October's Ghost

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  Frankie checked the list as her partner swung their car left onto Sunset from Rampart. “A place called Freddy’s. Fifty-nine-hundred block of Sunset”

  Art finished his turn and slid over into the right lane, slowing as the staggered convoy of LAPD cars, their lights and sirens clearing the way, came at him from the opposite direction.

  “Cavalry’s got work to do tonight,” he said, noticing just a second later that a helicopter was close behind the patrol cars, racing east on Sunset a few hundred feet in the air.

  “Just another night in L.A.,” Frankie observed. She was wrong.

  * * *

  The Los Angeles Police Department’s jurisdiction is divided into four Bureaus—West, Valley, South, and Central—which are comprised of a total of eighteen divisions, not including the elite Metro Division. Each division monitors and maintains its own patrol function, with officers responding primarily to 911 calls dispatched from a central communications center. When things in one division heat up, as is common in a city whose criminal element does not follow the statistical laws of even population distribution, units from adjacent divisions can be called in to assist. Certain happenings mandate such cooperation to a higher degree. At the top of those is one radio call— “Officer needs help.”

  Why such things happen is a question social theorists and criminologists have debated for decades, and to excess in the very recent past, but none could have predicted or explained the motivation for what began in the streets bounding Echo Park, a slab of green littered with bottles and drug paraphernalia located just inside Rampart Division’s area of responsibility.

  A jet-black vintage Cadillac Seville, its compressed springs and low-aspect tires identifying it as the ride of choice for gang members, glided slowly up the street on the park’s north side, just yards from a group of young men hanging out on the hood of a vintage Monte Carlo parked along the curb. The first words from the Cadillac, which would be seen as benign to most people not familiar with the gang culture, challenged the allegiance of the boys on the Monte Carlo, questioning them as to “who they claimed.” The answer, which was as much a statement of pride in one’s gang as it was a truthful response, was all the occupants of the Cadillac needed.

  Two sawed-off double-barrel shotguns poked through the open side window from the backseat, and a single semiautomatic pistol from the front. The weapons trained on the group of twelve young bangers. Understandably they started to scatter at the sight, but not fast enough.

  The fire came quickly and violently, striking three members of the La Playa Flats gang in the back as their homies dove to the ground, pulling out their own hardware, mostly .22- and .25-caliber pistols. They were not as well armed as their rivals, the Madera Honchos, but did not hesitate to shoot back as soon as their guns were in hand.

  On the east side of the park, sitting in their patrol car, two officers of the Rampart Division’s P.M. watch were finishing their dinners—Styrofoam bowls full of rice and teriyaki beef strips—when the repeated sounds of gunfire reached them. Immediately they radioed in that they were going to investigate “shots fired,” not an uncommon occurrence, and hurried to the north side of the park. They turned from Echo Park onto Park and instantly knew that this was more than an ordinary “shots fired.”

  The driver of the Cadillac, upon seeing the police cruiser turn toward him, reflexively floored it and swung to the left, trying to make a U-turn in an area that would not permit such for the big four-door. His homies in the backseat, alternately trying to hit their rivals with wild blasts from the shotguns and ducking into the false safety behind the doors, didn’t see what the driver had, and, as the Caddie screeched to a stop in its abortive swing to get out of there, they fired again without looking, their shots traveling straight down Park and hitting the LAPD car in the windshield and grill.

  “Two Adam Twenty-one! Officer needs help! Shots fired!”

  It was as if a lightning bolt had reached down from above and struck every LAPD unit in Rampart, Northeast, and Hollywood divisions. The twelve other Rampart units on patrol that evening, upon hearing the ‘Two’ in the unit I.D. that denoted it as one of theirs, dropped what they were doing and raced toward the park. Six Northeast units, just north of the park in their own division, also sped off with lights and sirens even before central communications put out the call as a Code Three.

  But it was from the west, from Hollywood Division, that the greatest outside response came. Eight units, including one of the LAPD’s helicopters that had been involved in a particularly nasty domestic-violence call, left the senior patrol officer of the watch, Sergeant Charlie Burns, to finish up the paperwork and witness statements and headed off to aid their brother law officers who had put out the call to the east of their location. It was a relatively quiet night in Hollywood otherwise, so the immediate loss of nearly all the division’s patrol force was not likely to cause a problem.

  Sergeant Burns thought that as he climbed into his car near the intersection of Beachwood and Sunset, his ears tuned to the unfolding situation at Echo Park and his thoughts with the officers who were in need of assistance, unaware that he would soon be in a situation not dissimilar.

  * * *

  Sullivan walked out of Freddy’s onto Sunset, wondering if he’d be able to find a cab at this time of night. He took a few steps east on the brightly lit boulevard, his gait slow and measured so as not to test the limits of his coordination. Not a damn one in sigh—

  “Get in!”

  The hands grabbed him from behind, pushing him toward the curb. A second later a dark-colored car screeched to a stop in front of him, and the back door came open. The hands pushed hard, shoving his head downward just as the police did in the movies. Could it be?

  Sullivan regained his senses as the back door closed to his right. He was facedown on the car seat and brought his head up as the sound of another door closing filled the car. Who was...?

  “Don’t move!” Jorge emphasized the words with the barrel of the revolver, which he pressed against the reporter’s forehead as he reached over the seat back and held him by the lapels. “Don’t say nothing, don’t do nothing.”

  Tomás eased out into traffic, not wanting to draw any attention. Sunset was a busy street, one that they had heard lots of sirens from in the past few minutes, so the automatic decision to get off of it was natural. It was also a mistake.

  * * *

  A car approaching is always cause for caution for a police officer, which made Sergeant Burns’s instinct to look up understandable. He saw the blue Chevy’s driver just as the man saw him, and there was the unmistakable mask of tension upon his face that most bad guys exhibited when confronted by the cops. That piqued the sergeant’s awareness, as did the man’s blatant attempt to continue looking straight ahead as he neared the patrol car. He was saying something out of the side of his mouth, Burns noted, probably trying to tell his buddy in the passenger seat...

  Gun.

  The sergeant’s head jerked fully to the left at the sight of the revolver pointing into the backseat. Beachwood was a residential street, and therefore not a wide one in the cramped confines of Los Angeles. The driver and his passenger passed ten feet to Burns’s left, then accelerated quickly south on Beachwood.

  * * *

  “Dammit!” Tomás swore, his eyes watching in his rearview mirror as the police car began a tight turn away from the curb.

  Jorge was pressed back against the seat when Tomás stepped on the gas, and his eyes caught the sight of the car a hundred feet back just as its light bar came to life. He looked down at Sullivan, the gun pressing harder into his forehead. “I’ll blow your head off if you move.”

  “He’s on us!” Tomás shouted above the noise of the Lumina downshifting for a quick burst of speed.

  “Lose him,” Jorge said, knowing it was more hope than directive.

  * * *

  There was no mistaking it now for Burns. The car was rabbiting.

  “Six L Fifty, I am in
pursuit,” he said calmly, though the adrenaline was already beginning to flow into his veins in appreciable quantities. A veteran of many pursuits, he never found them enjoyable, a fact directly in opposition to the Hollywood portrayal of them. Get your cameras out, boys, the sergeant thought, wondering just how long this one would last through Tinseltown.

  Next to an “Officer needs help” call, a pursuit takes priority. When both happen simultaneously, there is an expected bit of confusion, a situation that is amplified when the proximity of the two is as relatively close as these were.

  “All units...” The dispatcher paused, juggling her multiple major calls. “All units stand by. Six L Fifty is in pursuit.”

  Burns followed the car ahead of him through two hard right turns that had them going north toward Sunset. “Six L Fifty,” he said into the mic, referring to his division (Six), his unit type (L, or Lincoln, a one man car), and his individual unit number (Fifty, an even multiple of ten, which denoted a supervisor), “car is a late-model blue four-door Chevy, now heading north on Gower approaching Sunset. Two male occupants, one possible in the rear. Suspects are armed. License...” The newer white reflectorized California plates made reading at a distance easier. “...Four-Nora-Edward-X Ray-Two-Eight-Three. Now passing Sunset.”

  The dispatcher repeated back the information and waited for available units to announce themselves for inclusion in the pursuit The silence surprised her, until she checked her status log. “Any Hollywood units in the vicinity of Sunset and Gower, Six L Fifty needs a secondary unit for the pursuit of a late-model blue Chevy.” Still silence. Her blood pressure notched up a bit. “Air Forty.”

  Miles from the pursuit, hovering over the deteriorating situation at Echo Park, the helicopter heard the call. “Air Forty.”

  “Air Forty, Six L Fifty is in pursuit, north on Gower past Sunset. Can you intercept?”

  “Negative, we have continuing shots fired and multiple suspects.”

  “Air Twenty,” the call came into dispatch from another helicopter that had picked up the pursuit call and was heading north from the South Bureau at top speed. “We’ll take it. ETA five minutes.”

  “Roger, Air Twenty. Six L Fifty, your location?”

  Burns was glad he had put his seatbelt on. This guy was driving as though he really didn’t want to get caught. “Gower at Franklin, going...going west on Franklin.”

  The dispatcher checked her status log again. “Fifteen Adam Seven,” she said, calling a clear North Hollywood two-man unit. “Six L Fifty is in pursuit—can you respond as secondary unit? Location is westbound Franklin from Gower.”

  “Roger. ETA is six or seven.”

  There were now two additional units closing on the pursuit as the backup dispatcher entered the license number into the computer. The result of that would bring another welcome member to the chase. Another unwelcome one would, unfortunately, join in at the same time.

  * * *

  The bright white-and-blue Bell Jet Ranger lifted off from Hollywood-Burbank Airport just as the first “Officer needs help” call went out. Like all local television stations, KNTV Channel 3 monitored police broadcasts to find juicy bits of human drama that its viewers could eat up. Also like other local stations, KNTV had discovered that the helicopter was the perfect platform from which to get fast-breaking news events from the street to the viewer. To this end it had taken the very expensive step of purchasing its own helicopter outright, giving the station round-the-clock access to airborne pictures. In a business where budgets were tight, and where most stations simply leased the use of helicopters from respected aviation companies, KNTV had again lived up to its claim that it would do anything for the story and would pay the price that an aggressive TV news organization had to.

  The news director had no sooner come to the monitor room where reports from Echo Park were coming in when the first call on the pursuit caught his attention. “Where’s the chopper?” he asked the control room.

  “Coming south from Silverlake. LAPD has a bird up there, so he has to approach from due north.”

  Damn the stupid regulations, the news director thought. For safety’s sake the LAPD had persuaded the FAA to issue stringent guidelines regarding aircraft separation at crime scenes, relegating the news choppers to higher altitudes. Some stations had just gone to more powerful, much steadier cameras that could get better pictures from a thousand feet than they could previously from three hundred. That sort of gear was expensive, however, and KNTV had spent its money on the chopper, postponing the inevitable upgrade of its standard camera setup.

  “Any LAPD over the pursuit yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  The news director checked the clock. It was just a few minutes to the start of the eleven o’clock news. If he could get their chopper over the pursuit for a dramatic lead-in, it could take a bite out of the competition’s ratings for the important 11:00 P.M. broadcast.

  “Send the chopper to the pursuit.” It was a smart decision, he knew. High-speed chases got ratings almost as good as airplane crashes.

  * * *

  “Left...south on Highland!” Burns said loudly, the wailing of the siren transmitted to dispatch as background noise. The pursuit thus far had reached speeds of seventy miles per hour, fast enough for the streets of Hollywood. As a supervisor, he had the authority to continue or end a pursuit based upon conditions such as traffic and danger to civilians. Another factor was what the suspects were wanted for. The sergeant, having seen the way the gun was being wielded, had formed an opinion that there might be someone in the back of the car who was an unwilling passenger.

  And that had sealed it. Kidnapping, or suspected kidnapping, was a crime that deserved no slack. This chase was on for the duration.

  “West on Hollywood!”

  * * *

  Art and Frankie were three blocks from Freddy’s when the radio call came.

  “King Eight.” It was the office’s communication center.

  Frankie snatched up the mic. “King Eight.”

  “LAPD reports they are in pursuit of blue late-model Chevy. License Four-Nora-Edward-X Ray-Two-Eight-Three. It’s your warrant suspects. Presently westbound Hollywood Boulevard from Highland. Three occupants in vehicle.”

  “Three?” Frankie said to her partner.

  Art stepped on the gas and activated the Chevy’s blue and red grill lights and the under-hood siren. “Idiot!”

  “King Eight, we’re on it.” Frankie slipped the mic back into its holder. She also surreptitiously undid the top strap on her holster. Get there, Art. Get there.

  * * *

  George Sullivan knew he was going to die. He was certain of it. These were the guys. They had killed Portero. Now they were going to kill him. Please, God.

  The man hovering over him kept the gun jabbed hard into his face while he watched out the back window. Sullivan could do nothing. His body was wedged between the front and back seats, his upper body twisted painfully rearward. Only his eyes could move, and they could do little to stop what was certain to happen. He’d already searched the area he could see, but there was nothing. If there had been, what could he do? Fight the guys off?

  Guys with guns! Not likely. All there was within reach was a set of keys in the coin tray between the front seats. Not much.

  But it’s something, you wimp! George reached gingerly with his left hand and picked up the keys, actually just one large key on an equally large keytab. He gripped it tight in his hand, swearing to himself that if the guy even twitched on the trigger, he was going to jam the key home into his killer’s eye. I’m dead, you’re blind, he thought, feeling quite brave but having no idea why.

  * * *

  “South La Brea! Where’s the air unit?”

  “Air Twenty. “

  “Air Twenty, we’re a minute out.” The observer in the helicopter saw the flashing lights of the patrol car, and, quite a ways off, the lights of the North Hollywood unit racing to join the chase. “Six L Fifty, we’ve got you on v
isual.”

  The pilot was going too fast. The pursuit was going to pass below them soon, so he started a turn to the left to set up on a following course. In the process he gained a hundred feet of altitude in a planned ascent.

  * * *

  “There!” Frankie yelled, pointing directly to their front through the windshield.

  Art saw the pursuit pass from right to left a block from them, heading south on La Brea and passing Sunset. He slowed at the intersection, a red light causing him to interject caution when he wanted to drive like a bat out of hell.

  “Clear!” Frankie said, her eyes sweeping traffic from the right. Lights and sirens weren’t some impenetrable shield.

  Art floored it through the light, turning tight onto La Brea. Two blocks down he could see the pursuit passing Fountain. What he saw next was in the sky.

  * * *

  The KNTV chopper pilot was eyeballing the pursuit from a thousand feet, approaching it from the east. His cameraman was on the right side, and he knew he’d have to clear that side for a good shot. Plus, he’d have to get lower. He started the diving left turn and checked his airspace for any... SHIT!!!!

  * * *

  Air Twenty’s pilot, a veteran of the U.S. Army who had flown combat missions in Grenada, never saw what hit him. The KNTV chopper, traveling at 110 miles per hour, hit the LAPD helicopter from above and behind, disabling the tail rotor. That damage mattered not at all a split second later as Air Twenty’s main rotor sliced into the news chopper’s fuselage, killing both occupants instantly and turning the Bell Jet Ranger into a tumbling ball of fire that fell toward the earth.

  Air Twenty’s crew didn’t suffer such a merciful death. They both were conscious as their million-dollar aircraft spun out of control and impacted in the center of La Brea, a block behind Six L Fifty, and exploded into a cloud of black and orange.

  * * *

  Burns saw the flash in his rearview, and it drew his attention long enough that he missed what was happening to his front until it was too late.

  * * *

  Tomás knew the light was red but had no choice. He kept on going, accelerating even, and didn’t see the compact car come through the intersection from his left. He clipped the back end, sending the smaller car spinning and a car following it crashing into its rear. The Lumina spun also, its rear end impacting a set of parked cars on the east side of La Brea and throwing Jorge to the left onto Tomás.