The New Centurions

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “People are weak. I guess I’m resigned to handling weak people. I guess I know them because I’m so weak myself.”

  “You’re the strongest man I’ve ever known, and the gentlest.”

  “Lucy, I want to buy you a drink after work tonight. Well just have time for one before the bars close. Will you stop at Marty’s Lounge with me?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean anything by it,” said Gus, cursing himself for saying such a silly thing, because he meant everything by it and of course she knew he meant everything by it.

  “This will be our last night together,” said Lucy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The lieutenant asked me tonight if I’d like to be loaned to Harbor Juvenile starting tomorrow and if it worked out maybe it could be permanent. I told him I’d like to think about it. I’ve decided.”

  “But that’s too far to drive! You live in Glendale.”

  “I’m a single girl who lives in an apartment. I can move.”

  “But you like police work! The Harbor will be too dull. You’ll miss the action you get around here.”

  “Was it terrible growing up without a father, Gus?” she asked suddenly.

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Could you ever do that to your children?”

  “What?”

  “Could you ever make them grow up without a father, or with a weekend father, twice a month?”

  He wanted to say “yes” to the eyes that he knew wanted him to say “yes,” but he faltered. He often thought later that if he hadn’t faltered he might have said “yes,” and where would things have gone if he had merely said “yes.” But he did not say “yes,” he said nothing for several seconds, and her mouth smiled and she said, “Of course you couldn’t. And that’s the kind of man I want to marry me and give me babies. I should’ve found you about three kids ago. Now how about taking me to the station? I’m going to ask the lieutenant if I can go home. I have a rotten headache.”

  There must be something he could say but the more he thought, the less sense all this made. His brain was whirling when he parked in the station lot and while Lucy was putting her things away he decided that now, this moment, he would meet her in the parking lot at her car and he would tell her something. They would work out something because if he didn’t do it now, right now, he never would. And his very life, no, his soul was on the line.

  “Oh, Plebesly,” said Lieutenant Dilford, stepping out of his office and beckoning to Gus.

  “Yes, sir?” said Gus, entering the watch commander’s office.

  “Sit down for a second, Gus. I’ve got some bad news for you. Your wife called.”

  “What happened?” asked Gus, leaping to his feet. “The kids? Did something happen?”

  “No, no. Your wife and kids are okay. Sit down, Gus.”

  “My mother?” asked Gus, ashamed at his relief that it was his mother, not his children.

  “It’s your friend Andy Kilvinsky, Gus. I knew him well when I worked University years ago. Your wife said that she was called tonight by a lawyer up in Oregon. Kilvinsky left you a few thousand dollars. He’s dead, Gus. He shot himself.”

  Gus heard the lieutenant’s voice droning monotonously for several seconds before he got up and walked to the front door, and the lieutenant was nodding and saying something as though he approved. But Gus did not know what he was saying as he walked weak-legged down the stairway to his car in the parking lot. He was out of the parking lot and on his way home before he started to cry and he thought of Kilvinsky and cried for him. His head bent in anguish and he thought incoherently of the little boy tonight and of all fatherless children. He could no longer see the road. Then he thought of himself and his grief and shame and anger. The tears came like lava. He pulled to the curb and the tears scalded him and his body was convulsed by shuddering sobs for all the silent misery of life. He no longer knew for whom he wept and he was past caring. He wept alone.

  18

  THE HUCKSTER

  “I’M SURE GLAD THEY sent me to Seventy-seventh Street,” said Dugan, the ruddy-faced little rookie who had been Roy’s partner for a week. “I’ve learned a hell of a lot from working a Negro division. And I’ve had good partners breaking me in.”

  “Seventy-seventh Street is as good a place to work as any,” said Roy, thinking how glad he’d be when the sun dropped below the elevated Harbor freeway. The streets would begin to cool and the uniform would become bearable.

  “You been here quite a while now, haven’t you, Roy?”

  “About fifteen months. You’re busy in this division. There’s always something happening so you’re busy. There’s no time to sit and think, and time passes. That’s why I like it.”

  “You ever work in a white division?”

  “Central,” Roy nodded.

  “Is it the same as a black division?”

  “It’s slower. Not as much crime so it’s slower. Time passes slower. But it’s the same. People are all murderous bastards, they’re just a little darker down here.”

  “How long have you been back to work, Roy? If you don’t mind talking about it. As soon as I transferred in, I heard right away about how you were shot. Not many guys have ever survived a shotgun blast in the stomach, I guess.”

  “Not many.”

  “I guess you hate to talk about it.”

  “I don’t hate to but I’m tired of talking about it. I talked about it for the past five months when I was working light duty on the desk. I told the story a thousand times to every curious policeman who wanted to see how I screwed up and got myself shot like that. I’m just tired of telling it. You don’t mind.”

  “Oh, hell no, Roy. I understand completely. You are feeling okay, now, aren’t you. I mean I’ll be glad to drive and keep books any night you want to take it easy.”

  “I’m okay, Dugan,” Roy laughed. “I played three hard games of handball last week. I’m doing fine, physically.”

  “I figure I’m lucky to have an experienced partner who’s been around and done everything. But I ask too many questions sometimes. I have a big Irish mouth that I can’t control sometimes.”

  “Okay, partner,” Roy smiled.

  “Anytime you want me to shut up just say the word.”

  “Okay, partner.”

  “Twelve-A-Nine, Twelve-A-Nine, see the woman, four five nine report, eighty-three twenty-nine south Vermont, apartment B as in boy.”

  “Twelve-A-Nine, roger,” said Dugan, and Roy turned into the orange and purple smog-streaked sunset and drove leisurely to the call.

  “I used to think most burglaries happened at night,” said Dugan. “When I was a civilian, I mean. I guess the biggest portion happen during the day when people aren’t home.”

  “That’s right,” said Roy.

  “Most burglars wouldn’t go in an occupied pad at night, would they?”

  “Too dangerous,” said Roy, lighting a cigarette, which tasted better than the last, now that it was cooling off.

  “I’d sure like to nail a good burglar one of these nights. Maybe we’ll get one tonight.”

  “Maybe,” Roy answered, turning south on Vermont Avenue from Florence.

  “I’m going to continue my education,” said Dugan. “I picked up a few units since getting out of the navy but now I’m going to get serious and go after a degree in police science. You going to school, Roy?”

  “No.”

  “You ever go?”

  “I used to.”

  “Got quite a ways to go for your degree?”

  “Twenty units maybe.”

  “Is that all? That’s terrific. You going to sign up this semester?”

  “Too late.”

  “You are going to finish?”

  “Of course I am,” said Roy and his stomach began to burn from a sudden wave of indigestion and a shudder of nausea followed. Indigestion brought nausea now. His stomach would never be reliable again he supposed, and this bright-ey
ed rookie was upsetting his stomach with his prying, and his exasperating innocence.

  That would change, Roy thought. Not abruptly, but gradually. Life would steal his innocence a bit at a time like an owl steals chicks until the nest is empty and awesome in its loneliness.

  “That looks like the pad, partner,” said Dugan, putting on his cap and opening the door before Roy stopped the car.

  “Wait’ll I stop, Dugan,” said Roy. “I don’t want you breaking a leg. This is only a report call.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Dugan smiled, reddening.

  It was an upstairs apartment at the rear. Dugan tapped on the door lightly with the butt of his flashlight as Roy usually did, and as he probably had seen Roy do. Roy also noticed that Dugan had switched to Roy’s brand of cigarettes and had bought a new three-cell, big-headed flashlight like Roy’s even though his five-cell was only a few weeks old. I always wanted a son, Roy thought, sardonically, as he watched Dugan knock and step carefully to the side of the door as Roy had taught him to do on any call no matter how routine, at any time. And he always had his right hand free, carrying the report notebook and the flashlight in the left. He kept his hat on when they entered a house until they were absolutely sure what they had and only then did they sit down and remove the hats and relax. But Roy never relaxed anymore even when he wanted to relax, even as he concentrated on relaxation, because he must if his stomach would ever heal. He could not afford an ulcer now, could never afford one. He wanted so to relax. But now Dorothy was hounding him to let her new fat middle-aged husband adopt Becky. He had told her he’d see them both dead first and Dorothy had been trying to reach him through his mother whom Dorothy had always found an intercessor. And he was thinking of Becky and how she said “Daddy” and how incredibly beautiful and golden she was. The apartment door was opened by a girl who was not beautiful and golden but Roy thought immediately that she was attractive. She was dark-brown-skinned, too dark he thought, even though her eyes were light brown and flecked with black specks that reminded him of the flecks in his daughter’s eyes. Roy guessed she was his age or older and he thought the natural African hairdo was attractive on black women even though he despised it on the men. At least she didn’t go in for dangling bone or iron earrings and other pretentious Africana. Just the hairdo. That was alright, he thought. It was natural.

  She waved them in and pointed carelessly to the ransacked apartment. Roy saw that the molding had been pried from the door with a quarter-inch screwdriver which was then used to easily shim the door.

  “These wafer locks aren’t worth anything,” said Roy, touching the lock with his flashlight.

  “Now you tell me,” she smiled and shook her head sadly. “They cleaned me out. They really did.”

  She was surprisingly tall, he noticed, as she stood next to him, not having to tilt her face very much to look in his eyes. He guessed she was five feet nine. And she was shapely.

  “Did you touch anything?” asked Dugan.

  “No.”

  “Let’s see if we can find some nice smooth items that prints can be lifted from,” said Dugan, putting his notebook down and prowling around the apartment.

  “This happen while you were at work?” asked Roy, sitting on a high stool at the kitchen bar.

  “Yes.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I’m a dental technician. I work downtown.”

  “Live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What all is missing?”

  “Color TV set. A wristwatch, Polaroid camera. Clothes. Just about everything I own that’s worth a damn.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Roy, thinking that she was very shapely and thinking that he had never tried a black woman and had not tried any woman since recovering from the wound, except for Velma, the overweight beautician whom he had met through his mother’s neighbor Mrs. Smedley. Velma hadn’t been interesting enough to attract him more than once every two or three weeks and he wondered if the buckshot hadn’t done something to diminish his sex drive, and if it did, what the hell, it would be natural for him to lose the full appreciation of one of the few pleasures life seemed to hold for every poor son of a bitch it finally murdered.

  “Is there much of a chance of getting the TV back?” she asked.

  “Do you know the serial number?”

  “Afraid not,” she said.

  “Not too much chance then.”

  “Do most burglaries go unsolved?”

  “In a way they do. I mean they’re not officially cleared. The stolen property is never recovered because burglars sell it real fast to fences or in pawnshops or just to no-questions-asked-people they meet on the street. The burglars usually get caught sooner or later and sometimes the detectives know they’re good for lots and lots of jobs, maybe dozens or hundreds, but they usually don’t get the property back.”

  “So the guilty get caught sooner or later, but it doesn’t help their victims, is that it?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Bastards,” she whispered.

  Why doesn’t she move, Roy thought. Why doesn’t she move farther west to the periphery of the black district. Even if she can’t get completely away from it she could move to the salt and pepper periphery where there’s less crime. But what the hell, he thought. Some white burglar with a kink would probably strangle her in her bed some night. You can’t get away from evil. It leaps all barriers, racial or otherwise.

  “It’ll take a long time to replace all your losses,” said Roy.

  “You bet,” she said, turning away because there were tears glistening, dampening the heavy fringe of real eyelash. “Want some coffee?”

  “Sure,” said Roy, glad that Dugan was still rummaging in the bedroom. As he watched her going from the stove to a cupboard he thought: maybe I could go for a little of that. Maybe all of the simple animal pleasures aren’t gone for me.

  “I’m going to fortify my coffee,” she said, handing him a gold-rimmed cup and saucer, cream pitcher, and sugar bowl. She returned to the cupboard, brought out a fifth of unopened Canadian bourbon, cracked the seal, and poured a liberal shot into the coffee.

  “I never drink alone,” she said, “but tonight I think I’ll get loaded. I feel rotten!”

  Roy’s eyes roved from the girl to the bottle and back and then to the bottle and he told himself that he was not in any danger yet. He only drank because he enjoyed it, because he needed to relax and if the drinking was not good for his stomach, the therapeutic value of a whiskey tranquilizer more than made up for its ill effects. At least he was not interested in drugs. It could have happened in the hospital. It happened to lots of people with long-term painful injuries who were kept on medication. He could get through his shift without a drink, he knew. But he wasn’t harming anyone. A few ounces of whiskey always sharpened his wits and not a partner had ever suspected, least of all not little Dugan.

  “If I weren’t on duty, I’d join you,” said Roy.

  “Too bad,” she said, not looking at him as she took a sip, grimaced, and took a larger one.

  “If I were off duty I wouldn’t let you drink alone,” he said, and watched the glance she gave him and then she turned away and sipped the coffee again and did not answer.

  “Might as well get the report started,” said Dugan, coming back into the living room. “There’s a jewelry box and a few other things in there that might have latent fingerprints on them. I’ve stacked them in the corner. The print man will be out tonight or tomorrow to dust the dresser and those items.”

  “I won’t be here tomorrow. I work during the day.”

  “Maybe he can come tonight if he’s not too busy,” said Dugan.

  “He’ll come tonight. I’ll make sure. I’ll tell him you’re a special friend of mine,” said Roy, and she looked at him again and he saw no sign.

  “Well, might as well get started on this report, ma’am,” said Dugan. “Can I have your name?”

  “Laura Hunt,” she said, and this
time Roy thought he saw in her eyes a sign.

  As they were driving back to the station, Roy began to get jittery. It was not happening as often lately, he told himself. It was not nearly as bad now that he was back in the radio car. Those months of working the desk had been bad, though. He had periodic pain and his nerves were bothering him. He kept a bottle in the trunk of his car and made frequent trips to the parking lot. He worried that Lieutenant Crow, the watch commander, suspected something, but he had never been questioned. He never overdid it. He only drank enough to relax or to assuage the pain or to fight the depression. Only two times did he overdo it, unable to complete his tour of duty. He feigned sickness on those occasions, an attack of nausea he had said, and had gone to the lonely apartment, being careful to keep the speedometer needle pegged at thirty-five miles an hour and concentrating on the elusive white line in the highway. It was much better now that he was in the radio car again. Everything was better. And being back in the old apartment was good for him.

  The months of living with his parents had been as damaging to his emotions as anything else. And Carl—with his fat little children and his impeccable wife Marjorie and his new car and his goddamn belly hanging over his belt even though he wasn’t thirty years old—Carl was unbearable: “We can still find a spot for you, Roy. Of course, you couldn’t expect to start as an equal partner, but eventually . . . after all, it is the family business and you are my brother . . . I always thought you could be a businessman if you just made up your mind to grow up and now I hope your brush with death has made you come to your senses and realize where you belong and abandon your whims you remember Roy when I was a child I wanted to be a policeman too and a fireman but I outgrew them and you’ve admitted that you don’t really like your job and if you don’t you can never expect to be a really successful policeman if there is such a thing and Roy you must realize by now that you’re never going to get your degree in criminology. Roy, you haven’t the desire to hit the books again and I don’t blame you because why in the hell would you want to be a criminologist anyway and oh you don’t want to be one anymore well Roy that’s the best news I’ve heard from you in some time well we can make a place for you in the business and someday soon it can be changed to Fehler and Sons and someday Roy it will be Fehler Brothers and God knows Dad and Mom would be so pleased and I’ll do everything I can to bring you along and make you the kind of businessman worthy of the family name and you know it will be different than working for a boss who is an impersonal taskmaster because I know your faults and weaknesses Roy. God knows we all have them and I’ll make allowances because after all you are my brother.”