“Comb you hair back off your forehead. You goddamn kids all gotta look like rock singers. Comb it back. Show your high forehead. Makes you look even more square than you already look.”
Scuz turned the rearview mirror for Harold who parted his ginger hair and combed it back.
“Help if you had some greasy kid stuff,” said Scuz, who put the glasses on Harold when he was finished.
“I look okay?”
“Shit, ain’t nobody gonna make you, Harold. Nobody.”
“Guess I’m ready then.”
“Okay try going east on Pico there, circle south on Oxford, maybe, then back to Western. I want you close to me.”
As Harold fired up the Charger, Scuz fired up a fresh cigar and swatted at a swarm of gnats which had discovered him.
Meanwhile, as Harold Bloomguard began his maiden voyage into the land of vice, things were happening in the store where two revolted choirboys sat smelling human defecation in a dark and stuffy room.
First, Pete Zoony the veteran vice cop with the woolly hair and the Fu Manchu strolled into the rest room, grinned up at the screened hole on the wall and said, “Don’t bother making a bet. I’m a Jew.”
“How long we have to stay in here?” asked Sam Niles, whose voice boomed through the vent hole and echoed off the tile of the rest room.
“Scuz called us on the radio,” Pete Zoony said, examining his teeth in the mirror. “Told my partner to drop me here to sit with you. Said to give it an hour, no more. We wanna close this complaint bad. Wish we had a drunk wagon like Central. I’d have them carry two sleeping winos inside and leave them in the same toilet stall, then call the store manager to witness the orgy we discovered. After that we could close the complaint.”
“Well, nothing’s happened since we’ve been here,” Baxter said. “Maybe the fruits stopped coming here.”
“Maybe so. Think I’ll mosey outside and see there’s any new broads I haven’t met. When you come out for a break take a look at the set of tits works the perfume counter right across from junior miss clothes. I hear a policeman from North Hollywood’s balling her. Dynamite! Catch you later.”
And Pete Zoony was out the door looking for willing young clerks when he spotted two uniformed policemen entering the office of store security. Out of curiosity he sauntered across the floor and caught one of the three night security officers coming out.
“What’s happening?” Pete Zoony asked the plainclothes security officer who knew all the vice cops from the rest room watch.
“Shoplifter. No big thing. Second time we caught her. Gonna put her in the slammer this time to see if it discourages her. Make her steal from Sears instead of us.”
Pete Zoony nodded and decided to go leer at the girl who balled the North Hollywood policeman but had been coyly resisting Zoony’s persistent advances.
Then one of the uniformed policemen came out of the security office and headed straight for the rest room. Pete Zoony, who generally worked daywatch vice, was not known by many bluesuits on the nightwatch. He made a regrettable error in judgment by deciding to have a little fun and entertain the two new kids on the block. He followed the uniformed cop into the rest room.
“Roscoe Rules!” whispered Sam and Baxter simultaneously when the door to the rest room opened.
Then it was a matter of trying to suppress giggles as Roscoe, a helmet, relieved himself at the urinal and afterward stepped to the sink singing some Stevie Wonder.
He took off his cap carefully and teased his mousy hair, making it fall over the ears as much as possible without offending the lieutenant. Then he squeezed a watery pimple on his nose, straightened his tie and smiled with satisfaction while Baxter and Sam leaned on each other, smothering back the laughter. Their fellow choirboy stepped from the mirror, put the hat squarely on his head, held both fists against his hips and stood spraddle legged and broad shouldered, admiring the whole picture. And Sam Niles almost fell off the platfrom in muffled hysterics just as the rest room door flew open again and Pete Zoony came swishing in.
“Sam! Sam!” Baxter whispered, pulling his friend back to the screen as Pete minced past Roscoe Rules singing, “I Got a Crush on You, Sweetie Pie!”
He stepped to the urinal, peeked coyly over his shoulder at the unbelieving policeman and pretended to be taking a leak while he batted his eyelashes at the choirboy.
“Well I’ll be a motherfucker!” said the outraged Roscoe Rules.
“Oh, I hope you’re not!” Pete Zoony squealed as he zipped up his pants and swished across the room to the washbasin where he put a few drops of water on his fingers and patted his cheeks.
He dabbed daintily with a paper towel, singing, “Couldja coo, couldja care…”
“You got a lot a guts, you know that?” Roscoe Rules said as Pete Zoony peeked at him from time to time and giggled.
“Why whatever do you mean, Officer?” Pete lisped.
“You… you, you come in here and act like… like I’m a civilian!”
“Well I don’t care what you are. You’re just cute as can be, is all you are,” said Pete Zoony, primping in the mirror as the choirboys behind the wall desperately tried to see through their tears.
“Goddamn you! How dare you talk to a police officer like this! Gimme some identification!” Roscoe sputtered.
“Gosh, don’t get so upset,” Pete Zoony lisped. “I mean just because a person pays you a compliment.”
“You break out some ID right now,” Roscoe demanded and Pete Zoony was preparing to pull his police badge from his back pocket when he erred, not knowing Roscoe Rules.
“Now, I’m gonna show you my driver’s license, see, but I want you to promise you won’t ask for my phone number cause I don’t know you that well yet.”
“You fag! You insolent fucking sissy!” screamed Roscoe Rules.
“Well!” said Pete Zoony huffily, so carried away with his role that he underestimated the light in Roscoe’s close set eyes. “You wouldn’t make fun of a person because he’s crippled, wouldja? Huh?”
“You bastard!” Roscoe shrieked.
Pete Zoony pursed his lips and smacked a little kiss and said, “Oh, you’re so cute when you’re all mad! You blue meanie!”
Then Roscoe Rules reared back and slapped Pete Zoony across the moustache with the heel of his hand, catching him flush on the jaw and the vice cop was skidding across the slippery floor and banging against the metal trash can.
The two choirboys in the trap yelled, “No, Roscoe!” and jumped down from the platform and out the door, running down the corridor to the rest room.
They entered in time to intercept Pete Zoony who was growling and cursing and sliding on the floor attempting to get his feet under him as the bewildered Roscoe Rules looked up at the walls and ceiling, certain that he had heard ghostly voices shout his name.
“Niles! Slate!” Roscoe exclaimed as his fellow choirboys jumped on Pete Zoony to keep something terrible from happening which could get them all in trouble.
“You cocksucker!” shouted the outraged Pete Zoony, desperate to play catchup with Roscoe.
“Me, cocksucker? Me, cocksucker? You got a lotta guts, ya fag!” said Roscoe Rules.
It took a full five minutes to get Pete Zoony calmed down and Roscoe filled in on the prank that backfired. Finally the glassy eyed Pete Zoony smiled tightly and said, “No hard feelings, Rules,” and swung a roundhouse left which caught Roscoe on the right cheekbone and dumped him into a toilet stall, wherein both choirboys switched their attack to the cursing, raging Roscoe Rules who might have shot Pete Zoony to death were it not for Sam Niles keeping a wristlock on his gun hand.
The toilet stakeout was called off for the night then and there. Sam Niles would not release his wristlock on Roscoe until Baxter Slate had taken Pete Zoony out of the rest room to the parking lot in the rear. They found a pay phone and had Pete’s partner pick them all up to rendezvous with Scuz and Harold Bloomguard.
When Spermwhale Whalen heard about the incident later that night
at choir practice, he shook his head and said, “Someone’s always punchin Roscoe Rules. Kid, you oughtta wear a catcher’s mask.”
• • •
“Greetings and hallucinations!” cried frightened Harold Bloomguard to the first street whore he spotted after cruising the streets for twenty minutes.
“Say what?” the tawny black girl said as she stopped on the sidewalk and cautiously approached the Charger which was parked under the streetlight in the red zone at Pico and Western.
She wore mint green pants, skin tight to the ankles where they flared out over patent green clogs. Her stomach was bare and she wore a green halter top which tied at the neck. Harold was sure he had seen her several times before but Scuz had assured him that the girls have a difficult time recognizing uniform cops when they see them in plainclothes. To whores, as to most people, the patrol cop is a badge and blue suit and little more.
“Hello hello!” said Harold Bloomguard, turning off his headlights and bravado as the girl approached the car, walking with the traffic so that customers could pull to the curb without making an illegal U-turn that might draw a police car.
“Well, hi there, baby,” smiled the whore when she saw how “good” Harold looked.
But just then a set of headlights behind them flashed a high beam and a black and white pulled up beside him, preparing to write a parking ticket, thus doing its bit to combat prostitution. It was Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie.
“Okay, sir,” Spencer said as the radio car double parked. “Let’s…”
And then Spencer found himself looking into the tense, bespectacled face of his fellow choirboy Harold Bloomguard, who he knew was on temporary vice loan.
“Yes, Officer?” Harold Bloomguard winked.
Father Willie, thinking faster than his partner, said loud enough for the whore to hear, “Partner! We just got a hot call!” and he dropped the car into low.
“You’re in a red zone, buster!” yelled Spencer Van Moot as Father Willie pulled out. “Don’t be here when I come back!”
“Now don’t be scared, honey,” said the girl as the radio car sped away “They jist love to scare off our tricks. Got nothin else to do, jist hassle people.”
“And they’re never around when you need them,” Harold added.
“Tha’s right.”
Then the girl looked up as a white Lincoln pulled in behind Harold and a big suntanned man waved to the girl. She looked him over but opened Harold’s door and got inside.
“Motherfucker looks like a cop to me,” she said. “They borry these big shiny cars and try to fool us sometimes.”
“Cop?” cried Harold Bloomguard, trying his hand at acting now that the attractive, sweet smelling whore was sitting next to him, looking much less exotic and threatening.
“Now, you jist calm down, honey Ain’t no cause to git scared.”
“Cop?” repeated Harold Bloomguard, speaking in dry monosyllables, trying to remember the good opening lines Scuz had fed him as he drove east on Pico.
The whore pretended to be fixing her lipstick in the rearview mirror but was actually watching for a vice car.
“Now jist calm right down. Ain’t no worry about cops. Those two told you bout the parkin ticket? I got a friend pays them off. Fact he pays off all the black and whites and all the vice in this district for me. So see, we kin jist have us a nice party and don’t have to worry bout nothin.”
“Party?” Harold wanted a more explicit word for a better case. His hands were sweating and slipping on the steering wheel.
“Party. You know? Love. Half and half. French. Whatever you wants.”
“Oh yeah, I want!” Harold turned south on Oxford, hoping she would hurry and mention the money, too nervous to appreciate her billowy breasts as she dabbed at her lipstick and making sure there was no vice car slipping behind them with lights out.
“You got twenny-five dollars, sweetie?”
“Sure.”
“That’s the tariff. And it’s cheap for all you get.”
Then Harold turned west on Fourteenth Street and the girl said to turn left on Western but Harold turned right.
“Hey!” she said suspiciously but Harold pressed the accelerator to the floor, sped north for half a block, screeched across the southbound traffic lanes and skidded into the market parking lot while the whore yelled, “Gud-damn!” and bounced around in the car. Then Harold saw Scuz in the vice car sitting in the dark at the rear of the market. Only then did he feel heady and elated.
He pulled off his glasses, the triumphant unmasking of an undercover man, and said, “You’re under arrest!”
“Oh shit,” she replied.
Then for effect Harold put the glasses back on, skidded to a stop beside Scuz, pulled them off again and said, “You’re under arrest, young lady!”
“You already said that. I got ears, stupid,” said the whore.
Scuz shuffled around the car and opened the door for the whore as Harold decided he should show her his badge.
“Don’t bother, Harold. She knows who you are-now. I’ll baby-sit Bonnie here. We’re old pals. You go out and see you can get another one.”
The girl stalked gloomily to the back door of the vice car and said, “Sergeant, where’d you get this little devil? He don’t look nothin like a cop.”
“See? See, Harold?” grinned Scuz, puffing happily on his cigar, delighted with the professional accolade.
“You’re so young,” Harold said to the girl as she slid across the seat of Scuz’s car. Harold noticed her smooth brown legs for the first time and her pretty mouth and shapely natural hairdo.
“She’s even younger than you, kid,” Scuz said, closing the door and getting in the front seat where he could blow cigar smoke out the window and not suffocate the whore. “See you can get us another one that easy, Harold.”
“You’re so young and pretty,” said the saddened choirboy. “How’d you get started in this business?”
“Oh no!” the whore cried, slumping back in the seat, appealing to Scuz.
“Harold, just go on back out, see you can get another one,” Scuz said. “Let Bonnie here rest her sore feet.”
Harold Bloomguard emptied his gas tank driving and made himself dizzy circling around and around the block looking for another whore so Sergeant Dominic Scuzzi could write a good progress report for that psycho of a captain, while a sullen young whore named Bonnie Benson got sick from the air befouled by Dominic Scuzzi’s ten cent cigar.
While this was happening Sam Niles and Baxter Slate were sitting in a cozy dark cocktail lounge much farther north on Western Avenue where there was obviously little chance for a vice arrest but lots of chances for free drinks which the management gladly supplied Pete Zoony and his fellow vice cops.
Pete sat in the booth with Baxter and Sam and sipped a Scotch on the rocks, using the ice to rub on the bruise which Roscoe Rules had put on his jawbone before he put a much larger one on Roscoe.
Finally Pete said, “Mind if my partner and me disappear for a while? We gotta check out an answering service supposed to be taking call girl action. More than one or two guys’d look suspicious. Be back in an hour. We’ll raise Scuz on the radio and tell him where you are, so either he’ll pick you up or we will. Meantime, drink all you want and get a beef dip, they’re pretty good. It’s all on the house.”
“Sure, Pete,” Baxter said.
After the vice cop left, Sam said, “Wonder how big her tits are? Wish she had a couple friends.”
Baxter Slate downed his bourbon and ordered a double. “Just as well drink like a vice cop,” he grinned as they sat on tufted seats and felt fortunate to be out of the toilet. “Guess you might say we had a fruitless night.”
“That sounds like something Harold would say,” Sam yawned, starting to look bored. “Just like everything else. It’ll start to be a drag.”
“What?”
“Vice work. Jesus, what a way to make a living.”
“Did you feel embarrassed
, like we were peeping toms or something?”
“Christ, yes. You see enough shit on the streets without going to rest rooms to look for more.”
And then Baxter, who was getting a glow from the bourbon, said, “There’re worse jobs than vice.”
“What for instance?”
“Juvenile.”
“Oh yeah. I always wondered what made you leave so soon.”
“Just didn’t like it,” Baxter said, draining his glass and signaling to the waitress.
She looked even more bored than Sam Niles as she padded across the carpet in a silly tight costume which was supposed to push her breasts up and out and make her look like a sexy tavern wench instead of what she was: a blowsy divorcée with three young children who were running wild because she worked nights and wasn’t supervising them.
“Don’t think I’d like Juvenile either,” Sam Niles said, ordering a double Scotch. “Bad enough working with adults without taking crap from bubblegummers.”
“You handle some dangerous little criminals over and over again and you can’t get them off the streets because of their tender age. Despite the fact that they’re more predatory and lack an adult’s inhibitions. But I could live with that. It was the other things that bothered me. The children as victims.”
“Can’t let it bother you,” Sam Niles said as he drained his glass. “Must water their drinks here. Oh well, the price is right.” And he was ready to signal for another round.
“You know, you expect certain dreadful cases,” Baxter continued, “like the child molester who loved to see little girls tied up and screaming. Or the four year old I saw on my first day in court when her mother’s boyfriend was brought in and she started crying and a policewoman said to me, ‘He stuck it in one day and gave her gonorrhea.’”
Sam Niles wished a couple of unattached girls would come in and end Baxter’s stories.
“What I wasn’t prepared for were the other things.” Baxter’s speech was beginning to slur as he stared at the glass, for the first time failing to smile and thank the waitress who put a fresh one in front of him. “You should see what the generic term ‘unfit home’ can mean. The broken toilet so full of human excrement that it’s slopping over the top. And a kitten running through the crap and then up onto the table and across the dirty dishes. Brown footprints on the dishes which won’t even be washed.”
The Choirboys Page 27
