It was three months to the day after Tommy Rivers' death and almost two months before the choir practice shooting that Baxter Slate became the only one of the ten choirboys to kill a man on duty.
Contrary to film and fiction, policemen rarely fire their guns in combat, and even Spermwhale Whalen with nineteen and a half years service and Spencer Van Moot with sixteen years had never killed a man on duty. The flesh wound to the Regretful Rapist was the only time Spermwhale had ever fired his revolver outside of monthly qualification shooting, even including the Watts Riot. So it naturally became a topic of conversation during choir practice when Baxter Slate killed a man.
The night Baxter Slate killed a man started out a busy one. Ten minutes after they hit the bricks and cleared at 3:45 in the afternoon, Roscoe Rules and Dean Pratt put out an "officers need assistance" call on Chesapeake Avenue in the vicinity of Dorsey High School.
A call for either help or assistance demands all-out coverage, and every car on the nightwatch made a squealing turn and headed south through the heavy afternoon traffic, figuring that Roscoe Rules had probably caused a riot at the school.
As it turned out the call was indeed put out by Roscoe Rules. He and Dean had been driving by the campus so Roscoe could show off by parading his tailored blue body and gleaming badge in front of the high school girls, when they spotted a young black car stripper struggling with the bucket seats of a Porsche which was parked in the faculty parking lot.
Whaddayamean Dean had dropped his baton getting out of the radio car and the clatter of wood on asphalt caused the sweating car stripper to look back and see the "Mickey Mouse ears" on the roof of the police car, which is what students call the siren lights. The car stripper was off in a 9.5 hundred yard dash which left Dean far behind and Roscoe radioing for assistance.
During the chase, the car stripper ran right into the arms of a pretty, twenty-five year old, white history teacher named Pamela Brockington who saw the exhausted policeman hotfooting after the boy. She pushed the boy into the gymnasium and was standing in front of the door when the lanky redhead came panting up to her.
"That boy go in there?" Dean gasped.
"I know that boy; Officer," Pamela Brockington said. "Whatever happened we can settle it without your running through the school grounds and starting a problem."
"Out. out of the way, lady," Dean puffed.
"Listen, you're on Board of Education property," the teacher said, planting her feet and spreading her legs, which wasn't easy, her blue jersey skirt being so tightly fitted.
"You know him, okay, it's no problem," Dean said, catching his breath. "Just give us his name and we'll pick him up at home."
"Well, what did he do?" For the first time the teacher looked unsure of herself.
"Tried to rip off the bucket seats from a white Porsche in the parking lot. What's the kid's name?"
"Oh," the teacher said in a small voice.
"Your car?"
"No, Mr. Krump's car."
"Oh."
"What's his name?"
"Well, I don't actually know his name but he's always around." Pamela Brockington moved aside to let Dean into the gym. But it was far too late and the car stripper had gone out the other door.
"He goes to school here, doesn't he? You can pick his picture out of your school mug shots," Dean said, removing his hat and wiping the sweat from his freckled brow.
"Well, I don't think he actually goes to school here, but." and the young woman started to wither under the outraged scowl Dean was working up to. "He's. he's always hanging around the streets after school and I'm sure you could find him again tomorrow or the next day.'"
When Dean returned to the radio car without the car stripper and with the tale of Pamela Brockington, Roscoe Rules smiled ironically and in a very soft voice said, "Now ain't that typical, partner? I mean that's just so typical of some bleeding heart, left wing social science teacher, now ain't it?"
"I don't know if she teaches social science," Dean offered as Roscoe's voice rose an octave.
"Yes, well it certainly is typical and now our little mother-fucking car stripper is halfway to Watts or wherever the hell."
"You broadcast a description?" Dean asked as he saw the familiar mad glint working its way into Roscoe's blue eyes as his hairless brows knitted and unknitted, making Dean terribly nervous because he didn't know if Roscoe would suddenly turn on him. Which he did.
"And you. partner," Roscoe said, his voice getting louder still as he revved the black and white, ready to leave half a tire on the pavement. 'You, partner, let this little pinko, scum eating, shit sucking cunt keep you from hot pursuit? It's hard to believe!"
"Well. partner," Dean gulped. "We'll get him some other time. Maybe."
"And now you're sounding just like what this nigger loving split tail must've sounded like, partner. If I'd a been there I'd a grabbed that come licking, do-gooder little cunt and CHOKED HER OUT AND MADE HER DO THE FUCKING CHICKEN! YOU HEAR ME?"
It was quite an ordinary Roscoe Rules incident, interesting later to Baxter because the car stripper ran across Exposition Boulevard and up Palmgrove Avenue where he made the almost fatal error of crossing through the fenced yard of Yolanda Gutierrez, aged sixty-two, and her niece, Rosario Apodaca, aged fifty-one, who, unlike Pamela Brockington, spoke no English but understood immediately what it meant when this young boy leaped their fence and crouched behind a hibiscus as a black and white cruised by with the officers craning their necks.
Yolanda Gutierrez calmly opened a trunk belonging to her son who had been killed in Korea twenty-three years earlier, removed his Colt .45 automatic and drew down on the boy.
The young car stripper laughed like hell at the old woman holding the heavy gun until Yolanda Gutierrez fired one for effect and blew out the window of the car parked in front of the house. The car stripper fell shrieking to the ground, not knowing the old lady had lost the bucking gun and her glasses and was crawling around the porch trying to find both when two black and whites attracted by the explosion came roaring down the street and arrested the car stripper.
"Something to be learned here," Baxter Slate remarked later to Spermwhale. "How two social classes perceive reality. The educated schoolteacher and the simple old woman."
"Who gives a fuck about reality anyways?" Spermwhale mumbled. .
"Not me," Baxter grinned cheerfully. "I prefer choir practice to reality any old day."
Then Baxter's wide grin vanished as he watched a yellow gangrenous dog being dragged down the street by a larger bitch who had him locked inside her, his passion having turned to agony and howling terror. A gang of black kindergarteners, as guileless as a bunch of plums, laughed and pelted both muddy animals with rocks and tin cans.
"Maybe I'll fly another raid with some a the guys my next day off," Spermwhale suddenly said. "Need some excitement around here."
"Don't start that nonsense again," Baxter said, putting on his sunglasses and driving back toward their beat.
Spermwhale began to think about the mission he had flown three weeks earlier. It had started innocently enough with some alcoholic conversation at choir practice about how the white men of Palm Springs had cheated the Indians' out of their birthright by stealing the desert spa from the Indians. Roscoe Rules had corrected them by pointing out that Jews and not white men had done it and that he wished the tribe would rise up and massacre every one of those kike bastards and cut off their scalps and kneedrop them.
Then, at precisely fifteen minutes before dawn, Francis Tanaguchi slapped Spermwhale Whalen awake where he slept entwined in the chubby arms of Carolina Moon.
"I'd love to see those two in a lewd movie," Francis Tanaguchi remarked as they threw dirty pond water in Spermwhale's face until he gagged and choked for air.
"Why bother?" Calvin said. "You can see them in real life anytime you want just by sneakin behind the bushes where they usually mate."
"Yeah, but it'd be different in a movie," Francis answered. "You kno
w, a red sexy room with a red silky bedspread and Carolina and Spermwhale all fat and white and oiled and sliding around!"
"You'd need a cinemascope lens," Baxter Slate offered. "A wide wide angle to take in all that flesh."
"Wall to Wall Meat! What a title! Outta sight!" cried Francis Tanaguchi.
An hour later, Francis, Calvin, Dean and Spermwhale, who were all off duty the next night, were in Spermwhale's rented orange and white Cessna 172 at Burbank Airport where Spermwhale often flew if he could get someone to pay for the rental and gasoline. Spermwhale had taken off without a flight plan, but with three hungover choirboys, two fifths of Scotch and one of gin, on a mission to recapture Palm Springs by way of Ontario Airport where Spermwhale reluctantly agreed to land because Whaddayamean Dean wanted some potato chips. They were reprimanded at Ontario by a man in the tower for landing without using the radio, but Spermwhale told him to fuck off and decided to hire a taxi to the Ontario Motor Speedway to watch some motorcycles qualifying for a race.
It was a long hot day at the racetrack spent sleeping shirtless in the bleachers, drinking the two fifths of Scotch and a case of beer and eating all the potato chips Whaddayamean Dean could hold.
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." Sperm-whale 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 to 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 flyin 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 unconsciously 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 gi
n, 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 mustache 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 chickenshit!"
"Me, chickenshit? Me, chickenshit?" Spermwhale yelled, 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.
the Choirboys (1996) Page 17