The Choirboys

by Joseph Wambaugh

  When Father Willie eventually came to his senses with Filthy Herman swaying dizzily in front of his eyes, the choirboy began yelling, “You dirty little bugger!” and swinging the nightstick wildly until he broke it on Filthy Herman’s head.

  Then by the time the neighbors, who were sick and tired of the crashing and screaming, called for additional police, Father Willie had Filthy Herman punched silly.

  It took an hour and a half to get Filthy Herman dragged back up on the roof by his chain, pulled into the bathroom and covered with a bathrobe until an officer from Central Property could arrive with bolt cutters large enough to handle the heavy links.

  Spencer Van Moot was in the hospital for three days with neck and back spasms. Father Willie was on light duty for a week with two broken bones in his right hand. Filthy Herman had one tooth knocked loose, two black eyes and a broken nose.

  Both Filthy Herman and his daughter wept in each other’s arms in court three weeks later and Herman was eventually put on probation for one year with the stipulation that he drink no alcoholic beverage. One week after the sentence Filthy Herman got drunk again, masturbated from the step of a fire truck and threw a fire extinguisher at an amazed fireman. Filthy Herman got six months in jail for that one, which proved what all policemen already knew: it’s more risky to beat up firemen because they’re popular.

  So, while Spencer was meeting his Waterloo at the hands of Filthy Herman, Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate had to meander south into the ghetto of Wilshire Division, which would probably not be called a ghetto in any other large city in the world, to answer a call that ended up being just another attempt by Clyde Percy to get into Camarillo State Hospital.

  Clyde Percy was a seventy year old black man who lived in the vicinity of the Baldwin Hills reservoir. Because in the great flood of 1963 he had plunged into the raging water and rescued a drowning woman who was trapped in her overturned car, Clyde Percy was presented with a commendation by the City of Los Angeles, the first official praise he had ever been given in his entire life. Now he simply couldn’t wander too far from the scene of his triumph and was the object of numerous radio calls. People would find Clyde Percy asleep in their unlocked cars or in the storage sheds of small businesses, and once, in a pièce de résistance, he slept all night on a posture perfect mattress in the window of a department store in the Crenshaw shopping district. The next morning he was discovered by passing shoppers still in the store window, fully clothed, muddy shoes and all. He was snoring peacefully, slobbering out the side of his toothless mouth, dreaming of some woman far far back in his memory, holding onto an erection which only came in sleep. Clyde got ninety days that time.

  “Wonder why Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie weren’t assigned the call,” Spermwhale grumbled to Baxter Slate. “I’ll bet they’re off in some fuckin clothin store buyin some Lord Fauntleroy bow tie for Spencer or some tooty fruity boots. Man’s forty years old and he dresses like an interior decorator or somethin.”

  The radio call which Spermwhale and Baxter Slate received concerned an open door a tremulous security guard had found while making his rounds at a furniture store on the east side of Crenshaw. The security officer had heard ghostly sounds coming from within the store and though the sun had not yet set, it was dim and shadow filled inside. The guard was seventy-five years old and didn’t really want to be a security guard but if he relied on Social Security to support him and his seventy-three year old wife they’d have to eat dog food five days a week instead of two.

  “Go on about your rounds,” Spermwhale told the old man. “We’ll check it out.”

  “I’ll be right over there across the street by my car if you need me,” the guard promised. “I’ll be close to my radio in case you need help.”

  “Sure,” Spermwhale said, “stay there in case we need you.”

  And he patted the guard on the shoulder and pointed him toward his car which was not across the street as he thought but in the parking lot back of the building. The old man lost his car at least once a night.

  When they were alone and dusk was deepening, Baxter said, “We’re calling for another car, aren’t we?”

  “Nope,” said Spermwhale, “it’s just old Clyde Percy.”

  “Who?”

  “Clyde the lifeguard. The old dingaling that pulled the broad outta the sewer back in the flood. Ain’t you heard a him? He’s always gettin busted for somethin or other.”

  “How do you know it’s him?”

  “His MO. He breaks into places right after they close and he eats up whatever’s around and goes to sleep. I know it’s him because a the noises the doorshaker said he made. Like a ghost. They always say that, people who call in.”

  “What’s the noise?”

  “He cries. Sits in there and cries. He sounds like a mournful moose. I tell you it’s Clyde Percy in there.”

  But just in case, Baxter Slate unlocked the Ithaca shotgun from the rack and jacked one in the chamber when they walked single file into the darkened store looking for the mournful moose.

  It was a small furniture store which advertised entire living room sets for six hundred dollars. Clyde Percy would have none of the cheap furniture. They found him in the rear on the second floor by the manager’s office sprawled out on a nine hundred dollar tufted Chesterfield, eating a half empty bag of potato chips and a banana, which one of the clerks had left behind. He wore his regular attire, which was two dirty undershirts and three outer shirts with a ragged colorless turtleneck sweater over all, a pair of stout flannel pants over longjohn underwear, run over combat boots and a World War II flier’s hat without the goggles.

  “H’lo, Clyde,” Spermwhale said as Baxter lowered the riot gun and ejected the live round from the chamber.

  “Aw right, Officer, aw right,” said Clyde Percy, grinning happily and standing at attention, his purple lips smeared with banana, his skin blue-black in the shadows. “Y’all caught me fair an square. Don’t need no handcuffs. I’m gonna come peaceable. Course if you wanna use handcuffs it’s okay too.”

  “Ain’t seen you around for a while, Clyde,” Spermwhale said as they walked the old man down the stairs, each policeman holding an elbow because he reeked of wine and staggered on the landing.

  “Got locked up last November. Jist in time for Thanksgivin. Ain’t missed a Thanksgivin at Central Jail in twenny-eight years.”

  “You’ve been in jail since November?” Baxter asked as he navigated down the steep stairs gingerly, holding Clyde and the shotgun and now needing a flashlight in the gloom.

  “No suh,” Clyde Percy said. “This time a wunnuful thing happened to ol Clyde. I was sent to Camarilla State Hospital. The public defender say ol Clyde’s crazy. An first I din’t wanna go cause I likes your jail. I likes the sheriff’s jail even better, no offense to you officers. He tell me, Clyde, we gonna get you sent to this crazy hospital and you gonna like it even better’n jail. So I say okay, and off I go up to Camarilla, and know what? They gives me a job up there teachin.”

  “Teaching?” Baxter said and stumbled with Clyde at the bottom of the stairs, dropping his riot gun and flashlight, kicking the light under a counter in the dark.

  While the two policemen got down on their knees to look for the last flashlight, Clyde Percy picked up the riot gun helpfully and was holding it cradled in his arms like a baby when Sergeant Nick Yanov came through the front door.

  “Holy shit!” yelled Nick Yanov, drawing, crouching, throwing his flashlight beam on Clyde Percy who had lifted the gun to his shoulder upside down and started eating potato chips over the prone bodies of the two policemen.

  “Drop the fucking gun or I’ll blow you away!” Nick Yanov screamed.

  The next few minutes involved several panic stricken shouts after which Spermwhale sat the sergeant down on a display couch, gave him a cigarette and convinced him they were alive, that Baxter had unloaded the magazine when he ejected the live round, that Clyde Percy was a harmless old acquaintance of Spermwhale
Whalen’s and that Sergeant Yanov should remain on the couch until his legs steadied.

  “Sure glad it was you, Sarge,” Spermwhale Whalen said to the chesty, bristle jawed sergeant. “If it was one a them other cunt supervisors he’d a probably cut old Clyde in half and we’d a ended up with another suspension for lettin Clyde get wasted.”

  “Why do you do things like this to me,” Nick Yanov said, drawing heavily on the cigarette as some color returned to his face.

  Then the two policemen and Clyde Percy helped the weak kneed Sergeant Yanov out of the store and to his car, Clyde Percy apologizing profusely for scaring him to death.

  “Where’s the nearest gas station?” Sergeant Yanov asked as he got back in his black and white and threw his hat and light on the seat, running both hands through his heavy black hair.

  “Why, you gotta take a crap?” Spermwhale grinned.

  “No, I just did! I gotta clean up!” said Nick Yanov as he fired up the radio car and roared away.

  “Good fuckin sergeant,” Spermwhale Whalen mused in an extremely rare moment, and then reverted to his old self. “Not like that eunuch lieutenant and that gelding captain and all the other cocksuckin sergeants on the nightwatch.”

  “So what’s with the teaching you say you did at Camarillo?” Baxter asked when they got Clyde safely in the radio car and were on their way to jail to book him for drunk.

  “I tell you, Officer,” said Clyde Percy munching toothlessly on potato chips, “it was such a fine place. They was all these kids, retarded, you know? Ain’t nobody come to visit em most a the time. They gives em jobs to keep em busy like makin these little balloon toys. You puts the balloons on the little blow-up stems like. So they gives me the job a helpin watch over all the kids. So I does things like make sure they kin attach balloons right and that they don’t fight too much and don’t fall on their heads and bite their tongues and so forth like that. And then one day I made a invention. I drills holes in this board to put the stems in and then the kids kin attach three balloons at once and makes it easier to hold em. One a the bosses there says to me, ‘Clyde, you jist about the best we ever have workin here.’ So I tells him bout the time I save the lady in the flood and he say, ‘Clyde, you kin stay here if you wants to.’”

  “Why’re you out then?” asked Spermwhale, driving the black and white west on Venice Boulevard.

  “They say one day they jist ain’t no more room, jist room for real crazy people and I ain’t that crazy. So that night I start sayin I’m the President and mayor, and like that. But they say it ain’t no good, Clyde, we know you ain’t really crazy like some folks, leastways you ain’t so crazy you gonna hurt somebody. And then I thought bout hurtin one a the technicians, punchin em or somethin, but they all so nice to me I couldn’t. So they put me out and here I is, back home agin.”

  “That’s a goddamn shame,” Spermwhale said angrily, turning in his seat toward Baxter. “I seen fifty dollar a trick whores, and dopers and pimps, and thieves and assholes for three generations all on welfare and we can’t even afford a fuckin bed and three squares at a state hospital for Clyde. That pisses me off!”

  “Think you kin do somethin to git me back there?” asked the old man, his blue lips flaked with potato chips, the left earflap of his flier’s cap turned up from the scuffle with Sergeant Yanov.

  “By God, if there’s any justice in this miserable world, which there ain’t, somebody oughtta help you. Tell you what, you plead not guilty at your arraignment tomorrow. Then I’ll be in court on trial day. I’ll talk to the city attorney and tell him that you’re always walkin around the street threatenin everybody and sayin you’re the Easter Bunny and wavin your dong at housewives and stuffin dog shit in mailboxes and settin trash fires and in general bein a bigger pain in the ass than Francis Tanaguchi.”

  “Francis who?”

  “Oh, never mind,” Spermwhale said as they parked in the station parking lot and got out of the car. “Anyways, I’m gonna tell him you’re the Wilshire Division whacko and a horrible asshole and you shouldn’t be put away for ninety days for drunk like you usually are because you’re a dingaling. And then I’ll say I think you should get a sanity hearin and shipped off to Camarillo again.”

  “Oh, Officer,” said Clyde, and the tears welled in the old man’s eyes and he even stopped eating potato chips. “Oh, I’ll be crazier than you say I is, I kin stand on my head…”

  “No, don’t go too far,” Spermwhale said. “Just stare off in space and say somethin goofy every time somebody asks you somethin.”

  “I’ll shoo skeeters that ain’t there,” said Clyde as they shuffled toward the steps of the station.

  “Yeah, like that,” Spermwhale said as they half lifted the old man up the steps.

  “I’ll punch a policeman right in the mouf,” said Clyde.

  “No, don’t do that,” said Spermwhale.

  “A public defender?” Baxter Slate suggested.

  “No, no,” Spermwhale said as they opened the side door and took Clyde inside.

  “A judge? How about a judge?” Baxter offered.

  “No,” Spermwhale said, “let’s not overdo it. Just swat invisible mosquitoes or beat off at the jury or somethin.”

  Then Clyde Percy came to a limping halt in front of the barred jail doors and looked up at Spermwhale, and Clyde’s face, dust covered, but charcoal black in places, was streaked and wet.

  “I appreciates it, Officer,” he said to the fat policeman. “I wants to go back to the chirruns, back to Camarilla. I appreciates what you doin for me.” And then he took Spermwhale’s big hand in his and wept.

  “Jesus, Clyde! Okay! Okay!” Spermwhale said, pulling his hand away and looking around to see if other policemen were looking. “It’s okay. You don’t have to … it’s gonna be all right. I don’t mind bein there in court. I ain’t got nothin to do anyways. Jesus, it’s okay. Quit cryin, will ya?”

  Spermwhale Whalen did go to the court trial of Clyde Percy, and did succeed in getting a sanity hearing for the old man. But Clyde Percy was deemed not to be a hazard to himself or others and sane enough to be released. He was released, after which he walked one mile downtown, shoplifted a short dog of wine, poured it over his head and lay down in the middle of the intersection at First and Los Angeles streets, having to wait only ninety seconds until a police car heading into the police building was forced to stop, pick up the Baldwin Hills lifeguard and book him into Central Jail on a plain drunk charge. He was given ninety days in the county jail, which was better than nothing but a far cry from Camarillo State Hospital where he invented the device to help retarded children blow up balloons.

  When Whaddayamean Dean broke into one of his numerous drunken crying jags at choir practice after hearing of the ultimate fate of Clyde Percy, Roscoe Rules called him a nigger lover and said the old cocksucker probably wanted to go back to Camarillo in the first place just to molest the little dummies.

  Spermwhale Whalen was in a foul mood after they booked Clyde Percy. The mail drop had arrived at Wilshire Station and contained an eight by ten glossy photo sent to Spermwhale by his classmate, Sergeant Harry Bragg of the police department photo lab. The picture was a mug shot of Spermwhale Whalen’s eldest son, Patrick, who had died thirteen months earlier of a drug overdose. It was the only picture the boy had taken in the last two years of his life, this one when he was arrested for car theft in Van Nuys.

  Spermwhale, the veteran of three failed marriages, had not seen much of the boy after adolescence, and he studied the photo carefully appreciating the skill of Sergeant Harry Bragg who had removed the booking number and profile shot, and blown up the full face part of the double mug shot until probably only a policeman would suspect from whence it had come.

  Technically it was a successful picture, artistically a dismal failure. He could detect none of the boy’s considerable intelligence in the arrogant eyes and narrow mouth. The shoulder length hair was totally unfamiliar, as was a small fresh scar over the right eye. I
t was not the son he wanted to remember, not if he wished to keep the guilt from overtaking him.

  Spermwhale was scowling and chewing a cigar to shreds when he and Baxter went back to the radio car. The night had become exceptionally black.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Baxter asked.

  “Nothin.”

  “Look a little mad.”

  “I ain’t mad. Why should I be mad? I make seventeen grand a year, don’t I? Course after income tax and pension contribution and Police Relief and Police Protective League and the credit union and three wives and rent, I have about a dollar thirty cents to eat on between paydays. And I just come off a four day suspension so I gotta stop eatin for about two weeks. So what’ve I got to be pissed off about?”

  “That it? Money?”

  “Money, who needs money? Just because I been cuffed around a little bit by the heavy hand a justice? Just because I lost four days’ pay? Shit, that ain’t nothin. I only got three ex-wives to support, and three ex-kids … no, two ex-kids to feed. And an ex-dog and my turtle. Course the turtle’s sometimes in hibernation so he don’t eat too much. It’s only fair that I got four days’ suspension for keepin those avocados Francis gave me. But the thing bothers me. I wonder if Lieutenant Grimsley and all them IAD headhunters get a finder’s fee when they nail a cop? Maybe they get a percentage of what the city saves off our paycheck when we get suspended. Ever think a that?”

  “I could loan you twenty bucks till payday.”

  “Fuck it, I don’t need money. Old Clyde Percy gets along without it, don’t he?”

  “It’s pretty decent what you’re going to do for him,” Baxter Slate said. “The way you’re going to bat to get the old man back in the laughing academy.”

  “Listen, partner,” Spermwhale said, and now the cigar was almost eaten and he was spitting black leafy tobacco out the window of the radio car, “just because I seem to care about people once in a while, don’t make no mistakes about me. Nineteen plus years a workin these streets has taught me that people are shit. They’re scum. Only reason I don’t treat em like Roscoe Rules or some a those black glove hotdogs is what’s that do for you? Gets you fired for brutality or an ulcer or somethin. For what? The human race is no fuckin good but workin with these rotten bastards is all we got, right? It’s the only game in town so you gotta play like you’re still in the game. If you don’t, if you drop out, you take your fuckin six inch Colt and see can you pull the trigger twice while you’re eatin it. I just don’t wanna off myself like so many cops do. So once in a while I do somethin that might look to you like I give a fuck about some of these scumbags. But there’s nothin more rotten than people.”