Hollywood Station

“What’s that?”

“I climbed in the saddle, intending to ride him back to the trailer and call it a night. I did that instead of leading him back, which anybody without brain bubbles woulda done under the circumstances.”

“So?”

“He freaked again. He took off. Up onto the sidewalk.”

The moment would be with him forever. Galloping along the Walk of Fame, kicking up sparks and scattering tourists and panhandlers and purse snatchers and tweakers and pregnant women and costumed nuns and SpongeBob and three Elvises. Clomping over top of Marilyn Monroe’s star or James Cagney’s or Elizabeth Taylor’s or fucking Liberace’s or whoever was there on this block of the Walk of Fame because he didn’t know who was there and never checked later to find out.

Cursing the big horse and hanging on with one hand and waving the creepy multitudes out of his way with the other. Even though he knew that Major could, and had, run up a flight of concrete steps in his long career, he also knew that neither Major nor any horse belonging to the Mounted Platoon could run on marble, let alone on brass inserts on that marble sidewalk where people spilled their Starbucks and Slurpees with impunity. No horse could trample Hollywood legends like that, so maybe it was the bad juju. And very suddenly Major hydroplaned in the Slurpees and just… went… down.

His partner interrupted the sweat-popping flashback. “So what happened, bro? After he took off with you?”

“First of all, nobody got hurt. Except Major and me.”

“Bad?”

“They say I ended up in John Wayne’s boot prints right there in Grauman’s forecourt. They say the Duke’s fist print is there too. I don’t remember boots or fists or nothing. I woke up on a gurney in an RA with a paramedic telling me yes I was alive, while we were screaming code three to Hollywood Pres. I had a concussion and three cracked ribs and my bad hip, which was later replaced, and everybody said I was real lucky.”

“How about the nag?”

“They told me Major seemed okay at first. He was limping, of course. But after they trailered him back to Griffith Park and called the vet, he could hardly stand. He was in bad shape and got worse. They had to put him down that night.” And then he added, “Horses are such assholes, man.”

When his partner looked at the driver, he thought he saw his eyes glisten in the mix of light from the boulevard-fluorescence and neon, headlights and taillights, even reflected glow from a floodlight shooting skyward-a

After a moment the driver said, “So anyways, I said fuck it. When I healed up I put in for Hollywood Division because from what I’d seen of it from the saddle it seemed like a pretty good place to work, long as you got a few hundred horses under you instead of one. And here I am.”

His partner didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, “I used to surf a lot when I worked West L.A. Lived with my leash attached to a squealy. I had surf bumps all over my knees, bro. Getting too old for that. Thinking about getting me a log and just going out and catching the evening glass.”

“Awesome, dude. Evening glass is way cool. Me, after I transferred to Hollywood I sorta became a rev-head, cruising in my Beemer up to Santa Barbara, down to San Diego, revving that ultimate driving machine. But I got to missing being in the green room, you know? In that tube with the foam breaking over you? Now I go out most every morning I’m off duty. Malibu attracts bu

“Maybe I’ll get a brain wave out there on evening glass. I need one to figure out how to keep my second ex-wife from making me live under a tree eating eucalyptus like a fucking koala.”

“Of course you’re go

“Jetsam,” his partner said with a sigh of resignation.

“Dude, this could be the begi

“Jetsam? Bro, that is wack, way wack.”

“What’s in a name?”

“Whatever. So what happened to the Stetson after you played lawn dart in Grauman’s courtyard?”

“No lawn in that courtyard. All concrete. I figure a tweaker picked it up. Probably sold it for a few teeners of crystal. I keep hoping to someday find that crankster. Just to see how fast I can make his body heat drop from ninety-eight point six to room temperature.”

As they were talking, 6-X-32 got a beep on the MDT computer. Jetsam opened and acknowledged the message, then hit the en route key and they were on their way to an address on Cherokee Avenue that appeared on the dashboard screen along with “See the woman, 415 music.”

“Four-fifteen music,” Flotsam muttered. “Why the hell can’t the woman just go to her neighbor and tell them to turn down the goddamn CD? Probably some juice-head fell asleep to Destiny’s Child.”

“Maybe Black Eyed Peas,” Jetsam said. “Or maybe Fifty Cent. Crank up the decibels on that dude and you provoke homicidal urges. Heard his album called The Massacre?”

It wasn’t easy to find a parking place near the half block of apartment buildings, causing 6-X-32 to make several moves before the patrol car was able to squeeze in parallel between a late-model Lexus and a twelve-year-old Nova that was parked far enough from the curb to be ticketed.

Jetsam hit the at-scene button on the keyboard, and they grabbed their flashlights and got out, with Flotsam grumbling, “In all of Hollywood tonight there’s probably about thirteen and a half fucking parking places.”

“Thirteen now,” Jetsam said. “We got the half.” He paused on the sidewalk in front and said, “Jesus, I can hear it from here and it ain’t hip-hop.”

It was the Schreckensfanfare, the “Fanfare of Terror,” from Beethoven’s Ninth.

A dissonant shriek of strings and a discordant blast from brass and woodwinds directed them up the outside staircase of a modest but respectable two-story apartment building. Many of the tenants seemed to be out this Friday evening. Porch lights and security lights were on inside some of the units, but it was altogether very quiet except for that music attacking their ears, assaulting their hearing. Those harrowing passages that Beethoven intended as an introduction to induce foreboding did the job on 6-X-32.

They didn’t bother to seek out the complainant. They knocked at the apartment from which that music emanated like a scream, like a warning.

“Somebody might be drunk in there,” Jetsam said.

“Or dead,” Flotsam said, half joking.

No answer. They tried again, banging louder. No answer.

Flotsam turned the knob, and the door popped open as the hammering timpani served the master composer by intensifying those fearful sounds. It was dark except for light coming from a room off the hallway.

“Anybody home?” Flotsam called.

No answer. Just the timpani and that sound of brass shrieking at them.

Jetsam stepped inside first. “Anybody home?”

No answer. Flotsam reflexively drew his nine, held it down beside his right leg and flashed his light around the room.

“The music’s coming from back there.” Jetsam pointed down the dark hallway.

“Maybe somebody had a heart attack. Or a stroke,” Flotsam said.

They started walking slowly down the long, narrow hallway toward the light, toward the sound, the timpani beating a tattoo. “Hey!” Flotsam yelled. “Anybody here?”

“This is bad juju,” Jetsam said.