“Yeah,” Spermwhale said, trying to think of where they could get a free or half price meal tonight now that greedy Roscoe Rules had burned up their eating spot at Sam’s by not only demanding free food for himself and Dean, but wanting four hamburgers to go after they finished. Roscoe Rules could fuck up a wet dream, Spermwhale said.
“Do you know how sad it would be to live in a place where a woman couldn’t walk on the street after certain hours because she would either be robbed, raped or taken for a prostitute?”
“I don’t think about it,” Spermwhale answered.
“See that pedestrian underpass? When I worked Juvenile I met with some black mothers who said that six children were hit by cars at this intersection in one school year and yet the underpass had to be fenced off and locked up because juvenile muggers made it dangerous to use. The city couldn’t keep lights in the tunnel. They were broken twice a day. So it’s locked up and the children get hit by cars.”
“What can we do about that kind a bullshit? It’s not our problem.”
“It’s somebody’s problem. I caught two of the muggers down there one day waiting to rip off the smaller kids for their lunch money. They were loaded from sniffing paint and had felony records from when they were ten years old. At the hearing the judge went along with the defense contention that I should’ve had the paint analyzed in the lab to determine if the kids really were under the influence of paint. I told them we were talking about the health of these boys. They were staggering when I busted them. But the case got kicked and…”
“Look, the whole juvenile justice system is a fuckin joke. Everybody knows that, so what’s new?”
“It’s just that it used to be an equity proceeding. It was supposedly for the good of the child. Now every kid has the public defender representing him and it’s just as adversary as adult court. Kids are taught early on to get a mouthpiece and keep their mouths shut.”
“That’s the way it should be, you want my opinion. Give every five year old a shyster. Then send em to the joint if you convict em.”
“But at sentencing it reverts to an equity court or a burlesque on one, and a kid who should be taken away from his miserable home is left on the streets after the fifth serious felony. It’s crazy. Juvenile court is a revolving door, and then suddenly the kid turns eighteen, goes out and commits a strong arm robbery just like always but ends up in adult jail for six months. Then he’s crying for his mother and saying, ‘But you always sent me home before. You always gave me another chance.’ And he can’t understand it and why should he?”
“Baxter, I’m startin to worry about where your head is. I mean if you’re gonna start frettin about injustice in the system…”
“I just hated being a kiddy cop. I’m glad I’m out. Today’s street warriors were yesterday’s hoodlums but now they’re government funded. Do you have any idea how many ineffectual parents with whiskey voices and unconcerned delinquent kids I’ve counseled? Hundreds. Thousands, maybe.”
As Baxter talked, a black child about five years old stood at the corner and waited for the police car to drive off from the stop sign.
“Go ahead, kid,” Spermwhale said, waving at the boy to cross.
But the child walked up to the car on the driver’s side and grinned and said, “Who you lookin for?”
“I’m looking for a little guy in a blue shirt with two teeth missing in front,” Baxter said. “Seen him around?”
The boy giggled toothlessly and said, “You really be lookin for Ladybug, ain’t you?”
“Maybe, what’s she doing wrong?” Baxter asked.
“She round behind the house right now wif her head in a glue bag,” said the child.
“Well, we’d sure like to bust her, sonny,” Spermwhale said. “But we got this big murder case to work on. Now you tell Ladybug to get her dumb head outta that glue bag, okay?”
“Okay, Mr. PO-lice.”
The boy waved as Baxter drove away saying, “Bet Ladybug’s mother runs off and leaves her in a county foster home. And I’ll bet the county just places her right back with her when she comes off her little spree because the taxpayers can’t afford to keep Ladybug in a foster home. And what the hell, if we supported every little black kid that’s neglected…”
“I am really startin to worry about you, Baxter,” Spermwhale said. “You are really startin to worry me with all this crybaby social worker bullshit. Man, you never shoulda left patrol and went to Juvenile. I don’t know what happened to you workin with those kiddy cops but whatever it was you better get your mind together. Shine it on, baby.”
“Okay” Baxter grinned, pushing his umber hair back from his forehead. “I’m just going to shine it on.”
But Baxter Slate wasn’t sure what in his life he should shine on, unless it was Foxy Farrell. And anyone with an ounce of sense should know that. But the more despondent he had become lately, the more he wanted Foxy Farrell. The five foot two inch, ninety-eight pound, copper haired nude dancer somehow scratched deep and bewildering itches in Baxter’s soul.
And no other girl would do though there were many possibilities. Baxter Slate’s imposing figure, penetrating green eyes, heavy lashes and wide boyish grin made him quite popular with the clerk typists around the station as well as with the single girls in his apartment building. He tried to enjoy other women and made it a point to stay away from Foxy for days at a time. But he would always go back and despise her as she laughed and talked obscenely about what she didn’t do to other men in his absence, while she did it to him. And afterward she would chatter about a flashy boyfriend of one of the dancers and talk of how cute and sexy he was and why didn’t Baxter dress in a white jump suit with a fur collar instead of a stupid woolly herringbone sport coat and a dumb striped necktie like a fucking schoolteacher.
Spermwhale had persuaded Baxter to take him to the Sunset Strip once after work to meet Foxy and the two policemen were taken backstage by a burly assistant manager. Foxy was standing nude in her dressing room combing her pubic hair and pushing the vaginal lips back inside before the second show.
“Flops out once in a while,” she smiled, upon seeing the two men standing there. “Hi, you must be Spermwhale. I’m Foxy.”
“Yes, you are! You are!” cried Spermwhale Whalen. Spermwhale found that Foxy Farrell made him itch all over- to throw her down and bury his face in the burnished thatch of pubic hair which had been shaved to the shape of a heart, and dyed by squatting in a dish of hair color twice a month and brushing it carefully.
“Jesus, Foxy,” Baxter said, “can’t you occasionally act like a… oh what’s the use?”
“He’s a prude,” Foxy laughed, throwing her coppery hair over her shoulder and slipping into a sheer peignoir. “Baxter’s such a prude. That’s why we love each other.”
And she stepped over to the disgusted young policeman and rubbed her naked body against him and pulled his face down to hers, holding him by the ears.
Spermwhale watched and swallowed twice and developed a diamond cutter which delighted Foxy Farrell.
Baxter Slate despised Foxy Farrell. Which was why he wanted to be with her every moment he was off duty and even dared to drive the black and white up to the Sunset Strip in full uniform and leave Spermwhale in the car while he sneaked in the back door of the nightclub and listened at the door, catching Foxy Farrell blowing some fat cat in the dressing room.
Baxter had actually done this twice and each time he had the presence of mind to leave without being seen and wait to deal with Foxy Farrell when he was off duty. The way he dealt with her the last time was to accuse and rage and finally slap her, which she didn’t mind as long as he didn’t raise lumps or make her so black and blue that it would show on the stage.
When his anger was spent and he fell in her arms she smiled. Peppermint breath. Perfumed. Overripe. “Baxter, sweetie, it’s okay, it’s okay. Mama understands her baby. Honest, honey, I didn’t do nothing to that guy. Only fooled around with him a little. I wasn’t Fren
ching him. It sounded like that because you were all upset and playing vice cop and your imagination ran away with you.”
Baxter smiled grimly and said, “You disgusting bitch. You’re worthless, you know that? Irredeemably worthless. Without honor. Without humanity And someday somebody’ll kill you. But really, what good would that do?”
Foxy smiled slant eyed and licked Baxter on the cheek. “Honest, honey,” she purred, “I wouldn’t go down there and kiss that rich man’s cock and suck his balls like I’m gonna do to you right now. You know I wouldn’t do that to no other man, don’t you, honey?”
And while she did it, Baxter Slate clenched his teeth and whispered, “You worthless slut. You worthless slut. I hate you.”
He whispered it again and again. She gave him the most sensual and agonizing moments of his entire life and this time even she enjoyed it and laughed excitedly all the way, her cheek throbbing where he had struck her.
Baxter seldom talked to Foxy Farrell cruelly Usually he treated her like a perfect lady which she hated. And took her to intimate French restaurants which bored her. And brought her bottles of Bordeaux wines he really couldn’t afford, which she served to other friends over icecubes. In fact she rather disliked everything about Baxter except that he was unquestionably good looking, and being a cop could get her out of minor scrapes with the law or at least might help if she were ever picked up by vice cops for going too far during her nude dancing routine. She sometimes did go too far and once was taken from the stage by a vice officer for pulling a customer’s face into her bumping groin. A phone call to Baxter Slate saved Foxy from going to jail because the vice cop was an academy classmate of Baxter’s and liked him very much, as did all other policemen with the exception of Roscoe Rules.
Eventually, Foxy Farrell found Baxter Slate a terrible bore and was starting to hate him as much as Spermwhale found Foxy Farrell exciting and was starting to love her. But she found a twenty-five year old pimp named Goldie Grant irresistible. He saw her whenever she could ditch Baxter and eventually he became her real old man instead of her play old man and moved in with her and let her support him and go down on lots of fat cats and high rollers for lots of money and beat her up maybe twice a month whether she needed it or not. They were very happy together and everyone said made a handsome couple.
When Baxter did not appear unhappy enough one night Foxy told a story of how a cute and sexy player had taken her out for a drink after work and tried to give her a hundred dollars just to let him push her face in his lap and only stopped when she told him how her boyfriend was a cop. And what a hard on the player had!
Then Foxy feigned hurt and shock when Baxter grinned crookedly and said, “What a cheap stupid little animal you are.”
She pouted and said, “Honest, Baxter, I didn’t do this to him.” And she began the little charade which would end in his passionate moaning and her excited laughter.
But no matter how much she despised Baxter Slate, Foxy Farrell could not have begun to fathom how much he was starting to despise the same young man.
The relationship with Foxy Farrell had begun after Baxter’s tour of duty at Wilshire Juvenile where he felt he failed miserably as a kiddy cop and had not prevented the demise of Tommy Rivers, age six and a half.
Of course no one guessed that Baxter Slate somehow felt responsible for the fate of Tommy Rivers.
What made Baxter think he could have prevented Tommy Rivers’ death was that he had, before transferring to Juvenile, received the very first radio call to the home of Lena Rivers shortly after she was reunited with her then five year old son Tommy who in his blue sailor suit looked like little Shirley Temple with a haircut.
Lena Rivers had three children by the husband who preceded Tommy’s father who was a petty officer in the U.S. Navy. Lena had farmed the boy out to her mother six months after his birth when the sailor shipped out for good and never returned. Lena Rivers had undergone shock treatments after that and had hated the sailor relentlessly and never wanted the child he spawned. Now, five years later, with Lena’s mother ill, Lena had been forced to drive to the Greyhound Depot in downtown Los Angeles and pick up the little sailor who had traveled several hundred miles alone without a whimper, the darling of the bus.
The first thing Lena Rivers did, according to later statements from her other children, was to take Tommy home and tear the sailor suit from his body. Some weeks later Baxter Slate received a radio call to the Rivers house from a neighbor who reported that several older neighborhood children had begun hanging around the Rivers home and that some behaved as though they had been drinking. And that the new arrival, Tommy, seldom came outside and looked very sick when he did.
Baxter Slate, working alone on the daywatch at that time, had gone to the Rivers house and met Lena Rivers. She was drunk and dirty and her house was a mess. He had asked to see her youngest child and held his ground when she protested that he was taking a nap.
Finally Lena Rivers did admit Baxter Slate to the child’s room and he did in fact find the child: unwashed, fully clothed, in a crib too small for him. When Baxter later became a Juvenile officer and saw many neglected children he was to remember that Tommy Rivers’ pants looked almost as though they were pressed flat on the bed but he did not realize at the time that starving children can often be distinguished from very thin children by the absence of buttocks.
But at that time Baxter Slate knew very little about starving children, never having been in war like some of the other choirboys. So he had retreated when Mrs. Rivers ordered him out of her house. Baxter had often retreated, especially when working alone, if he felt he was on shaky constitutional grounds. Baxter Slate had always believed implicitly in limited police power, due process, the jury system. And even now though his years on the street had eroded his beliefs he still insisted on not overstepping his authority. This caused many partners to say, “Baxter’s a good partner to work with, goes along with most anything you want to do, but he’s so naïve I think he was brought up in a bottle.”
The Wilburn Military Academy was not exactly a bottle, but it was a hothouse for upper middle class children, which Baxter was until his mother foolishly lost her fat alimony check by impetuously marrying an alarm clock manufacturer who lost most of his money by diversifying into offshore oil drilling. Then the years at the authoritarian Dominican boarding school taught the boy what pansies the teachers at Wilburn were as they played at being soldiers. God’s army had much more dedicated generals. It was surprising that a boy who had been cuffed around and dealt with so strictly and splendidly educated in the traditional sense-virtually without parents unless one counted holidays and summers with Mom-would be the kind of policeman who would worry about human rights and due process. After all, they had always been denied him. But he did worry about such things. Fiercely. Even after he concluded that he had been a fool to entertain such notions.
Once, Baxter Slate, working alone in the West Adams district, saw a car driving by with two young white children waving frantically from the rear window and then dropping out of sight on the seat. The driver was a black man in a stingy brim hat. Baxter followed the car two miles for another glimpse of the white children, asking himself if he would be doing this had the driver been white, wondering if it were just a children’s prank. Finally, Baxter turned on his red lights and stopped the car. The white children were crouched down on the seat in the rear, giggling. The man, a boyfriend of the children’s mother, asked angrily, “Would you have stopped me if those kids had been black?” And Baxter Slate lied and said he would, but he never forgot.
Two weeks before Tommy Rivers died Baxter Slate received the second radio call to the Rivers home. This one from a neighbor on the other side of the street who reported that there was definitely something wrong. Tommy had come to live with his mother nine months before but had been seen only occasionally as he sat with a brother or sister in the front yard.
“I believe he’s a sick boy” the woman had said to Baxter Slate w
hen he responded to the radio call.
And this time Baxter Slate did overstep his authority a bit in demanding to see Tommy Rivers and scaring Lena Rivers with an implied threat to call in Juvenile officers if she refused.
Lena Rivers finally consented, and the gaunt young woman with bright darting eyes went to the bedroom and returned with a dirty but obviously fat and healthy child of seven who smiled at the policeman and asked to touch his gun.
“Satisfied?” Lena Rivers said. “Meddling neighbors oughtta mind their own business.”
Baxter Slate looked at Lena Rivers, at her scraggly colorless ponytail and dark rimmed blinking eyes, at the face already starting to bloat from alcohol despite her skinny build and relative youthfulness.
“That little boy looks different from when I saw him last,” said Baxter.
“When did you see him?” the woman slurred as Baxter smelled the booze.
“I was called here once before,” Baxter said, still standing in the doorway. “I was the one you let into the bedroom to look at Tommy, remember?”
“Oh yeah. You’re gonna spend your career hassling me, is that it?”
“No, I guess not,” Baxter said.
Every skill he had picked up during his four years as a policeman told him that this woman was lying. As with most policemen the hardest thing to learn was what consummate liars people are, and it was even more difficult for Baxter because he had been brought up to believe there is such a thing as unvarnished truth and that most people speak it.
“Is that the same boy I saw before?” Baxter asked and he believed it was a lie when she said, “Of course it is!”
“What’s your name, son?” Baxter asked, stooping and smiling at the child.
“Tommy Rivers,” the boy said and looked up at his mother.
“I don’t believe that’s the same child I saw. He was thin, very very thin.”
The Choirboys Page 19
