Joseph Wambaugh - The Glitter Dome

Joseph Wambaugh

Page 1 of 108

Joseph Wambaugh

The Glitter Dome

First published in 1981

A perverse thank you to those in The Business, who, during a two-year Passage To Hollywood, imbued the author with sufficient venom to produce this book.

and

A humble thank you to Jay Allen, Harold Becker, Jeanne Bern-kopf, Jack Herron, John Sturgeon, who helped the author complete the Passage, relatively intact.

Where is the place that they all like to go?

It's Hollywood.

Jack 'n' Jill, Bruce and Bill, Farrah and Bo

Go Hollywood.

Down on the boulevard Saturday night,

You've never seen such a colorful sight,

But make sure that you roll up your windows real tight

In Hollywood.

Where are there so many hustling stars?

In Hollywood.

Stuck in the sidewalk or parking your carsThat's Hollywood.

Most every moment you'll hear sirens scream;

Follow the cop cars-you'll soon reach the scene

And you're bound to end up on the big or small screen

In Hollywood.

In the tradition of countless marines

Go Hollywood.

Tuck your equipment in super-tight jeans,

Go Hollywood.

Saunter the boulevard, you're out for hire,

Milk all you can out of old men's desire,

'Cause in just a few years you'll find you are the buyerThat's Hollywood!

- song by Ian Whitcomb

It was six inches long. He stroked it lightly, but he could not conjure an appropriate response: eroticism, revulsion, fascination, terror. He had read it described in a hundred melodramatic and pathetic suicide notes. Technology had even infiltrated death messages: So far this year four farewells were transmitted on taped cassettes, the ultimate proof of declining literacy.

It was dark and cool in the tiny kitchen. The formica tabletop was greasy and wet from the spillage of Tullamore Dew. He stroked the thing again. It had hung on his body for too long. More of a cock than the other one. He used it once a month as required by the Los Angeles Police Department. He had tried to use the other one this very night. The fifth of Tullamore Dew was nearly empty. He should be anesthetized. He'd nearly died and all he could think of was his cock. But the memory of the misfire hurt.

file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Joseph_Wambaugh_-_The_... 11/20/2009

Joseph Wambaugh

Page 2 of 108

Even the Pacific Ocean had the sweats that night. The offshore breeze was hot and wet. He ought to have turned and left The Glitter Dome the moment he entered. It was just nine o'clock, yet there they were, perched at the long bar like Mother Carey's chickens.

Chinatown gave him a headache, especially on those two nights a month when The Glitter Dome was jammed with chickens, yet that was why he was here. Police payday.

He had retreated utterly to the bosom of the cop "family." To The Glitter Dome. To kaleidoscopic colors: greens, yellows, reds, all of which he hated. To chaotic winking lights and leering neon messages. To winking groupies (seldom at him) and leering young cops plucking the chickens from their tentative perches at that long, long bar.

The hysteria was palpable. The Glitter Dome was teeming, smoky, loud. A dozen couples bumped and banged together on a parqueted dance floor hardly larger than a king-size bed. And it may as well have been a bed: Three of the groping, licking, grinding pairs of cops and chickens had managed everything but penetration. He had known he should leave. He thought about leaving. But his legs were hurting from a game of handball at the police academy. His stupid idea, to provide some badly needed diversion for his partner, Martin Welborn, who, after his marital separation, had become morose, distant, burned out, eerie. They'd been partners for three years and he was suddenly scared for Marty Welborn.

So if it hadn't been for his friendship with Marty Welborn, and the handball, and the sore legs, he would not have almost died this night. He was ready to leave when one of the chickens (this one more of a vulture) was plucked from her stool by a cop he knew, a street monster named Buckmore Phipps who patrolled Hollywood Boulevard with the subtlety of a Russian gunship.

"Whaddaya know, whaddaya say?" Buckmore Phipps grinned, baring thirty -two donkey teeth, amazingly still intact, given the way this street monster did business on the boulevard. "If it ain't Aloysius Mackey. Welcome to the Bay of Pigs."

Then Buckmore Phipps was off to the dance floor with his boozy vulture, probably a record clerk. Al Mackey had gotten so he could tell the record clerks from the communications operators even before they opened their mouths. The policewomen were most easily identifiable: They evinced all the cynicism of their male counterparts. So there was an empty barstool, and his legs hurt, and he had a sudden yen for three fingers of Tullamore Dew. He pointed to the bottle of Irish whiskey and nodded to Wing, the proprietor. With his overlong neck, and hollow eyes, and small head with sparse tufts of slicked-down hair sprung loose on each side like antennae, Wing looked for all the world like a praying mantis hopping around behind the long bar, his bony arms extending from his emerald mandarin jacket. Wing was a third-generation American who affected a Chinese accent and obsequious demeanor for daytime tourists. Nothing was as it seemed in The Glitter Dome.

"Double?" Wing winked, pouring a triple.

Before the night was over he would shortchange the detective to more than make up for it. Nothing was free in The Glitter Dome either. The perfect microcosm for Al Mackey. Thank God Marty Welborn didn't come here. He'd probably go home and swallow his Smith & Wesson. The Glitter Dome was a death wish of a saloon. Al Mackey tossed it down at once and Wing skipped over with another. Three triples of Tullamore Dew and the warlord of The Glitter Dome could give the uncomplaining detective change for a ten and drop his twenty into the mysterious box made of monkey-pod which sat beside an abacus to accommodate the "tips" which never passed through the cash register. Wing called the "tips" a tribute to his honored ancestors who, among the huddled masses, came to these golden shores and prospered. There was an American flag on the front and Chinese characters painted on the back of the box. The message on the back, roughly translated, read: "Uncle Sam's taxes suck. It's every Chink for himself." Another thing that Al Mackey hated about The Glitter Dome was the cascade of fruity drinks they poured over that bamboo long bar: Scorpions, Zombies, Fog Cutters. They all delivered a throat full of phlegm and a world-class hangover. And they were expensive.

"What division you work?"

She was rather young, something between a chicken and a vulture. But why did they all have phony lacquered nails? The one that Buckmore Phipps had plucked loose from the bamboo had actually left claw marks in the varnished bar top.

"Hollywood Detectives." He said it to the Tullamore Dew, figuring it would be all over the second one of those virile, healthy young authority symbols from Central Patrol came swashbuckling in, full of juice and energy and hope, with the balance of a City of L.A. paycheck causing the other bulge in his jeans. We may not be the best cops in the world, honey, but we're the best paid! And in they came. Look-alikes. Polyester body shirts, tight pants, hairstyles trimmed just short enough to keep the sergeants happy, the inevitable sideburns and moustaches. Why do all cops love sideburns except Al Mackey and Marty Welborn? God, it was so predictable, but not as predictable as the barroom greeting: "Roll call!" bellowed one young cop, spotting a clutch of pals and friendly groupies. "Marcus!"

"Here!" a voice shouted from the smoky darkness. The goddamn place was starting to smell like incense. Al Mackey's head throbbed. A perverted Chinese church.