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| An
Excerpt From Inner
City Blues |
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Chapter
1
Messing Up My Cha-Cha
Twelve years, eleven months, and fifteen days into living
out my Top Cop fantasies Christie Love with a better hairdo
my Nubian brothers down on Florence and Normandie had
to go and pitch a serious bitch and mess up my cha-cha.
Since May of '79, when I stood in the graduating class at
the Police Academy, I had survived my years with the LAPD
with little more than a few bruises, a shoulder prone to
dislocation, and a couple of badly torn fingernails.
Survived the early years in patrol cars with partners whose
every joke began "There was a white man, a Mexican,
and a nigg . . . uh . . . black man . . ." Survived
my first assignment as a gang detective in Southwest, where
I learned more about L.A. homeboys in the first three months
than I had in three years of graduate study in criminology.
And let me not forget the edu-mo'-cation I got when I went
over to South Bureau Homicide, where I saw more dead bodies
in five years than detectives in other parts of the country
see in their whole careers.
I had survived stun guns and choke holds; Afro puffs and
Jheri curls; floods, fires, and medflies; the '84 Olympics
and the Whittier quake. At thirty-eight, I weighed thirty
pounds less than I had in high school, had all my teeth,
and had never, until getting caught near ground zero on
a fine spring day, seriously been in fear for my life. But
thanks to twelve decent, Gates-fearing residents of Simi
Valley and its pro-cop environs, I spent the days leading
up to my thirteenth anniversary in the Department back in
uniform dodging bullets, new jack Molotov cocktails, and
more Pampers tossed through broken grocery store windows
than I care to remember.
As I watched the city I loved go to hell in a handbasket,
I kept reminding myself that the Los Angeles I wanted to
protect and to serve was basically composed of law-abiding
citizens, not mad looters dragging microwaves down Pico
Boulevard near my house, no less.
There was a deadly carnival atmosphere in the air. Gang
members and grandmothers, who usually gave each other a
wide berth, were united in their rage over the verdict and
the stench of despair that had hovered in the air since
Watts blew up in 1965. But unlike the Watts riots, which
were confined by segregation to a much smaller area, the
alliance of the poor and the befuddled yearning to live
large was everywhere, of every color and economic class,
all wanting to bring down some particularly offensive part
of the system in their corner of the city. So it didn't
matter if it was beating Reginald Denny in South Central
or looting a jewelry store in Long Beach anything and
everything was fair game.
I had to do something to keep the peace, so even though
it was against Department policy, I'd finagled a way to
stay on duty almost forty-eight hours. And while it was
the most stressful thing I'd done since joining the force,
I was getting through it okay. But it was Friday, May 1,
the day after the National Guard set up housekeeping in
shopping centers all over the city, that the last straw,
blown in on a warm Santa Ana wind from a most unexpected
direction, broke this camel's back.
A motley crew of twenty of us street cops and desk jockeys
from Parker Center, South Bureau, and a couple of the divisions
had been deployed by bus to a strip mall on Rodeo Road.
Spelled exactly the same as Rodeo (as in Ro-day-o) Drive
in Beverly Hills, the running joke in some parts of town
was how far apart the two streets really were. Rodeo Drive's
sleek boutiques and Mercedes-Benzes epitomized the Southern
California good life, and the chief of police and residents
there made damn sure everyone knew Beverly Hills was not
in the City of Angels. I bet most of the tenants on Rodeo
Drive didn't even know about their poor relations that runs
through what black folks call "the Westside,"
less than five miles southeast as the crow flies.
My Rodeo although pronounced the way the cowboys do
was no less treasured than Beverly Hills's. Shopping centers
and moderately priced planned communities on the western
end of the street gave way to soul-food joints, strip malls,
and solidly middle-class homes to the east. At the corner
of Rodeo and La Brea was a busy commercial district. I bought
my first forty-five (record, that is) Fontella Bass's
"Rescue Me" at the record store that sat on
the corner, and down the street on La Brea was the Baldwin
Theater, where I went on my first real date.
Rodeo forked to the left at Dorsey High School and through
a neighborhood of postwar tract houses whose identical twins
in what white folks call the Westside would command at least
a hundred thousand more. A little farther east were blocks
of vintage Spanish homes, including the original residence
and beautiful rose gardens of Mayor Tom Bradley and his
wife, Ethel.
Two streets separated by a few miles and lot of money, in
those days the Rodeos were competing in a grimly fought
battle to see who would survive the hell of the last forty-eight
hours. With a chief of police who served as a former aide
to Chief Gates, I was betting well-staffed and well-patrolled
Beverly Hills's Rodeo would be the hands-down winner this
time around.
That day my Rodeo looked more like a war zone than a major
thoroughfare through middle-class black L.A. Its smoldering
rubble was a symbol of the largest civil insurrection in
modern American history, and I had been powerless to stop
it.
I couldn't stop the torching of my record store, up in flames
that first night along with several black-owned businesses.
I couldn't stop the multiracial looters who scrambled for
merchandise at the Fedco store, giggling like kids fighting
for candy from a piρata.
And I couldn't stop what faced the score of us who pulled
up in our armored bus, a day late and a bullet short, to
another devastated strip mall whose windows gaped at us
like a toothless drunk and whose erstwhile customers were
removing their and everybody else's dry cleaning without
presenting a ticket.
It was a little after three in the afternoon when we arrived,
and by four we had apprehended and restrained a rainbow
coalition of looters with the plastic handcuffs we were
using faster than Kleenex in flu season. After the suspects
were transported by prison bus to the emergency holding
facility, I threw myself onto our bus and stretched out
in the first row.
Opposite me was my new partner/trainee and the only other
female on the bus. Genoveva Cortez was an entry-level detective
a Detective I or D-I, we called them and a recent transfer
to headquarters from South Bureau. Cortez was a lot like
me when I got my first assignment at Parker Center, the
LAPD's headquarters, over eleven years ago intelligent,
assertive, naive as hell. But my first assignment at Parker
Center was as a grunt in Press Relations, not the LAPD's
renowned Robbery-Homicide Division. And my baptism by fire
came by assisting the Press Relations commander with the
media on a VIP homicide, not trying to work homicides while
the whole city went up in smoke at the rate of three fires
per minute.
Cortez was dealing with it, though. Made me understand why
they chose her to be the second woman to join RHD's homicide
unit, which up until my arrival was a very exclusive as
in white-only boys' club. But homicides even the demanding,
high-profile ones RHD handles have a way of ignoring gender
and color lines. And female homicide detectives had made
contributions everywhere else in the Department why not
RHD? So it was finally determined, after much gnashing of
teeth and wringing of hands, that even the LAPD's crθme
de la crθme had to change to keep up with the times, ugly
as they were.
But the kind of thing Cortez and I were doing during the
riots was without precedent, even if we were of the right
"persuasion" for the job. That was because there
were so many riot-related murders to investigate that the
homicide detectives in the Bureau and divisional operations
were completely overwhelmed. And so it was somebody downtown's
bright idea to loan out Robbery-Homicide Division detectives
including Cortez and me on a temporary basis, to provide
detectives to process as many homicides on the scene as
we could safely and quickly manage.
I guess it's like the song says some girls have all the
luck. Shopkeepers murdered in their burned-out stores. Looter-shooters
killing each other over CDs. Gang members whacking their
rivals, High Noon style, just because they could get away
with it. In forty-eight hours, Cortez and I had personally
investigated nine crime scenes in what is usually the South
Bureau's jurisdiction, more than we would usually handle
in RHD in a year.
And we weren't getting much sympathy from our bus mates,
either. "You downtown divas work so many celebrity
cases you forget what it's really like in the streets,"
Mike Cooper snorted. "This shit is what we gotta deal
with all the time."
He suggested we cruise King Boulevard. "Bound to be
some more 'bidness' for you ladies over there," he
said with just a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
As the bus made its way east, Cortez and I sat staring at
each other across the aisle, our heads propped up against
the windows. My reflection played back to me in the glass
behind Gena's head gave the illusion we were cheek to cheek.
Gena was darker than I, the deep sheen of her hair and eyes
marking her as a Latina much quicker than my pale skin and
light brown hair would tip some people off that I was black.
And while I knew Gena was a full seven years younger than
I, you wouldn't have known it that day. We were too tired
to talk, too tired even to acknowledge each other. We looked
more like chimney sweeps than cops.
At first I only half-heard Mike Cooper's voice. A detective
out of South Bureau, Cooper worked what used to be called
the gang detail, before some acronym-happy police administrator
christened it CRASH Community Resources Against Street
Hoodlums. As he droned on, I looked behind me to see what
all the hoopla was about.
Despite his religious devotion to weightlifting, Cooper
was still a rodent of a man, weasel-eyed and mousy-haired,
who reminded me more of the before than after pictures at
Gold's Gym. He was whining about how he hadn't seen his
family for two days, as if it were any different for the
rest of us. Cooper was clearly exhausted, but something
in the tone of his voice had the hairs on the back of my
neck standing at attention and straining to whisper urgent
warnings in my ear.
"Goddamn it, I'm sick of this shit! These fuckin' bangers
out here might as well have been the V.C. some of us saw
in 'Nam, the way they ambushed Denny. These animals don't
give a fuck about human life, so why should we?" The
supportive murmuring drifted toward Cortez and me like a
foul wind, carrying Cooper's words with it. "We're
supposed to be the best-trained law enforcement agency in
the world, not some fish in a barrel for these mud-brown
niggers and spics to pick off. I'm telling you, I don't
give a shit about no fuckin' prime directives the first
little jungle bunny who looks at me cross-eyed is gonna
get a cap in his ass! I know how to get this city in order!"
We were all tired and a little crazed, but Cooper was having
a bona fide out-of-body. It wasn't his anger or racism that
surprised me, but the fact that the fool had the nerve to
be this open about it.
Although Chief Gates had proclaimed after the Rodney King
beating that the LAPD saw no color except blue, every black
or brown-complexioned cop knew otherwise. It was a part
of their job, so went the thinking of some of our paler
brothers in blue, to provide a running commentary on the
race of every suspect we ran in. Or to type out gorilla-in-the-mist
jokes on their mobile digital terminals (as in "What
do you get when you put Mike Tyson in a steam room?").
And a comment on how they'd love to see Anita Hill's pubic
hairs (or mine, or Cortez's) in their Coke cans was always
good for a laugh theirs, not ours.
Women and minority officers knew that to protest the casual
racism and sexism of our co-workers singled us out as difficult,
opening the door to an even more rigorous dosage of fun
and games at our expense. If you complained of racial or
sexual harassment to the Internal Affairs Department, it
would automatically trigger an investigation and no one
would work with you. And without a partner you could trust
at your back, your ass would be grass, left out to dry in
the Santa Ana winds.
But even with the built-in protection the system gave him,
for Cooper to go this far in mixed company was way, way
over the line. Cortez and I both came out of South Bureau.
Cooper had known and had worked with both of us there. Besides,
there was no mistaking Cortez as a Latina, and despite the
fact that my coloring could be misleading to some, Cooper
knew damn well I was black.
Still pointedly ignoring us, Cooper ranted and raved while
a few others, some of whom I could trace back to my days
in the Academy, grunted their approval and nodded their
heads like newly saved sinners at a tent revival. Cortez's
eyes darted between Cooper in the back and me; our Latino
driver's eyes were fixed icily on the road ahead.
The encouragement from the choirboys in the back of the
bus made Cooper all the bolder. "You split tails think
you're makin' a difference in the Department with all that
community outreach you do," he called out, slipping
into the derogatory terminology too many of our colleagues
use for female officers, "but I'm tellin' you, these
bastards out here will kill you just as quick as they would
me. Maybe quicker. And them penny-ante Berettas you're carryin'
ain't gonna make a fuckin' bit of difference against the
firepower they've got out here."
He damn sure was right about that. We had all heard that
morning about three officers, including the brother of Dodger
player Darryl Strawberry, who were ambushed by a gang-banger
with an AK-47. Luckily the shooter was brought down and
the men weren't badly injured. Still . . .
The sinews in Cortez's neck tightened as Cooper strode up
front and sat on the edge of my seat. I didn't move my feet
to accommodate him or even look at him directly. He pushed
my feet aside and gestured out the window. We had just passed
the burned out hulk of Aquarius Book Center, the first and
oldest black bookstore in the city. I had just bought Toni
Morrison's latest novel there a few days before the world
went crazy.
"Tell me, Justice, do you think these homies and pachucos
give a rat's ass about you?" His whispering breath
bore the sour surprise of stale whiskey. "Do you? Do
you think if we put you off this bus right here you'd make
it to the end of the block without these fuckin' animals
rippin' you to pieces? They won't even see you; they'll
just see the uniform and those gray eyes you got and figure
you for one more honky bitch cop out to oppress their lazy
asses."
Cooper's eyes lingered over my body. "Or maybe they
will recognize their sistuh" he ran his tongue over
cracked lips and drawled out the word in his own version
of redneck-from-the-hood "and get themselves a little
piece of that sweet-cream ass before they put a bullet through
your head."
Sergeant Burt Rivers, a veteran I'd known since joining
the Department, called out for Cooper to lighten up. We
were under Burt's direct command, so Cooper should have
listened. But he was too far gone to turn back now.
I gently put my left hand on Cooper's shoulder, easing him
back so I could look him in the eye and he could see my
hand on my gun. Said as calmly as I could, "Mike, I
know you're tired. So am I. But if you don't get off my
bra strap right now, I'm going to aim this gun at Mister
Willy there and change that Waco twang to a West Hollywood
falsetto.
So why don't you save the drama for your mama before somebody
gets hurt?"
The bus reverberated with catcalls and "She sure told
you's," in four-part harmony. Cooper glared at the
chorus in the back and then leaned in a little closer toward
me.
I unsnapped my holster. I could have smoked him right then
and there if he pushed me.
Cooper's beady eyes had taken on a new gleam, but I realized
he was no longer looking at me, but through the window behind
me. "Pull over, Guillermo," he called out to our
driver. "Looks like we got us a curfew violator."
By that time the gaze of everyone on the bus had shifted
starboard to take in a male the color of cafι au lait sprinting
west on King Boulevard. Sporting three days' worth of beard
on his angular face, a Raiders cap, black leather jacket,
and wrinkled dark green cotton pants, the man appeared skittish
and agitated amid the graffiti-covered apartment buildings
and lengthening shadows.
He approached an Infiniti Q45 parked mid-block on the almost-deserted
street. With its glistening, white metallic paint job and
gold rims, the car was an easy target. The man peered through
the car's window, peeled off his jacket, and wound it around
his fist. He looked around as if he were trying to determine
who would notice if he smashed the passenger's window.
"Looky here, Justice, we got us a 487.3 in progress."
Cooper sounded almost gleeful to be quoting the California
Penal Code number for grand theft auto. "Let's wait
'til he makes a definitive move." As if on cue, the
man dropped to his knees, feeling around for something underneath
the car. He stood up with a smile, one of those magnetic
key holders in his hand. "Now ain't that a bitch?"
Cooper exclaimed to the guys in the back. "Some poor
bastard's dumb enough to leave his keys under the car for
this nigger to find. Come on, fellas."
Cooper, a pimply-faced boot named Amundsen, and four others
clambered off the bus, their riot helmets snapped into place,
rifles in hand. A little older and slower off the mark,
but at six-six and in his early fifties more commanding
in stature and presence, Sergeant Burt Rivers brought up
the rear, John Wayne with a mustache. Gena slid across the
aisle to my side of the bus. "Es muy peligroso."
She glanced at the apartment buildings on either side of
the street. A tic hopped in her left eye.
Very dangerous was right. I watched as Cooper and Burt approached
the car; Amundsen and the others stood back about ten feet
and waited, rifles clasped across their chests. The man,
tall, trim, and younger-looking than I suspected he actually
was, didn't run or back off but started gesturing toward
the car. He seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place
him. The Raiders cap he wore rang a bell a football player
coming from the Coliseum? If so, he must've had some kind
of shock; the stadium was being used as an emergency jail
facility. Besides, the team's practice field was fifteen
miles away in El Segundo, and it was the off-season. This
would be the last place you'd expect to see a football player.
A camera was slung over his shoulder. A news photographer?
Or maybe just a Looky Lou, one of a score we'd seen since
the riots started, capturing the fiery moments on everything
from video cameras to disposable thirty-five-millimeter
Kodaks and Fujis.
I slid the window down in time to hear, "Gentlemen,
I'm Dr. Lance Mitchell. I just finished my shift over at
California Medical Center's Emergency Room, and I locked
my keys in the car. I came over here to drop off some medication
with a patient."
He started patting his pockets. "I know I've got my
ID is somewhere..."
"Hold it right there!" Amundsen bellowed. The
boot eased up to the man, patted him down nervously. "He's
got no ID, sir," he told Rivers.
The man looked up with what tried to be a charming smile.
"Maybe I locked it up in the car, too."
Something about that smile clicked in my head this was
the doctor who treated me in the hospital's ER last fall!
I struggled to get the window down farther, to warn Cooper
and company to ease up.
"Sir, step away from the vehicle!" It was Sergeant
Rivers, polite but firm. I was probably the only one to
see his mustache twitch.
When Mitchell didn't move Cooper shouted, "Goddamnit,
nigger, get away from the car! You ain't no fuckin' doctor
and you know it! You were tryin' to cop a G-ride, just like
you probably stole that fancy camera you're carryin'."
Now why, I remember thinking, did Cooper have to go there?
I started banging on the windows, but no one heard me. I
might as well have been screaming underwater for all the
good it was doing.
"But you ain't stealin' this car, you Mandingo-assed
motherfucker!" Cooper said. "Now put your hands
on the hood of the car."
Cooper prodded Dr. Mitchell on the collarbone with his baton.
The doctor's hand flew up reflexively, batting the baton
away from his face. Amundsen stepped forward and put the
butt of his rifle in the doctor's gut before Rivers, his
training officer, could stop him. My stomach churned in
response and I anxiously fell in line behind Cortez and
the others rushing off the bus.
Please, God, not this. Since Rodney King, black men from
all walks of life had risen up to complain about their treatment
at the hands of the LAPD. It had caused the Department a
lot of embarrassment. We didn't need to go through it again,
especially not now. I had to do something to stop this.
When people watching from the nearby apartments saw the
first blow, they could have reached for their Uzis or their
video cameras, but most of the stream of thirty or so Latinos
and blacks being disgorged from the buildings were brandishing
forty-ounce bottles of Schlitz Malt Liquor, lengths of lead
pipe, and brooms. They stood jeering at the officers, who
by then were arrayed in a half circle around Dr. Mitchell
and the car, facing the oncoming crowd. Cortez and I joined
them and started ordering people back inside.
We stood that way for some time cops yelling at citizens,
citizens cursing at the top of their lungs. The stalemate
was broken when a shot echoed from somewhere nearby. In
the second of hush that followed someone threw a bottle
at Amundsen, who, rookie that he was, impulsively waded
in before anyone could stop him. After that, it was on
tire irons and empty forties crashing and clanging with
aluminum police batons and riot helmets.
I was hoping Guillermo had radioed in for backup because
things had gotten completely out of hand; if it persisted,
somebody was going to get killed. A smaller group of men,
women, and more than a few kids broke for the bus and tried
to rock it. A half dozen officers headed back across the
street to secure it and Guillermo's butt. Cooper was only
partially right about my people trying to rip me to pieces.
I could have been any color from sunshine white to shoeshine
black, could have been their mama's best friend, but it
was the dark blue uniform that made me a target that day.
Despite their best efforts to kick my ass, though, I still
managed to find Mitchell and drag him to his feet.
But I could have sworn it was a fellow officer who grabbed
my right arm and gave it a gut-wrenching twist as I strong-armed
my way through the surging crowd of my black, brown, and
blue brothers, Mitchell in tow. Cortez saw us from the other
side of the crowd and moved in to watch my back. Somehow
we made it past Cooper and the others, who had just about
stabilized the situation with help from a couple of extra
patrol cars from the nearby Southwest Division station and
an air unit thrumping overhead.
We had moved Mitchell away from the melee, past the boarded-up
taco stand at the corner, past the McDonald's, and almost
to the intersection, when my arm got too heavy for me to
carry and my back began to spasm. Dr. Mitchell hustled me
into a storefront's recessed doorway while Cortez went around
the corner to see if she could flag down some help.
We stayed crouched in that doorway, amid the empty wine
bottles, forties, and the smell of urine, for what felt
like forever. But probably only a few minutes elapsed before
Cortez returned, tailed by a redheaded reporter I recognized
as Neil Hookstratten from the Los Angeles Times. Riding
with him was the also-redheaded but dreadlocked Fred "F-Stop"
Stoppard, a former LAPD crime scene photographer who now
worked for the paper.
Cortez explained Hook would transport us to the temporary
jail facility at the Coliseum. "To hell with jail,"
snapped Mitchell. "You've got an officer here who needs
medical care!"
My partner ignored him and continued to confer with the
reporter.
"This is ludicrous," Mitchell broke in. "I'm
a doctor, goddamn it, and I'm telling you your partner needs
medical attention and she needs it now!"
I was in no shape to argue, but we had a suspect to consider.
Cortez was watching the melee we had just left behind us,
fingering her handcuffs like a rosary. Finally she returned
them to her belt and asked Hookstratten to drive us to the
hospital.
Dr. Mitchell was visibly relieved as he got into the backseat
of the Taurus to attend to me. Cortez got in back, too,
her eyes on our suspect. "Let's get her over to California
Medical Center," Mitchell suggested to Hook. The reporter
turned on the car's emergency flashers and whipped a U-turn
on King, turned left at the corner, and flew north on Vermont
like a bat out of hell.
Mitchell was fighting a losing battle to make me comfortable
as we were jostled about in the back of the car. "Haven't
we met before, Officer . . .?"
"Justice . . . Detective Justice," I corrected.
"Out of Robbery-Homicide Division downtown." The
puzzled expression on the doctor's face only intensified.
"Everyone's in uniform and on the street until this
thing is over," I explained.
"No . . . no . . . that's not it." His face scrunched
up in concentration. "We've met before. Was it the
Vineyard last summer? Were you a patient at California Medical
Center? I'm sure I remember . . ."
"This isn't about Detective Justice, it's about you,
Doctor," Cortez interrupted. "What in God's name
are you doing here?"
Mitchell ran his fingers through what looked to me like
chemically straightened hair. "I hadn't heard anything
on the radio about any trouble in this part of town. So
I assumed it would be safe to run some extra hypertension
meds over to one of the elderly women I treated yesterday."
" 'Assume' makes an ass of you and me," I reminded
him. "How could you 'assume' with a riot going on that
there wouldn't be trouble everywhere, especially in South
Central? Just because you didn't hear it on one of the all-news
radio stations doesn't mean ain't nothing going down."
Cortez was equally testy. "And acting like you were
about to break into that car only made matters worse."
"It was my damn car! I just locked my keys in it."
The words slipped out of Mitchell's mouth before he could
catch himself. He apologized quickly, his words tumbling
over themselves in his haste to make us understand. "You
have no idea what kind of madness we've been dealing with
at the hospital. Mrs. Rucker's pressure was one sixty over
one ten yesterday. She should have been admitted, but we
didn't have the beds. Didn't even have enough antihypertensive
medication to give her so many nonpatients had been begging
to get prescriptions filled, the pharmacy had run dangerously
low. And with all the local pharmacies burned down and our
suppliers afraid to send trucks into the area, what was
Mrs. Rucker going to do?"
"Are we missing something here?" Hookstratten's
eyes widened into the rearview mirror. F-Stop, who got his
nickname for the near-artistic precision of his crime scene
photographs, turned in his seat, dreadlocks bristling, and
looked, puppy-alert, at the three of us in the back.
"Not a thing," I warned the redheaded duo. They
both caught my drift, hunkered down in their seats, and
pretended not to listen.
Mitchell inhaled deeply and let the air shudder out in a
rush. "I'm sorry. I've been on a forty-eight-hour shift
at the hospital. I guess I'm not thinking too clearly."
He looked down at his hands, then defiantly at me. "But
that was my car! Didn't you see the license plate?"
How could I miss it? It was one of those notice-me vanity
plates in a red frame that proclaimed, "ER doctors
do it STAT."
I avoided answering his question by asking the fellas up
front for their cell phone. They were making such a show
of not listening to our conversation that I almost had to
say it twice before F-Stop responded. As he passed the phone
back to me, he noticed the Nikon that Mitchell was carrying,
and the two began a sotto voce pantomime about the model
they both evidently used.
Whatever mercy mission he'd been on, Lance Mitchell was
probably also on a little expedition to take pictures of
the war zone to show off to his buppie friends on the golf
course or his summer house in Oak Bluffs at the Vineyard.
I had seen that kind of behavior all day, mostly from whites
who drove in from the Valley or the Westside slumming,
my Aunt Winnie in Harlem would call it but to think of
a brother doing it really fried my ass.
I dialed the unlisted land line for the com center and told
the radio telephone operator we had two officers-need-help
situations. I gave her the location of the altercation and
made sure that adequate backup had been dispatched to the
taco stand. It had five more patrol cars with four men
each and a National Guard unit were already en route. Then
I told her my status, our present location and destination.
I also gave her the license plate to get the DMV status
on the Q45 Mitchell claimed was his.
"I know my driver's license number, too, if you need
it," Mitchell offered.
I motioned him to be quiet. "Never mind, Doctor. I
remember
. . . you reset my shoulder last fall."
And the way it was feeling, he might be doing it again. |
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