“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.
The shooting call took Ballard and Moore to a street party in the tow yard of an auto body shop. Several people were milling about in the street, most without masks. Most were watching officers from two patrol cars who were taping off a crime scene inside the gated and asphalt-paved yard, which was lined with vehicles in different stages of repair and restoration.
“So, we have to do this, huh?” Moore said.
“I do,” Ballard said.
She opened the door and got out of the car. She knew her answer would shame Moore into following. Ballard was pretty sure she was going to need Moore to help with this.
Ballard ducked under yellow tape stretched across the entrance to the business and quickly ascertained that the victim of the shooting was not on scene and had been transported. She saw Sergeant Dave Byron and another officer trying to corral a group of potential witnesses in one of the business’s open garages. Two other uniforms were stringing an inner boundary around the actual crime scene, which was marked by a pool of blood and debris left behind by the paramedics. Ballard walked directly over to Byron.
“Dave, what do you have for me?” she asked.
Byron looked over his shoulder at her. He was masked but she could tell by his eyes that he was smiling.
“Ballard, I have a shit sandwich for you,” he said.
She signaled him away from the citizens so they could talk privately.
“Folks, you all stay right here,” Byron said, holding his hands up in a stay-put motion to the witnesses, which Ballard took to mean that they might not understand English.
He joined Ballard by the front of the rusting body of an old VW bus. He looked at what he had jotted down in a small notebook.
“Your victim is supposedly Javier Raffa, owner of the business,” he said. “Lives about a block from here.”
He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the neighborhood west of the body shop.
“For what it’s worth, he has a known affiliation with Las Palmas,” Byron added.
“Okay,” Ballard said. “Where’d they transport him?”
“Hollywood Pres. He was circling.”
“What did the wits tell you?”
“Not much. Left them for you. Raffa apparently has the gates open and puts out a keg every New Year’s Eve. It’s for the neighborhood but a lot of Las Palmas shows up. After the countdown, there was some shooting of firearms into the sky, and then suddenly Raffa was on the ground. So far nobody is saying they actually saw him get hit. And you’ve got shell casings all over the place. Good luck with that.”