The Choirboys (19 page)

About twice a year, for no apparent reason, Filthy Herman would live up to his name and his normal alcoholic binge would end with his standing on two inch stumps on the wooden porch of his home, naked except for a Dodger baseball cap, screaming, "My cock's dragging the ground, how about yours?" Which indeed it was, what with the absence of legs.

Then the unfortunate radio car officers who got the call would be subjected to a barrage of incredible obscenities, empty bottles, beer cans, spitting, bites on the leg and surprisingly painful punches from the gnarled fists of Filthy Herman, who at fifty was not devoid of the strength acquired while an ironworker.

Any officer who had worked the division long enough had seen the legless torso of Filthy Herman bouncing across the asphalt as he was dragged cursing into the station by two disheveled policemen. Because of his physical impairment he was a pathetic sight when cleaned up and no judge had ever given him more than sixty days in the county jail for battery on a police officer.

The outraged victim of Filthy Herman was standing with her husband on the northwest corner of First and Harvard when the policemen arrived. Spencer sighed, parked on the east side of Harvard, slowly set the brake and turned off the headlights. He grabbed his flashlight and baton and followed Father Willie across the street.

"You call?" Father Willie asked the fortyish mousy woman who held a white toy poodle to her face and deferred to her tight lipped husband, a big man in a loose golf sweater and checkered pants.

"My wife was walking the dog," the man sputtered. "Just out walking our dog and she passed a house up there on Harvard and this filthy animal, this creature, exposed himself to her!"

"Where'd it happen?" Father Willie asked, opening his report book and leaning against a car at the curb, his hat tipped back as he wrote.

"Back up the street," the man said, "The third or fourth house."

"You see it, sir?" Father Willie asked.

"No, my wife ran home and got me, and came back here with her and she pointed out the house, but there was nobody on the porch. I was going to kill him." And the man put his arm around the skinny woman who clutched the toy poodle more tightly, lip quivering.

"What'd he do, ma'am?" asked Willie as he filled in the blanks for type of crime and location.

"He exposed himself! I told you!" said the man.

"Have to hear it from the witness," Spencer said.

"He yelled something horrible to me as I walked by," the woman answered brokenly. "And he showed himself. Oh, he was a horrible creature!"

"What'd he look like" asked Father Willie, writing a cursory narrative.

"He. he had no legs!" cried the woman. "He was a horrible, ugly little creature with, oh, I don't know, grayish hair and a horribly twisted body. And he had no legs! And he was naked! Except for a blue baseball cap!"

"I see," said Father Willie and then, unable to resist, "Did you notice anything unusual about him?"

And the woman answered, "Well, he had a tattoo on his chest, a woman or something. His porch light was on and I could see him very well."

"What'd he say to you when you passed?"

"Oh, God!" the woman said and the poodle yapped when she squeezed it to her face.

"Do we have to?" the man asked. "I'd like to go back and kick that little freak clear off the porch."

"You could," shrugged Spencer, "but he's a wiry little guy. Probably bite you in the knee and give you lockjaw."

"He said. he said. God!" the woman sobbed "Yeah," Spencer encouraged her.

"He said, 'I ain't got no left knee and no right knee, but look at my wienie!'Oh, God!"

"Yeah, that's our man all right," said Father Willie grimly. "Filthy Herman!"

After taking the complaining party's name, address and other routine information, the two policemen told them to go home and let the law deal with the little criminal. And they knew they stood a good chance of being punched in the balls or bitten on the thigh if they weren't careful. In that Filthy Herman was a legless man, not one team of policemen had ever had the good sense to call for assistance when arresting him. It was a matter of pride that two policemen with four legs between them should not have to call brother officers to help with this recurring problem.

"I'd like to punt the little prick sixty yards," Spencer said nervously as they climbed the steps to the darkened house of Filthy Herman.

"Wish we had a gunnysack to put him in. I hear he bites like a crocodile," said Father Willie, leading the way with his flashlight beam trained on the doorway.

The officers banged on the door and rang the bell several times until Spencer finally said, "Let's cut out. We tried. He's probably in there hiding. Let the dicks get a warrant and go down on Eighth Street during the day and pluck him off the bar at one of those gin mills where he plays the horses."

"Fine by me," Father Willie breathed, starting to imagine he heard a ghostly dragging chain above him in the dark old house. He looked up and saw dust falling from the porch roof which was sagging and full of holes and patched in several places with plywood and canvas.

Then they heard canvas tear and shingles fell on their heads as Filthy Herman sprung his surprise which put Spencer in Central Receiving Hospital for observation.

Spencer Van Moot was jolted forward almost out of his shoes, leaving his hat and flashlight behind as he flew crashing through Filthy Herman's front door while Father Willie stared in shock.

Father Willie slowly and incredulously realized what had happened when Filthy Herman came swinging back out the door, suspended by a heavy chain, and spit as he passed. Then he swung back in toward the doorway screaming, "C'mon and fight, you big sissy!" and spit again. Detectives who filed felony charges against Filthy Herman for the violent assault against Spencer Van Moot were to piece together the story the next day. The self-confessed attacker said he had become tired of being dragged off to jail every time he got a little bit drunk and flogged his dummy on the porch. Filthy Herman had decided to frustrate the next arrest by chaining himself to an ancient steel and porcelain freestanding bathtub in the second story bathroom of his home. He had acquired a fifty foot piece of chain from a fellow horse player on Eighth Street who worked at a wrecking yard, and with a tempered steel lock supplied by the same friend, had crisscrossed his torso, using the chain like the bandolier of a Mexican bandit. Then he encircled his waist and locked it in the front.

After his crime against the woman with the poodle, Filthy Herman had been in the bathroom on the second floor when he saw the officers arrive. He had planned to fight it out there in the bathroom but suddenly the swashbuckling plan burst forth. He crawled out on the porch roof, dragging his chain, until he was just over the unsuspecting officers at the front door beneath him. And without anticipating the consequences, he yelled "Geronimo!" and pitched forward through a hole in the porch roof, swinging down and in, striking Spencer Van Moot behind the neck with 150 pounds of beefy torso and propelling the policeman through the front door, splitting it in two and knocking the doorjamb ten feet across the room. Then he was swinging back and forth, screaming obscenities, spitting, snapping and challenging the bewildered Father Willie.

When Father Willie eventually came to his senses with Filthy Herman swaying dizzily in front of his eyes, the choirboy began yelling, "You dirty little bugger!" and swinging the nightstick wildly until he broke it on Filthy Herman's head.

Then by the time the neighbors, who were sick and tired of the crashing and screaming, called for additional police, Father Willie, had Filthy Herman punched silly.

It took an hour and a half to get Filthy Herman dragged back up on the roof by his chain, pulled into the bathroom and covered with a bathrobe until an officer from Central Property could arrive with bolt cutters large enough to handle the heavy links.

Spencer Van Moot was in the hospital neck and back spasms. Father Willie was out a week with two broken bones in his right hand. Filthy Herman had one tooth knocked loose, two black eyes and a broken nose.

Both Filthy Herman and his daughter wept in each others arms in court three weeks later and Herman was eventually put on probation for one year with the stipulation that he drink no alcoholic beverage. One week after the sentence Filthy Herman got drunk again, masturbated from the step of a fire truck and threw a fire extinguisher at an amazed fireman: Filthy Herman got six months in jail for that one, which proved what all policemen already knew: it's more risky to beat up firemen because they're popular.

So, while Spencer was meeting his Waterloo at the hands of Filthy Herman, Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate had to meander south into the ghetto of Wilshire Division, which would probably not be called a ghetto in any other large city in the world, to answer a call that ended up being just another attempt by Clyde Percy to get into Camarillo State Hospital. Clyde Percy was a seventy year old black man who lived in the vicinity of the Baldwin Hills reservoir. Because in the great flood of 1963 he had plunged into the raging water and rescued a drowning woman who was trapped in her overturned car, Clyde Percy was presented with a commendation by the City of Los Angeles, the first official praise he had ever been given in his entire life. Now he simply couldn't wander too far from the scene of his triumph and was the object of numerous radio calls. People would find Clyde Percy asleep in their unlocked cars or in the storage sheds of small businesses, and once, in a piece de resistance, he slept all night on a posture perfect mattress in the window of a department store in the Crenshaw shopping district. The next morning he was discovered by passing shoppers still in the store window, fully clothed, muddy shoes and all. He was snoring peacefully, slobbering out the side of his toothless mouth, dreaming of some woman far far back in his memory, holding onto an erection which only came in sleep. Clyde got ninety days that time.

"Wonder why Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie weren't assigned the call," Spermwhale grumbled to Baxter Slate. 'I'll bet they're off in some fuckin clothin store buyin some Lord Fauntleroy bow tie for Spencer or some tooty fruity boots. Man's forty years old and he dresses like an interior decorator or somethin."

The radio call which Spermwhale and Baxter Slate received concerned an open door a tremulous security-guard had found while making his rounds at a furniture store on the east side of Crenshaw. The security officer had heard ghostly sounds coming from within the store and though the sun had not yet set, it was dim and shadow filled inside. The guard was seventy-five years old and didn't really want to be a security guard but if he relied on Social Security to support him and his seventy-three year old wife they'd have to eat dog food five days a week instead of two.

"Go on about your rounds," Spermwhale told the old man. "Well check it out."

"I'll be right over there across the street by my car if you need me," the guard promised. 'I'll be close to my radio in case you need help."

"Sure," Spermwhale said, "stay there in case we need you."

And he patted the guard on the shoulder and pointed him toward his car which was not across the street as he thought but in the parking lot back of the building. The old man lost his car at least once a night.

When they were alone and dusk was deepening, Baxter said, "We're calling for another car, aren't we?"

"Nope," said Spermwhale, "it's just old Clyde Percy."

"Who?"

"Clyde the lifeguard. The old dingaling that pulled the broad outta the sewer back in the flood. Ain't you heard a him? He's always gettin busted for somethin or other."

"How do you know it's him?"

"His MO. He breaks into places right after they close and he eats up whatever's around and goes to sleep. I know it's him because a the noises the doorshaker said he made. Like a ghost. They always say that, people who call in."

"What's the noise?"

"He cries. Sits in there and cries. He sounds like a mournful moose. I tell you it's Clyde Percy in there."

But just in case, Baxter Slate unlocked the Ithaca shotgun from the rack and jacked one in the chamber when they walked single file into the darkened store looking for the mournful moose.

It was a small furniture store which advertised entire living room sets for six hundred dollars. Clyde Percy would have none of the cheap furniture. They found him in the rear on the second floor by the manager's office sprawled out on a nine hundred dollar tufted Chesterfield, eating a half empty bag of potato chips and a banana, which one of the clerks had left behind. He wore his regular attire, which was two dirty undershirts and three outer shirts with a ragged colorless turtleneck sweater over all, a pair of stout flannel pants over longjohn underwear, run over combat boots and a World War II flier's hat without the goggles.

"H'lo, Clyde," Spermwhale said as Baxter lowered the riot gun and ejected the live round from the chamber.

"Aw right, Officer, aw right," said Clyde Percy, grinning happily and standing at attention, his purple lips smeared with banana, his skin blue-black in the shadows. "Y'all caught me fair an square. Don't need no handcuffs. I'm gonna come peaceable. Course if you wanna use handcuffs it's okay too."

"Ain't seen you around for a while, Clyde," Spermwhale said as they walked the old man down the stairs, each policeman holding an elbow because he reeked of wine and staggered on the landing.