I never met a cop who didn’t like a Rueben on rye or some chili fries at three am. But I still hold a grudge. I think they should’ve found who took my sister’s life; they should’ve left him on a hillside to be eaten by dew and bugs. I don’t care if they’re under-funded, under-manned and outgunned, I’m not giving up any ground.
But I needed answers to the Domingos fire story, and hopefully a reason why. I’d scoured ten years of Hollywood Pulses to find out if they’d ever caught anyone, or if they even tried. But there was nothing: not even an attempt at explanation. Now I knew full well it could’ve been the paper’s fault, their stories were just catering to other needs. So I tucked the burned photo into my bag and headed for the Hollywood Police Station. Trying to believe.
It’s nestled in a homey little block of ’60′s apartments and Jacaranda trees. Two blocks north is the Boulevard: Popeye’s chicken, a hundred hot new clubs and late night Hookers on their knees. Inside, the lighting is bad, the cops are veneered and there’s an actors’ union ATM machine. The desk Sergeant “Tilly” smiled kind of coy at me, smelling like knock-off Obsession. I slid the Pulse over to him, “Trying to find out if you ever got the guy who did this?” I asked, my soul begging for resolution. He looked it over, smiled, wry, like he knew the case and my heart nearly flew. Then he shook his head “no” and said simple, cruel and true: “Some never get solved.” That, motherfucker, I already knew.
I walked four blocks down to where I’d parked on Wilcox south of Willoughby. The air was thick with an undertone of cool like it gets after summer’s been freed. I drove straight to the drive-through window at the Astro Burger on Gower with a burning need. There was a screening letting out at Paramount Studios, just across the street. People seemed giddy, laughing, happy, part of a bigger scheme: those who could live their lives as part of a community.
I ate my onion rings at home, alone, looking out my window at the vacant dark alley behind Domingos below. I don’t need to eat them hot; when they cool a bit, you can get a nice hit from the dough. I was trying to figure out what was so weird about the place, why it was hardly ever open and when it was, they didn’t seem to care that business was so slow. But I just didn’t know. And as I looked at the mist above the sputtering lights, all I saw was vapor with a neon glow. And I wondered, did I ever see angels there?
Then the doorbell rang. Time to go.
