Free Hollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh Page B

slender
     mustache jumped and twitched.
    Thus began the suspicion that, though never conclusively proved, put R.T. Dibney on the short list for an administrative transfer,
     and he was assigned to the desk during part of his last deployment period at North Hollywood Division. At the urging of Lieutenant
     Edgar Lamb, Internal Affairs agreed to monitor a video camera in the station lobby to determine whether or not R.T. Dibney
     was making on-duty phone calls to Lieutenant Lamb’s wife.
    To set the trap, R.T. Dibney was specifically told by a North Hollywood sergeant that the camera in the lobby was strictly
     for officer safety because of an incident wherein a deranged person had walked into Rampart Station with a can of gasoline
     and tried to set the place on fire. And would have, except that he couldn’t strike a match while wearing gloves.
    After the sergeant’s rather suspiciously timed and unnecessary remarks about the camera, R.T. Dibney whispered to the other
     desk officer, “Know what? We’re on reality TV.”
    And during that tour of duty at the desk, when nobody was in the North Hollywood lobby but R.T. Dibney and that desk partner—a
     black veteran P2 named Otis Maxwell—R.T. Dibney suddenly began humming and rocking slowly, his mustache twitching, and then
     did a weird and spooky dance while staring at the camera lens as Officer Maxwell watched, stupefied.
    When R.T. Dibney puckered his lips sensually and pinched his own nipples, Officer Maxwell cried, “What’re you doin’, Dibney?
     Your fuckin’ stash is jumpin’ like a tap dancer’s nuts.”
    “Who am I?” R.T. Dibney said.
    “Who are you?” Maxwell sputtered. “You’re a fifty-one-fifty wack job is who you are.”
    “This is a charade. You gotta guess the famous movie. Come on, it’s been on TV a hundred times.”
    “This is about a movie?” said Maxwell.
    “I’ll give you a hint,” R.T. Dibney said. “I kill women and strip off their skin.”
    “Boy, we better get you down to the BSS shrink,” said Maxwell. “You’re weirded out. Gone bug shit.”
    “Okay, another hint,” Dibney said. “My moniker in the movie is Buffalo Bill. The movie stars Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins,
     who won an Oscar.”
    Officer Maxwell could only gawk wordlessly when R.T. Dibney once again began the lascivious writhing and lubricious posing,
     all the time panting at the camera, and he only stopped when Maxwell cried, “
Silence of the Fuckin’ Lambs
! Now step off! You’re freakin’ me!”
    Internal Affairs later viewed the eerie video, and an IA investigator informed Lieutenant Edgar Lamb that this officer was
     not going to be caught so easily and that maybe the lieutenant should seek marriage counseling.
    The end of R.T. Dibney’s tour at North Hollywood Division and his administrative transfer finally came when he was ordered
     to transport to jail a Beverly Hills attorney whom a motor officer had arrested for DUI. The attorney, who’d been berating
     the motor cop, then directed the tirade against R.T. Dibney the moment the lawyer was put into the backseat of his black-and-white.
     According to the lawyer’s formal complaint, halfway to the station after the attorney demanded an answer to a legitimate question,
     “The officer farted at me. Twice.” And since this happened while the LAPD was laboring under the draconian federal consent
     decree, by which every accusation had to be taken seriously, a personnel complaint was initiated and had to be fully investigated.
    According to the attorney’s statement alleging the officer’s unbecoming conduct, as well as during later verbal testimony
     before a trial board heard by a tribunal consisting of two command officers and a civilian, the lawyer said of the incident,
     “It was rude. It was insulting. It was disgusting. It was unprofessional. It was outrageous.”
    When it was his turn, Officer R.T. Dibney simply said, “It was frijoles.”
    Thus, R.T. Dibney’s explanation