THE BELLAGIO GARDEN was a lush Mediterranean oasis. Orange trees and lemon trees, tall cypress spires, cold pools, hot pools, whirlpools, chaises. In the last rags of sundown, hotel guests lay in their sunglasses, sleeping. A woman using a long lynx coat as a blanket lay on a chaise with sunglasses almost as big as her face, bare feet with blue toenails, her hair grey and blond like another fur animal tumbling down into the fur coat. Beside her, a man in an ochre field coat, his bent legs covered by white towels wrapped mummy-style, was asleep with his mouth open, a hardcover book held aloft in his hands. Hollywood Station, Joseph Wambaugh.
A man you’d identify to police as average-looking, average height, dark hair, mid-thirties, slid down the side of a big empty swimming pool. He held o
