Calvin Potts crawled forward out of sight for a few minutes, then, crouching, ran back out of the alley carrying a modified.22 caliber rifle with a tommy gun grip and an infrared scope lovingly mounted on the stock. The gun could fire hollow points almost as fast as you could pull the trigger, and what possibly saved the policemen was that the sniper had jammed the gun in his excitement.
Baxter Slate was the first to suggest driving around to the street on the west, and while Francis and Calvin quickly cleared glass from the seat, Baxter was squealing out, knocking coffee cups all over the parking lot as the siren of the nearest help car could already be heard in the distance.
Spermwhale asked to be dropped near the mouth of the alley on the next residential block west while Baxter circled one block farther on the theory that a man could run very far and fast after just having tried to ambush some policemen.
On St. Andrew’s Place, Baxter Slate saw a dark running shadow. He jammed down the accelerator and the next sixty seconds became a fragmented impression as he screeched to a stop beside the running figure and jumped out in the darkness, gun drawn. He was met by a fanatical screaming charge by what turned out to be a weaponless man, and for once Baxter Slate did not intellectualize. He simply obeyed his instinct and training and emptied his gun at point blank range, hitting the man three times out of six, one bullet cracking through the left frontal lobe killing him almost at once. He discovered that unlike choreographed slow motion movie violence the real thing is swift and oblique and incoherent.
After intensive interrogation by the Robbery-Homicide Division shooting team and after his own reports were written, a pale and tense Baxter Slate met the other nine choirboys at MacArthur Park and tried to fill them in as best he could on the details. The trouble was there weren’t any.
The young man’s name was Brian Greene, and luckily for Baxter his fingerprints were found on the rifle. He was twenty-two years old. He was white. He had no arrest record. He had no history of mental illness. The Vietnam War was long over and he was not a veteran. He was not a student. He cared nothing about politics. He was a garage mechanic. He had a wife and baby.
Francis was beside himself that night at choir practice, not so much in fear but rage. And finally despair.
“So quit talkin about it,” Calvin said. “I’m sick a hearin about it. The asshole tried to shoot us and it’s over and that’s it.”
“But Calvin, don’t you see? He didn’t even know us. We’re just… just… blue symbols!”
“Okay so we’re blue,” Calvin reminded him. “You only see black and blue around the ghetto when the sun goes down.”
“But we were on Olympic Boulevard. That’s not a ghetto. He was white. Why’d he shoot? Who was he? Doesn’t he know we’re more than bluecoats and badges? It’s weird. I don’t know where these people are coming from. I dunno.”
“I dunno where you’re comin from,” Calvin said angrily.
“I dunno where I’m coming from either,” Francis said. “I don’t know where my head is.”
“What fuckin Establishment did we represent to him?” Spermwhale demanded to know. “I’m tired a bein a symbol! I’m not a symbol to my ex-wives and ex-kids. Why does an ordinary guy wanna shoot me?”
And all the choirboys looked at each other in the moonlight but there were no answers forthcoming.
“I didn’t want to kill him,” Baxter Slate said quietly. “I never wanted to kill anybody.”
It was suddenly cold in the park. They were ecstatic when Ora Lee Tingle showed up and hinted she might pull that train.
TEN
7-A-29: SAM NILES AND
HAROLD BLOOMGUARD
Lieutenant Finque had a splitting migraine at rollcall on the night Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard met the Moaning Man and called for choir practice.
The migraine was brought about by his defense of the Police Protective League, the bargaining agent manned by Los Angeles police officers for the department.
“How the fuck can the Protective League do anything for us?” Spermwhale demanded. “As long as brass’re members of the league. Don’t you see, the league gotta be more like a real union. It’s management against labor. You people are management. Only the policeman rank and maybe sergeants should be in the league. The rest of the brass are the enemy, for chrissake!”
“That’s not true!” Lieutenant Finque said. “The commanders and the deputy chiefs are just as much police officers as…”
“My ass, Lieutenant!” Spermwhale roared. “When did you last hear of a deputy chief gettin TB or a hernia or whiplash or pneumonia or shot or beat up or stabbed? Only cop’s disease they ever get is heart trouble and that’s not cause they have to jump outta radio cars and run down or fight some fuckin animal who wants to make garbage outta them, it’s cause they eat and drink so much at all those sex orgies where they think up ways to fuck and rape the troops!”
“How many deputy chiefs or commanders ever get suicidal?” Baxter Slate asked suddenly, and for a moment the room was quiet as each man thought of that most dangerous of policemen’s diseases.
“Yeah, it’s usually the workin cop who eats his gun,” Spermwhale said as he unconsciously thought of at least ten men he had served with who had done it.
“I’d hate to be a member of this department if we ever go from the Protective League to a labor union,” Lieutenant Finque solemnly announced with the consuming hatred and distrust of labor unions that was prevalent in those police officers who had sprung from the middle class and whose only collective bargaining experiences had been as Establishment representatives facing angry sign wavers on picket lines.
“Protective League my ass!” Spermwhale Whalen said. “They take our dues and wine and dine politicians while I eat okra and gumbo at Fat Ass Charlie’s Soul Kitchen.”
“I thought you like eatin like a home boy Spermwhale,” Calvin Potts grinned.
“We gotta sue the fuckin city for nearly every raise we get,” Spermwhale continued. “I’m sick a payin dues to the Protective League. I get more protection from a two year old box a rubbers!”
“Anyone for changing the subject?” Sergeant Nick Yanov suggested, as the lieutenant held his throbbing head and vowed to check Spermwhale Whalen’s personnel package to see how many more months he had to go before retirement. And to ask the captain if there weren’t a place they could transfer him until then. Like West Valley Station which was twenty-five miles away.
Lieutenant Finque’s eyes were starting to get as red and glassy as Roscoe Rules’ always were. Of late the lieutenant always had drops of grainy white saliva glued to the corners of his mouth from his incessant sucking of antacid tablets.
“I’m going to change the subject, change the subject,” Lieutenant Finque announced strangely. “The captain inspected the shotgun locker and found a gun with cigars stuffed down the barrel! If that happens again somebody’s going to pay!”
No one had to turn toward Spermwhale who was the only cigar smoker on the watch. “Young coppers they hire these days’ll rip you off for anything,” said Spermwhale. “Gotta hide your goods, Lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Finque had begun losing weight of late what with his migraines and acid stomach and inability to relate with Captain Drobeck who had turned down three dinner invitations this month despite the fact that Lieutenant Finque had done everything he could think of to woo the captain, including joining his American Legion Police Post. The lieutenant knew he should be clear headed what with the ordeal of studying for the captain’s exam three hours a day when his wife and children would leave him alone. And here at the job he had to deal with recalcitrant uglies like Spermwhale Whalen.
“Let’s read some crimes,” the watch commander said, picking up a sheaf of papers. “There was an ADW on a teacher at the high school. Says here a thirty-four year old schoolteacher had just started her third period when…”
“Kind of late in life, ain’t it?” Francis Tanaguchi giggled and Lieutenant Finque jerked spasmodi
cally and tore the report.
Lieutenant Finque blinked several times and simply could not regain the thread. “This report’s terrible. It’s sloppy Who did it?” And his eyes were so watery he couldn’t read the name.
“Just a few pencigraphical errors, sir,” said the culprit, Harold Bloomguard.
“Uh… Intelligence has a rumor,” Lieutenant Finque said, forgetting the crimes and going on disjointedly to a note in the rotating folder. “We may have a riot in the vicinity of Dorsey High School between four and four thirty this afternoon. Some militant…”
“A half hour riot?” said Calvin Potts and Lieutenant Finque’s thread came totally unraveled. He began talking to Sergeant Yanov on his right as though they were alone in the room.
“You know, Yanov, there’s a rumor that these young Vietnam vets they’re hiring these days are smoking pot. You see how hard it is to make them keep their hair off their collars and their moustaches trimmed? And there’s a rumor about fragging! Someone heard some policemen talking about bombing a watch commander!”
“I’ll read the crimes,” Sergeant Yanov said abruptly, putting a steadying hand on Lieutenant Finque’s arm while the assembly of policemen looked at one another in growing realization. “Let’s see, here’s one to perk up your evening. A rapist stuck his automatic down in his belt while he made the victim blow him and he got so excited he shot his balls off right in the middle of the headjob!”
The explosion of cheers startled the shit out of Lieutenant Finque who thought he was being fragged. He only kept from jumping up because Sergent Yanov’s strong left hand held his arm pressed to the table top as the sergeant regained control of the rollcall.
“Keep an eyeball out for Melvin Barnes,” Sergeant Yanov continued. “His picture’s on the board. Local boy and he’s running from his parole officer. He’ll be around Western Avenue. He likes to run because he’s a celebrity on the avenue when the cops’re looking for him. But he’ll be around because he doesn’t mind getting busted. He’s an institutional man. There’re thousands like him.”
“Amen,” Spermwhale Whalen said. “Ask me, I think half the fuckin population craves some kind of institution or other. They can’t get it, they’ll get taken care of some other way. If we just made our jails comfortable, gave the boys some pussy and all, shit, we couldn’t blast em out on the streets. Be a lot cheaper makin em happy and keepin em inside the rest a their lives than runnin them through the fuckin system over and over again while a few people get hurt along the way.”
“You got lots of ideas, Spermwhale,” said Harold Bloomguard. “Ever consider getting perverted to sergeant?”
As Sergeant Yanov got everyone in a better frame of mind to go out into the streets, Lieutenant Finque sat going through some envelopes which came to him through department mail. The voice of Yanov and the others seemed far away. He never noticed Francis Tanaguchi grin at his partner Calvin Potts when the lieutenant tore open the last envelope. It was a crime lab photo of a ninety year old black woman who had been dead for three weeks when her body was found and the picture taken. Her white hair was electric. Her silver eyes were open and her blackened tongue protruded. The note attached to the photo said, “Dear Lieutenant Finque, how come you don’t come to see me no more now that you transferred to the west-side? You cute little blue eyed devil!”
The lieutenant blinked and twitched and hoped he could get out of the station this night alive without being either framed or fragged. He stood up suddenly and said something unintelligible to Sergeant Yanov before walking out the door.
That night someone put a taped roll of freeway flares attached to a cheap alarm clock under the watch commander’s desk when Lieutenant Finque was having coffee. At 10:00 P.M. the bomb squad was at Wilshire Station assuring the captain by telephone that it was not dynamite but only a prank evidently played by some member of the nightwatch. At 11:00 P.M. Lieutenant Finque left Daniel Freeman Hospital severely tranquilized. He was off sick for seven days with something not unlike combat fatigue. Due to his splendid record as a whistle salesman he was taken downtown and made the adjutant of Chief Lynch. He was definitely an up-and-comer.
At six feet two inches and 185 pounds Sam Niles was not a particularly big man but next to Harold Bloomguard he felt like Gulliver. Harold Bloomguard was, at 149 pounds on a delicate frame, the smallest choirboy of them all. He had gorged himself with a banana-soybean mixture for three days to pass his original police department physical.
The choirboys always said that what Harold lacked in physical stature he made up for in physical weakness. Both Ora Lee Tingle and Caroline Moon had beaten him in arm wrestling on the same night at choir practice, and Harold, who usually loved fun and frolic, waded off in his underwear and sulked with the ducks on Duck Island. He wouldn’t come back until all of the choirboys had either gotten drunk or gone home.
“What’s it all about, Harold? What’s it all about, Harold?” cried Whaddayamean Dean to the lonely white figure huddled in the darkness of Duck Island which was a thirty by thirty mound of dirt and shrubbery in the middle of the large duck pond they called MacArthur Lake.
“What’d he say, Dean?” asked Harold Bloomguard’s partner, Sam Niles, as Whaddayamean Dean rejoined the choirboys who were trying to persuade Carolina Moon to pull that train even if she was tired from being on her feet all night hustling drinks at the Peppermint Club in Hollywood.
“What’d who say?”
“Harold! Who the hell were you just off yelling at, for chrissake!”
“I don’t know,” said Whaddayamean Dean, his brow screwed in confusion.
“Harold Bloomguard, goddamnit!” said Spermwhale, who got more pissed off at Whaddayamean Dean than anyone since Spermwhale more or less looked after him when he was drunk like this.
“You were yelling at Harold over on Duck Island, weren’t you?” asked Ora Lee Tingle patiently as Francis Tanaguchi crawled around behind her on the grass in his LAPD baseball shirt with number 69 on the back and pinched her ample buttocks and yelled when she punched him in the shoulder and knocked him over the cushiony Carolina Moon who grabbed him and smothered him in her enormous breasts and chubby arms and said, “Ya cute little fuckin Nip, ya!”
“I admit I was yelling but I don’t remember at who,” said Whaddayamean Dean, wishing everyone would stop picking on him and just let him drink and lie down on top of Ora Lee Tingle and rest his brain for a while. “I think I heard someone answer.”
“Well, you simple asshole, what’d he say?” demanded Spermwhale.
“I think he said, ‘Quack quack.’”
As all the choirboys moaned and fell over and rolled their eyes disgustedly, Spermwhale grabbed Whaddayamean Dean by the back of the Bugs Bunny sweatshirt and said, “That was a fuckin duck! Ducks say quack quack. Harold don’t say quack quack. You was talkin to a duck!”
“At least he didn’t yell at me,” Whaddayamean Dean sniffled and a large salty globular tear rolled out his left eye. “I don’t know what you mean. What’re you trying to say? Why is everybody picking on me? Huh? Huh?”
And so they gave up and left Whaddayamean Dean to finish his vodka and within three minutes he forgot that everyone had been picking on him and that Harold Bloomguard was almost naked and alone with the ducks on Duck Island. As a matter of fact, everyone forgot Harold Bloomguard but Sam Niles, and he would like to have forgotten.
At 5:00 A.M., when only the two girls and three of the choirboys were left sprawled on their blankets, Sam Niles stripped down and waded through the sludge to Duck Island, knocked the sleeping ducklings off Harold Bloomguard’s shivering body shook him awake and dragged him through the cold dirty water to his blanket and clothes. But Sam decided that Harold was too covered with filth to put him in Sam’s Ferrari so he broke the lock on the park gardening shed with a rock and found a hose with a strong nozzle. Then he forced the protesting Harold Bloomguard to stand shivering on the grass and be sprayed down from head to foot before drying in the blankets and d
ressing.
“I’d never do this to you, Sam!” Harold screamed as the merciless jet of water stung and pounded him and shriveled his balls to acorns.
“You’re not getting in my Ferrari covered with that green slimy duck shit,” said Sam Niles who had a thundering headache.
“I loaned you part of the down payment!” reminded Harold and shrieked as the spray hit him in the acorns, waking up Roscoe Rules who saw two nearly nude men by the gardening shack and figured it was a pair of park fairies.
Roscoe belched and shouted, “All you faggy bastards in this park better keep the noise down or I’ll make you do the chicken!” And then he went back to sleep.
When Harold was relatively clean Sam Niles vowed that somehow, someday he would rid himself of Harold Bloomguard who was by his own admission a borderline mental case.
Sometimes Sam Niles felt that he had always been burdened with Harold Bloomguard, that there had never been a time in his life when there was not a little figure beside him, blinking his large hazel eyes, cracking his knuckles, scratching an ever-present pimply rash on the back of his neck with a penknife and worst of all unconsciously rolling his tongue in a tube and blowing spit bubbles through the channel into the air.
“It’s sickening!” Sam Niles had informed Harold Bloomguard a thousand times in the seven years he had known him. “Sickening!”
And Harold would agree and swear never to do it again, and whenever he would get nervous or bewildered or frightened by one of the several hundred neurotic fears he lived with, he would sit and worry and his tongue would fold in two and little shiny spit bubbles would drop from his little pink mouth.
Sam Niles realized that at twenty-six, just four months older than Harold Bloomguard, he was a father figure. It had been that way since Vietnam where Harold Bloomguard more or less attempted to attach himself to Sam Niles for life, taking his discharge two months later than Sam and following him into the Los Angeles Police Department after returning to his family home in Pomona, California, where Harold’s father practiced law and his mother was confined in a mental hospital.
The Choirboys Page 21