BLOOD ON THE MOON
57
take exorbitantly expensive treatments by a Brazilian doctor-medicine man. The word had come down that all drug sales out of all Donut Deelite locations were to stop the following week, when the new owner took over. Big Mo would be on his way to Brazil by then, and all the countermen-pushers would be contacted by a “rich Mexican” who would give them their “going away” bonuses.
After uncovering three ounces of heroin underneath a meat locker, Peltz handcuffed the youth and took him downtown to the central jail, where he was booked as a material witness. Peltz then took the elevator to the eighth floor offices of the L.A.P.D.’s Narcotics Division. Two hours later, after obtaining search and arrest warrants, four shotgunwielding detectives burst into the home of Morris Dreyfus and arrested him for possession of heroin, possession with intent to sell, sales of dangerous drugs and criminal conspiracy. In his jail cell, against his attorney’s advice, Morris Dreyfus made the connection that convinced Dutch Peltz beyond any doubt of Lloyd Hopkins’s genius: In hushed tones, Dreyfus told how a
“death squad” of militant illegal aliens was behind the killing of the five hippies and how they were now demanding $250,000 from him for firing his immigrant work force en masse. The hippies were killed as a terror tactic; their random selection a ruse to keep attention from being focused on the Donut Deelite chain.
The following morning a dozen black-and-whites cordoned off both sides of the 1100 block of Wabash Street in East Los Angeles. Flak-jacketed officers surrounded the building that housed the death squad. Armed with fully automatic AK-47s, they broke through the front door, firing warning bursts above the heads of four men and three women quietly eating breakfast. The seven stoically submitted to handcuffing and a search team was deployed to check the rest of the house. A total of eleven illegal aliens were arrested. After a gruelling series of interrogations, three men admitted to the Hollywood killings. They were indicted on five counts of first-degree murder and ultimately received life sentences.
The day after the confessions were secured, Dutch Peltz went looking for Lloyd Hopkins. He found him going off duty in the parking lot at Central Division. Unlocking his car, Lloyd felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around and found Peltz shuffling his feet nervously, gazing up at him with a look that he could only think of as pure love.
“Thanks, kid,” the older cop said. “You’ve made me. I was going to tell—”
58
L.A. NOIR
“No one would believe you,” Lloyd interrupted. “Let it go down the way it is.”
“Don’t you want—”
“You did the work, Sergeant. I just supplied the theory.”
Peltz laughed until Lloyd thought he would keel over of a heart attack. As his laughter subsided, Peltz regained his breath and said, “Who are you?”
Lloyd flicked the antenna of his car and said softly, “I don’t know. I Jesus fucking Christ don’t know.”
“I can teach you things,” Dutch Peltz said. “I’ve been a Homicide dick for eleven years. I can give you a lot of solid, practical information, the benefit of a lot of experience.”
“What do you want from me?” Lloyd asked.
Peltz took a moment to consider the question. “I think I just want to know you,” he said.
The two men stared at each other in silence. Then Lloyd slowly extended his hand, sealing their fates. It was Lloyd who was the teacher; almost from the start. Dutch would provide knowledge and experience in the form of anecdotes and Lloyd would find the hidden human truth and hold it up for magnification. Hundreds of hours were spent talking, rehashing old crimes and discussing topics as diverse as women’s clothing and how it reflected character to dogwalking burglars who used their pets as subterfuge. The men discovered safe harbors in each other—Lloyd knew that he had found the one cop who would never look at him strangely when he retreated at the sound of a radio or begrudge him when he insisted on doing it his way; Dutch knew that he had found the supreme police intellect. When Lloyd passed the Sergeant’s exam, it was Dutch who pulled strings to get him assigned to the Detective Division, calling in a career’s worth of unreturned favors. It was then that Lloyd Hopkins was able to manifest his intellect and produce astounding results—the greatest number of felony arrests and convictions of any Los Angeles police officer in the history of the department, all within a period of five years. Lloyd’s reputation grew to the point where he asked for and was granted almost complete autonomy, deferred to by even the most stern-minded, traditionalist cops. And Dutch Peltz proudly watched it happen, content to play in the august light of genius provided by a man he loved more than his own life.
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