“Yes, sir,” the young cop said.
“Goddamnit, Marty,” Nate said, “save that ‘sir’ crap for your real training officer, who’ll probably turn out to be one of those GI junkies who grew up watching TV war movies. Me, I watched Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly musicals. My name’s Nate. Remember?”
“Okay, Nate. Sorry.”
“By the way, you like movies?”
“Yes,… Nate,” Marty said.
“Your old man wouldn’t be rich by any chance, would he?”
“Lord, no,” Marty said.
“Oh, well,” said Nate. “My last rich partner didn’t help my career anyway.”
There was a good crowd on the boulevard, and the young cop turned to Nate and said, “Sir-I mean, Nate, there’s a fifty-one-fifty raising heck over there in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater.”
Without looking, Nate said, “What’s he doing?”
“Waving his arms around and yelling at people.”
“In Hollywood, that’s just called communication,” Nate said. “Nowadays it’s hard to tell ordinary boulevard lunatics from people with headsets talking on cells.” But then he glanced toward the famous theater, saw who it was, and said, “Uh-oh. That guy’s a known troublemaker. Maybe we should talk to him.”
Nate pulled the car into a red zone and said to his partner, “Marty, on this one, you be contact and I’ll be cover. I’m gonna stay by the car here and see how you handle him. Think you can deal with it?”
“For sure, Nate,” Marty said with enthusiasm, getting out of the car, collecting his baton, and putting on latex gloves.
The wild man waving his arms saw the young cop coming his way and stopped yelling. He planted his feet and waited.
Young Marty Shaw remembered from academy training that it’s usually better to address mental cases in personal terms, so he turned around for a moment and said to Nate, “Do you remember his name, by chance?”
“Not his full name,” said Hollywood Nate. “But they call him Al. Untouchable Al.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective sergeant, is the New York Times bestselling author of sixteen prior works of fiction and nonfiction, many of which have been adapted for the big and small screen, including The Onion Field and The Choirboys. He is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and lives in Southern California.
