Maggie MacGowen

When Maggie MacGowen was a girl, her sister, Emily, lived the life of a leftist radical on the run from the FBI. Twenty-two years after the FBI finally caught her, Emily lives in Los Angeles, a doctor at a free clinic that tends to the city’s down and out. When one of her old radical buddies comes out of hiding and surrenders to the police, their long-ago crimes become front-page news. Emily calls Maggie, now a documentary filmmaker, and asks her to come visit. By the time Maggie arrives in Los Angeles, Emily is nearly dead.

In Los Angeles making a documentary about upscale daycares, Maggie MacGowen visits MacArthur Park to get complementary footage of the pubescent prostitutes that populate its dark corners. There she meets Pisces, a fourteen year-old hooker with manners that don't match her profession. As they bond over a plate of pastrami, Maggie talks her into spending the night in a shelter. But Pisces comes with baggage: A nine year-old hoodlum named Sly.

After decades making progressive documentary films, Maggie MacGowen did not expect to fall in love with a Los Angeles cop. But Mike Trent, whom she met while investigating her sister’s shooting, is no LAPD stereotype. Tall, with salt-and-pepper hair and a craggy Bogart face, he inspires her to uproot herself and her daughter from San Francisco and move down to L.A. It takes only a week for their new life to collapse.

In 1974, Roy Frady was a perfect cop. Now he's perfect fodder for one of Maggie MacGowen's documentaries. Frady worked narcotics in the 77th Street Precinct as part of a unit nicknamed the Four Whoresmen, a bunch of hard-drinking, womanizing cops that included Maggie's current lover, homicide Detective Mike Flint. They were successful at shutting down the drug trade in their district until a series of brutality charges brought about their downfall.