Hollywood Patrol

he sun set 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 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 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 Iron Man so sexy on film that his hustling doppelganger 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, 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." (continued on page 120)

HOLLYWOOD

(continued from page 71)

"Hey, Sticky Foot," Iron Man said, "no poaching."

"Chill, Tin Man," Spider-Man replied, "or you might get your fenders dented."

Iron Man, who had seen his namesake's movie 14 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—a.k.a. Regis the plumber in another life—let out a scream at the sight of Iron Man 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 6-X-46, a 4-15 fight in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese The­atre, between Spider-Man and Iron Man. Person reporting is...Captain America. Six-X-46, handle code two."

"How exciting," Fran Famosa said in disgust after rogering the call. "A street char­acter bitch-slapping."

Chester Toles just raised his pale eyebrows a notch, adjusted his aviator eyeglasses and scratched his rubbery bald scalp before turning north on Highland, but he didn't increase his speed by even one mile per hour. "Maybe if we give the young hotshots a chance to jump the call, we won't have to handle it," he said. "They might think a TV crew is going to roll on this one and they'll end up on the news at 10."

Usually, Fran Famosa would utter an objection to Chester's goldbricking, but when it came to a street character don-nybrook she was in his corner. Superhero rumbles usually did bring out a TV news team, and when that happened the mob of tourists with cameras seemed to replicate itself, since everybody in Hollywood wanted to be on the big or small screen. The vehicu­lar traffic on the boulevard would slow to a stop so motorists could rubberneck, and the

cops would have a mess on their hands.

"Yeah, take your time, Chester," she said. "I'm not up for dealing with freak show panhandlers."

When, four minutes later, they arrived, Chester said to her, "No worries, mate. The situation is well in hand."

There were already two units from Watch 3 at the scene, both radio cars manned by eager young coppers who would love to handle a superhero squabble in front of an audience of hundreds, especially if a news team showed and the audience grew to potentially hundreds of thousands on the nightly news. Chester and Fran stopped in the red zone and made the obligatory ges­ture of officially handing off the call to the cops of Watch 3, who hadn't handcuffed anyone and were still mulling over the cul­pability of Spider-Man for the injurious groin kick after witnesses had concurred that Iron Man had struck the first blow.

In fact, Chester and Fran had just got­ten back to their shop when a tourist in an L.A. Dodgers cap yelled, "Hey, that guy just grabbed my wife's purse!"

The thief was a slope-shouldered guy in a long-sleeved black hoodie that hid his face. He wore dirty jeans and running shoes, and he was fast. He zigzagged across Hollywood Boulevard, causing several cars to brake and blow their horns at him. He was nearly out of sight before Chester had time to start the engine, with Fran Famosa ready to bail out and give chase on foot. That is, if her fat partner could get the fucking car moving.

"Come on, Chester!" she said. "The dirt-bag's getting away."

"Okay, Fran, don't get your knickers in a knot," Chester said, pulling into traffic with his light bar on, tapping his horn to cut into the lanes of westbound traffic and across the oncoming eastbound traffic.

Fran put out the broadcast that they were chasing a 484 purse snatcher westbound on Hollywood Boulevard from Grauman's, and in a moment the PSR relayed the informa­tion to all units in the vicinity. While this was going on, Chester had to blast the siren in order to squeeze through the eastbound number one lane of cars, whose confused and panicked drivers didn't understand what the driver of the black-and-white wanted them to do.

The purse snatcher turned south at the first corner, and by the time they got across Hollywood Boulevard, he'd vanished.

"Maybe he ran into the parking structure," Chester said. "He could hide behind a car and we'd never find him without a K-9."

"There he is!" Fran said.

He'd been momentarily hidden from view by the darkness and a dozen young people walking north toward Hollywood Boulevard for an evening of fun and frolic. The runner turned, saw the black-and-white coming his way and ran even faster.

"Damn, the dude has an extra gear. He can really move," Fran said, broadcasting their location for all units.

Chester meant business now, and with his headlights on high beam and his light bar flashing and his siren yelping, he mashed down on the accelerator. When the purse snatcher was all the way to Sunset Boule­vard and turning the corner eastbound in

front of Hollywood High School, he tripped on the uneven pavement. He did a tumble and roll across the sidewalk, and the purse went flying. By the time he got up, 6-X-46 was stopped at the curb on the wrong side of Sunset, facing oncoming traffic, which had slammed to a stop at the sight of the black-and-white bearing down with its red and blue lights winking and its siren howling.

There was an instant traffic snarl on Sunset Boulevard when Fran Famosa and Chester Toles, who was moving faster than Fran thought possible, got out and took off after the limping thief, who wasn't going to go peacefully. He turned and threw a roundhouse punch at Fran, who ducked and grabbed him around the middle as Chester got him in an LAPD-nonapproved but usually effective choke hold. It took the thief to the pavement, with both cops on top of him. His hoodie slipped back and his long black hair fell across a scowling face, brown as saddle leather. Fran saw that he was wearing aviator glasses like Chester's, and they went soaring when he broke free of Chester's choke hold.

He was older than they'd originally thought, maybe mid-30s, and he was strong, far stronger than Chester. He got to his knees, taking Fran up with him, and he stomped hard on Chester's hand and kicked the baton away just as Chester was getting ready to unload with an LAPD-nonapproved head strike. Then the thief whirled and flung Fran Famosa off him, and he started to run again as they heard a wel­come siren headed their way.

Fran had a Taser in her hand, but Chester was between her and the thief with handcuffs in his left hand, and she saw the guy grab for Chester's Beretta. Both men lurched into her, and she lost the Taser. Chester didn't even realize it when his pistol clattered to the sidewalk along with his handcuffs. That's when Fran delivered a nonapproved kick to the face of the thief and followed it with a blast of pepper spray, which caught him in the back of the head instead of the face, and then he was up again and trying to run, with Chester Toles hanging on to his left ankle.

Fran Famosa picked up Chester's lost baton and struck the thief once, twice, across the right knee, to no avail. Saying "Fuck this!" she tried a nonapproved head strike, but he threw his arm up and took the blow across the wrist.

It sounded like the muffled pop of a fire­cracker, and he yelled in pain, then said, "I'll kill you, you cunt!" That's when she saw the knife.

And that's when Chester yelled in des­peration, "Shoot him, Fran!"

Fran Famosa was trying to do just that, drawing her Glock .40, retreating a few paces, then taking a combat stance.

But she heard a familiar voice yell, "Drop that knife!"

Hollywood Nate, followed by Britney Small, both with their pistols drawn, were running at the thief, who threw down the knife and raised both hands to the top of his head. She'd been so into the adrenaline-charged moment—sound had ceased and all motion had slowed way down—and so close to killing the thief that she had never heard 6-X-66 squeal to the

curb in a brake-locking slide, its high beams lighting up the life-and-death struggle. And she never really registered Hollywood Nate and Britney Small's arrival until Nate was handcuffing the purse snatcher's hands behind his back.

Britney said quietly, "Holster your weapon, Fran. We've got him controlled."

"Ooooh, my frigging back," Chester Toles said, struggling to his feet with one hand pressed against the small of his back, looking for his glasses, his baton, his OC spray and his dignity. Everything was strewn around the sidewalk, including the victim's purse and its contents: wallet, keys, lipstick, com­pact, tissues and coupons for Pizza Hut.

Then Chester said, "I'm too old for this shit."

Just then, 6-X-76 rolled up and Mel Yarashi jumped out with Always Talking Tony Doakes, and A.T. started jawing.

"This is some cluster fuck," he told Nate when Fran and Britney were out of earshot, walking the thief to Fran's shop. "This is what happens when you put a chick with a fat old slacker like Chester. They're lucky they didn't get scalped."

Only then did Nate notice that the purse snatcher appeared to be an American Indian. A.T. picked up the knife by the tip of the blade and said, "Uh-huh, a trophy taker. Wonder how many hanks of hair he's got hanging from the lodge pole in his tepee. They should always put someone like me with someone like Chester. 'I'll catch 'em, you clean 'em,' that's my motto. I would have run that red man's dick into the dirt."

Mel Yarashi, who was accustomed to A.T.'s garrulous ways, said, "Hey, partner, let's police up the sidewalk here. There's prop­erty scattered everywhere."

A.T. nodded but, still wanting to chat­ter, strolled over to the black-and-white where the purse snatcher was strapped into the backseat with the door open and said, "Dude, you are one lucky Injun. The LAPD's head-shot record with a handgun is 63 yards. If I'd been the closer here, I would have just let you get 64 yards in front of me and broke that record."

"Go fuck yourself," the exhausted Indian said.

"Are you talking to me?" A.T. responded. "And when exactly did you have your lobotomy?"

"I'm not an Injun. I'm a Native American."

"Really?" A.T. said. "Which casino?"

"I want my glasses," the prisoner said.

A.T. said, "I was gonna look for them, but now I have reservations."

He looked around to see if anybody appreciated his Indian humor, but they were all busy talking on radios or cell phones, gathering scattered evidence and waving off more arriving black-and-whites by hold­ing up four fingers, meaning code four, no further help needed. There were already too many coppers milling around the fight scene, but more kept coming.

"I need my glasses, goddamn it," the pris­oner said.

"What's your name?" A.T. asked. "And let me guess. You're a parolee, right?"

The prisoner did not deny his parole status but said, "My name's Clayton Lone Bear. Now go get my glasses, you mud-shark nigger, or bring one of the white cops over here."

"Now you just played the stupid card and made a mortal enemy of this noble buffalo soldier," Always Talking Tony said, thump­ing his own chest with a fist. "You want a white cop, try smoke signals." Then he turned and said, "Hey, Mel, come over here and babysit Mr. Lame Bear for a minute. I gotta go talk to Chester and Fran. If he tries to go all Little Bighorn on you, gimme a holler."

Mel Yarashi trotted over to Fran and Chester's shop to guard the prisoner, and A.T. walked toward the searchers, who were sweeping the sidewalk with their narrow flashlight beams.

"Isn't it great to be saddled with safe little baby flashlights," Chester Toles said to Fran Famosa. "In the old days I could have lit up the whole freaking scene all by myself with my five-cell monster." Chester was squinting nearsightedly when he spotted a dark object and said, "Hey, the guy had a gun!" Then he moved closer and squatted down, saying, "Wait a minute. This looks like my gun!"

With the adrenaline overload of the

fearful street fight, Chester Toles had been unable to obey the street cop's first com­mandment: Watch their hands. He hadn't realized the thief had jerked his Beretta from its holster before losing it.

Chester picked it up, holstered it and said to Fran with a shiver, "We came close to a bagpiper on the hill." Meaning an LAPD funeral complete with a lone bagpiper play­ing a dirge, an LAPD custom since the 1963 funeral of Officer Ian Campbell, himself a piper, who was kidnapped from the streets of Hollywood and murdered in an onion field north of Los Angeles.

A.T. strode up to them and said, "Hey, Chester, no big surprise, but I think this PLMF is a parolee at large. Way to go, cow­boy." Everyone knew that PLMF meant "parolee-looking motherfucker," but Chester Toles was too old and too sore right then to give a shit.

While A.T. was walking back along the curb to his shop, something glinted in his flashlight beam, and he recognized the pris­oner's glasses lying in the gutter beside the curb. He glanced around and saw that every­one was occupied with his or her own tasks, so he turned off his flashlight and strolled over to the gutter in the darkness. And he surreptitiously stepped on them, crunch­ing and grinding the glass and metal into the asphalt.

Mel Yarashi was waving the traffic past the scene when Sergeant Murillo pulled up, parking behind Nate and Britney's shop to take over supervision and make notification to Force Investigation Division about a "cat­egorical use of force."

That was when A.T. saw Chester Toles approach the prisoner and hand a pair of glasses to Fran, saying, "Here, put these on his face. I don't know where the hell my glasses are."

"Yo, partner!" A.T. suddenly yelled to Mel Yarashi. "Code four. We're not needed here. Let's bounce."

Excerpted from Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh. Printed with permission of the Mys­terious Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.