the New Centurions (1971)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "She a dyke?" asked Gant.

  "Oh yeah," said Ranatti. "She lives over on Alvarado with some big fat bull dagger. Told me one time she can't stand to lay a man anymore."

  "A vice officer hears all the girls' problems," said Phillips to Roy. "We get to know all these assholes so well."

  "Want Roy to work with me?" asked Gant to Jacovitch.

  "I want the four of you to work together tonight," said Jacovitch. "I don't want you guys getting hung up on something and not be ready to go on The Cave when it's time. You four go out together. You can take two cars, but decide what you're going to do till midnight and do it together. Phillips'll work with me."

  "Let's go down on Sixth and see if Roy can operate a streetwalker," said Gant to Ranatti and Simeone who were already taking their small flashlights out of the drawer of a filing cabinet.

  "Trash night and I'm wearing a brand-new shirt," Ranatti grumbled, buttoning the shirt gingerly. Roy noticed it fitted well and the shoulder holster was completely concealed. He wondered if he should invest in a shoulder holster. He decided to wait. He was only working vice this month and it might be a long time before he was given a permanent plainclothes assignment. Surely though, someone would want him soon. Felony car, vice, someone would want him. He was sure it was evident to everyone that he was an exceptionally good policeman but police work was temporary and he knew he should be thinking about what courses he would be taking this semester. He seemed to have lost his drive in that direction. Maybe, he thought, I'll take a vacation this semester.

  They took two cars. Gant was driving a two-tone green Chevrolet which the vice officers had done their best to camouflage by putting oversized tires on the back. Someone had hung a fuzzy object from the mirror and Gant told Roy that Simeone was responsible for the college decals plastered all over the rear window. Still, Roy thought, it looked like a stripped down, low priced, plainclothes police car. The Department, according to Gant, was very tight with expenditures of funds for undercover operation.

  Gant drove Roy to the parking lot where he had his private car.

  "Listen Roy," said Gant. "We'll be in the vacant lot behind the yellow apartment building north of Sixth just off Towne Avenue. You make a pass by there and see where we are. Then you cruise a few blocks down on Sixth and you should see a hustler or two even this early in the evening. If you get her, bring her back to the meeting place."

  "Okay," said Roy.

  "You sure you learned last night what you need for a whore pinch?" asked Gant.

  "Offer of sex for money," said Roy. "Seems simple enough."

  "Okay, Roy, go ahead," said Gant. "If you see a whore you suspect is a man dressed up as a woman, don't hit on him. Pass him by and try another one. We don't operate fruits alone. They're the most dangerous unpredictable bastards in the world. You just hit on women--_real__ women."

  "Okay," Roy said, getting anxious to start. It was a dark night, and being out here on the city streets in plainclothes was like being out here for the very first time. It was eerie and exciting. His heart began thudding.

  "Go ahead, kid," said Gant. "Take it easy though."

  Roy noticed that his hands became extremely clammy and the steering wheel slippery as he turned east on Sixth Street. It wasn't that he was alone, because he was not really alone with Gant and Ranatti and Simeone staked out just a few blocks away. But he was for the first time out in the streets minus the security of the badge and blue suit, and though he knew this street fairly well, it seemed altogether strange. A vice officer loses the comfort of the big brass shield, he thought. He acquires an identity. Without the blue suit he becomes a mere man who must function as a street dweller. His confidence was waning. Was it more than nervousness? He put a hand on his chest and measured the thuds. Was it fear?

  Roy saw a streetwalker at Fifth and Stanford. She was an emaciated Negro with straight legs and Roy guessed she was an addict with her look of yearning. She smiled as he drove slowly by.

  "Hello blondie," she said, walking up to Roy's car on the passenger side and peering in.

  "Hello there," Roy said, forced a smile, and cursed silently at his quivering voice.

  "Haven't I seen you around?" she asked, still smiling an uninviting bad-toothed smile as she glanced around the car, probing, and Roy guessed that she suspected immediately.

  "I've never been here before," Roy answered. "A friend told me about this place. Said I could have a good time."

  "What do you do for a living, baby?" she smiled.

  "Insurance man."

  "That's funny, you look just like a cop to me," she said, drilling him with her eyes.

  "A cop?" he laughed brokenly. "Not me."

  "You look exactly like a young cop," she said unblinkingly while he withered.

  "Look, you're making me nervous with this cop talk," said Roy. "Can I get a good time around here, or not?"

  "Maybe you could," she said. "What do you have in mind?"

  Roy remembered last night's admonishment by Jacovitch about entrapment and he knew she was trying to lead him into making the offer himself.

  "Don't you know?" he said, trying a coy smile but uncertain how it looked.

  "Give me a card, baby, I might want to buy some insurance sometime."

  "Card?"

  "A business card. Give me a business card."

  "Look, I'm a married man. I don't want you to know my name. What're you trying to do, blackmail me?" said Roy, congratulating himself on his quick thinking and making a note to borrow some cards from an insurance office for any future operations.

  "Okay," she smiled easily. "Tear your name off the card or scratch it out with that pen in your shirt pocket. Just let me see that you have a card."

  "I don't have any with me," said Roy. "Come on, let's get down to business."

  "Uh huh," she said, "let's do that. And my business is minding my own business. Any insurance man that ain't got a million cards in his wallet is a mighty poor insurance man."

  "So I'm a poor insurance man. What the hell," said Roy hopelessly as she turned to walk away.

  "You ain't even a good vice cop," she sneered over her shoulder.

  "Bitch," said Roy.

  "Paddy, blue-eyed motherfucker," said the prostitute.

  Roy turned right on the next street, drove south to Seventh then back up to Sixth where he parked his car a half block away with the lights out and watched the prostitute talking to a tall Negro in a gray felt hat who nodded and walked quickly down the block to a fat prostitute in a green satin dress whom Roy hadn't seen before. She ran inside the building and talked with two women in the doorway who were just coming out. Roy drove to the meeting place where he found Gant sitting in the back seat of Ranatti and Simeone's car.

  "Might as well go somewhere else," said Roy. "I'm burned."

  "What happened?" asked Gant.

  "A skinny whore in a brown dress recognized me from working uniform in this area," Roy lied. "I saw her look at me and run and tell all the whores on the block. It's no use, I'm burned here."

  "Let's go over to the park and bust a quick fruit or two," said Ranatti. "We haven't made a fruit pinch for a few days."

  After leaving his private car in the station parking lot Roy rejoined Gant in the vice car and they drove toward the park. Roy was disappointed that he had so far been unable to make a vice arrest, but he decided he'd operate successfully in The Cave later tonight and it now occurred to him that he had no idea how to arrest a homosexual.

  "What're the elements of a fruit pinch?" asked Roy.

  "That's easier than a whore bust," said Gant, driving casually through the early evening traffic. "If he makes a lewd offer in a public place, that's it. Or if he gropes you. But as far as I'm concerned you don't have to let a man grab your joint. If it looks like he's making a move to honk you, just grab his hand and he's busted. We'll say on the arrest report he touched your privates. I don't give a shit what Jacovitch says about legal arrests and embellishing arrest reports
, I don't let nobody touch my tool unless she's wearing a dress and I know for sure there's a female body under the dress."

  "Seems like you could just settle for the verbal offer," said Roy.

  "Yeah, you could. But some faggots are real aggressive. You say hello and bang, they got you by the dork. I don't expect you to submit to that crap. Just operating fruits is bad enough. But maybe we won't have to operate them. Maybe we can catch them in the trap."

  "I heard lots of talk about _the trap.__ What is it?" asked Roy, feeling a bit uncomfortable about the prospect of working fruits.

  "That's what we call a vantage point," said Gant, accelerating up the hill on Sixth Street past Central Receiving Hospital. "There's lots of places where fruits hang out, like public restrooms. Well, some of these places install vents covered with heavy mesh screen or something like that, where we can peek through into the restroom area. Most of the places take the doors off the shithouses for us too. Then we sit in _the trap,__ as we call it, and peek through into the restroom. Of course there's legal technicalities like probable cause and exploratory searches involved here, but I'll tell you about that when we make the arrest report--if we catch any. Sometimes we use the CC units and let one guy sit in the trap with a radio and if he sees some fruit action in the john, he whispers to us over the radio and in we come. Let me warn you about fruits. I don't know what you're expecting, but I can tell you that a fruit can look like anything. He can be a big manly guy with a wife and kids and a good job, he can be a professional man, or a priest, or even a cop. We've caught people from every walk of life in these traps. All kinds of people got kinks, and in my opinion, any guy with this particular kind of kink that has to indulge it occasionally will sooner or later look for a public restroom or some other sleazy fruit hangout. It's part of the cruddy thrill I guess. I talked to a million fruits in my time and lots of them cop out to needing a little action in a place like this once in a while even when they can have their kicks in private with a discreet boy friend. I don't know why, I just know they do it. So the thing is, you might run into a pretty square kind of fruit in here. Like I said, a respectable married guy or something, and when he finds out you're the law, that son of a bitch might come uncorked. Suddenly he pictures a big scandal where Mama and the kiddies and all his friends read on the front page of the _Times__ that old Herbie is really a cocksucker. That's what's going on in his sweaty brain. And you be careful, because if you was taking him for murder he wouldn't be near as panicky or dangerous. This prick might literally try to kill you to get away. I say don't get yourself hurt for a lousy misdemeanor pinch that ain't worth a goddamn in court anyway. You know what the average fruit gets? About a fifty-dollar fine and that's it. He'd have to have a bunch of priors to draw any jail time. But these fruits don't know all this and if they don't know it they don't think of it when you're arresting them. All they're thinking about is getting away from you. And they're fucked up in the head anyway or they wouldn't be there in the first place, so you just be careful working fruits."

  "I will," said Roy, feeling his heart race again. He hadn't bargained for the dangers of vice work. When he first learned he was going to vice he vaguely pictured girls and drinking. He thought of how he had never actually been in a fight in the two years he had been a policeman. He had to assist a partner wrestle a man to the ground a few times where the handcuffs were applied without too much trouble. But he had never actually struck a man, nor had anyone ever struck him. And a vice officer carried no baton. "Do you carry a sap?" Roy asked.

  "You bet," said Gant, lifting his shirt and showing Roy the huge black beaver-tail sap he carried inside his waistband.

  "Maybe I ought to buy one," said Roy.

  "I think you ought to have one," Gant nodded. "Vice officers get in some good ones and that onesies on twosies wristlock they teach you in the academy never seems to work when you're squirming around on some piss-covered restroom floor with some bloody sweaty fruit, or maybe battling some hugger mugger's pimp in some dark hotel lobby when your partner doesn't know where the hell you are."

  "This job doesn't sound too good after all," Roy smiled weakly.

  "I'm just telling the worst that can happen," said Gant. "They're the things that happen to young hot dogs like Ranatti and Simeone. But you stick with the old salts like me and nothing's going to happen. We won't make as many pinches as those guys but we'll go home in one piece every night."

  Gant parked the vice car a half block from the park and walked to the hedgerow on the south side of the duck pond where they found Ranatti and Simeone sprawled on the grass smoking and throwing pieces of popcorn to a hissing black gander who accepted the tribute but scorned them for their charity.

  "Nobody appreciates something for nothing," said Ranatti, pointing his cigarette at the ferocious gander who tired of the popcorn and waddled to the water's edge.

  "We going to operate, or work the trap?" asked Gant.

  "Whatever you want," Simeone shrugged.

  "What do you want to do, Roy?" asked Gant.

  "Hell, I'm too new to know," said Roy. "If we operate that means we walk around and pose as fruits?"

  "Just be available," said Simeone. "You don't have to swish around or play with your coins in your pants pocket or anything. Just hang around and talk to the fruits that hit on you. Usually one or two of us operate out around the trees and the other two wait somewhere. If you get an offer you bring the fruit to the waiting place. Tell him you got a car nearby or a pad, or tell him anything. Just get him to us, then we all take him. One man never takes a fruit alone."

  "I already told him that," said Gant.

  "Or, if you're squeamish about playing fruit, and I don't blame you if you are," said Ranatti, "'cause I never could stand to operate them--well, then we can go to the trap. Then you only watch them in a lewd act. You don't have to actually mingle with them like when you operate."

  "Let's do that," said Roy.

  "You two want inside or outside?" asked Simeone to Gant.

  "Outside. What do you think?"

  "What did you ask him for?" said Ranatti.

  "He respects his elders," said Gant as they began strolling through the park. It was a warm summer evening, and a slight breeze cooled Roy's face as it came off the pond. Many of the ducks were asleep, and aside from the steady flow of nearby traffic it was quiet and restful here.

  "It's a beautiful place," said Roy.

  "The park?" said Ranatti. "Oh, yeah. But it's full of faggots and thieves and assholes in general. No decent people dare hang around here after dark."

  "Except us vice officers," said Simeone.

  "He said decent people," Gant reminded him.

  "Once in a while some squares that're new in town might come around here after dark with the family, but they soon see what's happening. They used to lock up the johns at night, but some brainy park administrator decided to leave them open. The open restrooms draw fruits like flies."

  "Fruit flies," said Simeone.

  "We used to only have a hundred fruits a night around here. Now we got a thousand. Maybe we can get the restrooms closed again."

  "That's it over there," said Gant to Roy, pointing at the large stucco outbuilding squatting near a clump of elms that rustled in the wind which had grown stronger.

  "Roy, you and me'll wait behind those trees over there," said Gant. "When they come out of the trap we'll see them and run over and help them."

  "One time," said Simeone, "there were only two of us here and we caught eight fruits in there. One was gobbling another's joint, and the other six were standing around fondling anything they could find."

  "A real circle jerk," said Ranatti. "We snuck out of the trap and didn't know what the hell to do with eight of them. Finally Sim spots a pile of roofing tiles at the corner of the tool shed and he sticks his head in and yells, 'All you fruits are under arrest.' Then he slams the door shut and backs off to the pile of tiles and starts heaving them at the door every time one of them tries to
get out. He was really enjoying it, I think. I ran to the call box on the corner and put out a help call and when the black and whites got here we still had all eight fruits trapped in the crapper. But the wall of the building looked like a machine gun squad had strafed it."

  "See what I told you before about sticking with me and staying out of trouble," said Gant, walking toward the clump of trees where they would wait. "Why don't you go in with them for a while, Roy? You might as well see what it's all about."

  Ranatti removed his key ring from his pocket and unlocked the padlock on a massive tool shed which was attached to the side of the building. Roy entered the shed and was followed by Ranatti who held the door for him and closed it behind them. It was deep and black in the shed except for a patch of light six feet up on the wall near the roof of the shed. Ranatti took Roy's elbow and guided him through the darkness and pointed to a step and a three-foot platform leading up to the patch of light. Roy stepped up and looked through the heavy gauge sheets of wire mesh into the interior of the restroom. The room was about thirty by twenty feet, Roy thought. He envisioned the dimension might be a question by the defense if he ever had to go to court on an arrest he made here. There were four urinals and four stools behind them separated by metal walls. Roy noticed there were no doors on the front of the stalls and several peepholes were drilled in the metal walls which separated the toilets.

  They waited silently for several minutes and then Roy heard feet shuffling on the concrete walk leading toward the front door. An old stooped tramp slouched in toting a bundle which he opened when he got inside. The tramp took four wine bottles from the dirty sack and drained the half mouthful of wine which remained in each of them. Then he put the bottles back into the bundle and Roy wondered what value they could have. The old man wobbled over to the last stool where he removed his filthy coat, lunged sideways against the wall, righted himself, and took the floppy hat from his tremendous shaggy head. The tramp dropped his pants and sat down in one motion and a tremendous gaseous explosion echoed through the restroom.