Hollywood Hills hs-4 Page 13

  “I told you from the jump, we won’t do anything that ain’t safe.”

  She thought about it and said, “Okay, I guess maybe I’m in. Temporarily. Just till we’re on our feet.”

  “I’ll be good to go in a couple of days,” Jonas said. “Now, how about that food?”

  She was gone for fifteen minutes, and when she came back, she had a bowl of tomato soup and a few saltine crackers on a paper plate. Jonas picked up a cracker and it was so soggy it bent in his fingers.

  “Is it okay?” Megan asked when he tasted a spoonful.

  “Savory,” Jonas said. “One of your better dinners, I’d have to say.”

  TWELVE

  Viv Daley and Georgie Adams had been removed from the field after the shooting of Louis Dryden and would not be returned to field duty until a BSS shrink and the chief gave an okay, per LAPD policy. That left only two women working the midwatch on that night of the Hollywood moon. P3 Della Ravelle, a twenty-two-year cop, was the Field Training Officer for P1 Britney Small, who was born a year after her FTO had been appointed to the LAPD. They were working 6-X-46, and Della Ravelle was driving, with young Britney Small doing the report writing.

  Britney Small, who was in the last phase of her probation, was one of the most reticent and shy women that Della Ravelle had ever encountered in law enforcement. But her former FTO, a highly disciplined Korean American cop named Rupert Tong, had always given her glowing evaluations, so Della figured the probationer must’ve been assertive enough when she needed to be. Tong had transferred to a long-awaited detective assignment at Robbery-Homicide Division, and Della Ravelle was taking over Britney Small until the end of her eighteen-month probationary period, two months hence.

  Since Britney Small was so near the end of her probation and Della Ravelle was so laid-back, Della insisted that the boot not keep calling her ma’am. Britney had never stopped calling Rupert Tong sir until their last night together, when the former Navy SEAL said to her, “Be sure and let me know if you need anything or have any questions about something you’ve learned from me. You’ve got my cell number.”

  It was only after Britney had said, “Thank you, sir, and good luck to you,” that he’d smiled broadly and given her a farewell hug, saying, “You’re a real copper already, Brit. You can call me Rupert anytime.”

  Britney Small was so willowy that Della Ravelle called her “my bluesuit ballerina.” The creamy-faced rookie loved working with this female FTO, telling her on their first night together that it was great to work with someone even older than her mom, for the wisdom it would bring.

  “Thanks for that,” Della said, thinking what everyone past forty would think at such a moment-Older than her mom? Where did it all go? How the hell did this happen to me?

  Della Ravelle was forty-four years old, with smart hazel eyes and a friendly grin for everyone. She had to go to a hairdresser more often than she liked these days in order to keep her hair brown. “I’ll dye till I die” was her motto. She was always struggling to lose ten pounds despite frequent workouts in the Hollywood Station weight room, where Hollywood Nate pumped iron almost daily.

  She was twice married and twice divorced, with two sons aged nineteen and seventeen, who lived with her in her South Pasadena house. Zach and Jonathan were students, one at Pasadena City College and the other at South Pasadena High School. Della always thought it was nothing more than sheer luck that she had married slightly better the first time, back at a time when she’d wanted children. That marriage was to an IRS auditor who was diligent with his child support payments throughout the years, even though during their marriage he was so nitpicking and clueless that he almost drove her crazy. To him, police work was something that could be analyzed like the tax returns of the deadbeats he delighted in tormenting. He could never understand the emotional hazards of the Job, and the powerful bonds that developed among the blue brethren in Della’s strange fraternity of the badge.

  The second husband was a worse mistake because he, too, was a cop, an alpha male, LAPD macho copper, mustache and all. They had battled from their honeymoon on, but thankfully the marriage was brief with no children. So now, with the days and nights of hiring babysitters behind her, Della Ravelle hoped to enjoy the six years she planned to remain on the Job before retiring at age fifty to a peaceful future where the size of the moon over Hollywood did not matter a whit.

  At 9 P.M. that night, she looked up while driving and said to Britney Small, “Wonder when it’s gonna bring its wrath down on us.”

  “What?” Britney asked.

  “The Hollywood moon,” Della said. “We’re due.”

  So far, their watch had been routine, but the full-moon motorists were already feeling the effects of it. There had been three traffic collisions on the boulevards, and both Della and Britney had written traffic citations for moving violations. On their third call, they caught a “415 family dispute” on their dashboard computer, indicating the penal code section for disturbance of the peace. Such routine calls often escalated, so on the way to the call, Della said to her probationer, “About these routine four-fifteen family disputes, I want you to always keep in mind that you and me don’t go hands-on with people until backup arrives. Don’t be shy about using your rover to call for assistance or help if you have to.”

  “Right,” Britney said.

  Della said, “A few years ago, two women officers here in Hollywood got into a knockdown street fight with a large, violent guy, and one of the women got badly hurt. A few firefighters on a lunch break were standing there watching the tussle and didn’t lift a finger to help the officers. The fire department later sent a battalion chief to all our roll calls to apologize and try to rationalize it, but every copper at Hollywood Station was extremely pissed off. A few of the mouthier ones told the battalion chief that the next time firefighters were being pelted with rocks or shot at by street thugs, we’d sit and watch just like they did. There were very hard feelings for a while. Moral of the story is, you can only depend on your brothers in blue to help in the rough-and-tumble altercations. Your last FTO was a very good copper, but he was a man. Don’t ever forget that you’re a woman. You’re never gonna impress some of the old guys, no matter what you do.”

  “I’ve noticed that for sure,” Britney said. “The OGs aren’t very friendly with female boots.”

  “I repeat, Britney,” Della said. “Don’t ever forget out here that you’re a woman.”

  “Roger that,” Britney said. “I won’t.”

  Della said, “We can be outstanding police officers but we can’t morph into men during the hands-on stuff. And by the way, female scrappy drunks can be worse than men when it comes to down-and-dirty street fights, so be wary in those situations. But we usually have better verbal skills than men, and sometimes we can talk things down just by being reasonable and by being women, where the men can’t. Sometimes our gender can de-escalate things. For these last few months of your probation I’m gonna give you a lotta cop-style girl talk that Rupert Tong couldn’t give you. You okay with that?”

  “Of course, ma’am-I mean Della,” Britney said. “I’m really grateful to learn the woman stuff from another woman.”

  “I’ll bet Rupert Tong never talked to you about underwear, did he?” Della said.

  “Underwear? Lord, no!” Britney said.

  “Well, it’s an important thing for women officers to know about. Never rush off to work with your underwear inside out. And don’t wear grandma underwear, although at your age I’m sure you never do. This is in case something bad happens. Would you want a bunch of guys in the ER to see you in funny underwear that’s inside out?”

  “I see your point,” Britney said with a giggle.

  “And for the same reason, don’t go to work without shaving your legs. How’d you like it if a gossipy ER nurse told some of the Watch Five coppers about your stubble? You just know they’d all start calling you ‘cactus legs.’ ”

  “No cactus legs,” the rookie said. “Got
it.”

  “And don’t wear an underwire bra under your vest. I tried to take the vest off Millie Boyle after she got rear-ended in a TC at Hollywood and Vine, right before we put her into the RA. And her goddamn padded underwire bra popped off like it was spring-loaded. One of the midwatch coppers found it on the street and later taped a cell phone photo of the bra to the wall in the roll call room with a note that said, ‘Will the person who lost this piece of equipment at the scene of a TC at Hollywood and Vine please claim it with Harry the kit room king.’ It was all very embarrassing for Millie.”

  “No underwire bra. Okay, boss,” Britney said cheerfully. “This is real good information to have.”

  “Poor Millie,” Della said. “She married and divorced two lieutenants early in her career, so pretty soon every guy she worked with proposed. They’d say stuff like, ‘I know you don’t like me, but if I marry you I might get promoted to lieutenant, so how about it?’ ”

  It was a two-story house on a residential street several blocks south of Paramount Studios. They heard the yelling from the street when they got out of their black-and-white. Both women grabbed their side-handle batons. The call came from next door, and a young woman in an orange leotard stood on her porch and pointed to the walkway between the houses. There a large-screen plasma TV was shattered to pieces below an open upstairs window. Della nodded to the woman in the leotard, who went back inside and closed the door quickly.

  Britney knocked at the door, and after several seconds, one of the potential combatants, a dark-eyed, olive-skinned, beefy woman older than Della, with enough hairspray to be an ozone threat, opened the door. She was dressed in the work uniform she wore at Farmers Market, where she served coffee and pastries at one of the open-air shops. Her husband was her age and even more overweight, and appropriately enough, he wore a sweat-stained wifebeater. But neither side had yet inflicted any violence. His boozy face was blooming like a rose and he was scowling at his wife.

  The cops stepped inside and Britney said, “One of your neighbors called. Is there a problem here?”

  The man pointed at the woman and said, “My wife thinks she can cheat on me and I’m supposed to lay down and take it!”

  “May we have your names, please?” Della said, trying for some simmer time.

  “I’m John Gianopoulos,” the man said, “and this backstabbing adultress is my wife, I’m sorry to say.”

  The woman turned to the older cop for empathy and said, “This fool thinks I’m bonking my hairdresser, Jackie, who happens to be gayer than a bouquet of daisies. In fact, Jackie’s shack bitch is a little guy who’s way prettier than me and a hell of a lot younger. And his shack bitch even has tits thanks to hormone therapy. Why would my hairdresser wanna fuck me, for chrissake?”

  Britney’s look to Della said, Why would anyone want to?

  In a quiet voice, Della Ravelle said, “Could we all keep it down? You’re scaring the neighbors.”

  “She’s killing me,” her husband wailed. “Killing me!”

  Then both cops took a closer look at him. There were bald patches all over his head. He had only a little patch of eyebrow over his left eye and none over his right eye. Even his arms looked peculiar. The left forearm was thick with black hair but there were large spots of bare skin showing, just as on his head. His right arm had almost no hair left on it. When Della took a closer look, she saw that though he was obviously meant to be a very hairy man, he had no eyelashes at all.

  John Gianopoulos was obviously used to having people stare at him. He said to the cops, “She did this to me. I was a healthy man before she tricked me into marriage by saying her uncle would put me in his house-painting business.” He pointed to his head and said, “Look at what being with her does to me!”

  Britney gaped and said, “Do you have a skin disease? Like mange or something?”

  “I have trichotillomania,” he said. “Thanks to her evil ways.”

  His wife shook her head and said, “They call it an impulse-control disorder. He pulls out his hair when he’s stressed, which is most of the time. Sometimes he wears a wig, and believe me, it’s no improvement.”

  Della said, “Have you two considered breaking up?”

  “I just needed a push,” Mrs. Gianopoulos said, “and maybe having you cops coming here is the push I need.”

  Della said, “It would be a good thing if one of you could leave for a while until the two of you cool down. I think we have a potentially volatile situation here.”

  “Let him leave,” she said. “He can just walk down to the corner saloon and get shit-faced, which is what he usually does anyway.”

  “And you can leave permanently,” he said. “Take everything and go home to your dago mother. Just get out!”

  “When I walk outta here,” she said to him, “I’ll take my clothes and my plasma TV, which I paid for, by the way, and that’s all I want from this sick marriage.” She looked at the cops and said, “He can keep the pots and pans and the dishes he’s never washed and the bills he’s never paid.”

  “Did you just get home from work?” Della asked her.

  Mrs. Gianopoulos said, “Ten minutes before you arrived. Why?”

  “Did you happen to use the walkway on the west side of the house?” Della asked.

  “No,” she said. “I parked in the alley and came in the back door. Why?”

  “Uh-oh,” Britney said.

  Della said quickly, “Mr. Gianopoulos, I think it would be wise and better for both of you if you would leave here for a couple of hours. Do it now, please. And we’ll have a brief chat with Mrs. Gianopoulos after you’re gone.”

  He took the hint, put on a Members Only jacket that could never close over his huge belly, and walked out the front door, slamming it behind him. After the cops broke the news to Mrs. Gianopoulos about her plasma TV, and after she finished cursing loud enough to scare the goldfish in the living room, Della strongly encouraged her to load her car and head for her mother’s house, and no charge for the marriage counseling.

  Della concluded with, “We don’t want you to kill him in his sleep tonight. You’d be charged with first-degree murder.”

  “It might be worth it,” Mrs. Gianopoulos said with too much sincerity.

  “You’ll both be way better off if you leave him,” Britney Small said. “Mr. Gianopoulos might even start growing eyelashes again.”

  After 6-X-46 cleared from that call and was heading north on Van Ness Avenue, Della Ravelle said to her probie, “That was a pretty routine family beef, all things considered. But I can think of a dozen ways a he-said-she-said can go sideways. That one went okay because we were calm and we were businesslike and we’re women. Even though that dude mighta been crazy enough to toss a two-thousand-dollar TV out an upstairs window, you noticed he was obedient with us. Probably has mommy issues, but whatever, we use our gender to our advantage out here. Right, partner?”

  “Roger that, partner,” Britney said, and earnestly began logging the call on their daily field activity report.

  Della Ravelle watched Britney and smiled and wondered what it would’ve been like to have a daughter.

  Their next stop resulted in a judgment call for young Britney Small. The Hollywood moon was rising higher in the heavens, and they got a call about an illegally parked car blocking the driveway of a residence up near Lake Hollywood. By the time they got there, the car was gone, but since they were there in the Hills, Della took a drive to a lovers’ lane where the cops used to catch teenagers smoking pot. She figured that nowadays kids would be doing meth or ox if they still parked up there. That part of the Hollywood Hills was full of stunted trees and brush that had to be controlled to prevent wildfires. Deer, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, and skunks lived there, feeding on the leavings of nearby human inhabitants.

  Della said, “One time I got a call when a baby deer got hit by a car up here. The fawn was lying on the road, and there was an old motor cop there ahead of me, standing next to his bike and looking at the
animal. The motor cop was one of those dinosaurs whose partners probably have to chew his food for him. One of those old saddle-sore vets that everyone calls Boots when they don’t know his name. And then another two radio cars rolled up. And when I called in what had happened and asked for animal control to come and deal with it, the RTO conferred with somebody and came back saying there were no animal control people available, and told me we were authorized to shoot the animal.”

  “Did you?” Britney asked. “Did you shoot the baby deer?”

  “I looked at that fawn, at the terror and pain in its eyes and I wanted to put it out of its misery,” Della said. “Hollywood Nate was also there, and a unit from Watch Three, and nobody could shoot the fawn, not even the old motor cop, who I figured would just step up and show us what wusses we were. One of the coppers from Watch Three was a real shit magnet who worked gangs in Southeast, down where schoolkids don’t have earthquake drills, they have drive-by drills. Anyway, he’d been in three righteous gunfights down there where he killed a couple of guys, but even he couldn’t shoot the deer. Fortunately, the poor little thing went into shock and died.”

  “I kinda like that story, though,” Britney said.

  “Whadda you like about it?”

  “That the LAPD gunfighters couldn’t shoot a baby deer. Somehow that makes me sorta proud. Know what I mean?”

  Della smiled at her young partner again and said, “Okay, we’re coming up on the lovers’ lane here. It’s a piece of land that goes out a ways. The coppers call it Point Peter Puffer.”

  Then they spotted a car in the darkness and Della switched off her headlights and turned down the radio and let their car drift closer. It was a white Honda Civic, and it was bouncing and rocking like the hydraulic-aided, tricked-out lowriders that parade up and down Ventura Boulevard in the Valley.

  Della said, “They’re not doing dope at the moment, that’s for sure. But maybe they smoked some to prime the pump, and maybe we can find what’s left there in Daddy’s car. Wanna check them out?”