Then the catch in her voice made her pause again, and she said, “I’m sorry. I’m babbling. I’ve gotta get some sleep. Good-bye, Professor.”
As she gathered her purse and books, he held up his class folder, opened it, and pointed to her name, along with the grade he’d given her presentation when he’d sat there behind her, when she’d thought he wasn’t listening. It was an A-plus.
“Good-bye, Detective McCrea,” he said. “Take care in Gotham City.”
Andi McCrea was driving back to Hollywood Division (she’d never get used to calling it Hollywood Area, as it was supposed to be called these days but which most of the street cops ignored) to assure herself that all the reports from last night’s murder-suicide were complete. She was a D2 in one of the three homicide teams, but they were so shorthanded at Hollywood Station that she had nobody else around today who could help with the reports from her current cases, not even the one that had solved itself like the murder-suicide of the night before.
She decided to send an FTD bouquet to Professor Anglund for the A-plus that guaranteed her the Dean’s List. That old socialist was okay after all, she thought, scribbling a note saying “flowers” after she wheeled into the Hollywood Station south parking lot in her Volvo sedan.
The station parking lots were more or less adequate for the time being, considering how many patrol units, plain-wrap detectives units, and private cars had to park there. If they were ever brought up to strength, they’d have to build a parking structure, but she knew that it wasn’t likely that the LAPD would ever be brought up to strength. And when would the city pop for money to build a parking structure when street cops citywide were complaining about the shortage of equipment like digital cameras and batteries for rifle lights, shotgun lights, and even flashlights. They never seemed to have pry bars or hooks or rams when it was time to take down a door. They never seemed to have anything when it was needed.
Andi McCrea was bone-weary and not just because she had not slept since yesterday morning. Hollywood Division’s workload called for fifty detectives, but half that many were doing the job, or trying to do it, and these days she was always mentally tired. As she trudged toward the back door of Hollywood Station, she couldn’t find her ring of keys buried in the clutter of her purse, gave up, and walked to the front door, on Wilcox Avenue.
The building itself was a typical municipal shoe box with a brick facade the sole enhancement, obsolete by the time it was finished. Four hundred souls were crammed inside a rabbit warren of tiny spaces. Even one of the detectives’ interview rooms had to be used for storage.
By habit, she walked around the stars on the pavement in front of the station without stepping on them. There was nothing like them at other LAPD stations, and they were exactly like the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame except that the names embedded in the marble were not the names of movie stars. There were seven names, all belonging to officers from Hollywood Station who had been killed on duty. Among them were Robert J. Coté, shot and killed by a robber, Russell L. Kuster, gunned down in a Hungarian restaurant by a deranged customer, Charles D. Heim, shot to death during a drug arrest, and Ian J. Campbell, kidnapped by robbers and murdered in an onion field.
The wall plaque said “To Those Who Stood Their Ground When in Harm’s Way.”
Hollywood Station was also different from any other in the LAPD by virtue of the interior wall hangings. There were one-sheet movie posters hanging in various places in the station, some but not all from cop movies based in Los Angeles. A police station decorated with movie posters let people know exactly where they were.
Andi was passed in the corridor leading to the detective squad room by two young patrol officers on their way out. Although there were several older cops working patrol, Hollywood Division officers tended to be young, as though the brass downtown considered Hollywood a training area, and perhaps they did.
The short Japanese American female officer she knew as Mag something said hi to Andi.
The tall black male officer whose name she didn’t know said more formally, “Afternoon, Detective.”
Six-X-Sixty-six had been asked by the vice sergeant to pop into a few of the adult bookstores to make sure there weren’t lewd-conduct violations taking place in the makeshift video rooms. A pair of Hollywood Station blue suits making unscheduled visits went a long way toward convincing the termites to clean up their act, the vice sergeant had told them. Mag Takara, an athletic twenty-six-year-old, and the shortest officer at Hollywood Station, was partnered in 6-X-66 with Benny Brewster, age twenty-five, from southeast L.A., who was one of Hollywood’s tallest officers.
One morning last month, the Oracle had spotted a clutch of male cops in the parking lot after roll call convulsing in giggles at Mag Takara, who, after putting her overloaded war bag into the trunk, couldn’t close the lid because it was sprung and yawned open out of reach.
Mag’s war bag was on wheels, jammed with helmet and gear. She had also been carrying a Taser, an extra canister of pepper spray, a beanbag shotgun, a pod (handheld MDT computer), her jacket, a bag of reports, a flashlight, a side-handle baton as well as a retractable steel baton, and the real we-mean-business shotgun loaded with double-aught buck that would be locked in the rack inside the car. She was so short she had to go around to the rear window of the patrol car and close the trunk by walking her hands along the length of the deck lid until it clicked shut.
The Oracle watched her for a moment and heard the loudest of the cops tossing out lines to the others like, “It’s a little nippy, wouldn’t you say? A teeny little nippy.”
The Oracle said to the jokester, “Bonelli, her great-grandparents ran a hotel on First Street in little Tokyo when yours were still eating garlic in Palermo. So spare us the ethnic wisecracks, okay?”
Bonelli said, “Sorry, Sarge.”
While the cops were all walking to their patrol cars, the Oracle said, “I gotta balance that kid out.” And he’d assigned Benny Brewster to partner with Mag for the deployment period to see how they got along. And so far, so good, except that Benny Brewster had a cultural hangup about adult bookstores when it came to gay porn.
“Those sissies creep me out,” he said to Mag. “Some of the gangstas in Compton would cap their ass, they saw the stuff we see all over Hollywood” is how he explained it.
But Mag told him she didn’t give a shit if the fuck flicks were gay or straight, it was all revolting. One of her former cop boyfriends had tried to light her fire a couple of times by showing her porn videos in his apartment after dinner, but it seemed to her that act two of all those stories consisted of jizz shots in a girl’s face, and how that could excite anybody was way beyond her.
Despite his hangup about gay men, Benny seemed to her like a dedicated officer, never badge-heavy, never manhandling anybody who didn’t need it, whether gay or straight, so she had no complaints. And it was very comforting for Mag when Benny was standing behind her, eye-fucking some of those maggots who liked to challenge little cops, especially little female cops.
They met Mr. Potato Head in the first porn shop they checked out. It was on Western Avenue, a dingier place than most, with a few peep rooms where guys could look at video and jerk off with the door locked, but this one had a makeshift theater, a larger room with three rows of plastic chairs posing as theater seats, and a large screen along with a quality projector hanging from the ceiling.
The theater was curtained off by heavy black drapes and there was no lighting inside, except for what came from the screen. The occasional visit from uniformed cops was supposed to discourage the viewers from masturbating in public, whether alone or in tandem, while they watched two or three or five guys porking whatever got in front of them. To background hip-hop lyrics about rape and sodomy.