I picked up my clubs and walked out to the parking lot to look for my car. It wasn’t in the main lot for members, or the one for club employees. I walked out the gate ontO Pico. Wacky was getting to be too unreliable to trust.
I crossed the street, deciding to kill time by taking a walk around the outskirts of the 20th Century-Fox studio. I walked north, past a large expanse of vacant lots.
The sky was darkening, black clouds competing for primacy with a brilliant blue sky. I hoped for rain. Rain was a good catalyst. It was good to look for women on rainy nights–they seemed more vulnerable and open when foul weather raged.
I was almost up to Olympic when I spotted my red and white ’47 Buick in an alley behind the studio’s prop department. It was rocking and there were moans coming from inside. I walked up and peered in the driver’s side window. It was fogged from heavy breathing, but I could still plainly see Wacky and Siddell Weinberg writhing in a hot nude embrace.
I felt the perfect calm that settles on me when I get very angry. I took a 5 iron out of my bag and opened the door of the car. “Police officer!” I called as Wacky and Siddell started to shriek and attempted to cover themselves. I didn’t let them. I poked my 5 iron roughly between them, probing, kneading, and pushing at where they were joined. “Get the fuck out of my car, you stupid shitheads!” I screamed. “Now! Get out! Get the fuck _out!_”
Somehow they disengaged themselves and tumbled out the door. Siddell was sobbing and trying to cover her breasts with her arms. I threw their clothes out after them, and hurled Wacky’s holstered .38 and handcuffs over the fence into the prop department. As he tried to pull on his pants I kicked him hard in the ass.
“Don’t fuck with me, you asshole! Don’t fuck with my career, you fucking disgrace of a cop! Take your fueking fat pig and get the fuck out of my life!”
They stumbled off down the alley, pulling on clothes as they went. I looked into my car. There was a half empty fifth of bourbon on the floor. I took a long drink and threw it after them. The dark clouds had almost completely eclipsed the blue sky.
I retrieved the bourbon bottle and drank while awaiting the rain. I thought of Lorna Weinberg. When the first raindrops fell I discarded the bottle and started the car, with no particular destination in mind.
Aimless driving consumed three hours. Lorna Weinberg, Wacky, and Dirt Road Dave consumed most of my thoughts. They were depressing thoughts, and my random driving reinforced my grim state of mind.
The rain was coming down in sheets, driven by a fierce north wind. It turned dark early, and for no logical reason I was drawn to the winding, treacherous Pasadena Freeway. Maneuvering its abrupt turns on rain-slicked pavement at top speed got me feeling better. I started thinking about my opportunities for advancement and the wonder-seeking that working Vice would afford me.
That provided me with a destination. As soon as I hit Pasadena I turned around and drove back to L.A., to Wilshire Division, to some vice hot spots old-timers had told me about. I drove by the hooker stands on West Adams where knots of Negro prostitutes, probably hopheads, waited under umbrellas on the off chance that a customer would brave the rain and supply them with money for dope. I cruised by the known bookie joints on Western, then parked and watched bettors come and go. They seemed as desperate as the hopheads.
I got the feeling that Vice wonder would be sad wonder, pathetic and hopeless. The neon signs on the bars and nightclubs I passed looked like cheap advertisements for loneliness eradicator.
It was almost nine o’clock. I stopped at the Original Barbecue on Vermont and took my time with a sparerib dinner, wondering where to go look for women. It was too late and too wet to chance anything but bars, and women who were looking for the same thing I was. That made me sad, but I decided that while I cruised I could peruse the bar scene from the standpoint of a rookie Vice cop and maybe learn a few things.