The Glitter Dome

by Joseph Wambaugh

  One of the policewomen who did it was a former partner of Martin Welborn. She was a passive personality, now that he thought of it. She was shy and beautiful. She had enormous eyes. Just like Danny Meadows.

  “Will you snap out of it, Marty, for chrissake,” Al Mackey said to him. “Marty!”

  “Huh?”

  A skater brazenly sailed between them, saying, “Hop back, Jack.”

  “I’m starving to death,” Al Mackey said. “Let’s go get something to eat. Jesus, you were just standing there with that thousand-yard stare again. You don’t even hear anybody when they’re talking to you. Jesus Christ, Marty!”

  “I’m sorry, Al,” Martin Welborn said. “I was just thinking …”

  “Lemme guess. You figured out how I can turn this Nigel St. Claire ballbreaker into a suicide. Tell me, quick. How?”

  “That’s not at all what I was thinking.” Martin Welborn smiled. “Those skaters told me something interesting.”

  “I like the guy with the checkerboard hair the best.” Al Mackey snorted. “I saw him on Batman once.”

  “They told me some things,” Martin Welborn said. “Al, there’s someone who might know what Nigel St. Claire was doing in this parking lot the night he died.”

  8

  Gloria La Marr

  Poor old Cal Greenberg was doing everyone’s work today. Just his luck to come in the squadroom when everybody was out jerking off. All the brass was at some goddamn retirement luncheon for a commander in the valley. The sex detail, Ozzie Moon and Thelma Bernbaum, get sick on the same day and have to go home. (A likely frigging story!) Everyone but the chief of police and Walter Cronkite knew that Ozzie and Thelma spent more time together wrestling with her panty girdle in Griffith Park than they ever spent working on their cases. Some sex detail. They were qualified experts, all right.

  And then two bluesuits had to go and bring in a bubblegummer. “I ain’t no kiddy cop,” poor old Cal Greenberg moaned. “Can’t you put him somewheres till somebody else comes in?”

  “Sure, Sarge,” said Buckmore Phipps. “I can drop the little turd off the Capitol Records Building, you want me to.”

  “I can dump the little turd on the Hollywood Freeway, you want me to,” said Gibson Hand.

  Meanwhile the little turd, a twelve-year-old cookie bandit named Zorro Garcia, sat down and decided it was a toss-up between the big white cop and the big black cop as to which one would be likely to keep the vow they both made to grind him up in the big cement mixer over by the Cahuenga Hardware Store.

  But it became readily apparent to Zorro Garcia that the detective had more authority than the two street monsters and that he had more or less slid in safe at home. Zorro Garcia was a peewee member of the Black Spider Gang. When he was old enough he hoped to be a cherry, then a cutdown, then finally, after he’d been shot and stabbed ten times and was too old to fight, a veterano.

  As with many barrio youngsters, his buzzword was barely. Zorro Garcia decided to flex his macho little muscles with an opening statement to poor old Cal Greenberg: “Sir, these officers barely advised me of my rights. And I barely had time to pay for the Life Savers. And I barely got in the store when this dude started hassling me. And he barely gimme a chance to talk. I couldn’t barely say nothing. I don’t think the dude likes Met-sicans. Cause I go to him, I go: ‘Do you like Met-sicans?’ And he goes, ‘Not too much.’ So then I just barely made up my mind.”

  Poor old Cal Greenberg sighed and leaned forward over the table, stretching his suspenders, and said, “What, may I ask, did you just barely decide to do?”

  “I barely decided to file a class action lawsuit for all Met-sicans in the Black Spiders against that store and against the Los Angeles Police Department.”

  “How old are you?” poor old Cal Greenberg asked.

  “Twelve. Barely.”

  “Why are you a cookie bandit?” poor old Cal Greenberg asked. “Are you hungry?”

  “I was. I ain’t now.”

  Buckmore Phipps sat down at the vacant table of the sex detail and absently leafed through a book of photographs, hoping to find some shots of naked women.

  Gibson Hand stuck three sticks of gum in his mouth and said, “Zorro goes in the gud-damn market every day and pulls the same scam.” Then Gibson Hand produced a beer opener and a tablespoon which he had confiscated from the cookie bandit. “He roams through that store and eats about a thousand bucks worth a cupcakes and ice cream, and especially Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies cause he’s got expensive tastes. And then he washes it down with about two cases a Seven-Up and then comes burpin and fartin through the checkstand with his little belly poochin out and spends a few dimes on some Life Savers.”

  “Only reason the dumb shits at the checkstands ever catch these cookie bandits is they eat so much they turn chartreuse and kinda stand out in the crowd,” Buckmore Phipps added.

  And the little outlaw logged that one away in his book of experience. Don’t be a pig and turn weird colors. It’s quality, not quantity.

  “Oh, I wish you wouldn’t do these things,” poor old Cal Greenberg said. “Because I’m too old to play like a kiddy cop. Tell me, do you do well in school?”

  “Sure,” Zorro Garcia said. “Joo think I want to grow up to be a co …” And then he stopped and looked at Buckmore Phipps’ jaws tighten and Gibson Hand’s nostrils flare. “Joo think I want to grow up to be a … convict or something?”

  “If I let you go home, do you promise not to go in that store and barely eat half a ton of groceries again?” poor old Cal Greenberg asked. It was the music. When In the Mood and Tuxedo Junction were on the Hit Parade, nobody went into stores and gobbled a thousand bucks worth of chocolate chip cookies.

  “I don’t get to go to Juvenile Hall?” the cookie bandit cried dejectedly. All the midgets and tinys in the Black Spiders had been to the Hall. Most of the pee wees even! It was getting embarrassing.

  “If I do send you to Juvenile Hall will you promise not to go in that store and eat a ton of groceries?” poor old Cal Greenberg asked.

  “I’ll think it over,” the cookie bandit said. “I wooden mind a weekend in the Hall.”

  “And we get to take you there, you little turd,” Buckmore Phipps leered, and the bandit decided then and there who Buck-more Phipps reminded him of: that dude on The Incredible Hulk. The green one. “I don’t think I want to go to Juvenile Hall after all,” the cookie bandit said. “I won’t go in that store no more.”

  Poor old Cal Greenberg was old enough to know that life is, after all, one big compromise. He settled. “Okay, it’s a deal. We’re gonna let you go home.”

  “Home? Home? Gud-damn!” Gibson Hand roared, jumping to his feet and towering over the now quivering cookie bandit, who gaped up at that snarling black face. “Home, my ass! I wanna take this little turd over to the Cahuenga Hardware Store. And grind him up in the cement mixer until he’s taco meat! And put him in a manure bag and send him to those wetback farmworkers to spread on all that boycotted lettuce. I wonder how that spic prick Cesar Chavez would like that?” Then he lowered his scowling face until they were nose to nose. “And every … fuckin … time I eat a tostada I could think a this little turd when I grind up that lettuce in my teeth!”

  Poor old Cal Greenberg knew that the trembling cookie bandit hadn’t a clue as to who the hell Cesar Chavez was, but the fact that the street monster was scaring the cupcakes out of him was good enough. “There’s just one more thing,” the detective added. “If I let you go home, you also gotta promise not to pursue a class action lawsuit against the police department. We got enough troubles these days.”

  And while that further condition was being considered, the door burst open, and Schultz and Simon came thundering in with a much bigger problem. “Greenberg, are you the acting watch commander today?”

  “I guess so,” poor old Cal Greenberg moaned. The only reason he hadn’t taken his thirty-year pension long ago was that he’d have to be home all the time with his sec
ond wife, and not be able to sneak off to the senior citizens’ dances and fool around with his first wife, who had turned into a firecracker after she dumped him.

  “This here’s Gloria La Marr,” Schultz said. “And we got a big problem for ya.”

  Their problem was a big one all right, about six foot six. Gloria La Marr was a transsexual whom Schultz and Simon had just extradited from Nevada as a favor for the vacationing robbery team. She was a natural blonde (she claimed) and had good-sized breast implants, but not nearly big enough to go with her height. She did, however, have excellent legs, and Schultz, who was six foot five himself, had told Gloria La Marr on the airplane that he always looked for nice pins on tall girls and found them very seldom. Gloria La Marr had blushed and asked Schultz if he’d order her another Bloody Mary from the stewardess, and Simon sat across the aisle, squeezing his 280 pounds into an economy class seat, and decided that Schultz should retire on a medical pension now that he had gone fruitcake.

  But even Simon had to admit one thing: Gloria La Marr did have a groovy pair of wheels.

  The problem was where to book her. And when Schultz escorted Gloria La Marr out of the squadroom and down the hall to the women’s restroom, it was heaped on poor old Cal Greenberg.

  “I don’t see no problem,” poor old Cal Greenberg said to Simon, as the elephantine detective took off his plaid sportcoat, scratched his wrinkled crotch, and gave his crewcut a massage to return the circulation after the miserable plane ride.

  “It’s a problem, Cal,” Simon whispered, making sure that Schultz and Gloria La Marr were well out of earshot. “The first problem came when we went to the airport. Gloria refused to fly unless she could wear that black evening gown and Dolly Parton wig!”

  “I think the dress is rather attractive,” poor old Cal Greenberg shrugged. Age. Wisdom. Compromise.

  “Yeah, well how would you like to lay over for two hours in Vegas with Gloria La Marr, and everybody staring at ya? And the airlines, a course, won’t let you handcuff prisoners, and the airport security won’t let you make no fuss when Gloria La Marr has to go to the john, and you don’t know which john! How would you like to make those decisions?”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Everything Gloria demanded, is what we did. It was better than taking a bus clear from Vegas! Or renting a car and running into the same problems every time she had to take a leak somewhere along the trip. That broad’s got a bad bladder.”

  “I still don’t see the big problem,” poor old Cal Greenberg said, noting that the crotch of Simon’s double knits was ripping out from his ordeal. Those sweaty tree-trunk thighs couldn’t be contained in one pair of pants for two days.

  “I just ask you how would you like to be walking through airports with big Gloria swishing around in that black gown and Dolly Parton wig and those spike heels which make her about seven feet tall? Schultz walked ten paces in front and I walked fifteen feet behind.”

  “Sounds like you pulled it off admirably,” poor old Cal Greenberg said. “I still don’t see …”

  “But Schultz started getting chummy with Gloria on the airplane!” Now Simon pulled his chair close to poor old Cal Green-berg’s and whispered, which frustrated Buckmore Phipps, and Gibson Hand, and especially Zorro Garcia.

  “So? Schultz can get her phone number for when she gets out of the joint,” poor old Cal Greenberg said. Nothing surprised him these days. A cop asking a transsexual for her phone number. Pennsylvania 6-5000. Where are you, Glenn Miller?

  “But that ain’t the problem!” Simon cried in frustration.

  “Well, before I qualify for social security, which ain’t gonna be long, I would like you to try to tell me what is the problem.”

  “The problem is where to book her?”

  “Well that ain’t no problem at all,” poor old Cal Greenberg said. “Is that what’s troubling you? Look, Simon, this is modern times. I don’t care if Gloria La Marr used to be Slug McGuire. I don’t care if she was a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. I don’t care if she fought Joe Frazier. And won. That was when she was a man. Far as I’m concerned, she’s just a tall broad now. Vanessa Redgrave’s a tall broad. My ex-wife is a tall broad.” (He paused and thought of that hot number igniting all those other gray panthers at the Stardust Ballroom.) “Gloria is … peculiar-looking, I admit. But all you gotta remember is that she’s just a tall, funny-looking broad. So you take her and book her at S.B.I.”

  The Los Angeles women’s jail, Sybil Brand Institute, is perched high up over the San Bernardino Freeway. The cops called it Fanny Hill.

  Simon listened patiently, but pained. When poor old Cal Greenberg was finished he said, “Now I’m gonna give you the good news and bad news. The good news is that Gloria has a pretty nice set a knockers, all right. And dynamite legs. And she ain’t got no balls. The bad news is, she ain’t had her second operation yet. She still has her dick!”

  “Oh,” poor old Cal Greenberg said. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure? Well I didn’t get down there and look! But the jailer in Nevada told me.”

  “Goddamnit, why is she doing it that way?”

  “Why?” Simon sputtered. “Why?”

  “Yeah, why?” Zorro Garcia piped up from the corner of the squadroom. Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand were likewise staring at Simon. Everyone demanded an answer.

  “Why?” Simon fumed. “I don’t know why! How the fuck could I find out anything? Schultz monopolized her on the airplane. Buying her those Bloody Marys. I bet she’s in there pissing tomato juice right now! Seated, a course.”

  “In the ladies’ room,” poor old Cal Greenberg mumbled. Why didn’t Gloria have the whole operation done at once? Did the croaker discover in the middle of surgery that she hadn’t paid his last bill? Did Gloria hate to part with it? Did she want the worst of both worlds? The White Cliffs of Dover. Pennsylvania six, five, oh oh oh.

  “They ain’t gonna accept nobody up on Fanny Hill with a cock, even if it don’t work,” Gibson Hand observed.

  “That’s true,” poor old Cal Greenberg agreed.

  “But you put her down in the men’s lockup, she’ll end up with all the cigarettes in the jail,” Buckmore Phipps observed.

  “That’s also true,” poor old Cal Greenberg agreed.

  When Schultz and Gloria La Marr came back from the rest-room, she settled the problem. She said she preferred the men’s jail because she was so tall that women tended to stare at her.

  “But Gloria, there’s a lot a animals down there,” Schultz cried, and Simon decided to take Schultz up to the police academy for a jog around the track and a steam bath, and maybe beat the shit out of him on the wrestling mat to get his head straightened out.

  When two bluesuits came to take her down to the men’s jail Gloria was fluttering like a big hummingbird, and calling Schultz by his Christian name, and promising she’d plead guilty in court to the strong-arm robbery (which had occurred before her transsexual period), so as not to cause him any more trouble. She shook hands warmly with Schultz before the bluecoats handcuffed her and took her away.

  “Bye, Gloria,” Schultz said sadly.

  “Bye, Gunther,” Gloria said demurely.

  “Joo know something?” Zorro Garcia observed. “If those two get married they could have some kids big as King Kong, barely.”

  After Schultz and Simon processed their extradition waiver and other paper work on Gloria La Marr, they were shocked to discover they still had three hours until end of watch. Simon told Schultz this goddamn efficiency had to stop. It was making for a long day.

  But Schultz, who was usually Simon’s equal in bitching, whining and complaining, was strangely quiet as they drove back to Hollywood from downtown.

  “What’s the problem—you thinking about Gloria?” Simon sneered, looking up from the traffic at his partner.

  “I’m thinking about the Billings case,” Schultz said.

  “Why’d you have to bring that up, for chrissake?”


  “It won’t go away,” Schultz said.

  Samuel Billings was a gas station owner. He had a swell location right on Cole Avenue. Schultz and Simon knew him slightly from having handled a prior robbery where he was held up by a gentle gunman who only motherfucked him and pushed him around, but didn’t pistol-whip him or kick him or stab him or shoot him. He was netting nearly two thousand dollars a month, and seldom got beaten out of it by the hordes of Hollywood marauders with guns who understood Samuel Billings perfectly.

  Samuel Billings had been a Little League father, an Optimist, a PTA member. He had two boys in college, supported his mother-in-law, and had it by the tail. Until he started feeling guilty about all that good fortune, which wasn’t fortune at all but came as a result of his working sixteen hours a day on days he thought he was taking it easy.

  So he joined the local Give-a-Con-a-Break Program and hired Wilfred James Boyle, who was only six months out of Soledad and was already sick and tired of this eight-to-five bullshit on the grease rack. How could he kick back when he had to worry about things like paying utility bills? Or getting a driver’s license? How could a dude mellow out when he had to remember to give his landlady a money order once a month? How could he stand even buying that fucking money order once a month? And income tax! This year (if he stayed on the street long enough) he would have to file his first W-2. The thought of it filled him with such frustration and rage that he felt like screaming and yelling and maybe running right down Cole Avenue with his stuff hanging out. Or maybe grab the cunt of the next woman who came in to ask for two dollars and fifty cents worth of gas. Or punch out the next sissy that wheeled in on his bicycle and came sashaying up to ask if he would blow up his tire.