Read Online Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh - Free Book Online

while her partner lagged behind with a beanbag shotgun as well as the Remington 870 one-shot-and-you-rot model.
    It wasn’t a good time to start hacking on her, but nobody ever said the surfer cops were founts of wisdom. They always referred to big war bags on wheels as “wimpy bags for airline employees.” Jetsam nodded toward her nylon suitcase, winked at Flotsam, and said to Gert, “Excuse me, miss, but is our flight on time?”
    Taking the cue, Flotsam said, “Can we have a beverage before takeoff? And extra peanuts?”
    Gert Von Braun, who was only five foot six but outweighed Jetsam, if not the much larger Flotsam, said, “Shove your peanuts up your ass, you surfboard squids.”
    “Oh, that’s scandalous,” Flotsam whispered to Jetsam.
    “I’m so appalled,” Jetsam whispered back to Flotsam.
    Still giving the surfer cops the stink eye, Gert hefted her equipment into the trunk of her shop, closed the lid, and began testing her Portable Officer Data Device System, which she’d checked out at the kit room.
    The PODD, pronounced “pod” by the cops, was one of the instruments of torture encouraged by the monitors of the federal consent decree. It was a handheld instrument resembling a large BlackBerry. In it were the FDRs, or field data reports, which LAPD officers had to fill out for every contact with a suspect that was not the result of a radio call, that is, any stop of a suspect initiated by an officer. On it they had to list the gender, descent, and age of a suspect, and the reason for the stop, also indicating whether there was a pat-down or a more complete search of the suspect’s person or car.
    The purpose of the FDR was to monitor whether or not cops were engaging in racial profiling, but like everything else connected with the federal consent decree, it discouraged proactive police work. With the mountains of paperwork they already had to endure in order to please their monitoring masters, this one was cumbersome and insulting, and it encouraged otherwise honest cops to dishonestly “balance out” their legitimate suspect stops of blacks and Latinos by creating nonexistent Asians or white Anglos. And it just generally pissed off everybody connected with it and resulted in yet more cops being taken off the streets to deal with the PODD information.
    And at that moment nobody was more pissed off than Officer Gert Von Braun, who checked her PODD and placed it on the deck lid of her shop, trying to ignore the surfer team who were watching her and chortling. Because she was mad at the surfers, and at the PODD, and at herself for transferring to Hollywood Station, her mind had been elsewhere when she loaded the magazine tube of her shotgun. The loading protocol was designed to make the gun “patrol ready,” that is, four in the magazine and none in the chamber, with the safety on until the gun is ready to be taken from the car and used. Then a final round was to be taken from the butt cuff to top off the magazine.
    Probably because she was so hot and distracted by the smirking surfers, and had such a famously short fuse in the first place, she forgot that she’d just loaded the magazine. And she decided to test the action as she usually did before loading any rounds into the gun. Of course, that racked a live round into the chamber, with the safety off.
    Gert realized at once what she’d done, and cursing the surfers under her breath for dissing her, she was about to unchamber the round after placing her cell phone beside the PODD on the deck lid of the car.
    “Dude, I think we better get our wheels up,” Flotsam said to his partner. “Gert has locked in on us with lips drawn, fangs bared, and a shotgun in her paws.”
    “Bro, that swamp donkey can shoot with either hand,” Jetsam agreed, eyeing Gert’s Distinguished Expert shooting medal on her left pocket flap over her extra-large bosom. “And her heart pumps Freon to her veins.”
    Still glaring at the surfer cops, and trying to think up