The Choirboys (13 page)

"I bet she woulda got up off some pussy if I coulda showed a few fifty dollar bill."

"If you gotta buy it it ain't worth it."

"I woulda bought it that night I was hurtin for certain. She had me by the joint, you know."

"Sure."

"I told you that, didn't I?"

"Another alcoholic fantasy, Calvin. You better come down off that Johnnie Walker bottle you're living in."

"Listen, you slant eyed little fenderhead, I'm tellin you she was lopin my mule under the table."

"Calvin, you were so bombed that night even the Dragon Lady couldn't've given you a blue veiner. I mean a black veiner."

"Now you're wearin me down, Francis."

"I just ain't going for it, Calvin."

Calvin Potts was glaring at Francis and almost failed to stand on the brakes in time to keep from broadsiding a dilapidated ten year old Pontiac which had limped onto Adams Boulevard from the driveway of Elmer's Barbeque Kitchen which was one half block from the family dispute call.

"Gud-damn!" Calvin yelled to the driver of the Pontiac who managed a frightened smile and gripped the steering wheel nervously with big dusty work-hard hands, his knuckles like walnuts.

"Whooo-eee!" the driver said and stopped in the traffic lane to wait a command from the black and white which pulled up on his right in the number two lane.

"A gud-damn, Mississippi-transplanted, chittlin eatin nigger," Calvin moaned as he switched on his red light and debated going to the call or writing a ticket first.

Francis settled it for him. "I'm up, Calvin."

"Okay, write him then."

"I don't wanna write him, Calvin. He doesn't look like he can afford it."

"I'll write him then."

"I'm up. I'm giving up my turn on him. You write the next one."

"Sorry, Officer," the driver said as the black policeman glared at him. "I ain't used to Los Angeles traffic. I'm jist a country boy."

"Drive a tractor then, asshole!" Calvin yelled, switching off the red light and speeding to the call at Adams and Cloverdale where they found two bleary-eyed black women in print house dresses and shower shoes arguing in front of the bar.

"You call?" Francis asked, putting on his hat while Calvin merely shook his head and, cap in hand, followed the two women and Francis inside.

The two policemen found four other combatants all more or less allied against a thirtyish buxom mulatto woman who sat in a corner booth sipping a milkball and tearing at a fat stick of beef jerky.

"There's the bitch that's causin all this ruckus, Officer," said the bigger of the two women who had led them inside.

"Yeah, you hussy," said the other one before the beefeater could speak. "She been livin wif my uncle. My uncle jist up and passed away and she wanna do the funeral, and she think she be gittin the house and the car because this old man wif a brain like pigfeet made some kinda raggedy ass agreement she think is a legal will!"

"She spend all my uncle's bread on wine and beer," said a bony customer at the bar.

"Whadda you spend your old woman's bread on, bastard?" the buxom young woman answered. And then to Francis, "We was livin common law."

"They ain't no common law in this state, bitch," said the smaller of the two women who stepped toward the booth but was stopped by Calvin who walked in front of her.

"Lemme talk to you private," Calvin said and only then did she stop chewing beef jerky and follow the tall black policeman toward the silent jukebox in the corner of the bar.

"What's happenin here, baby?" Calvin asked when they were alone.

"Well see, I was this funky ol man's main momma. I give that man two a the best years he ever had. Ever time I turn aroun he was wantin some face scoldin. Baby, I got calluses on the inside of my mouth from that evil old fool. I woulda went steppin when he died but these people got on my case heavy the first day the ol man was dead. Shoot, I jist decided I was gonna stay and fight for what's mine."

"That all there is?"

"Nothin to it, baby," the woman said and smiled at Calvin for the first time, stepping in close and touching his chest with her swooping breasts.

Just then the man at the bar lurched forward drunkenly saying, "Don't you believe nothin this hussy says about my uncle. It's all a shuck. He was senile and she was usin that ol man."

The man was holding something in his arms pressed tightly against his ribs and in the gloom of the bar room it looked like a rusty bath towel. Then Calvin noticed it was leaking down onto the man's cracked leather wing tips and then to the grimy floor.

"Man, you're bleedin!"

"Yeah," the man said. "I is." And as though embarrassed, he pulled the filthy towel away and a mucous trickle spurted out of the puncture in his chest and ran down his rib cage to the floor. The wound bubbled and gaped a bit larger with every breath he took. "That bitch done it to me."

"Okay, bastard!" said the buxom heiress. "Now I'm gonna show em what you done to me!"

As she spoke she squirmed and wriggled and hiked her tight dress over her wobbly buttocks and displayed a soppy Kotex which had been pressed inside her blue panties to stem the flow of blood from an eight inch knife wound across the hip and stomach which peeled back flesh and fat and bared a sliver of gleaming hipbone.

"What the fuck is goin on?" Calvin exploded, waving Francis over and pointing at both ugly wounds.

"You said you wasn't gonna say nothin if I didn't say nothin, you funky ol devil!" the heiress complained.

"Well, he ast me, bitch. What was I gonna say, that I was holdin a pack a bloody meat in this here towel?"

"Did you get cut in the fracas?" Francis asked, shocked at the slash across her belly.

"No, bout five inches above it," the woman answered.

"So, who cut who?" Calvin demanded, disgusted because now they would have to make crime reports and likely book both antagonists in a "mutual combat" situation so common to ghetto policemen.

"I fell on a ice pick," the man said.

"Who cut you?" Francis asked the heiress.

"I fell on a butcher knife," she answered.

"Tell me somethin," the man said as Francis squinted in the bleak dusty light at the chest hole and finally stepped forward to watch the sinister little orifice blow and foam as the man breathed. "If somebody was to attack somebody wif a ice pick, and this here other somebody was to defend hisself wif a butcher knife, would this somebody wif a butcher knife go to jail?"

Before the policemen could answer, the heiress added, "And if this motherfuckin dawg of a lyin wino was really the one to attack a woman with a butcher knife and she had to defend herself with a ice pick, wouldn't this woman be a righteous victim of this other evil ol motherfucker? She wouldn't go to jail, would she?"

"Anybody else see this?" Francis asked, but everyone suddenly turned to his beer for some serious drinking.

"The detectives would book em both and let em hassle it out in court," Calvin scowled contemptuously. "And before it got to a court trial there'd be three continuances by the two defendants and in the end they'd both agree not to prosecute each other and it'd be a big motherfuckin waste of my time and the taxpayers' money."

"Kin you give me a ride to the hospital?" asked the heiress.

"You wanna make a crime report against him?"

"No."

"Take the bus," Calvin said. "The doctor'll sew you up for free. It's an emergency."

"Don't they send you a bill?" she asked, and finally tamped the Kotex compress back into place and squirmed the dress back down.

"Sure, but jist put it with the rest a your bills inside the hole in your shoe."

"Calvin, we better take him anyway," Francis said. "That's a chest puncture. This man's hurt bad."

"You wanna make a crime report against her?" asked Calvin.

"No," the man said and the breath made a rattling bubble on his chest and a soft pop when it burst.

"Groovy," Calvin said, heading for the door. "Jist take two aspirin and stay in bed tomorrow."

"He's hurt bad, Calvin." Francis had to run to catch his long striding partner outside on the sidewalk.

"Hey, jump back, Jack! I made my decision. I ain't fuckin with no more a these people. If they wanna rip each other from the lips to the hips, let em go head on!"

"He could die. His lung could collapse."

"You can't kill these niggers, Francis. I was broke in on the job by a cracker named Dixie Suggs who hated black people like you hate squid. He taught me you gotta practically cut off their heads and shrink em to kill the motherfuckers. Damn, let's work a north end car next month. I can take those big-mouth kikes better than niggers."

"Okay Calvin, okay." Francis watched his partner for a moment before raising the hand mike to clear from the call.

They cruised, Calvin smoking quietly, until darkness settled. Then Calvin patted the breast pocket of his uniform and said, "Let's stop by Easy's and get some smokes."

Francis, who had been drinking heavily the night before, was dozing in his seat, his head bobbing on his chest every few seconds, his long black hair hanging over his thin face as small boy's.

"We get a call?" Francis asked, fumbling for the pencil in his shirt pocket.

"Go back to sleep, Francis. We didn't get no call."

Calvin made a lazy turn onto Venice Boulevard to the liquor store run by Easy Willis, a jolly black man who supplied two packs of cigarettes a day to each of the three cars patrolling the district around the clock. Easy felt that this would promote the reputation that cops came into Easy's at any time, thus discouraging the robbers and potential robbers who lived in the area.

The packs of cigarettes ensured that not only would the officers walk in once on each watch, but they would make it a point to shine the spotlight in the window every time they passed. In truth, a pack of cigarettes did make them drive by a bit more than they would have normally and a policeman's spotlight is most reassuring to liquor store and gas station proprietors in the ghetto. Many of whom have faced a gun and been slugged and attacked more than a squad of policemen and in fact have a far more physically dangerous occupation.

"Say, Calvin, what's shakin?" Easy grinned, as Calvin walked hatless into the store which was stocked wall to wall with beer, hard liquor and cheap wine. The ghetto dwellers were not dilettante drinkers.

"Aw right, aw right, Easy, my man," Calvin said, leaning on the counter while Easy slid three fifths of Scotch into a paper bag for a boozy black woman who had a child in her arms and another hanging from her dress.

Calvin looked around the store at the sagging liquor counters and the display shelves. Like most ghetto establishments the shelves held no candy bars or cigarettes because of juvenile shoplifting. Calvin glanced at the rows of skin magazines and then at the elaborate sprinkler system which the white owner of the store had installed in case there was ever another black riot in Los Angeles.

The proprietor, Lolly Herman, had owned a store in Watts which had been looted and fire-bombed in 1965. He feared another black rebellion more than any antebellum plantation owner. The proprietor had all windows barred and a silent robbery alarm button situated in five strategic locations in the store: behind the counter, in the restroom in case a thief would force him in there, in the cold storage locker if that should be where he was forced to go, near the back door of the store which led out into the yard that was enclosed by a ten foot chain link fence with five strands of barbed wire around the top, and finally in the money room which was just to the side of the counter and enclosed by ceiling high sheets of bulletproof glass. The door to the money room was electrically controlled as was the swinging wrought iron gate which protected the front door when the premises were secured at 2:00 A. M.

Perhaps more formidable than the lonely vicious Doberman which prowled the service yard at the rear and lay flea bitten in the blazing sunshine was the carbine that Mr. Herman had displayed on the wall inside the bulletproof money room to dissuade any thief who thought his protection was merely preventative.

Three weeks after he had finished every elaborate antirobbery and antiburglary device, he was sapped by a ninety pound teenager on roller skates when he was getting into his car after closing. Three thousand dollars were stolen from his socks and underwear.

After that, Lolly Herman, with eighteen sutures in his skull, stopped working at the liquor store, retired to his Beverly Hills home and let Easy Willis take over management of the store. Of course, business was not as good. Easy and the other six employees could not be made to hustle without Lolly Herman watching them. They stole about a thousand a month among them to supplement their incomes, but the liquor store was still a gold mine and Mrs. Herman secretly thanked God that the ninety pound teenager, called Chipmunk Grimes, had coldcocked the old man and driven him into retirement.

"Momma made some souse and head cheese, Calvin," Easy said when the customer left. Then Easy flipped two packs of Camels on the counter without asking.

"Thanks but I don't eat much soul these days." Calvin put both packs in his pockets, glad that Francis didn't smoke.