The man said, “War gave me these eyes. War.”
Cautiously, Nate said, “I think we’re gonna say good night to you, soldier. Go home. Right now.”
Nate nodded to his partner and backed toward the police car, but when he got in and closed the door and Wesley got in on the driver’s side and started the engine, the transmission still in park, the man ran to the car and kicked the right rear door with those studded boots, howling like a wolf.
“Goddamn!” Nate yelled, keying the mike and yelling, “Six-X-Seventy-two, officers need help!” He gave the location, then threw open his door and jumped out with his baton, which he lost during the first thirty seconds of the fight.
Wesley jumped from the driver’s side, not removing the keys, not even turning off the engine, ran around the car, and leaped onto the back of the madman who had Nate’s baton with one hand and Nate in a headlock.
All those muscles that Hollywood Nate had found in his gym, that had impressed badge bunnies in the Director’s Chair saloon, weren’t impressing this lunatic one bit. And even when Wesley hurled his 210-pound body onto the guy, he still kept fighting and kicking and trying to bite like a rabid dog.
Wesley tried the Liquid Jesus on him but the OC can was clogged and it created a pepper-spray mist in front of his own face that almost blinded him. Then he tried again but got more on Hollywood Nate than on the suspect, so he gave up and dropped the canister.
And pretty soon they had tussled, tumbled, and rolled across the lawn of a sagging two-story residence belonging to Honduran immigrants, into the side yard, and then clear into the backyard, where Hollywood Nate was starting to panic as he felt his strength waning. And he thought he might have to shoot this fucking lunatic after he felt the guy trying to grab his sidearm.
And while the battle was raging, some of the Eighteenth Street cruisers from another two-story house looked out the window, and a few of them came out to get a better look and root for the guy to kick some LAPD ass. When their pit bulls tried to follow, they leashed them, knowing that lots of other cops would be coming soon.
The dogs seemed to enjoy the fight even more than the crew did and began snarling and barking, and whenever the leather-clad madman growled and kicked at Wesley Drubb, who was administering LAPD-approved baton strikes, the dogs would bark louder. And then Loco Lennie happened on the scene.
Loco Lennie was not a member of Eighteenth Street but he was oh, such a wannabe. He was too young, too stupid, and too impulsive even for the cruisers to use him as a low-level drug delivery boy. Loco Lennie wasn’t watching the fight with the five members of the crew and their crazed dogs. Loco Lennie couldn’t take his eyes off the black-and-white that Wesley Drubb had left in gear, engine running, key in the ignition, in his haste to help Hollywood Nate. And Loco Lennie saw a chance to make a name for himself that would live forever in the minds and hearts of these cruisers who had so far rejected him.
Loco Lennie ran to the police car, jumped in, and took off, yelling, “Viva Eighteenth Street!”
Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb didn’t even know that their shop had been stolen. By now they had the guy pinned against the single-car garage of the ramshackle house, and young Wesley was learning that all of the leg and arm strikes he’d been taught at the academy weren’t worth a shit when battling a powerful guy who was maybe cooked on PCP or just plain psychotic.
And before the first help came screeching around the corner, siren yelping louder than the homie dogs and even louder than this howling mental case who was trying desperately to bite Hollywood Nate, the cop locked his forearm and biceps in a V around the man’s throat. Nate applied all the pressure he could manage to the carotid arteries while Wesley exhausted himself, whacking the guy everywhere from the guy’s wingspan on down to his lower legs with little effect.
Flotsam and Mag, Budgie and B.M. Driscoll, and four officers from Watch 3 all came running to the rescue just as the guy was almost choked out, his brain oxygen starved from the infamous choke hold, the carotid restraint that had killed several people over the decades but had saved the lives of more cops than all the Tasers and beanbag guns and side-handle batons and Liquid Jesus and the rest of the nonlethal weapons in their arsenal put together. A form of nonlethal force that, in this era of DOJ oversight and racial politics and political correctness, was treated exactly the same as an officer-involved shooting. And that would require almost as much investigation and as many reports as if Hollywood Nate had shot the guy in defense of his life with a load of double-aught buckshot.
When it looked as though the situation was in hand, one of the dogs belonging to the cruisers did what guard dogs do, after he saw the cops piling out of their black-and-whites and running in the direction of his homeboys. He sprang forward, breaking free of the leash, and raced directly at B.M. Driscoll, who had barely set foot on the sidewalk. When B.M. Driscoll saw those slobbering jaws and those bared fangs and malevolent eyes coming at him, he bellowed, drew his nine, and fired twice, missing once but then killing the dog instantly with a head shot.
The gunfire seemed to stop all action. Hollywood Nate realized that the maniac was choked out, and he let the guy fall to the ground, unconscious. Wesley Drubb looked toward the street for the first time and said, “Where’s our shop?”
Now that the entertainment had ended, the homies and their still-living dogs turned and retreated to their house without complaint about the unlicensed animal they’d lost. And there was lots of talk among them about how Loco Lennie had pelotas made of stainless steel. Maybe they should reconsider Loco Lennie as a cruiser, they agreed, if he didn’t get himself dusted by some cop who spotted him in the stolen police car.
When Flotsam saw the leather-clad lunatic lying on the ground, he said to Mag, “Let’s do rock-paper-scissors to see who gets the mouth on CPR.”
But as Mag was running to the car to look for her personal CPR mask, the unconscious man started breathing again on his own. He moaned and tried to get up but was quickly handcuffed by Hollywood Nate, who then collapsed beside him, his face bruised and swollen.
It was then that Flotsam noticed something clinging to the guy’s bald head. He shined his light on it and saw “Weiss.” Hollywood Nate’s name tag had been pulled off and was sticking to the guy’s bare scalp.
“Get me a Polaroid!” Flotsam yelled.
By the time the Oracle had arrived and instructed Flotsam and Mag to ride with him and to give their car to Hollywood Nate and Wesley Drubb, the handcuffed man was alert, and he said to Hollywood Nate, “You can only hurt me in a physical state.”
And Nate, who was still trying to get his own breathing back to normal, rolled his aching shoulders and answered, “That’s the only state we live in, you psycho motherfucker.”
The Oracle warned that now they might have two FID teams out there: one on the dog shooting and another because Hollywood Nate had applied the dreaded choke hold. Force Investigation Division would have to be convinced that B.M. Driscoll had acted in fear of great bodily injury and that Hollywood Nate had choked out the madman as a last resort in the immediate defense of a life, namely his own.
“Not one but two FID roll-outs on the same freaking incident,” the Oracle moaned.
Flotsam said sympathetically, “LAPD can’t get enough layers of oversight, Boss. Somebody flipped the pyramid and we’re under the pointy tip. We got more layers than a mafia wedding cake.”
When a plain-wrapper detective unit pulled up in front and parked, the Oracle wondered how FID could have gotten there so fast but then saw that it was only the night-watch detective Compassionate Charlie, as usual experiencing morbid curiosity. He was wearing one of his Taiwanese checked sport coats that made people ask if it was flame retardant. Charlie got out, picked some food from his teeth, and surveyed the scene for one of his sage pronouncements.