12. What to Do with the LAPD Blues

It rained for the next two days, which is a mixed bag in Hollywood this time of year. On the one hand, it washes away the smog gripping the city day after suffocating day. On the other hand, once it's over, we all have to take a good, hard look at one another in the even more unforgiving glare of our big, cloudless skies.

I woke up from Rita's couch to get ready for night watch -- wrestling with my usual steamy fantasies about the captain. He was a happily married man, after all -- or at least he had been at one point, overcoming some kind of tragedy involving a child, if Georgia May was to be believed. Though there was all kinds of heat between him and me, maybe he hadn't been the one to invite it. Though cops are well trained to confuse you with what they don't say, so are pretty little blondes. It wouldn't take much of an actress to let him know that I'm not the type of girl to bother myself with a family man.

A loud rap on the front door signaled my daily visit from Rita's greedy, Arab-born landlord. Not that all Arabs are greedy any more than all landlords are Arab -- but this one was a full on, gold-chained, cologne-spritzed escapee from the pages of "Ali Baba and The Forty Skeeves." Rumor was he'd recently been deeded an entire square block of the Fairfax District after calling in a loan he made to some old Jewish guy in trouble with the mob.

"Good afternoon," I said brightly, opening the door in my baby dolls. "May I offer you a cup of sugar?" Pops always said you catch more flies with honey, but Rita didn't have any -- in fact, I hadn't seen her in weeks. The creep wasn't buying any of it, though he did indulge in a free sampling of my amply stocked top shelf.  I quickly wrapped myself in a pink satin bed sheet, insisting that she must be traveling on business. "Tomorrow I bring eviction papers," he replied.  "I have very big friends with the City. You are prostitute, no?

"I'm a civilian employee of the Los Angeles Police Department," I snapped back. "I, too, have big friends with the City." He emitted a sarcastic grunt women must get a lot wherever he's from. "Would you like to see some identification?" I inquired.

"I like to see two months back rent." Hammering on a calculator, he showed me some figure with far too many zeroes to even be legal on a rent-controlled unit. "Also twenty-percent increase for 'house guest' and my cut of profits from business activity on premises!" Disgusted, I slammed the door in his face. "How much for one night with both of you?" he added, scratching at the door like some hopeful little desert rat.

After waiting him out as he made unannounced visits throughout the complex, I was late for work, hurrying from the bus stop to the station just before sundown. I discovered my old, broken down Mustang convertible with a police boot on its rear tire. An officer was slapping another citation onto a damp pile tucked under the windshield. "Hey! Is another freaking ticket really necessary?" I called out. "It's called engined trouble, hello. It's not like I parked here on purpose." He turned around, revealing a chiseled, angular face I didn't recognize -- but a name and badge number I'd know anywhere. "Officer Muñoz," I said. "I'm Cherry Culpepper, from Records? I type your reports."

"You're Culpepper? Why didn't you say so?"

 "I just did. Not that I'm asking any favors." He'd come to be known among the other guys as Bad-Ass Muñoz after arresting the accused serial killer currently being questioned by law enforcement agencies from all over the country about the fate of respective missing girls. If he knew I'd found that nagging error in his initial report and was willing to look the other way, he wasn't going there out loud. In fact, it might have simply been that, after swaggering back in fresh from the national talk show circuit, he was feeling extra generous. He grabbed the whole wad of citations and blew on them -- as if to make them disappear. "Well, I mean, if you're one of us," he said. He had that beat cop way of conveying genuine disinterest while fully prepared to mess you up -- your choice.

The captain appeared from nowhere -- calling on what had become the world's most annoying super power -- to snatch the citations from Muñoz. "I'll take care of this." He continued toward the station, calling back. "See me in my office, Culpepper. We need to talk."

Bad-Ass also withdrew with an imaginary tip of the hat -- perhaps meant to serve as a thank you for our implied exchange of professional courtesies.  Or maybe not. Like I say, cops are trained to speak without words -- and once the rain finally stops, we Los Angelenos see all kinds of things we were never meant to.