Free Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh Page A

taking a job. It was the first time in fifteen years that he’d actually drawn a paycheck and he hated every minute of it. He was the only gringo at a second-rate car wash, and when the owner wasn’t yelling at him, the other workers were. One of the Mexicans was an old homeboy named Chuey, who sometimes had some decent rock to sell. Chuey never carried the rock on his person and he lived in a cottage in East Hollywood, where Leonard had to drive to if he wanted the dope.
    Leonard drove there just after sunset and found Chuey’s door wide open. He yelled and finally entered but couldn’t find Chuey anywhere. Then he walked into the backyard and found him. Horrified, Leonard ran back inside, picked up Chuey’s phone, and called 9-1-1, reporting what he’d found in what he considered to be Spanish-accented English but which was almost indecipherable.
    Before he left the cottage, he sublimated his horror long enough to ransack the bedroom until he found Chuey’s wallet. He stole $23 from the wallet and got the hell out of there.
     
     
    Their “unknown trouble” call came a couple of hours after Dan Applewhite’s allergy attack had quieted. Unknown trouble usually meant that somebody had phoned while drunk or hysterical, or sometimes in a language that was unintelligible. But it could mean anything and made cops a bit nervous and more alert.
    That part of Hollywood was gang territory, but not the turf of the Salvadorans. This was where older cruisers lived, Mexican American
veteranos
of White Fence. Recent reports identified 463 street gangs in Los Angeles with 38,974 members. But how the LAPD had managed to count heads so precisely was anybody’s guess.
    “Bring the shotgun,” Dan said to Gil Ponce, who removed the Remington from its barrel-up bed between the seats and racked one into the chamber, topping off the magazine with an extra round.
    It was a wood-frame cottage, white paint faded and peeling, the tiny yard full of weeds. A smell of salsa and frying lard was coming through the open door.
    “Police!” Dan Applewhite said at the doorway. “Did somebody call?”
    No answer. He took the shotgun from Gil and used the muzzle to push the door farther open. The house was dark but there was light coming from the kitchen. Somebody had eaten at the table recently. The single bedroom was vacant and the bed was made carelessly, a worn bedspread pulled up over a single pillow. A man’s clothes were draped over a chair and hanging in the closet, the meager wardrobe consisting of two pairs of khaki trousers, several white tees, and a gray sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves.
    The back door was open and Gil shined his light outside into a small rear yard, where he saw a child’s tricycle and a plastic wading pool, although the house interior bore no signs of a child living there. On a cheap dresser in the bedroom, he noted four pictures of a smiling Latino boy, and said, “He’s got a son living somewhere, if not here.”
    The young cop walked to the back porch of the cottage and noticed that the rear gate was hanging open, facing onto an alley. Across the alley was a firetrap of an apartment building, defaced by gang graffiti, known to house Latino illegal immigrants. The proof of their occupancy was all of the bean and tomato plants in the common areas, where there was an erstwhile flower planter or a patch of earth. It wasn’t very late and only a few windows showed light in that three-story building, whose westside owner had been cited for fire code violations.
    Gil Ponce walked through the yard and out to the alley, and there he found the object of their call. He was hanging by what appeared to be nylon rope from a climbing spike on a telephone pole between the cottage and the house next to it. He was wearing white cotton briefs and that was all. He was shoeless and there were drizzles of feces running down his legs and over his feet. His neck was stretched a third more than normal and his face had gone from its