Flotsam and Jetsam had listened with interest during roll call, especially about the car, because they had recently noticed a restored Chevrolet Malibu cruising around that area, and a guy who looked Latino was driving it. After noticing the apple-green eye-catcher, they’d discussed how cool it would be to drive a car named after their surfing beach.
When they were not answering calls on that very warm and windless late summer evening, the surfer cops covered every residential street in that vicinity on both sides of Beverly Boulevard. And when the full moon was rising high over Hollywood, they spotted the apple-green Malibu parked on a street that was jammed with other parked cars. Flotsam and Jetsam put their sun-streaked heads together and cooked up a scheme that would require some assistance. Jetsam requested that 6-X-66 meet 6-X-32 in a certain alley off Beverly Boulevard.
When Hollywood Nate and Snuffy Salcedo showed up and the two black-and-whites were parked side by side, Flotsam said, “Post up and keep an eye on that bitchin’ Malibu. The owner of that cherry ride’s gotta be in a house real close to it. And the owner might just be Aguilar. The license plate don’t mean shit. It’s registered to some chick named Johnson in Pomona.”
“Where’re you beach rats going in the meantime?” Nate wanted to know.
Jetsam said, “To collect some noisy junk.” Then Flotsam dropped it into gear and off they went.
Snuffy Salcedo said to Hollywood Nate, “This is stupid. If they’re so sure the car belongs to Aguilar, why don’t they request a stakeout?”
“Because the chances are so remote that it’s Aguilar’s, nobody would do it,” Nate said.
“Then why’re we doing it?” Snuffy said. “We were told just to write down license numbers and locations if we saw a restored car.”
“Based on my experience, it pays to indulge them,” Nate said. “Somehow, Neptune or whoever the surfer god is bestows crazy blessings on those two. Besides, my curiosity is killing me, isn’t yours? Noisy junk?”
When the surfer cops returned to the alley in twenty minutes, they had the backseat of their shop, as well as the trunk, loaded with empty cans of all sizes, along with two battered old metal trash cans.
“What the fuck?” Snuffy Salcedo said when he got a look at their cargo.
“We are stupendously grateful for Chinese restaurants,” Flotsam said. “You hardly ever find metal trash cans these days.”
“And food cans galore,” Jetsam said cheerfully.
Flotsam said to Snuffy Salcedo, “Dude, can you drive like Jimmie Johnson?”
Snuffy looked to Nate in utter puzzlement before he turned and said to Flotsam, “What?”
“They work in mysterious ways, partner,” Nate explained to Snuffy. “Let’s do what they want and see where it goes.”
Flotsam said to Snuffy, “Anyways, dude, try to drive like Jimmie Johnson tonight, okay? We want you to go to the top of the street and come screaming down till you’re almost opposite that pristine machine, and then lock ’em up. All four wheels. We wanna hear that rubber scream like a whore for a hundred-dollar tip.”
“And what will you two be doing in the meantime, pray tell?” Hollywood Nate asked.
Flotsam said, “Me and my pard, we’re gonna be dumping the trash cans full of junk onto the street and, like, making more noise than Chinese fucking New Year.”
“If the guy that owns that Malibu ain’t boning his old lady, he’s gonna run to his ride, to see if it’s in pieces all over the street,” Jetsam explained.
“Even if he is boning his old lady, he’s gonna pull right outta her and run to his ride,” Flotsam said. “He can find a bitch anywheres, but where’s he gonna find a mint Malibu like that one?”
Snuffy looked at Nate again and said, “Know what? On a night this hot, everybody in a no-A/C neighborhood’s got their windows open. Maybe it’s me being back in Hollywood where anything can happen, but this is so loopy I think it might work.”
Ten minutes later, Snuffy Salcedo was parked at the north end of the block, revving the engine of the Crown Vic. When he received a flashlight signal from the other end of the block, he floored it, and the black-and-white roared south until he was twenty yards from where the Malibu was parked and then he stood on the brakes.
The wheels locked up and the car’s rear end started sliding until Snuffy got off the brakes and sped past the Malibu and the waiting surfer cops, each of whom was holding overhead a metal trash can full of junk. Snuffy could hear the explosive crash of cans and other metal before he drove into the alley to conceal the radio car.
Flotsam, Jetsam, and Nate hid between houses and behind cars, and within a minute, people were running out of their houses to see which car had been smashed in the collision. Several car owners scurried to see if they still had fenders intact, but only one man, shirtless and barefoot, ran straight to the Malibu.
He was checking the driver’s side of the car when he was lit by flashlight beams and a tall blond cop said to him, “Dude, I don’t know if you speak English, but if you even fart too loud, I’m gonna blow the eye right outta that rattlesnake.”
A shorter blond cop said to him, “No, go ahead and rabbit. I love the smell of gunsmoke in the evening.”
Snuffy Salcedo came running back from the alley with tobacco juice dripping down his chin as the fugitive was being handcuffed.
Jetsam said, “Read him his rights in Spanish, bro.”
Snuffy Salcedo told Jaime Soto Aguilar in Spanish of his Miranda rights, and when he was finished, the fugitive made one brief comment to Snuffy in Spanish.
“What’d he say?” Flotsam asked.
Snuffy replied, “He said he thinks he’s gonna have a heart attack.”
“Bitchin’!” Flotsam said. “Tell him we never made a cardiac arrest.”
“Do they rehearse this shit?” Snuffy Salcedo asked Hollywood Nate.
“They don’t have to,” said Nate. “They’re in lockstep. I think they were Siamese twins separated at birth and raised apart. Probably by jackals.”
During the ride to Hollywood Station with the fugitive handcuffed in the backseat of their shop, Jetsam said to his partner, “Bro, do you think this is, like, unusual enough to qualify for a pizza from Sergeant Murillo? Or does it have to be more like Hollywood weird? Like, more in the freak-show mold?”
While the surfer cops were locking up first prize for the Hollywood moon award, 6-X-46 was down from the Hollywood Hills, and Della Ravelle was still lecturing her probationer in the ways of women in police work.
As she drove east on Santa Monica Boulevard, Della said, “I can talk a lot about common sense, Britney. It’s a good copper’s most valuable trait. Things’re gonna be a whole lot better for you on this Job than they were for women like me back in the day. When I was a boot, the old guys never got tired of playing little tricks on us. Like when I worked Central, I can remember a time when a couple of OGs had me do a pat-down search on a base-head down on skid row who was wearing spandex. After I patted her down and told them she’s clean, my P3 said, ‘Good job. I’m gonna write a comment card on you.’ Then when I wasn’t looking one of the other OGs, a former SWAT guy who thought he was Mr. Tactical and smoked cigarettes in his teeth instead of his lips, puts his hideout gun on the ground and says, ‘You missed this, rookie. She had it tucked under her crotch.’ ”