The Black Marble

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Whaddaya got?” she asked.

  “Maybe something for you. There was a pawnshop burglary about three weeks ago. Down on Melrose, I think.”

  “Western Avenue,” Valnikov said.

  “Yeah, that’s right, on Western,” the vice cop said, nodding his shaggy head. “They ripped him off for some shotguns, one a double-barreled custom job with silver inlay …”

  “Mother-of-pearl,” Valnikov said.

  “Mother-of-pearl?”

  “Yes,” Valnikov said.

  “Was it your case?” the vice cop asked.

  “No, I just remember the report.”

  “And you remember for sure it was mother-of-pearl?”

  “Yes,” Valnikov said, wiping his eyes.

  “Okay, guess this ain’t from that job.” He held up a silver-inlaid, double-barreled twelve-gauge, the walnut rubbed smooth from years of loving care. “I’ll just book it and let robbery try to make it on some other job. Just thought it might have been from that pawnshop burg, is all.”

  “What’s happening here anyway?” Natalie asked. There was an ambulance in front and a crowd of onlookers from the surrounding homes. There were seven men being loaded into the black-and-whites. “Somebody get shot?”

  “No, but he might wish he had,” said the vice cop.

  “Catch the suspect?”

  “Yeah, he’s the suspect,” the vice cop said, pointing to the blanket-covered man being bandaged by a paramedic as two policemen helped lift the gurney into the ambulance. “Thought he was Jesse James. Decided to take down a crap game that floats in this apartment about every Wednesday. We been staking out next door since this morning, and damned if Jesse James here doesn’t come crashing in the room just as we were about to make a little gambling bust. He leaps up on the table and fires his twelve-gauge into the ceiling to get all the players’ attention. I was next door alone, almost messed my pants. While I’m trying to call on the CC unit for some help, he gets carried away with scaring everybody. He’s not satisfied that the players’re shaking and begging so he fires another round to make them move a little quicker.”

  “And that’s just a double-barreled shotgun,” Natalie observed.

  “Yeah, and one by one, all the players noticed that too. They say the last thing old Jesse James says is ‘Uh-oh.’ And that may be the last thing he ever does say. They got through with him, his head squirms around like a water bed. Well, does your heart good once in a while to see justice done. Makes you think God ain’t dead after all.”

  When they were back on Vine Street stopped behind a fender-bender traffic accident, Natalie said, “Did you really remember that Western Avenue pawnshop burglary?”

  “Yes,” Valnikov said.

  “You must read hundreds of burglary reports.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was unusual about this one?”

  “Nothing,” he shrugged, at last his eyes starting to clear from the havoc of Russian vodka.

  “Then how do you remember?”

  “I always remember crime data. I don’t know why. I’ve been a detective so long I just seem to remember.”

  Memories. Twenty-two years a policeman. Fifteen of them working homicide downtown. Homicide. The first team. The varsity. Shootings, stabbings, rapes, mayhem. Torture murder, extortion murder, kidnap murder, sex murder. Domestic murder: husbands, wives, mothers, fathers. Who said a father never killed his seed? Valnikov knew better. But mothers were more innovative murderers of little children. Lots and lots of child murders. Whodunits, howdunits, whydunits. The Stinker Squad. Corpses. The faces of corpses: bewildered corpses, winking corpses, grieving corpses, laughing corpses, screaming corpses. There was no predicting the expression a corpse would wear to eternity. At times there were just chunks of corpses, slivers of corpses. Sometimes just heads. Remember Homer from Hollenbeck?

  Sergeant Ambrose Schultz was the cutup of the Stinker Squad. He loved a good joke. They had been trying to help solve a headless whodunit in Hollenbeck Division for two months. Finally someone informed on a woman who poisoned her unfaithful boyfriend named Homer, and who beheaded the corpse with a shovel, which took an hour of relentless hacking but got rid of her tension. Then she preserved the lover’s head in a crock of formaldehyde. (Why? they asked. You often discovered the who and the how but less often the why. Who can say why? Why anything?)

  Homer’s head was hanging around the squad room for a few days after they found it. The preserving fluid had long since leaked, and now Homer’s head was putrefied, blackened, engorged.

  Homer took with him to eternity the face of a gorilla.

  One day Ambrose Schultz happened to notice that clerk typist, Lupe Rodriguez, had made her weekly trip to the panadería and bought four pounds of delicious stone-ground, corn tortillas, handmade in Boyle Heights by Mexican women squatting over brick firepits. Ambrose stole the tortillas out of Lupe’s sack when she went to the john, and he left Homer’s head inside. Lupe Rodriguez, a perennial dieter and incurable nibbler, was right in the middle of reading a sexy crime report when she reached down inside the sack to nibble. It was odd. The tortillas felt soggy. And hairy? They say her shrieks could be heard clear up in the chief’s office. It was the best joke Ambrose Schultz pulled that year.

  Until Ambrose happened to be handling a homosexual murder wherein one lover strangled the other one and whacked off his penis with a handsaw. Rodney, the demented survivor, said he kept Claude’s ragged frontispiece in a fishbowl on his mantel to show his friends at a dinner party he gave after his lover had disappeared. The dinner party was not a success in that the first guest to examine the strange floating fish ran screaming to a telephone. Rodney couldn’t understand it because he had spent a fortune on stuffed squab and party favors. He later told detectives he couldn’t bear to part with that part of Claude just yet, and besides, he thought the penis in a pickle jar would be tacky, but in a fishbowl it would be a great conversation piece. The fishbowl and contents ended up in the care of Ambrose Schultz. Poor Lupe Rodriguez transferred to Personnel Division after that one. Memories.

  “I said we’ve still got several victim contacts to make.”

  “Pardon me, Natalie?”

  “I was talking to you.”

  “Sorry,” he said, smiling pleasantly. “We have some more victims to contact, I think.”

  And that was the way the day went. Almost. The difference being that at 6:00 p.m. that day, when she should have been off-duty—when she should have been home in the bathtub, sipping a gin and tonic, listening to Englebert Humperdinck sing his heart out—she was cowering on a napless carpet of a dingy apartment corridor, trying her best to keep her sphincter muscles tight and her bladder in control. (Oh God, I’m not wearing panties today!) For the first time in her entire police career she was on the verge of being shot to death. And it was all her fault. Not Valnikov’s. Hers.

  The call came at 4:20 p.m. It’s never a call exactly, it’s a scream. First the hotshot beeper over the radio. Then a shrill voice: “All units in the vicinity and 6-A-39! Officers need help, Lexington and Vermont! Shots fired! Officers under sniper fire!”

  And then, heaven help any pedestrian or motorist within a hundred feet of a police car. Coffee cups splashing in the street. Dozing policemen jerking upright. Seat belts click and whir tight. Engines roar, transmissions scream. A hundred yards of burning rubber is smeared on Hollywood asphalt, curb, sidewalk. And, all too often, two police cars (one in compliance with regulations, using siren, another in a hurry to be first, also using his siren) collide at a blind intersection and never get to the call.

  Probably the only Hollywood unit on the street which proceeded in its original direction was 6-W-232. Natalie was outraged.

  “Valnikov, didn’t you hear the hotshot call?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Aren’t you going to roll on it?”

  “Well, I hadn’t planned to. We’re over a mile away in heavy traffic. Besides, there’ll be plenty of c
overage.”

  “Well that tears it!” Natalie sneered. “Are you a police officer or not!”

  “Do you want me to go to the call? If you do …”

  “Of course I do. Jesus Christ!”

  “All right, Natalie,” Valnikov shrugged. Then to please her, he stepped on the accelerator. They speeded up to twenty miles an hour. Natalie was beside herself.

  “Put your frigging foot in the carburetor!” she yelled.

  “All right, Natalie. Calm yourself,” he said.

  Valnikov looked around cautiously, tightened his grip on the wheel, and speeded up to thirty miles an hour. Natalie gurgled and rolled her eyes.

  Surprisingly, there were only four radio cars and one other plainclothes unit at the scene when they arrived. Still, it was bedlam. The radio cars were parked on the curbs, their doors wide open on the street side. Rush-hour traffic couldn’t pass down the narrow street and was backed up for blocks. People were on their front lawns, and on balconies of nearby apartment buildings, and hiding behind palm trees. No one wanted to miss the police shooting somebody to death. Or being shot.

  One young policeman, hatless, red-faced, was crouching behind his radio car screaming into the uncoiled hand mike. When he was finished he threw the mike into the car.

  “Down! Get down!” he screamed at Natalie as she jumped out of the detective car and ran toward the black-and-white, skirt hiked up over her knees, revolver in hand.

  “What’s going on?” Natalie yelled, eyes ablaze.

  Valnikov struggled to get free of his seat belt. He’d never pulled it so tight before. Natalie had startled him into it.

  “A barricaded suspect!” the young bluesuit yelled. “Upstairs in the back! He threatened to kill his wife and when she ran out the door he starts popping caps at her! She says he’s got an army rifle and three handguns in there!”

  “You call for SWAT?” Natalie yelled. They were ten inches apart, screaming into each other’s face.

  “Yes!” the young cop yelled, spraying her with saliva.

  “Is there a sergeant here!” Natalie sprayed him back.

  “No!” he screamed.

  “Valnikov!” Natalie screamed over her shoulder as he finally got out of the car and came toward them. “Valnikov, you’re in charge here!”

  “Are you a sergeant?” The young cop sprayed him wetter than Natalie had.

  Valnikov couldn’t seem to find his handkerchief but he remembered it was soiled from the flow of vodka-induced mucus that morning. He didn’t want Natalie to see a dirty handkerchief so he wiped his face discreedy on his sleeve.

  “Are you a sergeant!” the young bluecoat screamed again.

  “Yes,” Valnikov said, wishing everyone would stop yelling. Then he decided he’d better pin his badge to his coat pocket before a young policeman shot him dead.

  “Whadda you want me to do, Sergeant!” the young cop yelled.

  “Well,” Valnikov began, as tactfully as possible, “I was wondering if you could stop spitting in my face? And, Natalie, I think you should wipe the moisture off your glasses. This is a dangerous situation and you’ve got to be able to see.”

  “SWAT’s on the way, Sergeant!” the young cop screamed. “I’ve called for detectives and the watch commander! I’ve called for an ambulance in case we have any wounded! I’ve …”

  Valnikov turned away letting the spray strike his left cheek and then he did something Natalie thought extraordinary. He put his hand over the young policeman’s mouth. A broad, strong hand. He clamped the lad’s mouth shut and held on.

  “Please, son,” Valnikov said quietly. “I can’t hear you because you’re hollering so loud. When I let you talk again I want you to try to whisper. Now, whisper to me where the barricaded suspect is.”

  Natalie watched the young policeman’s bulging eyes start to stabilize. His face was reddening, however, because he was having trouble breathing through his nose. He grabbed Valnikov’s wrist and nodded. Valnikov released him.

  “Thanks, Sergeant, I needed that,” he said.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Natalie said to her Friz.

  “Follow me, Sergeant!” the young cop said, and before Valnikov could grab him again, he was gone, duck-walking across the lawn toward the open door of the apartment building where another policeman crouched, fingering the trigger guard of a shotgun.

  “I’m sorry we got involved in this, Natalie,” Valnikov said reproachfully as he followed the cop across the lawn toward the ominous opening. Then they heard glass break, which caused everyone, Valnikov included, to fall flat on the pavement by the doorway.

  “Son of a bitch aims a rifle out the window every minute or so!” said a craggy cop with a shotgun. “His wife says he’s got a semiautomatic rifle and …”

  “Where’s the rest of the policemen?” Valnikov asked.

  “Upstairs, second landing,” said the craggy cop.

  The young cop who screamed so much was crouched behind Valnikov, peeking up at that shattered broken window, his service revolver at the ready. Pointed right at Natalie’s temple.

  Natalie turned and found herself looking down the black hole of a four-inch Smith and Wesson. She could see the lands and grooves from a glint of sunshine.

  “Oh, my God,” she said and Valnikov quickly pushed the gun muzzle away. The young cop hadn’t noticed a thing.

  And then all hell broke loose. PLOOM! PLOOM! PLOOM! A whoosh of air. Windows shattered. A tire exploded.

  “Who’s shooting?”

  “What the hell!”

  “The bastard’s got a cannon!”

  So far, Valnikov noted, nothing unusual had happened. It was a typical barricaded-suspect situation. The kind that rates a small column in the second section of the morning paper, unless a cop gets killed. Then it’s front page. So far it was ordinary. Everything screwed up.

  A domestic scene. Probably caught his wife cheating. Or she caught him. Maybe the scrambled eggs were too slimy. I love you. I hate you. I love you so much I’m going to kill you. And he tries. He fails. I’m going to kill myself, then. But first of all I’m going to shoot up the goddamn street.

  Actually, the berserk gunman yearned for the same things a “sustaining” Junior Leaguer in a Pasadena mansion did: attention, recognition, celebrity. He could only get it by playing a scene he’d seen in a thousand movies all his life: He was going out with guns blazing. Watch out, you coppers! Stanley Kravitz ain’t going alone!

  All of this was going incoherently through Valnikov’s mind. Usually, he’d been called in when Stanley Kravitz lay dead, having tired of the game, having put his own rifle in his mouth and fired with his big toe. Valnikov had learned it’s hard to fire with the big toe. Sometimes they missed and the side of their skulls cracked off but they lived. On an intravenous diet forever. Never again to complain about slimy scrambled eggs. Looking rather like slimy scrambled eggs. Sometimes, like this, Valnikov was there even before Stanley Kravitz fired with his big toe. But then a young cop with eyes like balloons would usually put one right in Stanley’s ten ring, doing a better job on Stanley than he could have done on himself.

  Before Valnikov moved up the stairs toward the upper landing where five policemen with shotguns and revolvers had fired twenty-three rounds through Stanley Kravitz’ door, before he tried to quiet down five other policemen with balloon eyes, Valnikov turned to Natalie and said sadly, “Why did you want to come here, Natalie? I wish you hadn’t insisted on it.”

  And then Stanley Kravitz (whose real name was William Allen Livingston) opened Act II with an M-14 and pinned everybody inside the building for two hours. And darkness fell.

  A command post was set up. The SWAT truck arrived with spotlights. Deputy Chief Digby Bates hovered safely over the building in a helicopter, his teeth clenched in determination, face pressed to the glass, hoping the photographers below had enough light, and telephoto lenses on their Nikons.

  It was ten minutes after dark that William Allen Livingston got sick and ti
red of the noisy police helicopter, and risked leaning out the window to fire up at the chopper. He shot a six-inch shard out of the bubble, causing Deputy Chief Digby Bates to forget about photographers with telephoto lenses and scream: “Let’s get the fuck OUT of here!” spraying the pilot with saliva.

  And then the situation got totally out of control, and twenty guns responded to the sniper by making a ruin of the side of the building where Livingston had barricaded himself. The police officers trapped inside heard Livingston speak for the first time. He played Act IV the way he’d been taught in Saturday matinees. He said, “I’m coming out, coppers! With guns blazing!”

  But before the barricaded suspect could get his guns blazing, a frenzied young cop on the stairwell screamed, “The lights!” And five blue-coats banged away with revolvers at the two wall sconces lighting the narrow hallway now that the sun had set.

  Valnikov was momentarily deafened. Natalie was holding her ears. The uniformed cops fired eighteen rounds at the two lights. In the movies one would do. In real life, when adrenaline turns an arm to licorice, eighteen rounds won’t do. They were covered with plaster dust. They could hardly breathe from the falling plaster and burning gunpowder. They missed the two lights completely. There was one hole in a lampshade.

  They were reloading when Valnikov raised his voice for the first time. He shouted: “Stop it! This is giving me a headache!”

  “The lights, Sergeant!” a young cop babbled.

  “We’re exposed to his fire!” a tall cop added.

  “He’ll be coming out!” a fat cop promised.

  And then Natalie gasped because Valnikov stood, his gun in front of him at the ready, and advanced down the hallway toward the bullet-riddled door of William Allen Livingston, known to Valnikov as Stanley Kravitz, corpse-to-be.

  Watching the door carefully, keeping as close to the wall as possible, covered with dust from the bullet-riddled walls and ceiling, Valnikov did something that no one had thought of.

  He unscrewed the light bulb.

  The hallway was immediately plunged into darkness. One policeman had a flashlight. He trained it on the door when Valnikov returned to his position.