by T. B. Smith
“Sure, come on in officer,” Mortensen smiled with a chiseled face that sported an immaculately trimmed goatee. It seemed he’d met this attractive young lady at the Chee Chee Club, bought her a drink and only noticed his wallet missing after he got home.
“Funny thing though,” Shimmer said.
“What’s that?”
“You meeting this honey at the Chee Chee. Drag queens and hustlers hang out there. You didn’t know that?” Shimmer asked.
“Are you sure?”
“You have any pets, Mr. Mortensen?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Just wanted to know if we needed to make any special arrangements before I throw your ass in jail’s all,” Shimmer said. “Now let me tell you what I know that you don’t think I know, dummy.”
Shimmer laid out the scenario. “There’s good news, though.” He waited for Mortensen to ask the obvious question.
“You get to be listed as a victim for the grand theft,” Shimmer went on. “Ain’t that nice? Oh, by the way. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can, and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney and to have the attorney present during questioning. If you so desire and cannot afford one, an attorney will be appointed for you without charge before questioning.
“Do you understand each of these rights I’ve explained to you?”
Mortensen nodded.
“I need you to answer yes or no, Mr. Mortensen.”
“I understand.”
“Having in mind and understanding your rights, are you willing to speak with me?”
“Yes,” Mortensen answered.
“Good,” Shimmer said. “Now, show me the fucking gun.”
After retrieving the .22 from under Mortensen’s bed, Shimmer called for a reserve unit to take their prisoner to jail. He handed the driver the booking slip and waved to Mortensen. Then he turned to Denny.
“Now, my REMF friend,” he said. “You get to write a case report on the attempted robbery and attempted murder listing Kimmy as the victim. Then you write a case report listing Mortensen as the victim of a grand theft person. Next, there’s the arrest report for Mortensen listing the prostitution caper and the shooting. Then there’s the notify warrant requesting that Kimmy be issued a summons for lifting the john’s wallet and you have to impound Kimmy’s clothes. If you ever finish that, I’ll be near dead of old age and you’ll either be turning into a real cop or just a little closer to getting fired. Care to make any bets on which it’ll be?”
10
LUKE AND DENNY PUSHED THROUGH THE DOOR of the One-Five-Three Club across the street from the police station. The bar’s name came from a police catchall form with mostly blank lines that functioned primarily as a continuation for narratives from other report forms like arrests or crime cases. It was also the form officers used to document their actions when they were either being investigated as the result of a citizen’s complaint or for internal probes initiated by someone further up the chain of command. Their supervisors almost invariably began the investigations by calling them in from the field and uttering the infamous words, “Give me a One-Five-Three about what happened.”
In point of fact, “Give me a One-Five-Three about that incident the other night in the One-Five-Three Club” was a phrase officers heard altogether too often. So much so, that the watering hole’s name had become a double entendre appreciated by nearly everyone who walked through the swinging doors of the dusty dump that was the opposite of everything the word “club” implied.
A busty redhead with amber eyes, spiked heels and skin-hugging Jordache jeans sat astride a stool near the end of the bar. She turned toward the entrance to check out the arriving talent and it looked to Luke like she fixed her gaze on his crotch before moving it up his torso. The enameled fingernails tapping against the bar, together with her cooing sing-along to Willie Nelson on the jukebox definitely advertised her availability.
Although he’d never really believed them, Luke knew the stories about cop groupies who thrived on copulating with cops, and this woman’s attention seemed headed in his direction. But she couldn’t be interested in him.
Luke wore snug nylon uniform pants and his XX T-shirt strained to contain his muscles. He ordered a club soda for himself and a Coors for Denny.
The groupie followed his movements. At least it seemed like she did. Luke’s internal mirror still reflected back Moochie, the younger pudgy victim of his older brother’s vicious attacks when they were kids.
Whenever girls came around, Tuffy had marshaled a gaggle together to surround Luke while they hissed epithets of hatred at the fat kid who stood with tears streaming down his cheeks and his eyes trained on his shoes. Tuffy would tweak Luke’s ears, pinch his rolling belly and shout out the nickname he used when he was at his most vicious. “Moochie! Pull that shirt up and show us your fat.”
The invitation signaled the others to yank Luke’s shirt tail out, push him to the ground and join in the vicious pinching and kneading of his corpulent flesh while Luke clawed desperately, dug his heels into the dirt and pleaded for help.
The fairer sex always declined Tuffy’s invitations to join in, but stood wide-eyed and giggly as Luke writhed on the ground, hating himself, hating his tormentors and hating the girls who watched in silence.
In the years since, he’d channeled his anger into pushups, stopping only when his muscles reached utter exhaustion. He started over again as soon as he could, his burning muscles an anesthetic for his pent-up anger.
He pounded out more than a thousand pushups a day and aimed his frustrations at his wrestling opponents. The muscle-numbing, body-exhausting, head-pounding matches forged a partial outlet for his seething rage.
“What a scum sucking bag of shit.”
Luke heard the words coming from behind him. “Say Luke, what would your Mr. Shakespeare say about that asshole?”
Hearing the hint of camaraderie in Hartson’s invitation to discuss the Bard was a surprise.
“What?” Luke asked.
“How would Shakespeare describe Biletnikoff?”
“I don’t really know Biletnikoff.”
“Humor me. If Shakespeare really hated some bastard the way we hate the Sarge, what would he say?”
Luke thought for a moment. “He’d say something like,
‘…that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swoln parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloakbag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity of years...and a nose like W.C. Fields. It made him a dead-ringer ”’
“What’d he say?” The question came from J.R. Shimmer who’d emerged from the bathroom with a glass of beer in his hand.
Luke sized up the slight man with chestnut hair, a Charlie Chaplin mustache, blood-shot cheeks and a nose like W.C. Fields. It made him a dead-ringer for Bardolph, a comic character in several of Shakespeare’s plays.
“What’d he say?” Shimmer asked again. “What the fuck did he say?”
“Shut up and you might learn something,” the groupie barked. Luke trained his marbled green eyes on Shimmer.
“My training officer asked for a Shakespearean insult,” Luke said.
“Huh?” Shimmer asked. “What?”
“Never mind him,” Hartson said to Luke. “Where’d you learn that shit anyway?”
“Books.”
“I heard about you,” Shimmer chimed in. “You used to stand on tables at the academy and quote poetry. What are you, some kind of faggot or something?”
“Well, my dear diminutive Bardolph,” Luke said, “I’m an occasional pedagogue who chooses his words deliberately for the sole purpose of ameliorating the lives of others.” Luke had developed his vocabulary with the same anger he’d utilized to develop his body. For years, he’d written every new word he encountered in his personal dictionary and added it
to his arsenal against bullies. He pounded his words at Shimmer’s ego like a billy club.
“What’d he say?” Shimmer looked around for help. “Will somebody tell me what the fuck he’s talking about?”
“What’d you say, Luke?” Denny asked. “Tell him what you said.”
Luke didn’t know Shimmer was Denny’s training officer and he wasn’t giving Denny the chance to tell him. Luke certainly didn’t know the little nebbish and he’d long since stopped taking guff from anybody. He craned his neck toward Shimmer and jutted his jaw forward, pouting his lips and enunciating every syllable. “I said I was being pedagogical.”
Shimmer leaped from his bar stool. “Yeah, well fuck you. Shimmer’s speech was thick and slurred. “You trainees got no business in a cop bar anyways. All you trainees need to get the fuck out of here.”
Hartson stepped between them. “My trainee can’t fight you,” he said. “They’d fire his ass, which I can’t let happen. Besides, he’d snap you like a teeny little twig. Then there’d be this huge investigation for which everybody in here’d have to write a One-Five-Three, and all’s we want is to have a few beers. So leave him alone.”
Hartson motioned for Luke to join his entourage and introduced him around as the group gathered several tables together and sat in a haphazard enclave. Luke pulled a chair next to Hartson and waved for Denny to take the seat.
“I think I should go,” Denny said.
“You’re not leaving because of him,” Luke said, more in the form of an order than a question. He’d driven Denny to work and knew his roomie had to stay.
“Francie,” Hartson said as Denny perched on the seat next to Luke. “Tell these guys about the Black Panthers in the Imperial Valley.”
Hartson nodded to a beer keg of a man who responded with a high-pitched voice and a hint of hilarity in every syllable he spoke. “Okay,” Francie said, “this is back in the late sixties and I’m a reserve deputy working in the Imperial Valley. My partner and I hear this all-units broadcast out of Los Angeles about some Black Panthers who’d surrounded an LA Sheriff’s transport unit, blown the deputies away, snatched their pals who were on their way to prison, and hauled ass.
“Dispatch says a guy saw them getting into a dark blue van with side windows. The driver’s a black male, twenty years old, with an Afro.
“So, three, maybe four hours go by and we’re in the middle of the desert. We see this blue van with a driver who has an Afro and it’s heading right for us. There were no black guys in the valley back then and enough time has passed for a drive from LA so we know this is the vehicle. The Panthers are armed with automatic weapons and have already blown two deputies away, so we’re scared shitless. Some cars are following close to the van as it blows past so we’re a few cars behind when we make our U-turn. We got time to make a plan, but we’re the only unit for miles, so what the fuck are we going to do?”
The group shrugged collectively.
Francie continued, seemingly encouraged by the feedback and the roundness of the sweating Coors in his hand. “Out there, you call for help and CHP responds, Border Patrol comes, everybody, because nobody’s close. We know nobody’s around. We’ve got nothing but our piss-ant thirty-eights and figure we’re dead meat.
“Anyways, there are four cars between us and what we’re convinced is certain death. A few miles ahead is this humungous billboard at a traffic signal, so we have dispatch tell our cover units to stage behind it, thinking maybe we can surprise these assholes and live to tell about it.
“So, units from around the desert are scrambling for heavy weapons to save our asses. As we’re driving along, one car in front turns off the highway. Now we’re even closer to getting blown away, praying these guys don’t pull over and take us on or we might as well eat our guns and save them the trouble. Then another car pulls off in front and there’s only one car between us and the van so we’re about to shit our pants.”
Francie’s congregation hoisted their glasses and drank in rhythmic unison with his lyrical delivery.
“We finally see the billboard in the distance and know we’ve got help waiting, but by now we’re right behind the fucking van that reaches the intersection just as the light switches to red. Cops start crawling around the van like Japs at a two-for-one film sale. One guy flings the back doors open and falls out of the line of fire as other guys shove in their shotguns. There’re officers at both windows and a dozen others surrounding the van and one of them has the barrel of a twelve-gauge screwed into the driver’s ear. I mean to tell you, the dude’s scared shitless.
“Problem is, it turns out he’s just a kid with his girlfriend napping in the back who wakes up to a shotgun in her face. They’re just driving to Phoenix, minding their own business.
“Our sergeant walks up, takes his sunglasses off and wipes them with a rag. Then he says to the guy, ‘Son, you’ve got yourself a tail light out, and down in this here Imperial Valley, we take them things kind of serious.”
Hartson dispatched Luke on a rookie’s mission as the laughter resounded and Francie accepted a salute of clinking beer bottles for his story-telling ability. “You can buy the next round,” Hartson said.
“I’m honored to provide the eleemosynary service,” Luke responded.
“What the fuck did he say?” Shimmer implored from his stool near the end of the bar.
Everybody at the tables shrugged.
Luke sized up the One-Five-Three Club as he waited for the drinks. A musty odor pervaded and the lighting was low. The club had three rooms, including the small kitchen behind the bar. The back room housed two pinball machines and the front one held the busy pool table that stood surrounded by a few rickety booths and some tables. Cobwebs hung from the corners of the ceiling. The club exuded a nearly mystical simplicity, making it the perfect spot for cops to regale one another with their tales of the exotic and the bizarre.
Luke put the beers on a tray and returned to hear more stories of mayhem and hilarity. Every tale represented a sermon without a moral and the One-Five-Three Club was the church of the non-sequitur. Everybody inside held status as an eager member or a prospective parishioner.
“I’m stuck in Balboa Park on graveyard,” Paul Devree started out. Devree, who sat directly opposite Luke, sported a sallow complexion and collar-length hair the color of shucked corn.
This started to become fun for Luke as he took slow sips of his club soda and sized Devree up. He constantly pushed his hair off his forehead and cocked his head to one side every few minutes, accompanying the movement with a quizzical expression like a German shepherd begging for a biscuit.
“I decide to go out on foot and see what’s happening in the canyons and around the Fruit Loop,” Devree said. “I turn my radio down and stick my keys in my pocket. I’m going to be a goddamn silent Indian tracker. So I’m walking along and I see this guy who I think’s naked. Only it turns out he’s not naked because he has a pair of socks on his feet and a heavy chain with a Master lock attached to his wrist. He looks around real sneaky like and runs over to this tree, throws his arms around the trunk and locks himself to it.
“This poor guy can’t get buggered no matter how hard he tries.” Devree leaned back, sucked a drag from his Kool menthol and looked around the table before leaning forward and lowering his voice to a whisper. “It’s like they say, there’s never a fudge-packer around when you need one. Know what I mean?”
Most of his table mates nodded as Francie added an emphatic, “No shit.”
“Then, I swear this is true,” Devree continued. “The bastard starts to howl. Just looks to the sky and howls like a goddamn she-wolf in heat because nobody’ll abuse him. Here’s this guy who’s naked except for his socks, he’s chained to a tree, he’s got this huge erection and nobody’ll come along and bugger his ass, the poor bastard.
“So, he fidgets behind the tree and undoes the lock. Then he looks around real furtive like and runs to another tree. He throws his arms around it, locks himself to
the trunk and starts howling again.
“This is all I can stand now, so I walk up to the guy and tell him he’s under arrest for barking up the wrong tree.”
As Devree finished to a burst of laughter, a throaty voice shouted above the clanging sounds of the backroom pinball machine, “Hey, Francie, did you hear the one about the two gay Irishmen, John Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzjohn?”
Frances Patrick Eugene O’Malley laughed his deep belly laugh and hollered above the twangy sounds of the juke box. “Ain’t no such a thing as a gay Irishman,” he said as Hartson handed Luke a wad of singles and sent him to fetch another round of beers for the table.
Denny walked to the bar to get his own beer as the round of stories continued.
When Luke got back to the table, the group tried insisting that he tell a tale of his own, but he had nothing to say. He sat still and silent, fondling the outside of his glass.
Hartson broke the awkward silence. “That true, Luke?”
“Huh,” Luke responded.
“What Shimmer said a while ago? God knows, I’m aware you quote Shakespeare, but that shit about standing up on the tables at the academy, is that true?”
“Damn straight,” Luke said. “To use a crass colloquialism.”
“Go ahead on then and quote us some Shakespeare.”
Luke tried not to let his surprise register as the rest of the group started mumbling. “Do you want something from a history, a comedy, a tragedy or a romance?”
“Just give us some fucking Shakespeare before I change my mind,” Hartson said.
Luke didn’t mind being the side show. Side shows had a great tradition dating back at least to the Renaissance. Besides, he’d never pass up the chance to teach somebody about Shakespeare. “All right, but I can’t do it from here. A man quoting the Bard needs room to pontificate.” Luke bounded atop the bar to tower over his audience. “Here’s something apposite to our lives in a modern constabulary.”