The Choirboys

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Nothing eventful happened at the speedway until late in the afternoon when the choirboys wandered down to the track and a bearded racer told Spermwhale to get his fat ass off his bike. Spermwhale replied that he could fix it so the bearded racer could equal Evel Knievel’s record for broken bones on a motor track.

  The racer then called for track security officers and after being threatened with arrest the four choirboys put on their tank tops and basketball jerseys and scuttled off, moaning about never being able to find a cop when you want one. Whaddayamean Dean was so drunk he had to be helped into his filthy yellow sweatshirt and they got it on backward with the picture of Bugs Bunny on the back and “What’s Up, Doc?” on the front.

  The choirboys discovered something extraordinary during the flight from Ontario to Palm Springs: that flying with a blood alcohol reading of.20 was actually invigorating. They celebrated by breaking open the fifth of gin almost immediately after takeoff and cruising at a carefree five thousand feet.

  “I hate gin,” Spermwhale said, tipping the bottle and drinking a quarter of a pint without taking it from his lips, flying the airplane as steady as a rock.

  “It’s what the brothers drink when they can’t get Scotch,” remarked Calvin Potts, who rode behind the self styled navigator, Francis Tanaguchi, who had never flown in any aircraft except once in the Army on the way to Fort Ord.

  “But you people can drink airplane fuel,” Francis said, grimacing from the burning gin.

  “Yeah, and you Chicanos are models of sobriety,” said Calvin.

  “He’s not a Chicano, you fuckin idiot. He’s a Jap.” Spermwhale said.

  “That’s right,” said Calvin Potts, shaking his head. “Gud-damn. I better start layin off the booze. I’m gettin simple!”

  “It’s confusin workin with a madman like Francis, is all,” said Spermwhale, belching wetly.

  “Gin! Gin!” cried Whaddayamean Dean, taking the bottle from Calvin and after three long swallows dropping into complete obliterating drunkenness.

  Twenty minutes from the Palm Springs Airport, Spermwhale discovered he was well off the course through Banning Pass and was coming in dangerously low over the San Jacinto Mountains. “Aw shit!” he said and took the plane up seven thousand feet.

  “Dynamite!” chuckled Calvin Potts as they climbed.

  “My ears hurt! My ears hurt!” Whaddayamean Dean moaned.

  “Far out!” Francis exclaimed as they soared through a cloud and came in like a Ping-Pong ball in the turbulence over the mountains.

  “Hey, I can see that guy’s eyeballs down there!” Calvin Potts said.

  “What guy?” Spermwhale asked.

  “The guy in the brown uniform. Looks like a forest ranger or somethin. The guy that jumped off the rock and fell on his ass when we buzzed him.”

  “We didn’t buzz nobody,” Spermwhale said. “Not on purpose.”

  “Well, ain’t we flying a little low to the mountaintop?” asked Calvin.

  “Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?” asked Whaddayamean Dean.

  “You know, there’s somethin wrong. Somethin’s fucked up,” Spermwhale said. “We ain’t comin in on the airport. We’re comin in on somethin else looks a little different. I think maybe I’m a little more off course than I thought.”

  Then Calvin Potts was suddenly draped around Spermwhale’s neck screaming, “Are we gonna crash?”

  “Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?” yelled Whaddayamean Dean.

  “Get off my fuckin neck, Calvin, goddamnit!” Spermwhale ordered, prying Calvin’s fingers loose. “Damn! You remind me a that vampire partner of yours. Jumpin around people’s necks!”

  “We are most certainly not going to crash,” said Francis Tanaguchi, who was giggling idiotically as the airplane swooped down and up again. “As long as I am navigator we shall not crash!”

  “Crash? Crash?” said Whaddayamean Dean.

  “Give Dean another drink and take one yourself, Calvin,” Spermwhale said as they dropped down toward the business district of Palm Springs and the airplane’s engine started to attract attention below.

  Then they were buzzing the Canyon Country Club. Calvin Potts, his red tank top soaked and plastered to him, cinnamon shoulders gleaming, said, “That’s a green motherfuckin airport, Spermwhale. That’s a… GUD-DAMN! THAT’S A GOLF COURSE!”

  And Spermwhale jerked the wheel and the airplane pulled out and up, throwing them all back against their seats.

  “We’re gonna be all right,” Spermwhale assured everybody. “I’m just a little lost is all.”

  “Lost? Lost?” cried Whaddayamean Dean. “What’s he mean, Calvin? What’s he mean, Calvin?”

  “Here,” said Francis Tanaguchi and Whaddayamean Dean accepted the bottle and was happy again.

  As often happened when the choirboys would get drunk with the simpering redhead, they would find themselves un-consciously talking rapid fire and double action after hearing Whaddayamean Dean for a time.

  Spermwhale was next to do it when he said, “I could use a drink. I could use a drink.”

  “Here. Here. Drink. Drink,” said Francis.

  “You had enough. You had enough,” said Calvin Potts.

  “What’re you trying to say? What’re you trying to say?” said Whaddayamean Dean.

  Francis played with the gauge and pretended he was a real pilot while Spermwhale turned around for a second pass over what he thought had to be the airport but was another golf course.

  “Motherfucker’s shootin at us!” screamed Calvin Potts as Spermwhale Whalen swooped down over the fifteenth fairway and then up toward the mountaintop.

  “Who is?” demanded Spermwhale Whalen, deliberately turning the roaring little airplane around and diving belligerently toward the golf course.

  “It was nothing,” said Francis disgustedly “Some guy pointing a golf club is all it was. He jumped into the sand trap that time down.”

  Then Spermwhale circled downtown Palm Springs for another few minutes as the police department sent two cars to sight and identify the aircraft.

  Francis suddenly turned surly to the chagrin of Calvin Potts who had stopped drinking fifteen minutes ago.

  “Rotten paleface assholes!” screamed Francis. “Steal the Indians’ land! I wish Roscoe Rules was here, you lousy scrotes. Roscoe’d fix you. He’d make you do the fucking chicken!”

  “Whaddayamean, Francis? Whaddayamean, Francis?” asked Whaddayamean Dean.

  “They stole the land!” said Francis, and the sadness in his voice was all that Whaddayamean Dean understood but it was enough to make him cry and wail, “They stole the land! They stole the land!”

  “Shut up, Dean, goddamnit!” growled Spermwhale. “That’s all we need now, for you to start bawlin.”

  “Have a drink, Dean,” Calvin Potts said, shakily handing Whaddayamean Dean the bottle as Spermwhale circled the town and Francis raged against all white men.

  “Thank you, Calvin. Thank you, Calvin,” Whaddayamean Dean said, smiling bravely. Then he wiped his moist eyes on his sleeve and sat back sucking up the gin, wondering what everything meant.

  “Dive! Dive! Dive!” commanded the angry navigator, but Calvin Potts said, “Don’t you motherfuckers be talkin that crazy shit now! You sound like when we sunk ol Wolfgang. But this ain’t no play submarine. THIS IS A REAL MOTHERFUCKIN AIRPLANE!”

  “Dive! Dive! Dive!” Francis repeated, staring saucer eyed at the reeling pilot who said, “I want gin!” causing Calvin Potts’ heart to stop and making him want to weep with Whaddayamean Dean, who actually wasn’t weeping but was giggling at Calvin as he held the almost empty gin bottle in front of his face, playing peekaboo, enjoying Calvin’s hilariously distorted black moustache through the glass.

  “Where should I dive to?” Spermwhale asked finally and Francis said, “That fucking golf course. We’re landing and claiming this whole town for the tribe. If you don’t you’re chicken-shit!”

  “Me, chickenshit? Me, chickenshit?” Spermwhale y
elled, and as Calvin screamed the airplane dove in a gut-erupting 190 mph dive which threatened the design limitations of the little aircraft, and Whaddayamean Dean shouted, “I just wanna know: What’s it all mean? What’s it all mean?” which Calvin Potts decided was the most intelligent remark he had heard lately as the airplane leveled out and climbed with Whaddayamean Dean throwing up all over everybody.

  “Goddamn you, Dean!” Spermwhale yelled.

  “That does it!” Francis raged. “I hate all thieving white men, even the ones in this airplane. I feel like crashing just to kill all you pukey pricks!”

  “How about me? How about me?” Calvin Potts pleaded. “I ain’t a white man. Why kill me?”

  “You’re all alike,” Francis said.

  “Whaddayamean Dean puked. I didn’t puke,” Calvin pleaded, and then Calvin realized that Whaddayamean Dean was vomiting in Calvin’s lap so Calvin did too, in his own lap.

  “See, you’re all alike,” said Francis disgustedly. “All a bunch of pukey white men. I wish Roscoe Rules was here to rupture your spleens!”

  “I swear I’m not a white man,” said Calvin Potts as he upchucked a second time.

  “Okay I dived. What the fuck else can I do?” Spermwhale Whalen challenged. “Want some aerobatics? Might as well spread all this vomit around.”

  “Buzz that golf course one more time,” the exultant navigator commanded, while both Whaddayamean Dean and Calvin moaned and rolled their heads and craved sweet cool air.

  “Where is it?” asked Spermwhale.

  “Jesus Christ, Spermwhale, it’s green, ain’t it? Just go straight ahead only down lower. We can’t miss something that big!”

  But they could. They just missed the mountains, barely.

  Spermwhale obeyed the navigator and dived down toward the golf course again, though he was starting to come to his senses from the concentrated effort of flying. He was beginning to realize that someone might not like Francis’ little prank of landing on a golf course claiming it for the Cahuilla Tribe. He was flying so low he made Calvin Potts scream in terror when he got over the golf course and Francis flapped the windows open and threw the empty gin bottle which shattered on the patio of the clubhouse, ending the attack on Palm Springs Indian land.

  Ten minutes later, Spermwhale Whalen was heading in the general direction of Los Angeles, starting to think of mundane things like whether or not they would be arrested upon landing at Burbank. But within an hour he had stopped worrying about being arrested at Burbank. Night had fallen and brought with it dense fog, and he was glancing at his fuel gauge and wondering why he could not see the Burbank Airport. For the first time that day he made the concession of turning on his radio and he said to the other choirboys, “You guys see anything through all this soup? I mean in the last five minutes or so?”

  “I saw somethin about fifteen minutes ago,” Calvin Potts said, the only one of the passengers sober enough and frightened enough to be completely awake. “I saw a string a lights.”

  “Whaddaya mean lights? Whaddaya mean?” asked Spermwhale. “Jesus, I’m startin to sound like Dean.”

  “Well, it looked like a ribbon a lights. Coulda been street lights or headlights.”

  “Headlights?” murmured Spermwhale, straining his eyes but seeing nothing below them. Nothing but fog and darkness. “Hold on, I’m goin down.”

  “Down, you’re goin down?” yelled Calvin Potts.

  “Who’s going down?” Francis asked, waking with a smile. “Ora Lee?”

  “You sober now?” Calvin asked. “You’re gettin sober, ain’t you, Spermwhale?”

  “Yeah, I’m gettin… Oh, mother! Oh, mother! I think I know where we are!”

  “I see somethin. I see somethin,” said Calvin Potts when they were at a hundred feet.

  “What is it? What the fuck is it?” Francis demanded, awake and sober enough to share Calvin’s sweaty terror.

  “The ocean!” yelled the horrified choirboy “That’s the fuckin ocean down there! Oh, Lord!”

  “The ocean!” screamed Francis.

  “The ocean! The ocean! Which ocean?” yelled Whaddayamean Dean, waking from his deep alcoholic sleep.

  “Keep the fuck off my back, Calvin,” shouted Spermwhale, shoving Calvin back and making the black policeman jump on Francis’ back instead.

  “We gonna go down, Spermwhale? We gonna go down?” Francis croaked, unaware that Calvin was choking him.

  “We ain’t goin nowhere but back to Burbank. Now shut the fuck up!” Spermwhale yelled.

  But he looked at his fuel gauge and believed deep in his heart that this was his last flight. He hoped that somehow he could get in close to the coast when he was forced to put her down in the water, probably killing them all on impact. But he still flew as calmly as he had flown into Ontario Airport that morning.

  “I see it! I see it!” shouted Calvin suddenly. “The ribbon a light!”

  “Okay that’s the coast highway,” Spermwhale said, sighing imperceptibly. “Santa Monica Airport’s probably really socked in.” He turned on his Burbank VOR, watched the dial and said, “Come on needle, come on needle.”

  Then he took the plane up over the Santa Monica mountains, and ten minutes later with less than two gallons of gasoline in each tank the choirboys landed at Burbank Airport, dragged Whaddayamean Dean out of the plane and drove home together.

  “That old bastard ain’t got a nerve in his body. He ain’t afraid a nothin,” Calvin said to Francis Tanaguchi the next night on patrol.

  “Nobody got our airplane numbers?”

  “Guess not. Nothin’s happened,” said Calvin.

  “Outta sight!” cried Francis Tanaguchi, shaking his black hair off his thin little face, as he started making airplane noises behind the wheel of the radio car, pretending he was Spermwhale Whalen flying a fearless mission into downtown Palm Springs. “Too much!” Francis exclaimed, now that he had a real hero. “I just gotta see Spermwhale and Carolina Moon in a lewd movie if I have to produce it myself!”

  And at the next choir practice, Francis tried to convince her that she should star with Spermwhale Whalen in the dirty movie he was going to produce. Spermwhale said okay, but next year after he had his twenty years’ service and a pension locked up. Carolina Moon said she wasn’t that kind of a girl.

  Spermwhale was joking when he mentioned another mission like the Palm Springs raid to Baxter Slate on the night Baxter killed the ordinary guy but Baxter Slate, not knowing the full extent of their terror that night over the dark lonely water, wondered if he meant it. Baxter was about to ask him if he was serious when they received a radio call to meet the officers at Ninth Street and Hudson.

  Baxter drove easily to the location since there was no code on the call and met Sergeant Nick Yanov and 7-A-33. Spencer Van Moot was laughing while Father Willie stood glumly, hands in the pockets of his uniform pants, pushing out his gun on one side and baton on the other, making him look shorter and chubbier than he was.

  When they got out of the car Spencer said to Baxter, “Ever hear of somebody lipping off to you?” And he held up a clean mayonnaise jar which contained a ragged pink object something like a sliver of veal.

  “It’s a piece of a woman’s lip.” Father Willie grimaced while Spencer Van Moot laughed uproariously.

  “There was a fight here half an hour ago,” Sergeant Yanov explained. “Two neighborhood women got in a hassle over the husband of one of them. There was kicking and gouging and biting and one broad ran home with her eyeball half torn out. When she recovered from the shock fifteen minutes later she found her neighbor’s lip in her mouth. She must’ve bit off half of it. At least it looks like a lip.”

  Baxter Slate examined the raw meat in the jar and said, “It’s a lip.”

  “The lipless lady, Mrs. Dooley was taken to the hospital by a friend,” Nick Yanov said. “So we’re gonna take the biter on down to the hospital for an MT too. After that, we’ll bring them both to the dick’s bureau. Meantime, how about taking
the lip in and seeing if they have to book it in any special way to preserve it. I really don’t know. I never had a lip to take care of before.”

  So Baxter and Spermwhale drove part of Mrs. Dooley to the detective bureau in Wilshire Station while Spencer and Father Willie located the rest of her at Daniel Freeman Hospital. The detective just smiled when Baxter showed him the lip and said it would require no special handling because undoubtedly both ladies would make up before the case ever went to trial and it would be dismissed in the interest of justice after four court continuances.

  When Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie found the rest of Mrs. Dooley at the emergency ward and arrested her for mayhem, she objected and they had a row with her. She had to be handcuffed and Spencer received a handcuff cut on the finger, a common injury for policemen who wrestle with slippery arms and sharp steel ratchets. The cut was not deep enough to require sutures and Spencer sat on a stool in the same emergency ward, no longer weak from laughing at the lip in the jar but from seeing his blood running down his hand.

  He was white and dizzy when the crusty old nurse applied disinfectant and a butterfly bandage to the one inch wound. Father Willie helped support him on the right side while Spencer stood shakily. He was too nauseated to get mad when the nurse said, “Why don’t you bite a bullet?”

  When Baxter Slate and Spermwhale left Wilshire Station without Mrs. Dooley’s lip, Baxter turned south on La Brea, causing Spermwhale to ask, “Where we goin, kid? Our area’s east.”

  “Just felt like driving around the ghetto for a while,” Baxter smiled. The slim policeman had an extraordinarily wide mouth which made his smile infectious and convincing even when he didn’t mean it. And he didn’t mean it now.

  “Suit yourself,” Spermwhale shrugged. “I just wanna take it easy tonight.”

  Suddenly Baxter said: “You know what I think is the best a cop can hope for?”

  “Tell me, professor.”

  “The very best, most optimistic hope we can cling to is that we’re tic birds who ride the rhino’s back and eat the parasites out of the flesh and keep the beast from disease and hope we’re not parasites too. In the end we suspect it’s all vanity and delusion. Parasites, all of us.”