Like they had some teenage boys’ version of sonar, they made a beeline for an Old World house close to the center of Salzburg. A red light gleamed from an impressive wall sconce. This was the beacon! This was the promised land!
I stood in the foyer as the two boys haggled with the proprietor using hand gestures and broken English and agreed on a price. Meanwhile, I made the lame excuse that I forgot to bring money and gave the universal sign for empty pockets.
My buddies went upstairs with their chosen companions, and I shrugged and took a seat and stared at my shoes. I think this had been my plan all along. I hadn’t had the courage to make that night the night. My friends had boldly met their agenda. No hesitation. And there I sat, glum, berating myself, then giving myself a pep talk. Those guys were braver than me. But I bet neither of them had ever beheaded a chicken!
When I looked up, a woman in a minuscule blue dress was standing over me, hands on hips. She waved me to come with her. I fished out the few bills I had to show her: I don’t have enough. She took the money and grabbed my hand.
In the room, she indicated I should take off my clothes. This was happening. I undressed slowly. She handed me a sealed condom. I struggled to open it for a bit too long, and she snatched it back, opening the package and putting it on for me. I was already erect—more nervousness than excitement. She lifted her dress. She wore no panties. What was the point? She lay down on the twin bed and brought me down on top of her and pulled me into her. I saw her breasts. I’ve got to touch her breasts. I went for it. Soft and—WAP. She slapped my hand, hard, clearly indicating You don’t have enough money for that. Just get it over with.
And soon, it was. There’d been no fireworks. No tenderness. No talking. We never exchanged names. I’d had no idea what I was doing. It was just this stranger and me at this particular moment in time. As uncomplicated as it could be. She wasn’t expecting anything from me. She wasn’t disappointed. She felt nothing. For her, it’d been an utterly forgettable moment. But it was a moment I’d never forget. Though I admit I couldn’t conjure her face under a threat of death.
I got up and got dressed. She got herself together and she was gone. She left the door open behind her.
It turned out nearly half the guys in our group went to whorehouses that night—including my brother; we lost our virginity on the same night, an odd coincidence that we never bring up. From that point on, it was the hooker tour. Most of the kids’ parents had given them money. Enjoy your trip! In Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, whenever we were allowed any free time, it was the same patter. What’s that? The Louvre? That’s nice. Why don’t we get going so we can experience some interactions with the locals and help circulate money to the people? Help the economy by supporting small business.
• • •
Back home I discovered that the Explorers wasn’t just about foreign relations. I discovered I had real aptitude for police work. As I neared the end of high school I realized that’s how you forged a career. You alighted on something you were good at and then you bored into it.
I applied myself to the Explorers and excelled in physical and scholastic achievement: running, obstacle course, sit-ups, push-ups, relay course, and marching drills. I learned that a 211 was a robbery and a 459 was a murder. Code 1 was get there when you can. Code 2 meant get there quickly. (Lights.) Code 3 was get there immediately. (Lights and siren.) Code 7 was grabbing a bite to eat. A 10–100 meant you were on a bathroom break. (A bit of police argot the film business borrowed; it’s part of the lexicon on set.) There were codes for all kinds of things. I memorized every last one, along with proper procedure on securing evidence, when to approach a crime scene, crowd control.
I graduated first in my class of Explorers. Number one out of 111 kids from all over the city. Number one! Had I ever been number one at anything? The die was cast. I’d learn to shut down my feelings and do the job.
I say I was first. I was first with an asterisk.
In the final testing at the police academy, I aced the scholastic stuff.
And then came the physical component. I breezed through the obstacle course and scored one hundred, the maximum, in jumping jacks and sit-ups. All I had left to do was polish off the push-ups. Every Explorer was given a buddy to do the counting to assure accuracy. My buddy was another West Valley recruit named Vince Serratella. Vince was a good guy. He was a friend. After I counted out his sixty or so push-ups, it was my turn to knock off a hundred and get a perfect score. I had done one hundred push-ups a few times before in training. It wasn’t easy, but it was doable, and I was confident going in. I was in peak shape. I was sixteen years old, determined to finally achieve something.
At about push-up seventy-eight, I was laboring and fatigued, but still pretty strong. When I hit eighty, Vince called out: “Ninety!” What? I was initially confused, thinking that Vince made a mistake, but after a few more push-ups I realized what he was doing. Ninety-two. Ninety-three. He was cheating for me. Only a handful of the 111 recruits accomplished one hundred push-ups, so ninety was noteworthy. The instructors and other Explorers rushed over to cheer me on. I could feel the crowd thickening around me. The group began to count down in unison.
I ground out the last few, my whole body burning, my mind racing about what I should do next: Should I continue and finish it the right way? Or should I just go along and pretend I’d really done the full count? I was still undecided when Vince cried out: One hundred! My classmates surrounded me and cheered. Vince clapped me on the back. I was a hero. And I was glad not to have to do ten more push-ups.
At the same time, I thought, I could have done ten more. I was exhausted, but not completely spent. I might have done something great. Now I’d never know. I quickly let myself forget Vince and got lost in the moment. But as I was getting congratulatory punches on the shoulder, deep down I knew. I hadn’t earned it.
Security Guard
I was only nineteen, and the LAPD’s minimum age requirement was twenty-one; plus the police department’s pay scale was better if you had a degree. So I enrolled at Valley Junior College as an administration of justice major, a fancy name for police science.
On the side, I got a job as a Protect-All security guard. I worked in a gated community called Bell Canyon, an exclusive area in a ritzier section of the San Fernando Valley. I waved to residents as they passed by the automatic entry gate, and checked in guests and delivery people. I worked the night shift, so there were very few guests and almost no deliveries. In essence, my job was to sit in a roomy, climate-controlled guard booth and get paid to do my homework and sip coffee.
I had a pocket notebook with the Admonition of Rights printed on the front cover. On the back, I scribbled a rating system I’d devised for my security jobs. X was bad—one time only. XXXX meant a great place to work. I gave Bell Canyon an XXX.
And I did my job well—so well, in fact, that I got a visit from my fully uniformed and armed supervisor. He said he was pleased that I was always at my post and never called in sick. He had zero complaints against me, and he was impressed that I’d volunteered to work nights and that I did so without grousing. He wanted to reward me. How did I feel about a promotion? “What about moving out of this dreary place,” he said, waving his hand dismissively at my booth. “How would you like to see some real action? Real criminals. The cops are called in almost every night. And”—he gave a slight pause for emphasis—“you get to carry a gun.”
He smiled at me, excited. I smiled back, uneasy. I looked around. I kind of like it here. I do my homework. I listen to Dodger games on the radio. No one bothers me.
I didn’t want to leave a good thing, but I didn’t want to insult my boss.
“Does the promotion come with a raise?” I asked.
It did. Twenty-five cents an hour. I calculated. That would bring me to a grand total of $4.10. The extra quarter would have been nice, but I didn’t want to carry a gun, and I was incidentally surprised that assuming the immense responsibility of carrying a wea
pon only earned you twenty-five cents more.
I politely declined, feigning disappointment at the amount of the raise. “Oh, uh, well I suppose there are a couple other posts I can offer you,” he said, taken aback by my crippling lack of ambition.
He assigned me to an event at the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars. I was stationed at the back entrance. All the action was in front. The back was much quieter, more intimate. An occasional limo rolled up and out spilled a publicity-shy celebrity.
Nothing happened, nothing happened. And then suddenly—Alfred Hitchcock. I recognized his portly silhouette immediately. Security personnel whisked Mr. Hitchcock through the back entrance, and the limo doors were taken care of by the driver and valet. I wasn’t sure what my job was even supposed to be. But, hell, it was Alfred Hitchcock. I resolved to politely greet him when he left. An hour after he arrived, people around the back entrance started buzzing, and I sensed that someone was making an exit. Mr. Hitchcock emerged and made his way to the waiting car, and I rushed ahead of him so I could open his door. When I got close, I softly asked, “Did you enjoy your evening, Mr. Hitchcock?” I waited for him to bestow upon me some bit of sage wisdom I’d always cherish.
Lunging for the limo, he turned slightly toward me and said, “AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!” He waved his arms chaotically as if to shoo away a fly. He dove into the backseat. I stood there stupidly for a while. And then I went back to my post.
That was my first brush with a Hollywood legend. Since I was going to be a policeman, I was pretty sure it was going to be my last.
My other reward for being such a great booth guard was a posting in a grocery store called Hughes Market on Highland and Franklin, a transient corner in Hollywood that was rife with crime. I gave Hughes a quadruple X rating in my notebook. My job was to man the two-way mirrors strategically placed high above the store and catch shoplifters.
My mother had always had light fingers. Whenever we’d go into the produce section of a supermarket she would help herself to a piece of bulk candy. She loved those individually wrapped chocolate-covered caramels. Or she’d casually snap off a sprig from a bunch of grapes, popping them into her mouth as she shopped. My mom taught us it was okay to “sample,” that the markets factor samples into the overall cost. When I was a kid, I would always take a caramel. My brother, too—because it wasn’t stealing, it was sampling. We never took big items, and never too many: one was acceptable, three was not. But if, for example, we spotted a bag of Toll House chocolate chips that had already been opened, we’d help ourselves to fistfuls. They couldn’t sell the bag now anyhow! I became so accustomed to the candy samples that whenever I walked into a grocery store, I’d crave something sweet. That Pavlovian response went on for years.
I vividly remembered looking up at those mirrors in stores and wondering if anyone was behind them. Now I finally learned the answer, and the answer was me.
My dark aerie, in an attic high above Hughes, had an L-shaped catwalk. The ceilings were low so I had to crouch, but the view was expansive. The mirrors protruded so I could even observe the meat counter beneath me. Little stools were set up, and I’d sit and wait and watch.
I was good at spotting thieves long before they stole. I was never wrong. It wasn’t that I possessed some preternatural powers of perception. Once you know what to look for, thieves are pretty conspicuous. People who shop are busy: they’re scanning their lists and examining labels, doubling back for that item they forgot. People who steal look around and down aisles furtively. Shoppers move quickly. Thieves have a slower pace. They’re trying to be careful. I learned to detect the telltale signs. The most telling of the tells was when people looked up at the two-way mirror. I wonder if anyone is there. And I was sitting there in the dark whispering: Yes, I’m here!
People stole constantly. They would take anything. Lightbulbs, coffee filters, a whole pineapple. One guy stood in the pet supply aisle and pocketed four or five leashes. Dog leashes? You’re going to risk getting arrested for dog leashes?
By law, a thief had to be outside the store to be caught. If you confronted a guy inside the store, he could point to the cold cuts in his pocket and say, I didn’t grab a basket, so I just put it here for the moment while I was looking for something else.
Oh, I put salami in my pocket all the time!
I had a little microphone at my station behind the mirrors, and when I spotted a thief, I needed to alert the manager. We had a code. At the precise moment the thief was crossing the threshold of the store, I spoke into my microphone, and my voice blared out through on the intercom: Fred, the coffee is on in the front. Or: The coffee is on in the back, Fred. The front or back told Fred where to look for the culprit, front door or back door. The manager then rushed to the relevant door and detained the shoplifter outside the store. I made my way down and said, “I witnessed you stealing such and such,” and then walked back to the manager’s office and waited for the cops to show up.
It was ridiculously easy. Per six-hour shift, I could catch up to ten people. Sometimes I’d have more than one thief in the store at the same time, and I had to decide which one I was going to follow. “You have packages of soup mix in your jacket.”
“No I don’t.”
“Just show us you don’t have them, sir.”
And the guy would say, “All right, all right.” He’d open up his jacket, and what do you know? Soup galore.
There were no big-ticket items at the store, so it was all petty stuff. But you had to detain them and call the police because otherwise they would come back night after night. Once you got caught, you were in the system. If we caught you again, there was a cumulative effect, and that meant an arrest and potentially jail time.
Hughes Market carried huge roasts wrapped in cellophane. They could run up to a foot and a half long. One time I saw this couple in their late teens, grungy, probably runaways, loitering in the meat section. The guy was doing that telltale glance-over-the-shoulder while the girl shoved a giant slab of meat down her pants, down the length of her thigh, and headed toward the back door. The roast was so long she couldn’t bend her knee, so she was limping, dripping a trail of bloody roast juice in her wake. My cue. Fred, the coffee is on in the back. The manager detained them outside, and I went down and confronted her. She got this sheepish look on her face and glanced around as if maybe she were thinking about running and then let out a sigh of concession and pulled the roast out of her pants. I did the paperwork and waited for the police to show.
I was doing my job, and yet I couldn’t help feeling sorry for these two. They had to be hungry.
Minister
Catalina Island is twenty-six miles off the coast of Long Beach. We always knew the exact distance because the hit 1950s song “26 Miles” by the Four Preps still came on the radio every now and then: Twenty-six miles across the sea / Santa Catalina is a-waitin’ for me / Santa Catalina, the island of romance, romance, romance, romance.
They said it four times for a reason.
While attending junior college, during summer breaks, my brother and I got jobs on Catalina. He drove a taxi, and I landed at a company called Island Baggage, which did big business in the days before some logician invented wheeled luggage. Once the boats docked on the island, Island Baggage would offer to cart the bags as the vacationers walked off their sea legs with a leisurely half-mile stroll into town. Thirty-five cents a bag. A different color tag for each hotel. I loaded up all the bags on Cushman golf carts and then distributed them to the various hotels. It was a summer fantasy come to life, being outdoors and scooting around the island all day long in the company uniform: shorts and flip-flops. Shirt optional.
Schlepping luggage may not sound like the height of romance, but Island Baggage jobs were coveted because we had first crack at the pretty girls as they filed off the boats in their summer dresses and short shorts. “Let me get your bag for you. No charge. Want me to show you around?”
“You live here?”
“Yes, my
brother and I are on the island for the summer. Do you have plans for tonight?”
I’d come out of my shell a little, and the freewheeling atmosphere of the island in the seventies made it easy to be with someone new weekly. Girls on vacation were so different from girls at home during the school year. Don’t you want to get to know her first? Sure. But the weather is warm, there’s an ocean breeze, and she’s wearing a bikini. What else do I need to know? I fell in and out of love several times over the course of a summer.
Getting a job on Catalina was no problem. The hard part was finding a place to stay. Enter Reverend Bob. During our second summer on the island, Bob invited my brother and me to rent a room in his condo for a dollar a day. He had a nice place, and the price could not be beat.
Bob Berton was a forty-year-old guy with an island tan and a toothy smile. He organized and ran the Miss Santa Catalina Beauty Contest—mostly as a way to attract more lovely young women to Avalon, the only incorporated city on the island. The pageants made him a bit of a polarizing figure, but my brother and I thought he was great. He didn’t drink or do drugs. He was just a harmless lady lover.
Bob was called Reverend because he was an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church. He wasn’t religious, but he had fashioned himself into the go-to guy for anyone in Southern California who wanted a nontraditional wedding. He made God a good time.
He came to me one day and told me he’d made a mistake. He’d booked two weddings. Same day, same time. One was there on the island. One was in the Valley. “You need to marry them,” he said.
“What? Me? Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”
He fleshed out some of the details, but still I was lost. “I couldn’t possibly officiate a marriage. Don’t you have to have a license or something?”
Bob said, “I’ll ordain you, and you can marry them.”
“As in legally married? No, Bob, I really can’t do this.”
A Life in Parts Page 5