Read Online Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh - Free Book Online Page B

deprivation than ever set foot in a 7-Eleven for a cuppa joe. Gil Ponce couldn’t understand that, given the price of Starbucks coffee, but his field training officer was a partner who would often buy coffee for both of them, and sometimes even a meal at Hamburger Hamlet or IHOP. Generosity was one of Dan’s saving graces that everyone appreciated, and it made working with him tolerable when he was in a dark mood. Gil figured that maybe it was his FTO’s way of compensating.
    Dan Applewhite was called Doomsday Dan by the other cops because he lived in constant anticipation of calamity, with permanent frown lines and an inverted smile on his lips. He could be assertive and fearless, but after the fact he’d lapse into a funk and imagine the horrors that might befall him for his actions. He’d reach ungloved into a resisting doper’s mouth to pull out a five-gram stash of rock cocaine but later conclude that if he was lucky, he’d only contract staph from the encounter, instead of the AIDS virus. He was forty-nine years old and had one year to go before retirement, but he was morbidly convinced he’d never make it. Or if he did, the stock market would crash and bankrupt him, and there he’d be, a retired cop, begging for quarters on Hollywood Boulevard.
    “I heard that Donald Trump carries a sterilizer for when he has to shake hands with lots of people,” Flotsam had said to Gil Ponce. “If I had to work with Doomsday Dan all the time, I’d buy him one. It gets embarrassing when he’s on a real downer and you go for a Fat Burger and he gloves up to spritz the table and scrub it down with paper napkins.”
    Gil Ponce had hoped that a supervisor would move him to another training officer, but being a P1 with so little time left on his probation, Gil had resigned himself and felt lucky when deployment considerations put him with other partners. Despite Doomsday Dan’s pathological pessimism, the older cop had taught Gil a lot, and the twenty-two-year-old boot never doubted that Doomsday Dan was dependable and instructive.
    More than once the older cop had lectured Gil on ways to take advantage of his Hispanic status in the diversity-conscious LAPD, especially now that the city of L.A. had a Mexican American mayor with political topspin.
    “You’re Hispanic,” Dan had reminded him. “So use it when the time comes.”
    “But I’m really not,” Gil Ponce finally said to his partner one evening when they were cruising the side streets in East Hollywood, looking for car prowlers. “Let me explain.”
    Gil Ponce had been named after his paternal grandfather, who had immigrated with his parents to Santa Barbara, California, from Peru. All of their children, including Gil’s grandfather, had married Americans.
    Gilberto Ponce III told Dan that he wished his mother, whose ancestry was a mix of Irish and Scottish, had named him Sean or Ian, but she said it would have dishonored his grandfather, whom young Gil loved as much as he loved his parents. Yet Gil had always felt like a fraud, especially now, when this FTO kept harping about the diversity promotions that a name like his could facilitate in Los Angeles, California, circa 2007.
    “Having a Hispanic name is bogus,” Gil finally said that night to the senior officer.
    “Read the nameplate on your uniform,” Dan Applewhite retorted. “You’re Hispanic. That means something today. Look around Hollywood Station. Except for the midwatch, white Anglos are in the minority. Half of the current academy class is Hispanic. L.A. is on the verge of being reclaimed by Mexico.”
    “Okay, look at it this way,” the probie said. “What if my Peruvian grandpa had come from neighboring Brazil, where they have Portuguese names and don’t speak Spanish? Would I still rate diversity points?”
    “Don’t make this too complicated just because you been to college,” Dan said. “It’s all about color and language.”
    Gil said, “I know about as much Spanish as you do,