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.”