Nate said, “The skinny one is Trombone Teddy. Used to be a hot-licks jazzman a truckload of whiskey ago. The real skinny one I’ve seen around for years, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him.”

The real skinny one, a stick of a man of indeterminate age but probably younger than Trombone Teddy, wore a filthy black fedora and a filthier green necktie over an even filthier gray shirt and colorless pants. He wore what used to be leather shoes but were now mostly wraps of duct tape, and he spent most evenings shuffling along the boulevard raving at whoever didn’t cross his palm with a buck or two.

It was hardly worth worrying about who would be contact and who would be cover with these two derelicts, and Hollywood Nate just wanted to get it over with, so he waded in and said, “Jesus, Teddy, what the hell’re you doing fighting on Hollywood Boulevard?”

“It’s him, Officer,” Teddy said, still panting from exertion. “He started it.”

“Fuck you!” his antagonist said with the addled look these guys get from sucking on those short dogs of cheap port.

“Stay real,” Nate said, looking at the guy and at his shopping cart crammed with odds and ends, bits and bobs. There was no way he wanted to bust this guy and deal with booking all that junk.

Wesley said to the skinniest geezer, “What’s your name?”

“What’s it to ya?”

“Don’t make us arrest you,” Nate said. “Just answer the officer.”

“Filmore U. Bracken.”

Trying a positive approach, Wesley smiled and said, “What’s the U for?”

“I’ll spell it for you,” Filmore replied. “U-p-y-u-r-s.”

“Upyurs?” Wesley said. “That’s an unusual name.”

“Up yours,” Nate explained. Then he said, “That’s it, Filmore, you’re going to the slam.”

When Nate took latex gloves from his pocket, Filmore said, “Upton.”

Before putting the gloves on, Nate said, “Okay, last chance. Will you just agree to move along and leave Teddy here in peace and let bygones be bygones?”

“Sure,” Filmore U. Bracken said, shuffling up to Teddy and putting out his hand.

Teddy hesitated, then looked at Nate and extended his own hand. And Filmore U. Bracken took it in his right hand and suckered Teddy with a left hook that, pathetic as it was, knocked Trombone Teddy on the seat of his pants.

“Hah!” said Filmore, admiring his own clenched fist.

Then the latex gloves went on both cops, and Filmore’s bony wrists were handcuffed, but when he was about to be walked to their car, he said, “How about my goods?”

“That’s worthless trash,” Hollywood Nate said.

“My anvil’s in there!” Filmore cried.

Wesley Drubb walked over to the junk, gingerly poked around, and underneath the aluminum cans and socks and clean undershorts probably stolen from a Laundromat found an anvil.

“Looks pretty heavy,” Wesley said.

“That anvil’s my life!” their prisoner cried.

Nate said, “You don’t need an anvil in Hollywood. How many horses you see around here?”

“That’s my property!” their prisoner yelled, and now an asthmatic fat man waddled out the back door of an adult bookstore and said, “Officer, this guy’s been raising hell on the boulevard all day. Hassling my customers and spitting on them when they refuse to give him money.”

“Fuck you too, you fat degenerate!” the prisoner said.

Nate said to the proprietor, “I gotta ask you a favor. Can he keep his shopping cart inside your storage area here until he gets outta jail?”

“How long will he be in?”

“Depends on whether we just book him for plain drunk or add on the battery we just witnessed.”

“I don’t wanna make a complaint,” Trombone Teddy said.

“Shut up, Teddy,” Hollywood Nate said.

“Yes, sir,” said Teddy.

“I ain’t as drunk as he is!” the prisoner said, pointing at Teddy.

He was right and everyone knew it. Teddy was reeling, and not from the other geezer’s punch.

“Okay, tell you what,” Nate said, deciding to dispense boulevard justice. “Filmore here is going to detox for a couple hours and then he can come back and pick up his property. How’s that?”

Everyone seemed okay with the plan, and the store owner pushed the shopping cart to the storage area at the rear of his business.

While Nate was escorting their prisoner to the car, Trombone Teddy walked over to Wesley Drubb and said, “Thanks, Officer. He’s a bad actor, that bum. A real mean drunk.”

“Okay, anytime,” Wesley said.

But Teddy had a card in his hand and extended it to Wesley, saying, “This is something you might be able to use.”

It was a business card to a local Chinese restaurant, the House of Chang. “Thanks, I’ll try it sometime,” Wesley said.

“Turn it over,” Teddy said. “There’s a license number.”

Wesley flipped the card and saw what looked like a California license plate number and said, “So?”

Teddy said, “It’s a blue Pinto. Two tweakers were in it, a man and a woman. She called him Freddy, I think. Or maybe Morley. I can’t quite remember. I seen them fishing in a mailbox over on Gower south of the boulevard. They stole mail. That’s a federal offense, ain’t it?”

Wesley said, “Just a minute, Teddy.”

When he got back to his partner, who had put Filmore U. Bracken in the backseat of the car, Wesley showed him the card and said, “Teddy gave me this license number. Belongs to tweakers stealing from mailboxes. The guy’s name is Freddy or Morley.”

“All tweakers steal from mailboxes,” Hollywood Nate said, “or anything else they can steal.”

It seemed to Wesley that he shouldn’t just ignore the tip and throw the license number away. But he didn’t want to act like he was still a boot, so he went back to Teddy, handed him the card, and said, “Why don’t you take it to a post office. They have people who investigate this sort of thing.”

“I think I’ll hang on to it,” Teddy said, clearly disappointed.

Driving to the station, Nate got to thinking about the secretary who worked for the extras casting office he’d visited last Tuesday. She had given him big eyes as well as her phone number. He thought that he and Wesley could pick up some takeout, and he could sit in the station alone somewhere and chat her up on his cell.

“Partner, you up for burgers tonight?” he asked Wesley.

“Sure,” Wesley said. “You’re the health nut who won’t eat burgers.”

And then, thinking of the little secretary and what they might do together on his next night off, and how she might even help him with her boss the casting agent, Nate felt a real glow come over him. What he called “Hollywood happy.”

He said, “How about you, Filmore, you up for a burger?”

“Hot damn!” the derelict said. “You bet!”

They stopped at a drive-through, picked up four burgers, two for Wesley, and fries all around, and headed for the station.

When they got there, Nate said to their prisoner, “Here’s the deal. I’m giving you not only a burger and fries, but a get-out-of-jail-free pass. You’re gonna sit in the little holding tank for thirty minutes and eat your burger, and I’ll even buy you a Coke. Then, after my partner writes an FI card on you for future reference, I’m gonna let you out and you’re gonna walk back up to the boulevard and get your shopping cart and go home to your nest, wherever that is.”

“You mean I ain’t going to jail or detox?”

“That’s right. I got an important phone call to make, so I can’t waste time dicking around with you. Deal?”

“Hot damn!” Filmore said.

When their passenger got out of the car in the station parking lot, Wesley looked at the car seat and said to Filmore, “What’s that all over the seat? Beach sand?”

“No, that’s psoriasis,” said Filmore U. Bracken.

“Oh, gross!” Wesley cried.

B.M. Driscoll and Benny Brewster caught the call to the apartment building on Stanley north of Fountain. They were half a block from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction of West Hollywood, and later Benny Brewster thought about that and wished it could’ve occurred just half a block south.