AUGUST 1965
19
THE QUEUE
IT WAS BAD ON WEDNESDAY. The Hollenbeck policemen listened in disbelief to their police radios which broadcast a steady flow of help and assistance calls put out by the officers from Seventy-seventh Street Station.
“The riot is starting,” said Blackburn as he and Serge patrolled nervously in the juvenile car but could not concentrate on anything but what was happening in the southeast part of the city.
“I don’t think it’ll be a real riot,” said Serge.
“I tell you it’s starting,” said Blackburn, and Serge wondered if he could be right as he listened to the frantic operators sending cars from several divisions into Seventy-seventh Street where crowds apparently were forming at One Hundred Sixteenth Street and Avalon Boulevard. By ten o’clock a command post had been set up at Imperial and Avalon and a perimeter patrol was activated. It was obvious to Serge as he listened that there were insufficient police units to cope with a deteriorating situation.
“I tell you it’s starting,” said Blackburn. “It’s L.A.’s turn. Burn, burn, burn. Let’s get the hell to a restaurant and eat because we ain’t going home tonight I tell you.”
“I’m ready to eat,” said Serge. “But I’m not going to worry too much yet.”
“I tell you they’re ready to rip loose,” said Blackburn, and Serge could not determine if his partner was glad of it or not. Perhaps he’s glad, thought Serge. After all, his life has been rather uneventful since his wife sued him for divorce and he was afraid to be caught in any more adulterous situations until the case was decided.
“Where do we want to eat?” asked Serge.
“Let’s go to Rosales’ place. We ain’t ate there in a couple weeks. At least I haven’t. Is it still on with you and the little waitress?”
“I see her once in a while,” said Serge.
“Sure don’t blame you,” said Blackburn. “She’s turned out real nice. Wish I could see somebody. Anybody. Doesn’t she have a cousin?”
“Nope.”
“I can’t see my own women. My goddamn wife got my notebook with every goddamn number in it. I’m afraid she’s got the places staked out. I wish I had one she didn’t know about.”
“Can’t you wait until your divorce goes to trial?”
“Wait? Goddamn, You know I’m a man that needs my pussy. I ain’t had a goddamn thing for almost three months. By the way, your little girlfriend ain’t working as much as she used to, is she?”
“She’s going to college,” said Serge. “She still works some. I think she’ll be working tonight.”
“What’s with your other girlfriend? That blonde that picked you up that night at the station. It still on with her?”
“Paula? It’s more or less on, I guess.”
“Bet she wants to marry you, right? That’s what all those cunts want. Don’t do it, I’m telling you. You got the life now, boy. Don’t change it.”
Serge could never control his heartbeat when he was near her and that was the thing that most annoyed him. When they left their car parked at the curb and entered the restaurant only minutes before Mr. Rosales put up the closed sign, his heart galloped, and Mr. Rosales nodded his gray head and waved them to a booth. He had thought for months that Mr. Rosales had guessed how it was with him and Mariana, but there had been no indication, and at last, he decided it was only the tattered remnants of his conscience fluttering in the hot wind of his passion. He made it a point not to meet her more than once a week, sometimes less, and he always brought her home early and feigned perfect innocence even though they had just spent several hours in a tiny motel room which the management kept for Hollenbeck policemen who only had to show a badge in lieu of payment. He thought at first that it would be only a short time before the inevitable melodrama would begin and she would wail and weep that she couldn’t go on like this in a cheap motel and that her tears would destroy the pleasure—but it hadn’t happened yet. When he was making love to Mariana it was the same no matter where, and it seemed to be so with her also. She had never complained and there were never any serious promises made by either of them. He was glad it was so, and yet he waited anxiously for the melodrama. Surely it would come.
And making love with Mariana was something to analyze, he thought, but he had as yet been unable to understand how she alone had made it so different. It wasn’t only because he had been her first, because he had felt like this with that dark-eyed little daughter of the bracero when he was fifteen, and he was certainly not the first with that one, and sometimes he was not the first on any given evening with that one. It was not only that he had been first, it was that he was purged each time when it was over. Her heat burned him from the inside out and he was at peace. She opened his pores and drained the impurities. That was why he kept coming back for more although it was difficult enough to single-handedly match the sexual prowess of Paula who was suspecting there was another girl and was demanding more and more of him until the ultimatum and melodrama was certainly overdue with Paula also. Paula had almost exploded in tears two nights before when they were watching an inane television movie and he had commented on the aging spinster in the story who was unhappily pursuing a fat little stockbroker who was not able to break the stranglehold of a domineering wife.
“Show a little pity!” she almost shouted when he snorted at the miserable woman. “Where’s your compassion? She’s scared to death of being alone. She needs love, damn it. Can’t you see that she has no love?”
He decided to be careful after that, very careful about what he said because the end was very near. He would have to decide whether to marry Paula or not. And if he didn’t, he decided he would probably never marry because the prospects would never again be this good.
He thought this as they waited for Mariana to come from the kitchen and take their order, but she didn’t come. Mr. Rosales himself came to the table with coffee and a writing pad and Serge said, “Where is she?” and watched closely but detected nothing in the eyes or manner of the proprietor who said, “I thought she should study tonight. I told her to stay home and study. She does so well with her studies. I do not want her to become too tired or upset because of overwork or anything else.” He glanced at Serge when he said “anything else,” and it was not a malicious glance, but now Serge was positive the old man knew how it was, but Christ, anyone with any intelligence would know that he wasn’t taking her out several times a month this past year just to hold her hand. Christ, he was almost twenty-nine years old and she was twenty. What the hell did anybody expect?
Serge toyed with his food, and Blackburn as usual devoured everything in sight and without much urging finished most of what Serge didn’t eat.
“Worried about the riot?” asked Blackburn. “Don’t blame you. Makes me a little queasy to think that they might do here what they did in the East.”
“It’ll never be like that here,” said Serge. “We’re not going to tolerate the bullshit as long as they did back East.”
“Yeah, we’re the best Department in the country,” said Blackburn. “That’s what our press notices say. But I want to know how a few hundred bluesuits are going to turn back a black ocean of people.”
“It won’t be like that, I’m sure it won’t.”
They were all held over in Hollenbeck that night. But at 3:00 A.M. they were permitted to secure, and Blackburn only shrugged when Serge told him that it was evidently quelled and that tomorrow things would be normal.
But on Thursday things were not normal and at 7:05 P.M. a crowd of two thousand again gathered at One Hundred Sixteenth and Avalon and units from Central, University, Newton and Hollenbeck were rushed to the trouble spot. At 10:00 P.M. Serge and Blackburn had given up all pretense of patrolling and sat in the station parking lot listening to the police radio in disbelief as did four of the uniformed officers who were preparing to leave for the Watts area.
Shots were fired at a police vehicle at Imperial Highway and Parmelee
, and an hour later Serge heard a sergeant being denied a request for tear gas.
“I guess they don’t think the sergeant knows what the fuck is going on out there,” said Blackburn. “I guess they think he should reason with them instead of using gas on them.”
The word came again a few hours past midnight that they would not be sent to Watts and Serge and Blackburn were given permission to secure. Serge had called Mariana at the restaurant at ten-thirty and she had agreed to meet him in front of the Rosales house whenever he could get there. She often studied until late in the morning and Serge would come by when the Rosales family was asleep. He would park across the street in the shade of an elm and she would come out to the car and it would always be better than he remembered. He could not seem to hold the moment in his mind. Not the moment with Mariana. He could not remember the catharsis of her lovemaking. He could only remember that it was like bathing in a warm pool in the darkness and he felt refreshed and never at any time did he think it was not good for him. For her, he wondered.
He almost didn’t stop because it was fifteen past two, but the light was burning and so he stopped, knowing that if she were awake she would hear. In a moment he saw her tiptoe out the front door wearing the soft blue robe and filmy pink nightgown he had come to know so well even though he had never seen it in the light. But he knew the feel of it well and his mouth became dry as he held a hand over the dome light and opened the door for her.
“I thought you would not come,” she said when he stopped kissing her for a moment.
“I had to come. You know I can’t stay away very long.”
“It is the same with me, Sergio, but wait. Wait!” she said, pushing his hands away.
“What is it, little dove?”
“We should talk, Sergio. It is exactly one year since we went to the mountain and I saw my first lake. Do you remember?”
This is it, he thought almost triumphantly, I knew it would come. And though he dreaded the weeping, he was glad it would be finally ended. The waiting.
“I remember the mountain and the lake.”
“I regret nothing, Sergio. You should know that.”
“But?” he said, lighting a cigarette, preparing for an embarrassing scene. Paula will be next, he thought. After Mariana.
“But it is so much better if it should stop now while we both feel what we feel for each other.”
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Serge said suddenly as the thought struck him that this was what she was preparing to tell him.
“Poor Sergio,” she smiled sadly. “No, querido, I am not. I have learned all the ways of prevention well even though they shame me. Poor Sergio. And what if I was? Do you think I would go away with your baby in my stomach? To Guadalajara perhaps? And live my poor life out raising your child and yearning only for your arms? I have told you before, Sergio, you read too many books. I have my own life to live. It is as important to me as yours is to you.”
“What the hell is this? What are you driving at?” He couldn’t see her eyes in the darkness and he didn’t like any of this. She had never talked like this before and it was unnerving him. He wanted to turn on the light to be sure it was her.
“I cannot pretend I can get over you easy, Sergio. I cannot pretend I do not love you enough to live like this. But it would not be forever. Sooner or later, you would marry your other one and please do not tell me there is not another one.”
“I won’t, but . . .”
“Please, Sergio, let me finish. If you can be a whole man by marrying your other one, then do it. Do something, Sergio. Find out what you must do. And I say this: if you find it is my kind of life you want to share, then come to this house. Come on a Sunday in the afternoon like you did the first time when we went to the lake in the mountain. Tell señor Rosales what you wish to say to me, because he is my father here. Then if he approves, come to me and say it. And then it will be announced in the church and we will not touch each other as we have done, until the night of the marriage. And I will marry you in a white dress, Sergio. But I will not wait for you forever.”
Serge groped for the light switch, but she grabbed his hand and when he reached for her desperately she pulled away.
“Why do you talk like this with such a strange voice? My God, Mariana, what’ve I done?”
“Nothing, Sergio. You have done absolutely nothing. But it has been a year. I was a Catholic before. But since we had our love, I have not been to confession or Communion.”
“So, that’s it,” he nodded. “The goddamn religion’s got you all confused. Do you feel sinful when we make love? Is that it?”
“It is not only that, Sergio, but it is partly that. I went to confession last Saturday. I am again a child of God. But it is not only that. I want you, Sergio, but only if you are a complete man. I want Sergio Duran, a complete man. Do you understand?”
“Mariana,” he said in bleak frustration, but when he reached for her she opened the door and was gliding barefoot across the shadowy street. “Mariana!”
“You must never return, Sergio,” she whispered, her voice breaking for an instant, “unless you come as I have said.” He squinted through the darkness and saw her standing for a moment straight and still, the long blue robe fluttering against her calves. Her chin was uplifted as always, and he felt the pain in his chest grow sharper and thought for one horrible moment that he was being ripped in two and only part of him sat there mute before this ghostly apparition whom he had thought he knew and understood.
“And if you come, I will wear white. Do you hear me? I will wear white, Sergio!”
On Friday, the thirteenth of August, Serge was awakened at noon by Sergeant Latham who shouted something in the phone as Serge sat up in bed and tried to make his brain function.
“Are you awake, Serge?” asked Latham.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, finally. “Now I am. What the hell did you say?”
“I said that you’ve got to come in right away. All the juvenile officers are being sent to Seventy-seventh Street Station. Do you have a uniform?”
“Yeah, Christ, I think so. I got it here somewhere.”
“Are you sure you’re awake?”
“Yeah, I’m awake.”
“Okay, dig your blue suit out of mothballs and put it on. Take your baton, flashlight and helmet. Don’t wear a necktie and don’t bother taking your soft hat. You’re going into combat, man.”
“What’s happening now?” asked Serge, his heart already beginning to advance its rhythm.
“Bad. It’s bad. Just get the hell down to Seventy-seventh. I’ll be there myself as soon as I get all our people there.”
Serge cursed as he cut his face twice while shaving. His light-brown eyes were watery, the irises trapped in a web of scarlet. The toothpaste and mouthwash did not cleanse his mouth of the vile taste which the pint of scotch had left there. He had drunk and read until an hour past daybreak after Mariana had left him there babbling to himself in the darkness and he hadn’t yet thought it all out. How could he have been so wrong about his little dove who was in fact a hunting hawk, strong and independent. Was he the predator or the prey? She didn’t need him the way he had gleefully imagined. When the hell would he be right about someone or something? And now, with a brain-cracking headache and a stomach twisted with anxiety and seething alcohol, and perhaps two hours sleep, he was going into he knew not what, where he might need every bit of physical strength and mental alertness to save his very life.
When this insanity in the streets was over and things returned to normal he would marry Paula, he thought. He would accept as much of her father’s dowry as was offered and play house and live as comfortably as he possibly could. He would stay away from Mariana because it was only her youth and virginity that had attracted him in the first place as it would have attracted any reasonably degenerate hedonist. Now he could see that stewing over that had been stupidly romantic because it appeared that she had taken more than he had. He doubted whether she were fe
eling as miserable as he was at this very moment and he suddenly thought, let them shoot me, let some black son of a bitch shoot me. I’m not capable of finding peace. Maybe there’s no such thing. Maybe it exists only in books.
Serge found that he could not buckle the Sam Browne and had to let it out a notch. He had been drinking more lately and was not playing handball as much since he was trying to handle two women. The waistband of the blue woolen trousers was hard to button and he had to suck in his stomach to fasten both buttons. He still looked slim enough in the tight-fitting heavy woolen uniform, he thought, and decided to concentrate on such trivialities as his growing stomach because he could not afford at this moment to be caught in a swamp of depression. He was going into something that no policeman in this city had ever before been asked to face and his death wish might be happily granted by some fanatic. He knew himself well enough to know that he was definitely afraid to die and therefore probably did not really want to.
Serge saw the smoke before he was five miles from Watts and realized then what policemen had been saying for two days, that this conflagration would not remain on One Hundred and Sixteenth Street or even on One Hundred and Third, but that it would spread through the entire southern metropolitan area. The uniform was unbearable in the heat and even the sunglasses didn’t stop the sun from cutting his eyes and boiling his brain. He looked at the helmet beside him on the seat and dreaded putting it on. He stayed on the Harbor Freeway to Florence Avenue then south on Broadway to Seventy-seventh Station which was as chaotic as he expected, with scores of police cars going and coming and newsmen roaming aimlessly about looking for escorts into the perimeter, and the scream of sirens from ambulances, fire trucks and radio cars. He parked on the street as close as he could get to the station and was waved wildly to the watch commander’s office by the desk officer who was talking into two telephones, looking like he was feeling about as miserable as Serge. The watch commander’s office was jammed with policemen and reporters who were being asked to remain outside by a perspiring sergeant with a face like a dried apple. The only one who seemed to have some idea of what was happening was a balding lieutenant with four service stripes on his sleeve. He sat calmly at a desk and puffed on a brown hooked pipe,
The New Centurions Page 34
