Hollywood Moon Read Online Free PDF

crossed the street and approached the driver’s side, saying, “Leon, can I talk to
     you for a minute?”
    The hulking cop said something to his partner, got out of the black-and-white, and trudged off with Dana Vaughn until they
     were alone.
    She said to him, “Leon, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that you think you’re taking care of me, and I know why, but you
     gotta stop.”
    “I back up everyone on code two and code three calls if I can,” he said, avoiding her eyes.
    “Not like this, you don’t,” Dana said. “And it’s embarrassing.”
    Leon Calloway, looking in the direction of his shoes, said, “You saved my life, Dana. I was two seconds from having my face
     blown apart. When I go home at night and peek in at my son sleeping, I think, I get to do this because of Dana Vaughn. When
     I wake up in the morning after a bad dream—and I have lots of bad dreams now—I think, I get to wake up this morning because
     of what Dana Vaughn did for me. That’s what I think.”
    “Have you talked to our BSS guy?” Dana asked, referring to the Behavioral Science Services shrink who was assigned to the
     officers of Hollywood Station, a man with a lonely job, because cops, being members of a macho tribe, feared a stigma of being
     soft and needy.
    “That’s for sick people,” the big cop said. “I’m not sick.”
    “Leon, this is over, hear me?” Dana said. “You’ve gotta move on with your life. Leave it behind. Let it go. If you do this
     again, I’m gonna have to complain to the captain.”
    Leon Calloway kept his head bowed for several seconds and finally turned and shuffled toward his waiting black-and-white.
    “Roger that,” he said without looking back. “But I’ll never forget. And if you need anything, you just call Six-Adam-Seventy-nine.
     I’ll be all over it.”
    When Dana got back to their shop and they resumed patrol, she said to Hollywood Nate, “There was one thing about the BSS shrink
     that I didn’t tell you about. He said that women aren’t so afraid to admit it when we can use a little help. I told him for
     the third time that I had no regrets about capping that guy, and that he did lots of bad things in his life, and I had no
     choice and no remorse. The shrink said, nevertheless, I killed a human being, and that means something to me in a certain
     part of my brain. He predicted that I might have night sweats and recurring dreams about trying to fire my gun and having
     the round dribble out and fall on the ground. He said that kind of dream is common to cops, especially after a fatal OIS.”
     She paused, looked over at Nate, and said, “Do you ever have dreams like that?”
    Nate studied Dana Vaughn as she drove, observing that the wisecracking veteran had morphed. Now her mouth was pulled down
     at the corners, and her voice had lost some of its timbre, and in a peculiar way she looked younger. He liked being with this
     Dana more but thought it was time to bring his partner back from that other place.
    Hollywood Nate cocked an eyebrow and said to Dana, “My gun
neve
r dribbles, partner. It’s always locked and loaded and ready for action.”
    That did it. The tension faded, and she grinned mischievously, saying, “Ah, so all the Hollywood Nate gossip I hear from the
     girls in the locker room is true? Well, when you’re ready for show ’n’ tell, be sure to drop a dime, honey!”

TWO
    A RED FLAG UP on a mailbox is like a party invitation,” Tristan Hawkins said to the man he called his apprentice, Jerzy Szarpowicz. “Outgoing
     mail. Come and get it.”
    His passenger flipped down the car’s visor when the afternoon sun hit him in the eyes, surprisingly harsh rays given the layer
     of summertime smog they had to penetrate, smog lying low over the Hollywood Hills.
    Jerzy Szarpowicz was the second Jerzy who’d worked for the boss, Jakob Kessler. The boss told Tristan that he liked to hire
     people of Eastern European ethnicity and also said that he was