When Nate ran into the Laundromat, he found the 311 woman sitting on a folding chair. Rather, she was sitting on two folding chairs that had been pushed together. She was naked and milky white with long, stringy brown hair, and she weighed approximately 350 pounds. She was crying, her mascara running down her swollen cheeks and dripping off her pug nose onto her pendulous bosom.
Nate gaped, then turned to Dana and held up four fingers, meaning “code 4,” no further help needed at the scene. Dana jogged out to their car and put out the code 4 broadcast, knowing that it wouldn’t stop the other horny bastards from arriving. Not unless she said that the 311 woman was “GOA,” or “gone-on-arrival,” in which case they’d fan out and start looking for her.
The woman on the sidewalk who’d put in the call said to Dana, “Why is that woman naked, Officer?”
“We’re gonna find out,” Dana said. “Be patient.”
When she reentered the Laundromat, Nate said to her, “I got a feeling you should handle this one.”
Hollywood Nate walked out to the sidewalk, when, predictably, a car from Watch 3 squealed to the curb, despite the code 4 broadcast.
“You don’t wanna go in there,” he said to the cops inside. “She’s naked all right, but she weighs at least three bills. Her jelly rolls hang like a loincloth. You don’t wanna go in there.”
Without comment, the night-watch car drove off, and a second one arrived and received the same eyewitness commentary, resulting in the same rapid departure. But the third black-and-white to arrive belonged to the midwatch surfer cops, and they stayed briefly.
After Hollywood Nate explained what he’d encountered inside the Laundromat, Flotsam tried to give Hollywood Nate his cell phone camera, saying, “Dude, you gotta get me a couple shots of her! Frontal and reverse!”
“I’m over this,” Nate said.
“It might be worth a buck on YouTube!” Jetsam urged.
“Paddle off, you surfboard pervs!” Hollywood Nate said, and the surfer cops reluctantly drove away.
When Nate got back inside the Laundromat, Dana Vaughn was sitting in a folding chair next to the 311 woman, who made no effort to hide her nakedness from Hollywood Nate. Not that it would have been possible, since she only had a small hand towel, which she was using to dab at her lacerated and swollen lip and to wipe away her tears. She appeared to Nate to be in her late thirties.
She said to Dana between sobs, “He said he was leaving me and would never come back. And I’d always believed him when he said we were going to get married and have a family.”
“How long have you been together, Reba?” Dana asked.
“Over a year. I spent most of my trust fund on him.” Then she started crying openly again.
Dana looked up at Hollywood Nate and said, “This is Reba Costello. Her boyfriend Lester’s a piece of work. He drops her here to do their laundry, and then he goes out and hits a couple bars on Western Avenue. Then he comes back, and when the second load of laundry’s not started, he starts ragging on her, and when they’re alone, he ends up punching her in the mouth.”
“Where’s Lester now?” Nate asked.
“Probably back on Western Avenue,” Dana said, answering for the sobbing woman.
“She gonna sign a report?”
Reba looked up at Nate and said, “I don’t wanna have him arrested. I just want him to get a job and not get drunk all the time!”
“You don’t have to be his punching bag,” Dana said. “He should be in jail, Reba.”
“No, please!” the woman said. “As soon as the clothes’re dry, I’ll just go home. I can walk from here.”
“So why is she naked?” Hollywood Nate asked Dana, just as the dryer alarm sounded and the drum stopped turning.
Dana walked him a few steps away from the woman and whispered, “When he knocked her down on the floor here, the drunken bastard whipped it out and pissed on her. All she had on was her cotton dress and underwear. They’re in the dryer with the second load.”
Nate raised his voice, saying, “After that, she’s not gonna sign a crime report?”
“No, no!” Reba said, overhearing him. “I think maybe I can persuade Lester to go to AA. Then everything will be fine. Honest.”
Dana said to Reba Costello, “The load’s done. Take your dress out and put it on. We’ll give you a lift to your apartment.”
“You’ve been real nice,” Reba said, getting painfully to her feet and opening the dryer. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I’ll help you fold your things,” Dana said. “And then we’ll get you home.”
Fifteen minutes later, 6-X-76 dropped Reba Costello and her laundry at her apartment, a few blocks from the Hollywood Cemetery. Dana helped the obese woman out of the car, along with her bags of laundry.
“He wouldn’t by chance be home by now, would he?” Dana said. “I’d like to have a little chat with him.”
“No, no, he’ll be out till the bars close when he’s like this,” Reba said. “I’ll be okay. Thank you, Officers, for being so kind.”
“Take care of yourself, honey,” Dana said. “Call us if he ever lays a hand on you again.”
When they had driven away, Hollywood Nate said, “Let’s request seven,” referring to code 7, the LAPD radio designation for a meal break.
“Okay,” Dana said, “and you can be sure I won’t be eating anything with a lot of fat grams or calories. Not tonight.”
Nate said, “How come our Hollywood romances never end happy like the ones in the movies?”
“Does anything?” Dana Vaughn said.
By the time Malcolm Rojas arrived home that night, his mother was sound asleep and snoring on the sofa while the TV blared. Malcolm was exhausted, and his fury had waned. He was ravenously hungry and hoped that his mother had prepared something and put it in the fridge for him, but she had not. He went to the cupboard and began eating cereal out of the box. Then he ate an apple, and after that, some cottage cheese that had already started to turn.
Malcolm was not yet ready to relive the events of the evening. Tomorrow would be the best time for that. He knew instinctively that the thing in the parking garage was something momentous. He was changed and he’d never be the same again. He felt like a failure for not having consummated his experience with that fat whore, but on the other hand, he felt that he’d been brave. If that feeling ever came over him again, he believed he’d be up to the task. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t do it. He should’ve picked someone more attractive, someone more his type, for his first sexual experience with a woman.
After he’d eaten a peanut butter and honey sandwich, he thought about going to bed and masturbating. He looked at his mother lying on the sofa with her mouth hanging open, drool running down her cheek, and he was repulsed. They were all alike, women like her, sickeningly soft with flesh like jelly. Smelly drunkards who always tried to put their hands on him. He was sure that the woman in the SUV would’ve begged him to fuck her if they’d been in the right place at the right time. But she was disgusting, and thinking of her made the anger start to rise again. Instead of letting it overwhelm him, he opened his cell phone and impulsively dialed young Naomi Teller.
He smiled when a voice that sounded like a small child’s said, “Hello?”
“It’s me, Clark Kent,” he said. “Strange visitor from the planet Krypton.”
“Clark!” she said. “I was getting ready to go to bed. I didn’t think you’d call.”
“I told you I would, didn’t I?”
“It’s nice to talk to you,” Naomi said. “Where are you?”
“I’m at home,” Malcolm said, “thinking of you.”
“No way,” Naomi said. “You’re not thinking of me.”
“Yes way,” Malcolm said. “I’m thinking that you and me’re gonna hop in my Mustang and go to the mall in North Hollywood or wherever there’s a good movie playing. And we’re gonna eat popcorn, and then I’m gonna buy you a burger or pizza afterwards. Which do you want?”