The Choirboys (29 page)

"Harold, I've watched you around black women and white women. You're perfectly normal with women. For God's sake, Harold!"

"I know, I know, Sam. You think it's my imagination, these deep stirrings in my twisted psyche. I know. But remember my mother. My mother is mad, Sam. The poor woman is mad!"

And Sam Niles would push up his slipping glasses, finger his brown mustache, light a cigarette and search for something else for Harold to worry about, which was generally the way to shut him up when any particular obsession was getting too obsessive.

"Harold, you know you're losing some hair lately? You noticed that?"

"Of course I've noticed," Harold sighed, touching his ginger colored sideburns. He admired Sam Niles' deep brown hair and his several premature gray ones in the front. Harold admired everything about Sam Niles, always had from the days when Sam was his fire team leader at the spider holes, and though they were in the same police academy recruit class, Harold always treated him with the deference due a senior partner and let him be the boss of the radio car. Harold even admired Sam's steel rimmed goggles and wished he was nearsighted so he could wear them.

Sam Niles admired almost nothing about Harold Bloom-guard and especially did not admire his annoying habit of amusing himself with doubletalk.

Harold would tell about a traffic accident that befell 7-A-77 the night before which resulted in a "collusion at the interjection" of Venice and La Brea. Or when Sam asked where he would like to take their code seven lunch break Harold might say, "It's invenereal to me."

Or in court Harold would ask the DA if he had any "exterminating evidence." And then ask if the DA wanted him to "draw a diaphragm." On and on it went and became almost as unbearable as the plinking spit bubbles.

But none of that was as bad as Harold Bloomguard's relentlessly sore teeth. He claimed he was a sufferer of bruxism and that he ground his teeth mercilessly in his sleep. If the nightmares were memorable the night before Harold would eat soup and soppy crackers during code seven.

But as with Harold's other maladies, Sam Niles suspected it was imaginary. He had once demanded to see Harold Bloomguard's teeth at choir practice and Ora Lee held Harold's head in her comfy lap while Father Willie struck matches for all the choirboys to examine Harold's molars which were not flat and worn down but were as sharp and serviceable as anyone's.

"They are worn down, I tell you," Harold said that night in the park. And he opened his mouth wider as Sam struck matches and everyone looked at his teeth.

"Let's see yours to compare, Roscoe," said Father Willie who was already very drunk.

Roscoe Rules only agreed because he wanted to take Harold's place on Ora Lee's lap and cop a feel. But while they were comparing, Father Willie accidentally dropped a match down Roscoe's throat.

Then everyone started yelling frantically with Roscoe who got up and began jumping around.

"Gimme a drink!" Roscoe shrieked.

"Give him some bourbon!" shouted Spermwhale.

"No, it'll start a fire in his tummy!" yelled Ora Lee Tingle.

"Give him the fuckin bourbon then!" yelled Spermwhale.

But Roscoe had panicked and run for the duck pond and was on his belly drinking pond water.

"He'll get typhoid!" shouted Ora Lee Tingle.

"He might at that!" yelled Spermwhale hopefully.

"Stop, Roscoe, you'll get typhoid!" Carolina Moon yelled.

"Do what feels best, Roscoe!" shouted Spencer Van Moot.

A few minutes later, Roscoe walked back to the blankets very calmly and frightened everybody because, though he had a blister on his tonsils, he was actually smiling.

"Gee, I'm sorry, Roscoe!" said the terrified Father Willie as he sat down next to Roscoe and punched Roscoe's arm playfully. "You're not mad at me, are ya?"

And Roscoe still smiled as he said, "Heavens, no, Padre! Let's have a drink."

"Sure!" said the choirboy chaplain. "Here, have a shot of vodka."

"No," Roscoe smiled, pointing at his throat. "No thank you. Think I'd prefer beer."

"Oh sure, Roscoe," Father Willie said eagerly. "I'll get it."

Roscoe said quietly, "I think there's a full six-pack down by the water."

"There is? I'll get it for you," Father Willie said.

"I'll help you," Roscoe said, putting his arm around Father Willie's shoulder and strolling with him toward the duck pond.

Thirty seconds later the other choirboys were running headlong toward the pond to rescue the screaming padre whose neck was in the arm of Roscoe Rules who was trying his best to make Father Willie do the chicken. It took four choirboys to overpower Roscoe and pin him until he promised not to choke or kneedrop the chaplain. He only relented when Ora Lee Tingle promised him she'd let him be engineer the next time she pulled the choo choo.

Ironically it was Harold Bloomguard who got Sam Niles the temporary duty assignment to the vice squad which he had been hoping for. When asked by the vice lieutenant to work the squad for two weeks because they needed some new faces to Use on the street whores, Harold had surprised the lieutenant by saying, "I know I don't look like a cop, I'm so little and all, but why don't you take my partner, Sam Miles, too? He doesn't look like a cop either."

"You kidding?" Lieutenant Handy 'said. "He's the dark haired kid with a mustache, isn't he?"

"Yeah."

"Got cop written all over him."

"He wears glasses," offered Harold. "Not too many policemen wear glasses, sir."

"No way. The girls'd make him for a cop in a minute. You're the one I want. We'll dress you up in a Brooks Brothers suit and they'll swarm all over you."

"Well sir," Harold said shyly. "I sure do appreciate it. You're the first one in the four and a half years I've been on the job who offered to put me in plainclothes. And I really do appreciate it. But."

"Yeah?"

"You see, Sam and I were in the same outfit in Nam. And we've been radio car partners here at Wilshire for."

"Okay. Look, I can bring in two more of you bluesuits for the two weeks.! I'd already decided on Baxter Slate because he seems like a heads-up guy, and I'd decided on some morning watch kid. But if you just gotta have Miles, okay. I'll bring him along instead of the morning watch rookie."

"That's great, Lieutenant," Harold said. "You won't be sorry. Sam's the greatest cop I've ever worked with. And the greatest guy."

"Yeah, yeah, okay. We'll use you till the middle of August. Gonna have a little crusade against the whores. Let you know more about it later."

Sam Niles never knew about Harold's meeting with the vice squad lieutenant and was a little nonplussed when he heard that Harold Bloomguard was also being brought in.

"I've been trying for thirteen months to get a crack at vice," Sam Niles said to his partner on the night he was told. "What made them ask you, I wonder?"

"I dunno, Sam," Harold said. "Tagging along on your coattails, I guess."

But before they took their temporary vice assignment, Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard were to have an experience which prompted Sam Niles to call for choir practice. It was before they worked vice, and before the August killing in MacArthur Park. Sam and Harold were to meet the Moaning Man.

They made a pretty good pinch, or almost did, five minutes out of the station that evening. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Without question, the skinny hype in a long sleeved dress shirt at the corner of Fourth and Ardmore had to be suffering. And he had to be a hype, standing there on the sidewalk so weak and sick he didn't see the black and white gliding down the street against the late afternoon sun with Sam Niles behind the wheel and Harold Bloomguard writing in the log.

The hype was a Mexican: tall, emaciated, eyes like muddy water. He had recently recovered from hepatitis gotten from a piece of community artillery passed from junkie to junkie in an East Los Angeles shooting gallery.

"There's one that's hurtin for certain," Sam Niles said as he pulled the black and white into the curb, going the wrong way on the street.

Harold jumped out the door before the addict saw them. The Addict spun and tried to walk away from Harold but Sam trotted up, grabbed him by the shirt and spun him easily into Harold's arms.

"Just freeze and let my partner pat you down," Sam Niles said and the hype responded with the inevitable, "Who me?"

"Oh shit," said Sam Niles.

As Harold finished the pat down on the front, neck to knee, and moved his hands around to the back, the hype made what he thought was a quick move for his belt but was grabbed in a wristlock by Sam Niles who lifted him up, up on his tippy toes and made him forget the other hurts plaguing him.

"Easy, goddamnit, easy!" yelped the hype.

"I told you not to make any sudden moves, baby." Sam crooked his arm around the hype's throat and applied just enough of a vise to the carotid artery to show him that the colorless odorless gas he breathed could be even more sweet and precious than the white crystalline chemical he had for twenty years buried in his arms and hands and legs and neck and penis.

"I got it, Sam." Harold stripped a paper bindle from the inside of the hype's belt where it had been taped.

"Pretty makeshift bindle, man," Sam Niles said, removing the pressure from the neck but keeping a wristlock which made the Mexican stand tall, sweating in the sunlight.

"Okay, okay, you got it," the hype said and Sam released the pressure.

"You sick?" Harold Bloomguard asked.

"Lightweight, lightweight," the hype said, wiping his eyes and nose on his shoulder while Sam Niles handcuffed his hands behind his back. "Listen, man, you don't wanna book me for that little bit a junk. I shoulda fixed. That'll teach me."

"Sick as you are, how come you didn't shoot it up?" Sam Niles asked when the hype was safely cuffed.

"This broad. Fucking broad. She was gonna pick me up here. Take me home. I was supposed to score and she was supposed to meet, me here. She had the outfit and she digs on me. Oh Christ."And he looked lovingly at the bindle in Harold's hand and said, "Look, I'll work for you. Gimme a break and I'll tell you where you can bring down a guy that deals in ounces. Just gimme a chance. I don't want no money, just a break. I'll be your main man for free. You can leave a little geez for me hidden away sometimes when you rip off a doper's pad. Just stash a dime bag or two in a corner and after you're gone with the guys I roll over on, I'll skate on in and pick it up. We can work like partners. You guys'll make more busts than the narcs! How about it?"

"Let's go," Sam Niles said, shoving the hype toward the police car but Harold's eyes widened as he envisioned the sick addict having international dope connections.

He said, "Sam, let's hear him out."

"Harold, for God's sake, this junkie'd say anything."

"And burglars, Christ, I know a million of them!" the hype said, still handcuffed, talking desperately to Harold as Sam Niles tried to aim him toward the open door of the police car. "Mostly daytime burglars. All dopers. Lazy broads lay around in bed so long these days it's pretty hard to rip off the pads in the morning like we used to, but I still know lots and lots of burglars. Want a burglar, Officer. ?"

"Bloomguard."

"Officer Bloomguard, yeah. Want a burglar, Mr. Bloomguard?"

"Why not listen to him, Sam?" Harold asked as Sam Niles tried to push the addict down into the back seat of the police car.

"And tricks. Man, I can teach you a few tricks. You could learn something from me, Mr. Bloomguard. I been around this world over forty years. Been shooting dope since I was fifteen and I'm still alive. Listen, you know how to tell a hype even if he's healthy? Look for burn holes in his clothes and blisters on his fingers. When he's geezing and on the nod, he'll burn himself half to death when he's smoking cigarettes. That ain't a bad tip, is it?"

"Not bad," said Harold Bloomguard. "Sam, lemme just talk to him for a minute."

Sam Niles dropped his hands in disgust, threw his hat in the radio car, sat on the front fender of the black and white while the hype told Harold Bloomguard of his miserable life and his jealous rage at a girlfriend who had been cheating on him.

". and I got me some plans for that bitch, Mr. Bloomguard. I'm gonna wait down the hall in her apartment house and when her new boy comes sneaking in, I'm gonna creep up behind him, see? I'm gonna hit him over the gourd with a wrench then I'm gonna drag him into the broom closet and pull down his pants and fuck him! Yeah! And then I'm gonna drag his beat-up, fucked over ass to my old lady's door and ring the bell and say, "Here, bitch! Here's your girlfriend!"

"This guy's got style!" Harold Bloomguard said to Sam Niles who replied, "Oh yes. Real panache. Let's invite him to choir practice, Harold."

"And listen, Officer, because you been nice enough to listen to me I'm gonna save you from embarrassment. Guess what? You want the real truth? I ain't even sure you can get me booked. Know why?"

"Why?" asked Harold Bloomguard while Sam Niles was ready to throw the hype and Harold into the car. "Because I think I mighta got burned on this score. This rotten motherfucker I bought the dope from sometimes tries to sell you pure milk sugar and hope you don't catch him for a few days. He's so strung out he'll do anything to make a little bread."