Spy Vs. Spy

I was in bed one morning next to my wife when the telephone rang.

An anxious voice said, “You think there’s a movie of the week in it?”

It was about 5 a.m., a time at which I am not usually prepared to answer sudden questions.

“No,” I said, “we are just an ordinary middle-aged couple, legally married, lying here. . . .”

“I don’t mean you in bed, idiot, I mean the cop spies!”

The man who called is an independent television producer, one of thousands in L.A. who wake up early and scan the newspaper for stories they can exploit as high-profile movies.

In this case, he had seen our piece on the book by Michael Rothmiller exposing the excesses of the LAPD’s Organized Crime Intelligence Division.

He wanted me to go with him that morning to ABC to pitch a fictional idea based on the story.

It would involve an OCID cop who is ordered to spy on his own girlfriend because she is suspected of being a Jerry Brown liberal and instead discovers that she is being untrue to him and sleeping with a mutual friend. A woman friend.

“As it turns out,” the producer said breathlessly, “ he has been untrue to her with the same person! Get it? They both love the same woman!”

The guy is a maggot from hell, the worst nightmare of anyone interested in truth and human decency. So I hung up.

“Who was that?” Cinelli asked sleepily.

“A pervert who wants to do a 12-hour miniseries on our love life.”

“I see it more as a short sitcom,” she said.

It was in this manner I first learned of the OCID, which was subsequently shut down by our new police chief, Willie from Philly.

Its problem, according to Rothmiller, was not that it spied on organized crime but that it spied on just about everyone Daryl Gates disliked, a form of voyeurism popularized by the late J. Edgar Hoover.

Not that our guys peepholed with any degree of efficiency. The LAPD has never been known for efficiency.

They would end up spying on empty houses, on small dogs, on each other and on inanimate objects like Jerry Brown’s bedroom walls.

In one instance, writes Rothmiller, they were trying to prove former state Atty Gen. John Van de Kamp was gay at the same time another unit was trying to prove he was having an affair with a woman.

They ended up proving nothing, which was what they did best.

Van de Kamp described it as “Police Academy VI.” At the height of an investigation, their suspenders break and their pants fall down.

Even the manner in which Rothmiller got his book published bears elements of a bad joke. He went to a new pre-literary agency in town: the ACLU.

Ramona Ripston, who heads the organization in Southern California, got him an agent and the rest, as they say, is history. I mean royalties.

Rothmiller himself is suspect. An ex-OCID cop, he was accused of faking a Mafia ambush in order to set up his own disability retirement, and was suspended from the LAPD.

To prove he was telling the truth, he broke out in hives and hid in the bathroom. A judge believed him and ordered him reinstated, but Rothmiller resigned anyhow. The hives, one presumes, got better.

I’m as upset as everyone else about the excesses of a police intelligence unit, but for a different reason. Why weren’t they spying on me?

Connie Chung was a victim and so was right-wing columnist Pat Buchanan. It’s an embarrassment not to be spied upon when other media people are.

There has only been one occasion when I felt cops might be checking me out. I was near MacArthur Park when I noticed a weirdo eyeing me and talking into a bag full of groceries.

At first I figure he is a nut who thinks he has God in the bag. But suddenly he drops the bag, which contains a radio receiver, and runs toward me hollering, “Police! Freeze!” At the last minute, he knocks me aside and goes after a woman behind me who is selling cocaine. The guy was a narc.

“Don’t feel bad,” Cinelli said. “Most people who get spied on are usually suspected of being involved in sexual eccentricities. You, on the other hand, are very, well, ordinary.”

I bristled. “I don’t bring ducks or whipped cream to bed, if that’s what you mean.”

“Don’t take it wrong. I mean you’re not having an affair. I’d know if you were. You get myopic and sweat when you lie.”

Nevertheless, I hope Chief Willie will reorganize the OCID long enough to spy on me. If nothing else, it will provide the spy with a nice rest. I’m too old for ducks and whipped cream.