The Boo Angel

She was holding William Taylor's hand as her little entourage entered the main campus of the UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. Father Kerrigan was still with William and Angel, and one of Taylor's office assistants was with them now too; he had picked them up and ferried them to Westwood, and now the group walked onto the Medicine floor and Taylor quickly found the nurses' station.

"I'm looking for Margaret Marlowe," Taylor said to one of the nurses sitting behind the counter. "Any idea where we could find her?"

"Seven-F," the nurse said -- without looking up or otherwise acknowledging his presence.

"Okay," he said with a brusque shake of his head.

And they walked down to 7-F to find -- an empty room.

So back the little group went to the nurses' station.

"Uh, sorry, but there's no one in 7-F," Taylor growled, and that made the nurse look up from her paperwork.

"Let me see if she's scheduled for imaging," the harried woman added as she pulled up a screen on her computer. "Nope, nothing," the woman said, standing and walking towards the room in a sudden hurry.

Still gone.

The nurse trotted back to her station and called a supervisor, who put out a security alert, but all to no avail. Margaret Marlowe had simply slipped into some clothes and vanished...

Yet Gretchen was unconcerned. "She'll come back to the beach. You'll see."

So William and Angel and Father Kerrigan and the production assistant drove back to Venice Beach, and once they had parked in the garage at Angel's house William pulled his assistant aside.

"Get me a tent," he began -- as his assistant began taking notes on a spiral notepad, "and something to sleep on. Maybe a cot and an air mattress. A light-weight sleeping bag. Better make sure the tent is big enough for four..."

"Four cots, then?"

"Yeah...better safe than sorry, right?"

"Yessir."

"Get a bunch of those Yeti coolers and load 'em up with ice and drinks, plastic cups, maybe a table and chairs, and anything else you think we'll need..."

"Okay. Got it, sir."

"And Henry? Ask Susan if she could look up Debra Sorensen's contact information, that's Ted Sorensen's daughter. I think she still lives over on Palm or Alpine."

"You just need a number, or email and social media?"

"Telephone. That'll do for now."

"Should I bring...?"

"Where you picked us up earlier."

"You're really going to stay down here?"

"Yeah...and oh, before I forget, bring me about five grand in cash. Hundred dollar bills."

"Yessir." Henry Gordon was used to his boss's eccentricities, but even this was a little over the top. Still, Gordon went camping in the Sierras all the time so knew exactly what Taylor needed, and where to get everything. He did not, therefore, go to Wal*Mart.

+++++

"William? Is your leg bothering you?" Father Kerrigan asked as Taylor's security detail finished helping get the campsite set-up.

"A little."

"I'm just wondering, but why the tents? Why not stay at Angel's house?"

"I want to experience what Gretchen has experienced," Taylor sighed, standing slowly after getting one of the tent's sun-shades staked out. "I need to understand what it feels like to live like this."

"You...need to? Why's that? Have a sequel to Sullivan's Travels in mind?"

Taylor thought about that for a moment, but then shook his head. "No, not really, but I suppose like everyone else in this town I do love that movie." He bent over a little and rubbed his left thigh, like he was working out a knot, then he stood again and looked at the huge encampment. "You know, I think My Man Godfrey was a better film, and yes, I know sitting down here with all the comforts of home hardly qualifies, but I feel like I need to do this. To connect with these people, even for a day or two."

"Kind of put yourself in their shoes?"

"Maybe. Maybe just a little, but I hardly ever think about what these people live like, let alone how they survive..."

"Well, the truth of the matter, William, is that too many of them don't."

"Don't what?"

"Survive."

"You mean they just die out here, on the streets?"

Father Kerrigan nodded. "Yes, alone and feeling rather forsaken, I think you might say."

Taylor turned and looked at the priest then. "What happens to them?"

"The bodies?"

"Yeah."

"Processed and buried in pauper's graves, I suppose, though I've heard the bodies are simply cremated these days."

"How many homeless are there, Father?"

"In Los Angeles? Hard to say, really. Some estimates are as low as fifty thousand, but most put the number between sixty and a hundred thousand."

"What about in the country?"

"Again, William, it's hard to say. Conservative estimates put the number at around six hundred thousand, but some groups put the number closer to one million. You know, funny story about that. About twenty years ago, back during the second Bush administration, a federal study put the number of homeless in New York City at fifteen thousand, but a few months later a book was published and the authors noted that they'd found more than fifty thousand homeless living in abandoned subway tunnels all around the region. They had power, their own government structures, and the authors also talked to hundreds of children who had never once seen the sun."

"That's fucking outrageous, Father...oh, uh, sorry Father...excuse my French."

Kerrigan shrugged then smiled: "There are all sorts of realities out there, William. More than you know."

"More than I know," Taylor whispered as once again he looked around the encampment. "I don't understand that, Father."

"Neither do I, William, but it's a problem that never goes away...the homeless have been with us since David and Jesus walked the streets of Bethlehem."

"But why here, now? Aren't we the richest...?"

"We are indeed, but the social safety net that caught these people and stopped their fall into homelessness was abandoned in the 80s and it's never been replaced, so the numbers grow, year after year...and this," Kerrigan said with a sweep of his arms, "is the result. No real long term mental health facilities so those people end up here on the street. No prohibitions against predatory lending so homes are taken, and more people fall through the cracks. The list is long, really, but there are simply too many ways to end up here, and literally millions more people are just a few steps away from finding a similar fate."

"But why, Father?"

"Because no one wants to think about it, William. It's far easier to turn away from all this than it is to confront the reality that a similar fate awaits anyone if just a few critical missteps are taken. And now, William, I must insist that you get off that leg!"

Taylor nodded. "I know, I know, but somehow..."

"Rome wasn't built in a day, William, and you won't solve this problem through the lens of a guilty conscience, so let's find you a chair."

"This way, sir," Bill Tucker said. Tucker was Taylor's Chief of Security and had been summoned by the studio to get down to the beach and assess the situation -- Right now! -- and he had gathered all available resources to help Taylor get set up down here. Tucker was a retired Navy Seal and had decades of experience in places like Somalia and Afghanistan, so setting up a secure camp on the sand was nothing new to him, but doing so in the middle of LA was, and in the middle of a homeless encampment full of American citizens was even more confusing. In fact, all of Tucker's men had similar life experiences, and to a man all were equally upset by the sight of so many destitute Americans wandering around the boardwalk area panhandling or begging for handouts, and as his men were well-dressed, filthy children came up and asked for food, reminding many of them of their tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Taylor made it to a folding chair and sighed, then he called out for Henry Gordon again. "Hank!"

"Here sir!"

"Good work down here, Hank."

"Thanks."

"Bill?"

"Sir?"

"I want to lay on dinner for these people, all of 'em."

"Yessir?"

"And probably for the next week or so, until I can get something organized with the mayor. I'm going to need you to organize that so we don't create chaos. Hank? What about Porta-potties? Can we do something along those lines?"

"Not really, sir. They need permits to do that, and if permits are issued that means the city is sanctioning this encampment. The fact of the matter is, sir, that the Sheriff's Department conducts sweeps down here every month or so..."

"Sweeps?"

"Yup. Officers come down and give the people camped out here a day to clear out, and dozers show up the next morning to scoop up any camp sites that remain..."

"But...where do they go?" Taylor cried, and Gordon shrugged.

"You see the problem now, William," Father Kerrigan sighed.

"Yeah, Father," Taylor said, clearly annoyed. "But every problem has a solution."

Gretchen came up just then and took his hand. "I'm hungry," the little girl said, and the words seemed to fall on Taylor's shoulders like an unbearable weight.

"I know you are, sweetheart. What would you like?"

She pointed at the cluster of food trucks parked nearby. "Anything," she said.

"William?" Father Kerrigan said. "You sit and rest that leg. I'll take care of this."

But Taylor shook his head as he stood, then he picked up Gretchen and scooped her up onto his left shoulder again. "Bill, let's head up and warn the owners of these trucks what's coming. Hank? Call the mayor and see if he can come down here this evening. Tell him I've got a few ideas I'd like to go over with him."

"Yessir!"

"And once you've done that, get me Ted Sorensen on the phone."

+++++

"I think your proposal her merit, Bill," Ted Sorensen said -- just after the mayor and his entourage left the beach, "and I applaud your sense of drama -- or should I say humor. You could not have chosen a better venue, and I do believe His Honor was truly shocked when you told him you'd be sleeping down here for the next week."

Taylor looked up at the milky sky and nodded. "Ideas started coming to me this afternoon, Ted, because it seems to me now is the time to act. The political will to act is certainly here, and the problem has reached crisis proportions. But Ted, none of the ideas I've read about have a snowballs chance in Hell of succeeding."

"And you think yours does?"

"No, not really, but someone has to make the first move, and that first step is going to have to include thinking outside of the box."

Sorensen nodded. "The oil companies will never grant access to all that land, however, I think the studios just might do it. The publicity would be enormously helpful, and even the tax implications..."

"How's Debra?" William Taylor said, interrupting the old man.

Who seemed to hesitate just a little before he began speaking again. "You know, when I watched them carry you off the field in Dallas I knew your career was over, yet I think a part of me expected that you'd call us after that. I hoped you might, anyway."

"I wanted to, Ted."

"Oh, how I wish you had."

"You know I couldn't do that."

"Do I?" Sorensen said with a sigh. "You know, I never understood what happened up there. Not really. Debra tried to explain..."

"I was humiliated, sir. Not by what my parents said to your daughter, but by my acquiescence to their hatred. I failed to stand up to them, but at the same time -- and who knows, maybe in the same way -- I failed to stand up for her. The problem, sir, is that I've never felt worthy of her love since that day."

"And then your brother."

"Yeah, and then...Frank."

"And you've still not forgiven yourself?"

"I'll never be able to do that, sir. I'll never stop hating myself, for my weakness, for my selfishness, for everything else that happened that day -- but most all for letting Debra down."

"She forgave you, but I think you know that."

Taylor shook his head. "I don't know why or how, Ted. I really don't, and I never..."

"Because she loves you," Sorensen cried, "you silly bastard! Don't you know that?"

William looked down at his hands, then he looked at the tent where Gretchen lay sleeping. "Is love really that powerful, sir? Can love really endure in the face of so much hatred and neglect?"

"Why don't you do us both a favor, son? Why don't you call her and find out?"

+++++

Gretchen's mother had simply disappeared, but Taylor soon learned from social services that this wasn't the first time she'd bugged out, and even the little girl seemed to take it all in stride.

"How do you take something like that in stride, Father?" Taylor asked Father Kerrigan the next day.

"You stop feeling disappointment, William, when each fresh round of pain begins to feel a little more pointless."

"Pointless?"

The priest frowned as he looked at the crowd gathering for their second free dinner, then he turned to face Taylor. "William, what happens when you leave these people? You'll have filled their stomachs, but what comes after?"

Taylor ignored the evasion and sighed. "I hope I'll have more answers for you tomorrow morning, so until then I'll just keep this up..."

"The word's out, you know? People from Skid Row will start showing up down here this afternoon, and I've heard more will be coming from as far away as South Central and Long Beach."

"I know. By tomorrow the residents around here are going to be major league pissed..."

"Which brings me full circle, William. Why are you doing this? Where are you taking these people?"

"I'm doing it because I can, and I want to help break this cycle of dependence."

"Indeed," Father Kerrigan said, but a little voice inside wondered if that was really the case.

"It's really simple, Father. The City has been trying to "formulate policy" for years, but now their best solution involves building a couple hundred housing units for almost three hundred million bucks. Ya know what, Father? That's like more than a million bucks a pop, and that's just absurd. There's got to be a better way, and I had a, well, let's just call it a brainstorm and be done with it. I think I have a sort of solution that's in all our best interests, and I'm going to see if I can't make it happen."

Henry Gordon appeared and held up his wrist, pointed to his watch. "Your meeting with Jennifer is in five minutes," Taylor's assistant said. "She's waiting up at the house," he added, meaning Angel's beach house -- because all his assistants were now working out of the living room there.

Taylor nodded. "You'll excuse me, Father..."

"That's alright. I'm done with classes for the day so I'll stay here with the girl."

"Thanks," Taylor said as he took off across the beach; several of the homeless squatters smiled at him as he passed, and a few even waved, but he began to notice that piles of trash left over from all his free meals were scattered all over the beach, creating yet another set of problems to be solved. But why? Why couldn't they police their own garbage? Was something fundamentally wrong with these people? An image of Sisyphus came to mind and as he looked at fetid taco wrappers blowing across the beach he wondered if he'd embarked on a fool's errand. 'Well,' he said to himself, 'I'll know soon enough.'

Angel and Jennifer Collins were sitting outside on the upper patio located on the building's large, flat roof, and while Angel was sitting in sunlight, Jennifer was in shade provided by a vine covered trellis. There was a pitcher of limeade on the table and a glass waiting there for him, already running with silvery condensation, and then he noticed the girls were wearing navy t-shirts and yellow gym shorts, both emblazoned with LAPD insignia, and both soggy with gallons of sweat.

"I'll leave you two alone," Angel said as she made to leave. "I'm sure you both have lots to talk about."

Taylor sat but tried not to smile. "Thanks. Looks like you could use a shower," he said to them both, but then he took a sip of limeade and watched Angel as she disappeared down the stairs.

"You know what, Bill?" Collins said, smiling at this little challenge.

"No. What?" he said, clearly annoyed that she'd called him 'Bill.'

"The truth of the matter is she doesn't."

"Doesn't what?"

"Look like she needs a shower. What do you know about her?"

"Just that she's got a German passport..." he started to say, then he remembered she'd told him she'd done a surgical residency at Stanford and his brow furrowed. "What are you getting at?" he added.

"The Chief invited her to come down to the academy this morning, and I think he wanted her to follow one of the classes while they did their morning PT, or maybe watch a physical combat class."

"Yeah. So?"

"You ever seen the run, Bill? At the Academy?"

"The run?"

"Yeah, at the Academy. It's a meat grinder, Bill. A lot of cadets quit first day because of that run."

"So?"

"Ever been up to the Academy?"

"Nope."

"Dodger Stadium, maybe?"

"Not a baseball fan," he scowled. "Where are you going with this?"

"The Academy is just above the parking lots on the north side of Dodger Stadium, in Elysian Park. There are trails all over that park, Bill. Steep trails. Steep, unpaved trails, and it was 93 degrees up there this morning. And you know what we did, Bill?"

"I suppose you're going somewhere with this?"

"Yeah Bill, I am. We went for a run, Bill, with an Academy class that's set to graduate in two weeks. In other words, with a class in top physical shape, Bill. I couldn't keep up with the slowest cadet, but Angel gets out there and smokes them. Every fucking one of them, Bill. Even the Academy Instructor running with her could barely keep up."

"Really?"

"Then we went to the combat class. Care to guess what happened?"

"Not really."

"You ever hear of Koga? Bob Koga?"

"Can't say that I have, no."

"LAPD officer back in the 50s, started teaching hand-to-hand. Aikido. Little guy. That kind of thing. He's been gone a while but a few of the instructors up there were his pupils, and they're good, Bill. Real good. She watched a short demonstration then one of them asked if she'd like to demonstrate what she'd just learned. She took out the instructor, Bill, in two moves. And she hurt him, too. Then she bends over him and starts a complete medical examination, and you know what?"

"Yeah, she's a physician."

"Yeah, Bill, she's a doc and she can do a mile in under four minutes, then ten minutes later take out a fifth degree black belt in Aikido, and after all that she's barely sweating...but she's still smiling, Bill. Smiling like she's just come in after a little walk in the park."

Taylor blinked rapidly then cleared his throat. "So...what's the punch line?"

"I don't have one, Bill. The department runs a serious background check on anyone that asks to come out on a ride-along and I've read all there is on the girl. Her background is perfect. I mean, it's fucking perfect, and in our business a perfect background check usually raises all kinds of red flags so CID did even more checking. And everything is still fucking perfect."

"I'm still not sure where you're going with this, Jennifer."

"I got nowhere to go, Bill. You found this perfect -- perfect! -- younger version of me to star in your movie, except she just happens to be a surgeon who also -- ta-dah! -- also just happens to be a fucking world class athlete," she said, scowling into her limeade. "And the whole thing feels kind of off to me, Bill. Off, as in weird, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah. I do. And you're not the only one, Kiddo."

"You...when did...why didn't you say something?"

"Like what? Like you said...she's perfect for the part and I'm always on the lookout for perfect. What the hell was I supposed to do? Turn my back and walk away?"

"You fucked up, Billy-boy. Big time."