The New Centurions

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “So?”

  “So be careful. Walk into any pad like a policeman not an insurance man. Stick your flashlight in your back pocket if there’s light on in the pad, and keep your lid on your head. Then you got two hands ready to use. You start strolling in these pads with a light in one hand and a hat in the other you might find you need a third hand quick some night and you’ll be a real courteous corpse with your hat in your hand.”

  “I didn’t think the old lady was very dangerous.”

  “I had a senile old lady stick a pair of scissors right through the web of my hand one time,” said Whitey. “You do what you want, I just give the tips for what they’re worth. Hey, kid, how about letting me call in. Head for my call box, will you?”

  Roy watched Whitey at the call box and fumed. Patronizing stupid bastard, he thought. Roy realized he had a lot to learn, but he wanted to learn it from a real policeman, not from an overweight old windbag who was a caricature of a police officer. The incessant chatter of the police radio subsided for a moment and Roy heard a dull clink of glass.

  Then the realization struck him and he smiled. How foolish not to have guessed it before! He couldn’t help grinning when Whitey returned to the car.

  “Let’s go to work, kid,” said Whitey, as he got back in.

  “Sure thing, partner,” said Roy. “But first, I think I’ll call in. I want to leave a message with the desk.”

  “Wait a minute!” said Whitey. “Let’s drive to the station. You can tell him personally.”

  “No, it’ll just take a minute, I can use this call box,” said Roy.

  “No! Wait a minute! The box is screwed up. Just before I hung up, it started buzzing. Almost busted my eardrum. It ain’t working right!”

  “Well, I’ll just try it,” said Roy, and moved as though to get out of the car.

  “Wait, please!” said Whitey, grabbing Roy’s elbow. “Let’s go in right now. I got to take a shit terrible bad. Take me to the station right now and you can give your message to Sam.”

  “Why, Whitey,” Roy grinned triumphantly, and with Whitey’s perspiring face this close, the fresh whiskey odor was overpowering, “you always crap fifteen minutes after we eat dinner. You told me your guts start rumbling right after your evening meal. What’s the matter?”

  “It’s my age,” said Whitey, staring sadly at the floorboard as Roy gunned the engine and drove into the traffic lane, “when you get my age you can’t depend on nothing, not even your guts, especially not your guts.”

  AUGUST 1961

  7

  GUERRA!

  THEY WERE TOLD BY the Gang Squad detective that the war had actually started six weeks ago when the Junior Falcons jumped a seventeen-year-old member of Los Gavilanes named Felix Orozco who had made the consummate and final mistake of running out of gas in Falcon territory in a striped nineteen forty-eight Chevrolet that the Falcons knew belonged to a Gavilán. Felix was beaten to death with his own tire iron which he had used to break the wrist of the first Falcon who had come at him with a sharpened screwdriver. The girlfriend of Felix Orozco, thirteen-year-old Connie Madrid, was not killed by the Junior Falcons but her face was badly ripped by a whistling slash of the car antenna that was broken off the car by El Pablo of the Junior Falcons who, it was believed by the detectives, was the one responsible for flogging Felix Orozco with the limber piece of steel as he lay, already dead probably, from countless kicks to the head and face.

  Connie had been a less than cooperative witness and now after two hearing postponements in juvenile court, it was believed by the homicide team that she would probably deny in court that she saw anything.

  Since the death of Felix, there had been seven cases of gang reprisals involving Los Gavilanes and the Junior Falcons, but on one occasion a member of the Easystreeters, named Ramon Garcia, was mistaken for a Junior Falcon and the Easystreeters announced against Los Gavilanes. Then, Los Rojos, who had no love for the Junior Falcons but who hated the Easystreeters, saw the opportunity once and for all to join a powerful ally and destroy the hated Easystreeters. Hollenbeck Division was plunged into a war that produced at least one gang incident every night, and made Serge more than ever want to transfer to Hollywood Division.

  He had been getting used to Hollenbeck. It was a small division, and after a year, he was getting to know people. It helped being familiar with the regulars and when you saw someone like Marcial Tapia—who had been a burglar for over twenty years—when you saw him driving a pickup truck in the Flats (when he lived his entire life in Lincoln Heights) and the Flats was an area of commercial buildings, factories, and businesses, which were closed on weekends and it was five o’clock Sunday afternoon and all the businesses were closed—well then, you had better stop Marcial Tapia and check the contents of the truck bed which was covered with three barrels of trash and refuse. Serge had done this just three weeks before and found seven new portable television sets, an adding machine, and two typewriters beneath the pile of rubble. He had received a commendation for the arrest of Tapia, his second commendation since becoming a policeman. He had made an excellent arrest report detailing the probable cause for the arrest and search, telling how Tapia had committed a traffic violation which had caused him to stop the truck, and how he had observed the rabbit ear antenna protruding from the pile of trash. He also told how Tapia had appeared exceptionally nervous and evasive when questioned about the telltale antenna, and how when it was all added up he, being a reasonable and prudent man, with a year’s experience as a police officer, believed there was something being concealed in the truck and this was how he told it in court, and it was, of course, all bullshit. He had stopped Tapia only because he recognized him and knew his background and suspected what he was doing in the commercial area of the Flats on a Sunday afternoon.

  It infuriated him that he had to lie, at least it used to infuriate him, but it soon came easy enough to him when he saw that if he stuck strictly to the truth he would probably lose more than half of his arrests which involved probable cause to stop and search, because the courts were not reasonable and prudent in their assessment of what was reasonable and prudent. So Serge had decided irrevocably several months ago that he would never lose another case that hinged on a word, innuendo, or interpretation of an action by a black-robed idealist who had never done police work. It wasn’t that he was trying to protect the victims, he believed that if you did not enjoy taking an asshole off the street, even if it’s only for a little while, then you are in the wrong business.

  “Why so quiet?” asked Milton, as he propped his elbow on the seat cushion and puffed his foul cigar, looking utterly content because they had just finished an enormous plate of chile verde, rice, and frijoles at a Mexican restaurant where Milton had been eating for eighteen years. He could eat his chile as hot as any Mexican after working Hollenbeck so long, and Raul Muñoz, the owner, challenged Milton by serving them his special chile “not for gringo tastes.” Milton had consumed the chile with a bland expression saying it was tasty but not hot enough. Serge however had drunk three strawberry sodas with his meal and had his water refilled twice. That had not quenched the fire and he had ordered a large glass of milk finally. His stomach was just now becoming normal.

  “What the hell. You never ate real Mexican food before?” asked Milton as Serge drove slowly through the dark summer night, enjoying the cool breeze which made the long-sleeved blue woolen uniform shirt bearable.

  “I never ate that kind of green chile,” said Serge, “you think it’s safe to light a cigarette?”

  “I think if I ever get married again, I’ll marry a Mexicana who can make that kind of chile verde that bites back,” Milton sighed, blowing cigar smoke out the window.

  Serge was Milton’s regular partner this month and so far he could tolerate the overweight blustering old policeman. He thought that Milton liked him, even though he always called him a “damn rookie” and sometimes treated him as though he had been on the Department fifteen days rather than fift
een months. But then, he once heard Milton call Simon a damn rookie and Simon had eight years on the Department.

  “Four-A-Eleven,” said the Communications operator, “at eighteen-thirteen Brooklyn, see the woman, A.D.W. report.”

  Serge waited for Milton to roger the call, which of course was his job as passenger officer, but the old glutton was too comfortable, with one fat leg crossed over the other, a hand on his belly and a pleading look at Serge.

  “Four-A-Eleven, roger,” said Serge and Milton nodded his gratitude at not having to move just yet.

  “I think I’ll trade you in for a police dog,” said Serge, seeing by his watch that it was 9:45. Only three hours to go. It had been a quick evening, though uneventful for a Saturday night.

  “At least you can catch a number for me,” said Serge to Milton, who had closed his eyes and leaned his head against the door post.

  “Okay, Sergio, my boy, if you’re going to nag me,” said Milton, pronouncing it Ser-jee-oh instead of with a soft throaty g in two syllables as it was meant to be pronounced.

  Milton shined the spotlight at the housefronts trying to read a number. Serge did not like to be called Sergio no matter how it was said. It was a name from his childhood and childhood was so far in the past that he could hardly remember. He had not seen his brother Angel nor his sister Aurora since Aurora’s birthday dinner at Angel’s house when he had brought presents to Aurora and all his nephews and nieces. He had been scolded by Aurora and Angel’s wife Yolanda for coming by so seldom. But since his mother was gone he had little reason to return to Chino and he realized that when the memory of his mother would begin to fade, his visits would probably be no more than twice a year. But so far, his memories of her were still very vivid and it was difficult to understand because he had never thought of her so frequently when she lived. In fact, when he left her at eighteen to join the Marine Corps, he had intended never to live at home again, but to leave the bleak little neighborhood and go perhaps to Los Angeles. He had not at that time considered being a policeman. Then he thought of how she, like all Mexican mothers, called her sons mi hijo and said it like one word which made it more intimate than “my son” in English.

  “Must be the gray house,” said Milton. “That one. The one with the balcony. Jesus Christ, those timbers are rotten. I wouldn’t walk on that balcony.”

  “With your weight I wouldn’t walk on the First Street bridge,” said Serge.

  “Goddamn rookies, no respect for senior partners anymore,” said Milton as Serge parked the radio car.

  The house sat on the edge of an alley and north of the alley was a commercial building, windowless on the south wall. The builder of the edifice had made the error of plastering the building with a coat of soft irresistible yellow paint. Serge guessed that the wall had not remained inviolate for two days after it was completed. This was a gang neighborhood, a Mexican gang neighborhood, and Mexican gang members were obsessed with a compulsion to make their mark on the world. Serge stopped for a moment, taking the last puff on his cigarette while Milton got his notebook and flashlight. Serge read the writing on the wall in black and red paint from spray cans which all gang members carried in their cars in case they would spot a windfall like this creamy yellow irresistible blank wall. There was a heart in red, three feet in diameter, which bore the names of “Ruben and Isabel” followed by “mi vida” and there was the huge declaration of an Easystreeter which said “El Wimpy de los Easystreeters,” and another one which said “Ruben de los Easystreeters,” but Ruben would not be outdone by Wimpy and the legend below his name said “de los Easystreeters y del mundo,” and Serge smiled wryly as he thought of Ruben who claimed the world as his domain because Serge had yet to meet a gang member who had ever been outside Los Angeles County. There were other names of Junior Easystreeters and Peewee Easystreeters, dozens of them, and declarations of love and ferocity and the claims that this was the land of the Easystreeters. Of course at the bottom of the wall was the inevitable “CON SAFOS,” the crucial gang incantation not to be found in any Spanish dictionary, which declared that none of the writing on this wall can ever be altered or despoiled by anything later written by the enemy.

  As Serge read, the disgust welled in him but it was interrupted by a blast of horns and a caravan of cars moving down State Street decorated with strings of pink and white paper carnations announcing a Mexican wedding. The men in the cars wore white dinner jackets and the girls chiffon dresses of blue. The bride of course wore white and a white veil which she wore pulled back as she kissed her new husband who Serge guessed could not be more than eighteen. The car directly behind the bride and groom’s blasted the horn louder than the rest to sound approval at the prolonged kiss.

  “In a few months we’ll be called in to handle their family disputes,” said Serge, grinding the cigarette out on the sidewalk.

  “Think it’ll take that long before he starts kicking the hell out of her?” asked Milton.

  “No, probably not,” said Serge as they walked to the house.

  “That’s why I told the lieutenant if he had to stick me with a rookie, to give me that half-breed Mexican Sergio Duran,” said Milton slapping Serge on the shoulder. “You may be short on experience, Sergio my boy, but you’re as cynical as any twenty-year cop on the Department.”

  Serge did not correct Milton who had referred to him on another occasion as his half-caste partner. He had never claimed to be only half-Mexican, but the idea had spread somehow and Serge merely acquiesced by his silence when some overly inquisitive partner asked him if it were true his mother had been an Anglo which would certainly explain why he didn’t speak Spanish and why he was such a big man and so fair. At first it had bothered him for someone to think his mother was other than what she had been, but damn it, it was better this way he told himself. Otherwise, he would have been constantly plagued like Ruben Gonsalvez and the other Chicano cops with hundreds of duties involving translation. And it was true, it was utterly true that he no longer spoke the language. Certainly he understood things that were said, but he had to concentrate fully to understand a conversation and it was not worth the effort to him. And he forgot the words. He could not answer even if he did understand a little. So it was better this way. Even with a name like Sergio Duran you could not be expected to speak Spanish if your mother was not Mexican.

  “Hope this goddamn balcony doesn’t cave in while we’re in the pad,” said Milton, flipping the remains of his wet cigar in the alley as they knocked on the screen door.

  Two little boys came to the door and held it open silently.

  “Is Mama home?” asked Milton, tapping the shorter one under the chin.

  “Our father is a policeman too,” said the taller one, who was very thin and dirty. His eyes were as black as his hair and he was obviously excited at having the policemen in his house.

  “He is?” said Serge, wondering if it was true. “You mean he’s a guard of some kind?”

  “He’s a policeman,” said the boy, nodding for emphasis. “He’s a capitán de policia. I swear it.”

  “Where?” asked Serge. “Not here in Los Angeles?”

  “In Juarez, Mexico,” answered the boy. “Where we come from.”

  Milton chuckled, and when Serge turned he reddened as he saw Milton was laughing at him, not at the boy.

  That was something he hadn’t yet mastered completely, the capacity to mentally challenge anything, anything that people told you because it was usually erroneous, exaggerated, rationalized or downright deceptive.

  “Go get Mama,” said Milton, and the shorter child obeyed immediately. The taller one stood staring at Serge in wonder.

  The boy reminded Serge of someone, he couldn’t remember who. The same hollow eyes of opaque blackness, bony arms, and a buttonless shirt that had never been completely clean. A boy in the old life perhaps, or one of the Korean children who shined their shoes and swept the barracks. No, it was one from the old life, a childhood friend had eyes like that, but h
e couldn’t remember which one. Why should he try? The memory failure was further proof the cord was irreparably severed, the operation a success.

  The child stared at the shiny black Sam Browne belt, the key ring with the huge brass key which unlocked police call boxes, and the chrome-plated whistle which Serge had bought to replace the plastic one the Department supplied. While Serge glanced up the stairs toward the woman who was answering the child they had sent, he felt a light touch on the key ring. When he looked down the child was still staring, but his hands were at his sides.

  “Here kid,” said Milton, removing the whistle from his key ring. “Take it outside and blow your brains out. But I want it back when I leave, hear me?”

  The boy smiled and took the whistle from Milton. Before he stepped from the house, the shrill screams of the whistle pierced the summer night.

  “Christ, he’ll have the whole neighborhood complaining,” said Serge, moving toward the door to call the boy.

  “Let him,” said Milton, grabbing Serge’s arm.

  “You gave it to him,” Serge shrugged. “It’s your whistle.”

  “Yep,” said Milton.

  “He’ll probably steal the goddamn thing,” said Serge, disgustedly.

  “You’re probably right. That’s what I like about you, kid, you’re a realist.”

  It was an old two-story house and Serge guessed it housed a family on each floor. They were standing in a living room which had two twin beds shoved into a far corner. The kitchen was in the rear of the house and another room which he could not see into. It was probably another bedroom. It was a very large old house, very large for one family. At least it was very large for one family on welfare, as he guessed this one was, for there were no man signs around the house, only children’s and women’s things.

  “Up here, please,” said the woman, who stood at the top of the staircase in the darkness. She was pregnant and carried a baby in her arms who was not more than a year old.