Cosmo lived on the sixth floor and had dozens of visitors nightly. Hiding behind some towering hibiscus plants, Snyder and I heard Cosmo’s departing guests remark on the great quality of his stuff. After three nights of this, we decided we had enough to act on and scheduled our raid for the following evening. We could have pulled it off low-key, dressing in hippie disguises of beard, moustache, and love beads from Bert Wheeler’s Magic Store on the Boulevard, and making a discreet buy before lowering the boom; but fueled by large quantities of Old Grand Dad, we decided to break the door down and go in with shotguns.
We did and it worked. Until Snyder got disappointed. Cosmo and his girlfriend submitted quietly, scared shitless by the two oversized short-hairs with badges pinned to their chests and wielding heavy firepower. They led us to their stash, let us handcuff them, and waited meekly as we phoned for a patrol car and a matron for the girl. But Snyder wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to shoot off his shotgun. He was heartbroken that he had missed his opportunity. He said the bust was like getting laid without getting your dick sucked first.
He rumbled through the apartment opening drawers and knocking over chairs. Then he saw the Che Guevara poster, life-size, taped to a gilt-covered bedroom mirror. “Brownie,” he called, “look at this.” I came into the bedroom, leaving my handcuffed prisoners unguarded. Snyder, late of the U.S. Marine Corps was aghast with indignation. “I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill that Commie cocksucker!” he cried, and blasted Che Guevara, the mirror, and a good part of the bedroom wall to kingdom come with his Remington pump. Before I could stop him, he blasted the other wall, sending Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix to hell. When the dust cleared, Snyder was grinning like a sated lover, our prisoners were screaming “Police brutality” and I quite literally shit in my pants.
A few minutes later we heard the sirens. I looked out the window and saw eight black-and-whites jamming up the streets. Knowing my trigger-happy colleagues craved excitement as much as my lunatic partner and I and might open fire at any moment, I ran down six flights of stairs, through the lobby and out the door of the building. When I hit the long walkway that led down to the street, I threw my hands above my head and yelled, “Police officer, don’t shoot!”
Some of the cops standing by their patrol cars with hardware at the ready recognized me and motioned me to join them. My mind racing with stories to explain the shooting, I ran toward them. Just as I was about to reach the street my half-empty pint of Old Grand Dad slipped out of my waistband and broke on the sidewalk in front of me. At that moment a merciful death was all I wished for. Liquid feces were running down my legs and my career was ruined. I would have to get a job as a security guard for a buck fifty an hour and drink Gallo muscatel. It was all over. Until a tough-looking old patrol sergeant started to laugh. Others joined him as I stood there, mute, lest I increase my culpability. The laughter was getting louder as the old sergeant pulled me aside and whispered “Is there anyone hurt up there, son? Is your partner okay?”
I told him everything was okay, except for some property damage.
“We can handle that,” he said. A group of officers went upstairs to rescue Cosmo and his girlfriend from Snyder, and Snyder from himself.
I was driven back to the station where I took a shower and changed clothes. In the report that was filed, no mention was made of the shotgun blasts (the suspects having been coerced into silence), my bottle, or the shit in my pants. Snyder and I received a commendation and by the perverse logic of the macho mentality my floundering police career was back in full stride.
The Mobil Station where Omar Gonzalez worked was catty-corner from the scene of my past triumph. The place was deserted when I pulled in, so I pulled up to the ethyl pump and served myself. I looked in vain for a Chicano in his late twenties. When my tank was full, I went searching for the attendant and found him under the lube rack working on a car. He turned around to face me, a stocky, affable-looking kid of about twenty. “I’ve got the exact change,” I said, “I know you guys appreciate it.” The kid gave me a pleasant smile as I handed him the money. “By the way,” I said, “is Omar around? I’m a buddy of his.”
The kid looked at me strangely. “Omar ain’t been around for two weeks. He ain’t at the recovery house, either. I don’t know where the hell he is. He gets away with murder ’cause the customers like him. The boss would give me the axe quick if I pulled the shit Omar does.”
“What kind of shit does Omar pull? I asked. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
He screwed up his face into a parody of concentration. “Don’t get me wrong, I like Omar. Everybody does. But he’s always talking this Chicano Activist shit and taking off to hang out at the drug recovery crashpad, leaving me holding the fucking bag and leaving his goddamn car blocking up the station.” The kid pointed to a ten-year-old yellow Plymouth. I was about to throw some more questions at him when a customer pulled in, a good-looking woman in a convertible. He forgot all about me and strode over to the pumps, his face contorted into a wolf grin.
I walked over to check out Omar’s car. I wrote down the license number on my notepad, then looked in the front window. The seats were upholstered in white naugahyde and the brownish matter that was caked in splotches on the driver’s side looked like dried blood. The back seat was covered with a green tarpaulin and underneath it were shapes resembling boxes. I didn’t have to think twice. The doors of the car were locked and my master keys were back at my pad. I ran to my car and opened the trunk, digging out a blank repo order and my bumper jack.
The kid was finishing up with the woman in the convertible as I ran by him. I stopped and shoved the repo order in his face. “I’m a private investigator,” I yelled, “This is a repossession order for that car. I’m taking it.”
His jaw dropped and he just stood there while I went to work. I gave a quick look around for cops, then slammed the bumper jack full force into the front window of the Plymouth. The safety glass shattered inward and I reached through the hole and opened the door.
I scraped off some of the dried matter on the seat cover and smelled it. It was definitely blood. I swung the front seat forward, dug under the tarpaulin and pulled out two cardboard boxes. They were light and I slung them easily onto the trunk of the car to open.
The attendant was at my side now, looking nervous. “Hey man, are you sure this is legal?” he said, his voice breaking.
“Yeah, punk, this is legal. Now get the fuck out of my way,” I said, almost screaming.
I watched him retreat toward the lube rack, then dug into the boxes. When I saw what I had I almost fainted. The first box contained bookies’ ledgers, eight or nine of them, bound in brown leather. My Vice Squad experience was paying off: the bettors’ names were in numbered code in one column, and in the succeeding columns were amounts of money, dates, and check marks probably indicating collections. I flipped through all the ledgers quickly. They were identical in their layout. The same margining, but with different codings, dates, and amounts of money. The dates went back twelve years. Wedged into the back of the bottom ledger were eight or ten blank Los Angeles County checks, the kind used for paying employees and disbursing Welfare money. I looked through all the ledgers for envelopes or something else to tie into the blank checks, but found nothing.