“Why not?” said Roy, thinking the coffee sounded good and it would be a pleasure to drive through the west side of the division for a change, which was only part Negro and relatively peaceful. Roy hoped he could work Ninety-one next month and get as far west and south as the division went. He had to get away from black faces. He was starting to change toward them and he knew it was wrong. But still it was happening.
They were only two blocks from the restaurant and Roy was already feeling reassured at seeing the predominantly white faces driving and walking by when Rolfe said, “Fehler, did you look in that liquor store we just passed?”
“No, why?” asked Roy.
“There was nobody behind the counter,” said Rolfe.
“So he went in the back room,” said Roy. “Look, do you want to play cops and robbers or do we get some coffee?”
“I’m just going to have a look,” said Rolfe, making a U-turn and driving north again while Roy shook his head and vowed to ask for an older, more settled partner next month.
Rolfe parked across the street from the store and they watched the interior for a second. They saw a sandy-haired man in a yellow sport shirt run from the back room to the cash register where he punched several keys, and then they saw him clearly shove the gun inside his belt.
“Officers need help, One one three and Western!” Rolfe whispered into the radio, and then he was out of the car, hatless, flashlight in hand, running low to the north side of the building. He evidently remembered Roy who was just getting around the front of the car because he stooped, turned, and pointed to the rear door indicating that he would take the rear and then he disappeared in the shadows streaking for the darkness of the rear alley.
Roy debated a moment where he should place himself, thought of lying across the hood of a car that was parked directly in front of the store and was probably the suspect’s car, but changed his mind and decided to get behind the corner of the building at the southwest corner where he could have a clear line of fire if the man came out the front. He began trembling, wondered for a moment if he could shoot a man, and decided not to think about that.
Then he saw that one of the cars in the bar parking lot next door was occupied by a man and woman who sat in the front seat apparently oblivious to the policemen’s presence. Roy saw that they would be directly in the line of fire of the gunman if he would shoot at Roy hiding behind the corner of the building. His conscience nagged and his hand trembled more, and he thought if I leave here to run across the vacant lot and tell them to get the hell out, he might come out the door and I’ll be caught out of position. But Jesus Christ, he might kill them and I’d never be able to forget . . . Then he decided, and made a dash to the yellow Plymouth thinking: Stupid bastard, probably sitting there playing with her tits and doesn’t even know they might get killed. Roy was beside the car and he saw the girl look at him wide-eyed as he held his revolver at his side. The man opened the door quickly.
“Get that car the hell out of here,” said Roy and he never forgot the foolish grin and the look of patent unconcern on the face of the little freckled man who leveled the sawed-off shotgun. Then the yellow and red flame crashed into him and he flew back across the sidewalk. He slid off the curb into the gutter where he lay on his side weeping because he could not get up and he had to get up because he could see the slimy intestines wet in the moonlight flopping out of his lower stomach in a pile. They began touching the street and Roy strained to turn over. He heard footsteps and a man said, “Goddammit Harry, get in!” and another male voice said, “I didn’t even know they was out here!” Then the car started and roared across the sidewalk and off the curb and it sounded like more footsteps farther away. He heard Rolfe shouting, “Stop! Stop!” and heard four or five shots and tires squeal. Then he remembered that the intestines were lying on the street and he was filled with horror because they were lying there in the filthy street getting dirty and he began to cry. He squirmed a little to get on his back and get them bunched up because if he could just shovel them back inside and brush the dirt off them he knew he’d be alright because they were oh so dirty now. But he couldn’t lift them. His left arm wouldn’t move and it hurt so much to try to reach across the bubbling hole with his right arm so he began to cry again, and thought: Oh, if only it would rain. Oh, why can’t it rain in August, and suddenly as he cried, he was deafened by thunder and the lightning flashed and clattered and the rain poured down on him. He thanked God and cried tears of joy because the rain was washing all the dirt off the heap of guts that was hanging out. He watched them shine wet red in the rain, clean and red, as all the filth was flushed away and he was still crying happily when Rolfe leaned over him. There were other policemen there and none of them were wet from the rain. He couldn’t understand that.
Roy could not have said how long he had been in the police ward of Central Receiving Hospital. Could not at this moment say if it was days or weeks. It was always the same: blinds drawn, the hum of the air conditioning, the patter of soft-soled footsteps, whispers, needles and tubes which were endlessly inserted and withdrawn, but now he guessed perhaps three weeks had passed. He wouldn’t ask Tony who sat there reading a magazine by the inadequate night light with a grin on his effeminate face.
“Tony,” said Roy, and the little male nurse put the magazine on the table and walked to the bed.
“Hello Roy,” Tony smiled. “Woke up, huh?”
“How long I been sleeping?”
“Not too long, two, three hours, maybe,” said Tony. “You were restless tonight. I thought I’d sit in here, I figured you’d wake up.”
“It hurts tonight,” said Roy, sliding the cover back to look at the hole covered with light gauze. It no longer bubbled and sickened him but it could not be sutured because of its size and had to heal on its own. It had already begun to shrink a little.
“It looks good tonight, Roy,” Tony smiled. “Pretty soon no more I.V.’s, you’ll be eating real food.”
“It hurts like hell.”
“Dr. Zelko says you’re doing wonderfully, Roy. I’ll bet you’re out of here in two more months. And back to work in six. Light duty of course. Maybe you can work the desk for a while.”
“I need something for the pain tonight.”
“I can’t. I’ve had specific orders about that. Dr. Zelko says we were giving you too many injections.”
“Screw Dr. Zelko! I need something. Do you know what adhesions are? Your goddamn guts tighten up and come together like they were glued. Do you know what that’s like?”
“Now, now,” said Tony, wiping Roy’s forehead with a towel.
“Look how my leg’s swollen. There’s a nerve that’s damaged. Ask Dr. Zelko. I need something. That nerve keeps me in terrible pain.”
“I’m sorry, Roy,” said Tony, his smooth little face contorted with concern. “I wish I could do more for you. You’re our number one patient . . .”
“Shove it!” said Roy and Tony walked back to his chair, sat down, and continued reading.
Roy stared at the holes in the acoustical ceiling and counted rows but he soon tired of that. When the pain was really bad and they wouldn’t give him his medication he sometimes thought of Becky and that helped a little. He thought that Dorothy had been here once with Becky but he couldn’t be sure. He was about to ask Tony, but Tony was his night nurse and he wouldn’t know if they had visited him. His father and mother had been here several times and Carl had come at least once in the beginning. He remembered that. He had opened his eyes one afternoon and seen Carl and his parents, and the wound started hurting again and his cries of anguish had sent them out and brought the delicious indescribable injection that was all he lived for now. Some policemen had come, but he couldn’t say just who. He thought he remembered Rolfe, and Captain James, and he thought he saw Whitey Duncan once through a sheet of fire. Now he was getting frightened because his stomach was clenching like a painful fist as though it didn’t belong to him and acted on its own in defiance of the w
aves of anguish that were punishing it.
“What do I look like?” asked Roy suddenly.
“Pardon, Roy?” said Tony, jumping to his feet.
“Get me a mirror. Hurry up.”
“What for, Roy?” Tony smiled, opening the drawer of the table in the corner of the private room.
“Have you ever had a really bad stomachache?” asked Roy. “One that made you sick clear through?”
“Yes,” said Tony, bringing the smaller mirror over to Roy’s bed.
“Well it was nothing. Nothing, do you understand?”
“I can’t give you anything,” said Tony, holding the mirror up for Roy.
“Who’s that?” said Roy, and the fear swelled and pounded and swelled in him as he looked at the thin gray face with the dark-rimmed eyes and the thousands of greasy globules of sweat that roughened the texture of the face that stared at him in horror.
“You don’t look bad at all, now. We thought we were going to lose you for the longest time. Now we know you’re going to be alright.”
“I’ve got to have some medication, Tony. I’ll give you twenty dollars. Fifty. I’ll give you fifty dollars.”
“Please, Roy,” said Tony returning to his chair.
“If I only had my gun,” Roy sobbed.
“Don’t talk like that, Roy.”
“I’d blow my brains out. But first I’d kill you, you little cocksucker.”
“You’re a cruel man. And I don’t have to stand for your insults. I’ve done everything I could for you. We all have. We’ve done everything to save you.”
“I’m sorry I called you that. You can’t help it if you’re a fruit. I’m sorry. Please get some medication. I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”
“I’m going out. You ring if you really need me.”
“Don’t go. I’m afraid to be alone with it. Stay here. I’m sorry. Please.”
“Alright. Forget it,” Tony grumbled, sitting down.
“Dr. Zelko has terrible eyes,” said Roy.
“What do you mean?” Tony sighed, putting down the magazine.
“There’s hardly any iris. Just two round black little balls like two slugs of double ought buckshot. I can’t bear his eyes.”
“Is that the kind of buckshot that hit you, Roy?”
“No. I’d be stinking up a coffin now if it had been double ought buck. It was number seven and a half birdshot. You ever hunt?”
“No.”
“He hit me from less than two feet away. Some hit my Sam Browne but I got most of it. He was such a silly-looking man. That’s why I didn’t bring the gun up. He was so silly-looking I just couldn’t believe it. And he was a white man. And that sawed-off shotgun was so silly-looking and monstrous I couldn’t believe that either. Maybe if he’d been a regular-looking man and had a regular handgun I could’ve brought my gun up, but I just held it there at my side and he looked so damned silly when he fired.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Stop talking about it, Roy.”
“You asked me. You asked about the buckshot, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry I did. I’d just better go out for a while and maybe you can sleep.”
“Go ahead!” Roy sobbed. “All of you can leave me. Look at what you’ve done to me though. Look at my body. You made me a freak, all you bastards. I got a huge open hole in my belly and you put another one in me and now I can wake up and find a pile of shit on my chest.”
“You had to have a colostomy, Roy.”
“Yeah? How would you like to have an asshole in your stomach? How would you like to wake up and look at a bag of shit on your chest?”
“I always clean it up as soon as I see it. Now you try to . . .”
“Yeah,” he cried, weeping openly now, “you made me a freak. I got a bloody pussy that won’t close and an asshole in front that I can’t control and they’re both right here on my stomach where I’ve got to look at them. I’m a goddamn freak.” Then Roy wept and the pain worsened but he wept more and the pain made him weep harder and harder until he gasped and tried to stop so that he could control the inexorable pain that he prayed would kill him instantly in one huge crashing red and yellow ball of fire.
Tony wiped his face and was about to speak when Roy’s sobbing subsided and he gasped, “I . . . I’ve got to . . . to turn over. It’s killing me like this. Please, help me. Help me get on my stomach for a little while.”
“Sure, Roy,” said Tony, gently lifting him and then letting the bed down flat and taking the pillow away as Roy rested on the throbbing burning wound and sobbed spasmodically and blew his nose in the tissue Tony gave him.
Roy lay like this for perhaps five minutes and then he could bear it no more and turned, but Tony had stepped out into the corridor. He thought the hell with it he’d turn himself over and maybe the effort would kill him and that would be fine. He raised up on an elbow, feeling the sweat streaming over his rib cage and then moved as quickly as he could and fell on his back again. He felt the sweat flowing freely over his entire body. He felt something else and pulled the Scotch tape loose and glanced at the wound and screamed.
“What is it?” said Tony, running in the room.
“Look at it!” said Roy, staring at the fibrous bloody clump which protruded from the wound.
“What the hell?” said Tony, looking toward the hall and then back at Roy with confusion in his eyes.
Roy gaped at the wound and then at Tony and seeing the worried little face on the nurse began to giggle.
“I’ll get a doctor, Roy,” said Tony.
“Wait a minute,” said Roy, laughing harder now. “I don’t need a doctor. Oh Christ, this is too funny.” Roy gasped and stopped laughing when another spasm struck him but even the pain could not completely destroy the humor of it. “Do you know what that mess is, Tony? That’s the goddamn wadding!”
“The what?”
“The wadding of the shotgun shell! It finally worked itself out. Look close. There’s even some shot mixed in there. Two little pieces of shot. Oh Christ, that’s funny. Oh, Christ. Go make the announcement to the staff that there was a happy event in the police ward. Tell them that Dr. Zelko’s monster strained his new pussy and gave birth to a three-ounce pile of bloody wadding. And it had eyes like Dr. Zelko! Oh Christ, that’s funny.”
“I’ll get a doctor, Roy. We’ll clean that up.”
“Don’t try taking my baby away, you goddamn faggot! I once saw a nigger try to eat her baby when I did that to her. Oh, Christ, this is too funny,” Roy gasped, wiping the tears away.
AUGUST 1964
16
THE SAINT
SERGE STRETCHED AND YAWNED, then put his feet on the desk in the deserted juvenile office at Hollenbeck station. He smoked and wondered when his partner Stan Blackburn would return. Stan had asked Serge to wait in the office while he did some “personal business” which Serge knew to be a woman whose divorce was not final, who had three children that were old enough to get him into trouble when the romance finally ended. An officer would get at least a suspension for conduct unbecoming, when an adulterous affair was brought to the Department’s attention. Serge wondered if he would tomcat around—if—he married.
Serge had accepted the assignment as a juvenile officer only because he was assured he would not be transferred to Georgia Street Station but could remain here in Hollenbeck and work the night watch J-Car. He decided that the juvenile background would look good in his record when he went up for promotion. But first he would have to pass the written exam and it would be extremely doubtful that he would manage that since he couldn’t imagine himself knuckling down to a rigid study program. He hadn’t been able to make himself study even in his college classes and he smiled as he recalled the brave ambition of a few years ago to work diligently for the degree and advance quickly in his profession. After several false starts, he was now a government major at Cal State and had only accumulated thirty-three units.
But he enjoyed his work here at Hollenbeck and he
made more than enough money to support himself. He had a surprisingly sound savings program and he couldn’t see any farther than perhaps detective sergeant here at Hollenbeck. That would be enough, he thought. At the end of his twenty years he would be forty-three years old and able to draw forty percent of his salary the rest of his life which would certainly not be lived here in Los Angeles, or anywhere near Los Angeles. He thought of San Diego. It was pleasant down there, but not in the city, some suburb perhaps. There should be a woman and children somewhere in his plans, he knew. It could not be avoided indefinitely. And it was true that he was more and more becoming restless and sentimental. The home and hearth television stories were starting to interest him slightly.
He had been seeing a great deal of Paula. No other girl had ever stirred this much interest in him. She was not a beauty, but she was attractive and her clear gray eyes held your attention unless she was wearing tight-fitting clothes and then she became extremely interesting. He knew she would marry him. She had hinted often enough that she wanted a family. He told her you’d better get started because you’re now twenty-two, and she asked him if he’d like to sire her a couple of kids. When he said, “My pleasure,” she said they’d have to be legitimate.
Paula had other assets. Her father, Dr. Thomas Adams, was a successful dentist in Alhambra, and would probably bestow a small piece of property on a lucky son-in-law since Paula was his only child and overly indulged. Paula had taken apartment number twelve in his building, formerly occupied by a steno named Maureen Ball, and Serge had hardly noticed the change in women and had begun dating Paula without a break in stride. He knew that some evening, after a good dinner and more than a few martinis, he would probably go through the formality of asking her, and tell her to go ahead and inform the family to prepare the marriage feast because, what the hell, he couldn’t go on aimlessly forever.
The New Centurions Page 28