Then he saw more heads bobbing their way through the crowd a block away, and he knew that some cops were running his way. Short-haired bobbing heads were chasing a long-haired bobbing head like a zany board game on Hollywood Boulevard, with Gil Ponce leaping high to see over the crowds, hoping the eastbound bobbing heads would meet the westbound bobbing head and gobble him up like Pac-Man. But suddenly, the whippet in flip-flops was gone.
The decision that the thief made to zip around the corner, running south on Orange Drive, turned out to be unwise. Because after following the foot pursuit on the radio, several cops were fanning out and trying to guess where the thief would run, and one had figured correctly that it would be through the parking garage.
Some of the foot pursuit information was broadcast by Cat Song, her shop still trapped in traffic while she boiled in frustration, cursing everything, including tourism in general. Yet the more her siren howled and her light bar winked, the more confused the out-of-town motorists became, and the gridlock grew more impenetrable. The other foot pursuit information came from five cops who’d parked west of the Chinese Theatre and were broadcasting on their rovers while running through the crowds.
The one copper who had everything doped out perfectly was Gert Von Braun. There were lights all over the parking structure, but there were dark places where a wide person dressed in a navy blue uniform could hide. She was behind a concrete wall when he ran to the structure, puffing and panting, looking behind himself, the purse in his hand now.
He never slowed and never saw Officer Von Braun holding her PR-24 baton in a rising-sun samurai pose before she stepped out from the shadows and whirled in a 360-degree whip with amazing agility for a woman in a size 44 Sam Browne. She was holding her baton in a Barry Bonds two-handed baseball grip when she swung for the bleacher seats. The baton struck the purse snatcher across the chest, and he might as well have slammed into the side of a bus. His right flip-flop continued hurtling forward, along with his left eye. It popped from its socket and rolled, clicking across the pavement, scooting off the curb, and coming to rest against the tire of an illegally parked car.
The first to arrive at the scene of arrest was Gil Ponce. The purse snatcher was proned out, hands cuffed behind his back, making creaking raspy sounds as he sucked at the air but couldn’t get enough of it. His empty eye socket glistened in the neon glow from the boulevard.
Gert Von Braun handed the purse to Gil Ponce, who was still wearing the latex gloves he’d donned when asked to take charge of the putrid drunk. Gil looped the purse strap over his arm and was putting his baton back in the ring when the surfer cops pulled to the curb and parked.
The surfers alighted from their shop, and Flotsam looked at Gil, saying, “You need somebody to accessorize you, dude. That purse does not match your shoes and gloves.”
Gil quickly peeled off the gloves and stuffed them in his pocket, and Jetsam removed the cap and straw from a cup of Gatorade he’d been drinking and said, “Here, bro. Rehydrate before you pass out.”
Gil took a gulp of Gatorade and handed it back to Jetsam while Flotsam and Gert Von Braun, each holding an arm, lifted the purse snatcher to his feet.
“My eye!” he said, wheezing. “I lost my goddamn eye!”
Flotsam shined his flashlight beam on the thief’s face and said, “You did lose it, dude. There’s just a hole in your face now. Stuff it with toilet paper before you get to the slam or those jailhouse meat packers will add a whole new meaning to eye-fucking.”
“Do you know what that eye cost!” the thief yelled, his baggy jeans and boxers now down so low his penis was exposed.
Taking out her handcuff key, Gert Von Braun uncuffed his hands, saying, “You missed a belt loop. In fact, you missed the whole belt. Do me a favor, put that thing away while we look for your eye.”
Shining his flashlight beam around the pavement, Gil Ponce said, “There it is. Under the tire of that car. Gnarly!”
“Pick it up, will ya?” the purse snatcher said to Jetsam, who was sitting on the fender of his shop, looking down at the glass eyeball, sipping his Gatorade.
“I ain’t picking up nobody’s eyeball,” Jetsam said. “You can pick up your own fucking eyeball, bro.”
“Get gloved up again, boy,” Flotsam said to Gil Ponce. “And pick it up. Every man’s got a right to his own eyeball.”
“Why did I transfer to this lunatic division?” Gert Von Braun asked rhetorically and strode across the sidewalk. “There’s not a real man on the midwatch.”
And she squatted, shined her light under the car, picked up the glass eyeball, ungloved, and then strode over to Jetsam and dunked the dirty eyeball into the surfer’s drink. And swished it around.
“My Gatorade!” Jetsam cried in disbelief to all present. “She dunked an eyeball in my Gatorade!”
“Girlie men,” Gert Von Braun muttered, and she handed the eyeball to the purse snatcher, saying, “Stick this in your head, dude.”
There were two civilians watching the action from a hundred feet away. One was Leonard Stilwell, who then had decided that purse picking wasn’t for him. Along with him was a young guy who looked like a transient but was a stringer who wrote pieces for the underground rags. The stringer was thinking he might submit this piece to the editors at the L.A. Times, who were always harping about LAPD’s “warrior cop” ethos. He’d already decided on his headline: “The Eyes Have It with Warrior Cops.”
Gert Von Braun said to Gil Ponce, “I’ll see you at the station.”
“I think maybe there is one real man on the midwatch,” Flotsam said, watching Gert get in her shop. “At least we didn’t get spit at.”
Finally having negotiated her way through the traffic on Hollywood Boulevard, Cat Song double-parked across from the parking structure and trotted over to the group of cops, where she saw the purse snatcher wipe something on the front of his T-shirt and then use both hands to do something to his face.
But her mind was on her young boot, who had nearly gotten himself killed, and she was very mad when she pulled Gil Ponce aside and said quietly, “You almost got pancaked by that head-up-ass tourist in the Ford. You were very lucky. Dumb and lucky.”
“I misjudged his speed,” Gil Ponce said.
“Listen, man of steel,” she said, “you can play Russian roulette, date Phil Spector, or otherwise self-destruct on your own time, but not on mine. There’s no place for a kamikaze kid in my shop.”
“I’m sorry, Cat,” Gil said. “But we got him. We got the guy!”
Jetsam walked over to Cat Song and pointed at Gert Von Braun driving away. “She dunked an eyeball in my Gatorade!” he said. “And swished it around!”
“What?” said Cat Song.
SEVEN
THE NEXT DAY was one where all the watches had to listen to roll call training prepared by the LAPD’s Behavioral Science Services about recognizing suicidal behaviors. The California Highway Patrol, which was a much smaller law enforcement agency than the LAPD, had been experiencing a frightening suicide cluster. Eight of their officers of both genders had committed suicide in the prior year alone, the rate being five times higher than the national average for law enforcement. Suicide was a subject that cops did not wish to talk about. It was disturbing to think about and unnatural that far more cops murder themselves than are murdered by criminals. And that if they stay on the Job long enough, they will have worked with or around some cop who does it.
They preferred to treat it much like others in high-risk jobs treat death, the way fighter pilots treat the deaths of colleagues by blaming nearly all air crashes on pilot errors that they themselves would not have made.