Hollywood Station Read Free

bad hip, which was later replaced, and everybody said I was real lucky."
    "How about the nag?"
    "They told me Major seemed okay at first. He was limping, of course. But after they trailered him back to Griffith Park and called the vet, he could hardly stand. He was in bad shape and got worse. They had to put him down that night." And then he added, "Horses are such assholes, man."
    When his partner looked at the driver, he thought he saw his eyes glisten in the mix of light from the boulevard-fluorescence and neon, headlights and taillights, even reflected glow from a floodlight shooting skyward-announcing to all: This is Hollywood! But all that light spilling onto them changed the crispness of their black-and-white to a wash of bruised purple and sickly yellow. His partner wasn't sure, but he thought the driver's chin quivered, so he pretended to be seriously studying the costumed freaks in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.
    After a moment the driver said, "So anyways, I said fuck it. When I healed up I put in for Hollywood Division because from what I'd seen of it from the saddle it seemed like a pretty good place to work, long as you got a few hundred horses under you instead of one. And here I am."
    His partner didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, "I used to surf a lot when I worked West L. A. Lived with my leash attached to a squealy. I had surf bumps all over my knees, bro. Getting too old for that. Thinking about getting me a log and just going out and catching the evening glass."
    "Awesome, dude. Evening glass is way cool. Me, after I transferred to Hollywood I sorta became a rev-head, cruising in my Beemer up to Santa Barbara, down to San Diego, revving that ultimate driving machine. But I got to missing being in the green room, you know? In that tube with the foam breaking over you? Now I go out most every morning I'm off duty. Malibu attracts bunnies. Come along sometime and I'll lend you a log. Maybe you'll have a vision."
    "Maybe I'll get a brain wave out there on evening glass. I need one to figure out how to keep my second ex-wife from making me live under a tree eating eucalyptus like a fucking koala."
    "Of course you're gonna get a surf jacket soon as these hodads around Hollywood Station find out. Everybody calls me Flotsam. So if you surf with me, you know they're gonna call you . . ."
    "Jetsam," his partner said with a sigh of resignation.
    "Dude, this could be the beginning of a choiceamundo friendship."
    "Jetsam? Bro, that is wack, way wack."
    "What's in a name?"
    "Whatever. So what happened to the Stetson after you played lawn dart in Grauman's courtyard?"
    "No lawn in that courtyard. All concrete. I figure a tweaker picked it up. Probably sold it for a few teeners of crystal. I keep hoping to someday find that crankster. Just to see how fast I can make his body heat drop from ninety-eight point six to room temperature."
    As they were talking, 6-X-32 got a beep on the MDT computer. Jetsam opened and acknowledged the message, then hit the en route key and they were on their way to an address on Cherokee Avenue that appeared on the dashboard screen along with "See the woman, 415 music."
    "Four-fifteen music," Flotsam muttered. "Why the hell can't the woman just go to her neighbor and tell them to turn down the goddamn CD? Probably some juice-head fell asleep to Destiny's Child."
    "Maybe Black Eyed Peas," Jetsam said. "Or maybe Fifty Cent. Crank up the decibels on that dude and you provoke homicidal urges. Heard his album called The Massacre?"
    It wasn't easy to find a parking place near the half block of apartment buildings, causing 6-X-32 to make several moves before the patrol car was able to squeeze in parallel between a late-model Lexus and a twelve-year-old Nova that was parked far enough from the curb to be ticketed.
    Jetsam hit the at-scene button on the keyboard, and they grabbed their flashlights and got out, with Flotsam grumbling, "In all of Hollywood tonight there's probably about