Harbor Nocturne

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Another silence, until she said quietly, “I think I am understanding why you help me, Dinko.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Wanna clue me in?”

  “We got words in Spanish.” She turned her face toward his. “You have the compasión. This mean, I know with my heart, you are very kind man, Dinko.”

  EIGHT

  The roll call that afternoon was boring, as usual. Sergeant Murillo told his officers to report any complaints regarding illegal Somali wire transfers to the detectives. He also alerted them that Vietnamese drug dealers were removing the guts from ordinary battery packs and stuffing them with eight balls of dope for ingenious distribution by Hispanic street vendors.

  Chester Toles, who was alert for once, said, “Are there any Americans left in Hollywood? Besides some of the people at this roll call?”

  Sergeant Murillo looked at the assembly of a dozen coppers and said, “You all look sleepier than Chester tonight. Would it perk you up if we could hand out some awards tomorrow? How about if I buy a super-size pizza with the works for the car that wins the Hollywood Love Story Award tonight? We don’t have a Hollywood moon, but there should still be enough domestic violence calls to choose from. But no repeats. The last winner was for the guy that shot his wife, claiming he thought she was a home invader when she came home from the market with an armload of groceries. And now she drives the neighbors crazy by blowing on a whistle every time she sticks her key in the lock. He might shoot her again, but I’ve already awarded a pizza for that one.”

  Hollywood Nate said, “What if a pissed-off neighbor shoots her this time?”

  Sergeant Murillo thought it over. “Okay, that would qualify if a neighbor shoots her.”

  Flotsam and Jetsam were back from their brief vice assignment and Flotsam asked, “How about popping for a second pizza for a Quiet Desperation Award?”

  Everyone knew that the QDA was an award initiated by the Oracle for the most bizarre or memorable event of the evening involving citizens living lives of quiet desperation. In Hollywood, there were always a lot of entries in that category.

  Sergeant Murillo said, “Wait a minute.” He looked in his wallet, then said, “Yeah, I can just about cover two if I can persuade the Cambodian at the pizzeria that my twenty percent off coupon should be doubled when I buy two super-size pizzas in a single order. He can’t seem to work that out.”

  “I thought Asians’re supposed to be good at math,” Chester Toles said.

  “Racial stereotype!” Mel Yarashi cried.

  Jetsam said, “The guy’s name is Benny, and he’s a juicehead. Order them after midnight and I guarantee he’ll be so toasted you can talk him into paying you for the pizzas.”

  The chance to win a super-size pizza perked up the coppers noticeably, and Sergeant Murillo affected the somber expression he normally showed before a joke, saying, “One last word of warning about citizen complaints. I took a phone call from an indignant gentleman last night who complained that a uniformed officer talked smack to him near Hollywood and Highland at twenty-thirty hours, after the citizen saw four uniformed coppers jacking up some young African-American men near the subway entrance.”

  “Who happened to be fun-loving Piru Bloods, no doubt,” said Mel Yarashi. “Up from south L.A. for some giggles, crime, and violence.”

  “Regardless,” Sergeant Murillo continued, “one of the male officers at the scene was approached by the citizen, who asked him, quote, ‘Why is the LAPD always harassing minorities?’ The officer affected an Eastern European accent and described himself to the citizen as a police officer from Moscow Five-Oh on an exchange program with the LAPD. And he replied to the citizen, quote, ‘A more relevant question is, Why are your missiles pointed at my country?’ I managed to talk the citizen out of making me write a one twenty-eight, but I promised that I would have some harsh words for the officer in question and straighten him out. Now, my question to you is, Does anyone have any idea who that jokester might’ve been?”

  Of course, nobody said a word, but every eyeball in the room shifted in the direction of Marius Tatarescu. After a moment Sergeant Murillo said, “No idea? Okay, must’ve been some copper from Watch Three. Let’s go to work.”

  The Hollywood Love Story Award was won hands down by 6-X-72 on their second call, and it occurred almost two hours before the sun went down. Marius Tatarescu and Sophie Branson got a call to perhaps the most disgusting hotel in Hollywood Division. It was one of those fleabag weekly rentals where the stairwell reeked of urine and vomit. One of those places where dark wallpaper could move when someone shined a flashlight on it, and you’d suddenly become aware that the wallpaper was a solid mass of cockroaches.

  Of course, it was a domestic violence call, and they spotted the person reporting standing in the hotel parking lot in his bare feet, wearing only lime-green sequined shorts that matched one of the streaks in his rainbow Mohawk. Both sides of his shaved head bore tats of various zodiac signs, and he had lip, nose, and eyebrow piercings, a face full of rings and studs. He was a white man in his mid-forties with the malnourished, spidery look of a long-term tweaker, and the front of his bony chest was running bright red from clotting blood. And he was clearly spun out, no doubt from smoking crystal. He waved when he saw the black-and-white, and Sophie Branson pulled into the lot.

  “Damn,” she said to her partner, “looks like a run to Hollywood Pres,” meaning Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.

  Marius said, “Better now than later, when the ER is filling up. He has maybe been stabbed.”

  When they got out of the car, the man said, “My old lady is the one that called, but I wanna talk to you first, though, so you can get the true story. My name is Willard Higgins, but my professional name is Ace Fingers. I’m a musician.”

  The big Romanian cop asked, “And where is this person you call your old lady?”

  “Up in our room. Our room for now. We’re getting evicted tomorrow, and it’s her fault. Always yelling and bitching.”

  Sophie Branson looked closely at his bloody hollow chest but could not detect a wound. “What happened to you?” she asked. “And what does your female companion look like?”

  “Look like? With the lights on, she’s uglier than a basket of maggots. With the lights out and her clothes off, she’s skinny and rough as an old wooden clothespin, so I guess she looks better in the dark. She’s tweaked out even though I try to tell her life is about moderation.”

  Sophie said, “Yeah, I can see that all your face metal makes a very moderate fashion statement.”

  “It’s self-expression,” Ace said. “It’s who I am.”

  “You’re the Valley Boulevard Junk Yard?” Sophie said.

  Marius said, “When my partner is asking what your wife is looking like, she means is your wife all lumped up like you?”

  “Sorta,” he said. “Follow me and you can see for yourself.”

  “What kind of weapons were involved in this situation?” Sophie asked.

  “No weapons,” Ace said. “Our love play went sideways and it pissed her off. There ain’t been no crimes committed here. You’ll see what I’m getting at when you meet her.”

  Sophie took a deep breath of smoggy air before entering the hotel behind the man, with Marius trailing behind her.

  While climbing the greasy, reeking staircase, Sophie said, “I suppose you’ll get around to telling us something about the love play that went sideways.”

  “It’s sorta embarrassing to tell it to a woman,” Ace said, “but I can tell it to your partner. I’d rather wait and see what kinda lie she tells first, if you don’t mind.”

  Their room was on the second floor. When they entered, Sophie couldn’t tell which smelled worse, the stairwell or this room. The bed was a double that sagged in the middle, making Sophie wonder if one of them would roll down on top of the other after they both fell asleep. It had a bedsheet on it that hadn’t been changed since Mick Jagger was a virgin, and a large patch of darkening blood was soaked into
it. There was a beat-up chest of drawers, a lamp on a mismatched wooden stand, and a tiny bathroom with the door shut that Sophie hoped she would not have to enter. They heard the toilet flush, so they knew that the woman was still alive in there.

  When the bathroom door opened, Ace said to the cops, “May I present my little love truffle? This is Ms. Sadie Higgins.”

  “Don’t call me Higgins, you son of a bitch,” she said. “We ain’t married and we ain’t never getting married. Not after what you done to me.” Then she looked at Sophie and said, “And don’t ask if this is the maid’s day off. I ain’t into cop humor.”

  She might have been about Ace’s age, but it was hard to say. She had full-sleeve tats on one arm; the other displayed ink that ran the length of her forearm and said, “Sexy Bee-yitch.” Her brittle persimmon frizz was falling out in patches, and it looked like something was moving on her scalp. A spider? Sophie wondered. She had rosacea blooming on both cheeks, and her pale eyes were red and watery. It looked like rats had snacked on her legs. Sophie estimated that the five-foot-eight-inch woman weighed less than ninety pounds. She was wearing a red satin robe that covered most of her, but Sophie could see the dried blood on her bare feet. She was as tweaked out as he, and toothless except for a few upper molars and one rotting tooth in her lower grille.

  “We understand that you are the one who called for us,” Marius said to her.

  “Sure, I called,” she said. “The sick bastard raped me!”

  “I think it’s time to separate and talk privately,” Sophie said.

  “I can talk in front of him,” the woman said. “He raped me and I want you to arrest him, and I want to prosecute his ass in a court of law and send the bastard to the joint, where he can find out what it’s like to get choked and raped.”

  “He choked you?” Marius looked at Ace, who grimaced and shook his head slowly, to indicate it was all a terrible lie.

  She sat down on the side of the bed, causing an explosion of dust motes, and said, “Excuse me, but I’m a little bit weak from his vicious assault.”

  “How long have you two been together?” Sophie asked.

  “Two weeks,” she said. “We met at a rock concert. He claims to be a musician, but his so-called silky guitar riffs sound like a baboon fucking a ukelele.”

  “Two months,” Ace said. “Maybe more. We’re as good as husband and wife, and we had lotsa sex before this. So how can sex with me all of a sudden be called rape?”

  Neither cop was sure if there was going to be an advisement of Miranda rights here, but before Marius could tell Ace to wait outside with him the musician said, “Furthermore, I got a permission slip from her.”

  Sophie said, “A permission slip? For what?”

  “It’s in the top drawer in my wallet,” Ace said to Marius. Then, to Sadie: “By the way, did you steal the twenty bucks while I was downstairs waiting for them?”

  “I don’t want nothing from you,” she said, “except to hear you whimper like a sick dog when they lead you down the steps in handcuffs.”

  “Please, Officers, will one of you get the permission slip?” Ace said.

  Marius opened the top drawer of the chest but jumped back, cursing in Romanian, when a Captain America cockroach shot across the drawer with a spectacular leap and landed on his hand.

  “I gotta give that cockroach a perfect ten,” Sophie said while Marius cursed some more and brushed the roach onto the bed, where several of its cousins skittered away.

  Marius pulled on a latex glove and gingerly retrieved the wallet with a thumb and forefinger, handing it to Ace, who opened it and extracted a folded piece of yellow lined paper.

  “Would you please read that to your partner?” Ace asked, casting a triumphant look at his woman, who was in a hands-on-hips snit, shooting mean looks at him.

  Marius handed the note to Sophie, who read aloud: “‘I hereby give you permission to do whatever you want with me. I am your kinky whore. You are my master of seduction. You can choke me while you fuck me with a jackass dildo.’ It’s signed ‘Sadie Higgins.’”

  “See, that ain’t a valid permission slip!” Sadie cried in triumph. “We’re not married. My name is Sadie Sloane, so it ain’t legit. Now handcuff the bastard and get him outta here!”

  “Is that what he did to you,” Sophie asked Sadie. “What it says on the note?”

  “Exactly,” Ace answered. “That’s what she wanted. The trouble is, she started bleeding real bad and I had to stop. I took her in the bathroom and tried to clean her off, but she wouldn’t let me. She got real mad. Like it was my fault or something.”

  Marius Tatarescu, looking a bit queasy, asked Ace, “Is that how you got blood on you?”

  “No,” Ace said. “The sick bitch got so mad at me, she took the washrag she was mopping up her love rug with and threw it at me. Smacked me right in the chest with it. It’s on the floor in the bathroom if you wanna see it.”

  “I shoulda threw a kitchen knife at you,” Sadie said.

  “I am taking your word that it is on the floor in there,” Marius said. Then he looked beseechingly at his senior partner to deal with this one.

  Sophie told the warring couple, “Stay put for a minute. We gotta talk.” She motioned for Marius to follow her out into the hallway, leaving the door open in case combat might resume inside.

  In the hallway she said sotto to Marius, “Partner, I’ve been on the Job twenty years, and as a matter of professional pride I almost never call a supervisor to a scene, but this one needs someone above our pay grade to sign off. If we just leave them, they might smoke some crank and turn violent. She might start hemorrhaging again and go into shock and die.”

  Marius said, “I got a good idea. Let us call for a detective. I think Charlie Gilford is not going to say we got to deal with these people. He will get us out of here.”

  “Excellent idea,” Sophie said. “He can always find a way out of doing any kind of work. Let him decide if we’ve got a bookable offense here and if we need to transport Sadie to the ER.”

  Sophie Branson drew her rover from her Sam Browne and keyed the mike.

  “Compassionate Charlie” Gilford was a D2 who had been on the Job long enough to retire, and he was probably even lazier than Chester Toles. He was the sole night-watch detective on duty, and he spent most of his time watching a little TV he kept in his desk or trying to figure out how to get a free burrito plate from a gourmet taco truck, or maybe something tasty from a Chinese dim sum joint where they gave him a “police discount” that he had previously negotiated.

  Fortunately for 6-X-72, Charlie happened to be out and about, checking on new eateries, and was not far from the dirtbag hotel in question. They only had to wait ten minutes before the rangy, unkempt detective, who always wore sport coats and skinny pants that spoke of the 1970s at its worst—and the most outrageously ugly neckties on the entire LAPD—sauntered in, sucking his teeth as usual, ready to offer an expert opinion on just about anything. Sophie thought the color and pattern on this particular tie reminded her of decaying meat crawling with blowflies.

  Sophie led Charlie inside the little hotel room and said to Ace and Sadie, “I want you to tell Detective Gilford exactly what you’ve told us. He’s gonna decide what we should do about this.”

  Charlie remained with the couple, and Sophie went back out into the hallway, where she said to Marius, “Partner, somehow I don’t think a bouquet’s gonna be enough to settle this one. And I’ll just hate it something awful if Charlie fails us here and we gotta take Sadie for medical treatment, and then haul Ace to jail for choking her out. I don’t wanna occupy the same car space with either of them. They say everyone finally gets the face they deserve, and these two prove it. Which reminds me, did you see Barbra Streisand before her recent lift?”

  “When it come to, how we say, the kiss-off artist, there is nobody better than Charlie Gilford,” the Romanian said reassuringly. “Keep up the faith, Sophie.”

  Ten minutes passed, but
they could still hear muffled conversation inside the room, with Sadie’s voice only briefly rising in anger. Then the door opened and Charlie Gilford sauntered out with the couple still inside. The cops could see that the formerly warring tweakers now had an arm around each other’s waist and were cooing softly.

  Charlie sucked his teeth a couple of times and asked Marius and Sophie, “Do you know why they don’t do regular sex?”

  Sophie answered sotto, “Yeah, because they’re a couple of degenerate skanks and her bug rug is probably crawling with crabs.”

  “See,” Charlie said, shaking his head sadly, “that’s why you bluesuits need a detective at the scene when a situation calls for subtle diplomacy as well as super sleuthing. For your information, the reason they don’t do regular sex is because he recently got himself a Prince Albert.”

  “What is a Prince Albert?” Marius asked.

  Charlie said, “Don’t they teach you people nothing these days? Man, this is fucking Hollywood! A Prince Albert is a bolt through the pecker. He showed it to me. Wanna see it?”

  “I think I can live without that part of a more complete Hollywood education,” Sophie Branson said. “I’ll pass.”

  “I shall pass also,” Marius Tatarescu said, looking even queasier.

  Just then, Ace and Sadie came to the open doorway. They still had an arm around each other, and her head was on his shoulder.

  “Remember what I told you,” Compassionate Charlie Gilford said to the cuddling couple. “When the going gets tough, you gotta step back and recall the songs of your youth. You’re a musician, Ace. It should be easy for you.”

  Ace nodded, turned his face to Sadie, and sang in a raspy tenor, “‘They say we’re young and we don’t know, we won’t find out until we grow!’”

  She sang back at him in a quivery soprano, “‘Well, I don’t know if all that’s true, ’cause you got me and, baby, I got youuuuu!’”

  And then they sang together, “‘Babe! I got you, babe! I got you, babe!’” With Sadie grinning toothlessly at the man she loved for now.