Hollywood Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

had done. While her partner was unholstering his nine, she was already at the fence, aiming her
     Glock with both hands as the airship’s spotlight bounced and the crisscrossing beams from flashlights danced over the two
     men, making her dizzy. She took a long breath, held it, and squeezed off the only shot she’d ever fired outside the police
     pistol range.
    The .40 caliber round did not strike the intended target, which was the skull of Rupert Moore, but was close enough, entering
     the side of his throat, ripping apart the carotid arteries and bathing Leon Calloway first in spatter, then in spurt, when
     he fell face forward onto the gurgling killer, who began quickly to drown in his own blood.
    The first rescue ambulance that roared into the alley whisked Sarah Messinger from the scene, followed by a second. One of
     the cops waiting outside the now-open security gate worried that Rupert Moore hadn’t bled out yet and said to the paramedics,
     “Did you happen to hear the Dodgers game? Did they win tonight? Who was pitching?”
    The paramedics declined the invitation to discuss Dodgers box scores and instead ran to the side of Rupert Moore, who might
     not have finished bleeding out but who was very dead nonetheless.
    At that point in the story, Dana said to Hollywood Nate, “The watch commander sent me downtown to the BSS shrink, and I had
     to show up without a weapon and sit around with a bunch of other cops who were supposed to talk about emotional trauma they
     were supposed to’ve experienced. Nobody had much to say, and when it was my turn, I had
nothing
to say. So I had to go for a private session, where the shrink said, ‘Tell me about your childhood.’ And ‘Tell me about your
     relationship with your parents.’ I said to him, ‘A cop was about to get killed. What do my parents have to do with it?’ He
     said, ‘Well, then, tell me what you felt when you pulled that trigger.’ I said, ‘First of all, I didn’t pull, I squeezed.
     And I felt the Glock buck in my hand. And I also felt an acrylic nail snap off when my finger got snagged on the wire fence.
     And I felt pissed off because I paid forty bucks for those acrylics. Those are the things I felt.’ Finally, he seemed to think
     I was hopeless and gave up.”
    “What happened to the young boot?” Nate asked.
    “She’s okay,” Dana said. “She was in a coma for ten days, but she’s in physical therapy and doing fine now. She was brand-new
     to Watch Three when it happened, so I didn’t know her at all and had never spoken to her, not even in the locker room.”
    “And that was Calloway in the black-and-white?”
    “He’s the main reason I requested to come to Watch Five. I thought that if he didn’t see me at roll call every day, he might
     stop dogging me.”
    “So he’s your guardian angel,” Nate said.
    “On Watch Three, whenever he was clear, he’d roll on every call of mine that he figured had the slightest element of danger
     involved. I’m sure it drove his partners crazy. I know it drove me crazy.”
    “And now you have someone to watch over you, just like in the song.”
    “Much to my discomfort,” Dana said. “I tried talking to him about it, but he claims he backs up everyone like this. I finally
     talked confidentially to the watch commander and got to come to Watch Five.”
    It was close to midnight when Dana Vaughn and Nate Weiss got a “man with a gun” call to the parking lot near the border with
     West Hollywood. It involved an elderly resident shooting at feral cats with a pellet gun. The pensioner explained that the
     cats were keeping him awake with their cries at night.
    After giving the appropriate warnings and hearing promises from the old guy’s daughter that it would never happen again, Dana
     and Nate were walking to their car, and there it was again: 6-A-79 parked a few houses away, lights out, watching.
    “Okay, that’s it!” Dana Vaughn said.
    While Nate waited beside their shop, she