The Choirboys (22 page)

Baxter Slate was one of three college graduates among the choirboys, the others being Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard, both of whom obtained degrees while police officers. Two of the others were upperclassmen in part time studies, and all but Spermwhale Whalen had some college units. Baxter Slate not only had his baccalaureate in the classics, but had been a graduate student and honors candidate when he dropped out of college in disgust and impulsively joined the Los Angeles Police Department five years earlier. He was an unusually handsome young man, almost twenty-seven years old. He lived alone in a one bedroom apartment. He had no plans for marrying and no ambition to advance in rank. He said he liked working uniform patrol, that it gave him a chance to live more intensely, that sometimes he seemed to live a week or a month in a single night.

Whereas Calvin Potts read every new book in the police library which he thought might help him pass the coming sergeant's examination, Baxter Slate read no books in the police library Since they invariably dealt with law, crime and police; Though Baxter Slate enjoyed doing police work he hated reading about it. And though Baxter Slate firmly believed that his extensive education in the classics had been the most colossal waste of money his mother had ever squandered and that his degree would never at any time in his life be worth more than the surprisingly cheap paper it was printed on, he nevertheless could not break old habits. He would occasionally, for the fun of it, struggle with Virgil and Pliny the Elder to see if he could apply their admonitions to the sensual, self-contained, alcoholic microcosm of choir practice which to Baxter Slate made more sense than the larger world outside.

Most of the choirboys had worked with Baxter as a partner at one time or another. He had been in the division three years and had worked Juvenile for nine months until he discovered he was a lousy Juvenile officer. Baxter thought he was also a lousy patrol officer. No one else said that Baxter was a lousy anything, except Roscoe Rules, who disliked Baxter for having ideas which confused Roscoe. At choir practice often drunkenly accused Baxter of using ten dollar words just to show off in front of Ora Lee Tingle who was so bombed on gin and vodka she wouldn't have known the difference if Baxter had spoken Latin. And as a matter of fact, Baxter could tell dirty jokes in Latin which amused all the choirboys except Roscoe.

"You and your faggy big words," Roscoe shouted one night as he soaked his feet in the MacArthur Park duck pond, watching warily that the ducks did not swim by and attack his toes.

"Baxter don't use big words," Spermwhale Whalen said, looking as though he would like to pulverize Roscoe Rules, who feared and hated Spermwhale even more than he feared and hated the little ducks.

"Well I think he does, goddamnit," Roscoe said but was careful to smile at Spermwhale when he said it.

Baxter was some forty feet away in the darkness, lying on a blanket and shaking his head in wonder that even here in the idyllic tranquilized and totally artificial world of choir practice, it was not entirely possible to escape hostility and violence.

"I think it's faggy and uppity to talk like that," Roscoe Rules said, while the other choirboys drank and teased Ora Lee Tingle or played mumbletypeg in the grass with confiscated and illegal ten inch stilettos or, like Spermwhale Whalen, tossed little stones on the water to watch the ripples, and to neck with Carolina Moon.

Finally Baxter uncoiled his lean body, brushed back his heavy umber hair, longer than anyone's but Spencer Van Moot's, who was constantly under fire from the watch commander to get a haircut, and said, "Roscoe, I sincerely try not to use any big words."

"There! See, you did it again!" Roscoe pointed, banging On the arm of his partner Whaddayamean Dean Pratt who was dozing on his blanket. "See, you said 'sincerely.' Shit. Faggy word. Faggy is what it is."

"I simply asked the fellows if."

"See! You did it again!" shouted the mean and drunken Roscoe Rules as he punched on Dean to arouse him, but his partner only whimpered drunkenly. "'Fellows.' How many cops you ever hear say 'fellows'? Cops say 'guys' or 'dudes' or 'studs' or 'cats,' but no cop in the history of LAPD ever said 'fellows. Nobody but you, Baxter Slate."

"He didn't say nothin faggy I heard," Calvin Potts said, and the tall black policeman was suddenly standing behind Roscoe Rules who was thinking that the only thing worse than a fag is a nigger and how much fun it would be to kneedrop Calvin Potts and puncture his kidney and smash his spleen like a rotten peach.

"For chrissake. Baxter, tell Roscoe what you said so I can relax," said Francis Tanaguchi who was lost in the expansive bosom of Ora Lee Tingle, trying to persuade her to pull the train for a few of the choirboys. She was now wearing only Spermwhale's T-shirt and her own skintight black flares as she held Francis Tanaguchi in her arms saying how fucking cute Nips are.

"Roscoe," Baxter said patiently, "I only said that policemen see the worst of people and people at their worst. I was simply trying to explain to you and me and all of us our premature cynicism. That's all I said and I wish I'd keep my big mouth shut."

"So do I," muttered Roscoe. "Fucking ten dollar words. A policeman only needs about a hundred words in his whole vocabulary."

"The only big words I use were taught me in the police academy, Roscoe," said Baxter. "Words like hemorrhage and defecation." Baxter took a drink of cold vodka and said, "You know, Roscoe, even you use euphemisms, police euphemisms, like calling your nightstick a baton because the LAPD says to call it that. I refuse to call it that. A baton is a plaything for young girls. There's no phallic connotation whatsoever. If I'm going to carry something to beat people over the head with I insist it have Freudian implications. I learned that in graduate school. Everything must have Freudian implications."

"You making fun a me, Slate?" Roscoe demanded, trying to stagger to his feet.

"You know, a graduate student would love to use a big faggy word like 'emasculated' on you, Roscoe. That's a favorite word of all graduate students. And they would say of your baton that's the true symbol of your sexual identity is the wooden appendage you store at the station. In other words, your cock's in your locker."

"Oh, I don't like you, Slate, I never liked you," said Roscoe Rules who really didn't like Baxter Slate any less than he liked Harold Bloomguard, Francis Tanaguchi, Calvin Potts and Spermwhale Whalen, not necessarily in that order. He only just tolerated his partner, Dean Pratt, who was starting to get on his nerves, and Father Willie Wright who seemed to be afraid of him.

"Let's talk economics instead of philosophy, Roscoe," Baxter Slate said, deciding to test the meanest choirboy. "I think that the inflationary period follows the prediction of the deficit meanders of corollary Harry, that Roscoes cannot breed in captivity and that Chandu the Magician is a cousin of the condor at Santa Barbara."

"I don't buy that faggy idea any more than the last one," Roscoe Rules said, passing the test.

"Whaddaya mean, Baxter? Whaddaya mean?" asked Whaddayamean Dean who had crawled across the grass into the conversation area.

"What do I mean, Dean, my friend?" said Baxter Slate. "I mean that I was a lousy Juvenile officer, that's what I mean. I mean that a battered child has a marvelous capacity to adjust to his torture and will ceaselessly love his battering parents. I mean that the mother of a sexually molested child will not leave nor truly protect the child from the father as long as the man has a good job or otherwise preserves that mother from an economic life which is more horrifying to her than the molestation of her child. I mean that the weakness of the human race is stupefying and that it's not the capacity for evil which astounds young policemen like you and me, Dean. Rather it's the mind boggling worthlessness of human beings. There's not enough dignity in mankind for evil and that's the most terrifying thing a policeman learns."

"Whaddaya trying to say, Baxter? Whaddaya trying to say?" pleaded Whaddayamean Dean drunkenly.

"I mean that twelve good men and true are a gaggle of nonprofessional neophytes conditioned by the heroics of cinema juries which inevitably free the defendant who is inevitably innocent. I mean that they can never really believe that a natural father could do such an unnatural thing to his child."

"I don't get it! I don't get it!" cried Whaddayamean Dean.

"I mean that doctors and professional men are the most arrogant and incompetent witnesses at any criminal proceedings and that they'll screw up your case for sure.

"I mean that the weak and inept parents will always refuse to surrender their neglected children to the authorities because they want to atone for failures with older children and the cycle inevitably repeats itself.

"I mean that perhaps economics, not morality, is our last consideration, and that the judge has a point when you plead with him to put a man away to save that man's family and the judge says, 'Swell, but who do you want me to let out?'"

"What's he mean? What's he mean?" yelled Whaddayamean Dean to the drunken choirboys. Dean was boozy enough for a crying jag now, the tears welling as he bobbed and weaved and almost fell over backward.

"And I mean that when policemen have to deal with small inflexible men in their own ranks, perhaps it becomes too much. And perhaps part of the reason that Roscoe Rules is small and inflexible and insensitive is because traditional police administrators-men like Captain Drobeck and Commander Moss and Chief Lynch-are small and inflexible and insensitive and."

"I heard that faggy remark, Slate, you scrote!" said Roscoe Rules, still unable to stand.

"I mean that cops chase society's devils as well as their own, which becomes unbearably terrifying since the devil is at last only the mirror image of a creature utterly without worth or dignity. And that the physical dangers of police work are grossly overrated but the emotional dangers make it the most hazardous job on earth."

"Oh, Baxter, oh, Baxter," moaned the bewildered Whaddayamean Dean who was starting to get sick.

"I mean that I carry only two memories from my childhood in Dominican boarding schools where I was placed by my beautiful, well traveled mother: if you touch the communion wafer with your teeth it's not so good and should be avoided. And the only unforgivable sin is to murder yourself because there is absolutely no possibility of absolution and redemption, and."

"What the fuck're you babblin about, Baxter?" asked Spermwhale Whalen who was suddenly behind Baxter, having slept long enough to be more or less capable of driving home before dawn.

"Spermwhale! Thought you were stacking those Z's." Baxter Slate offered his partner a quick wide grin and a drink of vodka.

"Baxter, you sound like a silly pseudo intellectual horse's ass. You're gettin embarrassin. C'mon, I'll drive you to your pad." Spermwhale felt a stab of pain across the front of his skull when he lifted his young partner to his feet and helped steady him. Actually, Baxter Slate was rarely such a silly pseudo intellectual horse's ass, but he had been undergoing a prolonged period of despondency brought about partly because he thought he had been such an unsuccessful Juvenile officer.

The murder of Tommy Rivers was the final blow to his career as a Juvenile officer because Baxter Slate had foreseen the imminent demise of Tommy Rivers and had been powerless, or rationalized that he was powerless, to prevent it.

It was three months to the day after Tommy Rivers' death and almost two months before the choir practice shooting that Baxter Slate became the only one of the ten choirboys to kill a man on duty.

Contrary to film and fiction, policemen rarely fire their guns in combat, and even Spermwhale Whalen with nineteen and a half years service and Spencer Van Moot with sixteen years had never killed a man on duty. The flesh wound to the Regretful Rapist was the only time Spermwhale had ever fired his revolver outside of monthly qualification shooting, even including the Watts Riot. So it naturally became a topic of conversation during choir practice when Baxter Slate killed a man.

The night Baxter Slate killed a man started out a busy one. Ten minutes after they hit the bricks and cleared at 3:45 in the afternoon, Roscoe Rules and Dean Pratt put out an "officers need assistance" call on Chesapeake Avenue in the vicinity of Dorsey High School.

A call for either help or assistance demands all-out coverage, and every car on the nightwatch made a squealing turn and headed south through the heavy afternoon traffic, figuring that Roscoe Rules had probably caused a riot at the school.

As it turned out the call was indeed put out by Roscoe Rules. He and Dean had been driving by the campus so Roscoe could show off by parading his tailored blue body and gleaming badge in front of the high school girls, when they spotted a young black car stripper struggling with the bucket seats of a Porsche which was parked in the faculty parking lot.

Whaddayamean Dean had dropped his baton getting out of the radio car and the clatter of wood on asphalt caused the sweating car stripper to look back and see the "Mickey Mouse ears" on the roof of the police car, which is what students call the siren lights. The car stripper was off in a 9.5 hundred yard dash which left Dean far behind and Roscoe radioing for assistance.

During the chase, the car stripper ran right into the arms of a pretty, twenty-five year old, white history teacher named Pamela Brockington who saw the exhausted policeman hotfooting after the boy. She pushed the boy into the gymnasium and was standing in front of the door when the lanky redhead came panting up to her.