The Boo Angel

Endlessly.

Roaring.

Embrace.

Then -- a different song.

Strong, deep bass, a punchy, almost syncopated bass line.

The Beat Goes On. Sonny and Cher. And she hadn't heard the song in ages. Absolute ages.

Then she listened to the words, something about 'drums and how they keep pounding a rhythm to the brain.'

Life keeps on coming at you. It never stops pounding away at you. The beat goes on.

The beat goes on and another jet lands. The beat goes on and another takes off. The beat goes on and lost people run into open, outstretched arms -- and they are found again.

She turned up the volume to an insane level and the house shook and rumbled, but who could tell, really? One jet after another, the beat goes on. My mother passed out in her vomit and the beat goes on. She died and I just threw her ashes to the wind and still the goddamn beat goes on.

And it ain't ever gonna stop, is it? Daddy died and he hated Mommy and I just mixed their ashes together and still the beat goes on. On and on and on and on...

But she turned down the hi-fi before her local patrolman stopped by for a visit, yet for the rest of the night that driving bass line never left her. Not once, not for one mother-fucking minute.

+++++

Her first real published novel, published after twenty two years on the street, was titled The Beat Goes On, and for some reason the book sold well. When a glowing review in the LA Times came out, her phone started to get busy. She went on The Tonight Show -- not in uniform -- and not long after that her agent got a call from a producer over at Twentieth Century Fox.

"Some guy named Taylor, William Taylor."

"Is he the guy that won an Oscar a couple of years ago...?"

"Yup, he's the one. Look, he's made an offer for the rights, and it's a good one. More than fair for a first book."

"And? What are you not telling me?"

"Nothing, really. I think you should jump on it. He's off to Sweden tomorrow but he saw you last night and his people called me first thing this morning."

"Okay...?"

"The thing is, he's not sure about you writing the screenplay."

"So? I'm not sure I could, or even if I should."

"So...that's not a problem?"

"Not as far as I'm concerned."

"You want any creative control?"

"Look, as long as they're not making snuff porn I could give a good goddamn. I guess I just expect you to get the best deal we can and let me get on with my life. Beyond that...leave me out of all the Hollywood bullshit. I've got to make briefing in two hours...know what I mean, Jelly-bean?"

"You open to doing publicity?"

"Yup. Sure. Why the fuck not?"

"And he mentioned something about doing a ride-along -- with you."

"Up to the department, Amigo...not me."

"Okay, I think I got the contours. I'll talk to you tomorrow..."

+++++

After nearly a quarter of a century with the department, Jennifer Collins had become sort of a fixture around both Rampart and the old South Central neighborhood in Southwest. Both divisions were regarded with disdain by most officers in and around LA, but to those officers who worked these meanest of the mean streets, being assigned to either was a badge of distinction, if not honor, and the men and women who worked in either were often regarded by outsiders as kind of a different breed. You needed a special kind of iron-fisted empathy to make it in South Central, if only because the population there, especially around the University of Southern California, was about as African-American as any neighborhood in America. And because USC was located in the heart of South Central, and because USC was about as patrician-lily-white as any school in Southern California could possibly be, this rather overt collision between the Haves and the Have Nots had, by the time Jennifer Collins started working there, generated more than it's fair share of toxic animosity -- and it had for well over fifty years. Even the Fire Department's paramedics wore bullet-proof vest when they worked South Central because, well, it was just that kind of place.

Jennifer was still assigned to Patrol Division, just as she had been right out of academy. She'd been pressured to take the sergeant's exam -- and more than once, too -- and while she'd placed at or near the top of each successive sergeant's list she always turned down the offered promotion. Becoming sergeant would, she explained to a succession of curious watch commanders, taken her away from the street -- where she was happiest and, more importantly, where she felt most needed. Perhaps even more important, becoming sergeant would, she said, drive a wedge between herself and the men and women in Patrol, because in a very real sense she'd no longer be 'one of them'. She would become a supervisor, and that was something she really, really didn't want to be. It felt, she liked to say -- especially when she explained these feelings to her coworkers after a bad shift, -- like she belonged out there in a patrol car, out there in the middle of everything, right out there in the middle South Central, mired chest-deep in the human debris of a never-ending, undeclared war. The war she was fighting with the other officers assigned to Rampart and South Central by her side. She couldn't leave them, she couldn't let them down. Not now...

Not now...

"Why not now?" William Taylor asked during negotiations to secure the movie rights to The Beat Goes On.

"You, like, read the book...right?" Jennifer Collins replied.

"I did," Taylor began pleasantly enough -- and not at all defensively, "but I'd kind of like to hear your thoughts about all that right now. The book's been published, and it's been well received. The men and women working by your side in South Central have praised your work, yet I take it that's kind of unusual. At least, I think that's a little more than out of the ordinary, so I'm just curious. More than curious, really, about this bond you describe. This bond between officers."

"What are you curious about, Mr. Taylor?" Jennifer asked, actually a little confused now.

"Well, actually, I think because I have my own preconceptions about being a cop, and about the camaraderie officers feel, about what it must actually feel like...for you?"

"Were you ever an officer," Jennifer asked, and when he shook his head she continued. "Were you in the military?"

"No."

"Ever belong to a group where other people depended on you for their safety, even their very existence?"

Taylor shrugged. "You know, the closest I came to anything like that happened just down the street from here," he said, pointing in the general direction of the USC campus. "I played football here at 'SC, then I played up in SF for the Forty Niners, but really, when I look back on those years the time I had here at 'SC was most like that."

"Okay," Jennifer said, unimpressed even though she knew he'd tried to throw her off balance by bringing up the whole professional football player thing, "I get that, but maybe there are a few key differences between what you experienced and what we experience here in South Central -- every day..."

"Hell, after reading your book that comes through loud and clear."

"Well, thanks, I'm glad...but I'm still not clear what's behind your curiosity?"

He drew in a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, almost like he was studying the ceiling, searching for just the right words...

"Look at my problem this way, if you could for just a moment," Taylor began again. "I've got ninety minutes, maybe one-twenty to get your point of view across. Your book is almost six hundred pages of non-stop action, yet there are really just a handful of key ideas I can convey to our audience in that time. My problem -- and I guess it's kind of your problem too -- is which key ideas do you feel -- and I mean feel strongly about, like deep in your gut -- we need to include in our representation of your work?"

"Okay, I get where you're going," she sighed. "First up, you'll need to paint a picture of LA, and by that I mean the department, before Rodney King, before the verdict and the riots. Up next, and this is crucial, was the return of troops after Desert Storm, in '91 and '92, and then the whole George Bush push to get cities to hire troops returning from the war for their police departments..."

"And why is that so crucial?"

"Because police departments have always been "Us versus Them" institutions, but so are military institutions. What happened in the early 90s represented a huge change because police departments, especially out here in Southern California, incorporated more of the military elements into what had been..."

"Okay, I get that. Go on. What's next, but remember...we've can really only cover just so many..."

"You know what, Mr. Taylor...I really need to sit down and think about all this before I..."

"I understand, Jennifer. And I know you didn't expect to be grilled like this during our first meeting, but I'm off to Stockholm tomorrow and won't be back until Christmas. I really kind of wanted to get a few of these ideas clear in my mind before I left, but I get it."

Collins smiled and nodded. "I understand. Really. You know, I took a couple of screenwriting classes..."

Taylor smiled too -- while inwardly he groaned. "Good. Look, just thinking out loud here, but why don't you work on this for a couple of weeks then call my office. If you can swing a week or two, why don't you come over to Sweden and we can get together with casting and one or two of my writers; we'll put our heads together and clean up some of these questions..."

+++++

She'd always instinctively shied away from Hollywood types; most cops did...especially the cops who worked the West Side. Too much money, and way too many lawyers, and if you got too close...well, it was moths to the flame. You could get sucked-in by all their drama, all the deals those guys promised but that never seemed to come to anything. Jennifer Collins had heard those stories for years, but when she seriously started to write she began to ask around. Who was dialed in. Which production companies were more inclined to take an interest in another cop story...those kinds of questions. Because this was LA -- La-La-Land -- and LA would always be all about making movies -- she wanted to be ready if opportunity came knocking on the door to her father's house.

Only now they had come looking for her. And they wanted -- Her!

And now here she was, sitting in First Class on a huge SAS Airbus taxiing out to the very same runway she had been looking at all her life. When the Airbus began its charge down the runway she looked out her window and caught a fleeting glimpse of the little house, her home -- yet she was struck by how little everything looked as it streaked by. Maybe her life was little too, she thought, just before the airliner leapt away from the earth and began a long, steady climb into the empty sky.

She'd never been anywhere but Mexico before. A trip to Cabo once, with her parents, and a couple of trips to Tijuana with some friends right after academy. Trips to San Diego and San Francisco didn't count, not really, not if you were from LA -- so this was her first big trip -- and she was excited.

First Class! What a way to go. A little cabin all her own and a glass of champagne as soon as she sat down. Canapés served before the jet even pushed back from the gate, then a procession of appetizers and entrees that boggled the mind.

'All because I wrote a book?' she said to herself. 'This is crazy!'

But then again it wasn't. Not really. This was business. She was business. She had created a product and brought it to market, and sitting here in this jet was just a part of the process of becoming a commodity that would be exported all around the world.

Ideas. Her ideas. Her experience.

Her life.

A commodity?

She tried to wrap her head around that idea, but soon found the notion gave her a headache.

Yet champagne, she soon discovered, helped. A lot. So did the Beef Wellington, but by then the surprise had worn off.

+++++

For an American abroad, and really for her first time, Stockholm was a crazy place -- and the most crazy thing of all were the prices. Almost ten bucks for a cheeseburger -- at Mickie-Ds! -- while a Coke, with no free refills -- cost almost five bucks. The same thing in South Central was a couple of pennies more than two dollars, and the shock of this hit her street sensibilities like a slap on the face. Her tiny suite at a local chain hotel was costing Taylor's production company more than five hundred bucks a night, so no wonder he was using as many locals as possible while filming on location. Just how much money could it cost to make a movie? Taylor and one of his writers took her out to lunch her first full day there and the tab for the three of them was just short of four hundred dollars, and they'd only had beer!

But after lunch that first day the writer, a kid from Beverly Hills named Ethan Cohen, took her for a long walk around town -- which involved getting on boats, sometimes just to get across the street! Small islands overgrown with trees and ornate gardens also were dotted with a few dozen stately homes, and these islands constituted little neighborhood in and unto themselves, while another island just across a nearby canal was loaded with shops and restaurants. Little boats, actually part of the local transit system, carried people everywhere, and within a few hours she didn't give a damn about the high prices anymore.

Which almost instantly made her think of Disneyland, down in Anaheim, which was quite possibly the cleanest, most well-kept "neighborhood" in all Southern California...yet from everything she saw that first day, Stockholm was cleaner. People weren't dropping scraps of paper on the sidewalks as they walked along their little cobbled lanes, and public transit wasn't splattered in neon paint with the miscreant ravings of deluded gangbangers. By the end of her second day in the city she was thinking of contacting a realtor and renouncing her citizenship.

"You know the 'love it or leave it' crowd?" Cohen said at dinner after her second day touring the city with him.

"Who?"

"You know, those so-called patriots who go around putting up billboard that scream -- 'America! Love it or leave it! Those clowns...?"

"I've heard about that stuff, but not so much around South Central," Jennifer replied.

"Yeah? Lucky you. Well, the thing is, most of those people have never been out of the States so they have absolutely no idea how people in places like Europe or Japan or Australia live. As far as these people are concerned the only people who enjoy the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness live in Kansas, well, in truth, only in Red states. Democrats are socialists and so is Europe..."

"And Sweden?" she sighed.

"Yeah. It IS socialist, but only to a degree. And yeah, the taxes are brutal but you don't need to worry about getting sick or growing old or how you're going to pay for college. Denmark and Finland are even more heavily socialized than this place, and you know what? They rank highest on the UNs happiness index, and that's a whole bunch of parameters that measure quality of life and all the little things that make life stress free. The love or or leave it crowd just can't wrap their heads around the reality that democratic institutions are robust over here, that most people are politically engaged and have voted time after time to keep these social institutions. Talk to anyone here about the cost of medical care and about the biggest gripe you'll hear is about how expensive it is to park near the hospital. Ask about student loans and people won't know what you're talking about. Old age isn't stigmatized, and old people aren't warehoused in shitty conditions, basically, you know, left to rot and die. And all this wasn't rammed down the people's throats, either. They voted for politicians that created this sorry state of affairs."

"I'm already thinking about looking for a realtor," Jennifer said, only half in jest.

"I'm not sure I'd bother. We're considered damaged goods these days, not really welcome anymore."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"I have my ideas, but while you're here maybe you should ask a few people what they think about what's going on back at home. I think you'll find it's a real eye opener."

"So, where do you live?"

"The Hills of Beverly, Ma'am, only on the south side of Santa Monica."

"Ah."

"What about you?"

"Westchester, over by LMU."

"Ah, over by the airport?"

"I have a great view of In and Out Burger and the jets on final approach!"

"Man, I'd kill for that view!" he said, but only half-jokingly. "I go over there once a week or so to sit under the lights and feel the jets as they pass by just overhead."

"And...admit it...for an order of Animal Fries!"

"You know it, man!"

"LA isn't all bad, Ethan."

"Never said it was, Officer. I just get tired of the bitching about Europe. To me it's just ignorance, but it's also a kind of willful turning away from reality."

"Willful?"

"Yeah, willful. It's like these people aren't even willing to take a look at how other people are constructing solutions to the problems we face, they're just plowing straight ahead while waving the flag -- so they're not really even aware that they're running straight for the edge of the cliff, and they're willing to take all us over the edge with them."

"So? What's the solution?"

"Buy a fucking house, in Stockholm."

+++++

As they walked around the city and all those canals, Ethan Cohen asked Jennifer Collins all kinds of questions about what it was like working around Rampart Division and the South Central neighborhood. "There's not really a South Central Division, is there?" he asked.

"No, not officially. It used to be called University, and nowadays it's called Southwest, but everyone knows what you're talking about. South Central means the area around SC, and the neighborhood around the school has been called South Central for a really long time."

"Is it still predominantly Black?"

"Ninety percent is the number I keep hearing. It feels higher to me."

"Jesus..." Cohen sighed. "And is it still really like a war zone?"

Collins shrugged and looked away. "Depends on where you're coming from, Ethan."

"Look, Jennifer," Cohen said, needling her just a little, "I need to know the score. The real deal, so if..."

"I'm not keeping anything from you, kid," Jennifer sighed. "At least nothing you don't already know. And I'll let you in on a little secret, Ethan. I've done my research too, ya know? Like you went to high school in Beverly Hills, then you went on to the film school at USC, so you drove the same streets I do everyday. And so here's the deal, the real scoop: don't run this 'I'm Mr. Innocent and don't know diddly' con on me, okay? I can smell a con from two miles away, and if you're going to run one on me right now you might as well get lost."

"What else did you learn about me?"

"Enough."

"Like?"

She shook her head. "Trust me. You don't want to know."

He looked at her and shook his head. "I have fucked up a few times," he finally whispered.

"You have."

"I guess I should've figured you'd run my history. You are a cop."

"I am indeed, and if I were you I'd take my time before heading back to the states."

"Warrants?"

"Yup. Two state, one federal."

"Fuck."

"You're a decent writer, Ethan, but you've got, as they say, a few issues."

Cohen nodded. "I wasn't planning on going home, you know? Thing is, there aren't many places you can run."

She shrugged. "None of my business," she said as she looked around the restaurant. "Ain't my jurisdiction, if you know what I mean. Besides, you're a pretty good tour guide."

"Hey, my new calling!"