The Glitter Dome by Joseph Wambaugh

with Harvey H. Fairchild. It was all the detectives could do to keep the two street monsters from breaking into Jukebox Johnson’s cell and lynching the little traitor on the spot, except that he had already been writted out of jail by a lawyer who said he was retained by one Jules P. Laidlaw, a fat pink guy with lots of jewelry and a groovy silk suit.
    So it was woe to the boulevard denizens for the next few weeks while Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand worked at exorcising the memory of their Waterloo at the hands of Jukebox Johnson and a future corpse who called himself Harvey H. Fairchild and Jules P. Laidlaw. During those humiliating days Buckmore Phipps broke two molars grinding his teeth in frustration, and Gibson Hand accidentally snapped a police nightstick in two, whacking a telephone pole. There was scarcely a word passed between the two street monsters on their fruitless manhunt. Instead of asking each other whether one wanted to drive or write reports, Buckmore Phipps or Gibson Hand would turn a rabid face toward another rabid face and say: “How about today you write and I fight .”
    So, knowing that Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand were cutting a swath across Hollywood not seen since the Hillside Strangler manhunt (like rogue elephants they foraged through every addict haunt and hole-in-the-wall for the needle-scarred carcass of Jukebox Johnson), the little junkie decided it was time to take a Greyhound with part of his score from Harvey H. Fairchild’s tunnel job, and head on back to Little Rock for a permanent family reunion. Jukebox Johnson knew full well that life was harder for ex-disc-jockey, junkie burglars in Little Rock, but he also knew that as far as he was concerned, Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand just weren’t about to be taking any prisoners.

6
    Just Plain Bill
    â€œI’ve thrown more freaking passes the last two days than Roger Staubach threw in his whole career,” the Ferret moaned.
    â€œThen take a little off them,” the Weasel complained. “My ribs look like I just fought ten rounds with Larry Holmes.”
    â€œI start lobbing the ball to you and I’ll lose control and bust another window. That’s all we need. Screw it, let’s take a break.”
    So the two narcs, dressed today in sweat shirts and jeans and tennis shoes instead of leather jackets and boots, took their football and retreated half a block down Oxford Avenue to the green Toyota where they kept their other props.
    They’d been street football jocks the last two days while watching a certain house south of Los Feliz Boulevard. Two days before that they were gardeners, after having been lucky enough to find a house on the street with the residents on vacation. The Ferret mowed the lawn seven times. The Weasel dug up all the crabgrass, pruned the roses, snipped back the ivy, and when they’d run out of things to do, started all over again. It gave them a splendid vantage point from which to observe the house in question, but after two days of overzealous gardening there wasn’t enough left for a hungry snail. They packed up their gardening tools after it looked like a horde of locusts had hit the yard. Then they started playing the endless game of catch football.
    The resident of the house under surveillance was, according to a usually reliable snitch named Sox Wilson, dealing chunks of hash as big as cucumbers, and had bragged that this very week he was going to wheel his silver Mercedes 450SL out of his garage and make a fresh buy from his Asian connection on the waterfronts of San Pedro.
    The county recorder’s office showed the property deed to belong to a Randolph Waterman, who had leased the house to a vacationing couple, who had subleased the property, apparently to the hash dealer or one of his friends. The narcs couldn’t find out the name of the dealer except that everyone called him Bill.
    â€œBill what, for chrissake?” the Weasel demanded of