“I don’t know. I just feel…different now.”
“Sure, you do,” Cat said. “You’re supposed to. You took a life-through no fault of your own. He made the choice, not you. I was there, boy. I heard you yelling at him to put his hands on his head and get down and prone out. I heard it!”
Gil Ponce said, “I don’t like the other guys slapping me on the back and calling me a gunfighter. I don’t like that.”
“Screw them too!” Cat said. “Macho dipshits. None of them ever fired their weapons outside the pistol range. Those that have wouldn’t go around patting your ass over it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want anyone else to know that you and me talked about this,” Gil said.
“That’s just your Hispanic machismo,” Cat said.
“I’m not really Hispanic,” he said.
“Let’s not go over that again,” she said. “Now, listen to me, partner, I don’t know how to dial you in except to keep saying you did exactly what any copper woulda done and shoulda done at that moment in that place. And I’d hate to think that my safety could be jeopardized from now on because you’re gun-shy.”
He said, “Cat, I don’t want you-”
“Lemme tell you a true story,” she said, interrupting him. “Five years ago, I had a partner for two months. A nice guy. We were working Watch three. He married a woman with four kids who was a peace activist, and pretty soon he decided to resign from the Department. Said he wanted to go into a line of work where he’d never have to use violence on anybody. And on the last day we worked together, he made a little confession to me. Because of his wife’s haranguing, he hadn’t loaded a round in his nine since before we started working together. It’s the closest I ever came to pulling my baton and beating another cop right into the ground.”
“Why’re you telling me this, Cat?” Gil asked.
“Did you clean your nine after the other night?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you reload it?”
“Of course.”
“Then I feel safe. Because this is all about me, not about you. I’ve got a two-year-old at home who needs his momma. I’ve got a good copper here with a loaded nine who’s got my back. So I feel safe. End of story. Any questions?”
After a moment of contemplation, Gil Ponce said, “Thanks, Cat.”
“For what?” she said.
Gil Ponce paused, then said, “For the Thai dinner, of course. It was great.”
“Don’t mention it,” Cat Song said.
There wasn’t any parking for blocks around the Leopard Lounge at 11:15 on a soft summer night like this one, when a Hollywood moon brought hordes of people out for revelry on the boulevards. Gil parked their black-and-white in a red zone on Sunset Boulevard and they walked south to the source of the call, a large apartment building with parking spaces in front.
The person reporting was a well-coiffed, well-dressed elderly woman who answered the door at the manager’s office and said with a Russian accent, “I’m Mrs. Vronsky. I’m the one who called.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gil said.
“At this time of night I should be in bed, asleep,” she said, “but if I go to sleep, I’ll get woke up when my tenants come home and can’t park. A man just pulled into space number two, and when I yelled at him, he said something ugly to me. Then after I called for you, he drove away.”
“Then there’s nobody for us to cite at the moment,” Cat said. “Call us if it happens again.”
“Do you know Officer Ramstead?” Mrs. Vronsky said. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“Community Relations Office?” Cat said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Mrs. Vronsky said. “He often comes by in the daytime and helps me with the parking problems. It’s all because of the nightclub, you know.”
“Yes,” Cat said, “we sympathize.”
“Officer Ramstead is a very kind man and he likes my homemade piroshki,” the old woman said. “If I had some, I’d invite you in and pour you some tea, and you could taste it.”
“Some other time,” Cat said, giving Gil a look that said, Lonely old lady.
“Oh, look!” Mrs. Vronsky said. “Another one.”
Sure enough, a four-year-old white Corvette that had been cruising slowly along the street, looking for parking, had wheeled into one of the vacant spaces in front of the apartment building. The driver of the car turned out the headlights but did not get out.
“We’ll check this one,” Cat said, and both cops walked out to the front of the building.
“Come back when I have some piroshki!” Mrs. Vronsky called after them.
Gil Ponce was surprised to find a young woman sitting in the car when he walked up on the driver’s side. A beautiful young woman who looked to be of mixed race, with dark Asian eyes. She jumped when he tapped on her window with his flashlight.
She lowered the window and said, “Yes, Officer?” Then a beam shone along her dashboard and she saw Cat at the passenger window.
“Do you live here, ma’am?” Gil said.
“No, I don’t,” she said. “Is there a problem?”
“You’re parking on private property in a resident’s parking space,” Gil said, thinking that this girl was smokin’ hot!
She blinked, smiled, and said, “But Officer, I’m not parking. I just stopped here because there’s no place on the street. I’m waiting for a car to leave a parking space at the Leopard Lounge. I work there.”
“May I see your driver’s license and registration?”
Jasmine looked in her purse, retrieved her wallet, opened it, and said, “Oh, crap! Today I bought some underwear at Victoria’s Secret and paid by credit card. The girl asked for my driver’s license too. I must’ve left my license and my Visa!”
“How about your registration?”
She handed it to Gil Ponce, who shined his light on it and said, “Jasmine McVicker.”
“Yes,” she said, drumming nervously on the steering wheel, looking at her watch. It was 11:25 P.M.
“Do you have anything else that proves you’re Jasmine McVicker?” Gil asked.
She said, “I only have the one credit card. Look, Officer, you can walk across the street to the Leopard Lounge and anybody’ll tell you I work there.”
Gil looked at Cat over the roof of the ’vette, and Cat gave a shrug that said, Your call.
The fact was, young Gil Ponce wanted to go inside the Leopard Lounge and see what an upscale titty bar looked like. He said, “Let’s find a place to park your car and see if you’re who you say you are. If you are, I’ll give you a warning for driving without a license but no ticket. Fair enough?”
Just then, Jasmine’s cell phone rang and she grabbed it from her purse. Margot’s voice came on in a whisper, saying, “Showtime.”
Quickly Jasmine said, “I’ll be delayed. A very nice police officer has detained me for not having my driver’s license.”
“Goddamnit!” Margot whispered. “Get rid of him!”
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Jasmine said, clicking off.
To Gil she said, “Where do I park?”
“Right up at the corner, in the red zone,” Gil said. “My partner can watch your car so you don’t get a ticket while you and me run inside for a minute.”
“But then I’ll have to come back out and move my car to some legal place before I can go back in again! I have to see one of the other dancers about something important and I’m late!”
“Better than getting a traffic citation, isn’t it?” Gil said. Then he added, “Are you really a dancer?”
Jasmine was desperate. If there hadn’t been a woman cop with him, she’d have given him her address and offered him a late date. Anything to give her fifteen minutes of goddamn parking so she could do what she had to do!
“Okay, okay!” she said. “But let’s just leave my car here for two minutes and run across the street. Please, Officer, it’ll save time!”
Gil shrugged at Cat, who gave a nod, having figured this one out. Cat had pumped up her young boot’s sagging morale to the point where he wanted to stroll into the topless bar with this hottie and check out the other flesh onstage. And who knows? Maybe get Jasmine’s phone number. They lose their innocence fast, these male rookies, Cat Song thought.