the Choirboys (1996)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Drop the fucking gun or I'll blow you away!" Nick Yanov screamed.

  The next few minutes involved several panic stricken shouts after which Spermwhale sat the sergeant down on a display couch, gave him a cigarette and convinced him they were alive, that Baxter had unloaded the magazine when he ejected the live round, that Clyde Percy was a harmless old acquaintance of Spermwhale Whalen's and that Sergeant Yanov should remain on the couch until his legs steadied.

  "Sure glad it was you, Sarge," Spermwhale Whalen said to the chesty, bristle jawed sergeant. "If it was one a them other cunt supervisors he'd a probably cut old Clyde in half and we'd a ended up with another suspension for lettin Clyde get wasted."

  "Why do you do things like this to me," Nick Yanov said, drawing heavily on the cigarette as some color returned to his face.

  Then the two policemen and Clyde Percy helped the weak kneed Sergeant Yanov out of the store and to his car, Clyde Percy apologizing profusely for scaring him to death.

  "Where's the nearest gas station?" Sergeant Yanov asked as he got back in his black and white and threw his hat and light on the seat, running both hands through his heavy black hair "Why, you gotta take -a crap?" Spermwhale grinned.

  "No, I just did! I gotta clean up!" said Nick Yanov as he fired up the radio car and roared away.

  "Good fuckin sergeant," Spermwhale Whalen mused in an extremely rare moment, and then reverted to his old self. "Not like that eunuch lieutenant and that gelding captain and all the other cocksuckin sergeants on the nightwatch."

  "So what's with the teaching you say you did at Camarillo?" Baxter asked when they got Clyde safely in the radio car and were on their way to jail to book him for drunk.

  "I tell you, Officer," said Clyde Percy, munching toothlessly on potato chips, "it was such a fine place. They was all these kids, retarded, you know? Ain't nobody come to visit em most a the time. They gives em jobs to keep em busy, like makin these little balloon toys. You puts the balloons on the, little blow-up stems like. So they gives me the job a helpin watch over all the kids. So I does things like make sure they kin attach balloons right and that they don't fight too much and don't fall on their heads and bite their tongues and so forth like that. And then one day I made a invention. I drills holes in this board to put the stems in and then the kids kin attach three balloons at once and makes it easier to hold em. One a the bosses there says to me, 'Clyde, you jist about the best we ever have workin here.' So I tells him bout the time I save the lady in the flood and he say, 'Clyde, you kin stay here if you wants to.'"

  "Why're you out then?" asked Spermwhale, driving the black and white west on Venice Boulevard.

  "They say one day they jist ain't no more room, jist room for real crazy people and I ain't that crazy. So that night I start sayin I'm the President and mayor, and like that. But they say it aint no good, Clyde, we know you ain't really crazy like some folks, leastways you ain't so crazy you gonna hurt somebody. And then I thought bout hurtin one a the technicians, punchin em or somethin, but they all so nice to me I couldn't. So they put me out and here I is, back home agin."

  "That's a goddamn shame," Spermwhale said angrily, turning in his seat toward Baxter. "I seen fifty dollar a trick whores, and dopers and pimps, and thieves and assholes for three generations all on welfare and we can't even afford a fuckin bed and three squares at a state hospital for Clyde. That pisses me off!"

  "Think you kin do somethin to git me back there?" asked the old man, his blue lips flaked with potato chips, the left earflap of his flier's cap turned up from the scuffle with Sergeant Yanov."

  "By God, if there's any justice in this miserable world, which there ain't, somebody oughtta help you. Tell you what, you plead not guilty at your arraignment tomorrow. Then I'll be in court on trial day. I'll talk to the city attorney and tell him that you're always walkin around the street threatenin everybody and sayin you're the Easter Bunny and wavin your dong at housewives and stuffin dog shit in mailboxes and settin trash fires and in general bein a bigger pain in the ass than Francis Tanaguchi."

  "Francis who?"

  "Oh, never mind," Spermwhale said as they parked in the station parking lot and got out of the car. "Anyways, I'm gonna tell him you're the Wilshire Division whacko and a horrible asshole and you shouldn't be put away for ninety days for drunk like you usually are because you're a dingaling. And then I'll say I think you should get a sanity hearin and shipped off to Camarillo again."

  "Oh, Officer," said Clyde, and the tears welled in the old man's eyes and he even stopped eating potato chips. "Oh, I'll be crazier than you say I is, I kin stand on my head."

  "No, don't go too far," Spermwhale said. "Just stare off in space and say somethin goofy every time somebody asks you somethin."

  "I'll shoo skeeters that ain't there," said Clyde as they shuffled toward the steps of the station.

  "Yeah, like that," Spermwhale said as they half lifted the old man up the steps.

  "I'll punch a policeman right in the mouf," said Clyde.

  "No, don't do that," said Spermwhale.

  "A public defender?" Baxter Slate suggested.

  "No, no," Spermwhale said as they opened the side door and took Clyde inside.

  "A judge? How about a judge?" Baxter offered.

  "No," Spermwhale said, "let's not overdo it. Just swat invisible mosquitoes or beat off at the jury or somethin."

  Then Clyde Percy came to a limping halt in front of the barred jail doors and looked up at Spermwhale, and Clyde's face, dust covered, but charcoal black in places, was streaked and wet.

  "I appreciates it, Officer," he said to the fat policeman. "I wants to go back to the chirruns, back to Camarilla. I appreciates what you doin for me." And then he took Spermwhale's big hand in his and wept.

  "Jesus, Clyde! Okay! Okay!" Spermwhale said, pulling his hand away and looking around to see if other policemen were looking. "It's okay. You don't have to. it's gonna be all right. I don't mind bein there in court. I ain't got nothin to do anyways. Jesus, it's okay. Quit cryin, will ya?"

  Spermwhale Whalen did go to the court trial of Clyde Percy, and did succeed in getting a sanity hearing for the old man. But Clyde Percy was deemed not to be a hazard to himself or others and sane enough to be released. He was released, after which he walked one mile downtown, shoplifted a short dog of wine, poured it over his head and lay down in the middle of the intersection at First and Los Angeles streets having to wait only ninety seconds until a police car heading into the police building was forced to stop, pick up the Baldwin Hills lifeguard and book him into Central Jail on a plain drunk charge. He was given ninety days in the county jail, which was better than nothing but a far cry from Camarillo State Hospital where he invented the device to help retarded children blow up balloons.

  When Whaddayamean Dean broke into one of his numerous drunken crying jags at choir practice after hearing of the ultimate fate of Clyde Percy, Roscoe Rules called him a nigger lover and said the old cocksucker probably wanted to go back to Camarillo in the first place just to molest the little dummies. Spermwhale Whalen was in a foul mood after they booked Clyde Percy. The mail drop had arrived at Wilshire Station and contained an eight by ten glossy photo sent to Spermwhale by his classmate, Sergeant Harry Bragg of the police department photo lab. The picture was a mug shot of Spermwhale Whalen's eldest son, Patrick, who had died thirteen months earlier of a drug overdose. It was the only picture the boy had taken in the last two years of his life, this one when he was arrested for car theft in Van Nuys.

  Spermwhale, the veteran of three failed marriages, had not seen much of the boy after adolescence, and he studied the photo carefully, appreciating the skill of Sergeant Harry Bragg who had removed the booking number and profile shot, and blown up the full face part of the double mug shot until probably only a policeman would suspect from whence it had come.

  Technically it was a successful picture, artistically a dismal failure. He could detect none of the boy's considerable intelligence in the a
rrogant eyes and narrow mouth. The shoulder length hair was totally unfamiliar, as was a small fresh scar over the right eye. It was not the son he wanted to remember, not if he wished to keep the guilt from overtaking him.

  Spermwhale was scowling and chewing a cigar to shreds when he and Baxter went back to the radio car. The night had become exceptionally black.

  "What's wrong with you?" Baxter asked.

  "Nothin."

  "Look a little mad."

  "I ain't mad. Why should I be mad? I make seventeen grand a year, don't I? Course after income tax and pension contribution and Police Relief and Police Protective League and the credit union and three wives and rent, I have about a dollar thirty cents to eat on between paydays. And I just come off a four day suspension so I gotta stop eatin for about two weeks. So what've I got to be pissed off about?"

  "That it? Money?"

  "Money, who needs money? Just because I been cuffed around a little bit by the heavy hand a justice? Just because I lost four days' pay? Shit, that ain't nothin. I only got three ex-wives to support, and three ex-kids. no, two ex-kids to feed. And an ex-dog and my turtle. Course the turtle's sometimes in hibernation so he don't eat too much. It's only fair that I got four days' suspension for keepin those avocados Francis gave me. But the thing bothers me. I wonder if Lieutenant Grimsley and all them IAD headhunters get a finder's fee when they nail a cop? Maybe they get a percentage of what the city saves off our paycheck when we get suspended. Ever think a that?"

  "I could loan you twenty bucks till payday."

  "Fuck it, I don't need money. Old Clyde gets along without it, don't he?"

  "It's pretty decent what you're going to do for him." Slate said. "The way you're going to bat to get the back in the laughing academy."

  "Listen, partner," Spermwhale said, and now the cigar almost eaten and he was spitting black leafy tobacco out the window of the radio car, "just because I seem to care about people once in a while, don't make no mistakes about me. Nineteen plus years a workin these streets has taught me that people are shit. They're scum. Only reason I don't treat em like Roscoe Rules or some a those black glove hotdogs is what's that do for you? Gets you fired for brutality or an ulcer or somethin. For what? The human race is no fuckin good but workin with these rotten bastards is all we got, right? It's the only game in town so you gotta play like you're still in the game. If you don't, if you drop out, you take your fuckin six inch Colt and see can you pull the trigger twice while you're eatin it. I just don't wanna off myself like so many cops do. So once in a while I do somethin that might look to you like I give a fuck about some a these scumbags. But there's nothin more rotten than people."

  And the very next call of the night did nothing to change Spermwhale's mind.

  "Think I'll go see my ex-wife tomorrow," Spermwhale said to Baxter who had just suggested taking code seven at the half price restaurant north of Wilshire on Western.

  "Which one?" asked Baxter.

  "The second ex-wife," Spermwhale said. "I like her best in some ways. She had the most balls. Took every dime I had. I like to see her once in a while and visit my ex-dog and my ex-car."

  "She still give you a little?"

  "Wouldn't want it. Her ass is so big she has to sit down in shifts. And she's as old as runnin water. I like them young animals like Carolina Moon. Her fat's all smooth and bouncy. I like em with enough strength to fight!"

  "Gonna have to call a choir practice one of these nights," said Baxter Slate, as the Regretful Rapist was pulling a black woman out of her Ford sedan just two blocks ahead and trying to drag her off behind a large trash dumpster in the darkness.

  She screamed at two men passing by who just kept walking, observing the golden rule of city dwellers: Do unto others if you want to risk getting your fucking head blown off.

  "I'm getting awfully hungry," Baxter Slate said as the Regretful Rapist was discovering that the black woman was almost as strong as he and was not going to submit, knife or no knife. The rapist was furiously trying to find the dagger she had knocked from his hand to plunge it into her throat.

  "You know, there's somethin about Nick Yanov reminds me a my youngest kid," Spermwhale said as he lit a fresh cigar and Baxter glided slowly around the traffic consisting of diners looking for parking off La Cienega's Restaurant Row, to avoid tipping valet parking lot attendants.

  "Your kid isn't that old," Baxter said.

  "No," said Spermwhale, "but he just looks somethin like Yanov. You know, I'm afraid he's gonna get in trouble like the others. Last time he came to see me he wouldn't even accept some clothes I bought him. Only wants to hang around Venice Beach with the hippies. Don't even want some clean underwear. You see, he can't stand ownin anything. He only wants the clothes on his back. Can't even stand the responsibility of changin his skivvies. I'm afraid if he ever went to jail and had someone make all his decisions for him, he might like it."

  Baxter Slate tried to think of something to change, the subject because he didn't want Spermwhale to start thinking of the oldest boy.

  And the Regretful Rapist, not a bit regretful at the moment, grabbed the black woman by the throat and almost choked the life out of her before she succeeded in burying her teeth in his bicep and squirming free just long enough to manage a chilling scream which was nearly her very last.

  "Jesus Christ, what was that?" Spermwhale jerked upright in his seat and grabbed the flashlight as Baxter wheeled the car around and screeched into the darkened parking lot, catching the screaming woman and the raging rapist full in the headlight beams as they fought on the ground.

  Then Spermwhale, moving like a younger slimmer man, was out of the car before it stopped, chasing the fleeing rapist across the parking lot shouting, "Stop, you motherfucker, or you're maggot meat!"

  Baxter Slate, finally getting his flashlight to work by banging it on his hip as he ran, caught up with Spermwhale who was standing motionless and aiming two handed at a running shadow eighty feet away. Then there were three explosions in Baxter's ear and the Regretful Rapist dropped to the asphalt shrieking in terror from a slight wound which entered his lower back, broke two ribs, ricocheted around the rib cage, following the path of least resistance, and exited in the front, causing, aside from the broken ribs, little more than a flesh wound. And this caused Roscoe Rules at the next afternoon's rollcall to scream loudly for the hundredth time that they should be permitted to carry dumdums and high velocity ammo.

  When the two policemen got to the wounded suspect and stood over him, he shook his mop of sweaty hair out of his face and yelled in panic and shock, "You shot me in the back, you chickenshit!"

  Spermwhale, panting heavily from excitement and exhaustion, yelled back, "There ain't no rules out here, you cocksucker! The Marquis of Queensberry's just some fag over on Eighth Street!"

  And the Regretful Rapist was caught; Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate each received a Class A commendation which was worth exactly nothing in terms of promotion, prestige or economic remuneration. They both offered to trade it for the four days' pay which had been taken away for accepting the imprudent avocados, but the watch commander told them he didn't think that was very funny.

  Perhaps Spermwhale Whalen's greatest contribution was the rapport he established with the rapist in the five hours they were together at the emergency hospital, the detective bureau and finally the General Hospital jail ward where they booked him.

  It started when Spermwhale bought two candy bars for himself and his starving partner and discovered that he had punched the wrong button and got one full of caramel which he never ate because it stuck to his partial plate.

  "Here, want some candy?" he asked the rapist as the young man was sitting handcuffed to a chair in the emergency ward.

  "Thanks," the rapist said, and Spermwhale noticed that his eyes were glassy and shining from tears, and though he had refused to speak to detectives, the fat policeman said, "Pretty good candy, ain't it? You like candy?"

  "It's okay," the rapist sa
id, his large blue eyes moving around the room.

  Then Spermwhale said, "I did you a favor by shootin you."

  The rapist turned, wiped his face on the shoulder of his torn jacket and said, "How's that?"

  "You woulda been booked in an LAPD jail. We wake our prisoners up at five A. M. and serve them meals of red death, Gainesburgers and donkey dicks. This way you're gonna be in the hospital jail ward and then in the county jail when you heal up. Chow's a hundred percent better. Same with the bed and cell. I did you a favor."

  "Thanks."

  "You know, I don't blame you for what you done. I get the urge sometimes myself. Ugly guy like me and all the pussy around just teasin a guy with this no bra stuff and tight pants. Shit, they ask for it."

  "You think so?"

  "Sure. We all got our bad habits. Hell, I can't quit smokin and drinkin, how can I criticize you?"

  The Regretful Rapist smiled at the fat policeman and eventually accepted two more candy bars with caramel and almonds and confessed to more than thirty rapes, including twelve which had never been reported to the police but were verified through a detective follow-up. Spermwhale Whalen was given his usual subpar score the very next time he went before a board on a promotional exam. He had for years been wasting his off-duty time flying 200,000 pounds of mechanized and human cargo for his country instead of taking police science classes at night school.

  As Captain Orobeck said at a private staff meeting, who in the hell wants supervisors and executives who were only good for flying airplanes and catching dangerous crooks like the Regretful Rapist? Besides, Spermwhale Whalen was unpolished and fat and had ridiculous feet. He wore a wide triple E shoe but his feet were an abnormally short size 7 1/2. It looked like he was walking on waffles.

  Chapter NINE

  Tommy Rivers.

  "Kudos to Roscoe Rules!" Sergeant Nick Yanov announced at rollcall on the night Baxter Slate shot the ordinary guy. "Roscoe just had his annual physical, and the medical report here says his Phthirius pubis count is very low this year. I looked that up and it means body crabs."