The Choirboys (11 page)

And as Father Willie strained to hear the voice of his secret love, Francis Tanaguchi abruptly changed the tape from Elton John to The Carpenters because he had finally managed to get a dance with Ida Keely, a cute communications operator with eyes like a deer. He had a blue veiner even before the song began.

Lookin back on how it was in years gone by and the good times that I had Makes today seem rather sad so much has changed.

Officer Sheila Franklin sighed, stood and made her way out of the cluttered bedroom where most of the living room furniture had been pushed to make room for the dancers. She stopped before opening the door and said, "All right, Reba, I've asked you to be sociable and stay a little while because you know how I feel about Nick Yanov. But if you have to go."

"I can call a cab. You stay."

"Damn it, Reba, I brought you here. I'll take you back to your car. But you know something? It's not a rough party. They're just dancing and."

"I was practically mauled in the swimming pool!"

"One drunk grabbed your ass. Come on, Reba, you're a cop too, for God's sake. They're just a little drunk."

"I'll call a cab."

"No, no, no, I'll tell Nick we're leaving. Go ahead and change."

And then as Father Willie ducked into the bathroom the partially opened bedroom door swung open and Sheila Franklin, still wearing her wet bikini under a blue terry cloth robe, crossed the hallway and went out a side door which opened onto a terrace where Sergeant Nick Yanov sat playing nickel and dime poker with five other policemen.

It was songs of love that I would sing to them

And I'd memorize each word.

Those old melodies still sound so good to me As they melt the years away.

No-Balls Hadley still sat where Sheila Franklin had left her. On a large glass coffee table. In her wet bathing suit. A short robe she had borrowed from Nick Yanov covered her sleek flesh as Father Willie Wright quietly pushed open the door behind her.

The sound of No-Balls Hadley's voice. The heart searing voice of Karen Carpenter. The unbearable nostalgia of his high school days. Twelve ounces of gin fermenting in his young bloodstream. Father Willie Wright had very little to do with what happened next. Seldom has a legend been born more spontaneously.

All my best memories come back clearly, to me, Some can even make me cry-just like before.

It's yesterday once more.

First, Father Willie tried to formulate a perfect sentence: something tender, loving, endearing but he could not. He leaned against the wall, unseen behind No-Balls Hadley. Breathing became labored. Nostrils flared. Bulging eyes rolled back in unbearable ecstasy and passion. Like Byron on the Acropolis.

Ev'ry sha-la-la-la, ev'ry wo-oh-wo-oh still shines Ev'ry shing-a-ling-ling that they're startin' to sing so fine.

He knew instinctively that this was his moment. His life had led him here. Behind her where she sat perched on. the glass table, pissed off at her friend Sheila Franklin and these swinish policemen and men in general. And no man could have stopped what happened next when, still wearing the short robe, she slipped off her bikini bottom and kicked it against the wall in a wet and angry plop.

The coffee table was suddenly cold on the bare buttocks of No-Balls Hadley and she tried to tuck the robe tinder her as she thought again of that fat hairy ugly pig, Spermwhale Whalen, and how he had tried to dive under the water and grab her by the ass. As she sat fuming on the glass coffee table, Father Willie Wright knew he was not worthy to touch this exquisite golden girl who had filled his young life with torment and guilt.

Ev'ry sha-la-la-la, ev'ry wo-oh-wo-oh still shines Ev'ry shing-a-ling-ling that they're startin' to sing so fine.

Father Willie Wright found himself on his knees crawling across the red carpet. Without willing it he was on his back worming forward under the glass table.

Then No-Balls Hadley thought she heard something. A sound, wet and sticky. But with the noise in the living room she dismissed it and smoldered and waited for her friend, determined not even to go in the other room to get her clothes. She would let Sheila bring them to her. She wouldn't risk an encounter with another drunken cop.

She heard the sound again. Louder. A smacking sound, close but somehow distant. Then she heard it directly beneath her! She uncrossed her legs and spread them and looked down in horror at the white and bloodless nose and lips of Father Willie Wright pressed against the underside of the glass table, smearing the glass directly beneath her bare bottom with wet and loving kisses while his blue eyes crossed and bulged from the meticulous maddening scrutiny of the golden twat of his beloved.

No-Balls Hadley screamed. She shrieked in consummate disgust as Father Willie Wright, unaware that she was gone from the glass, still slurped tenderly and vaguely wondered what someone was yelling about.

No-Balls Hadley screamed. And screamed.

Before the first three policemen had burst through the door Father Willie realized that something was wrong, his face pressed like a fish against the smeary wet glass, eyes popping. Then Father Willie understood that he was discovered.

"God love ya!" Father Willie whispered reverently just before No-Balls Hadley picked up a huge ceramic lamp and smashed it down on the tempered glass while all hell broke loose around the confused and troubled choirboy chaplain.

Then someone pulled him out from under the table to save him while No-Balls Hadley grabbed a three iron from the golf bag of Sergeant Nick Yanov and began breaking chunks from the glass. Father Willie went skidding across the floor, Spencer Van Moot dragging him by the heels.

Someone wrestled the three iron from No-Balls Hadley who yelled, "You filthy disgusting obscene little motherfucker! I'll kill you!"

She tore a picture from the wall and threw it crashing through the bedroom window to the terrace outside where it thudded against the side of the head of a poker player, sending him to the emergency ward for five stitches.

No-Balls Hadley, minus her robe which had been pulled away by a policeman trying to restrain her, clad only in a green bikini top, began beating Father Willie Wright back against the sliding closet door and kicking him in the soft belly.

Then she was sitting on top of Father Willie, pummeling him with both fists as he covered his little face with both arms saying, "But I love you, Officer Hadley. Don't you see?"

Finally, Sergeant Nick Yanov, one of the few sober policemen at the party, overpowered the spitting kicking cursing policewoman and dragged her still naked into the other bedroom where Officer Sheila Franklin got her in a wristlock until she fell exhausted, blurting what Father Willie had done.

As the bleeding bewildered Father Willie Wright was being carried to his car by Spencer Van Moot and Harold Bloomguard, he turned his battered face to Harold Bloomguard and said, "What'd I do wrong, Harold? What'd I do?"

"I'll tell you what you did, Padre! You put that hoity-toity bitch No-Balls Hadley in her place, is all!" Harold Bloomguard cried proudly as they carried Father Willie down the sidewalk. "You just became a Legend in Your Own Time!"

From that day on, in choirboy folklore, the episode of No-Balls Hadley became known as The Night the Padre Tried to Eat Pressed Ham Through the Wrapper.

Chapter
SEVEN

7-A-77: Calvin Potts
and Francis Tanaguchi
.

A choir practice was certainly in order and was called for by Francis Tanaguchi on The Night the U Boat Was Decommissioned. It was three months before the killing in MacArthur Park.

The night was bound to be an extraordinary one, beginning as it did with a noisy argument in which the nightwatch ganged up on Lieutenant Finque who was trying to defend the department's disciplinary policies to the rebellious assembly of blue suited young men who thought he was full of shit.

"Look," the exasperated watch commander argued, "that West Los Angeles officer deserved thirty days off for what he did."

"Deserved? Deserved?" Spermwhale Whalen thundered. "His old man and his old man's old man owned that fuckin bar for thirty years. He grew up behind the bar."

"Department policy forbids policemen to engage in off-duty employment in places where alcoholic beverages."

"What would you do if your old man was pressed for a bartender for a couple weeks?"

"He only got thirty days."

"Only? Only! Take thirty days' pay off me and I'd starve to death. So would my ex-wives and my ex-kids and my turtle. Where the fuck else does a guy get fined for somethin he does durin nonworkin hours that don't violate no laws?"

"Professional sports," said Lieutenant Finque.

"They can afford it, we can't," Spermwhale shot back. "All I can say is I'm glad I got my twenty in next January. I'm gonna start speakin my mind then."

"The lieutenant needs that like a dose of clap," said Sergeant Nick Yanov, who winked at Spermwhale.

"Fuckin pussies run this outfit," Spermwhale growled, settling down a little under the placating grin of Sergeant Yanov. "I know why all the brass downtown go up to Chinatown for lunch. They operate this fuckin department from the fortune cookies."

"Well, what say we read the crimes?" Sergeant Yanov asked, much to the relief of Lieutenant Finque who feared gross and ugly and dangerous old cops like Spermwhale Whalen. Lieutenant Finque could never seem to reason with them.

"Here's one on Virginia Road where a housewife invented a do it yourself antiburglary kit," Nick Yanov said, rubbing his bristling chin as he read. "She's an invalid who stays in bed all day with a Colt .38 under her pillow. Blew up a burglar the other day when he opened the kitchen window and tippy-toed in. Her second."

After everyone finished cheering, Sergeant Yanov looked at the clock and said, "Not much time left. Here's a mug shot of that dude the dicks want for shanking his old lady. Cut her long, deep and continuous. Hangs around the poolroom on Adams."

"Hey, Sarge," Spencer Van Moot said, "I'm getting tired of all these station calls to the old broad lives on West Boulevard. Doesn't the desk officer know she's a dingaling? She always wants to know things like where does she buy a crash helmet big enough for her thirty-five year old epileptic son who keeps falling on his head."

"Only takes a minute," Sergeant Yanov said. "Her boy's been dead for five years. Makes the old woman feel good talking to a big good looking blond Like you, Spencer. You probably remind her of him."

"Well she's not my type and I got better things to do," Spencer answered, and then he got mad as the assembly room exploded into hoots and laughter because everyone but Lieutenant Finque knew that Spencer's better things to do were bargain hunting on Wilshire Boulevard.

"It's time we hit the streets," Lieutenant Finque repeated, since he believed that a lieutenant should never let a sergeant, especially one as lenient as Nick Yanov, take over the rollcall.

Unquestionably, the biggest pain in the ass on the nightwatch at Wilshire Station was Francis Tanaguchi. He was twenty-five years old, a third generation Japanese-American who grew up in the barrio of East Los Angeles and spoke good street Spanish but not a word of Japanese. He adored guacamole, chile relleno, barbacoa, menudo, albondigas soup and tequila with anything. He hated sushi, tempura, teriyaki steak, sake and could not operate a pair of chopsticks to save his life.

As a teenage member of a Chicano youth gang he had spray-painted "Peewee Raiders" on more walls than any other gang member. Still, he was never totally accepted by Mexican boys who lumped all Orientals together by invariably nicknaming them "Chino" or "Chink." Francis fought to be called "Francisco" or at least "Pancho" but settled for "Chink-ano." It stayed with him until he joined the Los Angeles Police Department at the age of twenty-one.

Gradually he found it was advantageous to be Japanese. There were many Mexican-American policemen but there were few Japanese-American policemen, even though Los Angeles has the largest Japanese-American population in California.

Sometimes Francis and his black partner, Calvin Potts, had profound philosophical discussions about their ethnic roots.

"So now if I wanna get somewhere in the department I gotta be a Buddhahead," Francis moaned to his partner.

"You think you got problems?" Calvin remarked. "How about me? How'd you like to be a brother in your paddy world, huh?"

"Who said I'm a paddy for chrissake?" Francis answered. "Goddamnit, I'm a Mexican."

"You're a Nip, Francis," Calvin reminded him.

"So quit calling me a paddy."

"You all look alike."

"It's goddamn hard becoming a Jap when you're my age. I been at it four years now and I still can't take a picture or mow a lawn straight."

"You think you got it rough," Calvin said. "How'd you like to have other policemen put you down when you date a white chick. How'd you like that, Francis?"

"I ain't seen it stop you yet, Calvin."

"That's because I'm drunk when I date a white chick. I get drunk to stop the hurt."

"You get drunk when you date any chick. In fact, everybody knows you're an alcoholic, for chrissake."