The Choirboys

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Remember one thing, babe,” Roscoe said, his voice dropping an octave as it always did when he assumed the role of training officer, “don’t never try to overtake a fast car on the outside when you’re going in a turn. Most cars’ll flip on a piece of spit. Hit him on the inner rear fender and he’ll eat the windshield. I once saw a freeway car drive a motherfucker right into an abutment by doing that. Sucker’s car blew up like a howitzer shell. Took four pricks off the welfare rolls permanent. And you gotta know when your engine’s gonna flame out. These hogs probably only top out at a hundred ten so you push it very long you’ll probably throw a bearing, drop a rod and blow the engine. That’s embarrassing in a good pursuit. Makes you feel stupid.

  “In addition to knowing your car you gotta know all your equipment,” Roscoe continued, “like that peashooter you’re carrying. I wish I could talk you into buying a Magnum and carrying some good, gut ripping hollow points in it. I want a gun that’ll stop some scrote when I need him stopped. After the prick’s dead I’ll worry about the ammunition being department approved. I ever tell you about that abba dabba burglar my partner shot when I used to work the Watts car? Ripping off a gas station when he set off the silent alarm. We were carrying those peashooters like you got. That sucker could run the hundred in ten flat till my partner shot him, and then he ran it in nine-nine. So I made a vow to get rid a this worthless ammo and get me some killing stuff. I made a study of velocity and shock.”

  And then they got their first bloody call of the night. “Seven-A-Eighty-five. A possible jumper, Wilshire and Mariposa,” said the communications operator. “Handle the call code three.”

  Roscoe preferred working an extra car, called an “X-car,” because instead of saying “Seven-X-Eighty-five” or “Seven-X-ray-Eighty-five,” he could improvise by saying, “Seven-Exceptional-Eighty-five,” or “Seven-Exciting-Eighty-five.”

  Roscoe was falling in love with the voice of the radio operator on frequency ten whom he had never seen. So Roscoe picked up the mike, pushed the button to send, made three kissing sounds and said, “This is Seven-Ay-ya-Eighty-five. I say Seven-a-for-Atomic-Eighty-five, rrrrrajah on the call.”

  Then he released the button, turned to Whaddayamean Dean and said, “That’ll make her wet her pants.”

  And the radio operator, who was a fat, fifty-nine year old housewife with six children older than Roscoe Rules, turned to the operator on her left and said, “That guy on Seven-A-Eighty-five sounds like an insufferable prick.”

  • • •

  A janitor named Homer Tilden had placed the jumper call when a twenty-two year old receptionist named Melissa Monroe returned to the office some three hours after the building closed and demanded to be let in on the pretext of having left an important document there.

  “I never shoulda let her in, it’s my fault, all my fault,” the plump black janitor later sobbed to detectives.

  Then the janitor pictured the pert smiling girl with the jazz age bob, who always yelled “Night, Mr. Tilden!” when she left at night, and he burst into tears like a child.

  When Roscoe Rules and Dean Pratt arrived, red lights flashing and siren screaming, there was already a small group of morbid onlookers who had come across from the Ambassador Hotel. Homer Tilden led the two policemen to the elevator and up to the twenty-first floor where the young woman sat on the window ledge of her own office, feet dangling, looking down curiously at the crowd gathering. In the distance the wail of a fire department emergency vehicle trapped by Wilshire Boulevard night traffic three blocks west.

  “Don’t come near me,” the girl said calmly her hair blowing wispily around her tiny ears as the two policemen ran from the elevator and burst into the office.

  “Go downstairs,” Roscoe said to Homer Tilden who was holding his chest and panting as though he had run the twenty-one stories instead of taking the elevator.

  “Maybe I…”

  “Go downstairs!” Roscoe repeated. “There’s gonna be other people coming.”

  And as the janitor obeyed, Roscoe Rules began to imagine a picture and write-up in tomorrow’s Los Angeles Times if he could save the beautiful jumper. She was a fox and would surely rate an inside front page photo, along with her savior.

  “Look, miss,” Roscoe said and stepped forward. But the girl moved inches closer to her destiny, and Roscoe froze in his tracks.

  “Maybe we better back off, partner,” Dean whispered, looking for the moment far younger than his twenty-five years, his freckles swimming in streams of sweat.

  “We don’t back off nothing,” Roscoe whispered back. “She’s a dingaling, and there’s ways to handle them.” Then to the girl Roscoe said, “Nothing’s as bad as that. Come on in. Let’s jaw about it.”

  He said it fliply with a grin and stepped forward, stopping when the girl moved forward another two inches and now teetered on the very edge, framed against the faded smoggy night sky of the Miracle Mile.

  “Oh no!” Dean said. “No, miss! Don’t go any closer! Come on, partner, let’s go downstairs and give this lady a chance to think!”

  But as Roscoe Rules saw a Times write-up and perhaps a police department medal of valor slipping through his fingers, he decided to try a different approach. He had seen Charles Laughton or someone do it successfully on an old TV movie. You could shame a jumper into surrendering.

  “All right then, goddamnit!” Roscoe shouted to the girl. “You got your audience. It’s your life. If it ain’t worth a shit to you, it ain’t worth a shit to us. Go ahead, girl. We can’t stay here all night babying you. We got other things to do. Go ahead, girl! Jump!”

  And she did. Without a word or a tear she looked at Roscoe Rules and Dean Pratt and in fact never took her large violet eyes off them as she let herself slip from the ledge and fell at thirty-two feet per second squared, legs first, with a scream that was lost in a woosh of air and rustling skirt which had blown up over her face.

  What was left of Melissa Monroe was being covered by a sheet when Dean Pratt stumbled by on his way to the radio car.

  “Let me make the reports, partner,” Roscoe Rules said, and for the very first time Dean heard Roscoe’s voice quiver with uncertainty.

  Then Whaddayamean Dean looked at Melissa Monroe and said later it was as though God in Heaven was displeased with dessert and had hauled off and threw it at the Ambassador Hotel but missed and splattered the sidewalk on Wilshire Boulevard. Skull and body had exploded. Organs and brain littered the pavement. She was white and yellow and pink, covered with lumpy red sauce and syrup. Melissa Monroe had been turned into a raspberry sundae.

  Dean Pratt was very quiet for the rest of this bloodiest of all nights of his life. He thought they were finished when at the station Roscoe Rules finished writing his 15.7 report: that indispensable police document which handily covers all those police situations which do not conveniently fit into a category such as robbery burglary or vehicle theft.

  “Remember, partner,” Roscoe warned as they sat alone in the station coffee room, “as soon as the janitor left, she just jumped. Nothing was said by nobody. She just jumped!”

  Dean Pratt nodded and sipped at a soft drink, longing for a water tumbler of straight bourbon as he had never longed for anything in his life. He hoped there might be some downers left in the bottom of his closet at home where his girlfriend left a small cache. He was terrified by barbiturates since drug use was an irrevocable firing offense. But he wanted to get loaded and sleep.

  At 11:00 P.M. Roscoe Rules dragged his partner out of the coffee room and said, “Come on, partner, let’s go do some police work.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, goddamnit, let’s hit the bricks.” Roscoe grinned. “We ain’t through yet. We still got forty-five minutes.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Dean.

  “Come on!” Roscoe commanded, his grin vanishing. He took Whaddayamean Dean very firmly by the arm and walked him out to the radio car.

  “Don’t go cuntish on me!” Roscoe sn
arled when he drove away from the station. “As far as I’m concerned we handled that call just right. If that whacko bitch wanted to take gas, fuck it, it ain’t our fault.”

  When Dean didn’t answer Roscoe became angrier. His hairless brows puckered and whitened. “Fuck it! Who cares if all these rotten motherfuckers take gas. They’re all shit sucking, miserable scrotes anyways. What the fuck’s a life anyway, less it’s yours?”

  Still Dean did not answer and Roscoe unconsciously pulled at his crotch and raged on. “You bust a good felony and you tell him to throw up his hands. He don’t do it and there’s no witnesses, I say put him down. Understand? Shoot em down like birds that shit on your roof. Remember that nigger and spick The Night My Balls Blew Up? I’m gonna get them someday And I’ll worship the ground they’re laid under. You’d like to blow em down, wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess so,” Dean nodded.

  “One nigger plus one spick equals a Mexi-coon!” Roscoe shouted. “That’s my hard charging partner! One a these nights we’ll get a couple a scrotes who wanna go the hard way. We’ll show some a these so called cops with their withered nuts how a couple a honest to God hard chargers do it! We’ll perform a little retroactive birth control and blow the motherfuckers right outta their shoes with my Magnum and your little peashooter!”

  “I guess so, Roscoe,” Dean mumbled.

  Roscoe was unconsciously pushing the radio car eighty miles an hour on the Santa Monica Freeway, heading nowhere, feeling the rush of cool wind, stroking himself while Whaddayamean Dean watched the speedometer.

  And then they received the last radio call of the night.

  “Seven-A-Eighty-five, Seven-Adam-Eight-five, assist the traffic unit, Venice and Hauser. Code two.”

  “Seven-A-Eighty-five, roger,” Dean responded, banging the mike back in the holder, disgustedly jotting the location on the notebook pad.

  “Shit fuck!” said Roscoe Rules, an expression he seldom used anymore since a former partner convinced him that it made him sound like a Central Avenue nigger.

  “I’ve had enough for one night,” Dean grumbled. “I was ready for code seven.”

  “Coulda used some chow myself,” said Roscoe. “Don’t the scrotes at communications have another car they can pick on? Shit fuck! Give her the handcuffs, partner.”

  Dean Pratt, as Roscoe Rules had taught him, opened the bracelet of his handcuffs, holding it next to the hand mike, and squeezed the bracelet through five or six times, making a ratchet sound very like a large zipper being ripped open and closed. Roscoe was convinced that the sound would be magnified in the operator’s radio headset.

  “Sounds like the jolly green giant opening his fly, don’t it, partner?”

  Whaddayamean Dean nodded, suddenly a bit carsick. He hadn’t had a thing to eat for almost twenty-four hours. He had been in court all day and had come straight to work after testifying. And Roscoe Rules sitting there pulling on his dork wasn’t doing anything to settle his queasiness.

  “I ever tell you about that slopehead we used to gang-bang in Nam, partner?” Roscoe asked, in a downright jovial mood since this would be their last call.

  Even if it was a quickie he intended to make it an “end-of-watcher,” by “milking” the time out and failing to clear when they were finished.

  “Don’t think you told me that one,” Dean sighed, by now deciding that he would rather have four fingers of bourbon than a hamburger.

  “This little gook was about fourteen, but retarded. Had the brain of a chicken and nearsighted to boot. We got a translator to tell her that fucking was good for her eyes. She was ugly as a busted blister. Just a little better than jacking off. Best part wasn’t the pussy, it was cleaning her up ahead a time. We used to get these fifty cent rice paddy whores like her and throw them in this big wooden tub and eight or ten of us would get hot water and GI brushes and scrub the stink off them. Goddamn, that was fun! We’d lather them up and scrub every inch. Shit, we’d take our clothes off and fall in the water and drink beer and wash those bitches. Seems kinda weird but it was more fun washing them than gang fucking them.”

  Dean nodded and leaned back while Roscoe drove west on Venice Boulevard and dreamed of thin young yellow bodies in soapy water. He had had many a lay but never had a more exciting sexual experience than scrubbing and lathering the rice paddy whores. Even now he got a blue veiner every time he held a bar of soap.

  “Shit fuck!” Dean observed. “There it is!”

  And there it was! Traffic was snarled six blocks in every direction. Fifty people were milling around like ghouls, and two frantic traffic officers in white hats were trying to lay down a flare pattern to divert east- and westbound traffic. Every east-bound lane was blocked by the wreckage of a spectacular four car collision.

  Roscoe pulled on his red lights, crossed the center divider and parked the wrong way on Venice Boulevard.

  “Glad you got here,” said a heavy middle aged traffic policeman who came running up with a handful of flares and spots of ash on his uniform. “Worst goddamn crash I seen in a long time. Drag race. Two cars laid down sixty feet of skids before they plowed into a northbound station wagon and knocked it clear back into the eastbound lanes.”

  “What station wagon?” Dean asked, adjusting his hat, getting his flashlight ready as he and Roscoe jogged back toward the wreckage where several souvenir hunters were already starting to prowl.

  “Get the hell out of here or you’re going to jail!” the traffic officer shouted to the unkempt teenagers.

  “Everybody gone to the hospital?” Roscoe asked, waving his flashlight violently at a car which was trying to get past the wreckage to go south on Ridgely Drive.

  “Two ambulances been here,” the traffic officer said. “You’re the only radio car to show up. The fucking fire department hasn’t even been here yet and there’s two dead bodies jammed inside that station wagon!”

  “Will someone tell me where the hell the station wagon is?” Dean asked, holding a handful of flares, preparing to lay a pattern fifty feet south of the corner and divert the horn blowing cars through an east-west alley.

  “That’s it! That’s the station wagon!” the traffic officer said, pointing to a small heap of mangled steel which had knocked down the light standard, plunging the intersection into darkness. “It was cut in half!”

  “Blow it out your ass, pizza face!” Roscoe shouted to a sputtering acned man in a white Cadillac who was honking his horn and yelling as though he thought the policemen could magically sweep away ten tons of scrap metal and let him continue about his business which was to get to a west Hollywood bar before it closed and try to pick up a thirty-five dollar prostitute.

  By now a dozen of the trapped cars were flashing their high beams in the policemen’s faces and blowing their horns while Roscoe violently waved them toward the alley where Dean Pratt was laying flares.

  “Terrible wreck,” the traffic policeman muttered. “A woman in the station wagon was decapitated. She’s one of the ones still inside.”

  “Yeah?” Roscoe said. He crossed the street, flashed his light at the heaps of debris in his path and stood beside the half of the station wagon, trying to make sense of the pile of mutilated flesh which had been a young couple. The tin cans and “Just Married” sign were still tied to the bumper.

  And then Roscoe Rules was reminded of one of the two hilarious photographs he carried in his wallet from his Vietnam days.

  “Oh yeah!” said Roscoe Rules excitedly. “Move the flares, partner!” he shouted to Dean, who was angrily waving his flashlight at the string of cars to get them moving through the alley, as at last the fire engines’ sirens could be heard.

  “What for?”

  “I want them to pass by the wreck here across the gas station parking lot.”

  “What for?”

  “I think it’ll be easier to divert them down the alley.”

  “Okay” Dean shrugged, moving the line of flares, and then Roscoe Rules stood quietly on the
far side of the station wagon, hoping the fire trucks or another ambulance wouldn’t get there too quickly and spoil things.

  The first car to pass Roscoe was not suitable. The driver was well dressed, prosperous, just the kind of prick who’d call in and make a complaint, Roscoe thought. Neither was the second car. The traffic was crawling by, most of the drivers gawking hungrily for a glimpse of blood.

  The twelfth car in the line was perfect. It was a late model Dodge containing a man and two women. The bulging luggage rack, travel stickers and Ohio license said they were tourists passing through and not likely to take time to stop and complain about a policeman, no matter the outrage.

  When the station wagon crawled by, Roscoe, still standing half hidden beside the wreckage, smiled encouragingly at the pudgy woman on the passenger side. Her window was down and she said, “Quite a wreck, eh, officer?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Roscoe answered, and he knew this was the one.”

  “Over here, partner!” he called to Whaddayamean Dean, since every legend needs a Boswell.

  The woman shook her head sadly and clucked. As her husband was revving the engine and the creeping traffic was starting, she said to Roscoe, “Anyone hurt bad?”

  Then Roscoe Rules came from behind the wreckage and stepped to her window, lifting the dripping, severed head of the young bride, and said, “Yeah, this one got banged up a bit.”

  The woman from Ohio drowned out the fire engines’ sirens with her screams as her husband drove into the flow of traffic.

  Dean Pratt told the story to at least thirty policemen before going home that night. Roscoe Rules had achieved a place in police folklore, and was a Legend in His Own Time.

  SIX

  7-A-33: SPENCER VAN MOOT AND

  FATHER WILLIE WRIGHT

  Willie Wright was also destined to become a police celebrity It happened four months before the choir practice killing. On the night he met a brother in the basement.

  Of course he could not have dreamed of the bizarre turns this tour of duty would take when he sat in the rollcall room late that afternoon and wished he could grow a moustache like the one belonging to Sam Niles of 7-A-29, or Calvin Potts of 7-A-77 who had a heavy one which made the muscular black policeman look even more formidable.