the Choirboys (1996)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Oscar Mobley was admitted, later had a sanity hearing wherein he steadfastly refused to tell anyone why he painted his car, himself, and Mrs. Jasper red, and went to a state hospital for six months where he refused to tell anyone else his secret.

  After his release he moved to a new neighborhood, took a job delivering throwaway circulars, did it beautifully for eight-days, then painted his boss and his boss' wife red and was recommitted to the state hospital. But all this happened long after Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard took him to Unit Three, in time to miss code seven though they were starving, and just in time to meet the Moaning Man.

  The call came just after 11:00 P. M. "Seven-Adam-Twenty-nine, shot fired vicinity of Ninth and New Hampshire."

  "Rampart Division," Sam Niles said to Harold Bloomguard who nodded, picked up the mike and said, "Seven-A-Twenty-nine reporting that the call is in Rampart Division."

  "Seven-Adam-Twenty-nine, stand by," said the radio operator as she checked with one of the policemen who supervise the girls and assign the call tickets.

  "Goddamn Rampart cars've been pulling this shit too often lately," Sam said to Harold who didn't mind handling the call in someone else's division because Sam had been exceedingly quiet and Harold was getting as bored as Sam always was.

  "If we have to handle this one, next time a Rampart car gets a call in our area we'll just let the bastards handle it," Sam said. "Seven-Adam-Twenty-nine, handle the call in Rampart Division," said the radio operator. "No Rampart units available."

  "Seven-Adam-Twenty-nine, roger on the call," Harold Bloomguard said as Sam Niles pushed up his drooping steel rimmed glasses and threw a cigarette out the window saying, "They're probably all over on Alvarado eating hamburgers, the lazy pricks."

  Sam drove slowly on the seedy residential streets, mostly a white Anglo district, but with some black and Latin residents. He shined the spotlights on the front of homes and apartments, hoping not to find anyone who may have phoned about shots being fired. Sam Niles wanted to go to an east Hollywood drive-in and eat cherry pie and drink coffee and try to score with a waitress he knew.

  "There it is," Harold said as Sam's spotlight beam lighted a chinless withered man in a bathrobe who waited in front of a two story stucco apartment house. The door glass had been broken so many times the panes were replaced by plywood and cardboard.

  Sam took his time parking, and Harold was already across the narrow street by the time Sam gathered up his flashlight and put his cigarette pack in his pocket and locked the car door so someone didn't have fun slashing the upholstery or stealing the shotgun from the rack.

  "Heard a shot," the old man said. His eyes were a quiet brown like a dog's.

  "You live here?"

  "Yep."

  "You the manager?"

  "Nope, but I got a passkey. I help out Charlie Bates. He's the manager."

  "Why do we need a key?" Harold asked.

  "Shot came from up there."

  And the man in the bathrobe pointed a yellow bony finger up to the front window on the second floor where a gray muslin drape flapped rhythmically as the gusts of wind blew and sucked through the black hole of an open window on what had become a chilled and cloudy night.

  "Give us the passkey, we'll have a look," Sam Niles said and later he wondered if he felt something then.

  It seemed he did. He was to recall distinctly wishing that a Rampart unit would feel guilty that Wilshire was handling their calls and perhaps come driving down Ninth Street to relieve them.

  The stairs creaked as they climbed and the whole building reeked, dank and sour from urine and moldy wool carpet on the stairs. They stood one on each side of the door and Sam knocked.

  The dying tree outside, the last on the block, rattled in the wind which rushed through the narrow hallway upstairs. The building was surprisingly quiet for one housing eighty-five souls. Sam reached up and unscrewed the only bulb at their end of the hall, and said, "We better be in the dark."

  "Might be some drunk sitting in there playing with a gun," Harold nodded and both policemen drew their service revolvers.

  Sam knocked again and the sound echoed through the empty hall which had no floor carpet, only old wooden floors caked with grime which could never be removed short of sanding the wood a quarter of an inch down. A mustard colored cat, displaying the indifference Sam Niles usually feigned, watched from the windowsill.

  The wind blew and it was a cold wind, yet Sam was to remember later that he was sweating. He tasted the salt running through his mustache into the dimple of his upper lip. Then they heard it.

  At first Sam Niles thought it was the wind. Then he saw the look on Harold Bloomguard's face in the dark hallway when he moved into a patch of moonlight. He knew that Harold heard it and that it wasn't the wind.

  Then they heard it again. The Moaning Man was saying: "Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm. Mmmmmuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh."

  Then Sam was sweating in earnest and Harold's pale little face was glistening in the swatch of moonlight as he pressed himself against the wall, gun in his left hand. Sam Niles turned the key slowly and then kicked the door open with his toe and jumped back against the wall.

  "Mmmmm," said the Moaning Man. "Uuuuhhhhh. Mmmmmuuuuuhhhhh."

  "Jesus Christ motherfucker son of a bitch!" Sam Niles, like many men, swore incoherently when he was frightened.

  The moans sounded like cattle lowing. They came from inside. Inside in the darkness.

  Finally Sam Niles moved. He dropped to his knees and with his flashlight in his left hand and gun in the right, crawled into the tiny apartment ready to switch on the flashlight and ready to shoot. He crept toward the bedroom which was just behind the cluttered kitchen.

  Sam Niles smelled blood. And he felt the flesh wriggling on his rib cage and on his back and up the sides of his dripping neck into his temple when the Moaning Man said it again. But it was loud this time and plaintive: "Mmmmm. Uuuuuhhhhh. Mmmmmuuuuuhhhhh!" Then Harold Bloomguard, tiptoeing through the kitchen behind Sam who was on his knees, accidentally dropped his flashlight and the beam switched on when it hit the floor and Sam Niles cursed and jumped to his feet and leaped to the doorway, his gun following the beam from his own flashlight in the darkness. And he met the Moaning Man.

  He was sitting up in bed, his back pressed to the wall. He was naked except for undershorts. Every few seconds the wind would snap the dirty ragged drapes and the moonlight would wash his chalky body which otherwise lay in the slash of light. He held a 9 mm. Luger in his left hand and had used it for the first and last time by placing it under his chin, gouging the soft flesh between the throat and the jawbone and pulling the trigger.

  The top of the head of the Moaning Man was on the bed and on the floor beside the bed. The wall he leaned against was spotted with sticky bits of brain and drops of blood. Most of his face was intact, except it was crisscrossed with rivulets of blood in the moonlight, filling his eyes with blood. The most incredible thing of all was not that the Moaning Man was able to make sounds, it was that the gun he had killed himself with was clenched tightly in a fist across his body at port arms. He moved it back and forth in rhythm with the moans.

  "Oh my God oh my God - oh my God," Sam Niles said as Harold Bloomguard gaped slackjawed at the Moaning Man whose gun hand was swaying, swaying, back and forth with the snapping of the drapes in the wind as he said: "Mmmmmm. Uuuuuhhhhhh. Mmmmmuuuuuhhhhh."

  And Sam Niles knew that he never would have done what the terrified Harold Bloomguard did next, which was to walk slowly across that room, watching the Luger swaying in the hand of the Moaning Man, the pieces of skull crackling under his leather soles, crackling with each step, until he stood beside the bed.

  Sam Niles would forever smell the blood and hear the wind and the snapping drapes and Harold's shoes crackling on the fragments of bone and Harold's teeth clicking together frightfully as he moved a trembling hand toward the Luger which the Moaning Man held in front, swaying to and fro as he said: "Mmmmm. Uuuuuhhhh. Mmmmuuuuuhhhtherr!" />
  And then Harold Bloomguard spoke to the Moaning Man. He said, "Now now now. Hush now. I'm right here. You're not alone."

  Harold Bloomguard gripped the wrist and hand of the Moaning Man and the moaning stopped instantly. The fist relaxed, dropping the pistol on the bed. The bloody eyes slid shut and overflowed. The Moaning Man died without a sound.

  Both policemen remained motionless for a long moment before Harold Bloomguard controlled his shaking and said, "He was calling his mother, is all. Why do so many call their mother?"

  "He was dead!" Sam Niles said. "He was dead before we saw him!"

  "He only needed the touch of a human being," said Harold Bloomguard. "I was so scared. So scared!"

  Sam Niles turned and left Harold in the darkness with the Moaning Man and called for a detective to take the death report and he did not speak to Harold for the remainder of the watch and demanded a choir practice when they changed into civilian clothes later that night. It was a bitter night for choir practice and only half the choirboys showed up. But Carolina Moon was there so it wasn't too bad.

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Sergeant Dominic Scuzzi.

  With a galloping heartbeat Harold Bloomguard entered the opened door of the vice squad office on the first night of his vice assignment. Harold was twenty-five minutes early. He wore a conservative gray suit, white button-down shirt, a paisley tie and traditional wing tip brogues."

  The office was open but empty when Harold arrived. It looked different from the detective squad room. It was much smaller. And more cluttered. Covering one wall were three large street maps dotted with multicolored pins. Certain streets were covered with green pins signifying prostitution activity. Other streets were sporadically dotted with pins marking suspected bookmaking locations: cashrooms in the southerly black neighborhoods, phone spots in the northerly white neighborhoods. Cocktail lounges were marked where handbooks and agents operated.

  There was a painted motto over the door. It said: "What you say here, What you see here, What you hear here, Let it stay here, When you leave here."

  Harold Bloomguard read that motto with shining eyes. He shook back his thin, ginger-colored hair and smiled enchantedly. For a dreamy moment he sipped from a frothy goblet in Bombay, Macao, Port Said: white linen suits, narrow teeming passages, mingled aromas of spice, rich dried fruit, dusky succulent women, clawing danger. The mystique of the secret agent enveloped this room.

  Just then a swarthy unshaven overweight man of fifty in a dirty short sleeved dress shirt shuffled through the door in run over sneakers. He looked Harold up and down and said, "You don't look big enough to fight, fuck or run a footrace. You one a the new kids on the block?"

  "I'm. I'm. are you a policeman?"

  "I'm a sergeant. I run the nightwatch." The man shambled to a desk, rummaged through piles of papers until he found a cigar, belched three times before he offered his hand and said, "Name's Dom Scuzzi. You can call me Scuz. You Slate, Niles or Bloomguard?"

  "Bloomguard. Sergeant."

  "I said call me Scuz. Ain't no formality in the vice squad. Not since I got rid a that prick, Lieutenant Cotton-Balls Klingham. I'll never understand how he got on the squad. Cotton-Balls. One hundred percent sterile like they say on the box. Everything about him was sterile, especially his conversation."

  Sergeant Scuzzi paused long enough to puff on the cigar and belch once or twice before continuing. "Anyways, we got rid a him. Can't tell you how I did it. But I'll always be beholding to one a your nightwatch bluesuits, name a Spermwhale Whalen, for giving me the idea. How long you been at Wilshire?"

  "Almost two years. You know, Sarge. Scuz, I've seen you around but."

  "That's Scuz. Don't rhyme with fuzz. Rhymes with loose. That's Scooose. As in scuse a me."

  "Scooose."

  "That's it! I ain't been here at this station too long."

  "Yeah, I've seen you around, but I always thought you were."

  "A janitor?"

  "Yeah, I guess so."

  "I don't mind. My old man's a janitor. Supported nine kids pushing a broom. Never talked a word a English, hardly. I don't mind looking like a janitor. The other two loaners look good as you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You look good. I mean good. How tall're you?"

  "Five eight."

  "Weigh about a hundred fifty?"

  "Just about."

  "How the hell you get on the department?"

  "I stretched and ate bananas and stuff."

  "You look good. Here." Scuz pulled open the drawer of his desk, propped his tennis shoes up in front of him, leaned back, puffed his cigar and said, "Try em on."

  Harold picked up the horn rimmed glasses, held them to his eyes and said, "They're clear glass."

  "Sure. Makes you look even less like a cop if that's possible. You're gonna be a real whore operator, my boy. Glad you wore a suit tonight. You're definitely the suit and tie type. Tell em you're an accountant. Here."

  And Scuz reached back in the drawer, rummaged through it for a few seconds and found a packet of business cards which said, "Krump, Krump and Leekly, Certified Public Accountants."

  "Any broads get cute with you trying to guess if you're a cop, just lay a card on her. Tell her it's your private business phone and she can call you during business hours. That's our straight-in line here. We got a girl works here on the daywatch who's good at conning callers. If a whore won't go for you tonight she'll go for you tomorrow night after she checks you out with our girl."

  "I don't know anything about vice, Scuz," Harold said, relaxing in the chair in front of the unshaven sergeant who reached inside his shirt and scratched his belly which was almost as big as Spermwhale's, and puffed the cigar blissfully with his eyes closed.

  "Now don't go worrying. what's your first name?"

  "Harold."

  "Harold, don't worry about nothing. I never let my coppers get hurt, specially not a loanee like you who I gotta return to the patrol lieutenant in a couple weeks in as good a shape as I borrowed him. There ain't nothing to working whores. They offer you a sex act for money. Got it? Sex, money. You in the service?"

  "Marines."

  "Overseas?"

  "Vietnam."

  "All right," Scuz nodded, chewing his cigar, leaning back in the chair, hands behind his head. "Overseas the broads got it made. Fucky sucky, five bucks. See, they say what every whore said in war or peace for five thousand years. Sex, money. Now, these whores today know that there's a thing called entrapment, which means you can't plant an evil idea in their heads, as if that was possible. So in effect they're gonna wanna say sucky fucky and let you say the price. Or they're gonna say the price and let you say sucky fucky. Get it?"

  "I think so."

  "It's just a game but I don't wanna see you perjure yourself for a Shitty little whore pinch so you play it straight. Figure out a way to make her say the whole thing: Sucky fucky, five bucks. But of course it ain't five bucks, it's twenty on the street. And she ain't gonna say sucky fucky usually. She's gonna say French or half and half or party, and all these words been construed by the black robed pussies that sit on the bench to be words with sexual connotations. So soon as she says one a these words and she mentions money, Boom! Bring her down. Hook her up. You got a legal pinch. Got it?"

  "God, I hope so," said Harold.

  "Well, just don't entrap them. Course you're gonna run into guys who say, bullshit, she says sucky fucky and gets cute about the price, I pull out the iron and zoom her. I say no. Nice and legal."

  "Sucky fucky, five bucks," said Harold.

  "You got it, kid, I knew you was smart!" Scuz said, moving the cigar from the right side of his mouth to the left. "Course she might throw you a curve."

  "Like how?"

  "She might say, 'I think you look like a cop. If you ain't a cop, take out a twenty dollar bill and wrap it around your cock and wave it at me.' One did that to me once."

  "What'd you do?".

  "I only had a ten,"
said Scuz, closing his eyes, enveloping himself in a shroud of cigar smoke which was starting to choke Harold Bloomguard. "But don't worry about these brain teasers. Don't happen too much. Most girls're just gonna say."

  "Sucky fucky, five bucks."

  "I like you, kid," said Scuz, "Wanna cigar?"

  "No thanks, Scuz," Harold said, thinking about inviting the vice sergeant to choir practice, just as Sam Niles and Baxter Slate came through, the door.

  Scuz opened his eyes, peeked through the cloud of smoke which hung over him and shook his head disapprovingly at the two strapping six footers, at their hair styled just over the ears, but not long enough to offend the station captain totally. Baxter wore tie dyed jeans, a denirri jacket and a red velvet shirt. Sam Niles wore a buckskin shirt over a tank top, brushed denims and Wallabees. His neat brown mustache did not drop down around the lip far enough to anger the same station captain and his sideburns did not quite flare out into mutton-chops. The steel rimmed goggles did hot help mitigate the whole picture.

  "Shit!" Scuz said, fanning the smoke away from his face. "You look just like two healthy, clean cut, twenty-six year old studs, which is what you are. You look like young cops. Why can't you look sick and puny like him?" And Scuz pointed to Harold Bloomguard who decided not to invite him to choir practice.

  "This is a sergeant," said Harold Bloomguard to Sam and Baxter in case they wouldn't believe it.

  "Just call me Scuz," said Scuz.

  "Anything wrong with the way we look?" Sam Niles asked.

  "No, you can't help it," Scuz said. "It wouldn't even help if I made you funky. You just got copper written all over you. It's okay, you guys can work in the trap."

  "Trap?" said Baxter Slate.

  "Fruits," Scuz said, dropping his feet to the floor and remembering they had not shaken hands, offering his hairy paw to both policemen. "What's your first names?"