Hollywood Hills Read Free Page A

the wide-bodied, balding, mustachioed Latino cop in the dark three-piece business suit. It was Lorenzo "Snuffy" Salcedo, an old friend and classmate who had served with Nate in 77th Street Division when they were boots fresh out of the police academy, as well as later, when Snuffy had worked patrol at Hollywood Station for two years.
    Snuffy had served nine years in the navy before becoming a cop and was ten years older than Nate. But he wasn't showing the effects of his forty-eight years. He had competed in power lifting in the Police Olympics and had a chest like a buffalo. Snuffy had acquired his nickname from his habit of tucking a pinch of Red Man chewing tobacco inside his lower lip and spitting tobacco juice into a Styrofoam cup. Some cops mistakenly thought that he was dipping snuff. Nate remembered that their training officers at 77th had threatened to make Snuffy drink the contents of his cup if they caught him, but at Hollywood Station, once he was off probation, he'd kept his lip loaded most of the time. He was always the division champ when it came to chatter and gossip, in a profession where gossip was coin of the realm.
    Back then, their late sergeant, whom they'd called the Oracle, was often tasked by the watch commander to deal with Snuffy's droopy 'stash. But the Oracle would simply say to him, "Zapata is dead, Snuffy. Trim the tips off that feather duster next time you're clipping your nails."
    Snuffy seldom did and the Oracle didn't really care. Then Nate thought of how much he missed the Oracle, who'd died of a massive heart attack on the Walk of Fame in front of Hollywood Station. The stars in marble and brass on that part of Wilcox Avenue were not there to commemorate movie stars but as memorials to the Hollywood Division coppers who had been killed in the line of duty.
    Nate's reminiscing stopped when Snuffy Salcedo left the LAPD chief's SUV at the curb and jogged toward the red carpet parking area, arms outstretched. Under the mustache his toothy grin was glinting arctic white from all the lights on Hollywood Boulevard.
    Nate said, "Snuffy Salcedo, I presume?"
    Snuffy said, "Hollywood Nate Weiss! Where the fuck you been and how are you? Abrazos,'mano!"
    He gave Nate a rib-crushing embrace, and up close Nate saw that bulge under Snuffy's lower lip.
    Snuffy said, "I saw you spear that chubby pap, you rascal. Glad to see you still got the chops you learned back in the day with me." Then he did an Elvis impression and sang, "Down in the ghet-to!"
    Nate said, "I see you still got that revolting wad of manure inside your lip. Does the big boss let you drive with a cup of tobacco juice in the cup holder?"
    "It disappears when Mister shows up," Snuffy said.
    Many of the veteran LAPD cops had never accepted this chief of police, the second one to be imported from the East Coast since the Rodney King riots. This chief had come seven years ago, and when the coppers referred to him privately, it was not with "Chief" before his surname but with "Mister," the ultimate invective, meaning that he was just another imported civilian politician and could never be a real LAPD copper.
    "So how do you like driving for this one?" Nate asked. "Have you ever had a colonoscopy?" Snuffy said.
    "Why've you stayed in Metro all these years, Snuffy?" Nate asked. "Aren't you sick of it yet?"
    "The overtime money driving for this one has been keeping me where I am," Snuffy said. "Mister is the first LAPD chief to need security aides everywhere but in his bathtub. You'd think a guy that's been married as many times as he has woulda picked a babe that cooks this time around, but there's no food in their house and they go out every night to eat. On his weekend days off, he even needs us with him. We're a full-service detail with this one. There's five of us security aides and we're all getting richer than Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band."
    "I had a feeling his Irish twinkle might mask a gloomy Celtic interior," said Nate.
    Snuffy