Honorable mention

“Who’s that? Never seen them before.”
Hermosa Sgt. JD Clements mumbled to himself as he drove North along PCH, past the four Star gas station and repair shop, “Lemme just have a quick look.”
Clements did a quick right turn and blacked out, no interior or headlights, killed the engine and rolled down the driveway of the all night filling station.
August 6, 1953, not only was the planet Mars the closest it’s been to earth this century, there was a Super Moon event that evening. The brightness from the east-rising moon lit up the ocean like a search light .
The officer got out of his car and called out to the night attendant, “Jimmy, need to talk to you!” There was no response, but he thought he heard someone in the manager’s office. Not a voice, but some shuffling and a muffled response. Clements unleashed the holster of his sidearm and walked towards the open door of the office.

As he got closer, he saw the moonlit silhouette of the night attendant, bound and gagged, prone on the oily floor. Holding his .45 in his right hand, ready to shoot at anything that blinked, Clements whispered to Jimmy, “Just nod your answer, is he still here?” Jimmy’s head went up and down like a jackhammer. That rapid cranial movement somehow loosened the gag covering the attendants mouth, enough for him to blurt out, “He has a gun!”

At this exact same moment, the sound of burning rubber, tires peeling, and engine belts being pushed way beyond their limits could be heard from the south end of the building. Clements ran back to his patrol unit just in time to see the 1951 Plymouth Seville pull out of the driveway and head north along PCH.
“Sorry, Jimbo, I’ll have to come back for you later,” the officer said to himself as he grabbed the mic from the dash and told anyone who was interested that he was in pursuit. This was just months before all the South Bay cities were brought onto one emergency frequency, so when there was an incident like this, the neighboring cities’ police units were already in position along Sepulveda Boulevard.
“1 Ocean 20, I’m now crossing Manhattan Beach Boulevard, approaching Marine, speeds at 100 plus.”

Clements looked in his rear view mirror and what he initially thought was a firefly making erratic horizontal movements, was actually none other than Hermosa Chief Holly Murray, on a city motorcycle — riding at an incredible speed.
“1 Ocean 20, crossing Rosecrans, speed’s at 100 plus,” radioed a Manhattan unit driven by Sgt. Mike Martin. Then a two-man El Segundo unit joined in the pursuit. Its wide open road from this point north, and everyone instinctively knew that this incident was going to end in the next minute or so. The adrenaline of the chase wears off quickly with the realization that the pursuits never end well.

As the parade continued past El Segundo Boulevard, Sgt. Martin held his service revolver out the window and shot out the rear tires of the suspect’s vehicle, right wheel first, causing the driver to over-correct by turning the steering wheel to the left, with the second bullet prompting the Plymouth to cease all forward motion. Unfortunately for the suspect, the Hermosa unit was still in “forward motion” at about 50 m.p.h. when it impacted the front left area of the Plymouth, knocking it into the gully that adjoins the strawberry fields. The force of the collision launched the black and white up on its two left wheels for about 20 yards before the unit rolled over on its side and skidded to a stop.

About 20 yards from the termination of the pursuit the two El Segundo officers pulled Clements out of his wrecked vehicle and hauled their seriously injured patient to Gardena Hospital.
Sgt. Martin and Chief Murray each grabbed one arm of the suspect and yanked him out the driver’s side window and placed him knees folded into the mud. As Martin did a pat down for weapons, Murray leaned over to pick up a piece of paper that had fallen out of the suspect’s vehicle. It revealed a floor plan of the Mermaid Restaurant. He motioned the Manhattan officer over. “I stopped some guy earlier this evening, down at the waterline, got a call that he was behaving weird, using a flashlight to signal someone off the coast. As I rolled up I could see a guy in a small craft, about 50 yards out, just south of the pier. He took off when I walked down towards flashlight guy.

“I asked the guy who was sitting in the sand for his ID, and who his friend with the panga was. He said he didn’t have anything and didn’t see any boat. I told him he’s not going anywhere ‘til he gives me something w/ his name on it. He was fumbling around his pockets, pulled out the map, then quickly shoved it into his jacket pocket. I grabbed his arm and reached into his pocket to grab the map.
Same one as this clown has. He started to get up so I shoved him back down and cuffed him. Let’s go find out who this guy is.”

The officers walked back towards their suspect and laid it out for him.
“We have your friend. You wanna tell us your version, ‘cause his story throws you under the bus.”

After about 15 seconds of the seven stages of grief, the suspect spoke up.

“I knew this wasn’t gonna work, the whole thing was so stupid. My idiot cousin saw it in a movie, and we just tweaked the plot to fit our plan. We were gonna knock over the Mermaid. It’s a Saturday night, the owners can’t go to the bank ‘til Monday, so it makes sense that there’d be a ton of cash there. We hired this kid and paid him to drive away from the Mermaid as fast as he could, blacked out around 11 p.m. figuring he could keep u guys busy chasing him down, while we scooped all the cash from the tills and customers.”

“Then we were gonna run down to the beach and get aboard a dinghy to take us to a bigger boat, maybe hide out at the isthmus on Catalina. But the kid called and said some cop ran my cousin off the beach and then off to jail.”

“So our plan was on hold. I didn’t want to go home empty handed, so I stopped off at that gas station you saw me at, was gonna knock that over, but you guys ruined that plan, too.” 

Martin lifted the guy to his feet and walked him back to his unit as a message from the Hermosa desk

was relayed to Murray.

“Clements called from the hospital, he’s gonna be fine, but thought it’d be wise to mention that the victim in the gas station robbery is most likely still tied up in the office and will probably lash out at anyone who shows up to free him.”

Murray radioed back that he’d head over to the station and take care of that, but on his way, he did a slow roll by the Mermaid, looking at the lot full of locals and rummies, heading in and out and thinking to himself, “You people have no idea how two nosy, suspicious civil servants made your life a lot more pleasant tonight.”

As he turned his motor west and headed up Pier Avenue, he rode by but didn’t recognize the kid who was gonna drive the car away from the Mermaid and now was walking back toward the restaurant, seeing if there was any way to salvage the evening. He glanced towards Pier Ave at the fading light of Murray’s motorcycle, with its back and forth excessive changes, and thought to himself, “That looks like a drunken firefly.” B