The Choirboys

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “No, we don’t mind, Scuz,” Pete Zoony said. “Just tell us where you’re gonna take em so we don’t bunch up in the same place.”

  “Well, we got that three-eighteen about the shithouse up there in the department store.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I might try this wimpy little kid here out on the whores on Western. Don’t he look terrific?” And Scuz threw a heavy arm around the wimpy little kid and hugged him.

  Five minutes later, Sergeant Scuzzi was driving north on La Brea in a four door, five year old Plymouth which looked every bit like a detective car and disappointed the choirboys.

  Sam Niles sat in the back seat with Baxter Slate and Harold sat in front, nervously blowing spit bubbles off his tongue which plinked on the dashboard as he scratched the strawberry rash on the back of his neck with a little penknife. Sam Niles decided then that Harold and Scuz would make perfect partners.

  “This ain’t much of an undercover car, is it, boys?” Scuz remarked as they bumped and pounded over dips in the asphalt.

  “Not much,” Baxter Slate said. He looked at Scuz in disbelief but not without affection from time to time.

  “Cheap outfit, boys. I mean we work for a cheap outfit. Be amazed how little Secret Service money I get. End up spending my own bread more often than not. Think we can go in the bar and nurse one drink for three hours? Shit, they know we’re cops when they see how fucking stingy we are.”

  “Where we going first, Scuz?” Harold asked, perspiring because the sun had not yet set and it was muggy for Los Angeles. And because he was very nervous.

  “Boys, I gotta take you to a trap first off tonight. And I gotta apologize which I don’t like to do cause I always feel a cop shouldn’t have to apologize for doing his job. But the truth is — and don’t tell your lieutenant old Scuz told you this when you go back to patrol-but the truth is that most of a vice cop’s job is just public relations. See, we can say we’re protecting the city’s morals and point to statistics to prove it, but fact is we ain’t doing much a anything. So you might say Scuz, what the hell we doing it for? And I say, boys, it’s part a the game. Every business has its PR department where they manufacture bullshit, right? General Motors got it. U.S. Steel got it. AT amp;T got it. For sure the While House got it and City Hall. We can tell all the folks who pay our salary that we’re guarding the morals a the citizens from the degenerates that wanna pay money to suck, fuck or gamble with someone they ain’t married to outta the privacy a their own bedroom. You only work this vice detail for eighteen months and then you’re out. I say it’s a little break from routine for me so I work it but I ain’t got no illusions about cleaning up maggots. In the first place how do I know I ain’t just a maggot myself, you stand back and look at the whole picture in general?”

  The choirboys glanced at one another and gave Scuz no argument.

  “So anyways that’s my philosophy about vice work. And you kids’re gonna work for me for a couple weeks. And since you’re doing a job that ain’t gonna help nobody anyways, I just don’t want you to get hurt, see? So let’s say you run into some six foot six fruit with nineteen inch arms who’s a foot fetishist. And he buys a pair a black satin shoes from the shoe department a this store I’m taking you to, and takes the shoes into the shitter where he pulls out a can a whipped cream which he shoots all over the shoes. And then he stands there and licks the whipped cream off. Whadda you do about it, seeing as how you’re gonna be behind a wall looking through a screen into the john and protecting the public morals?”

  “Huh?” said Harold Bloomguard.

  “I asked, whaddaya gonna do about this weird guy?”

  “Well, I dunno, Scuz,” Harold said, blowing a spit bubble while Sam Niles toyed with his moustache and shook his head disgustedly, as Baxter Slate’s wide smile grew wider with affection for Scuz.

  “Harold, my boy” Scuz said. “First place, I gave you a hint. I said the weirdo has nineteen inch arms!”

  “Oh, I see!” said Harold. “Shine him on. Pass him by.”

  “You got it!” Scuz said, driving only fifteen miles per hour which was driving Sam Niles to distraction. “Course there ain’t no misdemeanor here in the first place. So happens that some guys like to eat whipped cream off black satin shoes. Just wish they’d do it home and we wouldn’t get no calls about it but thing is they like to do it in public. Anyways there ain’t no law against it I know, so you just hope he gets full a whipped cream in a hurry and gets the hell out before someone calls the station and the station turns the problem over to the vice squad. Ready for another hypothetical?”

  “Sure, Scuz,” grinned Baxter Slate, accepting a cigarette from the lethargic Sam Niles who was wondering how it was he had wanted to work vice.

  “Okay you’re in the trap, peeking through the screen and some dude walks in the john and he pulls down his jeans and there inside the underwear he carries a toothbrush and a feather. And his dick’s all wrapped in rubber bands and rags to make it bulge outta his tight pants. And he sits down on the pot and reaches down in the toilet water and after he unwraps it he starts splashing cold water up on his dong. And he brushes it off with the toothbrush. Then he pulls out the feather and tickles his balls and when all this is done he’s able to take a leak, which he does sitting down, and then he leaves. Any violation there?”

  “None,” Baxter Slate said.

  “Okay, what if there ain’t no door on any a the toilets, which there ain’t because the manager a this department store is trying to discourage the fruits who like to meet here and poke their cocks through glory holes and all that. Now there he is, no door, just side walls around the toilet and everybody walks in can see him, including little kids.”

  “Well…” Baxter hesitated.

  “And just to mix you boys up a little, let’s say that our vice complaint which brought us here in the first place is from some lady lives near here and her kids always come use this rest room on the way home from school, and she says they got propositioned by some grown up fruits and don’t her kids got no rights?”

  “Well…” Baxter Slate hesitated.

  “Sure, if the fruits didn’t get a naughty kick outta doing it in public johns because it’s guilt and sin and fun and anal obsession and everything all mixed up and it ain’t the same in a private room, well then we wouldn’t have to come here at all. But that ain’t the case and it’s pretty hard to tell the lady her kids just have to put up with some dude propositioning them or blowing some other dude in front a them in the shithouse, ain’t it, Harold?”

  “I guess so, Scuz.”

  “Agree, Baxter?”

  “I guess. Seems as though there should be some other solution.”

  “Seems like,” Scuz said, “but there ain’t. Not for us. We got the problem and the complaint. We gotta do something and that something is to make at least one arrest so when the lady calls back because some other fruit tried to grope her kid, we can show her that we took action on her last complaint. See, boys, there’s just a million problems in this world that there ain’t no solutions to and cops get most of those kind.”

  “So how would you handle the guy who doesn’t bother any children and just does his number with the toothbrush and feather?” asked Sam Niles whose pose was always boredom whether or not he was bored.

  “I shoot him,” Scuz answered.

  “You what?” Harold exclaimed.

  “I shoot him. With this,” Scuz said, pulling a pink plastic water pistol from the pocket of his baggy gabardines. “I just shoot him through the screen where I’m peeking. First it confuses him, then it scares him soon’s he realizes where it’s coming from. See, I don’t add to his thrill by bracing him and threatening him or any a that shit. Just makes him wanna come back some more. Remember, guilt and punishment and stuff from his kiddy days is partly the reason he has to do all this in a public place. So I just shoot him with my gun. Pretty soon he don’t know who or what’s behind that wall. Sometimes he yells, ‘Who’re you? You
store security? You a cop? Who’s shooting me?’”

  “What do you say?” asked Harold.

  “Nothing. I just shoot him again. It’s humiliating. It degrades him in a way he can’t stand. See, he might wanna degrade himself with the stuff he does in a public shitter but he can’t take the kind of humiliation I give him. I’m saying to him with my water gun that his little act ain’t worth no more than a few squirts a water. That he can’t stand. I’ve seen em go out in tears and never come back. At least not to that rest room and that’s all I can worry about at the moment. Make any sense?”

  “Maybe it does at that,” Baxter Slate said as Scuz lit another cigar and turned on Wilshire Boulevard.

  “See, I don’t wanna get in a big fight with these guys. I don’t wanna hurt them but I sure don’t wanna have them hurt me or my boys. So I spend most of my time figuring out how I can satisfy the citizens that make the vice complaints and keep my boys from getting hurt at the same time. I know most vice supervisors wouldn’t agree with me but I don’t think it’s too bad a way to run a vice squad.”

  “Not bad at all, Scuz,” grinned Baxter Slate, rolling down the window to let out some of the smoke.

  “Reason we gotta work this department store tonight is they stay open till nine, and some fruit picks up some cat in the rest room couple weeks ago and offers him ten bucks to let him give the guy a headjob which is okay except he don’t have no money after he does it. And to keep from getting his skull caved in he agrees to let the guy buy ten dollars’ worth a merchandise on his credit card. And the butch guy goes out and buys a hundred dollar suit and tells the fruit if he don’t sign for it he’ll do a fandango on his gourd with his boots. So then the fruit comes and complains about the cowboy. So I say to the guys in the dicks’ bureau, you got an extortion, maybe a credit card hustle, you ain’t got no vice squad case. But our captain says, ‘I think you better take a three-eighteen, Sergeant, and let your vice boys make an arrest there.’ See, he always calls me ‘Sergeant’ when he’s on the rag which is most a the time. So anyways we gotta work the trap in the john and I hope we make a pinch tonight so I can put this vice complaint to bed. I don’t like to make my guys sit around smelling shit.”

  A few minutes later the battered vice car bumped into the parking lot at the rear of the large Wilshire Boulevard department store where shoppers were carrying bundles and fighting each other for parking places and stealing packages out of each other’s cars, as smoggy summer darkness finally fell on Los Angeles.

  As Scuz led the three choirboys into the building and to the storage room which was attached to the rest room on the second floor, Baxter Slate spotted a man sitting on the floor of the corridor leading from the rest room. A stack of ten newspapers was on the floor beside him. His legs were folded under him like hinged sticks. His right hand was a claw, his left was worse. He scratched at the wall like a mutilated insect, unable to gain his feet. He was a forty year old newspaper vendor and several times a day he had to leave his newsstand to use the rest room in the department store. He had cerebral palsy but could usually get to the rest room and back to his chair quite easily often selling a paper or two along the way. Tonight he was suffering from a summer cold which weakened him like an attack of pneumonia would disable a healthy man.

  Scuz turned around and saw two of the choirboys looking down the hallway at the man. Sam Niles wanted to help the man stand up but hated to attract attention to himself and make the other policemen think he was a do-gooder. Baxter Slate wanted to help the man stand up but was afraid the man would interpret his gesture as patronizing and snarl him away with righteous indignation. So both Sam and Baxter pretended not to see the man lolling on the floor and averted their eyes self-consciously. And felt guilt because they were unable to help.

  Just then Harold Bloomguard saw the man. He didn’t think much of anything. He just said, “Oh,” walked down the corridor, took the palsied newspaper vendor by the arm and started to raise him up.

  Then Scuz, who wondered why his parade had slowed, turned and saw Harold Bloomguard. He didn’t intellectualize either. He walked past Sam and Baxter and joined Harold who almost had the man to his feet.

  “Stumbled, huh?” Scuz said, bending over and picking up the fallen man with one arm as easily as a doll, while he gathered up the stack of newspapers with the other. “Slippery goddamn floors in this store. Someone always going on their ass.”

  He half carried the man to a bench near the rear door and seated him there with the stack of papers beside him as the man perspired and panted, unable to speak.

  “Got the late edition?” Scuz asked, taking a coin from his pocket and putting it in the lap of the man as he took a paper from the stack and folded it into the back pocket of his gabardines. “Feel okay, partner? Want me to take you anywheres?”

  The man managed a twisted smile and shook his head, and Scuz nodded, saying, “See you around, partner.” Then he shuffled off down the hall with Harold Bloomguard at his side and the other choirboys trailing.

  As Scuz passed an old man people-watching on a bench by the elevator, he said, “Here you go, Dad,” dropping the paper beside the threadbare pensioner. “It’s a late edition. I ain’t got time to read it.”

  “Well, thanks,” said the old man as Scuz opened the door of the storage room and led the three choirboys to the platform.

  Two men could stand and look through a heavily screened one by two foot opening into the lighted rest room where shoplifters hid merchandise under their clothing and where men publicly masturbated and buggered each other, forcing Sergeant Dominic Scuzzi to force the choirboys to peek and smell shit.

  They weren’t in the trap ten minutes before a man in a candy striped shirt and double breasted blue blazer walked in, looked nervously in each toilet stall and, finding himself alone, withdrew his penis and wrote a lazy S on the rest room floor from wall to wall.

  “That deserves a shot,” whispered Scuz from the platform in the darkened room. “See if I remembered to load it. Yeah, I did.” And he put his pink plastic water pistol up to the screen and gave the man two bursts.

  The man looked up at the ceiling for leaky pipes, saw none and tried to write some more. Scuz gave him two more bursts which caused him to cry out and walk around the rest room for another puzzled look into each toilet stall. Then Scuz gave him another burst and the man screamed and ran outside.

  “He was easy,” Scuz said, stepping down from the platform to let Sam Niles have a look. “Reason I ran him off is I suspect he’s one a these pissy pork pullers. Takes a leak and beats off and cuts out. Guy can do most anything legally long as he’s alone. Gotta catch one that does his number with somebody else. Then we can make a pinch and close the vice complaint and get the fuck outta here and say we protected the people’s morality. Until somebody else makes another vice complaint. Some fun, hey, boys?”

  “Yeah,” muttered Baxter Slate as Sam Niles grimaced disgustedly and longed for a cigarette because he couldn’t have one in the close dark room.

  “Tell you what,” Scuz said. “I’m gonna leave you two guys here and take Harold with me for a pass down Western Avenue. See if we can catch ourselves a whore. Now I don’t like leaving two new guys here like this so I’ll be sending a team to come and sit with you. You two guys just hang loose and wait here and don’t go busting nobody unless a murder is being committed before your eyes, got me?”

  “Uh huh,” Sam Niles said.

  Scuz opened the door to the outside corridor and let Harold out into the light. Then Scuz turned and said, “You get bored you might amuse yourselves by betting quarters whether the next guy in will be a helmet or a anteater.”

  “What’s that mean?” Baxter Slate asked.

  “Circumcised or uncircumcised,” said Scuz as he shoved another cigar between his teeth. Then he threw his pink water pistol to Sam Niles saying, “Careful, it’s loaded.”

  The first man into the rest room stepped up to the urinal and emptied his bladder. The
two choirboys looked at each other and wondered how they had gotten here. He was an anteater.

  The second man was also an anteater. However, the third, fourth and fifth were helmets. The sixth was an anteater and cost Baxter Slate twenty-five cents. The seventh was a helmet and Baxter won the money back. Neither man cared what the eighth one was. The ninth was an anteater but he soon turned into a helmet because he sat down on the toilet and began playing with himself after looking at a picture of Raquel Welch in a movie magazine. But then he looked at a picture of Warren Beatty and seemed just as excited.

  Sam Niles gave him four bursts with the pistol and he ran out cursing, wiping the wet pages of the magazine on his shirt.

  Baxter Slate said, “I can’t take two weeks of this.”

  Sam Niles offered Baxter a cigarette, opened the door for ventilation and nodded.

  Meanwhile Sergeant Dominic Scuzzi was sitting in the parking lot of a food market near Pico and Western briefing an exceedingly nervous Harold Bloomguard.

  “So I’m gonna be right here in the parking lot,” Scuz said as Harold nodded and compulsively blew spit bubbles and cleaned the bogus horn rimmed glasses for the third time and made ready to get in his own car, a three year old Dodge Charger which they had picked up at the station parking lot after leaving Sam and Baxter.

  “I don’t want you roaming too far, Harold, got me? Just go a block or so down Western and no more than a couple blocks east on Pico. You get a broad in the car, you get your offer like I told you, then badge her and bring her back here quick. She wants to jump out, let the bitch do it. You drive here to me and we’ll just cruise on back and scrape her off the street. You don’t go roaming more than a couple blocks from me, right?”

  “Right,” said Harold.

  “You nervous, Harold?”

  “No. Not too much,” he lied.

  “Got a comb?”

  “Yeah.”