All in all, he was wrecking the captain’s dinner of green corn tamales, and his boss wished it were possible to get drunk on virgin margaritas so this eager beaver could pass out on the table or something.
After their meal break, Lieutenant O’Reilly thanked the captain excessively for buying him the tamales and they said their good-byes outside El Cholo’s front entrance. And then Lieutenant O’Reilly walked to his car, which he’d had to park on Eleventh Street just east of Western Avenue because of the crowded restaurant parking lot. He had his keys in his hand, preparing to unlock the door, when he saw that he couldn’t.
The front door on the driver’s side was gone. He stopped and stared at the inside of his car in disbelief, only to discover that the door on the passenger side was also missing. The bolts and hinges on each side had been attacked and the doors… were… gone.
Lieutenant O’Reilly put in a code 2 call for a patrol unit to assist, and the first to arrive was 6-X-32. The surfer cops bailed out and ran to their watch commander with gusto.
“Your doors ain’t here, Lieutenant!” Flotsam cried. “What happened?”
“How the hell would I know what happened?” Lieutenant O’Reilly said. “I can’t believe this!”
“Those car strippers stop at nothing!” Jetsam cried. “Musta been those rotten little Eighteenth Streeters.”
Two other midwatch units arrived very fast, and Snuffy Salcedo got out of the car and started snapping photos of the watch commander’s car with his camera phone.
“Stop that!” Lieutenant O’Reilly yelled at him. “Broadcast a code four. We’ve got enough people here. I don’t want anyone else seeing this goddamn travesty.”
While Hollywood Nate was broadcasting a code 4, indicating that there was sufficient help at the scene, Lieutenant O’Reilly began searching the street and sidewalk with his flashlight, looking for evidence of the vandals’ identity. He knew that this was no ordinary crime of malicious mischief, and he suspected that slackers from Hollywood Station had done this to humilate him. The midwatch cops at the scene were fascinated, watching the way Lieutenant O’Reilly circled the wounded police vehicle like a predator wary of dangerous prey. His eyes were bulging and his face looked like a tomato about to explode.
Flotsam said sotto to Snuffy Salcedo, “Dude, I think the lieutenant’s gone to dizzyland. This here outrage should not go unpunished.”
Jetsam said sotto to Snuffy Salcedo, “Bro, these are perilous times we live in. Nobody’s safe no more.”
Snuffy Salcedo listened to the surfer cops and whispered something to Hollywood Nate, something he’d asked before. “Are you telling me these two don’t rehearse this shit?”
“Maybe some of it,” Nate conceded in a whisper of his own. “They’re sort of the Gilbert and Sullivan of Hollywood Station. They write and sometimes star in their little asphalt operettas.”
“This looks to me like somebody’s idea of a prank!” Lieutenant O’Reilly said after his search for evidence turned up nothing. “I want this unit taken to the parking lot and dusted for prints. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Let’s glove up, partner,” Flotsam said, taking latex gloves from his pocket.
“You won’t need to,” Lieutenant O’Reilly said to Jetsam. “I want you to drive me to the station right this minute.”
“Roger that, sir,” Jetsam said.
“And you drive my unit in,” Lieutenant O’Reilly said to Flotsam, handing him the keys. “Book anything you find in my car that even remotely might be evidence. A matchstick, a chewing gum wrapper, anything. I want the bastards that did this, and I’m going to get them.”
“I’m on it, sir,” Flotsam said. “I’ll do a diligent search for clues. We sure wouldn’t want the doors to turn up at a swap meet or maybe in an L.A. Times story.”
Jetsam opened the passenger door on 6-X-32’s shop for the watch commander to get in, but Lieutenant O’Reilly paused and showed all present a grimace of a smile. He probably thought it showed self-confidence and was intimidating, but Hollywood Nate thought it looked like the other contenders’ smiles on the night they lost the Oscar to Kate Winslet.
When Jetsam got behind the wheel, he said, “If this does happen to get in the news, don’t let it embarrass you, Lieutenant. It’s not your fault. This is fucking Hollywood.”
Flotsam enjoyed driving a car with no front doors, and he decided to take Hollywood Boulevard so that he could cruise past Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and give the tourists a show. When he was stopped for traffic directly in front of Grauman’s forecourt, a clutch of tourists with cameras ran to the curb and started snapping photos of the doorless police car.
Flotsam waved and yelled, “Tough town! Last week somebody stole my front fenders!”
TWENTY-FOUR
This was the day of reckoning as far as Raleigh Dibble was concerned. He did everything he could to make time pass faster. He dusted and vacuumed the master suite for Leona Brueger’s return and even washed her windows. That involved some precarious labor on a tall stepladder. He drove his own car to the markets where his employer had charge accounts and made sure that there was enough fresh produce, chicken, and fish to provide meals for several days in case she was too tired to dine out.
When he was finished with chores, he called Cedars-Sinai and received a report on Marty Brueger. His condition was not as serious as had been thought, and it was hoped that the old man could soon be moved to a managed-care facility. Raleigh was living in such a state of fear for his own plight that he hadn’t had time to pity Marty Brueger. But now Raleigh thought that if Marty Brueger was moved to a less-structured facility, he would take the poor old geezer some of his favorite Irish whiskey. It pleased him to be concerned with someone else for a change.
When Raleigh was finished with everything he could think of to do, he found himself wondering if he would even be there to prepare a homecoming meal for her or if he would be in jail. Or would he be dead? He sat in his bedroom and stared at Leona Brueger’s nickel-plated revolver. One thing he knew for sure, for the first time he was capable of violence, at least as far as Nigel Wickland was concerned. Nobody in his life had ever harmed him so grievously. Regardless of the consequences, he was not going to let that arrogant son of a bitch get away with it. He knew exactly what he was going to do.
Raleigh planned on going to the Wickland Gallery at 4 P.M., but not to enter. He could watch the gallery entrance from the coffee shop across the street to know if Nigel left. Just before the gallery’s closing time of 5 P.M., Raleigh was going to enter, demand to see Nigel, and strongly suggest to him that he send Ruth home because a private talk was essential and unavoidable. And of course Nigel would be angry that Raleigh had come, but when they were alone, the anger would turn into something else. Mr. Nigel Wickland, the master schemer and manipulator, was going to experience a bit of what Raleigh Dibble had been living with ever since he’d been insane enough to join the gallery owner’s plot. Nigel Wickland was going to experience fear! Every time Raleigh looked at the nickel-plated revolver lying on his bed, it made his palms sweat.