the New Centurions (1971)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Don't worry, Terry, he won't," she said, accepting the towel, which was pressed to her jaw.

  "Has he beat you on only one prior occasion?" asked Serge, beginning the narrative of the report, wishing he had sharpened the pencil at the station.

  "Well, actually, I had him arrested another time," she said. "I'm just a sucker for a big good-looking guy, I guess." She smiled and fluttered the unclosed eye at Serge and he guessed she was signaling that he was big enough to suit her.

  "What name were you using that time?" asked Serge, thinking she was probably blousy at best, but the legs were good and the stomach was still pretty flat.

  "That time I was using Constance Deville, I believe. I was under contract to Universal under that name. Wait a minute, that was in sixty-one. I don't think... Christ, it's hard to think. That man of mine knocked something loose. Let's see."

  "Were you drinking tonight?" asked Edmonds.

  "It started in a bar," she nodded. "I think I was using my real name, then," she added thoughtfully.

  "What's your real name?" asked Serge.

  "God my head hurts," she moaned. "Felicia Randall."

  "You want to see your own doctor?" asked Serge, not mentioning that free emergency care was available to crime victims because he did not want to take this woman to the hospital and bring her back.

  "I don't think I need a doct... Wait a minute, did I say Felicia Randall? Christ almighty! That's not my _real__ name. I was born and raised Dolores Miller. Until I was sixteen, I was Dolores Miller. Christ almighty! I almost forgot my real name! I almost forgot who I was," she said, looking at each of them in wonder.

  Later that month, while patrolling Hollywood Boulevard at about 3:00 A.M. with a sleepy-eyed partner named Reeves, Serge had taken a good look at the people who walk the streets of the glamour capital at this hour. Mostly homosexuals of course, and he was getting to recognize some of them after seeing them night after night as they preyed on the servicemen. There were lots of other hustlers who in turn preyed on the homosexuals, not for lust but for money which they got one way or the other. This accounted for a good number of beatings, robberies, and killings and until the hour of sunrise when his watch ended, Serge was forced to arbitrate the affairs of these wretched men and he was still revolted with all of it a week later when he returned to Alhambra and rented his old apartment. He talked with Captain Sanders of Hollenbeck Division who agreed to arrange a transfer back to Hollenbeck because he said he remembered Serge as an excellent young officer.

  Burke was winding up the roll call training which nobody ever listened to and Serge did not at this moment even know the subject of the lesson. He decided he would drive tonight. He didn't feel like making reports so he'd do the driving. Milton always let him do exactly as he wished. He liked working with Milton and he even liked Burke's slow deliberate ways. There were worse supervisors. It was good to be back in the old station.

  Serge was even beginning to lose his dislike for the area. It was not Hollywood, rather it was the opposite of glamorous. It was dull and old and poor with tall narrow houses like gravestones and the smell of the Vernon slaughterhouses remained. It was the place where the immigrants came upon their arrival from Mexico. It was the place where the second and third generation remained, who could not afford to improve their lot. He knew now of the many Russian Molokan families, the men with beards and tunics and the women with covered heads, who lived between Lorena and Indiana Streets after Russian flats had been changed to a low-priced housing project. There was a sizable number of Chinese here in Boyle Heights and Chinese restaurants had Spanish menus. There were many Japanese, and the older women still carried sun parasols. There were the old Jews of course, few now, and sometimes nine old Jews had to scour Brooklyn Avenue and finally hire a drunken Mexican for a minyan of ten to start prayers in temple. These old ones would soon all be dead, the synagogues closed, and Boyle Heights would be changed without them. There were Arab street hawkers selling clothing and rugs. There were even gypsies who lived near North Broadway where many Italians still lived, and there was the Indian church on Hancock Street, the congregation being mostly Pima and Navajo. There were many Negroes in the housing projects of Ramona Gardens and Aliso Village whom the Mexicans only tolerated, and there were the Mexican-Americans themselves who made up eighty percent of the population of Hollenbeck Division. There were few white Anglo-Protestant families here unless they were very poor.

  There were few phonies in the Hollenbeck area, Serge thought as he slowed on Brooklyn Avenue to park in front of Milton's favorite restaurant. Almost everyone is exactly as he seems. It was very comforting to work in a place where almost everyone is exactly as he seems.

  Chapter 11

  THE VETERAN

  "TWO YEARS AGO TONIGHT I came to University," said Gus. "Fresh out of the academy. It doesn't seem possible. Time has passed."

  "You're about due for a transfer, aren't you?" asked Craig.

  "Overdue. I'm expecting to be on the next transfer."

  "Where you want to go?"

  "I don't care."

  "Another black division?"

  "No, I'd like a change. Little further north, maybe."

  "I'm glad I came here. I can learn fast down here," said Craig.

  "Be careful you don't learn too fast," said Gus and dropped the Plymouth into low as he slowed for the red light because he was getting tired driving. It had been a very quiet evening and policemen toyed with the cars out of boredom after several hours of slow monotonous patrol. It was only nine-thirty. They shouldn't have eaten so early, Gus thought. The rest of the night would drag.

  "Have you ever been in a shooting?" asked Craig.

  "No."

  "How about a real knockdown fight?"

  "I haven't," said Gus. "Not a real fight. A few belligerent bastards, but not a real fight."

  "You've been lucky."

  "I have," said Gus, and for a second it started coming over him again, but he had learned how to subdue it. He was seldom afraid for no reason anymore. The times when he was afraid he had good reason to be. He had worked with an old-time policeman one night who had told him that in twenty-three years he had never had a real fight or fired his gun in the line of duty, or even been close to death except in a few traffic chases and he didn't think a policeman had to become involved in such things unless he went out of his way to become involved. The thought was comforting except that this policeman had spent his career in West Valley and Van Nuys Division which was the next thing to being retired, and he had only been in University for a few months, a disciplinary transfer. Still, Gus thought, after two years he had escaped the confrontation he feared. But did he really fear so much now, he wondered? The blue suit and badge, and the endless decisions and arbitration of other people's problems (when he didn't really know the answers but on the street at midnight there was no one else to find an answer except him and therefore he had made the choices for others and on a few occasions lives had depended on his decisions), yes, these decisions, and the blue suit and the badge had given him confidence he never dreamed he might possess. Though there were still agonizing self-doubts, his life had been deeply touched by this and he was as happy as he ever expected to be.

  If he could transfer to a quiet white division, he would probably be happier if he were not troubled by guilt at being there. But if he could be satisfied that he had the necessary courage and had nothing further to prove to himself, why then he could transfer to Highland Park, and be closer to home and finally content. But that of course was bullshit because if police work had taught him anything it had taught him that happiness is for fools and children to dream of. Reasonable contentment was a more likely goal.

  He began thinking of Vickie's widening hips and how twenty pounds even on a pretty girl like Vickie could make such a difference so that sometimes he was unsure whether their infrequent lovemaking was because she was so terribly frightened of another pregnancy, for which he couldn't blame her, or was it because s
he was growing less and less attractive. It wasn't just the bulkiness which had transformed a sleek body that was made for a bed, it wasn't just that, it was the breakdown of personality which he could only blame on a youthful hasty marriage and three children which were too much for a weak-willed girl of less than average intelligence who had always depended upon others, who now leaned so heavily on him.

  He guessed he would be up all night with the baby if her cold wasn't any better, and he felt a tiny surge of purgative anger but he knew he had no right to be angry with Vickie who was the prettiest girl who had ever shown an interest in him. After all, he was certainly not a trophy to cherish. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that his sandy hair was very thin now and he had been forced to reassess his guess; he knew he would be bald long before he was thirty and he already had tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He laughed at himself for his disappointment in Vickie for getting fat. But that wasn't it, he thought. That wasn't it at all. It was her.

  "Gus, do you think policemen are in a better position to understand criminality than, say, penologists or parole officers or other behavioral scientists?"

  "My God," Gus laughed. "What kind of question is that? Is that a test question?"

  "As a matter of fact it is," said Craig. "I'm taking psych at Long Beach State and my professor has quite a background in criminology. He thinks policemen are arrogant and clannish and distrust other experts, and believe they're the only ones who really understand crime."

  "That's a fair assessment," said Gus. He reminded himself that this would be the last semester he could afford to rest because he would get out of the habit of going to school. If he ever wanted the degree he would have to get back in classes next semester without fail.

  "Do you agree with that?" asked Craig.

  "I think so."

  "Well I've only been out of the academy a few months but I don't think policemen are clannish. I've still got all my old friends."

  "I still have mine," said Gus. "But you'll see after a year or so that you feel a little different about them. They don't know, you see. And criminologists don't know. Police see a hundred percent of criminality. We see noncriminals and real criminals who're involved in crime. We see witnesses to crimes and victims of crimes and we see them during and immediately after crimes occur. We see the perpetrators during and right after and we see victims sometimes before the crimes occur and we know they're going to be victims, and we see perpetrators before and we know they're going to be perpetrators. We can't do a damned thing about it even though we know through our experience. We _know.__ Tell that to your professor and he'll think _you__ need a psychologist. Your professor sees them in a test tube and in an institution and he thinks these are criminals, these unfortunate unloved losers he's studying, but what he doesn't realize is that so many thousands of the winners out here are involved in crime just as deeply as his unloved losers. If he really knew how much crime occurs he wouldn't be so damned smug. Policemen are snobs, but we're not smug because this kind of knowledge doesn't make you self-satisfied, it just scares you."

  "I never heard you talk so much, Gus," said Craig, looking at Gus with new interest, and Gus felt an urge to talk about these things because he never talked about them very much except to Kilvinsky when he was here. He had learned all these things from Kilvinsky anyway, and then his experience had shown Kilvinsky was right.

  "You can't exaggerate the closeness of our dealings with people," said Gus. "We see them when nobody else sees them, when they're being born and dying and fornicating and drunk." Now Gus knew it was Kilvinsky talking and he was using Kilvinsky's very words; it made him feel a little like Kilvinsky was still here when he used the big man's words and that was a good feeling. "We see people when they're taking anything of value from other people and when they're without shame or very much ashamed and we learn secrets that their husbands and wives don't even know, secrets that they even try to keep from themselves, and what the hell, when you learn these things about people who aren't institutionalized, people who're out here where you can see them function every day, well then, you really _know.__ Of course you get clannish and associate with others who know. It's only natural."

  "I like to hear you talk, Gus," said Craig. "You're usually so quiet I thought maybe you didn't like me. You know, us rookies worry about everything."

  "I know," said Gus, moved by Craig's frank boyishness.

  "It's valuable to hear an experienced officer talk about things," said Craig, and it was very hard for Gus to control a smile when he thought of Craig thinking of him as a veteran.

  "While I'm philosophizing, you want a definition of police brutality?'

  ' asked Gus.

  "Okay."

  "Police brutality means to act as an ordinary prudent person, without a policeman's self-discipline, would surely act under the stresses of police work."

  "Is that one of the Chief's quotes?"

  "No, Kilvinsky said that."

  "Is he the guy who wrote the book on police supervision?"

  "No, Kilvinsky was a great philosopher."

  "Never heard of him."

  "On punishment Kilvinsky said, 'We don't want to punish offenders by putting them in institutions, we only want to separate ourselves from them when their pattern of deviation becomes immutably written in pain and blood.' Kilvinsky was drinking a little when he said that. He was usually much more earthy."

  "You knew him?"

  "I studied under him. He also said, 'I don't care if you supply the asshole with dames and dope for the rest of his life as long as we keep him in the joint.' In fact, Kilvinsky would have out-liberaled the most ardent liberal when it came to prison reforms. He thought they should be very agreeable places. He thought it was stupid and useless and cruel to try to punish _or__ to try to rehabilitate most people with 'the pattern' as he called it. He had it pretty well doped out to where his penal institutions would save society untold money and grief."

  "Three-A-Thirteen, Three-A-Thirteen," said the operator. "See the man, family dispute, twenty-six, thirty-five south Hobart."

  "Well, it's fun to talk on a quiet night," said Gus, "but duty calls."

  Craig rogered the call as Gus turned the car north and then east toward Hobart.

  "I wish I had had this Kilvinsky for a professor," said Craig. "I think I'd have liked him."

  "You'd have loved him," said Gus.

  When Gus stepped out of the radio car he realized how unusually quiet a night it had been for a Thursday. He listened for a moment but the street lined on both sides with one-story private residences was absolutely still. Thursday, in preparation for weekend activity, was usually a fairly busy night and then he realized that welfare checks would arrive in the next few days. With no money the people were quiet this Thursday.

  "I think it's the house in the rear," said Craig, shining his flashlight to the right of the darkened pink stucco front house. Gus saw the lighted porch and followed Craig down the walk to the rear house where a shirtless Negro stepped out of the shadows with a baseball bat in his hand and Gus had his revolver unsnapped, in his hand, crouching instinctively before he realized why. The man threw the ball bat to the ground.

  "Don't shoot. I called you. I'm the one that called. Don't shoot."

  "Jesus Christ," said Gus, seeing the Negro lurch drunkenly to his left, waving his big hands to the officers as he held them high overhead."

  "You could get killed like that, jumping out with a club," said Craig, snapping his holster.

  Gus could not find the pocket in the holster and had to use both shaking hands to put the gun away, and could not speak, did not dare to speak because Craig would see, anyone would see how unreasonably frightened he had been. He was humiliated to see that Craig was merely startled and was already asking questions of the drunken Negro while his own heart was hammering blood into his ears so that he couldn't make out the conversation until the Negro said, "I hit the motherfucker with the bat. He layin' back there. I think I done
killed him and I wants to pay the price."

  "Show us," Craig commanded, and Gus followed the two of them to the rear of the cottage which was pink like the front house, but a frame building not stucco, and Gus sucked deeply at the air to still his beating heart. In the rear yard they found the lanky Negro with a head like a bloody bullet lying on his face and beating the ground with a bony fist as he moaned softly.

  "Guess I didn' kill him," said the drunken Negro. "Sho' thought he was dead."

  "Can you get up?" asked Craig, already obviously accustomed to bloody scenes, knowing that most people can shed a great deal of blood and unless wounds are of certain types, people can usually function quite well with them.

  "Hurts," said the man on the ground and rolled over on one elbow. Gus saw that he too was drunk and he grinned foolishly at the officers and said, "Take me to the hospital and git me sewed up will you, Officer?"

  "Shall I call an ambulance?" asked Craig.

  "Doesn't really need one," said Gus, his voice steady now, "but you may as well. He'd get blood all over the radio car."

  "Don't want to press no cha'ges Officer," said the bloody man. "Jist want sewed up."

  What if I'd shot him, thought Gus while Craig's voice echoed through the narrow walkway and was followed by a static explosion. A female voice blared out and Craig adjusted the volume and repeated his request for an ambulance. Someday I'll become scared like that and I _will__ kill someone and I'll cover it up neatly just as I could have covered up this one because a man leaped out of the darkness with an upraised club. But Craig was only startled; he didn't even clear the holster and there I was crouched with three pounds of pressure on the trigger and thank God, I didn't cock the gun unconsciously or I'd have killed him sure. As it was, the hammer was moving back double action, moving, and God, what if Craig hadn't been in front of me, I know I'd have killed him. His body had reacted independent of his mind. He'd have to think about that later. This could be the thing that might save him if _real__ danger came. If it ever comes I hope it comes suddenly, he thought, without warning like a man leaping out of darkness. Then my body might save me, he thought.