Hollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online Page A

date.”
    “You’ll be glad someday to be looking like a perennial frat rat.” To tweak him she added, “Do you have to shave every day,
     Aaron, or just a couple times a week?”
    Aaron reddened and said, “You know, my youthful DNA almost got me killed before I got off probation. Did you know I worked
     UC for a while? I mean deep undercover.”
    “No,” she said, quite surprised. “Where was that?”
    “I was one they took right from the academy and put into the buy program,” he said, “back when they still liked to do that.
     I was twenty-one but looked sixteen. They put me in high school in the Valley, where teenage gangsters were selling pot and
     meth on campus. It was when a couple kids got killed in a four-car TC after they’d smoked crystal in the gym. It was mostly
     an intelligence-gathering job rather than making buys of dime bags. I was in school for two months as a senior transfer. My
     UC name was Scott Taylor, and I actually tried out for the baseball team. One time a very aggressive LAPD officer stopped
     a few of us in the school parking lot after a game, and he yelled to me, ‘Get your hands up!’ I put them up really high, thinking,
     if he shoots me, the trajectory test would get my mom and dad some big bucks in the lawsuit.”
    With a sly smile Sheila said, “Did you score with any of the cheerleaders?”
    “I was warned about fraternizing with the other kids, especially of the female persuasion,” Aaron replied. “And just as I
     was getting close to the adult gangster that was supplying the high school kids, I screwed up and ended my UC career.”
    “How’d you do that?”
    “By getting in a fight in shop class. Some little dude in one of the Hispanic gangs kept picking on me, always calling me
puto
and
maricón,
shit like that. I got sick of it, and one afternoon he dumped a soda on me and I kicked his ass. Beat him bad right there
     in class. Our instructor called Security and had us both taken to the vice principal’s office. He happened to be the only
     one that knew I was cop.”
    “Damn, Aaron!” Sheila said. “There’s another side to you. Where do you park your Batmobile?”
    “We were both given a suspension,” Aaron continued with a self-conscious smile. “Which was fine with me, except when I drove
     home from school that afternoon, I got tailed by two tricked-out low riders packed with crew. I figured they were tooled-up,
     so I tried to call for help, but my cell was dead. And that happened to be the day I was so late for school I ran out the
     door, leaving my Beretta on the kitchen table instead of taping it under the seat of my UC car like I was supposed to. With
     that posse driving up my ass, and me all helpless, I can tell you I was
scared
.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Of course, there’s never a cop around when you need one, so I drove that shitty UC car straight to the nearest mall with
     the lead lowrider locking bumpers with me, and me thinking the crowds of people might scare them off. When I got there, I
     looked in the mirror and saw one dude leaning out the window, aiming what looked like a TEC-nine at me. And I kinda panicked
     and burned a fast left but lost it and went skidding through the window of a Big Five store, where luckily nobody got hurt
     but me. Two cracked ribs and a busted collarbone.”
    “What happened to the gangsters?”
    “They split and got away. I wasn’t really able to ID any of them later when gang cops showed me six-packs. I got removed from
     school real fast and from the buy program too. And after I recovered, I got sent to Wilshire patrol, where I finished my probation.
     All that drama because I looked way young. I’ve never found any advantage to it.”
    “That’s quite a story, Aaron,” Sheila said.
    Aaron was pleased to see that for the first time, Sheila Montez seemed to be watching him with a bit of interest. Known for
     being supercool and unflappable, she’d told him she’d worked down south at