The Black Marble

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Yeah. He talks and he’s not a kid, right?”

  “Of course not,” Valnikov said, looking puzzled. “He’s a parakeet. Green.”

  “Uh huh,” said Natalie, her mind racing, wanting the day to end in a hurry so she could run to Hipless Hooker with as much of this bullshit as she could remember. He was a doper. He was loaded right now. Speed maybe. Or coke. This was perfect!

  “And Grisha is …”

  “Grisha’s beautiful.” Valnikov smiled.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Natalie said, raising her glasses and massaging the bridge of her nose. “I mean what … kind … of … creature is Grisha?”

  “Oh, he’s a gerbil,” Valnikov said. “Didn’t I say that?”

  “You didn’t, Valnikov. No, no, you really didn’t!” Then she said, “What’s a gerbil?”

  “A little rodent, indigenous to southern Russia. I’m indigenous to northern Russia. At least my mother and father were indigenous.”

  Now she was excited with what she’d deduced. He had had no partners since his assignment to Hollywood Investigative Division. He’d been handling business burglary cases on his own, and keeping to himself. There was a damn good chance that nobody but she knew that he was a doper. Non sequitur, my ass. This dopey bastard couldn’t string together one question and answer. They’d put him on the wall. Shake him down. Empty his pockets. Would they find Quaaludes? Or hash? That’s it! He was fried on hash oil! He was hearing his own questions somewhere. Who knew from where?

  Siberia. The questions today were coming from a frozen wasteland. The Siberia of his mind. This was a bad day. He knew last night of course that if he drank nearly a fifth of Stolichnaya, well, he would have a hard time today linking sentences together, understanding what people said to him. People would say things and he would hear them, but on these bad days it was so very hard to put the picture in focus. There were little motes of light, the shimmering dots when a flashbulbpops. Like when they photograph a corpse. There would be a picture emerging there among the dots. He could almost get it, and if he did, well, then everything would start to make sense. But then someone would say something to him, talk to him like Natalie was talking to him now, and the shimmering sparkly picture would fade. The Great Secret would not be revealed. Not today. Stolichnaya. Too much vodka. But it was almost as bad other times too.

  She was talking to him.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Valnikov said, smiling that patient, watery-eyed, vacant smile. “What did you say?”

  She had removed her glasses. She was pretty without her glasses, he thought. She was pretty with her glasses, he thought. It might be good to have a partner again. He forgot how long it had been. He truly wasn’t sure right now if it was one month or one year.

  “I asked,” she said slowly, “if you were sure Misha and Grisha were boys? You refer to them in the masculine gender.”

  Now that, she thought, was the toughest question she had thrown at him all morning. Let’s see how he handles it.

  Valnikov’s brow wrinkled, and he chewed his lip for a second and scratched the wild cinnamon hair curling over the frayed collar of a white dress shirt. His coat flapped open when he scratched his ribs. Jesus Christ! His inside coat pocket was repaired, not with thread, but with metal staples.

  “I’m sure that Grisha is a boy,” he answered finally. “I’m not really positive about Misha.” He looked at her with grave blue eyes and thought that if you look very closely you can see a gerbil’s dick, but not a parakeet’s peter. But he couldn’t say that to her.

  “I see,” Natalie said.

  “Well now,” Valnikov said cheerfully. “Shall we make our first call on a burglary victim?”

  It was an interminable work day for Natalie Zimmerman. Hollywood had never looked seedier. Even the downtown area, “the sewer” as the cops called it, had never looked this bad to her. She had long since decided that Hollywood is a slum. At least parts of it. The “swells” of filmdom’s Golden Age would be shocked: massage parlor girls flaunting their wares in doorways and windows. Dirty book stores. Clean book stores. More dirty book stores. Magazine stands, mostly dirty. Trolling homosexuals, both butch and queen. Jockers in leather and chains. Hustling black pimps. Listless whores, all colors. Paddy hustlers, pigeon droppers, pursepicks, muggers. Don’t walk the Boulevard at night and expect to see Robert Redford, baby. Hoo-ray for Hollywood!

  Business burglary. She despised it. A public relations job. Ought to hire the Rogers and Cowan Agency. “Unknown suspects broke into victim’s place of business using a half-inch screwdriver. Property missing: IBM Selectric typewriters.” Sell like hell. Every “honest” businessman in town will lay two hundred on a runny-nosed hype, no questions. Roll of stamps: same thing. Easy to peddle. Got to take a discount but what the hell. Took the office petty cash of course. Maybe took an adding machine if he was big and strong. Those goddamn IBMs are heavy. Same old bullshit, over and over. Why the masking tape? The scumbag dropped it. Uses it to tape the window when he breaks it out to reach inside. No falling glass. Watch out for scumbags who carry masking tape, dearie. They can also tape up your little mouth and eyeballs and then start operating your Selectric. (Why scare the shit out of the victim? Because she was so miserable, that’s why.) Sixty-six thousand burglaries in this town last year, lady. No, that doesn’t count car theft. That doesn’t count robbery. That doesn’t count half a dozen other kinds of larceny. That’s just burglary. Just breaking and entering! How many detectives work burglary? Oh, in the whole damn city about two hundred, maybe. How’s your math? Two hundred divided into sixty-five thousand is what? Not to mention the other larcenies the same dicks handle. And the arrestees they have to process. And the long days in court. Solve the crime! Recover your stolen property? How’s your math, lady?

  A dreary endless slogging death march. That’s business burglary with Valnikov. Unknown suspects. Who ever saw a burglar? Like fighting ghosts. And Valnikov. A ghost himself.

  Gas stations. A guy doesn’t pay for his gas, peels out and beats the proprietor out of eight bucks. Who gets the crime reports? Business burglary. Trouble is there’s always a suspect. The victims get his license number. Run the license, call the suspect. Where was your car Tuesday night at ten o’clock? Your son, Harvey? Uh huh. And how old is the little zit-faced, coke-snorting, hash-smoking son of a bitch? Seventeen? Yes, well he didn’t pay for his gas at Seymour’s Shell Station, corner of … Yes, that’s right, little Hah-vey just didn’t pay. (God, she hated transplanted New Yorkers.) No, no mistake. They took his license number. Yes, you take care of it with Seymour and we can close out our report. We won’t arrest Hah-vey this time. Thank you very much.

  A collection agency. Furniture movers. Paper shufflers. Business burglary. What a thrill. And this was only the first day! Why me!

  But Valnikov didn’t mind. He leisurely passed the time of day with every victim of every petty crime report they handled. Natalie was mad enough to spit. Especially, when they were an hour and a half past what should have been their lunch break and he gave twenty minutes to the sixty-five-year-old proprietor of a second-hand store on Western Avenue. She’d been burglarized three times in five weeks. Every time she picked up some decent merchandise, a hit-and-run window smash.

  “Sergeant,” the Filipino woman said, “I can’t go on like this. I can’t make enough to pay my utilities even. Do you think I could get a job with the police, maybe?” She brightened and said, “Maybe a crossing guard for school kids. I ain’t too old, am I?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I see lots of old people,” Valnikov said. “I can check. I can get an application sent to you.”

  Natalie was leaning against a ramshackle dress rack, smoking, bored stiff, when she heard the tea pot whistle. She walked over to turn it off and saw a dish behind the hot-plate burner. There was a fork on the plate and what looked like corned beef hash. There was a half-empty can of dog food beside the hot plate.

  The woman saw Natalie looking at i
t and scurried behind the counter, pushing everything back and covering it with a towel.

  “My dog … my doggie’s outside … I … well …”

  “Yes, of course, Mrs. De la Cruz,” Valnikov said, with his weary nod of the head. “I was telling Sergeant Zimmerman just this morning that every business person around here should have a watchdog. Wasn’t I, Natalie?”

  And Natalie had a dash of resentment to add to her frustration because a rummy like this saw something quicker than she did.

  “I’ll be very grateful if you could send me the application, Sergeant,” she said to Valnikov, her dentures clicking. “I could dye my hair, pass for fifty-five, if there’s an age limit.”

  “You just let me check on it for you, Mrs. De la Cruz,” Valnikov said, patting her hand.

  “I used to be an actress,” she said to Natalie. “I can play any Asian. Trouble is, not too many good parts for Chinese, Japanese anymore. Lost my SAG card even. No Japanese parts.”

  Valnikov was reminded of something when she said “Chinese.” There it was again. The sparkly flash bulbs. The picture almost formed. An Asian doctor. The morgue? He heard snatches of conversation. Chinese … Japanese … Japanese parts? Sony? Panasonic? Was her television on the blink?

  “It’s time to go, Valnikov,” Natalie said, grabbing her partner’s arm, as Mrs. De la Cruz looked questioningly at the confused detective.

  “You won’t forget to call me, Sergeant?”

  “No ma’am, I won’t,” Valnikov said over his shoulder. “I think you’d make a super crossing guard.”

  “I’m getting hungry, what say we grab a bite,” Natalie said after they got back in the car. She realized she had almost two hundred minutes left in this endless first day.

  “Fine with me,” Valnikov smiled. “Where would you like to go?”

  “Well, I’d like to go to Sergio’s Le Club, but I understand they’re having another Save Harry Whatzisface party there today,” she snorted. “Every guilt-ridden Hollywood liberal will be there. And that’s just about all of them. Or we could …”

  “Who’s Harry Whatzisface?”

  “The guy who played in Deep Throat. Don’t you even read the entertainment section of the paper?”

  “No.”

  “Hollywood folks stomping for our civil liberties and the creative freedom of all artists? You know, so Linda Lovelace can go down on Harry and Harry can go down on Linda and Big Brother can stop repressing us and King Kong can bugger Godzilla? Don’t you read the paper?”

  “Deep Throat was the guy in the Watergate case, wasn’t he?” Valnikov answered.

  “Valnikov, have you ever seen a porno movie?”

  “No, I haven’t been to a movie in, oh … When was Nicholas and Alexandra out?”

  “Several years.”

  “I haven’t been to a movie in several years.”

  “What do you do with your time?”

  “I listen to music. Or I go to a basketball game.”

  “Start the car and let’s go eat, Valnikov.”

  “Oh, yes, sorry.” He started the Plymouth, flicked on his turn signal, gave an arm signal, looked out the window craning his neck, then pulled into traffic at three miles per hour, while Natalie rolled her eyeballs. He turned on the blinker, made an arm signal, changed into the curb lane and stopped. “Did you decide where you want to eat?”

  “Well, since we probably can’t get an ‘A’ table at Chasen’s and my favorite maître d’ isn’t at the Rangoon Racquet Club anymore, and since we’re six days from payday and I’ve got about three goddamn dollars in my purse, what say we have a pizza?”

  But he was wandering again. The sparkling lights were shimmering. He was trudging across the great trackless Steppes. A wasteland. The picture was dappled, formless. He saw … a rabbit in the snow.

  “Would you say that again, please?” he mumbled.

  “Pizza. Let’s get a pizza.” She couldn’t keep her eyes off him. Couldn’t wait to talk to Hipless Hooker. She was positive now that it wasn’t speed. And it wasn’t barbiturates. His pupils weren’t dilated or contracted. No, he was spaced out on some sophisticated drug she wasn’t familiar with. Some kind of dope that didn’t take his pupils up or down.

  Ten minutes later they were parked under a pepper tree near the observatory silently eating their pizzas. Still she watched him. He’d been raised by someone with table manners all right. It was rare to see a man eat anything with such delicacy, let alone a pizza. He chewed small bites thoroughly and dabbed at his lips with a paper napkin when there was nothing there. He was solicitous, asking whether she would like a bit more cream or sugar for her coffee. Whether her pizza was all right. Isn’t it going to be a lovely day despite the smog? Then: “Were you married a long time, Natalie?”

  “Which time, first or second?”

  “Oh,” he shrugged. “Let’s say the second.”

  “What is this, a contest?”

  “I was married sixteen years,” he smiled, careful to swallow his food before speaking.

  “Good. You win.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Never mind,” she said, waving at the air. “I was married three years the first time and two years the second time. My daughter’s from the first. My second didn’t want me to be a cop and tried to make me quit. I stayed a cop. I have a twenty-one-year-old daughter away at college and I don’t have a parakeet or a Goebbels.”

  “That’s gerbil,” he corrected her gently. “A soft g as in gentle. Goebbels was a Nazi who killed lots of Russians. My little gerbil is a Russian rodent. Would you like more cream for your coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Would you like to see a movie?”

  “What?”

  “I gather you like movies. I asked if you’d like to see a movie.”

  “Now?”

  “Of course not” Valnikov smiled, sipping at his tea.

  It looked ridiculous! He was a hulking man with a broad Slavic forehead and he drank his tea like a grand duchess, for God’s sake.

  “What movie’re you talking about?”

  “Oh, whatever you like,” he shrugged. “I don’t know what’s playing. You mentioned Deep Throat.”

  “Deep Throat! You’re asking me to go with you to a porno movie!”

  “Oh, I thought that’s what you liked to see. You don’t want to see Deep Throat?”

  “I saw it. Twice. On dates with horny policemen who insisted. Jesus Christ, put a cigarette in your mouth, Valnikov!”

  “Pardon?”

  “Typical macho cop. A freebie cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a hard-on. I was starting to think you were a little strange. I guess you’re normal enough.”

  “Pardon?” Now Valnikov had lost the thread again. It was unraveled and he hadn’t the faintest idea why she was upset, why she was raising her voice.

  “You’ve been working this division one month,” she smirked. “We’ve hardly said more than a good morning before today. We’ve been partners for, oh, four hours. And you think you can dance me into a porno movie for a nooner?”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” she sneered, shoving the paper cup into the bag. “Let’s finish handling our calls.”

  Valnikov sipped the rest of the coffee but his lunch was ruined. He knew for certain that he had offended her but didn’t know why. He was troubled and didn’t know what to say to make it right. The sparkling motes were swimming. He did the only thing he could. He started all over again. “Natalie, would you like to see a movie?”

  She whirled in her seat, eyes narrowing behind the over-sized glasses. She viciously brushed back a wisp of frizzy, buckskin hair.

  “Do you mean now?”

  “Oh, no. We’re on duty. I meant tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or sometime. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t seen a movie in … I don’t know how long.”

  “You don’t know how long.”

  “No.”

  “Several years. Since
Nicholas and Alexandra.”

  “Yes, so I can wait. Maybe next month sometime?”

  Oh, shit. She turned back and watched the foot traffic sliding by in the shimmering smog. She lit a cigarette. “Valnikov, do you want to take me to a porno? I mean a dirty movie? Is that it?”

  “Well, I’d rather not see a dirty movie,” he said, wiping his watery eyes on his shabby coatsleeve. “But if that’s the kind of movie you like, I’m willing. I just thought maybe you were lonely and I felt sorry for you.”

  “How dare you!” Natalie screamed, in consummate frustration, making Valnikov hit the brakes, almost causing a van to rear-end them on McCadden Place. “How dare you say that to me! You don’t even know me!”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “Wrong! You feel sorry for me! You want to take me to a porno house!”

  “No, I’ve never even been to a porno house. I just gathered that’s what you’d like. I mean, you said two policemen took you to this dirty movie so I thought maybe you liked it, and, well, if that would make you happy, I just thought …”

  Natalie was going to scream when they got a radio call.

  “Roger that, Natalie,” he said, wondering why she was yelling.

  “What … what …”

  “We just got a call,” he said. “Roger it, please.”

  “6-W-232 roger,” she mumbled into the mike, and now she was looking dazed.

  “Western and Romaine, see the vice officer. That was the call, Natalie. Wonder why they want a burglary team? Oh well, that’s what makes our job interesting, eh?” He looked at her and smiled and blinked, his cinnamon hair blowing back from the gust of wind as he suddenly “speeded” up the detective car. Now they were going fifteen miles an hour.

  The vice cop was about twenty-five years old. He wore his auburn hair in a huge Afro which he had done once a month at a beauty parlor on Sunset where he got a police discount. He was shirtless in a leather vest and wore five strands of beads around his neck. He recognized Natalie but didn’t know Valnikov.

  “You working burglary?” He leaned in the detective car window from the street side.