Before they let him go, Nate said, “Where you headed?”

“Pablo’s to get a taco.”

“That’s tweakerville,” Nate said. “Don’t tell me you’re smoking glass now instead of shooting smack?”

“One day at a time, man,” Brian Wilkie said. “I wouldn’t want my PO to know, but I’m down to booze and a little meth now and then. That’s an improvement, ain’t it?”

“I don’t think that’s what AA means by one day at a time, man,” Nate said. “Stay real.”

A few minutes later, when Wesley drove past Pablo’s Tacos, they saw an old car parked in front and a pair of skinny tweakers in a dispute with another guy who also had tweaker written all over him. The argument was so animated that the tweakers didn’t see the black-and-white when Wesley parked half a block away and turned out the lights to watch.

“Maybe one of them’ll stab the other,” Nate said. “And you can pop him for a felony. Or better yet, maybe one of them’ll pull a piece and we can get in a gunfight. Would that relieve your boredom?”

Farley Ramsdale was waving his arms like one of those people with that terrible disease whose name she couldn’t remember, and Olive was getting scared. Spit was running down Farley’s chin and he was screaming his head off because the tiny tweaker that they knew as Little Bart wouldn’t sell one of the two teeners he was holding. Farley refused to meet his excessive price and had tried to bargain him down.

Olive thought it was mean and wrong of Little Bart, because Farley had often sold to him at a decent price. But all this screaming was just going to get them in trouble.

“You are an ungrateful chunk of vomit!” Farley yelled. “Do you remember how I saved your sorry ass when you needed ice so bad you were ready to blow a nigger for it?”

Little Bart, who was about Farley’s age and whose neck bore a tattoo of a dog collar all the way around, said, “Man, things’re bad, real bad these days. This is all I got and all I’m gonna have for a while. I gotta pay the rent.”

“You little cocksucker!” Farley yelled, doubling his fist.

“Hey, dude!” Little Bart said, backing up. “Take a chill pill! You’re freaking!”

Olive stepped forward then and said, “Farley, please stop. Let’s go. Please!”

Suddenly, Farley did something he had never done in all the time they’d been together. He smacked her across the face, and she was so stunned she stared at him for a moment and then burst into tears.

“That’s enough,” Wesley said, and got out of the car, followed by Hollywood Nate.

Farley never saw them coming but Little Bart did. The tiny tweaker said, “Uh-oh, time to go.”

And he started to do just that, until Wesley said, “Hold it right there.”

A few minutes later, Little Bart and Farley were being patted down by Wesley and Hollywood Nate while Olive wiped her tears on the tail of her jersey.

“What’s this all about?” Farley said. “I ain’t done nothing.”

“You committed a battery,” Wesley said. “I saw it.”

“It was an accident,” Farley said. “Wasn’t it, Olive? I didn’t mean to hit her. I was just making a point with this guy.”

“What point is that?” Nate said.

“About whether George W. Bush is really as dumb as he looks. It was a political debate.”

Little Bart wasn’t really worried, because the ice was under the rear floor mat of his car, which was half a block down the street. So he just had to chill and not piss off the cops, and then he figured he could skate.

When Nate pulled Farley ten yards away from the other two, Farley yelled back, “Olive, tell these guys it was an accident!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Nate said. “Where’s your car?”

“I ain’t got a car,” Farley lied, and after he did it, he wondered why he had lied. There was no crystal in his car. He hadn’t smoked any glass for two and a half days. That’s why his nerves were shot. That’s why he was on the verge of strangling Little Bart. He was just so sick of being hassled by cops that he lied. Lying was a form of rebellion against all of them. All of the assholes who were fucking with him.

For the next twenty minutes, the shakes were written, and each name was run through CII, with a rap sheet showing for Farley Ramsdale but none for Olive O. Ramsdale. Farley finally stopped bitching and Olive stopped crying.

Little Bart actually began trying to talk politics to Farley to go along with the George Bush crack, but the cops obviously weren’t buying it. They knew that some kind of drug deal was going down, and Little Bart just didn’t want to give them a good reason to try his car keys in the doors of the eight cars that were parked within half a block of Pablo’s. And he especially didn’t want them to look under the floor mat.

Farley thought the cops were going to prolong this for as long as possible, but the younger cop ran up to the other one and said, “Kidnapping in progress, Omar’s Lounge on Ivar! Let’s go, Nate!”

When Farley and Olive and Little Bart were left standing there outside Pablo’s Tacos, Farley said to Little Bart, “Those cops saved your fucking life.”

Bart said, “Dude, you need some help. You’re way out there. Way, way out there.” And he ran to his car and drove off.

Olive said, “Farley, let’s go home now and -”

“Olive,” he said, “if you say you’ll make me a delicious cheese sandwich, I swear I’ll knock your fucking tooth out.”

Hollywood detectives had been forced to investigate a number of date rapes, called acquaintance rapes by the police. It was usually “I woke up naked with somebody I didn’t know. I was drugged.”

The cases were never prosecuted. Evidentiary requirements necessitated an immediate urine test, but the date rape drugs metabolized in four to six hours. It was always too late for the special analysis that had to be done outside the LAPD crime lab, which did only basic drug screening of controlled substances. In fact, as defense lawyers argued, too much booze produced much the same effect as a date rape drug.

The date rape cases were reported to Hollywood Station by persons of both genders, but only once was there a criminal filing by the district attorney’s office. The victim had vomited shortly after the encounter, and the drug was able to be recovered and identified.

Six-X-Seventy-six was the unit to receive the code 3 call to Omar’s Lounge but Budgie and Fausto were beaten to the call by Wesley Drubb and Hollywood Nate, followed closely by Benny Brewster and B.M. Driscoll, complaining of motion sickness caused by Benny’s fast driving.

The first units to arrive gave way to Budgie and Fausto, since they were assigned the call, and Budgie entered the nightclub to interview the victim. Even though Fausto was the report writer on this night and Budgie was driver, she took over with the report because the victim was a woman.

When they were being escorted to a private office inside the nightclub, Fausto whispered to her, “This joint gets sold to somebody new just about every time they change the tablecloths. It’s impossible to keep track of who the owner is, but you can bet your ass it’s a Russian.”

Sara Butler was sitting in the office being tended to by a cocktail waitress who wore a starched white shirt, black bow tie and black pants. The waitress was a natural blonde and pretty, but the kidnap victim, who was about Budgie’s age, was both prettier and unnaturally more blond. The straps on her black dress were held together with safety pins, and her pantyhose was in shreds around her ankles. Her knees were scraped and bleeding, as were both her palms. Mascara and eye liner were smeared all over her cheeks, and she was wearing most of her lipstick on her chin. She was angry and she was drunk.

The cocktail waitress was applying ice in a napkin to the victim’s right knee when the cops walked in. A faux fur coat was draped across the chair behind the young woman.

Budgie sat down and said, “Tell us what happened.”