Roy examined his lean body in the full-length mirror and thought the uniform still fit as well as the day he left the academy. He hadn’t been exercising but he watched what he ate and thought he still wore the blue suit well.
He was a few minutes late for roll call and muttered “Here” when Lieutenant Bilkins called his name, but he didn’t hear Bilkins read the daily crimes and wanted suspects even though he mechanically wrote the information in his notebook just as all the others did. Sam Tucker came straggling in ten minutes after roll call, still adjusting his tie clip with his heavily veined blue-black hands as he sat down at the bench in front of the first row of tables.
“If we could get old Sam to quit counting his money, we could get him here on time,” said Bilkins, glancing down at the grizzled Negro officer with his blank narrow eyes.
“Today’s rent day, Lieutenant,” said Tucker. “Got to stop by my tenants’ and collect my share of their welfare checks before they blow it on booze.”
“Just like you Jew landlords,” sniffed Bilkins, ‘“bleed the ghetto black man, keep him down in the east side.”
“You don’t think I’d let them live in West L.A. with me, do you?” said Tucker with a perfectly sober expression which brought a burst of laughter from the already sleepy morning watch officers.
“For you guys who don’t know, Sam owns half of Newton Division,” said Bilkins. “Police work is a hobby with him. That’s why Sam’s always late the first Wednesday of every month. If we could stop him from counting his money we could get him here on time. And if we could break all the mirrors in the joint, we could get Fehler here on time.”
Roy cursed himself for flushing deeply as the roll call boomed with the chuckles of his fellow officers. That was unfair as hell, he thought. And it wasn’t that funny. He knew he was a bit vain, but so was everyone.
“By the way, Fehler, you and Light keep an eyeball out for the hot prowl suspect in your district. The prick hit again last night and I think it’s only a matter of time till he hurts somebody.”
“Did he leave his calling card again?” asked Light, Roy’s partner this month, a round-shouldered, two-year Negro policeman, slightly taller than Roy and a difficult man for Roy to understand. He couldn’t seem to develop rapport with Light even though he went out of his way as he always did with Negroes.
“He dropped his calling card right on the fucking kitchen table this time,” said Bilkins dryly, running a big hand over his bald head and puffing on a badly scarred pipe. “For you new guys that don’t know what we’re talking about, this cat burglar has hit about fifteen times in the past two months in Ninety-nine’s district. He never woke nobody in any of his jobs except one when he woke a guy who had just got home and wasn’t sleeping too sound yet. He slugged the guy in the chops with a metal ashtray and bailed out the window, glass and all. His calling card is a pile of shit, his shit, which he dumps in some conspicuous place.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Blanden, a curly-haired young policeman with large round eyes, who was new and aggressive, too aggressive for a rookie, Roy thought. And then Roy thought the act of defecation was clearly what Konrad Lorenz called “a triumph reaction,” the swelling and flapping of the geese. It was utterly explainable, thought Roy, simply a biological response. He could tell them about it.
“Who knows?” Bilkins shrugged. “Lots of burglars do it. It’s a fairly common M.O. Probably to show their contempt for the squares and the law and everything, I guess. Anyway, he’s a shitter and wouldn’t it be nice if somebody would wake up some night and grab a shotgun and catch the bastard squatting on their kitchen table just squeezing out a big one, and baloooey, he’d be shitting out a new hole.”
“Is there any description on this guy yet?” asked Roy, still smarting from Bilkins’ gratuitous remark about the mirror, but man enough he thought, to overlook immaturity in a superior.
“Nothing new. Male, Negro, thirty to thirty-five, medium-sized, processed hair, that’s it.”
“He sounds like a real sweetheart,” said Tucker.
“His mother should’ve washed him out with a douche bag,” said Bilkins. “Okay, I been inspecting you for the last three minutes and you all look good except Whitey Duncan who’s got dried barbecue sauce all over his tie.”
“Do I?” said Whitey, looking toward the tie which was ridiculously short hanging over a belly which Roy thought had swelled three inches in the past year. Thank heavens he didn’t have to work with Whitey anymore.
“I saw Whitey this afternoon down at Sister Maybelle’s Barbeque Junction on Central Avenue,” said Sam Tucker, grinning at Whitey affectionately. “He comes to work two hours early on payday and runs down to Sister Maybelle’s for an early supper.”
“Why the hell would Whitey need money to eat?” shouted a voice in the back of the room and the men chuckled.
“Who said that?” said Bilkins. “We don’t accept gratuities or free meals. Who the hell said that?” Then to Tucker, “What do you think Whitey’s up to, Sam? Think he’s got the hots for Maybelle?”
“I think he’s trying to pass, Lieutenant,” Tucker answered. “He was sitting there amongst ten or fifteen black faces and he had barbecue sauce from his eyebrows to his chin. Shit, you couldn’t even see that pudgy pink face. I think he’s trying to pass. Everybody wants to be black, nowadays.”
Bilkins puffed and blew gray clouds and the fathomless eyes roved the roll call room. He seemed satisfied that they were all in good spirits and Roy knew he would never send them out in the morning watch until they were laughing or otherwise cheerful. He had overheard Bilkins telling a young sergeant that no man who did police work from midnight to 9:00 A.M. should be subject to any kind of GI discipline. Roy wondered if Bilkins wasn’t too soft on the men because Bilkins’ watch was never the high producer in arrests or traffic citations or anything else, except perhaps in good cheer which was a commodity of doubtful value in police work. Police work is serious business, Roy thought. Clowns should join a circus.
“Want to drive or keep score?” asked Light after roll call and Roy realized Light must want to drive because he had driven last night and knew it was Roy’s turn to drive tonight. He asked, therefore he must be hoping for another night at the wheel. Roy knew that Light was self-conscious because Roy was such an excellent report writer and that when working with Roy, Light hated to keep the log and make the reports as the passenger officer must do.
“I’ll keep books if you want to drive,” said Roy.
“Suit yourself,” said Light, holding a cigarette between his teeth and Roy often thought he was one of the darkest Negroes he had ever seen. It was hard to see where his hairline began, he was so dark.
“You want to drive, don’t you?”
“Up to you.”
“You want to or don’t you?”
“Okay I’ll drive,” said Light and Roy was starting the night out annoyed. If a man had a deficiency why in the hell didn’t he admit the deficiency instead of running away from it? He hoped he had helped Light recognize some of his defense mechanisms with his blunt frankness. Light would be a much happier young man if he could come to know himself just a little better, thought Roy. He always thought of Light as his junior even though he was twenty-five, two years older than Roy. It was probably his college training, he thought, which brought him of age sooner than most.
As Roy was crossing the parking lot to the radio car, he saw a new Buick stop in the green parking zone in front of the station. A large-busted young woman jumped from the car and hurried into the station. Probably a policeman’s girlfriend he thought. She was not particularly attractive, but down here any white girl attracted attention, and several other policemen turned to watch. Roy felt a sudden longing for his freedom, for the carefree liberty of his early college days before he met Dorothy. How could he ever have thought they could be compatible? Dorothy, a receptionist in an insurance office, barely a high school graduate, having got her diploma only after a math class w
as waived by an understanding principal. He had known her too long. Childhood sweethearts are the stuff of movie mags. Romantic nonsense, he thought bitterly, and it had never been anything but bickering and misery since Dorothy became pregnant with Becky. But, God, how he loved Becky. She had flaxen hair and pale blue eyes like his side of the family, and she was incredibly intelligent. Even their pediatrician had admitted she was an extraordinary child. It was ironic, he thought, that her conception had shown him irrevocably the mistake he had made in marrying Dorothy, in marrying anyone so young, when he still had the promise of a splendid life to come. Yet, almost from the moment of birth Becky had shown him still another life, and he felt something utterly unique which he recognized as love. For the first time in his life he loved without question or reason, and when he held his daughter in his arms and saw himself in her violet irises, he wondered if he could ever leave Dorothy because he worshiped this soft creature. He was drawn to the tranquility she could produce in him instantly, at almost any moment, when he pressed the tiny white cheek to his own.
“Want some coffee?” asked Light as they cleared from the station, but at that moment the Communications operator gave them a call to Seventh Street and Central. Roy heard the call and heard Light and wrote the address of the call as well as the time the call was received. He did all this mechanically now and never for a moment stopped thinking of Becky. It was becoming too easy, this job, he thought. He could make the necessary moves while only ten percent of his mind was functioning as a policeman.
“There he is,” said Light as he made a U-turn in the intersection at Seventh Street. “Looks like a ragpicker.”
“He is,” said Roy in disgust as he shined his spotlight on the supine figure, sleeping on the sidewalk. The front of his trousers was soaked with urine and a sinuous trickle flowed down the sidewalk. Roy could smell the vomit and the excrement while still twenty feet away. The drunk had lost one torn and dismal shoe in his travels and a ragged felt hat, three sizes too big, lay crushed beneath his face. His hands clawed at the concrete and his bare foot dug in when Light struck him on the sole of the other foot with his baton, but then he became absolutely still as though he had grabbed for the softness and security of his bed, and having found it, relaxed and returned to the slumber of the consummate alcoholic.
“Goddamn winos,” said Light, striking the man more sharply on the sole of the shoe. “He’s got piss, puke, and lord knows what, all over him. I ain’t about to carry him.”
“Neither am I,” said Roy.
“Come on, wino. Goddamn,” said Light, stooping down and placing the knuckles of his thick brown index fingers into the hollow behind the ears of the wino. Roy knew how strong Light was, and cringed when his partner applied the painful pressure to the mastoids. The wino screamed and grabbed Light’s wrists and came up vertically from the ground clinging to the powerful forearms of the policeman. Roy was surprised to see the man was a light-skinned Negro. The race of the ragpicker was almost indistinguishable.
“Don’t hurt me,” said the wino. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.”
“We don’t want to hurt you, man,” said Light, “but we ain’t carrying your smelly ass. Let’s walk.” Light released the man who collapsed softly to the sidewalk and then tumbled back lightly on a fragile elbow and Roy thought when they’re this far gone with malnutrition, when they bear the wounds of rats and even alley cats that have nibbled at the pungent flesh as they lay for hours in ghastly places, when they’re like this, it’s impossible to estimate how close to death they are.
“You got gloves on?” asked Light, bending down and touching the wino’s hand. Roy shined the flashlight beam in the lap of the man and Light recoiled in horror.
“His hand. Damn, I touched it.”
“What is it?”
“Look at that hand!”
Roy thought at first that the wino was wearing a glove which had been turned inside out and was hanging inside out by the fingertips. Then he saw it was the flesh of the right hand which was hanging from all five fingers. The pink muscle and tendon of the hand were exposed and Roy thought for a minute that some terrible accident had torn his flesh off, but he saw the other hand was beginning to shed the flesh so he concluded the man was deteriorating like a corpse. He was long dead and didn’t know it. Roy walked to the radio car and opened the door.
“I hate like hell to go to all the trouble of absentee booking a drunk at the General Hospital prison ward,” said Roy, “but I’m afraid this guy’s about dead.”
“No choice,” Light shrugged. “I imagine the police been keeping him alive for twenty years now, though. Think we’re doing him a favor each time? It would’ve been over long ago if some policeman would just’ve let him lay.”
“Yeah, but we got a radio call,” said Roy. “Somebody reported him lying here. We couldn’t ride off and leave him.”
“I know. We got to protect our own asses.”
“You wouldn’t leave him anyway, would you?”
“They’ll dry him out and give him ninety days and he’ll be right back here, come Thanksgiving. Eventually he’ll die right here in the street. Does it matter when?”
“You wouldn’t leave him,” Roy smiled uneasily. “You’re not that cold, Light. He’s a human being. He’s not a dog.”
“That right?” said Light to the wino who stared dumbly at Roy, his blue-lidded eyes crusty yellow at the corners.
“You really a man?” asked Light, tapping the wino gently on the sole of his shoe with the baton. “You sure you ain’t a dog?”
“Yeah, I’m a dog,” croaked the wino and the policemen looked at each other in amazement that he could speak. “I’m a dog. I’m a dog. Bow wow, you motherfuckers.”
“I’ll be damned,” grinned Light, “maybe you’re worth saving after all.”
Roy found the absentee booking of a prisoner at General Hospital to be a complicated procedure which necessitated a stop at Central Receiving Hospital and then a trip to Lincoln Heights Jail with the prisoner’s property which in this case was the handful of rags that would be burned, and the presentation of the jail clinic with the treatment slips and finally the completion of paper work at the prison ward of the General Hospital. He was exhausted at three-thirty when Light was driving back to their division and they stopped at the doughnut shop at Slauson and Broadway for some bad but very hot coffee and free doughnuts. The Communications operator gave them a family dispute call. Light cursed and threw his empty paper cup in the trash can at the rear of the doughnut shop.
“A family dispute at four in the morning. Son of a bitch.”
“I felt like taking it easy for a while too,” Roy nodded. “I’m getting hungry, and not for these goddamn doughnuts. I feel like some real food.”
“We usually wait till seven o’clock,” said Light, starting the car while Roy gulped down the last of his coffee.
“I know we do,” said Roy. “That’s the trouble with this goddamn morning watch. I eat breakfast at seven o’clock in the morning. Then I go home and go to bed and when I get up in the late afternoon, I can’t stand anything heavy so I eat breakfast again, and then maybe around eleven just before I come to work I grab a couple eggs. Jesus, I’m eating breakfast three times a day!”
Light settled the family dispute the easiest way by taking the husband’s identification and calling into R and I where he found there were two traffic warrants out for his arrest. As they were taking him out of the house, his wife, who had called them to complain of his beating her, begged them not to arrest her man. When they put him in the radio car she cursed the policemen and said, “I’ll get bail money somehow. I’ll get you out, baby.”
It was almost five o’clock when they got their prisoner booked and drove back to their beat.
“Want some coffee?” asked Light.
“I’ve got indigestion.”
“Me too. I get it every morning about this time. Too damned late to go to the hole.”
Roy was glad. H
e hated “going to the hole” which meant hiding your car in some bleak alley or concealed parking lot, sleeping the fitful frantic half-awake sleep of the morning watch policeman, more nerve-racking than restful. He never objected when Light did it though. He just sat there awake, dozing, mostly awake, and thought about his future and his daughter Becky who was inextricably tied to any dream of the future.
It was 8:30 A.M. and Roy was sleepy. The morning sun was scorching his raw eyeballs when they got the silent robbery alarm call to the telephone company just as they were heading for the station to go home.
“Thirteen-A-Forty-one, roger,” said Roy and rolled up his window so that the siren would not drown out the radio broadcasting, but they were close and Light did not turn on the siren.
“Think it’s a false alarm?” asked Roy nervously as Light made a sweeping right turn through a narrow gap in the busy early morning commuter traffic. Suddenly Roy was wide awake.
“Probably is,” Light muttered. “Some new cashier probably set off the silent alarm and didn’t know she did it. But that place has been knocked over two or three times and it’s usually early in the morning. Last time the bandit fired a shot at a clerk.”
“Can’t get too much money early in the morning,” said Roy. “Not many people come in this early to pay bills.”
“Hoods around here will burn you down for ten bucks,” said Light, and he turned sharply toward the curb and Roy saw that they had arrived. Light parked fifty feet from the entrance to the building where the lobby was already filling with people paying their utility bills. All of the customers were Negro as were many of the employees.
Roy saw the two men at the cashier’s counter turn and look toward him as he came through the front door. Light had gone to cover the side door and now Roy took a step toward the men. They turned before he got very far into the lobby and were almost to the door when he realized they were the only two in the place who could possibly be robbery suspects. The other customers were either women or couples, some with children.
The New Centurions Page 16