Hollywood Boulevard

Jeezus, Marty, I was standing right there just waiting for the crossing signal to turn so I could get to the movie house on the other side. And bam, this long lick of a flame screamed as loud as if you dropped a load of steel i-beams at my feet. God almighty it was loud. That’s all I saw and heard. The white-yellow blast and the sound of a .45 caliber and its echo. I know that sound, it’s like nothin’ else, a real roarin’ explosion. After that you could’ve heard a pin drop. Oh man, it must of been a long few seconds before it registered, someone took cold blooded aim at some poor slob and popped ‘em right there on the boulevard.

You know me, I don't show stuff, Mr. Ice Water, right? Anyway, I gathered my wits and I took a good look at the crowd around me, I guess partly to see if what I saw was real. It was. The crowd was in a weird kind of silence, a few sobs and lots of heavy breathing. But down on the asphalt, in the crosswalk was this guy, bleeding from his gut and he wasn’t moving. I mean at the range that gun was fired it’s amazing the dead guy wasn’t sawed in half. To tell you the truth, I never seen someone get plugged like that. If I was religious, with that gun's roar, I would have said the world had ended and we were waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Instead, the silence ended and a few people started screaming and carrying on. Like chickens with their heads off. Most just scrammed. And a few, like me, waited a few minutes. I guess to figure out what to do or where to go. Cause after seeing a killing it sort of knocks the hell out of whatever you thought you were going to do.

So I grabbed the arm of Cassie, the woman I was with, you know her, she works at Hatton's. Yeah, well, she was still acting like a statue and I thought it best to get her to safety and maybe get her feelin’ better somewhere else. So we split. But as we left I noticed a guy standin’ off to the side, just down the sidewalk some and he looked different than everyone else in the vicinity. For one thing, he was limp looking and for another, he had a gun in his hand. He was staring towards the dead guy and, can you believe it, he was crying! Well, it was Hollywood Boulevard and I’ve seen stranger stuff.

Next thing ya know he started walking towards the crowd and the body. Me and Cassie quick got to the other side of the street and stood behind a bunch of newspaper boxes there by Max Factor's. Looking at each other, we decided a few more minutes of watching might clear things up for us. Sure enough it started making sense.

The shooter started yelling at the body, mostly telling him he was a rat and a whore and deserved to be shot for cheatin’ on him. With those words we saw two nervous looking guys, who were standing behind the few people still at the crosswalk, turn and quickly leave.

Yeah, the shooter was just some jealous bastard who didn’t like his boyfriend steppin’ out on Saturday night. You got that right, it’s Hollywood and nothing is going to change that.