the Choirboys (1996)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "I told you not to make any sudden moves, baby." Sam crooked his arm around the hype's throat and applied just enough of a vise to the carotid artery to show him that the colorless odorless gas he breathed could be even more sweet and precious than the white crystalline chemical he had for twenty years buried in his arms and hands and legs and neck and penis.

  "I got it, Sam." Harold stripped a paper bindle from the inside of the hype's belt where it had been taped.

  "Pretty makeshift bindle, man," Sam Niles said, removing the pressure from the neck but keeping a wristlock which made the Mexican stand tall, sweating in the sunlight.

  "Okay, okay, you got it," the hype said and Sam released the pressure.

  "You sick?" Harold Bloomguard asked.

  "Lightweight, lightweight," the hype said, wiping his eyes and nose on his shoulder while Sam Niles handcuffed his hands behind his back. "Listen, man, you don't wanna book me for that little bit a junk. I shoulda fixed. That'll teach me."

  "Sick as you are, how come you didn't shoot it up?" Sam Niles asked when the hype was safely cuffed.

  "This broad. Fucking broad. She was gonna pick me up here. Take me home. I was supposed to score and she was supposed to meet, me here. She had the outfit and she digs on me. Oh Christ."And he looked lovingly at the bindle in Harold's hand and said, "Look, I'll work for you. Gimme a break and I'll tell you where you can bring down a guy that deals in ounces. Just gimme a chance. I don't want no money, just a break. I'll be your main man for free. You can leave a little geez for me hidden away sometimes when you rip off a doper's pad. Just stash a dime bag or two in a corner and after you're gone with the guys I roll over on, I'll skate on in and pick it up. We can work like partners. You guys'll make more busts than the narcs! How about it?"

  "Let's go," Sam Niles said, shoving the hype toward the police car but Harold's eyes widened as he envisioned the sick addict having international dope connections.

  He said, "Sam, let's hear him out."

  "Harold, for God's sake, this junkie'd say anything."

  "And burglars, Christ, I know a million of them!" the hype said, still handcuffed, talking desperately to Harold as Sam Niles tried to aim him toward the open door of the police car. "Mostly daytime burglars. All dopers. Lazy broads lay around in bed so long these days it's pretty hard to rip off the pads in the morning like we used to, but I still know lots and lots of burglars. Want a burglar, Officer. ?"

  "Bloomguard."

  "Officer Bloomguard, yeah. Want a burglar, Mr. Bloomguard?"

  "Why not listen to him, Sam?" Harold asked as Sam Niles tried to push the addict down into the back seat of the police car.

  "And tricks. Man, I can teach you a few tricks. You could learn something from me, Mr. Bloomguard. I been around this world over forty years. Been shooting dope since I was fifteen and I'm still alive. Listen, you know how to tell a hype even if he's healthy? Look for burn holes in his clothes and blisters on his fingers. When he's geezing and on the nod, he'll burn himself half to death when he's smoking cigarettes. That ain't a bad tip, is it?"

  "Not bad," said Harold Bloomguard. "Sam, lemme just talk to him for a minute."

  Sam Niles dropped his hands in disgust, threw his hat in the radio car, sat on the front fender of the black and white while the hype told Harold Bloomguard of his miserable life and his jealous rage at a girlfriend who had been cheating on him.

  ". and I got me some plans for that bitch, Mr. Bloomguard. I'm gonna wait down the hall in her apartment house and when her new boy comes sneaking in, I'm gonna creep up behind him, see? I'm gonna hit him over the gourd with a wrench then I'm gonna drag him into the broom closet and pull down his pants and fuck him! Yeah! And then I'm gonna drag his beat-up, fucked over ass to my old lady's door and ring the bell and say, "Here, bitch! Here's your girlfriend!"

  "This guy's got style!" Harold Bloomguard said to Sam Niles who replied, "Oh yes. Real panache. Let's invite him to choir practice, Harold."

  "And listen, Officer, because you been nice enough to listen to me I'm gonna save you from embarrassment. Guess what? You want the real truth? I ain't even sure you can get me booked. Know why?"

  "Why?" asked Harold Bloomguard while Sam Niles was ready to throw the hype and Harold into the car. "Because I think I mighta got burned on this score. This rotten motherfucker I bought the dope from sometimes tries to sell you pure milk sugar and hope you don't catch him for a few days. He's so strung out he'll do anything to make a little bread."

  "You think this is milk sugar?" Harold asked and took the bindle out of the pocket of his uniform shirt as Sam Niles got off the car, stepped on his cigarette, adjusted his steel rimmed glasses and said, "Harold, let's go."

  "I think it's probably milk sugar," the hype nodded, "and you're gonna have to let me go soon as you run one of those funny little tests at the station. Taste it. I think it's pure sugar."

  "Harold!" Sam Niles said as Harold opened the bindle curiously, making sure that the hype's hands were securely cuffed behind him.

  "Harold!" Sam Niles said, stepping forward just as Harold licked his finger to touch the sugar and just as the hype made good his promise to teach Harold a few tricks.

  The addict blew the gram of heroin out of the bindle into the air and Sam Niles watched the powder fall to the Bermuda grass at his feet and disappear.

  "Oh God," said Harold Bloomguard, dropping to his knees, pulling up grass, looking for the evidence the hype had just blown away.

  The addict held his breath for a moment as Sam Niles stepped forward towering over him, gray eyes smoldering. But then Sam Niles wordlessly unlocked the addict's handcuffs, put them in his handcuff case, returned the key to his key ring, took the car keys from the belt of his Sam Browne and got behind the steering wheel while Harold Bloomguard crawled around the grass searching for a few granules of powder.

  "I don't think you could even pick it up with a vacuum," the hype said sympathetically. "It's very powdery. And there was only a gram."

  "Guess you're right," said Harold Bloomguard, getting in the police car beside the silent Sam Niles just in time to keep from losing a leg as Sam squealed from the curb heading for the drive-in for a badly needed cup of coffee.

  "Sorry, Sam," Harold smiled weakly, not looking at his grim partner.

  The junkie waved bye-bye and decided that Harold was a very nice boy. The addict hoped that all five of the sons he had fathered to various welfare mothers would turn out that nice.

  It was almost ten minutes before Harold Bloomguard spoke to Sam Niles which was probably a record for Harold Bloomguard who sat and tried to think of something conciliatory to say.

  Unable to think of something he decided to entertain Sam. "It was consti-pa-tion, I know," sang Harold Bloomguard to the melody of "Fascination," watching Sam Niles who did not smile, which forced Harold to sing, "I'll be loving you, maternally. With a love that's true."

  Getting only a languid sigh from Sam Niles he switched to a livelier melody and sang, "Gee, but it's great after eating my date, walking my baby back home."

  Finally Sam Niles spoke. He said, "Harold, I don't mind your dumb songs but if you don't stop scratching those pimples on your neck with that penknife, I'm gonna stick it up your ass."

  And then Harold tried to forget about losing the heroin by remembering a disturbing dream, he had last Thursday and had not yet discussed with his partner. And as he concentrated he folded his tongue into a long pink tube and blew little spit bubbles which plinked wetly on the dashboard and made Sam Niles grind his teeth.

  "Sam, there's something I'd like your advice about."

  "Yes, yes, yes. What the hell is it this time?"

  "I think I'm getting impotent."

  "Uh huh."

  "I haven't awakened one morning in the past week with a diamond cutter. Or even a blue veiner."

  "You're not impotent."

  "How do you know that, Sam? I mean how do you know it's not happening to me? I was reading about impotency rece
ntly and."

  "Stop reading, Harold. That's part of your problem. You read about these diseases and then you've got the symptoms."

  "You think it's hypochondria but."

  "You're going to choir practice too often. Cool it for a while. Too much booze makes a limp noodle. Also you're getting old. Twenty-six. You're over the hill. At your age you should drink Vano starch instead of booze."

  "It's not funny, Sam. It's serious."

  "Really scares you, huh, Harold?"

  "Indeed," said Harold and Sam Niles gritted his teeth again. He had come to hate the word "indeed" because it was one of Harold's favorite expressions.

  "Well, I'll tell you, Harold. Being impotent wouldn't be too bad for you because Carolina Moon and Ora Lee Tingle are just about the only broads you ever ball lately and I think you only do that to be a respectable member of an unrespectable group that gets drunk once a week and gangbangs two fat cocktail waitresses."

  "That's not fair of you to say that, Sam. You know some of us don't approve of more than one guy mounting the same girl the same night. You and Baxter and Dean never do it. You know don't."

  "You did it last week!"

  "I didn't!"

  "Then what the hell were you and Ora Lee doing off in the bushes?"

  "Only fooling around. I just can't board the train like horny old Spencer or that pig Roscoe Rules."

  "Did you have a blue veiner?"

  "A diamond cutter as a matter of fact."

  "Then what makes you think you're impotent?"

  "Because I haven't woke up for a week with anything but a limp noodle!"

  "So you'll be low man on the scrotum pole at the next choir practice," said Sam Niles, turning a Bloomguardism against him.

  "God, that's cruel, Sam."

  "Harold, you're not impotent. Take my word. And you're not going to end up in a rubber room like your mother. But might end up there if you keep using me for your shrink. Now if you only wanna wake up with a hard on, then ask the captain to put you on the morning watch. When you're out there at about sunrise, waking up in a radio car, after trying to sleep with an upset stomach from the crazy hours and the greasy eggs you ate at two A. M., and the nervous sleep in some alley where you're worrying about a sergeant catching you and you're; longing for all the normal things people do at that hour like being flaked out in a warm bed with a warm friendly body, you know what? You'll wake up with the hardest diamond cutter you ever had. Try it if you don't believe me."

  "Morning watch, huh? Don't think I'd mind that. How about it, will you go with me?"

  "No, I think you'd be better off going it alone with a new partner. Who knows? Maybe you'll catch one with an MS in abnormal psych."

  Harold Bloomguard thought it over for five seconds and said, "I think I'll stick with you, Sam. We'll just have to come up with another solution for my impotency."

  Then they received a routine radio call to the south end where a black man had thrown a pot of hot soup on his teenage daughter and beaten the mother over the head with the pot lid. But since he was gone and the girl had already been removed to the hospital by ambulance there wasn't much to do but take the report from the mother and phone the hospital for the treatment information on the child.

  After dark they received another routine call, this time on the north end to a small house inhabited by a disheveled white woman, who was barefoot in a torn dress, with three small children literally hanging on her clothing. She lurched from dragging the weight but also from the pint of bourbon she had consumed that afternoon.

  Sam Niles let Harold Bloomguard handle it since somehow Harold always did anyway, excitedly jumping into a conversation with a distraught married couple or the victim of a burglary with every sort of advice, wanted or otherwise. Harold's notebook bulged with the addresses of referral agencies that ostensibly provided a remedy for any malaise Los Angeles had to offer.

  The tired eyed woman had called them to report that her teenage daughter had threatened to run off with a forty-nine year old piano tuner who lived next door. Harold Bloomguard promised to arrange an appointment with juvenile officers at Wilshire Station the next morning, then he advised the mother to try to help police ascertain if she had been taken advantage of by the older man.

  "If she been what?" the woman asked as Sam Niles turned on his flashlight and prepared to descend the porch steps.

  "Taken advantage of," Harold said as Sam was halfway down the walk heading for the radio car.

  The woman nodded dumbly and Harold said, "Well, I'm very glad we could be of service. I certainly hope we can help the young lady get back on the track tomorrow, ma'am, and if there's any way we can expedite matters prior to your appointment, you just call us back and we'll be here at once."

  "Ex-pee-dite?" mumbled the woman as the lassitudinous Sam Niles, hands in his pockets, hoped the little bubblegummer's keys had been well pounded by the piano tuner so she could get out of this house, even to go to the home for unwed mothers.

  "So long, ma'am," Harold said cheerfully as he took off his hat and opened the door of the radio car, turning back to wave at the stooped woman who now had no less than seven children flocked around her on the sagging wooden porch in the dim light of a naked bulb. "By the way, wherever did all these children come from?"

  "From fuckin," yelled the woman, wondering how the little policeman could be so stupid as not to know that.

  "Now you know where they came from, Harold," Sam said as he drove away.

  It was always like this with Harold Bloomguard and always had been. Yet for reasons impossible to explain Sam could not rid himself of the clinging little man any more than the weary woman could rid herself of the clinging children.

  But I didn't fuck to get him, thought Sam Niles. I just got fucked the day I accepted him into my fire team in Nam. And then Sam Niles felt the fear sweep over him as he thought of Vietnam and for a second he actually hated Harold Bloomguard. It always came this way: first fear at the memory and then a split second of incredible hatred which he assumed was for Harold Bloomguard who knew the secret of the cave. And relief for Harold's never having revealed the secret to anyone, for never having mentioned the secret even to Sam Niles. If he'd just bring it up once, thought Sam Niles, but he never did. And that was perhaps the reason he could never rid himself of Harold Bloomguard.

  "You know, Sam, I think it's time I got married," Harold suddenly announced, interrupting Sam's fearful reverie.

  "Anybody I know? Ora Lee maybe? Or Carolina?"

  "Don't be silly, Sam."

  "If it's Ora Lee be sure to rent her out to us once a week for choir practice."

  "I'm serious, Sam," Harold said as Sam Niles winked his headlights at an oncoming car and cruised west on Beverly Boulevard, glancing in store windows, most of which were darkened by now.

  "So who're you going to marry?" Sam asked, not truly interested.

  "I dunno. I haven't met her yet. I wonder what she'll be like?"

  "Just like the girl that married dear old dad," said Sam Niles, thinking it would be rather difficult to find one like the mother Harold described to him, who up until the day he went overseas had twisted the tops off the catsup bottles and pried the lids from the cottage cheese containers, replacing them gently so that Harold would not strain himself when getting something to eat.

  But she was never there to care for him again, after a certain summer afternoon when Harold was in Vietnam and her psychiatrist was on vacation in Martinique and Mrs. Bloomguard decided she was Ann Miller and did a naked tap dance in front of the Pomona courthouse and had to be taken to the screw factory to get rethreaded.

  As they patrolled the nighttime streets and Harold complained that perhaps he should never get married because his mother's insanity might be congenital, Sam Niles was reminded of his own fifteen month marriage which had just been finally dissolved last year.

  His ex-wife Kimberly Cutler Niles, was a tall athletic student he had met in a college night class. She was a blonde
, tawny cat of a girl with daring amber eyes that looked inquisitively and boldly at you. She was bright, articulate, personable. She said Harold Bloomguard was a doll and asked Sam to invite him home to dinner often. And incredibly enough she could cook. Not like a twenty-two year old student wife can cook but like a cook can cook. She was tidy and their little apartment was always immaculate. Harold Bloomguard loved her like a sister. He was ecstatically happy for his best friend, Sam Niles. Kimberly was darling. Sam Niles hated her guts.

  But he didn't hate her at first, that came later. They were probably married three weeks before he started to hate her. But he didn't know that he hated her after three weeks, he just knew that she made him terribly uncomfortable. She was as terrific in the sack as he knew she would be the first night they met in class. She had introduced herself by shaking hands smoothly and firmly and saying, "I knew you were a Taurus. I just love bulls."

  And moments later she was chatting glibly about tennis which interested Sam, saying, "You're a pretty good sized boy, but I'll bet you could get into size thirty-three tennis shorts. My brother left some at my place when he went away to school. Want them?"

  "Sure, I'd like to play with you," Sam said with a hint of a smile so he could withdraw gracefully but she delighted him by saying, "You could probably get into much smaller tennis shorts given the opportunity, couldn't you, Sam?"

  And Sam Niles had a blue veiner going on a diamond cutter and was impulsively married within four months, wondering, as did Kimberly Cutler, how the hell it all happened.

  The first thing Sam Niles didn't like about being married to Kimberly Cutler was having to sleep in the same bed with another human being. It wasn't that Kimberly wasn't carnal and syrupy, she certainly was. But prior to marriage he had seldom had to spend a whole night in a bed with anybody. And early on, Kimberly's doubts were heightened by Sam's saying that he'd like to trade their king size bed for twins.

  "That's unnatural," Kimberly told him as they lay in their king size bed unable to sleep.

  "What's unnatural about it?"

  "Newlyweds should sleep in the same bed, for God's sake."