The Choirboys (7 page)

"I've had enough for one night," Dean grumbled. "I was ready for code seven."

"Coulda used some chow myself," said Roscoe. "Don't the scrotes at communications have another car they can pick on? Shit fuck! Give her the handcuffs, partner."

Dean Pratt, as Roscoe Rules had taught him, opened the bracelet! of his handcuffs, holding it next to the hand mike, and squeezed the bracelet through five or six times, making a ratchet sound very like a large zipper being ripped open and closed. Roscoe was convinced that the sound would be magnified in the operator's radio headset.

"Sounds like the jolly green giant opening his fly, don't it, partner?"

Whaddayamean Dean nodded, suddenly a bit carsick. He hadn't had a thing to eat for almost twenty-four hours. He had been in court all day and had come straight to work after testifying. And Roscoe Rules sitting there pulling on his dork wasn't doing anything to settle his queasiness.

"I ever tell you about that slopehead we used to gang bang in Nam, partner?" Roscoe asked, in a downright jovial mood since this would be their last call.

Even if it was a quickie he intended to make it an "end-of-watcher," by "milking" the time out and failing to clear when they were finished.

"Don't think you told me that one," Dean sighed, by now deciding that he would rather have four fingers of bourbon than a hamburger.

"This little gook was about fourteen, but retarded. Had the brain of a chicken and nearsighted to boot. We got a translator to tell her that fucking was good for her eyes. She was ugly as a busted blister. Just a little better than jacking off. Best part wasn't the pussy, it was cleaning her up ahead a time. We used to get these fifty cent rice paddy whores like her and throw them in this big wooden tub and eight or ten of us would get hot water and GI brushes and scrub the stink off them. Goddamn, that was fun! We'd lather them up and scrub every inch. Shit, we'd take our clothes off and fall in the water and drink beer and wash those bitches. Seems kinda weird but it was more fun washing them than gang fucking them."

Dean nodded and leaned back while Roscoe drove west on Venice Boulevard and dreamed of thin young yellow bodies in soapy water. He had had many a lay but never had a more exciting sexual experience than scrubbing and lathering the rice paddy whores. Even now he got a blue veiner every time he held a bar of soap.

"Shit fuck!" Dean observed. "There it is!"

And there it was! Traffic was snarled-six blocks in every direction. Fifty people were milling around like ghouls, and two frantic traffic officers in white hats were trying to lay down a flare pattern to divert east and westbound traffic. Every eastbound lane was blocked by the wreckage of a spectacular four car collision.

Roscoe pulled on his red lights, crossed the center divider and parked the wrong way on Venice Boulevard.

"Glad you got here," said a heavy middle aged traffic policeman who came running up with a handful of flares and spots of ash on his uniform. "Worst goddamn crash I seen in a long time. Drag race. Two cars laid down sixty feet of skids before they plowed into a northbound station wagon and knocked it clear back into the eastbound lanes."

"What station wagon?" Dean asked, adjusting his hat, getting his flashlight ready as he and Roscoe jogged back toward the wreckage where several souvenir hunters were already starting to prowl.

"Get the hell out of here or you're going to jail!" the traffic officer shouted to the unkempt teenagers.

"Everybody gone to the hospital?" Roscoe asked, waving his flashlight violently at a car which was trying to get past the wreckage to go south on Ridgely Drive.

"Two ambulances been here," the traffic officer said. "You're the only radio car to show up. The fucking fire department hasn't even been here yet and there's two dead bodies jammed inside that station wagon!"

"Will someone tell me where the hell the station wagon is?" Dean asked, holding a handful of flares, preparing to lay a pattern fifty feet south of the corner and divert the horn blowing cars through an east-west alley.

"That's it! That's the station wagon!" the traffic officer said, pointing to a small heap of mangled steel which had knocked down the light standard, plunging the intersection into darkness. "It was cut in half!"

"Blow it out your ass, pizza face!" Roscoe shouted to a sputtering acned man in a white Cadillac who was honking his horn and yelling as though he thought the policemen could magically sweep away ten tons of scrap metal and let him continue about his business which was to get to a west Hollywood bar before it closed and try to pick up a thirty-five dollar prostitute.

By now a dozen of the trapped cars were flashing their high beams in the policemen's faces and blowing their horns while Roscoe violently waved them toward the alley where Dean Pratt Was laying flares.

"Terrible wreck," the traffic policeman muttered. "A woman in the station wagon was decapitated. She's one of the ones still inside."

"Yeah?" Roscoe said. He crossed the street, flashed his light at the heaps of debris in his path and stood beside the half of the station wagon, trying to make sense of the pile of mutilated flesh which had been a young couple. The tin cans and "Just Married" sign were still tied to the bumper.

And then Roscoe Rules was reminded of one of the two hilarious photographs he carried in his wallet from his Vietnam days.

"Oh yeah!" said Roscoe Rules excitedly. "Move the flares, partner!" he shouted to Dean, who was angrily waving his flashlight at the string of cars to get them moving through the alley, as at last the fire engines' sirens could be heard.

"What for?"

"I want them to pass by the wreck here across that gas station parking lot."

"What for?"

"I think it'll be easier to divert them down the alley."

"Okay." Dean shrugged, moving the line of flares, and then Roscoe Rules stood quietly on the far side of the station wagon, hoping the fire trucks or another ambulance wouldn't get there too quickly and spoil things.

The first car to pass Roscoe was not suitable. The driver was well dressed, prosperous, just the kind of prick who'd call in and make a complaint, Roscoe thought. Neither was the second car. The traffic was crawling by, most of the drivers gawking hungrily for a glimpse of blood.

The twelfth car in the line was perfect. It was a late model Dodge containing a man and two women. The bulging luggage rack, travel stickers and Ohio license said they were tourists passing through and not likely to take time to stop and complain about a policeman, no matter the outrage.

When the station wagon crawled by, Roscoe, still standing half hidden beside the wreckage, smiled encouragingly at the pudgy woman on the passenger side. Her window was down and she said, "Quite a wreck, eh, officer?"

"Yes, ma'am," Roscoe answered, and he knew this was the one.

"Over here, partner!" he called to Whaddayamean Dean, since every legend needs a Boswell.

The woman shook her head sadly and clucked. As her husband was revving the engine and the creeping traffic was starting, she said to Roscoe, "Anyone hurt bad?"

Then Roscoe Rules came from behind the wreckage and stepped to her window, lifting the dripping, severed head of the young bride, and said, "Yeah, this one got banged up a bit." The woman from Ohio drowned out the fire engines' sirens with her screams as her husband drove into the flow of traffic.

Dean Pratt told the story to at least thirty policemen before going home that night. Roscoe Rules had achieved a place in police folklore, and was a Legend in His Own Time.

Chapter
SIX

7-A-33: Spencer Van Moot
and Father Willie Wright
.

Willie Wright was also destined to become a police celebrity. It happened four months before the choir practice killing. On the night he met a brother in the basement.

Of course he could not have dreamed of the bizarre turns this tour of duty would take when he sat in the rollcall room late that afternoon and wished he could grow a mustache like the one belonging to Sam Miles of 7-A-29, or Calvin Potts of 7-A-77 who had a heavy one which made the muscular black policeman look even more formidable.

Willie was sure that if he grew one it would look like Francis Tanaguchi's sparse and sad one, which many old women could duplicate.

It was a peaceful, untraumatic rollcall that afternoon. Lieutenant Finque was on a day off and Sergeant Yanov sat before them alone at his table on the platform.

"Got an unusual one last night," Sergeant Yanov said, trying to look through the crimes to find one that might amuse the watch. "Guy tried to shove a Pepsi bottle in his wife's giz after he caught her stepping out on him."

"I took that report," said Sam Miles. "It was nothing. The bottle didn't have the cap on it."

"Reminds me of the guy stuck a screwdriver up his ass to scratch his prostate. Remember that, partner?" Roscoe asked Whaddayamean Dean. "Couldn't get it out and the wife called the police. That was funny!" Rules chuckled as he pulled at his crotch and made Harold Bloomguard sick.

Then Roscoe blushed and got angry when Sergeant Yanov said, "By the way, an unnamed officer turned in a report last night where he wrote a pursesnatcher was l-e-r-k-i-n-g and p-r-a-y-i-n-g on his victims. Check the dictionary if you're not sure. These reports end up in courts of law. Makes us look dumb."

"I told you to check my spelling, goddamnit," Roscoe whispered to Dean Pratt who smiled weakly and said, "Sorry, partner."

"One word of advice," Sergeant Yanov said. "The captain is uptight about the pissy wino they found sleeping in the back of Sergeant Sneed's car. They Suspect one of you guys put him there."

"Me? Why me all the time?" Francis Tanaguchi cried when all eyes turned to him.

"Gee, rollcalls are quiet without the lieutenant here," observed Spermwhale Whalen, who then turned to Willie Wright and said, "Hey, kid, how about comin in the bathroom with me? My back's hurt and I ain't supposed to lift nothin heavy."

Spencer Van Moot was happy when rollcall ended early. It gave him more time to shop. Spencer was, at forty, the second oldest choirboy, next to fifty-two year old Spermwhale Whalen, the two of them the only choirboys over thirty. Spencer Van Moot had convinced Harold Bloomguard that he should be accepted as a Mac Arthur Park choirboy because he was only temporarily married, was hated by his wife Tootie and her three kids and would probably soon be thrice divorced like Spermwhale Whalen.

Harold welcomed the complainer Spencer Van Moot for the same reason he welcomed Roscoe Rules. He invited Spencer Van Moot because he was the most artistic scrounger and promoter at Wilshire Station.

Spencer knew every retail store within a mile of his beat. His "police discounts" had furnished his house princely. He wore the finest Italian imports from the racks of the Miracle Mile clothing stores. He dined superbly in one of three expensive restaurants near Wilshire and Catalina which were actually in Rampart Division. Retailers became convinced that Spencer Van Moot could ward off burglars, shoplifters, fire and vandalism. That somehow this tall blond recruiting poster policeman with the confident jaw and the small foppish mustache could even forestall economic reversal.

Despite his natural morose nature and his self pitying complaints about his unhappy marriage, he was accepted at once by the choirboys. He arrived with a dowry of three cases of cold beer and four bottles of Chivas Regal Scotch. And he brought his partner, Willie Wright.

Willie was one of the smallest choirboys, along with Francis Tanaguchi and Harold Bloomguard, under five feet nine inches tall. Willie in fact had stretched to make five feet eight and was almost disqualified when he took his first police physical, he was a devoutly religious young man, raised as a Baptist, converted to Jehovah's Witnesses when he married Geneva Smythe, his high school sweetheart. Willie was now twenty-four and Geneva twenty-five. She, like Willie, was short and chubby. She took Watchtower magazines door to door three times a week. Willie accompanied her on his days off.

Spencer Van Moot loved him as a partner because Willie thought it was crooked to accept gifts or wholesale prices from retail stores, thereby leaving Spencer a double share of everything he could promote. The only concession Willie would make was a nightly free meal in one of Spencer Van Moot's gourmet restaurants.

After being practically dragged to the first choir practice by Spencer, Willie Wright discovered something totally extraordinary: that choir practice was fun, more fun in fact than anything he had ever done in his young life. He was accepted by the other choirboys almost from the start because he entertained them by preaching squeaky sermons. He told them how wrong it was to drink and lust after the two camp followers, Ora Lee Tingle and Carolina Moon, who often turned up at choir practice. But then when drunk he turned into an evil eyed little mustang.

Harold Bloomguard dubbed him official chaplain of the MacArthur Park choirboys. He was thereafter known as The Padre, Father Willie Wright.

The night that Father Willie Wright personally called for choir practice was the night he found the brother in the basement. It had begun much like every other night, with Spencer Van Moot driving the radio car madly to all of his various stops before the stores closed. First he had to make three cigarette stops where he picked up two packs of cigarettes for each of them, which Father Willie didn't use. Father Willie suspected quite rightly that Spencer wholesaled the cigarettes to his neighbors.