“Goddamnit, Olive!”
“What’d I do, Farley?” she asked, running a few steps toward him from her lookout position on the corner.
He couldn’t think of what to say she’d done wrong, but he always yelled at her for something when life fucked him over, which was most of the time, so he said, “You ain’t watching the streets. You’re standing here talking is what.”
“That’s because you said ‘Goddamnit, Olive,’” she explained. “So that’s why I -”
“Get back to the fucking corner!” he said, dropping the mousetrap into the blue mailbox.
Try as he might, he couldn’t hook the glue trap onto the thick envelope, but after giving up on it, he did manage to sweep up several letters and even a fairly heavy ten-by-twelve-inch envelope that was nearly as thick as the one he couldn’t catch. He tried the duct tape, but it didn’t work any better than the mousetrap.
He squeezed the large envelope and said, “Looks like a movie script. Like we need a goddamn movie script.”
“What, Farley?” Olive said, running over to him again.
“You can have this one, Olive,” Farley said, handing her the envelope. “You’re the future movie star around here.”
Farley tucked the mail under Olive’s baggy shirt and inside her jeans in case the cops stopped them. He knew the cops would bust him right along with her but he figured he’d have a better shot at a plea bargain if they didn’t actually find any evidence on his person. He was pretty sure that Olive wouldn’t snitch him off and would go ahead and take the rap. Especially if he promised that her bed in the house would be there when she got out. Where else did she have to go?
They walked right past one of the old homeless Hollywood street people when they rounded the corner by the car. He scared the shit out of Farley when he stepped out of the shadows and said, “Got any spare change, Mister?”
Farley reached into his pocket, took out an empty hand and said to Teddy, “April Fool, shitbag. Now get the fuck outta my face.”
Teddy watched them walk to an old blue Pinto, open the doors, and get in. He watched the guy turn on the lights and start the engine. He stared at the license plate for a minute and said the number aloud. Then he repeated it. He knew he could remember it long enough to borrow a pencil from somebody and write it down. The next time a cop rousted him for being drunk in public or panhandling or pissing in somebody’s storefront, maybe he could use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
THREE
THERE WERE HAPPIER partners than the pair in 6-X-76 on Sunday of that May weekend. Fausto Gamboa, one of the most senior patrol officers at Hollywood Station, had long since surrendered his P3 status, needing a break from being a training officer to rookies still on probation. He had been happily working as a P2 with another Hollywood old-timer named Ron LeCroix, who was at home healing up from painful hemorrhoid surgery that he’d avoided too long and was probably just going to retire.
Fausto was always being mistaken for a Hawaiian or Samoan. Though the Vietnam veteran wasn’t tall, only five foot nine, he was very big. The bridge of his nose had been flattened in teenage street fights, and his wrists, hands, and shoulders belonged on a guy tall enough to easily dunk a basketball. His legs were so massive he probably could have dunked one if he’d uncoiled those calf and thigh muscles in a vertical leap. His wavy hair was steel-gray and his face was lined and saddle leather-brown, as though he’d spent years picking cotton and grapes in the Central Valley as his father had done after arriving in California with a truckload of other illegal Mexican immigrants. Fausto had never set eyes on a cotton crop but somehow had inherited his father’s weathered face.
Fausto was in a particularly foul mood lately, sick and tired of telling every cop at Hollywood Station how he’d lost in court to Darth Vader. The story of that loss had traveled fast on the concrete jungle wireless.
It wasn’t every day that you get to write Darth Vader a ticket, even in Hollywood, and everyone agreed it could only happen there. Fausto Gamboa and his partner Ron LeCroix had been on patrol on an uneventful early evening when they got a call on their MDT computer that Darth Vader was exposing himself near the corner of Hollywood and Highland. They drove to that location and spotted the man in black cycling down Hollywood Boulevard on an old Schwinn three-speed bike. But there was often more than one Darth Vader hanging around Grauman’s, Darths of different ethnicity. This one was a diminutive black Darth Vader.
They weren’t sure they had the right Darth until they saw what had obviously prompted the call. Darth wasn’t wearing his black tights under his black shorts that evening, and his manhood was dangling off the front of the bike saddle. A motorist had spotted the exposed trekker’s meat and had called the cops.
Fausto was driving and he pulled the car behind Darth Vader and tooted the horn, which had no effect in slowing down the cyclist. He tooted again. Same result. Then he turned on the siren and blasted him. Twice. No response.
“Fuck this,” Ron LeCroix said. “Pull beside him.”
When Fausto drew up next to the cyclist, his partner leaned out the window and got Darth’s attention by waving him to the curb. Once there, Darth put down the kickstand, got off the bike, and took off his mask and helmet. Then they saw why their attempts to stop him had been ineffective. He was wearing a headset and listening to music.
It was Fausto’s turn to write a ticket, so he got out the book and took Darth’s ID.
Darth Vader, aka Henry Louis Mossman, said, “Wait a minute here. Why you writing me?”
“It’s a vehicle code violation to operate a bike on the streets wearing a headset,” Fausto said. “And in the future, I’d advise you to wear underwear or tights under those short shorts.”
“Ain’t this some shit?” Darth Vader said.
“You couldn’t even hear our siren,” Fausto said to the littlest Darth.
“Bullshit!” Darth said. “I’ll see you in court, gud-damnit! This is a humbug!”
“Up to you.” Fausto finished writing the ticket.
When the two cops got back in their car that evening and resumed patrol, Fausto said to Ron LeCroix, “That little panhandler will never take me to court. He’ll tear up the ticket, and when it goes to warrant, we’ll be throwing his ass in the slam.”
Fausto Gamboa didn’t know Darth Vader.
After several weeks had passed, Fausto found himself in traffic court on Hill Street in downtown L.A. with about a hundred other cops and as many miscreants awaiting their turn before the judge.
Before his case was called, Fausto turned to a cop in uniform next to him and said, “My guy’s a loony-tune panhandler. He’ll never show up.”
Fausto Gamboa didn’t know Darth Vader.
Not only did he show up, but he showed up in costume, this time wearing black tights under the short shorts. All courtroom business came to a standstill when he entered after his name was called. And the sleepy-eyed judge perked up a bit. In fact, everyone in the courtroom-cops, scofflaws, court clerk, even the bailiff-was watching with interest.
Officer Fausto Gamboa, standing before the bench as is the custom in traffic court, told his story of how he’d gotten the call, spotted Darth Vader, and realized that Darth didn’t know his unit was waving in the breeze. And that he couldn’t be made to pull over because he was wearing a headset and listening to music, which the cops discovered after they finally stopped the spaceman.
When it was Darth’s turn, he removed the helmet and mask, displaying the headset that he said he wore on the day in question. He did a recitation of the vehicle code section that prohibits the wearing of a headset while operating a bike on city streets.
Then he said, “Your Honor, I would like the court to observe that this headset contains only one earpiece. The vehicle code section clearly refers to both ears being blocked. This officer did not know the vehicle code section then and he don’t know it now. The fact is, I did hear the officer’s horn and siren but I did not think that it was for me. I wasn’t doing nothing illegal, so why should I get all goosey and pull over jist because I hear a siren?”