"Sam, Sam Niles."
"Baxter Slate."
"Okay, guys, glad to have you. Hope you enjoy the two weeks here. Anyways, you can work fruits with the regular team tonight and maybe tomorrow, then you can have some fun on the weekend working a Wilshire Boulevard bar. We got a complaint there's a big game going on in the back room a this cocktail lounge after closing time. Gotta check it out. Give you some front money maybe. See how you operate. Call it Secret Service money. The department is cheap. Cheapest fucking outfit you ever saw. The money's just for flash. You spend as little as you have to and bring the rest back. You lose it or somebody burns you for it, I gotta shoot myself like a Jap general. You don't wanna see old Scuz fall on his sword, do you, Sam?"
"No, Sergeant."
"Scuz."
"Scuz."
"You, Baxter?"
"No, Scuz."
"Okay, boys, then when your partners get here and start your teaching, pay attention to what they tell you. They'll tell you better than me. Just remember a couple things. One is that we work a misdemeanor detail and I don't want any man hurt for a shitty little misdemeanor. Don't get hurt. Got it, boys?"
And as Harold Bloomguard gulped nervously all three young men nodded at Scuz. "And another thing, I'm sorry I gotta give you some a the shitty jobs but we get a vice complaint we gotta investigate it. I wish I could just let you work fun things like gambling and call girls and bookmaking back offices and fancy bars with good drinks, but that usually ain't what we gotta do. So try to have fun but don't get hurt. That's the only rule I got. You let yourself get hurt and I'll break your arm!"
For the next fifteen minutes six regular vice officers straggled into the squad room and said hello to Scuz who continued to befoul the entire room with the cheap cigar. The vice cops introduced themselves all around and worked in their logbooks and vice complaints.
The regular vice cops looked like Hollywood's version of Tripoli buccaneers, Turkish brigands or Viking warriors. One, a black; looked like a Sudanese caravan raider. All were young men, fiercely moustachioed and bearded with enough hair to stuff a mattress. They wore stylishly funky clothes like most young people. Yet beneath it all they were carefully washed and sprayed and powdered. They were so baroque and theatrical they had to be cops. Only Dominic Scuzzi could fool the street people.
"This one here's Harold Bloomguard," Scuz said to his troops. "Look at him. This is what I been trying to tell you guys about how you should look. Ain't nobody gonna make him for the heat, right?"
"Right," answered the Viking.
"Then why don't you guys try to look like him? Why do you wanna look like you walk a beat for Attila the Hun?"
"Scuz, I ain't looked like Harold since I was twelve years old," said a Turkish brigand while Harold blushed at the laughter.
The three loanees were given a further briefing and within an .hour they were heading for their vice cars.
"One more thing I almost forgot," Sergeant Scuzzi said, stopping the squad of men in the doorway. He sat back down, lit a new cigar and said, "You new kids listen. If you go sneaking and peeking and prowling around backyards, you gotta, always pay attention to the size a the dog shit. Got me?"
Then Scuz put his tennis shoes up on the desk and leaned back and puffed while a persistent fly who wanted desperately to light on the vice sergeant's pungent flesh decided to fly from the choking polluted clouds. Fleeing for his very life.
The three new kids on the block found themselves standing in the parking lot just before dark, each with a tiny flashlight the other vice cops lent them since their three, and five cell lights were unwieldy on the vice detail. They waited for each of the three teams to pick one of them and were totally bewildered when no one did.
As Pete Zoony, a loose limbed vice cop with a woolly dust-colored hairdo and a Fu Manchu mustache got in his car he turned to the three loanees and said, "We're not being unfriendly, it's just that Scuz is gonna come slipping and sliding out the door in a couple seconds. He can't relax when there's new guys around. Thinks you'll get killed if he don't break you in personally. Tomorrow night you'll work with us and we'll get better acquainted. Oh, oh. Here he comes."
And the three choirboys turned to see Scuz shuffling through the door, stepping on the frayed ends of his,shoelaces and scratching his balls, which was easy to do given the shiny baggy gabardine pants ready to wear through. Then he banged his little flashlight on the heel of his hairy hand, puffed a cloud of smoke into the summer breeze and scuttled across the parking lot, just stepping back in time to keep a black and white from running over him.
The officer driving, who was Roscoe Rules, said to Whaddayamean Dean, "Fucking janitors they hire these days look like goat shit! Oughtta make that prick clean up or fire him!"
As Scuz reached the three choirboys and his teams of regular vice cops who sat grinning in their cars, he said to Pete Zoony, "Don't mind if I take the new kids out, do you, Pete? Just for tonight. I ain't got nothing to do anyways except the progress report for our psycho captain. Can't seem to think a any good lies to put in there tonight."
"No, we don't mind, Scuz," Pete Zoony said. "Just tell us where you're gonna take em so we don't bunch up in the same place."
"Well, we got that three-eighteen about the shithouse up there in the department store."
"Yeah."
"And I might try this wimpy little kid here out on the whores on Western. Don't he look terrific?" And Scuz threw a heavy arm around the wimpy little kid and hugged him.
Five minutes later, Sergeant Scuzzi was driving north on La Brea in a four door, five year old Plymouth which looked every bit like a detective car and disappointed the choirboys.
Sam Niles sat in the back seat with Baxter Slate and Harold sat in front, nervously blowing spit bubbles off his tongue which plinked on the dashboard as he scratched the strawberry rash on the back of his neck with a little penknife. Sam Niles decided then that Harold and Scuz would make perfect partners.
"This ain't much of an undercover car, is it, boys?" Scuz remarked as they bumped and pounded over dips in the asphalt.
"Not much," Baxter Slate said. He looked at Scuz in disbelief but not without affection from time to time.
"Cheap outfit, boys. I mean we work for a cheap outfit. Be amazed how little Secret Service money I get. End up spending my own bread more often than not. Think we can go in the bar and nurse one drink for three hours? Shit, they know we're cops when they see how fucking stingy we are."
"Where we going first, Scuz?" Harold asked, perspiring because the sun had not yet set and it was muggy for Los Angeles. And because he was very nervous.
"Boys, I gotta take you to a trap first off tonight. And I gotta apologize which I don't like to do cause I always feel a cop shouldn't have to apologize for doing his job. But the truth is -and don't tell your lieutenant old Scuz told you this when you go back to patrol-but the truth is that most of a vice cop's job is just public relations. See, we can say we're protecting the city's morals and point to statistics to prove it, but fact is we ain't doing much a anything. So you might say, Scuz, what the hell we doing it for? And I say, boys, it's part a the game. Every business has its PR department where they manufacture bullshit, right? General Motors got it. U. S. Steel got it. AT&T got it. For sure the White House got it and City Hall. We can tell all the folks who pay our salary that we're guarding the morals a the citizens from the degenerates that wanna pay money to suck, fuck or gamble with someone they ain't married to outta the privacy a their own bedroom. You only work this vice and detail for eighteen months and then you're out. I say it's a little break from routine for me so I work it but I ain't got no illusions about cleaning up maggots. In the first place how do I know I ain't just a maggot myself, you stand back and look at the whole picture in general?"
The choirboys glanced at one another and gave Scuz no argument.
"So anyways that's my philosophy about vice work. And you kids're gonna work for me for a couple weeks. And since you'
re doing a job that ain't gonna help nobody anyways, I just don't want you to get hurt, see? So let's say you run into some six foot six fruit with nineteen inch arms who's a foot fetishist. And he buys a pair a black satin shoes from the shoe department a this store I'm taking you to, and takes the shoes into the shitter where he pulls out a can a whipped cream which he shoots all over the shoes. And then he stands there and licks the whipped cream off. Whadda you do about it, seeing as how you're gonna be behind a wall looking through a screen into the John and protecting the public morals?"
"Huh?" said Harold Bloomguard.
"I asked, whaddaya gonna do about this weird guy?"
"Well, I dunno, Scuz," Harold said, blowing a spit bubble while Sam Miles toyed with his mustache and shook his head disgustedly, as Baxter Slate's wide smile grew wider with affection for Scuz.
"Harold, my boy," Scuz said. "First place, I gave you a hint. I said the weirdo has nineteen inch arms!"
"Oh, I see!" said Harold. "Shine him on. Pass him by."
"You got it!" Scuz said, driving only fifteen miles per hour which was driving Sam Mies to distraction. "Course there ain't no misdemeanor here in the first place. So happens that some guys like to eat whipped cream off black satin shoes. Just wish they'd do it home and we wouldn't get no calls about it but thing is they like to do it in public. Anyways there ain't no law against it I know, so you just hope he gets full a whipped cream in a hurry and gets the hell out before someone calls the station and the station turns the problem over to the vice squad. Ready for another hypothetical?"
"Sure, Scuz," grinned Baxter Slate, accepting a cigarette from the lethargic Sam Miles who was wondering how it was he had wanted to work vice.
"Okay, you're in the trap, peeking through the screen and some dude walks in the John and he pulls down his jeans and there inside the underwear he carries a toothbrush and a feather. And his dick's all wrapped in rubber bands and rags to make it bulge outta his tight pants. And he sits down on the pot and reaches down in the toilet water and after he unwraps it he starts splashing cold water up on his dong. And he brushes it off with the toothbrush. Then he pulls out the feather and tickles his balls and when all this is done he's able to take a leak, which he does sitting down, and then he leaves. Any violation there?"
"None," Baxter Slate said.
"Okay, what if there ain't no door on any a the toilets, which there ain't because the manager a this department store is trying to discourage the fruits who like to meet here and poke their cocks through glory holes and all that. Now there he is, no door, just side walls around the toilet and everybody walks in can see him, including little kids."
"Well." Baxter hesitated.
"And just to mix you boys up a little, let's say that our vice complaint which brought us here in the first place is from some lady lives near here and her kids always come use this rest room on the way home from school, and she says they got propositioned by some grown up fruits and don't her kids got no rights?"
"Well." Baxter Slate hesitated.
"Sure, if the fruits didn't get a naughty kick outta doing it in public Johns because it's guilt and sin and fun and anal obsession and everything all mixed up and it ain't the same in a private room, well then we wouldn't have to come here at all. But that ain't the case and it's pretty hard to tell the lady her kids just have to put up with some dude propositioning them or blowing some other dude in front a them in the shit-house, ain't it, Harold?"
"I guess so, Scuz."
"Agree, Baxter?"
"I guess. Seems as though there should be some other solution."
"Seems like," Scuz said, "but there ain't. Not for us. We got the problem and the complaint. We gotta do something and that something is to make at least one arrest so when the lady calls back cause some other fruit tried to grope her kid, we can show her that we took action on her last complaint. See, boys, there's just a million problems in this world that there ain't no solutions to and cops get most a those kind."
"So how would you handle the guy who doesn't bother any children and just does his number with the toothbrush and feather?" asked Sam Niles whose pose was always boredom whether or not he was bored.
"I shoot him," Scuz answered.
"You what?" Harold exclaimed.
"I shoot him. With this," Scuz said, pulling a pink plastic water pistol from the pocket of his baggy gabardines. "I just shoot him through the screen where I'm peeking. First it confuses him, then it scares him soon's he realizes where it's coming from. See, I don't add to his thrill by bracing him and threatening him or any a that shit. Just makes him wanna come back some more. Remember, guilt and punishment and stuff from his kiddy days is partly the reason he has to do all this in a public place. So I just shoot him with my gun. Pretty soon he don't know who or what's behind that wall. Sometimes he yells, 'Who're you? You store security? You a cop? Who's shooting me?'"
"What do you say?" asked Harold.
"Nothing. I just shoot him again. It's humiliating. It degrades him in a way he can't stand. See, he might wanna degrade himself with the stuff he does in a public shitter but he can't take the kind a humiliation I give him. I'm saying to him with my water gun that his little act ain't worth no more than a few squirts a water. That he can't stand. I've seen em go out in tears and never come back. At least not to that rest room and that's all I can worry about at the moment. Make any sense?"
"Maybe it does at that," Baxter Slate said as Scuz lit another cigar and turned on Wilshire Boulevard.
"See, I don't wanna get in a big fight with these guys. I don't wanna hurt them but I sure don't wanna have them hurt me or my boys. So I spend most a my time figuring out how I can satisfy the citizens that make the vice complaints and keep my boys from getting hurt at the same time. I know most vice supervisors wouldn't agree with me but I don't think it's too bad a way to run a vice squad."
"Not bad at all, Scuz," grinned Baxter Slate, rolling down the window to let out some of the smoke.
"Reason we gotta work this department store tonight is they stay open till nine, and some fruit picks up some cat in the rest room couple weeks ago and offers him ten bucks to let him give the guy a headjob which is okay except he don't have no money after he does it. And to keep from getting his skull caved in he agrees to let the guy buy ten dollars worth a merchandise on his credit card. And the butch guy goes out and buys a hundred dollar suit and tells the fruit if he don't sign for it he'll do a fandango on his gourd with his boots. So then the fruit comes and complains about the cowboy. So I say to the guys in the dicks' bureau, you got an extortion, maybe a credit card hustle, you ain't got no vice squad case. But our captain says, 'I think you better take a three-eighteen, Sergeant, and let your vice boys make an arrest there.' See, he always calls me 'Sergeant' when he's on the rag which is most a the time. So anyways we gotta work the trap in the John and I hope we make a pinch tonight so I can put this vice complaint to bed. I don't like to make my guys sit around smelling shit" A few minutes later the battered vice car bumped into the parking lot at the rear of the large Wilshire Boulevard department store where shoppers were carrying bundles and fighting each other for parking places and stealing packages out of each other's cars, as smoggy summer darkness finally fell on Los Angeles.
As Scuz led the three choirboys into the building and to the storage room which was attached to the rest room on the second floor, Baxter Slate spotted a man sitting on the floor of the corridor leading from the rest room. A stack of ten newspapers was on the floor beside him. His legs were folded under him like hinged sticks. His right hand was a claw, his left was worse. He scratched at the wall like a mutilated insect, unable to gain his feet. He was a forty year old newspaper vendor and several times a day he had to leave his newsstand to use the rest room in the department store. He had cerebral palsy but could usually get to the rest room and back to his chair quite easily, often selling a paper or two along the way. Tonight he was suffering from a summer cold which weakened him like an attack of pneu
monia would disable a healthy man.
Scuz turned around and saw two of the choirboys looking down the hallway at the man. Sam Niles wanted to help the man stand up but hated to attract attention to himself and make the other policemen think he was a do-gooder. Baxter Slate wanted to help the man stand up but was afraid the man would interpret his gesture as patronizing and snarl him away with righteous indignation. So both Sam and Baxter pretended not to see the man lolling on the floor and averted their eyes self-consciously. And felt guilt because they were unable to help.
Just then Harold Bloomguard saw the man. He didn't think much of anything. He just said, "Oh," walked down the corridor, took the palsied newspaper vendor by the arm and started to raise him up.
Then Scuz, who wondered why his parade had slowed, turned and saw Harold Bloomguard. He didn't inteliectualize either. He walked past Sam and Baxter and joined Harold who almost had the man to his feet.
"Stumbled, huh?" Scuz said, bending over and picking up the fallen man with one arm as easily as a doll, while he gathered up the stack of newspapers with the other. "Slippery goddamn floors in this store. Someone always going on their ass."
He half carried the man to a bench near the rear door and seated him there with the stack of papers beside him as the man perspired and panted, unable to speak.
"Got the late edition?" Scuz asked, taking a coin from his pocket and putting it in the lap of the man as he took a paper from the stack and folded it into the back pocket of his gabardines. "Feel okay, partner? Want me to take you anywheres?"
The man managed a twisted smile and shook his head, and Scuz nodded, saying, "See you around, partner." Then he shuffled off down the hall with Harold Bloomguard at his side and the other choirboys trailing.
As Scuz passed an old man people-watching on a bench by the elevator, he said, "Here you go, Dad," dropping the paper beside the threadbare pensioner. "It's a late edition. I ain't got time to read it."
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