The Boo Angel

"Now, you want to ask some real questions, or you wanna keep tryin' to blow some more sunshine up my ass?"

"Man...I can't get a handle on you, Collins."

"What do you mean?"

"You're like a lemon, before you squeeze it and get all the juice out."

"How so?"

Well, you're going to take this the wrong way, but here goes. You're almost like a woman, but not quite. You're like a woman that's had all the feminine squeezed out, ya know?"

She looked down, suddenly no longer hungry, no longer sure she wanted anything at all to do with this whole movie business any more. Because, in a way, she knew he was right. She'd squeezed all those things people called femininity out of her system twenty years ago and it really didn't matter to her, or at least it hadn't, because she went to work every day with men and women who counted on her being tough enough to deal with whatever the streets through her way...

"Look, I'm sorry. I knew that was going to come out all wrong..."

She turned and looked at Ethan. "You're not wrong. As a matter of fact..."

"Look, like I said, I'm sorry."

"What I was going to say, Ethan, is that I haven't thought about it much, but I think you just might have perfectly described me. I don't date because I'm not attracted to people anymore, and I don't date because when I look around I see people like you everywhere I go. Criminals and perverts hiding in plain sight, and really, I guess I just don't want anything to do with people anymore. It's not just because as a human being you're a total failure, Ethan. It's because the world is full of people just like you. Always on the run. Always hiding, but you make the mistake of thinking the rest of the world really gives a damn. How could they, Ethan, when everyone is just like you?"

"Jesus, you are a cynic..."

She chuckled at that. "Cynicism is just another way of turning your back on reality, kid...another way of letting it sneak up from behind and stick a knife in your back."

He nodded. "Were you always like this?"

"No, not really, but if you'd read my book you'd already know the answer to that one."

"Wanna give me the condensed version?"

"No."

"Fair enough. Well, how shall we proceed?"

She shrugged, but her eyes were a little like laser beams just then, hard and focused and cutting through his flesh.

"Yeah, well, I guess I'll leave you to it, Officer Collins," he said as he pushed away from the table. "You have a nice life."

"You too, dirtbag," she sighed as she watched him walk through the restaurant and out into the midnight sun.

+++++

"Ethan tells me you gave him a pretty hard time last night?" William Taylor snarled when he met her for breakfast the next morning.

"You should run background checks on your employees, Mr. Taylor."

"Oh?"

She shrugged. "Sorry, I'm not at liberty to discuss what I know or learn about people during the course of my duties."

"Your duties? Are you telling me you're on duty right now? In Stockholm?"

"I'm a sworn Officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, sir, and not your office assistant. And I take the oath I swore seriously."

"Maybe too seriously, Jennifer?"

"No such thing, Mr. Taylor."

"Okay, fair enough, and I understand how you feel about Ethan. Now comes the hard part...can you work with him?"

"Certainly I can. The question you need to ask yourself, or that he needs to think about, is 'Can he work from the LA County Jail?"

"What the earth has he done to get you so riled up?"

"For one thing, he's got a federal warrant out for possession of child porn, and I can tell you that much because that's out of my jurisdiction, but don't ask me about what else is pending out there, okay?"

"Jesus, are you fucking serious? Kiddie porn?"

Jennifer shrugged. "Not sure what your exposure is to any of this, but if you've got a couple of lawyers on retainer you might want to run this by them. At least your PR people should know..."

William Taylor seemed genuinely startled, and she watched as his pupils dilated and as the skin on his face and ears flushed, both pretty good indicators his reaction was genuine.

"You still want me to work with him, sir?"

He shook his head, then backpedaled and shrugged a little. "Hell, Jennifer, I don't know what to say right now. Ethan has, had, a real good take on your story..."

"He told me he hasn't read the book yet. Just in case you're curious."

Again, William Taylor kind of mentally shuddered to a stop. "He what?"

"It's more likely he has a problem with cops in general and wanted to use this to work up a nice little hatchet job on the LAPD..."

"Jesus H Christ!" Taylor cried. "That's all I need!"

"Look, I..."

"Jennifer, I can't apologize enough. You've done me, and, well, the studio one hell of a service by bringing this to my attention..."

"Mr. Taylor...?"

"Would you call me William, please?"

She shook her head. "We're not there yet, sir. But I would like to call your attention to one more thing before we move on. Ethan is innocent until proven guilty, sir, and if I was in your position I wouldn't say or do one damn thing to him until he's proven guilty, or hell, innocent, by a jury. And frankly, sir, if you happen to think he's the best writer for the job then we'll just have to work around things until this project wraps up."

"You know what...? I'm not sure I've ever been around anyone quite like you before. You don't, like, get flustered real easy, do you?"

"The city doesn't pay me to lose my shit out there, sir. Peoples lives depend on that."

Taylor shook his head as he took a deep breath. "Ya know, I don't get it...I just don't get it. Where do they find people like you?"

She smiled. Then she looked him in the eye. "They don't, sir. It's the job. Academy starts the process, then comes training with other, more experienced officers, but all that just sets the stage for what comes next."

"Which is?"

"The street, sir. The street is the real classroom, and if you live long enough -- or if you don't get religion or get really smart and quit -- the street begins to work its magic on you. You begin to see through people, and after a while you begin to realize there aren't any innocent people out there. Everyone lies. Everyone cheats. Everyone steals, and more than anything else, sir, everyone you run into out there on the street is absolutely full of hate."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

She shrugged again. "Maybe it sounds harsh, but..."

"No, no... No, I'm just trying to figure out how to get all your intensity onto the screen..."

"If you did that, sir, I can guarantee you that about four people would come to see that movie. And that would be worldwide," she added, grinning.

"Then...you see my problem. Somehow I've got to figure out how to bottle the reality of life out there on the streets...so that other people can..."

"Why," she said, interrupting his train of thought, "if you don't mind me asking?"

Taylor leaned back and sighed again. "Okay...I'll bite. Why'd you write the book you did?"

"Because I think people need to know the human truth behind that life, and the cost people pay to do this job well. And it doesn't matter if I'm talking about a cop in LA or up in, maybe, a place like Vermont. The job's the same because the people are the same, like as in everyone, everywhere."

"Liars and cheats, all full of hate?"

"Yessir."

"And you don't, maybe, like think you might be burnt out a little?"

"No sir, I think I'm burnt out a lot, and there's not a day that goes by when I don't think about that, like maybe even when I'm standing in the shower, but even so all that shit gets put away when the uniform goes on. It has to. And when I started on this story I had to figure out how to keep all that anger from getting in the way of the truth I needed to tell."

Taylor held out his right hand and she took it. "Then it's my job, Jennifer," he began, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he pushed back a tear or two, "to help you make this happen, but in order to do that I'm going to have to rely on you to tell me if I stray too far off the path you made for us. In other words, Jennifer, I'm going to need you to be my conscience, that little voice whispering in my ear, and I hope that's okay with you. Because this is Hollywood, and I'm going to need you to be like a little angel sitting up there on my shoulder, if you know what I mean, helping all of us down the path you've set out...

Chapter Three

Paper Rock Scissors

If god created this world, he should review his plan.
Goethe, 1820

Angel loved to walk along the Venice Beach Boardwalk at any hour of the day or night, yet the odd thing about it was that after arriving in Los Angeles she'd asked to go there almost immediately. When William Taylor had asked her why, Angel simply informed him that the Venice Beach area was someplace she'd always wanted to see. Of course, he'd had other plans. His production company maintained a couple of residences in the Century City area, and these were nice homes set aside for actors and actresses who didn't already have established homes in the area. And not that anyone would, but these homes were so close to the studio that anyone could easily walk there.

Then again, it seemed no one in LA ever walked anywhere. Ever. 'It must be a law,' he thought.

But Angel wasn't buying into the whole "close to the studio" thing, not by a long shot.

"You live in Beverly Hills and it takes you ten minutes to drive to the studio, right?" she said, still smiling. Always smiling. "I have always lived by the sea," she explained, "and I doubt it will inconvenience anyone if want to live on the beach in Venice."

Taylor had learned the hard way; these days he found it somewhat easier to give in on these kinds of peripheral demands, if only because he could then use his own willingness to compromise to his own advantage when and where it counted most: either working on location or shooting on a sound-stage. So...he had given in easily and noted he'd have to get one of his assistants to find her a house on the boardwalk and arrange a rental. And then almost immediately he'd had the assistant get Angel a cell phone...because she could never be found in the little house by the beach...because she was always out walking.

And so one day William Taylor decided to go down to Venice and catch Angel early in the morning, in time for a coffee, and then maybe he'd get to go out with her on one of these long walks she seemed to be taking all the time.

He drove down to her place, a new single family house on Speedway at 26th, and he shook his head in disgust at the overcrowded conditions in the area, and that was before he ran into his first homeless encampment. There was hardly enough space to walk between houses down there, and no yards to speak of, and it felt like every house along the boardwalk was built right out to the limits of its property line, and then went straight up about three stories -- or more. Stucco boxes too, all of them, and about the only difference he noted between them was the color of the paint -- and most of the paint he thought looked garish and out of place on houses in this price bracket.

He parked in her garage -- because of course she refused to drive a car -- and walked up to the door that led inside and he found a note taped there.

"Be back by 6:30. Make yourself at home."

He looked at his watch and sighed. It was already six fifteen...so, he had fifteen minutes to kill...but he also had a more than busy day ahead. He tried the back door and sighed when he realized she hadn't even locked it, like it just didn't matter that a couple thousand homeless freaks lived on the beach just a couple hundred yards away! Hell, the sidewalk was swimming in discarded syringes! He scoffed at her carelessness and was about to go inside when he heard an odd sounding car pull right behind his Beemer, so he turned and looked...

"Yup...that figures," he snarled, looking at her in the passenger seat of a Prius -- driven by -- a fucking priest! She waved at him before she leaned over and hugged -- hugged! -- the priest, then she climbed out of the Tree-Hugger-Mobile and came over to him -- hugging him too. Only now she smelled like grocery store after-shave, that blue crap that looked like radioactive waste -- and smelled worse!

"Ready for some coffee?" she chirped brightly.

"My, aren't we bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning?!" he said, but then he realized she was wearing surgical scrubs.

"I had a good night," she added, smiling.

"A good night? Look, pardon my curiosity, but you look like you've been on the set of MASH...?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm volunteering over at St. Mark's."

"Doing what, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Just helping out, with the sick."

"The sick?"

"Yeah, William, the sick. And the homeless, people like that..."

"And what are you doing there, Angel, with the sick and the homeless?"

"Just helping out."

"Yeah. Okay. Sure. Whatever you say, kid. So...off to the coffee truck? Pumpkin-spice latte?"

"That sounds good. You lead and I'll follow," she said, again sounding very chipper for this time of the morning.

"You must either be a night owl or a real morning person," he said as they made it to the boardwalk.

"I don't need a lot of sleep."

"Lucky you. Some mornings I feel like I could sleep for a week."

"Maybe you should."

"What?"

"Sleep until you feel like you don't need to anymore. You might feel better."

"And go out of business too, you mean," he said, chuckling at the thought.

"Can't hurt to give it a try," she added. "Now...what was so important it couldn't wait?"

"The department has finally given us the green light. Next Thursday you're doing a ride-along with Miss Collins out of Rampart, but the big deal is one of their Public Affairs Officers is going to tail you two throughout the shift, and we're going to have a crew from CBS riding along. So, we're..."

"You're going to film any calls we go out on. Yeah, I can see that being pretty useful. Congratulations. Has anyone done something like this before?"

"No, no one I'm aware of," Taylor said, grinning. "Took a while, but the mayor stepped in and helped make it happen."

"That's quite a responsibility, William," Angel said, smiling.

"Responsibility? How so?"

"Well, obviously both the department and the city trust you to present an impartial, unbiased account of the evening, but doesn't that also mean that's what they expect from the movie?"

"Oh, sure, sure. They've all read the book. They know the score. And they know this movie is going to be about as pro-cop as anything any of them could hope for..." Taylor shuddered to a stop as the enormity of the human condition on display out here confronted him. "Jesus Fucking Christ! Look at the tents! There must be hundreds..."

"Closer to two thousand right now," Angel said, "and more every day."

"Fuck! No wonder property values around here are dropping like a hot rock!"

She looked at him and smiled. "Yes. Like a very hot rock."

"Goddamn! Look at that...that guy's taking a shit, right there in the open! Right there in the fucking bushes!"

"Someone should arrest him, shouldn't they, William?"

"God damn right they should!"

"So? Why don't you?"

"Why don't I what?"

"Arrest him."

Taylor shook his head and sighed. "Where's the truck?"

"All the food trucks are about two blocks -- this way," she said, pointing. "Good breakfast tacos at the place I like to go to."

"Tacos? For breakfast?"

"It's the world you live in, William. You'd better get used to it."

He snarled. "Better to just load 'em all up in airplanes and..."

"And what, William? Push them out the door? Maybe without a parachute?"

"I was going to say fly them back home, but that works too."

"A lot of people out here were born here, William."

"Too bad for them. And the rest of us."

She looked at him and smiled broadly. "What a lovely day," she sighed as she turned and looked at the sky.

Taylor kept looking at all the tents and at all the squalor, but he turned to her now and then followed her eyes up at the sky. "I hear a Santa Ana is coming this afternoon."

"A Santa Ana? What's that?"

"Hot winds come down from the desert and blow out to sea. Gets very windy, lot of dust in the air, and it gets real hot, too."

"Ooh, I love it when it's hot out, don't you?"

"I might...if people weren't shitting all over the beach. It's gonna fucking smell like a latrine down here."

She nodded and smiled, then wrapped her arm in his.

"Jennifer tells me her two meetings with you have been productive," Taylor said gently, not at all sure what to make of her affections this morning. "How'd you feel about meeting her?"

"She's very bright, but like you she seems very set in her ways."

"Like me? How so?"

"Well, for one, she seems to have issues with people, uh, in general."

He smiled. "Ah. Yes. Well, there is that, but who told..."

"You told me as much, William, once upon a time," Angel said, sighing as warm breezes came for them. "You don't remember?"

But just then an obviously scared and more than likely homeless girl walked up to Angel.

"Excuse me please, but are you a doctor?" the emaciated waif said to Angel.

And Angel nodded. "Yes, I am. Are you not feeling well?" William turned and stared at Angel and scowled at her blatant lie as the girl explained that her mother was sick, and that she was "just over there" -- while pointing to a tent on the margins of the beach. "Well then, let's go see what's wrong," Angel added as she took the girl's hand.

But Taylor quickly pulled her aside. "You, like, do know that it's a felony to impersonate a physician, don't you?" he admonished. "Just what the Hell do you think you're doing?"

And Angel stopped and turned to him, the same gentle smile on her face. "I'm not impersonating anything, William. I'm board certified in General Surgery, William, and I completed all the requirements for national certification after I finished my residency at Stanford."

"You...what?" he cried. "But...I found you in that window, working as a..." he added, dizzy now as confusion tugged at his feet.

"We see what we want to see, William. Or are you telling me now that isn't always the case?"

"Please," the girl said, "it's not much further!"

It was a little three-man tent, bright red but not well ventilated. Flies were buzzing around the vestibule and it was more than apparent that people, a lot of people, had been defecating nearby. The girl opened the tent's zippered rain-fly and Taylor could see the woman inside...red as a lobster, her skin rolling in sweat...and Angel put on some latex exam gloves before she bent down and crawled inside.

Taylor watched as she performed a complete exam, then she came back out onto the grassy sand.

"Did you bring your phone with you?" Angel asked Taylor.

"Yes, of course."

"I'm pretty sure that woman has cholera. I need to call EMS and Public Health," she whispered as she took Taylor's phone and stepped away so as not to alarm the little girl.

"Is my mommy sick?" she asked William.

Taylor knelt yet instinctively kept his distance. "She might be, yes," he said, "but we'll find out soon and see if we can make her all better."

"Will they take her away," the little girl said, her eyes starting to fill with tears.

"I don't know. I'm sorry, but I really don't know much right now."

"What's your name?" the girl asked, tears now rolling down her grimy face.

"William, but I'll tell you a little secret, honey...you can call me Bill," he said, smiling a little as he looked at the fear in her eyes.

"My name is Gretchen," she said, her voice cracking a little as she looked down at the sand.