The Glitter Dome

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Do you have any reason to be detaining these two men? Or is it simply for walking on Selma Avenue?”

  “Jist a gud-damn minute …” Gibson Hand sputtered.

  “There is no crime to be walking, or standing, or sitting on Selma Avenue regardless of what you may think. And, as you know, there is no crime in being homosexual.”

  Buckmore Phipps was turning white around the gills. “You just better fly on, shitbird,” he warned.

  “You men!” the intruder said to the combatants. “You have a right to be here on Selma Avenue. You have a right to get into cars. At the moment, it is a public offense to engage in sex for money. That’s true for either sex. It’s a public offense to engage in certain conduct in public. That’s true for either sex. But that’s all. You do not have to let these officers harass you.” He punctuated his statement by a forceful finger thrust. Which accidentally poked Buckmore Phipps right in the eye.

  The case which eventually ended up in the Los Angeles municipal courtroom involved not the two original combatants who fought for the customer on Selma Avenue. It involved the people versus Thurgood Poole, the gay rights activist, who maintained he was merely trying to protect the freedom of two members of the gay community on Selma Avenue.

  What the other witnesses claimed, both street monsters and the two combatants, was that all four of them were perfectly justified in breaking Thurgood Poole’s nose and collarbone and dislocating his shoulder and dancing on Thurgood Poole’s kidneys.

  The gay rights activist went to jail for battery on a police officer and eventually ended up in court facing all four witnesses. The two members of the gay community he was trying to protect told the jury he was just a meddling busybody who shouldn’t go around picking on diligent policemen like Officer Phipps and Officer Hand, who both sat in court in double-knit leisure suits and clip-on neckties and smiled sweetly at all the old ladies on the jury.

  Thurgood Poole ended up with summary probation, a five-hundred-dollar fine, and more dents, cracks and bruises than both teams in the Super Bowl. The two battling fruit-hustlers ended up with a letter of commendation from the commanding officer of Hollywood Station for doing their civic duty in coming to the assistance of two beleaguered policemen.

  All in all, it was a pretty good day for the street monsters, who got rid of tons of tension. It wasn’t often these days you got to do good police work like they did on Thurgood Poole. But while they were enjoying the Waterloo of Thurgood Poole, a horny spring-loader in a ball-point pen factory in Burbank was about to deliver Jackin Jill right into their puffy mitts.

  His name was Bruno Benson and he was sick and tired of sitting around all day sticking little springs into ball-point pens. In fact, he got so sick of it, and was feeling so horny, he decided to make his fourteenth bomb threat of the month, take the rest of the day off, cruise down the Sunset Strip, and maybe find a cute thirty-dollar hooker who could suck the batteries out of a flashlight.

  During his lunch hour he strolled out the back door of the plant, hopped up on the cab of one of the delivery trucks, dropped over the fence into the alley, moseyed down to the gas station on the corner, dialed the plant manager, and told him the same thing he had told him the other thirteen times: There was a bomb planted in one of the cartons in the warehouse and it would go off sometime before the end of shift unless one hundred thousand dollars was left in a package on the bus bench across from NBC Television Studios.

  Of course the plant manager never left the package of money, but that didn’t bother Bruno Benson a bit. Because each time the manager received the bomb threat he was obliged by union and company policy to call the cops, and then to inform employees of the possibility of a bomb having been planted, giving them the option of leaving for the day or remaining on the job.

  During his three weeks of employment Bruno Benson had earned a total of $485 including overtime. He had cost the company $230,687, which he figured made him the most expensive employee in Burbank, except for Johnny Carson.

  While Bruno Benson was off for another afternoon, sucking on a fifth of Jim Beam, cruising hornily down the Sunset Strip in his pickup truck looking for a hooker, Jackin Jill was telling her pal Juicy Lucy in The Red Valentine Massage Parlor that she didn’t want to work at the parlor anymore because the cheapos take too big a cut out of your fees, and she was doing far better on her own at one of the outcall massage services listed in the Yellow Pages. Which meant that she wasn’t interested in the hundred-dollar bag of bones who Juicy Lucy said was coming back at eight o’clock for a doubleheader.

  Meanwhile, the Weasel and Ferret were amusing themselves by shooting at pigeons on the roof over the Thai restaurant with plastic slingshots and pieces of .00 buckshot from a police shotgun round. They’d played Frisbee for a while until the Weasel got carried away with a fancy behind-the-back toss and the disc went sailing clear over to Western Avenue into the shopping cart of a wino ragpicker who gave a Thanks, Lord! glance to the sky and sold it to the first roller skater sailing by for enough to buy a pint of Sneaky Pete.

  It was while the Ferret was looking at his Frisbee going bye-bye that he glanced down at the restaurant and saw the black Bentley drive slowly up in front and stop.

  While both narcs were fighting over the binoculars, the driver, who never emerged from the car, seemed to feel that his man was not inside, and drove off in traffic.

  “Son of a bitch ain’t going in!” the Ferret cried.

  “Fucking bus is blocking me out!” the Weasel cried, frantically adjusting the binoculars.

  “Stop, you prick!” the Ferret moaned.

  But the Bentley turned right and was gone. They didn’t even get the license number.

  No crack of wings. No pigeons plummeting. The only creatures going bonzo were the Ferret and Weasel who were stomping around the rooftop in frustration, yelling and firing wildly at the bored and listless birds, who had no fear of these two assholes with slingshots. As the narcs finally decided that their stakeout would have to be moved to the street, where they had access to the Toyota, Bruno Benson was driving by the Whiskey-A-Go-Go.

  He had so far spotted five whores hustling afternoon motorists. They were all at least twenty-five years old. Almost as old as his youngest daughter. He didn’t go for these old ones. Then he saw a very pale, thin little blonde in tight jeans walking east on Sunset. Now, she was young enough for Bruno Benson.

  “Hey, honey, how about a lift?” Bruno Benson yelled from the number one lane.

  “I can walk,” she said.

  “Why walk?”

  “Good exercise.”

  “I know a better way to exercise,” Bruno Benson giggled, taking a big gulp of Jim Beam.

  A redneck drunk in a pickup truck? Poison. “Catch you later, honey,” she said, crossing to the north side of Sunset.

  Bruno Benson circled the block and came roaring up behind the blonde with both his engines racing.

  “Look, baby,” he yelled. “I ain’t some toaster mechanic from Ventura. I’m a player. I got money!”

  She kept walking west on Sunset, but she slowed enough to keep pace with the pickup creeping along beside her.

  “How much money?”

  “Enough.”

  “Good-bye,” she said, quickening her pace.

  Skinny little bitch. He had half a mind to tell her he was the Burbank Bomber, driving the cops crazy with thirteen, no, fourteen calls to the ball-point pen factory. “I got fifty dollars!” he said. “But I don’t know if you’re worth it.”

  Then the pale blonde stopped, turned, and walked over to the truck that was idling at the curb. Up close she had a quality, all right. Her skin was … Bruno Benson later tried to describe the gossamer girl to another spring-loader. She was like those figurines you see down at Farmer’s Market. Like that.

  She said, “For fifty dollars, if you’ll settle for a short time, I’ll be worth it.”

  Except that she made a very unprofessional error. On the way to the motel, Bruno B
enson wanted to substitute her head for the bottle of Jim Beam between his legs.

  “Come on, just kiss it a little till we get there. Get me warmed up.”

  “We’ll be at the motel in a few minutes, sweetie.”

  “Come on, just a kiss,” he said, his voice husky with horniness. She was so young!

  “Sorry, sweetie,” she said. “You have to watch the road.”

  But when he expansively pulled out the roll of fives and tens and dropped twenty dollars in her lap, saying, “This is a bonus,” and unzipped his khaki pants, the whore let greed overcome professional reservations.

  She hadn’t been down on him for ten seconds before Bruno Benson forgot to watch the road and started watching the ceiling of the truck cab and howling like a wolf. His howl was cut short when he slammed into the rear of a school bus and all the kids going home got a good giggle at the expense of the guy running around the street holding his bleeding dick.

  And the pale little whore was sitting on the curb, still coughing when the police car pulled up and Gibson Hand said to the howling Bruno Benson, “Put your joint away, you’re causin a traffic jam.”

  “I’m hurt, I’m hurt!” Bruno Benson bellowed.

  “What happened, your cock go in the cigarette lighter?” Buck-more Phipps asked. “Never seen a traffic injury where only a cock gets crunched.”

  “That howlin’s gettin on my nerves,” Gibson Hand said.

  Then the street monsters looked from the choking whore to the howling driver and put it together. “First the whore down at the motel fucks a guy to death,” Gibson Hand observed. “Now this one almost bites a dude’s cock off. You know, we’re safer gettin our pussy at those Chinatown gin mills, Buckmore.”

  Though they didn’t want to bother with a traffic accident at any time of day, let alone so late in the afternoon (there’s never a traffic car around when you need one. Those lazy pricks!), the street monsters were stuck with it.

  “Gimme some ID, sis,” Gibson Hand said to the blond whore.

  “Don’t have none,” she said, starting to get her breath back.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Peggy Farrell,” she said, truthfully.

  “How old’re you?”

  “Twenty,” she lied.

  “You wanna go to a doctor?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll just go on home.”

  “You got any a his cock stuck in your teeth?”

  “No.”

  “Awright, jist lemme get your address and phone number.”

  Then Buckmore Phipps came over and whispered, “Think we gotta book this drunk, Gibson? The bus driver’s yellin about get-tin rear-ended and he can see the dude’s swacked.”

  “Shee-it!” Gibson Hand snarled. “Means we’re gonna be workin overtime again tonight!’

  By then Bruno Benson was getting calmed down and had his wounded penis back in his pants, and was worrying about going to jail for drunk driving, and wondering how he was going to get enough money to pay ten percent to a bail bondsman. Then he thought of his twenty-dollar bill. She sure as hell hadn’t earned it!

  “She has twenty bucks a mine. I want it,” he said to Buckmore Phipps.

  “She sucked your dick, didn’t she?” Buckmore Phipps shrugged. “I don’t wanna get involved in no business dispute. I got enough problems here.”

  “She stole twenty bucks from my pocket after we crashed,” Bruno Benson said. “I want it!”

  “That’s a goddamn lie!” the blonde yelled raspily, and then started coughing through her swollen throat.

  “She stole my money. I want it. Or I’ll prosecute!”

  “Officer, I’ve got a bus full of kids,” the bus driver yelled out the window.

  “Fuck it!” Gibson Hand snarled. “Driver, you come to Hollywood Station and make a traffic report after you get rid a those gigglin milk suckers! Buckmore, we gotta take both these people to the station, see what the fuck we got.”

  And so the Burbank Bomber and Jackin Jill were both in custody and crying when, fifteen minutes later, they were led into the detective squadroom where Jackin Jill would meet the bag of bones who had hoped to be her date that night.

  14

  Mr. Silver

  The detectives were cleaning up their paper work for the day, making the last phone calls to crime victims, or girlfriends or wives (Yes, dear, it’s just a coincidence that when I have to work overtime it usually happens on payday). Poor old Cal Greenberg wasn’t in any hurry to go, but wait till tomorrow: seniors night at the Stardust Ballroom! And his second wife out of town visiting a niece! Pennsylvania six five, oh! oh! ooohhh!

  Then he saw Buckmore Phipps come in with a tearful little blonde in tow and he started getting depressed.

  “Hey, Greenberg,” the street monster said. “Who’d handle a trick roll on Sunset? You?”

  “It depends on the circumstances, Buckmore,” poor old Cal Greenberg sighed. He should have moved quicker and been gone. “Was it a robbery, a plain theft, what?”

  The weeping blonde said, “That man’s a liar! I didn’t rob nobody!”

  “Well, she hurt the dick of a trick, and the bus driver they rear-ended is mad, and the trick’s too drunk to walk so I don’t know how great a victim he is, and I get it all dumped on me!”

  “You’re not making too much sense, Buckmore,” poor old Cal Greenberg sighed. “Sit down, my dear, and tell me your name.”

  “Peggy Farrell,” the whore cried.

  “PEGGY FARRELL!” Simon, Schultz, the Weasel and Ferret, Al Mackey and Martin Welborn, all nearly scared the constipation out of poor old Cal Greenberg.

  “Jackin Jill!” Al Mackey cried. “I had a date with you tonight!”

  Peggy Farrell had never had so much attention in her life, what with two scary cops in beards and leather jackets trying to talk to her about Lloyd in the black Bentley, and being overruled by two gigantic detectives in funny haircuts like they wore in the olden days, all finally being overruled by the other pair of detectives. One was the skinny one Juicy Lucy told her about, and the other, the one she didn’t mind talking to, was a good-looking man with a gentle smile and beautiful teeth and dark eyes that turned down at the corners and made Peggy Farrell think that with a guy like him she could almost switch back to men for the sex she did apart from business. She sat in the interrogation room for thirty minutes with Martin Welborn and Al Mackey.

  “I ain’t really a runaway,” she sobbed. “My dad knows I never left Hollywood. I just didn’t want to live with him no more.”

  “And where do you live, Peggy?” Martin Welborn asked.

  “Around.”

  “We could detain you at Juvenile Hall,” Al Mackey said.

  “I didn’t steal that man’s money,” she said.

  “But you’re technically a runaway.”

  “I’ll be eighteen the first of next month. It wouldn’t make much sense to treat me like a juvenile, would it?”

  “No, but we could,” Martin Welborn said. “Why don’t you want to tell us where you live?”

  “Cause I live with somebody I don’t want to hurt, that’s why.”

  “Is it a man?” Al Mackey asked. “The man you work for?”

  “I don’t have no pimp.”

  “All the girls say that.”

  “I don’t have no pimp. I been bothered by a couple pimps. One said he’d pour acid on me if I didn’t work for him, but so far I ain’t been hurt.”

  “Is the person you live with straight?” Martin Welborn asked.

  “I live with a woman,” Peggy Farrell said. “She’s an older person.”

  “How old?” Martin Welborn asked.

  “Old. My mom’s age.”

  “How old is that?”

  “She’s forty-two.”

  “Is she your lover?” Martin Welborn asked.

  “Whadda you think?”

  “Does she approve of the fact that you hustle tricks?”

  “No. She has a good job. She’s been
trying to talk me out of it. In fact, I hardly ever do it anymore. This guy in the truck just wouldn’t let up. Practically waved the money at me.”

  “Let’s forget him for the moment,” Al Mackey said. “Tell us all you can about Lloyd in the black Bentley.”

  “He’s just a guy offered me an acting job, is all. I didn’t know he was some big criminal or something. He was an outcall massage. Asked for me by name. Didn’t even take the massage. Just met me, paid me, and gave me the phone number.”

  “How old is Lloyd? How tall? What color hair? Describe him,” Al Mackey said.

  “It’s hard for me to tell when a guy’s thirty or forty if he’s in good shape like Lloyd. I think he has light hair, maybe even gray. But he’s youngish. Like you,” she said to Martin Welborn, which made Al Mackey wince, being two years younger.

  “Why don’t you know for sure what color hair he has?”

  “He never took off his cap both times I saw him. One a those caps like Scotch or Irish people wear in movies. Tweedy like. And he wore it down close to his glasses. He wasn’t anxious to be too recognizable, that’s for sure. He had a grayish moustache and tinted glasses. Big wire-rimmed goggles.”

  “What color tint?”

  “Brown. Made his brown eyes harder to see.”

  “Good girl,” Martin Welborn said. “And you only saw him twice?”

  “Twice. And I never tricked with him. He never asked for it. First, he picked me up at Sunset and La Brea and took me by my dad’s restaurant.”

  “Why did you ask him to take you there?”

  “There were some things a my mother’s she left behind when she ran away from home. I wanted them. I figured with Lloyd along, my dad wouldn’t make no fuss and try to get me to stay. I mean, Lloyd wasn’t a guy to fuck with, in that big car and all. And afterwards he dropped me back at Sunset and La Brea and gave me twenty dollars just to call a number and ask for Sapphire Productions. Said to tell the guy that answered who I was and where to meet the next time.”

  “That’s when you met the producer?” Martin Welborn asked. “Where did you go and what was his name?”

  “His name was Mister Silver. We met at this house clear up on top of Trousdale. I used to have two massage customers up there.”