Hollywood Crows Read Online Free PDF Page B

have got too rich and successful for victimhood. You and me’re in the same boat. We could jump off a roof and who cares?”
    Sergeant Treakle had teamed them up arbitrarily for one night, assigning Jetsam to ride with a Hispanic probationer whose field training officer was on a sick day. Jetsam didn’t like working with a boot, but Flotsam wasn’t complaining, and Cat knew why. She was very aware that he had eyes for her, but so did most of the other male officers on the midwatch.
    That was when the PSR’s radio voice said, “Six-X-Thirty-two, a four-fifteen fight, Santa Monica and Western, code two.”
    “Why can’t we get a call in our own backyard once in a while?” Flotsam grumbled as Cat rogered the call. “Doomsday Dan’s working sixty-six with a probie partner. They should be handling it.”
    “Dan probably had to run over to the cyber café to rent a computer and watch his foreign stocks tumble,” Cat said. “Doesn’t matter how good the market’s doing. He’s a great anticipator of international disasters.”
    When they got to the location of the call, which turned out to be a bit east of Western Avenue, Cat said, “Doomsday Dan sure would break out the gloves for this one.”
    Four onlookers, two of them Salvadoran gang members, along with a pair of white parolees out looking for some tranny or dragon ass, were watching the disturbance. Transsexuals were preferred by the ex-cons in that all of their hormone treatments and surgery made them more like women, but in a pinch the parolees would settle for a drag queen. The onlookers were watching what had been a pretty good fight between a black drag queen and a white man in a business suit, which was now down to a screaming contest full of threats and gestures.
    When the cops got out of the black-and-white, four observers walked quickly away, but a fifth stepped out of the shadows from a darkened doorway. Trombone Teddy was a transient, known to Flotsam from prior contacts. He was a street person nearly eighty years old who panhandled on the boulevards.
    Teddy had stayed at the fight scene to watch the denouement, knowing he was drunk enough to get busted but too drunk to care. He wore a Lakers cap, layers of shirts that were now part of him, and nearly congealed trousers the color and texture of just-picked mushrooms. Looking at Teddy made you think fungus.
    “I’m a witness,” Trombone Teddy said to Flotsam.
    “Go home, Teddy,” the tall cop said, putting his mini-flashlight under his arm, cursing because the little light wouldn’t stay there.
    “I am home,” Teddy replied. “I been living right here in this doorway for the last few days. The cops rousted us outta our camp in the hills. Up there we could hear the concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. I was a real sideman in my time, you know. I could blow better than any I ever heard at the Bowl. Back when I was a real person.”
    That made Flotsam feel a little bit sad, Trombone Teddy reminiscing about having been a real person. Back in the day.
    With the police there as protection, the black dragon, wearing a mauve shell and a black double-slitted skirt, hauled off for one last shot, swinging a silver purse at the white businessman, until Flotsam stepped in and said, “Back off! Both of you!”
    Reluctantly, the dragon stepped back, blonde wig askew, one heel broken off the silver pumps, makeup smeared, panty hose shredded, and yelled, “He kidnapped me! I barely escaped with my life! Arrest him!”
    Flotsam had already patted down the other combatant. He was portly and middle-aged with a dyed-black comb-over that shone like patent leather. A trickle of blood dripped from his nose and he wiped it with a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket.
    He handed Flotsam his driver’s license and said, “My name is Milt Zimmerman, Officer. I’ve never been arrested for anything. This person stole my car keys and took off running to here, where I caught her. My car is two blocks west in an alley. I