The Dark Hours (Harry Bosch #23)(3)
“The fire guys are considered health-care providers,” Ballard said. “We’re not.”
“I know, but it’s the principle of it. Our union is shit.”
“It’s not the union. It’s the governor, the health department, a lot of things.”
“Fuckin’ politicians …”
Ballard let it go. It was a complaint heard often at roll calls and in police cars across the city. Like many in the department, Ballard had already contracted Covid-19. She had been knocked down for three weeks in November and now just hoped she had enough antibodies to see her through to the vaccine’s arrival.
During the brooding silence that followed, a patrol car pulled up next to them on Moore’s side in one of the two southbound lanes.
“You know these guys?” Moore asked as she reached for the window button.
“Unfortunately,” Ballard said. “Pull your mask up.”
It was a team of P2s named Smallwood and Vitello, who always had too much testosterone running in their blood. They also thought they were “too healthy” to contract the virus and eschewed the department-mandated mask requirement.
Moore lowered the window after pulling her mask up.
“How’s things in the tuna boat?” Smallwood said, a wide smile on his face.
Ballard pulled up her department-issued mask. It was navy blue with LAPD embossed in silver along the jawline.
“You’re blocking traffic there, Smallwood,” Ballard said.
Moore looked back at Ballard.
“Really?” she whispered. “Small wood?”
Ballard nodded.
Vitello hit the switch for the light bar on the patrol car’s roof. Flashing blue lit up the graffiti on the concrete walls above the tents and shanties on both sides of the overpass. Various versions of “Fuck the Police” and “Fuck Trump” had been whitewashed by city crews but the messages came through under the penetrating blue light.
“How’s that?” Vitello asked.
“Hey, there’s a guy over there wants to report a theft of property,” Ballard responded. “Why don’t you two go take a report?”
“Fuck that,” Smallwood said.
“Sounds like detective work to me,” Vitello added.
The conversation, if it could be called that, was interrupted by the voice of a com center dispatcher coming up on the radio in both cars, asking for any 6-William unit, “6” being the designation for Hollywood, and “William” for detective.
“That’s you, Ballard,” Smallwood said.
Ballard pulled the radio out of its charger in the center console and responded.
“Six-William-twenty-six. Go ahead.”
The dispatcher asked her to respond to a shooting with injury on Gower.
“The Gulch,” Vitello called over. “Need backup down there, ladies?”
Hollywood Division was broken into seven different patrol zones called Basic Car Areas. Smallwood and Vitello were assigned to the area that included the Hollywood Hills, where crime was low and most of the residents they encountered were white. This was a move designed to keep them out of trouble and away from confrontational enforcement with minorities. However, it had not always worked. Ballard had heard about them roughing up teenagers in cars parked illegally on Mulholland Drive, where there were spectacular views of the city at night.
“I think we can handle it,” Ballard called across. “You boys can go back up to Mulholland and watch for kids throwing their condoms out the window. Make it safe up there, guys.”
She dropped the car into drive and hit the gas before either Smallwood or Vitello could manage a comeback.
“Poor guy,” Moore said without sympathy in her voice. “Officer Smallwood.”
“Yeah,” Ballard said. “And he tries to make up for it every night on patrol.”
Moore laughed as they sped south on Cahuenga.
3
The Gower Gulch was the name affixed by Hollywood lore to the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, where almost a hundred years ago it was a pickup spot for day laborers. These laborers waited at the corner for work as extras in the westerns the movie studios were turning out by the week. Many of the Hollywood cowboys waited at the intersection in full costume — dusty boots, chaps, vests, ten-gallon hats — so it became known as the Gower Gulch. It was said that a young actor named Marion Morrison picked up work here. He was better known as John Wayne.
The Gulch was now a shopping plaza with the fading facade of an Old West town and portraits of the Hollywood cowboys — from Wayne to Gene Autry — hanging on the outside wall of the Rite Aid drugstore. Going south from the Gulch, a stretch of studio stages as big as gymnasiums lined the east side all the way down to the crown jewel of Hollywood, Paramount Studios. The storied studio was surrounded by twelve-foot-high walls and iron gates, like a prison. But these barriers were constructed to keep people out, not in.
The west side of Gower was a contradiction. It was lined with a stretch of car repair shops sharing space with aging apartment buildings where burglar bars guarded all windows and doors. The west side was marked heavily by the graffiti of a local gang called Las Palmas 13, but the east-side walls of the studios were left unmarred, as if those with the spray paint knew by some intuition not to mess with the industry that built the city.