The detectives were trying to decide on their next move when 6-X-66, Sheila Montez and Aaron Sloane, arrived, followed by R.T. Dibney and Mindy Ling in 6-X-46.
Dana looked at the cops emerging from their shops and said, “The midwatch is well represented. Let’s find this bastard. He’s gotta be in one of the houses on this block.”
The surfer cops approached Dana and Nate, and Flotsam said, “On Wednesday we got a call half a block south on this side of the street to an apartment almost empty of furniture. There were two guys there with bad news written all over them. Might be setting up a crack house or something.”
“A big fat white guy that looks like a biker,” Jetsam said, “and a light-skinned black guy with dreads.”
Dana looked at Nate and said, “We wrote a ticket to a pair like that. The driver’s name was… let’s see… Tristan something.”
“That’s him!” Flotsam said. “We wrote shakes on both of them.”
“What the hell,” Dana said, “shall we stroll down the street and see if they have a guest tonight?”
“Why not?” said Hollywood Nate. “Birds of a feather?”
“Be careful, honey,” Dana said.
“What did I jist hear you say?” Jerzy Szarpowicz said to Malcolm Rojas.
“I said I’m not leaving,” Malcolm said. “I got nowhere to go. I’m in trouble.”
“You’re gonna be in a lot more trouble if you don’t get your ass outta here,” Jerzy said.
“Look, kid, run along,” Tristan said. “We’re expectin’ an important call.”
“I promise I’ll phone you tomorrow and give you a real job,” Dewey said. “Go home, Clark.”
“I left a whole handprint on the wall,” Malcolm said, emotionless. “I can’t go home. The police might be there already.”
Tristan looked at Dewey in puzzlement, and Dewey tapped his head and said, “He claims he murdered Ethel.”
“I ain’t got time for fuckin’ bullshit!” Jerzy said. “We got business to do, and if I don’t get me a dime of rock pretty soon, I’ll be doing the killin’, and I’ll start with you!”
With that, he grabbed Malcolm by the back of his neck and swung him toward the door, which he crashed into, and he dropped to his knees.
“Get out, Clark!” Dewey said.
Malcolm stayed on one knee, looking up at Jerzy Szarpowicz, and said, “I’m not afraid of you because you’re big. I can deal with big men now. I can deal with anybody.”
“You little fuckhead!” Jerzy said, and he stepped forward, intending to kick Malcolm with his boot, but Malcolm was on his feet, leaping sideways and swiping through the air with his box cutter.
It didn’t catch Jerzy in the throat, as Malcolm had intended, but sliced open a deep gash across his right cheek, and Jerzy screamed in pain and fury. When Malcolm lunged at him again with the box cutter, Jerzy had the two-inch.38 revolver out of his waistband, and he fired two rounds a few feet away into the young man’s chest. Malcolm Rojas looked down at his body, dropped the box knife, and fell into a sitting position, leaning against one of the crates. Then he gazed up with shuddering breaths, while the other three, their ears ringing from the explosions, screamed incoherent obscenities at one another.
Tristan was the first to recover and shouted, “I’m outta here!”
But when he jerked open the door, he saw a crew of uniformed police running toward the sound of gunfire. The street was hemorrhaging blue!
“Cops!” he yelled, slamming the door. And then he shoved Dewey aside and ran for the back door, with Jerzy right behind him, gun in hand.
The police heard the back door crash open, so Dana and Nate sprinted along the walk beside the duplex to the rear of the lot, followed by the surfer cops.
R.T. Dibney and Aaron Sloane kicked in the front door of the duplex and found Dewey Gleason with his hands up and Malcolm Rojas dying on the floor.
Tristan Hawkins tried to leap the chain-link fence dividing the properties but fell back hard, and Hollywood Nate shined a light on him and yelled, “Stay down or die!”
Jerzy Szarpowicz powered through the doorway at that instant, firing his last four rounds at anything that had a human form, on his way to the rear alley. Hollywood Nate returned fire almost simultaneously, and the last thing Jerzy Szarpowicz saw were three orange fireballs that lit the darkness, two rounds hitting him in the right chest and one in his forehead, killing him instantly.
The surfer cops were yelling, and Hollywood Nate was yelling, and Tristan Hawkins was facedown on the walkway, crying, “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”
In a moment, he was handcuffed tight, palms outward, dragged to his feet, and hustled along the walkway to the front of the house, while Hollywood Nate, still leaking adrenaline from the gunfight, yelled into the house, “Is it okay in there?”
“Okay!” Sheila Montez shouted, and she appeared backlit in the doorway, holstering her Glock.
Hollywood Nate then shakily holstered his Beretta and trotted along the walkway to the front of the house, where Dewey Gleason had now become convinced that what the boy had told him must be true, and Dewey was yelling at anyone who’d listen, “I had nothing to do with her murder! Clark did it!”
Tristan said to Jetsam, who clutched his arm, “Officer, get me to a detective quick! I wanna make a deal. I’ll tell you everything I know about these crazy fuckin’ people.”
It was then that Hollywood Nate said, “Where’s Dana?”
Mindy said, “Didn’t she cover the back door with you?”
By now all of the detectives had arrived and were milling around the property and talking on cells, while the bluesuits were gathered in front of the duplex with their two handcuffed prisoners.
And Hollywood Nate said again, “Where the hell’s Dana?” Then he switched on his flashlight and ran back along the walkway to the rear of the duplex, with the surfer cops right behind him.
Flotsam spotted her first with his flashlight beam. She was lying in a flower bed behind a short hedge that partially concealed her body.
“Here!” Flotsam yelled. “Call an RA!”
Hollywood Nate leaped the hedge and was down on his knees in the dirt, turning her onto her back, and crying out, “Partner! Partner!”
Flotsam shined his light onto her face and saw her eyes open in slits, and he said, “It’s bad, Nate! It’s bad!”
“No!” Nate shouted in denial, unable to see a bullet wound. He started doing chest compressions through her Kevlar vest, when Jetsam came running toward them, and Flotsam showed a distraught face to his partner and shook his head.
Then Nate stopped the chest compressions and, tilting her head back, raised her chin and placed his mouth over hers. He began breathing into her mouth, his left hand now wet with blood leaking from the bullet wound that severed her spinal cord at the cervix, just above her vest, killing her in seconds. By now other cops were there, lighting the scene with flashlight beams, and both Sheila Montez and Mindy Ling were crying.
Nate began doing the chest compressions again, his left hand slippery with her blood, and he began sobbing and murmuring, “Please don’t, Dana! Please don’t!” And both surfer cops turned way, Flotsam looking up at the Hollywood moon while the yelp of the ambulance siren drew closer and Hollywood Nate begged Dana Vaughn not to die.
TWENTY-TWO
BECAUSE HER MOTHER had not been religious, the daughter of Officer Dana Vaughn chose the Hollywood United Methodist Church for the funeral service after the coroner released her body. The Gothic church could be seen from the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, arguably the heart of Hollywood, and had been used in movies, so Pamela thought that her mother would’ve chuckled and approved of her choice.
She told this to Hollywood Nate Weiss during a phone conversation when she asked him to be one of the pallbearers, four of whom would be old friends of hers, male and female officers. Another choice that Pamela made was Leon Calloway, the officer from Watch 3 whose life was seconds from ending one dark night when Dana Vaughn had taken a risky head shot to save him. He fervently thanked Pamela for according him such an honor.