to free-loading cops from Tijuana to L.A., just chalked the freebies up to public relations.

After The Bad Czech was belching hot sauce and was feeling less cranky, the old beat cop took his giant partner by the arm and walked him over to a bench by the water in MacArthur Park. When The Bad Czech finished his soda pop, Cecil Higgins said, "Know somethin', kid? I been noticin' that ya ain't so happy lately."

"I ain't?" The Bad Czech said, belching up a green chili seed that stuck to his wiry black mustache.

"No, you ain't. Is it your divorce?"

"I'm used to them. After three, I oughta be. I ain't got no money for the lawyers to take no more."

"Maybe it's the booze," Cecil Higgins offered. "Maybe nobody oughta go to Leery's ever' single night."

"I think I'd really get grouchy if I didn't go to Leery's ever' single night," The Bad Czech said.

Cecil Higgins, still boozy from the night before, was being hypnotized by the green-pepper seed on The Bad Czech's mustache. Then he pulled himself together and plucked off the fiery seed and threw it in the water, where a white duck bit into it and got totally pissed off, quacking furiously.

"I know what it is!" Cecil Higgins suddenly cried. "It's the fuckin' newspaper. You're gettin' goofy from readin' the L.A. Times!"

"Ya think so?" said The Bad Czech. "Ya think I'm gettin' goofy?"

"Kid, the Times ain't good for your head," the grizzly old cop said. "Ya take it too serious."

"Maybe you're right," The Bad Czech nodded. "But, Cecil, am I really gettin' goofy?"

"Czech, I think you're aware that hangin' went out in this state, oh, maybe eighty years ago. Like, they ain't even gassed nobody in years. I mean, the chief, the mayor, the public defender, the A.C.L.U., even Alcoholics Anonymous, almost everybody I can think of would not like it one fuckin' bit, they was to catch ya hangin' winos."

Then The Bad Czech turned his demented gray eyes toward Cecil Higgins and said, "But, Cecil, how do ya know for sure that wino was real?"

"Guddamn it!" Cecil Higgins yelled, getting up and throwing his police hat down onto the bench.

Then he pulled out his night stick and whacked a palm tree that brought a little palm frond down onto his bald, scaly bean, and he said, "There ya go again with this real bullshit!"

"Cecil, don't get cranky!" The Bad Czech pleaded. "Look, the chief justice a the state supreme court says that smugglers shouldn't have to get rid a their Gucci luggage and buy sniffproof containers for their dope. Don't ya get it? Even a dog can get his balls slapped for search and seizure. Don't ya get it?"

"Get what?"

"It ain't real. I mean it ain't really real in ... in ... a ... a philosophical way."

"Philo-fuckin'-sophical!" Cecil Higgins groaned. Then the old black cop paced back and forth, snorting disgustedly. "I should a knowed. Ever since you took that night school class at L.A. City College. Up until then, the biggest word you ever said was enchilada. Philosophical. Shit. Night school's fucked up your head worse than the L.A. Times."

"But you said yourself, Cecil, that even you ain't always sure what's ... really real and what ain't."

Then Cecil Higgins sat down on the bench. A burly man in his own right and, when standing erect, at least six feet tall, he had to look straight up at The Bad Czech, who had most of his great height in his torso. Like John Wayne, he always bragged.

"OK, Czech, I'm gonna tell ya what's real," Cecil Higgins said. "What's real is that nobody, I mean no civilian outside a the fat broad with the whiskers, is gonna care about what's really real when it comes to hangin' winos. And if ya insist on hangin' winos--or anybody else, for that matter--what's gonna happen is they're gonna send some headhunters out to throw ya in the slam, and then they're gonna send ya to San Quentin. And up in Q, there's these gangs a bad-news niggers, like the Muslims and so on. And one day, in the prison yard, old Elijah X or some other head-shaved motherfucker is gonna give the signal, and all these spades is gonna jump on your bones and pull your pants off and about eighty a them's gonna lay more tube than the motherfuckin' Alaska Pipeline and your asshole's gonna end up lookin' like the Second Street Tunnel and you're gonna be able to carry your bowlin' ball and six armadillos no hands for the rest a your fuckin' life, which is gonna be real short anyways. And that's what's real! Kin you dig it?"

It was the longest speech Cecil Higgins had ever made. The Bad Czech seemed impressed. "OK, I won't hang no more winos," The Bad Czech said, "if ya promise not to ask to work with somebody else. You're the only person left I kin talk to."

For once, The Bad Czech's demented gray eyes didn't seem to smolder. The old beat cop brushed a palm nut off his scaly noggin and looked at those eyes and, well, he had to admit it: The big wacko had started to grow on him. Truth to tell, Cecil Higgins didn't have anybody to talk to, either, outside of the other losers at Leery's saloon.

"OK, kid," Cecil Higgins said. "I promise to work with ya right up to my thirty-year pension. Which I don't expect to live to see, anyways. I jist hope I don't end up in San Quentin with a asshole big enough for a motor scooter to turn around in."

•

Meanwhile, there was more trouble on the beat. A woman with wooden teeth was being whacked around like a tether-ball.

Her true name was unknown, but all the people around MacArthur Park called her Wooden Teeth Wilma. She was a harmless rag woman who wore Hedda Hopper hats and miniskirts and boots that showed off her bony, varicosed, 65-year-old legs, which she thought were beautiful. She was not as unkempt and dirty as most rag women, so it was thought that she might have a little income and actually live somewhere. Some policeman years earlier had started a rumor that she had been married to a cop, and when he was shot and killed by a bandit, she haunted the area he used to patrol. It was probably without substance, but even cops need a little soap opera in their lives, so they chose to believe it and she was given handouts from time to time by The Bad Czech and Cecil Higgins.

As to the wooden teeth, it was a total mystery. She would only smile slyly when asked why she had dentures made of wood and where she had gotten them. She didn't talk much, since even rag women in MacArthur Park thought it imprudent to tell all. The only answer she gave was that George Washington also had wooden teeth and look how people loved him.

But Earl Rimms didn't love George Washington or Wooden Teeth Wilma. Earl Rimms didn't love anybody. He had spent all of his 45 years learning that love is expensive. Love can cost and hate can pay.

Earl Rimms was not very discriminating when it came to victims, as long as they were defenseless. And he believed in quantity, not quality, so he'd steal the purse of just about anyone over the age of 60 who might break a hip or a shoulder when he knocked her to the ground.

The heat was on in his Watts neighborhood, and old black women were starting to fight back. Earl Rimms wasn't getting any younger himself, so he'd decided to move to central Los Angeles last year. He had been arrested there twice by Cecil Higgins and The Bad Czech, who were well aware of his record of senseless brutality to robbery victims. The beat cops had come to hate him as much as he hated everyone.

When Wooden Teeth Wilma made the near-fatal mistake of strolling past Earl Rimms that Tuesday morning, he couldn't have known that the loony old lady carried only food for the ducks and dog food for herself in her oversize plastic purse. Earl Rimms was feeling particularly bummed, because his girlfriend had called the cops when he took half of her welfare money and knocked her down the steps for resisting. He was thinking of what he was going to do to that ungrateful bitch when he finished with his day's work.

Wooden Teeth Wilma was wondering where The Bad Czech and Cecil Higgins were this morning. Maybe it was their day off, she thought, but there were no other beat cops around Alvarado. Traffic was medium light on this overcast, rather balmy Tuesday morning.

She said, "Good morning!" to Earl Rimms.

He punched her so hard in the stomach that her wooden dentures shot from her mouth, clattering across the pavement. He grabbed the red-plastic purse at the same moment and jerked the frail woman, who whipped around him like a tetherball. She wanted to let go but was unable.

In order to keep anyone from stealing her red-plastic purse full of food for the ducks, she had wrapped the purse strap around her wrist. Earl Rimms was a powerful man, and he whipped her in an arc until she slammed into a park bench, cracking six ribs. On another pass, she crashed into a palm tree, breaking her hip and the strap of the purse.

A Costa Rican newspaper vendor who was working on the corner saw the incident and started yelling. Earl Rimms ran like hell through the park and disappeared in the foot traffic on Alvarado with the duck food and the Alpo hors d'oeuvres. Wooden Teeth Wilma ended up in the hospital and would unquestionably be on a walker for the rest of her life. When The Bad Czech heard about Wooden Teeth Wilma's being belted around like a tetherball, he got mad enough to commit murder.

•

They didn't know as yet the identity of the suspect, but they had a description supplied by the Costa Rican news vendor, and Earl Rimms was one of eight or ten people they suspected. The news vendor said that when the suspect started highballing it through the park, he almost fell on his ass. He wore what looked like brand-new brown-and-white-patent wing tips.

"Brown and white," The Bad Czech said. "There ain't too many dudes around with brown-and-white shoes."

"We kin take a look around Leo's Love Palace," Cecil Higgins said. "Git us a Alka-Seltzer while we're at it."

"Wooden Teeth Wilma wasn't a bad old broad," The Bad Czech said. "It makes me mad to think a somebody usin' her like a tetherball. I'm feelin' mad enough to murder any spade I catch wearin' brown-and-white shoes."

"Let's jist hope Mayor Bradley don't go out on the streets today with brown-and-white shoes on," Cecil Higgins said.

While The Bad Czech and Cecil Higgins started a search for Alka-Seltzer and spades in brown-and-white wing tips, the K-9 cops were playing with their partners in the park, showing off to Jane Wayne, the six-foot lady cop, and her partner, Rumpled Ronald.

Gertie, the German shepherd, and Ludwig, the huge black Rottweiler, were having such a glorious time that they both had to be dragged toward their radio cars, heartbroken that their romp was over. Both animals were German imports and understood no English. The K-9 cops drove black-and-white Ford Fairmonts with the back seats removed. The animal stayed in the back and metal mesh protected any potential prisoner in the front seat from the threat in the back. Gertie and Ludwig were whimpering for each other when Hans and the other K-9 cop ordered them into their respective radio cars.

The other K-9 cop was nameless. All the K-9 cops were nameless to the people on uniform patrol. They knew the names of all the dogs, but the dog's partner, unquestionably the less important half of the team, was nameless. It was "Gertie and Gertie's partner." (The dog's name was really Goethe, which the cops had trouble saying.)

The only reason they knew Hans by name was that he chose to do his drinking in The House of Misery, among other haunts downtown. To the cops in Rampart Station who didn't drink at The House of Misery, this K-9 team would be Ludwig and Ludwig's partner.

Rumpled Ronald, the cop who was one day from a pension, would have stayed in Echo Park all day, screwing off and watching the dogs work. The pension was officially his at 12:01 tonight. He was absolutely convinced that if he did any police work whatsoever on this day, he would be a dead man.

As they were getting into their cars, the call came crackling over the radio: "All units in the vicinity and two-A-thirteen. Two-F-B-one is in foot pursuit of possible two-eleven suspect in the alley north of Eighth Street and Alvarado!"

"That's The Bad Czech!" Jane Wayne cried. "Let's hit it, Ronald!"

"Oh, God!" Rumpled Ronald cried. "Oh, God! This is it! I shouldn't be chasing robbery suspects today! Oh, God, this is it! A good cop's gonna die today!"

And as it turned out, Rumpled Ronald was right.

•

Cecil Higgins had spotted the suspect first. He didn't know it was Earl Rimms. He just saw the tall black man with the mean-looking body shove a drunk out of his way when he came in the back door of Leo's Love Palace. He could see that the man wore a stingy-brim straw hat and a sports coat, but that was all he could see until the door closed. Then the man was no longer back-lighted against the sunlight as he stood in the dark saloon trying to get his eyes in focus.

Cecil Higgins' eyes were already in focus. He could clearly see that the man was wearing two-tone wing tips. Then he could see the man's mean and threatening face. "Earl Rimms," he said to The Bad Czech, who was putting away his second Alka-Seltzer, along with a glass of tomato juice with egg. "Look at his shoes."

The Bad Czech saw the shoes at about the same instant that Earl Rimms's eyes dilated and he saw the beat cops at the end of the bar. The foot race was on.

Back out the door went Earl Rimms, followed by the monster cop, who was yelling and moving fast for his size. Cecil Higgins put out the officers-need-assistance call on the rover radio unit he carried on his belt. There wasn't much point in his trying to keep up with The Bad Czech, who was 13 years younger, so he tried to figure in which direction Earl Rimms would go once he realized that the alley off Eighth Street would lead him into the dead end where The Bad Czech had hanged the wino.

Both K-9 units beat the others to the scene. Cecil Higgins had totally lost sight of Earl Rimms and The Bad Czech once they got to the alley. There was a ten-foot chain-link fence at one end, and although Cecil Higgins thought The Bad Czech was too hungover to scale that fence, he realized that was what must have happened.

Unit K-9-1 arrived before any other car. It was to be expected, in that Gertie's partner was superhyped and burning for action. Gertie was fairly frothing by the time they arrived, even more hyper than his partner. The shepherd detected the radio urgency, the change in his partner's breathing and voice level. The dog smelled the new sweat.

Gertie was stoked. Gertie wanted to go. He was ready to attack. Gertie was as wild-eyed as his partner when Cecil Higgins, holding his hat in his hand, waved the careening K-9 car around the block, yelling, "Drive south two blocks! If you don't see them, head west toward Alvarado!"

Hans, being a more placid and plodding cop, was, of course, giving off enough vibrations to make Ludwig excited, but both members of unit K-9-2 were in control when Cecil Higgins, standing on the corner directing traffic, waved them in a westerly direction in search of The Bad Czech and Earl Rimms.

Jane Wayne, along with a pale and clammy Rumpled Ronald (who thought he was looking straight into his own grave), began weaving through the traffic to the south.

"Why ain't I driving? Why am I in the death seat?" Rumpled Ronald wanted to know. "Why am I in this Burt Reynolds movie?"

"I hope the Czech's OK," Jane Wayne said, biting her lip nervously while her blue eyes, lined severely with black eye liner, swept over the streets.

"I probably shoulda been better to my wife," Rumpled Ronald said. "I know I shoulda been better to my girlfriend."

It was unit K-9-1 that first spotted The Bad Czech. He was lumbering north on Coronado toward Wilshire Boulevard. A black man in a stingy-brim hat and a sports coat was 50 yards ahead of him.

Unit K-9-1 hit the siren, blasted past four panicked motorists, ran up over the curb to get past two cars at a red light, spun and swayed and straightened out and skidded to a stop. The black-and-tan shepherd was given his command to attack.

"Fass!" the cop yelled. "Fass, Goethe! Fass!"

Earl Rimms turned in horror when he saw the roaring mass of black-and-tan disaster hurtling toward him. He instinctively ran straight up to the front porch of a triplex, kicked open the door, entered past a screaming, hysterical child, slammed the door shut, kicked through the rear door and was in the yard while Gertie frothed and growled and barked at the front door. Then Gertie heard Earl Rimms plowing through the rear yard, and the dog leaped from the porch, vaulted one fence, scrambled gracefully over another and spotted the terrified mugger sprinting across the residential street.

Gertie pursued wildly. In full throat. Ecstatic. With abandon.

Gertie never saw the car. It didn't have time to brake. Gertie was struck broadside by a Cadillac, lifted six feet, head over tail, and smashed against a metal light standard at the intersection.

Gertie immediately tried to stand on three broken legs. He pulled himself upright on the one good leg and dragged his bloody hulk down the sidewalk toward the fleeing Earl Rimms. After him still. Vomiting scarlet.

Jane Wayne had tried pushing her foot through the floor when the K-9 unit broadcasted the sighting of The Bad Czech and the suspect. She was the first to careen onto Coronado and see the dog dragging his broken body down the sidewalk, instinctively in pursuit of the man who had disappeared and was again scaling back-yard fences.

She stopped the car beside the dog and said, "Oh, Gertie!"

The dog didn't seem to hear her. The pain and shock were by now overwhelming. He could only whimper and vomit blood. And vainly drag his ruined body after the vanished Earl Rimms.

"Somebody should shoot him now," Rumpled Ronald said.

Then they heard unit K-9-1 screaming up behind them, and Gertie's partner was out before the car skidded to a stop, slamming into the curb. He was quickly down on the sidewalk, wrapped around the bloody dog, babbling to him and crying like a child.

"Goethe, Goethe," Gertie's partner said, sitting down on the sidewalk, cradling the dying shepherd.

"He should shoot that animal," Rumpled Ronald said.

"Shut up, Ronald," Jane Wayne said.

It wasn't necessary to shoot Gertie. His head was hanging loose and he'd stopped whimpering even before his weeping partner picked him up in his arms and carried him to the black-and-white.

Hans and Ludwig had arrived, and Ludwig jerked Hans down the sidewalk like a puppet despite the pinch collar Ludwig was wearing. Ludwig was whimpering and barking and growling all at once and tried to get into the back of unit K-9-1 with Gertie. Ludwig was obviously confused and bewildered and ignored Hans's commands. Ludwig almost pulled the chain clear out of Hans's grasp and had to be wrestled away by Hans and Jane Wayne and Rumpled Ronald before they could close the door on Gertie.

"Well, Ronald, you were right," Jane Wayne said as they got back in their car. "A good cop did die today."

•

Earl Rimms was by now as bonkers as The Bad Czech, and he was lots more scared. He'd gotten away from the dog, and every time he thought he'd eluded the monster cop, he'd stop running and take a breather and wipe the sweat off his face and fan himself with his stingy brim. And each time he thought it was cooling off, the giant beat cop would come scuttling around the corner and the chase would be on again.

They had run west on Wilshire Boulevard, past the Sheraton--Town House Hotel, providing a great show for some tourists from Toledo. They were several blocks past the perimeter of search. They had run through apartment houses, in the front door, out the back door. They had crossed busy streets, climbed over walls, run through alleys. They had both been threatened by frightened dogs and had frightened humans when they scaled or crashed through fences.

The Bad Czech's face and hands were bleeding, and he was convinced that he was about 100 heartbeats from a coronary, but he simply couldn't stop himself. He was, like Gertie, a product of training, and he pursued like a monster police dog.

Twice he almost had a shot at Earl Rimms, who leaped over a fence each time. Whenever they got close enough to almost smell each other, the elusive mugger managed to do something totally unexpected, such as dash through the door of an interior-design shop on Wilshire Boulevard and out the back while customers screamed. The Bad Czech yelled curses and threats at Earl Rimms and at a covey of shoppers who got in his way at Bullocks Wilshire.

It was a foot pursuit that would go down in Rampart Division legend. Particularly after its bizarre ending. It appeared that Earl Rimms had won. He left The Bad Czech at Seventh Street and Magnolia, with the beat cop staggering in exhausted, bewildered circles. The sun and the smog and the traffic sounds combined to make the huge cop giddy and disoriented.

For a second, The Bad Czech thought he'd been nuked. A noise in his head sounded like the incoming missiles back in 'Nam. He had to sit on the curb and put his huge head between his knees. The Bad Czech raised his sweat-bathed face after a few seconds. He was dying to kill. He wanted to murder.

So did Earl Rimms. After he'd won the pursuit, after his heart stopped banging in his throat and the fear subsided, he was murderous. He was mad at the whole world. At the old crazy who carried only dog food in her purse. At his own woman, who called the cops just because he knocked her down the stairs. At Los Angeles County, which didn't give his woman enough welfare money to support him properly, thereby forcing him to whack old crazies around like tetherballs. At lunatic monster cops who just kept coming like police dogs.

Then he spotted the spic in the pickup. He would have preferred spotting an old woman in a Mercedes, of course. Someone he could grab by the neck and throw out onto the street. And have a purse left on the seat to make this miserable day worth while, while he drove a decent car out of this goddamned neighborhood, which must be overrun by cops looking for him. But he didn't see a single person sitting in a parked car on the old and seedy residential area around Magnolia and Leeward except the spic in the pickup.

The spic in the pickup was a Durango Mexican named Chuey Valdez. He was a gardener and had the back of the pickup loaded with lawn tools. He'd had a bad day, too. Two customers had stiffed him, promising to pay him next week. Chuey Valdez had found that money and mangoes were not growing on trees in Los Angeles, as he'd been promised by the pollero, who had hustled him illegally across the Mexican border for $200 American. He was working his ass off in Los Angeles, and he was cranky. He was not about to let some big, sweaty mallate steal his battered pickup.

Chuey Valdez was eating his lunch of corn tortillas and cold beans and the treat of the week--one whole avocado--when Earl Rimms walked up to his truck.

"OK, climb outa there, grease ball," Earl Rimms said, his depthless black eyes snapping like a whip.

"Joo wan' sometheeng?" Chuey Valdez asked warily.

"I want your neck. I want your balls. I want your fuckin' blood! An' I'm gonna have them if you don't get the fuck outa that truck!"

So Chuey Valdez, as was his custom, shrugged in the face of overwhelming odds as if to say, "Si, señor." He picked up his sandwich bag and his avocado and his tortillas and got out of the truck. Then Chuey Valdez reached into his sandwich bag and withdrew the kitchen knife with which he had been peeling his avocado.

When Earl Rimms, feeling as deadly as a white-lipped cobra, turned to give the little grease ball a shot of knuckles in the mouth, Chuey Valdez plunged that kitchen knife right into his sweating chest. Right under the sternum. Right up to the handle. Then he jerked the knife out and tossed it into the back of the truck and stepped away a few feet to survey the job.

Earl Rimms just stood there with his back to the truck, looking at Chuey Valdez. He clearly couldn't believe it. He held both hands cupped over the puncture wound and said in disbelief, "You little spic! You stuck me!"

At which Chuey Valdez shrugged noncommittally and said, "Joo made me mad."

"You fuckin' little grease ball!" Earl Rimms said in wonder, and with each beat of his heart, with each word he spoke, a jet of blood squirted from his body and splashed onto the asphalt.

Then he turned and began walking aimlessly toward Wilshire Boulevard, while Chuey Valdez contemplated being a good American and calling the authorities or being a smart wetback and getting the hell out of there.

As it turned out, he didn't have to decide. Jane Wayne, who was by then crazy with fear for The Bad Czech, came squealing around the corner of Magnolia in her black-and-white Plymouth with her nearly comatose partner, Rumpled Ronald. Earl Rimms stopped, pointed to his chest and at Chuey Valdez as if to say, "That little grease ball stabbed me!" and staggered across the lawn of a stucco duplex, collapsing by the driveway.

Within five minutes, there were a dozen police cars blocking the street, their red-and-blue lights gum-balling in all directions. Earl Rimms had dragged himself toward the back yard of the duplex and was lying there, getting very cold, waiting for the ambulance.

The other cops kept back the crowd of rubberneckers and directed the traffic past the police cars and waited to wave in the paramedics, while The Bad Czech, battered and exhausted, stood with his partner, surveying the inert body of Earl Rimms.

"He ain't gonna make it, is he, Cecil?" The Bad Czech asked in the flattest tone of voice Cecil Higgins had ever heard from him.

"I don't think so. He musta bled two quarts already. 'Course, these miserable motherfuckers like Earl Rimms, somehow they live when anybody else'd cash it in. He might make it."

Then The Bad Czech said, "Cecil, go ask Jane Wayne if she radioed the paramedics that he's gonna need plasma right away."

"It ain't like you to be so concerned," Cecil Higgins said suspiciously. But he turned to see whether or not Jane Wayne had informed the ambulance as to the nature of the puncture wound.

The Bad Czech looked dementedly down at the inert figure of Earl Rimms and said, "I think you ain't breathin', Earl. You need CPR."

The Bad Czech rolled up his shirt sleeves and knelt at the head of the mugger and began giving him cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The Bad Czech pushed down on the bloody chest of Earl Rimms, and the blood shot two feet in the air. The Bad Czech put the stingy-brim hat of Earl Rimms over the puncture and pushed down on the chest and the jet of blood clattered against the crown of the straw stingy brim. The Bad Czech began rhythmically pushing on the chest of Earl Rimms and the blood pounded and clattered against the inside of the straw hat.

An elderly black woman who lived in the duplex where Earl Rimms had fallen finally got enough courage after peeking through the lace curtains. She walked out onto her back porch. The Bad Czech sweated as he worked on Earl Rimms.

The old black woman was overcome with emotion. "Oh, that's so wonderful, officer," she said to the monster cop, who looked up, startled. "You're saving that poor man's life!"

The Bad Czech turned his crazed eyes on the old woman and said, "That's right, ma'am. He ain't breathin', and this is his only chance. If I can resuscitate him."

"I'm going right inside and call the mayor's office," she said. "You deserve a medal."

As the geysers of blood thudded against the crown of the stingy brim, while The Bad Czech pushed on Earl Rimms's chest, Cecil Higgins returned. He said, "Czech! What the fuck're you do in'?"

The Bad Czech had his bloody hands pressed around the rim of the stingy brim. When he straightened up and removed it, a hatful of blood washed over Earl Rimms's body and onto the concrete driveway. The Bad Czech had to jump back to keep from getting splashed.

"You pumped him dry!" Cecil Higgins whispered.

"Quiet, Cecil," The Bad Czech said. "Don't make a big thing outa it."

"Czech! Czech!" Cecil Higgins said, grabbing the monster cop by the shirt front, looking for a shred of sanity in those demented gray eyes. "That's murder! Did anybody see this?"

"I think he was dead anyways, Cecil," The Bad Czech said.

They heard the ambulance cut its siren and slide to the curb. A few minutes later, The Bad Czech, Cecil Higgins, Jane Wayne, Rumpled Ronald, two detectives and a patrol sergeant were all in the street, discussing the incident. The Bad Czech reassured Chuey Valdez that he wouldn't even be charged with littering and that the only way he could've done better was if he'd taken Earl Rimms's scalp, like a fucking Apache.

The paramedic walked out to the clutch of cops while his partner covered the body. "He's long gone," he said. "I never saw so much blood, even from a puncture like that. The coroner'll have to go to his spleen for a blood sample. He looks like something from Transylvania got to him."

Which caused Cecil Higgins to glance involuntarily at The Bad Czech, who said, "This ain't been my day. I want a burrito."

As they were preparing to leave, the old black woman who lived in the duplex hobbled out to the patrol sergeant and said, "I just want you to know that you should be proud of your men. That big officer there tried to save that poor man even if he was a criminal. That's Christian charity. I want his name so's I can write a letter to the mayor about it."

"Thank you, ma'am," The Bad Czech said shyly. "It don't hurt to remember that we're all God's children."

The Bad Czech insisted on getting a burrito from the roach wagon before they headed back to the station for all the reports. His uniform was a mess, but the paramedics had cleaned up the cuts on his face and hands. He'd drunk seven free Pepsis, much to the chagrin of the Mexican on the roach wagon, but all things considered, he looked remarkably fit after his ordeal.

Cecil Higgins was a wreck.

"Even when ya hung the wino, I thought ya wouldn't really do it," Cecil Higgins said, looking up at his belching partner, who had both cheeks full of burrito. "I mean really."

"It ain't easy to say about somethin' really," The Bad Czech said, pondering it. "I mean, what's real and what's really----"

"What's that got to do with hangin' winos and doin' a Dracula on Earl?"

"Well, it's hard to explain, but ... it's like it ain't really real. Stuff like that."

"I ain't ready for San Quentin," Cecil Higgins said. "I ain't ready to have a asshole big enough for Evel Knievel to pop wheelies in."

"You ain't gonna ask to stop workin' with me, are ya, Cecil?" The Bad Czech looked alarmed for the first time.

Just then, the sergeant drove up and parked at the curb. "Hurry up and get into the station, Czech!" he yelled. "The captain got a call from the old lady who saw you trying to resuscitate the suspect. He thinks it might make a good public-relations story, so a television crew's coming down!"

"OK, sarge, we're on our way!" The Bad Czech said.

And when the sergeant waved and sped away, Cecil Higgins could only look dumfounded.

On their drive to the station, Cecil Higgins said, "I been thinkin', Czech. There's a certain risk to workin' with you. I got to face that. What could ya offer me if I'm willin' to run the risk a spendin' my old age in San Quentin with a asshole big enough for a bobsled race and the Lawrence Welk orchestra?"

"You're the on'y one I kin talk to, Cecil," The Bad Czech said eagerly. "I'll buy ya a drink every night at Leery's!"

"Ya do that anyways. Make it two drinks."

"OK, two drinks!"

"Maybe you're on to somethin'," Cecil Higgins said deliberately. "You're gonna be kissin' babies and have your picture in the papers."

"Cecil, this really ain't worth so much stewin' about."

"But that old woman saw you suckin' him dry. I mean, you looked like a big ol' blue vampire bat, but she saw a compassionate Christian hero."

"Good thing I got a clean uniform for television," The Bad Czech said, warming to the thought of it.

"I think maybe you ain't crazy," Cecil Higgins said. "I think maybe I'm crazy."

"I wish you could be a hero, too," The Bad Czech said sincerely. "Damn, I sure hope they send that foxy little blonde from channel two!"

"When ya buy me my two drinks tonight, I want ya to explain it all to me," Cecil Higgins said. "I want to know what's real and what's really real. I think I'm ready to listen."

" 'Some days, I walk this here beat and I don't know my dick from a dumplin'.' "

"The Bad Czech's loony eyes looked a little loonier than usual. Just the hangover, Cecil decided."