“Yes sir,” Father Willie said, never looking up as he wrote.
“Why me? Why me?” Murray Fern demanded, reminding Father Willie of Spencer.
“You ran a red light, sir,” Father Willie said, looking up for the first time then continuing with the citation.
“But I can’t get another ticket. One more and they’ll suspend my license. Christ, gimme a break!”
Father Willie did not answer but continued to write in embarrassed silence.
“Just my luck to get stopped by a couple of pricks,” the fat man said as he paced in a tight circle. “A couple of ticket hungry heartless pricks.”
Now Spencer Van Moot no longer cared about a cut rate stereo set and looked around the rear of the car for a taillight violation that Willie could add to the ticket.
“A couple of two bit, ticket happy, stupid fucking pricks!” Murray Fern said as Father Willie continued his writing without comment.
“Sign on the line,” Spencer said coldly, speaking for the first time.
“Fuck you,” said Murray Fern. “I’m innocent and I’m not signing.”
“You’re not admitting guilt,” Father Willie said quietly. “If you don’t sign, thereby promising to appear, we’ll have to take you in and book you on the violation.”
“Prick!” the fat man said, brushing Father Willie’s ballpoint aside, taking a gold plated fountain pen from his inside coat pocket and leaning on the hood to study the ticket.
“It’s only a promise …”
“I know what the fuck it is!” the man interrupted. “What I’d like to know is why you tinhorns aren’t out catching criminals instead of harassing honest citizens, that’s what I’d like to know.”
The fat man scrawled his name across the ticket and turned his back on the two officers while Father Willie tore off the violator’s copy and handed it to him along with his driver’s license.
“I’ll see you in court!” Murray Fern sputtered as he snatched his copy and license from Father Willie’s hand. “I’ll have a lawyer. I’ll beat you. I’ll make you go to court on your day off and I’ll make you look like the dumb shit you are!”
He spun around and jammed the ticket, pen and license into his coat pocket. But when he jerked his hand out, a tiny.25 caliber automatic clattered to the pavement.
“Oh shit,” said Murray Fern bleakly as Spencer Van Moot quickly pulled and pointed his.38 at the fat man’s eyes.
“Who says there’s no God?” Father Willie grinned happily.
“I only carry a gun when I make bank deposits,” croaked Murray Fern. “I know it’s against the law but I’m a businessman! You’re not gonna put me in jail for something as petty as this?”
“Who says there’s no God?” Father Willie repeated as he drew his handcuffs.
By the time the two policemen obtained the booking approval and ran a record check on Murray Fern who had three drunk driving arrests, but no other criminal record, the fat man had threatened every officer at Wilshire Station with a lawsuit. It was 8:30 P.M. when they stood with Murray Fern in front of the booking officer, Elwood Banks, a fifty-year old black man and former partner of Spencer Van Moot.
“How’s the retail trade in Los Angeles holdin up?” he asked Spencer when they brought the prisoner inside the lockup.
“Fair to middling, Elwood,” Spencer answered. “Booking this guy for CCW.”
“Kinda old to be playin with guns, ain’t you, Dad?” commented Elwood Banks, looking up from his typewriter as he inserted a booking form.
“I’ll sue you too, you bastard,” Murray Fern warned. “Just one more smart remark and I’ll put you on the lawsuit.”
Sitting on a bench to the side of the booking cage, waiting to be fingerprinted, was a tall, once powerful derelict with a bloody wet bandage over one eye. He was forty-eight years old, looked sixty-five, and had fought with the officers who had arrested him for plain drunk. The assault on the officers made him a felon now, but his fourteen page rap sheet included fifty-four arrests for only plain drunk and vagrancy, so now he would be tried and sentenced as a misdemeanant.
Elwood Banks knew the derelict as Timothy “Clickety-clack” Reilly so called because his ill-fitting false teeth clicked together when he talked. Elwood Banks had booked Clickety-clack three times in the past, had never known him to be violent and rightly guessed that the young arresting officer, Roscoe Rules, had antagonized the derelict. His smashed nose and scarred eyes should have been a tip-off to Roscoe. Clickety-clack had once been a ranked heavyweight.
When Clickety-clack was brought inside the station by Roscoe he had merely said what he said to every arresting officer from Boston to Los Angeles: “I could whip you, Officer. In a fair fight I could whip you from here to East Fifth Street, know that?”
And most arresting officers answered something like: “Yeah, Clickety-clack, I know you could-in a fair fight. But if you try it, it ain’t gonna be a fair fight cause my partner and me and half the nightwatch are gonna work out on your gourd with our sticks and do the fandango on your kisser. But in a fair fight you’d kick my ass, that’s for sure.”
And Clickety-clack would be satisfied. But on this night when he made the same speech to Roscoe Rules, Roscoe replied, “Oh yeah, you’re gonna whip me, old man?”
And then in the corridor of Wilshire Station by the front desk in the presence of luscious Officer Reba Hadley whom he was trying to impress, Roscoe Rules took off his hat, slammed it on the desk, stood on the balls of his feet in front of the hulking derelict, put on his black gloves dramatically, both fists on his hips and said, “You think you can whip my ass, you wrinkled wart? You stinking tub a puke. Think you can whip me in a fair fight, huh?”
And Clickety-clack just said, “Yeah.” And from a corner of his all but destroyed brain, he found a memory, a rhythm, an instinct and sent a picture left hook whistling through the air. Roscoe Rules woke up three minutes later in the lap of luscious Officer Reba Hadley who said to him, “You dumb shit.”
Clickety-clack Reilly was of course buried by five of six blue uniforms and ended up with a badly cut lip and three more stitches in his eyes which made no difference at all to that caved in, monstrous face.
But now he sat, calm and secure and happy in the jail of Elwood Banks who knew exactly how to pacify him, thereby eliminating the possibility of further problems for himself.
“You okay Mister Reilly?” he asked when Spencer and Father Willie entered the jail with Murray Fern. “Mind if I book this prisoner for these officers so they can get back out on the street?”
“No, Officer, I don’t mind,” the derelict smiled painfully to the black jailor. He looked as though he would love to hear it again, that word applied to him so seldom in his bitter lonely life.
“Thanks a lot, Mister Reilly” Elwood Banks said. “We’ll just be a minute.”
“Glad to hear you quit eatin in those greasy spoons down on Jefferson,” Elwood Banks said to Spencer without even looking at Murray Fern. Then to Father Willie, “Once we was eatin in this soul kitchen and we caught a momma cockroach and three babies crawlin on his plate. Spencer just told them to fry it. It was free.”
“My tastes’ve changed since those days,” Spencer remarked.
“I knew you wasn’t the soul food type at heart, Spencer,” Elwood Banks said. Then he turned to Murray Fern and said, “Name?”
“Go to hell,” the arrestee answered.
“Man, your face is red as a bucket a blood,” Elwood Banks said. “Calm down, make it easy on yourself.”
“I’m including you in the lawsuit,” said Murray Fern.
“You’re sure lucky you got these easygoin officers here,” Elwood Banks said. “You was busted by an officer named Roscoe Rules he’d a been up side your head long ago. They’d a needed a sewing machine to put in the stitches.”
“I demand an attorney.”
“After you’re booked you can call one,” said Elwood Banks.
“I demand an MD. I’m o
n medication for a serious allergy.”
“Ain’t none here,” Elwood Banks said. “Boys can take you to the hospital if you want, right now before they book you.”
“That’ll take too long. I’m bailing out of here at once.”
“Then why do you want a doctor?”
“Because I do. I demand an MD be brought here.”
“Well there ain’t none here.”
“Then I demand an RN.”
“You keep this shit up and you’re gonna get an RIN,” the black jailor informed him.
“What’s that?” asked Murray Fern.
“A rap in the nuts. Now gimme your full name and address.”
“I refuse to answer.”
“That does it,” Elwood Banks said, his lip curling as he came out from behind the counter. “I usually search after booking but I’m gonna make an exception. Strip down.”
“What?” Murray Fern asked nervously “What are you gonna do?”
“Nothin. If you do like I say.” Elwood Banks wore crisp jail khakis, his LAPD badge was highly polished, his feet were spread as he stood before the fat white man whose courage and insolence were in direct proportion to what was on his body and in his pockets. Or as Elwood Banks often put it, “Strip em down and show em what they are: nothin!”
“You want me to take off all my clothes?” Murray Fern asked, looking from one policeman to another as Elwood Banks reached roughly into his pockets, removing his wallet, keys, handkerchief, cigarettes and chewing gum.
“Turn em inside out,” Elwood Banks said, and Murray Fern obeyed, trying to beat the jailor to the pockets, fearing he would rip them.
“Satisfied?” Murray Fern asked, when everything including his Patek Philippe wristwatch was on the counter.
“No way baby” said Elwood Banks. “Get them fancy threads off that chubby body and on the counter. I mean strip and do it now!”
Thirty seconds later, Murray Fern stood before the three policemen wearing only ninety dollar boots of imported Swiss leather, knee length blue silk socks, and silk boxer shorts dotted with tiny hearts.
“Satisfied?” he asked again, but now his authoritative baritone was a tenuous rasp and his eyes darted past the men to the corridor outside.
“I said strip, damnit!” Elwood Banks ordered. “Now get them boots and britches off before I rip em off!”
In a moment Murray Fern stood utterly naked before them, turning his body to one side and another, his composure breaking to pieces before their eyes, the rolls of textured fat shaking as he squirmed and wriggled with nowhere to hide.
“Turn around and bend over and spread your cheeks, Murray” Elwood Banks said, for the first time using the fat man’s name.
“Bend over?”
“Bend over and show me that round brown,” Elwood Banks said. “I gotta see if you’re hiding a machine gun in there.”
When Murray Fern timidly did as he was told Elwood Banks said, “Humph, my kid’s basset hound got better makins than that. Okay boy lift your feet up one at a time and show me the bottoms.”
Murray Fern obeyed quickly and quietly.
When he was finished, Elwood Banks said, “Okay, Murray now turn around and face me and open your mouth and lift up your balls. We don’t want you ratholin twenty bucks in some little crease down there. You can’t be no better off than Mr. Reilly when we lock you in the tank together.”
As Murray Fern opened his mouth for inspection he unconsciously held his hands over his shriveled penis, which was lost in the hair and layers of overhanging fat.
Elwood Banks then delivered the coup de grace. “Okay Murray now take your hands away and skin your wee wee back. I once knew a bookie kept bettin markers hid under his foreskin.”
When the search and booking were finished, Murray Fern was docile, tamed by the jailor who knew that this soft wealthy white man could be subdued as easily as a black pimp could be mastered by the threat to book his flash money as evidence. As easily as fighting derelict could be pacified simply by calling him “sir” and “mister.” Elwood Banks had never set foot in a college classroom, but life had made him a psychologist.
“Wanna use the phone now, Murray?” Elwood Banks asked when he finished the fingerprinting and offered Murray Fern a cigarette.
“Yes sir,” said Murray Fern, who was ever so grateful to the black jailor for giving him his silk underwear with the little hearts, a cigarette and a dime for a phone call.
After booking Murray Fern, Spencer longed to get up to Wilshire Boulevard and eat liver pâté and poached turbot with sautéed cucumbers. But Father Willie made the mistake of clearing on the radio and they were given a call at once. “Seven-A-Thirty-three, Seven-Adam-Thirty-three, see the woman, Eleventh and Ardmore, possible DB.”
“A dead body at eleven fifteen! Goddamnit, Padre, how many times I told you about picking up that frigging mike and clearing?”
“I know, Spencer, I know,” Willie answered.
“You’re too goddamn conscientious!”
“I know.”
“Wait’ll you been on the job awhile. You think the sergeants care we bust our balls? You think that cunt Lieutenant Finque cares?”
“I know, Spencer, I know.”
“Christ, I got a headache already. All that jawing from that fat prick, Murray Fern. My head aches and I’m sick to my stomach.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t get my vichyssoise tonight, for chrissake.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t get my veau à la crème.”
“There’s nothing I can do …”
“And I had my heart set on maybe some Coquilles St. Jacques Parisienne!” Spencer cried.
“Is that the one with scallops, garlic and herbs?”
“No that’s Provençale. This is the one with scallops and mushrooms.”
“In a white wine sauce?”
“Yeah.”
“I like that one.”
“And I had my heart set on some artichoke hearts and truffles!” Spencer continued. “Oh God!”
“I’m really awful sorry, Spencer,” Father Willie said.
“When you started working with me you thought all menus were printed on the wall. I trained you!” reminded Spencer Van Moot.
“I know, Spencer, I know.”
“And this is the thanks I get. All because you’re so goddamn gung ho and have to pick up the mike and clear. Now I gotta smell a dead body instead of a soufflé au chocolat! Oh God!”
“I’ll make it up to you, Spencer,” promised Father Willie, wondering when he was going to learn to act like a veteran.
A wizened crone in a black dress and dirty sweat-socks was drinking beer on the porch of a two story frame house just south of the corner. She waved as Spencer flashed their spotlight around, hoping not to find the caller.
Spencer lagged behind disgustedly as they parked, and gathered up his flashlight and hat slowly He always put the hat on while looking in the rearview mirror so as not to disturb the hairstyle.
“Yes, ma’am?” Father Willie turned his light on the porch steps as the old woman drained the can without getting out of her rocking chair. She steamed like dank mulching weeds.
“Think my tenant’s dead in the basement,” the old woman grinned in triumph.
“What makes you think… uh, oh,” said Spencer as he got to the top step of the porch and smelled the tenant who made them forget the old woman’s putrescence.
“When did you discover him?” Father Willie asked, as Spencer sneered, thinking he would have to endure this instead of peach Melba.
“Ain’t seen him in about three days. Thought he moved out without paying the rent. Sort of discovered him, you might say, about an hour ago when the wind started stirring things around.”
Spencer sighed and nodded and led Father Willie through the musty hallway of the boardinghouse which was partitioned off to accommodate seven single men. They found the basement door slightly ajar.
“Wo
nder if that witch is drinking beer or bat milk?” Spencer remarked.
“He’s down there all right,” Father Willie said, almost retching as they tried the stairs.
Then Spencer found the light switch and led Father Willie down the ancient wooden stairway where next to a gravity-heat furnace they found the tenant hanging from the ceiling joists, his knees almost dragging the ground.
“Kee-rist!” Spencer said, forgetting the overpowering smell for a moment.
The neck of the hanging man was almost ten inches long and the dragging legs formed a bridge for a column of ants which trooped up his legs to his face and ears and nose where they nested and fed with a velvety spider. And there were wounds on the man’s neck which Father Willie realized were rat bites after he saw the mounds of droppings on the floor beneath the hanging man.
“Wonder how long he’s been hanging around here?” Spencer quipped to his little partner who had a handkerchief pressed to his nose.
“He probably reached the end of his rope,” Spencer said, but Father Willie didn’t hear Spencer’s gags.
Willie Wright had not seen that many dead men in his three year police career and he was struck by the youth of this man and by the swollen hands darkened by draining blood and by the gray face which looked as if it belonged in a wax cabinet. And though the elongated neck shocked him, because he did not dream it could happen like this, he was almost shocked because for the first time in twenty-four years Father Willie Wright realized something. He looked at that one dull eye open and truly believed that he would join the waxen hanging man. That they were brothers going somewhere. Or nowhere.
It was just a young man consciously coming to a basic truth for the first time. But Father Willie, not knowing the source of his fear, became very frightened by the hunk of fat in his belly and had a hard time keeping Spencer Van Moot from noticing.
This was the night that Father Willie Wright encouraged the others to go to choir practice. It was the first time Father Willie had been the prime mover.
And later that very night, perhaps because of the hanging man, Father Willie Wright was to become a beloved MacArthur Park choirboy for what he did to put that hoity toity bitch, Officer Reba Hadley in her place.
The Choirboys Page 7
