The Choirboys (4 page)

At first the only thing Roscoe didn't like about his partner Dean Pratt was his styled red hair. But he soon came to hate his partner for his drunken crying jags at choir practice. There was another thing about Dean Pratt which all the choirboys despised and that was that the twenty-five year old bachelor's brain became temporarily but totally destroyed by less than ten ounces of any alcoholic drink. Then it was impossible to make the grinning redhead understand anything. Any question, statement, piece of smalltalk would be met by an idiotic frustrating maddening double beseechment:

"I don't get it. I don't get it." Or, "Whaddaya trying to say? Whaddaya trying to say?" Or, most frequently heard, "Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?"

And so, Dean Pratt eventually became known as Whaddayamean Dean. The first few sessions of the MacArthur Park choirboys found Roscoe Rules, Calvin Potts or Spermwhale Whalen eventually grabbing the lanky redhead by the front of his Bugs Bunny sweatshirt and shaking him in rage with Dean in drunken tears babbling, "I don't get it. I don't get it. Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?"

Yet Whaddayamean Dean became , the first policeman Roscoe Rules ever took home to meet his family. Roscoe, one of three choirboys who were married, lived on a one acre piece of ground east of Chino, California, some sixty miles from Wilshire Station. Even the few friends Roscoe had made these past four years would not drive that far to be sociable. Roscoe loved it there and made the daily trek gladly. His children could grow up in a rural setting as he had. Of course they would not have to work nearly as hard. His two boys, eight and nine, only had to hoe and weed and water his corn, onions, carrots, squash and melons. Then after cleaning the animals' stalls, picking the infectious dung and hay from the horse's hooves and treating the swaybacked pony for ringbone, they could have the rest of the day for playing. After they studied for a minimum of one and a half hours on weekdays and two on Saturdays and Sundays. And after they took turns pitching and catching a baseball for forty-five minutes on weekends.

Roscoe Rules had convinced both his sons that they would be allstar players their first season in,Little League. And they were. And he had convinced them that if they didn't get straight A's through elementary school they would get what the recalcitrant pony got when it misbehaved.

Roscoe's two sons hated riding as much as the pony hated being ridden, but when the pony wouldn't ride, Roscoe would snare the pony's front feet, loop his rope around the corral fence and deftly jerk the animal's legs back toward his hindquarters, catching the beast when it fell with a straight right between the eyes. He wore his old sap gloves with the lead filled palm and padded knuckles (which a sob sister sergeant had caught him beating up a drunk with and which he had been ordered to get rid of). That jerking rope, that punch and the bone bruising force of crashing to earth never failed to tame the pony who would obey for several weeks until the stupid creature forgot and became stubborn. Then he would require "gentling" again. Roscoe Rules believed that animals and people were basically alike: they were all scrotes.

Roscoe was very proud of the clean healthy life he had provided for his sons away from the city. He counted the years, months and weeks until he could retire with a twenty year service pension to his little ranch east of Chino and live out his days with his wife Clara (a secret drinker), and raise grandchildren in the same American tradition and perhaps buy them ponies and make ballplayers out of them. And give them all the advantages he had provided for his own children.

Roscoe was, like most policemen, conservative politically by virtue of his inescapable police cynicism but more so because of his misanthropy which had its roots in childhood. He had served in Vietnam and had almost made the Army his career until an LAPD recruiting poster had forced him to compare the benefits of police work to military service.

Roscoe was not a religious man. He scowled at American Legion benedictions. He scoffed at his Presbyterian wife and forbade her to make weaklings of their children by taking them to Sunday school. He said that instead of turning the other cheek you should sap the motherfuckers to their knees then choke them put until they were "doing the chicken" on the ground and then step over their twitching, jerking, unconscious bodies and kneedrop them with the full weight of your body down through the spear of the knee into the kidney. And that if Jesus Christ didn't have the balls to treat his enemies like that he was just another faggot Jew. Roscoe Rules wasn't raising his sons to be faggots.

But Roscoe Rules had a sense of humor. He carried in his wallet two photographs from his Army days which were getting cracked and faded despite the plastic, envelopes he kept them in. One showed a Vietnamese girl of twelve or thirteen trying gamely to earn five American dollars by copulating an emaciated oxen which Roscoe and several other American cowboys had lassoed and tied thrashing on its back in a bamboo corral.

The second photo, which everyone at Wilshire Station had seen, was of Roscoe holding the severed head of a Vietcong by the hair as Roscoe leered into the camera, tongue lolling, neck twisted to one side. The photo had "Igor and friend" printed across the bottom. The thought of the photo was to trigger Roscoe's finest hour as a member of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Whaddayamean Dean hated being the partner of someone as mean as Roscoe Rules. He knew his own physical limitations and rarely talked tough on the street unless he was absolutely sure that the other person was terrified of police, in which case he allowed himself the luxury of tossing around a few "assholes," or "scrotes" to please Roscoe.

"Know why niggers survive serious wounds, partner?" Roscoe Rules asked Whaddayamean Dean.

"No, why, Henry?" asked Whaddayamean Dean, using the given name abhorred by the other choirboys.

"They're too dumb to go into shock."

Whaddayamean Dean giggled and snuffled and looked up from his driving at the browless blue eyes of Roscoe Rules, and at his freckled hands which would nervously grab at the crotch, especially when the conversation turned to women. Roscoe was one of those policemen who would sit bored in a radio car in the dark and quiet hours and talk of his incredible sexual encounters in Vietnam or Tijuana and knead and squeeze his genitals until his partners got nauseated.

Working with Roscoe Rules was many things but it was never dull. He was what is known in LAPD jargon as a "Four-fifteen personality," 415 being the California penal code section which defines disturbing the peace. Indeed, Roscoe Rules had turned many bloodless family fights or landlord-tenant disputes into minor riots by his presence. He had been transferred around the department more than any member of his academy class, had been the subject of many complaints of excessive force from citizens and even from a few police supervisors, who generally do not challenge the techniques of policemen like Roscoe Rules. Not if they respond promptly to radio calls, write one moving traffic violation a day and stop at least three people daily for field interrogations.

During their first week as partners, Roscoe started a small riot. It was in 7-A-77Y area, but Calvin Potts and Francis Tanaguchi were handling a call in 7-A-29's area, while Harold Bloomguard and Sam Niles were handling a call in 7-A-l's area, while Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate were parked in an alley near Crenshaw Boulevard, Spermwhale receiving a listless headjob from an aging black prostitute whom he had known from his days at old University Station.

The call had originated as a neighbor dispute, and by the time Roscoe and Whaddayamean Dean arrived, what had been a potentially dangerous situation in an unhappily mixed apartment house on Cloverdale had pretty well petered out to the name calling, face saving phase. There were two tired men involved: a black and a Mexican who did not really want to fight for the honor of their bickering wives or anything else.

"Took a report here one time," Roscoe observed as they climbed the stairway at nine o'clock that night. "Some abba dabba made a report that one a her cubs was missing. Had so fucking many milksuckers running around she forgot the police department summer camp was taking care a the little prick for a week. That's what kind a people we run our kiddie camps for. Didn't know he was gone till she had a head count".

Whaddayamean Dean shivered as he saw a team of roaches charge on a chunk of slimy red hamburger which lay rotting on the landing.

There was a sign on the manager's door which said:. "No loiterers in this building. Due to lady tenants being kidnapped, molested and robbed the LAPD will arrest loiterers."

On the second landing they passed a staggering wine reeking black woman who ignored them. She was barefoot, wore pinned black slacks and an extra large dirty blouse which hung outside. The blouse was hiked in the back because of the lopsided hump which bent her double and reduced a woman who was meant to be of average height to a misshapen dwarf.

Roscoe tapped the hump as he passed, winked mischievously at Whaddayamean Dean and said to the stuporous woman, "I got a hunch you're for me, baby!"

Roscoe was still giggling when they found the remnants of the once smoldering neighbor dispute. The rival factions were almost evenly divided. Two sets of neighbors, including husbands, wives, teenage and preteen children, backed the play of each injured party. Mexicans backed Mexicans, blacks backed blacks. There had been twenty-two people screaming and threatening at the height of the dispute. Now there were just the husbands of the aggrieved women. The black man had a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth where the Mexican had accidentally bumped him when they were pushing and shoving, preparatory to doing battle.

The black man, a squatty hod carrier with enormous shoulders and a wild full, natural hairdo, looked relieved by the presence of the bluesuits and shouted angrily, "You made me bleed, motherfucker! You gonna pay. I'm gonna kick ass for this!"

"Anytime, man, anytime," said the Mexican, a slightly shorter man, a member of the same hod carrier's local, who had been on many jobs with the black man and was almost a friend.

The Mexican, like the black man, was dressed in dirty work pants and was shirtless to unnerve his opponent. He did not have such an intimidating physique in terms of musculature, but his chest, back and rib cage were crisscrossed with many scars: some like coiled rope, some like purple zippers, from old gang wars in East Los Angeles where he had fought his way through the elaborate gang hierarchy to emerge as a seasoned veterano covered with battle wounds and glory. But then the Mexican had gotten married, fathered seven children, lost his taste for street war and in truth had not faced a foe for many years.

"What started the beef?" Roscoe Rules asked, deciding to talk to the Mexican.

The Mexican shrugged, touched his hand nervously to the drooping Zapata mustache, lowered his eyes and turned his scarred back to the two policemen.

The black hod carrier's wife spoke first. "The problem is, Officer, that this broad and her daughter always has to hang clothes on the same day that I'm hangin mine. And that ain't no big thang, cept they got no respect and just throws other folks' clothes on the ground like pigs. And I has to put another quarter in the machine and wash my clothes all over agin'."

"That's a lie," said the husky Mexican woman, throwing her long sweaty brown hair back over her shoulder. "Her and her daughter are the ones that don't have no respect. Animals, that's what they are."

"Go back to Mexico, bitch," the black woman said.

"I was born here, nigger. Go back to Africa," the Mexican woman said, and Whaddayamean Dean stepped between them as the black woman lunged forward, bumping Whaddayamean Dean into Roscoe, who fell against the black man, who accidentally stepped on Roscoe's plain toed, ripple soled police shoes, which he had spit shined every day for the eight months he owned them.

"Goddamn it!" Roscoe yelled, holding his arms out between the two women, eyeballs white with disgust. "I heard enough!" he thundered, arms still extended, knees slightly bent, face twisted in agony like Samson straining at the pillars.

Then Roscoe dropped his hands to his hips and walked in slow circles. Finally he paused, looked at the people like a sad but patient uncle, nodded and said, "I heard enough!"

"Looky here, Officer," said the black man, "I don't mean no disrespect but I heard enough a you sayin you heard enough. You're makin me nervous."

Roscoe walked over to Whaddayamean Dean, pulled him aside and whispered, "This spade's the troublemaker far as I can see. I think he's got a leaky seabag. Dingaling. Psycho. You can't even talk to him. Look what the motherfucker did to my shoe!"

"I think we can quiet them down," Whaddayamean Dean said as Roscoe stood on one foot like a blue flamingo, rubbing his toe hopelessly on the calf of his left leg.

"Can I talk to you?" Whaddayamean Dean asked the Mexican, walking him to the other end of the hall while Roscoe Rules hustled the silent black thirty feet down the stairway.

"I don't want no more trouble outta you," Roscoe whispered when he got the hod carrier to a private place.

"I ain't gonna give you no trouble, Officer," the black man said, looking up at the mirthless blue eyes of Roscoe Rules which were difficult to see because like most hotdogs he wore his cap tipped forward until the brim almost touched his nose.

"Don't argue with me, man!" Roscoe said. His nostrils splayed as he sensed the fear on the man who stood hangdog before him.

"What's your name?" Roscoe then demanded.