The Choirboys (35 page)

Scuz turned around and saw two of the choirboys looking down the hallway at the man. Sam Niles wanted to help the man stand up but hated to attract attention to himself and make the other policemen think he was a do-gooder. Baxter Slate wanted to help the man stand up but was afraid the man would interpret his gesture as patronizing and snarl him away with righteous indignation. So both Sam and Baxter pretended not to see the man lolling on the floor and averted their eyes self-consciously. And felt guilt because they were unable to help.

Just then Harold Bloomguard saw the man. He didn't think much of anything. He just said, "Oh," walked down the corridor, took the palsied newspaper vendor by the arm and started to raise him up.

Then Scuz, who wondered why his parade had slowed, turned and saw Harold Bloomguard. He didn't inteliectualize either. He walked past Sam and Baxter and joined Harold who almost had the man to his feet.

"Stumbled, huh?" Scuz said, bending over and picking up the fallen man with one arm as easily as a doll, while he gathered up the stack of newspapers with the other. "Slippery goddamn floors in this store. Someone always going on their ass."

He half carried the man to a bench near the rear door and seated him there with the stack of papers beside him as the man perspired and panted, unable to speak.

"Got the late edition?" Scuz asked, taking a coin from his pocket and putting it in the lap of the man as he took a paper from the stack and folded it into the back pocket of his gabardines. "Feel okay, partner? Want me to take you anywheres?"

The man managed a twisted smile and shook his head, and Scuz nodded, saying, "See you around, partner." Then he shuffled off down the hall with Harold Bloomguard at his side and the other choirboys trailing.

As Scuz passed an old man people-watching on a bench by the elevator, he said, "Here you go, Dad," dropping the paper beside the threadbare pensioner. "It's a late edition. I ain't got time to read it."

"Well, thanks," said the old man as Scuz opened the door of the storage room and led the three choirboys to the platform.

Two men could stand and look through a heavily screened one by two foot opening into the lighted rest room where shoplifters hid merchandise under their clothing and where men publicly masturbated and buggered each other, forcing Sergeant Dominic Scuzzi to force the choirboys to peek and smell shit.

They weren't in the trap ten minutes before a man in a candy striped shirt and double breasted blue blazer walked in, looked nervously in each toilet stall and, finding himself alone, withdrew his penis and wrote a lazy S on the rest room floor from wall to wall.

"That deserves a shot," whispered Scuz from the platform in the darkened room. "See if I remembered to load it. Yeah, I did." And he put his pink plastic water pistol up to the screen and gave the man two bursts?

The man looked up at the ceiling for leaky pipes, saw none and tried to write some more. Scuz gave him two more bursts which caused him to cry out and walk around the rest room for another puzzled look into each toilet stall. Then Scuz gave him another burst and the man screamed and ran outside.

"He was easy," Scuz said, stepping down from the platform to let Sam Miles have a look. "Reason I ran him off is I suspect he's one a these pissy pork pullers. Takes a leak and beats off and cuts out. Guy can do most anything legally long as he's alone. Gotta catch one that does his number with somebody else. Then we can make a pinch and close the vice complaint and get the fuck outta here and say we protected the people's morality. Until somebody else makes another vice complaint. Some fun, hey, boys?"

"Yeah," muttered Baxter Slate as Sam Miles grimaced disgustedly and longed for a cigarette because he couldn't have one in the close dark room.

"Tell you what," Scuz said. "I'm gonna leave you two guys here and take Harold with me for a pass down Western Avenue. See if we can catch ourselves a whore. Now I don't like leaving two new guys here like this so I'll be sending a team to come and sit with you. You two guys just hang loose and wait here and don't go busting nobody unless a murder is being committed before your eyes, got me?"

"Uh huh," Sam Niles said.

Scuz opened the door to the outside corridor and let Harold out into the night. Then Scuz turned and said, "You get bored you might amuse yourselves by betting quarters whether the next guy in will be a helmet or a anteater."

"What's that mean?" Baxter Slate asked.

"Circumcised or uncircumcised," said Scuz as he shoved another cigar between his teeth. Then he threw his pink water pistol to Sam Niles saying, "Careful, it's loaded."

The first man into the rest room stepped up to the urinal and emptied his bladder. The two choirboys looked at each other and wondered how they had gotten here. He was an anteater.

The second man was also an anteater. However, the third, fourth and fifth were helmets. The sixth was an anteater and cost Baxter Slate twenty-five cents. The seventh was a helmet and Baxter won the money back. Neither man cared what the eighth one was. The ninth was an anteater but he soon turned into a helmet because he sat down on the toilet and began playing with himself after looking at a picture of Raquel Welch in a movie magazine. But then he looked at a picture of Warren Beatty and seemed just as excited.

Sam Niles gave him four bursts with the pistol and he ran out cursing, wiping the wet pages of the magazine on his shirt.

Baxter Slate said, "I can't take two weeks of this."

Sam Niles offered Baxter a cigarette, opened the door for ventilation and nodded.

Meanwhile Sergeant Dominic Scuzzi was sitting in the parking lot of a food market near Pico and Western briefing an exceedingly nervous Harold Bloomguard.

"So I'm gonna be right here in the parking lot," Scuz said as Harold nodded and compulsively blew spit bubbles and cleaned the bogus horn rimmed glasses for the third time and made ready to get in his own car, a three year old Dodge Charger which they had picked up at the station parking lot after leaving Sam and Baxter.

"I don't want you roaming too far, Harold, got me? Just go a block or so down Western and no more than a couple blocks east on Pico. You get a broad in the car, you get your offer like I told you, then badge her and bring her back here quick. She wants to jump out, let the bitch do it. You drive here to me and we'll just cruise on back and scrape her off the street. You don't go roaming more than a couple blocks from me, right?"

"Right," said Harold.

"You nervous, Harold?"

"No. Not too much," he lied.

"Got a comb?"

"Yeah."

"Comb your hair back off your forehead. You goddamn kids all gotta look like rock singers. Comb it back. Show your high forehead. Makes you look even more square than you already look."

Scuz turned the rearview mirror for Harold who parted his ginger hair and combed it back.

"Help if you had some greasy kid stuff," said Scuz, who put the glasses on Harold when he was finished.

"I look okay?"

"Shit, ain't nobody gonna make you, Harold. Nobody."

"Guess I'm ready then."

"Okay, try going east on Pico there, circle south on Oxford, maybe, then back to Western. I want you close to me."

As Harold fired up the Charger, Scuz fired up a fresh cigar and swatted at a swarm of gnats which had discovered him.

Meanwhile, as Harold Bloomguard began his maiden voyage into the land of vice, things were happening in the store where two revolted choirboys sat smelling human defecation in a dark and stuffy room.

First, Pete Zoony, the veteran vice cop with the woolly hair and the Fu Manchu strolled into the rest room, grinned up at the screened hole on the wall and said, "Don't bother making a bet. I'm a Jew."

"How long we have to stay in here?" asked Sam Niles, whose voice boomed through the vent hole and echoed off the tile of the rest room.

"Scuz called us on the radio," Pete Zoony said, examining his teeth in the mirror. "Told my partner to drop me here to sit with you. Said to give it an hour, no more. We wanna close this complaint bad. Wish we had a drunk wagon like Central. I'd have them carry two sleeping winos inside and leave them in the same toilet stall, then call the store manager to witness the orgy we discovered. After that we could close the complaint."

"Well, nothing's happened since we've been here," Baxter said. "Maybe the fruits stopped coming here."

"Maybe so. Think I'll mosey outside and see there's any new broads I haven't met. When you come out for a break take a look at the set of tits works the perfume counter right across from junior miss clothes. I hear a policeman from North Hollywood's balling her. Dynamite! Catch you later."

And Pete Zoony was out the door looking for willing young clerks when he spotted two uniformed policemen entering the office of store security. Out of curiosity he sauntered across the floor and caught one of the three night security officers coming out.

"What's happening?" Pete Zoony asked the plainclothes security officer who knew all the vice cops from the rest room watch.

"Shoplifter. No big thing. Second time we caught her. Gonna put her in the slammer this time to see if it discourages her. Make her steal from Sears instead of us."

Pete Zoony nodded and decided to go leer at the girl who balled the North Hollywood policeman but had been coyly resisting Zoony's persistent advances.

Then one of the uniformed policemen came out of the security office and headed straight for the rest room. Pete Zoony, who generally worked daywatch vice, was not known by many bluesuits on the nightwatch. He made a regrettable error in judgment by deciding to have a little fun and entertain the two new kids on the block. He followed the uniformed cop into the rest room.

"Roscoe Rules!" whispered Sam and Baxter simultaneously when the door to the rest room opened.

Then it was a matter of trying to suppress giggles as Roscoe, a helmet, relieved himself at the urinal and afterward stepped to the sink singing some Stevie Wonder. He took off his cap carefully and teased his mousy hair, making it fall over the ears as much as possible without offending the lieutenant. Then he squeezed a watery pimple on his nose, straightened his tie and smiled with satisfaction while Baxter and Sam leaned on each other, smothering back the laughter. Their fellow choirboy stepped from the mirror, put the hat squarely on his head, held both fists against his hips and stood spraddle legged and broad shouldered, admiring the whole picture. And Sam Niles almost fell off the platform in muffled hysterics just as the rest room door flew open again and Pete Zoony came swishing in.

"Sam! Sam!" Baxter whispered, pulling his friend back to the screen as Pete minced past Roscoe Rules singing, "I Got a Crush on You, Sweetie Pie!"

He stepped to the urinal, peeked coyly over his shoulder at the unbelieving policeman and pretended to be taking a leak while he batted his eyelashes at the choirboy.

"Well I'll be a motherfucker!" said the outraged Roscoe Rules.

"Oh, I hope you're not!" Pete Zoony squealed as he zipped up his pants and swished across the room to the washbasin where he put a few drops of water on his fingers and patted his cheeks.

He dabbed daintily with a paper towel, singing, "Couldja coo, couldja care."

"You got a lot a guts, you know that?" Roscoe Rules said as Pete Zoony peeked at him from time to time and giggled.

"Why whatever do you mean, Officer?" Pete lisped.

"You. you, you come in here and act like. like I'm a civilian!"

"Well I don't care what you are. You're just cute as can be, is all you are," said Pete Zoony, primping in the mirror as the choirboys behind the wall desperately tried to see through their tears.

"Goddamn you! How dare you talk to a police officer like this! Gimme some identification!" Roscoe sputtered.

"Gosh, don't get so upset," Pete Zoony lisped. "I mean just because a person pays you a compliment."

"You break out some ID right now," Roscoe demanded and Pete Zoony was preparing to pull his police badge from his back pocket when he erred, not knowing Roscoe Rules.

"Now, I'm gonna show you my driver's license, see, but I want you to promise you won't ask for my phone number cause I don't know you that well yet."

"You fag! You insolent fucking sissy!" screamed Roscoe Rules.

"Well!" said Pete Zoony huffily, so carried away with his role that he underestimated the light in Roscoe's close set eyes.

"You wouldn't make fun of a person because he's crippled, wouldja? Huh?"

"You bastard!" Roscoe shrieked.

Pete Zoony pursed his lips and smacked a little kiss and said, "Oh, you're so cute when you're all mad! You blue meanie!"

Then Roscoe Rules reared back and slapped Pete Zoony across the mustache with the heel of his hand, catching him flush on the jaw and the vice cop was skidding across the slippery floor and banging against the metal trash can.

The two choirboys in the trap yelled, "No, Roscoe!" and jumped down from the platform and out the door, running down the corridor to the rest room.

They entered in time to intercept Pete Zoony who was growling and cursing and sliding on the floor attempting to get his feet under him as the bewildered Roscoe Rules looked up at the walls and ceiling, certain that he had heard ghostly voices shout his name.