The New Centurions

by Joseph Wambaugh

  When they got to Washington Boulevard, Kilvinsky turned around.

  “There were twenty-eight whores on the Avenue,” said Gus. “And I think I missed counting some right at first!”

  “The people around here have got to stop it,” said Kilvinsky, lighting a cigarette and inserting it in a plastic cigarette holder. “Soon as they bitch loud enough the judges will give the girls some time and they’ll go underground again. I know a whore with seventy-three prior arrests. Most time she ever did was six months on two separate occasions. This whore wagon is completely illegal by the way.”

  “What do we do with them? Where do we take them? I was wondering about that.”

  “For a ride, that’s all. We pick them up and ride them around for an hour or so and take them to the station and run a make to see if they have any traffic warrants and let them go from the station. It’s illegal as hell. We’ll be stopped from doing it one of these days, but right now it works. The girls hate to be picked up in the wagon. Stopgap measure. Let’s take those two.”

  Gus saw no one at first and then saw a movement in the shadows near the phone booth at the corner of Twenty-first Street and two girls in blue dresses walked west on Twenty-first. They ignored Kilvinsky’s, “Evening ladies,” until both policemen were out of the cab and Kilvinsky was holding the back door of the wagon open.

  “Shit, fuck, Kilvinsky, you always picks on me,” said the younger of the two, a yellow girl in an auburn wig who, Gus supposed, was even younger than himself.

  “Who’s the baby?” asked the other, pointing at Gus and appearing resigned to climbing the high step into the back of the panel. She hiked the flesh-tight blue satin dress up to her hips to make the step. “Give me a lift, baby,” she said to Gus but didn’t hold out her hand. “Grab a handful of mah big ass and push.”

  Kilvinsky chewed on the cigarette holder and eyed Gus with frank amusement, and Gus saw her firm pantiless buttocks like a dark melon with a sliver removed. He held her around the waist and boosted her up as she shrieked with laughter and Kilvinsky chuckled softly as he locked the double doors and they climbed back in the cab.

  The next girl they picked up at Adams, and there were not so many now that everyone knew the wagon was out, but they picked up three more at Twenty-seventh, one of whom cursed Kilvinsky viciously because someone had made her ride in the wagon only last night and it wasn’t her turn again, she said.

  Once the prostitutes were in the wagon, they chattered and laughed pleasantly enough. It seemed to Gus that a few of them might be enjoying the respite from the street and Kilvinsky assured him that there was truth in this when Gus asked him, because their work was very dangerous and demanding, what with robbers and sadists prowling for prostitutes. The pimps provided little protection except from other pimps who were constantly trying to enlarge their own stables.

  The tall policeman who had talked to Lafitte in the locker room was standing with his partner at Twenty-eighth beside the open door of the radio car talking to two prostitutes. The tall one motioned them to the curb.

  “Got two for you, Andy,” said the tall policeman.

  “Yeah, you should make sergeant for this, you blue-eyed devil,” said the umber-colored girl, with a natural hairdo, and a severe short-skirted black dress.

  “She doesn’t like you, Bethel,” said Kilvinsky to the tall policeman.

  “He don’t know how to talk to a woman,” said the girl. “Nobody likes this funky devil.”

  “I don’t see any women,” said Bethel, “just two whores.”

  “Yo’ wife’s a whore, bastard,” spat the girl, leaning forward at the waist. “She fucks fo’ peanuts. I gets two hundred dollars every day fo’ fuckin’ you pitiful paddy motherfuckers. Yo’ wife’s the real whore.”

  “Get in the wagon, bitch,” said Bethel, shoving the girl across the sidewalk and Gus grabbed her to keep her from falling.

  “We goin’ to fix you whiteys, one day,” said the girl, sobbing. “You devil! I never feel you blue-eyed devils, do you hear? I feel nothin’! You paddy motherfuckers never make me feel nothin’ with yo’ needle dicks. You ain’t gonna git away wif pushin’ me aroun’, hear me?”

  “Okay, Alice, hop in, will you,” said Kilvinsky, holding the girl’s arm as she yielded and climbed into the wagon.

  “That there suckah don’t evah talk right to nobody,” said a voice inside the blackness of the wagon. “He think people is dogs or somethin’. We is motherfuckin’ ladies.”

  “I haven’t met you yet,” said Bethel, offering his hand to Gus who shook it, looking up at the large brown eyes of Bethel.

  “This is quite an experience,” said Gus haltingly.

  “It’s a garbage truck,” said Bethel. “But this ain’t too bad, really. You ought to work Newton Division . . .”

  “We’ve got to get going, Bethel,” said Kilvinsky.

  “One thing, Plebesly,” said Bethel, “at least working around here you never run into nobody smarter than you.”

  “Do I have to get in the wagon, too?” asked the second girl and for the first time Gus noticed she was white. She had a high-styled black wig and her eyes were dark. She had a fine suntan but she was definitely a white woman and Gus thought she was exceptionally pretty.

  “Your old man is Eddie Simms, ain’t that right, nigger?” Bethel whispered to the girl, whom he held by the upper arm. “You give all your money to a nigger, don’t you? You’d do just anything for that slick-haired boy, wouldn’t you? That makes you a nigger too, don’t it, nigger?”

  “Get in the wagon, Rose,” said Kilvinsky taking her arm, but Bethel gave her a push and she dropped her purse and fell heavily into Kilvinsky, who cursed and lifted her into the wagon with one large hand while Gus picked up the purse.

  “When you get more time on the job you’ll learn not to manhandle another officer’s prisoner,” said Kilvinsky to Bethel as they got back in the wagon.

  Bethel faced Kilvinsky for a moment, but said nothing, turned, got back in his car, and was roaring halfway up Western before Kilvinsky ever started the motor.

  “Got lots of problems, that kid,” said Kilvinsky. “Only two years on the Department and already he’s got lots of problems.”

  “Hey,” said a voice from the back of the wagon as they bounced and jogged across Jefferson and began an aimless ride to harass the prostitutes. “Yo’all need some pillas back here. This is terrible bumpy.”

  “Your pillow is built in, baby,” said Kilvinsky and several girls laughed.

  “Hey silver hair. How ’bout lettin’ us out ovah on Vermont or somewhere,” said another voice. “I jist got to make me some coin tonight.”

  “Kilvinsky got soul,” said another voice. “He git us some scotch if we ask him pretty. You got soul, don’t you, Mr. Kilvinsky?”

  “Baby, ah gots more soul than ah kin control,” said Kilvinsky and the girls burst into laughter.

  “He sho’ kin talk that trash,” said a throaty voice that sounded like the girl who had cursed Bethel.

  Kilvinsky parked in front of a liquor store and shouted over his shoulder, “Get your money ready and tell me what you want.” Then to Gus, “Stay in the wagon. I’ll be back.”

  Kilvinsky went around to the back and opened the door.

  “Dollar each,” said one of the girls and Gus heard the rustle of clothing and paper and the clink of coins.

  “Two quarts of milk and a fifth of scotch. That okay?” asked one of the girls and several voices muttered, “Uh huh.”

  “Give me enough for paper cups,” said Kilvinsky, “I’m not going to use my own money.”

  “Baby, if you’d turn in that bluesuit, you wouldn’t have to worry ’bout money,” said the one called Alice. “I’d keep you forever, you beautiful blue-eyed devil.”

  The girls laughed loudly as Kilvinsky closed the wagon and entered the liquor store, returning with a shopping bag in a few minutes.

  He handed the bag in the door and was back in the cab and moving
when Gus heard the liquor being poured.

  “Change is in the bag,” said Kilvinsky.

  “Gud-dam,” muttered one of the prostitutes. “Scotch and milk is the best motherfuckin’ drink in the world. Want a drink, Kilvinsky?”

  “You know we can’t drink on duty.”

  “I know somethin’ we can do on duty,” said another one. “And yo’ sergeant won’t smell it on yo’ breath. Less’n you want to get down on yo’ knees and French me.”

  The girls screamed in laughter and Kilvinsky said, “I’m too damn old for you young girls.”

  “You ever change yo’ mind, let me know,” said Alice, “a foxy little whore like me could make you young again.”

  Kilvinsky drove aimlessly for more than a half hour while Gus listened as the prostitutes laughed and talked shop, each girl trying to top the last one with her account of the “weird tricks” she had encountered.

  “Hell,” said one prostitute, “I had one pick me up right here on Twenty-eighth and Western one night and take me clear to Beverly Heels for a hundred bucks and that bastard had me cut the head of a live chicken right there in some plushy apartment and then squish the chicken aroun’ in the sink while the water was runnin’ and he stood there and comed like a dog.”

  “Lord! Why did you do it, girl?” asked another.

  “Shee-it, I didn’t know what the suckah wanted till he got me in that place and handed me the butcher knife. Then I was so scared I jist did it so he wouldn’ git mad. Ol’ funky bastard, he was. Didn’ think he could even git a stiff one.”

  “How ’bout that freak that lives up there in Van Nuys that likes to French inside a coffin. He sho’ is a crazy motherfucker,” said a shrill voice.

  “That milk bath guy picked Wilma up one night, didn’t he Wilma?” said another.

  “Yeah, but he ain’t nothin’ too weird. Ah don’ mind him, ’cept he lives too far away, way up in North Hollywood in one of them pads on a mountain. He jist gives you a bath in a tub full of milk. He pays damn good.”

  “He don’ do nothin’ else?”

  “Oh, he Frenches you a little, but not too much.”

  “Shit, they almost all Frenches you anymore. People is gettin’ so goddamn weird all they evah wants to do is eat pussy.”

  “That right, girl. I was sayin’ that the other day (pour me a little scotch, honey) people jist French or git Frenched anymore. I can’t remember when a trick wanted to fuck me for his ten dollars.”

  “Yeah, but these is all white tricks. Black men still likes to fuck.”

  “Shee-it, I wouldn’ know ’bout that. You take black tricks, baby?”

  “Sometimes, don’t you?”

  “Nevah. Nevah. My ol’ man tol’ me any who’ dum ’nuff to take black tricks deserves it if she gits her ass robbed or cut. Ah never fucked a niggah in my life fo’ money. An’ ah never fucked a white man fo’ free.”

  “Amen. Give me another shot of that scotch, baby, ah wants to tell you ’bout this here rich bitch from Hollywood that picked me up one night an’ she wanted to give me a hunderd an’ fifty dollars to go home an’ let her eat mah pussy an’ her husband is sittin’ right there in the car with her an’ she tells me he jist likes to watch.”

  Gus listened to tale after tale, each more bizarre than the last and when the voices were slurring, Kilvinsky said, “Let’s head for the station and let them go a few blocks away. They’re too drunk to take them in the station. The sergeant would want us to book them for being drunk and then they might tell him where they got the booze.”

  As the wagon bounced toward the station, the night drawing to a close, Gus found himself more relaxed than he had been for days. As for a physical confrontation, why, it might never happen and if it did, he would probably do well enough. He was feeling a lot better now. He hoped Vickie would be awake. He had so much to tell her.

  “You’re going to learn things down here, Gus,” said Kilvinsky. “Every day down here is like ten days in a white division. It’s the intensity down here, not just the high crime rate. You’ll be a veteran after a year. It’s the thousands of little things. Like the fact that you shouldn’t use a pay phone. The coin chutes of all the public phones around here are stuffed so you can’t get any coins back. Then once every few days the thief comes along and pulls the stuffing out with a piece of wire and gets the three dollars’ worth of coins that’ve collected there. And other things. Kid’s bikes. They’re all stolen, or they all have stolen parts on them, so don’t ask questions to any kid about his bike or you’ll be tied up all night with bike reports. Little things, see, like New Year’s Eve down here sounds like the battle of Midway. All these people seem to have guns. New Year’s Eve will terrify you when you realize how many of them have guns and what’s going to happen someday if this Civil Rights push ever breaks into armed rebellion. But the time passes fast down here, because these people keep us eternally busy and that’s important to me. I only have a short time to go for my pension and I’m interested in time.”

  “I’m not sorry I’m here,” said Gus.

  “It’s all happening here, partner. Big things. This Civil Rights business and the Black Muslims and all are just the start of it. Authority is being challenged and the Negroes are at the front, but they’re just a small part of it. You’re going to have an impossible job in the next five years or I miss my guess.”

  Kilvinsky steered around an automobile wheel which was lying in the center of the residential street, but he rolled over another which lay on the other side of the street, unobserved, until they were on it. The exhausted blue van bounced painfully on its axle and a chorus of laughter was interrupted by an explosion of curses.

  “Goddamn! Take it easy, Kilvinsky! You ain’t drivin’ no fuckin’ cattle truck,” said Alice.

  “It’s the great myth,” said Kilvinsky to Gus, ignoring the voices behind them, “the myth whatever it happens to be that breaks civil authority. I wonder if a couple of centurions might’ve sat around like you and me one hot dry evening talking about the myth of Christianity that was defeating them. They would’ve been afraid, I bet, but the new myth was loaded with ‘don’ts,’ so one kind of authority was just being substituted for another. Civilization was never in jeopardy. But today the ‘don’ts’ are dying or being murdered in the name of freedom and we policemen can’t save them. Once the people become accustomed to the death of a ‘don’t,’ well then, the other ‘don’ts’ die much easier. Usually all the vice laws die first because people are generally vice-ridden anyway. Then the ordinary misdemeanors and some felonies become unenforceable until freedom prevails. Then later the freed people have to organize an army of their own to find order because they learn that freedom is horrifying and ugly and only small doses of it can be tolerated.” Kilvinsky laughed self-consciously, a laugh that ended when he put the battered cigarette holder in his mouth and chewed on it quietly for several seconds. “I warned you us old coppers are big bullshitters, didn’t I, Gus?”

  6

  THE SWAMPER

  “HOW ABOUT DRIVING to a gamewell phone? I got to call the desk about something,” said Whitey Duncan, and Roy sighed, turning the radio car right on Adams toward Hooper where he thought there was a call box.

  “Go to Twenty-third and Hooper,” said Duncan. “That’s one of the few call boxes that works in this lousy division. Nothing works. The people don’t work, the call boxes don’t work, nothing works.”

  Some of the policemen don’t work, thought Roy, and wondered how they could have possibly assigned him with Duncan five nights in a row. Granted, August was a time when the car plan was short due to vacations, but Roy thought that was a feeble reason and inexcusable supervisory technique to give a rookie officer to a partner like Duncan. After his second night with Whitey he had even subtly suggested to Sergeant Coffin that he would like to work with an aggressive younger officer, but Coffin had cut him off abruptly as though a new officer had no right to ask for a specific car or partner. Roy felt that he was being
penalized for speaking up by being inflicted with Duncan for five days.

  “I’ll be right back, kid,” said Whitey, leaving his hat in the radio car as he strolled to the call box, unsnapped the gamewell key from the ring hanging on his Sam Browne, and opened the box which was attached to the far side of a telephone pole out of Roy’s line of sight. Roy could only see some white hair, a round blue stomach and shiny black shoe protruding from the vertical line of the pole.

  Roy was told that Whitey had been a foot policeman in Central Division for almost twenty years and that he could never get used to working in a radio car. That was probably why he insisted on calling the station a half dozen times a night to talk to his friend, Sam Tucker, the desk officer.

  After a few moments, Whitey swaggered back to the car and settled back, lighting his third cigar of the evening.

  “You sure like to use that call box,” said Roy with a forced smile, trying to conceal the anger brought about by the boredom of working with a useless partner like Whitey when he was brand-new and eager to learn.

  “Got to ring in. Let the desk know where you’re at.”

  “Your radio tells them that, Whitey. Policemen have radios in their cars nowadays.”

  “I’m not used to it,” said Whitey. “Like to ring in on the call box. Besides, I like to talk to my old buddy, Sam Tucker. Good man, old Sammy.”

  “How come you always call in on the same box?”

  “Habit, boy. When you get to be old Whitey’s age, you start doing everything the same.”

  It was true, Roy thought. Unless an urgent call intervened, they would eat at precisely ten o’clock every night at one of three greasy spoon restaurants that served Whitey free meals. Then, fifteen minutes would be spent at the station for Whitey’s bowel movement. Then back out for the remainder of the watch, which would be broken by two or three stops at certain liquor stores for free cigars and of course the recurrent messages to Sam Tucker from the call box at Twenty-third and Hooper.