Another said, “We should all just become lawyers. They get paid a lot to lie, even if they have to dress up to do it.”

So it seemed that the Department of Justice, instead of promoting police integrity, had done just the opposite, by making liars out of LAPD street cops who had to live under the consent decree for five years and then had to swallow the demoralizing three-year extension.

During that ponderous roll call, Hollywood Nate was dozing through the consent decree sermon and got surprised when the Oracle popped his head in the door, saying, “Sorry, Lieutenant, can I borrow Weiss for a minute?”

The Oracle didn’t say anything until they were alone on the stairway landing, when he turned to Nate and said, “Your wife is downstairs demanding to speak to the lieutenant. She wants a one-twenty-eight made on you.”

Nate was mystified. “A personnel complaint? Rosie?”

“Do you have any kids?”

“Not yet. We’ve decided to wait.”

“Do you want to save your marriage?”

“Sure. It’s my first, so I still give a shit. And her old man’s got bucks. What’s happened?”

“Then cop out and beg for mercy. Don’t try weasel words, it won’t work.”

“What’s going on, Sarge?”

Hollywood Nate got to see for himself what was going on when he, Rosie, and the Oracle stood in the south parking lot beside Nate’s SUV on that damp and gloomy winter night. Still baffled, Nate handed his keys to the Oracle, who handed them to Rosie, who jumped into the SUV, started it up, and turned on the defroster. As the windows were fogging prior to clearing, she stepped out and pointed triumphantly at what her sleuthing had uncovered. There they were, in the mist on the windshield in front of the passenger seat: oily imprints made by bare toes.

“Wears about a size five,” Rosie said. Then she turned to the Oracle and said, “Nate always did like little spinners. I’m way too zoftig for him.”

When Nate started to speak, the Oracle said, “Shut up, Nate.” Then he turned to Rosie and said, “Mrs. Weiss…”

“Rosie. You can call me Rosie, Sergeant.”

“Rosie. There’s no need to drag the lieutenant into this. I’m sure that you and Nate -”

Interrupting, she said, “I called my dad’s lawyer today while this son of a bitch was sleeping it off. It’s over. Way over. I’m moving everything out of the apartment on Saturday.”

“Rosie,” the Oracle said. “I’m positive that Nate will be very fair when he talks with your lawyer. Your idea of making an official complaint for conduct unbecoming an officer would not be helpful to you. I imagine you want him working and earning money rather than suspended from duty, where he and you would lose money, don’t you?”

She looked at the Oracle and at her husband, who was pale and silent, and she smiled when she saw beads of sweat on Nate’s upper lip. The asshole was sweating on a damp winter night. Rosie Weiss liked that.

“Okay, Sergeant,” she said. “But I don’t want this asshole to set foot in the apartment until I’m all moved out.”

“He’ll sleep in the cot room here at the station,” the Oracle said. “And I’ll detail an officer to make an appointment with you to pick up whatever Nate needs to tide him over until you’re out of the apartment.”

When Rosie Weiss left them in the parking lot that evening, she had one more piece of information to impart to the Oracle. She said, “Anyway, since he got all those muscles in the gym, the only time he can ever get an erection is when he’s looking in the mirror.”

After she got in her car and drove away, Nate finally spoke. He said, “A cop should never marry a Jewish woman, Sarge. Take it from me, she’s a terrorist. It’s code red from the minute the alarm goes off in the morning.”

“She’s got good detective instincts,” the Oracle said. “We could use her on the Job.”

Now, his wife was married to a pediatrician, no longer entitled to alimony, and Nate Weiss was a contented member of the midwatch, taking TV extra work as much as he could, hoping to catch a break that could get him into the Screen Actors Guild. He was sick of saying, “Well, no, I don’t have a SAG card but…”

Hollywood Nate had hoped that 2006 would be his breakthrough year, but with summer almost here, he wasn’t so sure. His reverie ended when he got a painfully vigorous handshake from his new partner, twenty-two-year-old Wesley Drubb, youngest son of a partner in Lawford and Drubb real-estate developers, who had enormous holdings in West Hollywood and Century City. Nate got assigned with the former frat boy who’d dropped out of USC in his senior year “to find himself” and impulsively joined the LAPD, much to the despair of his parents. Wesley had just finished his eighteen months of probation and transferred to Hollywood from West Valley Division.

Nate thought he’d better make the best of this opportunity. It wasn’t often he got to partner with someone rich. Maybe he could cement a friendship and become the kid’s big brother on the Job, maybe persuade him to chat up his old man, Franklin Drubb, about investing in a little indie film that Nate had been trying to put together with another failed actor named Harley Wilkes.

The cops often called their patrol car their “shop” because of the shop number painted on the front doors and roof. This so that each car could be easily identified by an LAPD helicopter, always called an “airship.” When they were settled in their shop and out cruising the streets that Nate liked to cruise no matter which beat he was assigned, the eager kid riding shotgun swiveled his head to the right and said, “That looks like a fifty-one-fifty,” referring to the Welfare and Institutions Code section that defines a mental case.

The guy was a mental case, all right, one of the boulevard’s homeless, the kind that shuffle along Hollywood Boulevard and wander into the many souvenir shops and adult bookstores and tattoo parlors, bothering the vendors at the sidewalk newsstands, refusing to leave until somebody gives them some change or throws them out or calls the cops.

He was known to the police as “Untouchable Al” because he roamed freely and often got warned by cops but was never arrested. Al had a get-out-of-jail-free card that was better than Trombone Teddy’s any old day. This evening he was in a cranky mood, yelling and scaring tourists, causing them to step into the street rather than pass close to him there on the Walk of Fame.

Nate said, “That’s Al. He’s untouchable. Just tell him to get off the street. He will unless he’s feeling extra grumpy.”

Hollywood Nate pulled the black-and-white around the corner onto Las Palmas Avenue, and Wesley Drubb, wanting to show his older partner that he had moxie, jumped out, confronted Al, and said, “Get off the street. Go on, now, you’re disturbing the peace.”

Untouchable Al, who was drunk and feeling very grumpy indeed, said, “Fuck you, you young twerp.”

Wesley Drubb was stunned and turned to look at Nate, who was out of the car, leaning on the roof with his elbows, shaking his head, knowing what was coming.

“He’s having a bad hair day,” Nate said. “A dozen or so are hanging out his nose.”

“We don’t have to take that,” Wesley said to Nate. Then he turned to Al and said, “We don’t have to take that from you.”

Yes, they did. And Al was about to demonstrate why. As soon as Wesley Drubb pulled on his latex gloves and stepped forward, putting his hand on Al’s bony shoulder, the geezer shut his eyes tight and grimaced and groaned and squatted a bit and let it go.

The explosion was so loud and wet that the young cop leaped back three feet. The sulfurous stench struck him at once.

“He’s shitting!” Wesley cried in disbelief. “He’s shitting his pants!”

“I don’t know how he craps on cue like that,” Nate said. “It’s a rare talent, actually. Kind of the ultimate defense against the forces of truth and justice.”

“Gross!” the young cop cried. “He’s shitting! Gross!”