Free Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh Page A

pavement in front of the station without stepping on them. There was nothing like them at other LAPD stations, and they were exactly like the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame except that the names embedded in the marble were not the names of movie stars. There were seven names, all belonging to officers from Hollywood Station who had been killed on duty. Among them were Robert J. Cot,, shot and killed by a robber, Russell L. Kuster, gunned down in a Hungarian restaurant by a deranged customer, Charles D. Heim, shot to death during a drug arrest, and Ian J. Campbell, kidnapped by robbers and murdered in an onion field.
    The wall plaque said "To Those Who Stood Their Ground When in Harm's Way."
    Hollywood Station was also different from any other in the LAPD by virtue of the interior wall hangings. There were one-sheet movie posters hanging in various places in the station, some but not all from cop movies based in Los Angeles. A police station decorated with movie posters let people know exactly where they were.
    Andi was passed in the corridor leading to the detective squad room by two young patrol officers on their way out. Although there were several older cops working patrol, Hollywood Division officers tended to be young, as though the brass downtown considered Hollywood a training area, and perhaps they did.
    The short Japanese American female officer she knew as Mag something said hi to Andi.
    The tall black male officer whose name she didn't know said more formally, "Afternoon, Detective."
    Six-X-Sixty-six had been asked by the vice sergeant to pop into a few of the adult bookstores to make sure there weren't lewd-conduct violations taking place in the makeshift video rooms. A pair of Hollywood Station blue suits making unscheduled visits went a long way toward convincing the termites to clean up their act, the vice sergeant had told them. Mag Takara, an athletic twenty-six-year-old, and the shortest officer at Hollywood Station, was partnered in 6-X-66 with Benny Brewster, age twenty-five, from southeast L. A., who was one of Hollywood's tallest officers.
    One morning last month, the Oracle had spotted a clutch of male cops in the parking lot after roll call convulsing in giggles at Mag Takara, who, after putting her overloaded war bag into the trunk, couldn't close the lid because it was sprung and yawned open out of reach.
    Mag's war bag was on wheels, jammed with helmet and gear. She had also been carrying a Taser, an extra canister of pepper spray, a beanbag shotgun, a pod (handheld MDT computer), her jacket, a bag of reports, a flashlight, a side-handle baton as well as a retractable steel baton, and the real we-mean-business shotgun loaded with double-aught buck that would be locked in the rack inside the car. She was so short she had to go around to the rear window of the patrol car and close the trunk by walking her hands along the length of the deck lid until it clicked shut.
    The Oracle watched her for a moment and heard the loudest of the cops tossing out lines to the others like, "It's a little nippy, wouldn't you say? A teeny little nippy."
    The Oracle said to the jokester, "Bonelli, her great-grandparents ran a hotel on First Street in little Tokyo when yours were still eating garlic in Palermo. So spare us the ethnic wisecracks, okay?"
    Bonelli said, "Sorry, Sarge."
    While the cops were all walking to their patrol cars, the Oracle said, "I gotta balance that kid out." And he'd assigned Benny Brewster to partner with Mag for the deployment period to see how they got along. And so far, so good, except that Benny Brewster had a cultural hangup about adult bookstores when it came to gay porn.
    "Those sissies creep me out," he said to Mag. "Some of the gangstas in Compton would cap their ass, they saw the stuff we see all over Hollywood" is how he explained it.
    But Mag told him she didn't give a shit if the fuck flicks were gay or straight, it was all revolting. One of her former cop boyfriends had tried