The Choirboys

by Joseph Wambaugh

  She turned and yelled, “It was a swell choir practice, fellas! And don’t worry, Roscoe, we ain’t gonna start calling you a duck socker!”

  THIRTEEN

  CATULLUS

  It was two weeks after that memorable choir practice before there was talk of going to MacArthur Park. Roscoe’s shootout with the ducks had unnerved everyone and had caused ten choirboys and two cocktail waitresses to study the newspapers the next day for any mention of persons hit with stray bullets in the vicinity of the park. There was none. They were ready to try again. It was scheduled for a Thursday night near the end of August. Harold Bloomguard intended to make sure all the choirboys left their guns in their cars.

  “We can’t have any more shooting at ducks,” Harold had informed the others.

  “How about shooting at fags?” Roscoe Rules had remarked.

  “Believe it or not it’s kind of nice to get back in a radio car after two weeks on vice,” said Sam Niles to Harold Bloomguard the Tuesday night before.

  “I was getting tired of those smelly rest rooms,” Harold agreed as he blew a spit bubble against the steering wheel.

  Sam slouched in the black and white and glanced languidly at the traffic which was light at this time of night. He didn’t mind when Harold drove toward the Miracle Mile for a change of scenery.

  “Remember the whore who lived there?” asked Sam as they passed a freshly painted lemon and white townhouse apartment building.

  “Yeah, sometimes vice was fun,” said Harold.

  Then Sam Niles said something he would profoundly regret: “Just for kicks, drive by Gina Summers’ apartment, right off Wilshire.”

  “Who?”

  “That sadist whore, the one who takes those special tricks and does a number on them in her little torture chamber.”

  “Oh yeah,” Harold said. “I never did see her. I remember you and Baxter talking about her.”

  “Wanna see if she’s undressing up by her window tonight?” Sam asked. “Then you can see her. Tits like avocados.”

  “All right!” Harold said.

  When Harold pulled to the curb beside Gina Summers’ apartment and turned the lights out, Sam Niles said, “Yeah, she’s home. See the light up there in the sixth floor corner apartment? Just sit for a minute, see if she parades in front of the window naked.”

  “Got lots of time.” Harold had his eyes glued to the light.

  But after they sat for five minutes Harold got antsy and said, “Well?”

  “No action tonight. Let’s split,” said Sam.

  Just then Gina Summers walked in front of the window, a long piece of leather draped around her neck. She unbuttoned her blouse and stood naked to the waist, the leather resting on one breast as she lowered the shade.

  “Outta sight!” Harold Bloomguard exclaimed.

  “Harold, that was a man’s belt, wasn’t it?” Sam Niles asked.

  “It was a long fat leather belt. Mighta been a whip!”

  “Goddamn. She’s got a trick up there.”

  “So what?”

  “So what? Do you know that Scuz and Baxter and I stake out four nights straight trying to close the vice complaint on this bitch? We never got close. Now she’s got a trick up there. And she’s got her whip!”

  “So? We’re not working vice anymore.”

  “It’s police work, isn’t it? Besides, Scuz’d get his rocks off if a couple of bluesuits brought in Gina Summers on a vice pinch when his squad’s been working on her so long.”

  “Come on, Sam,” Harold said. “It’s only a lousy misdemeanor like Scuz always said. Besides we can’t sneak and peek in full uniform.”

  “Let’s try. You might get to see her bare ass, Harold.”

  “That’s different. Let’s go,” Harold Bloomguard said, and the partners gathered up their hats and flashlights and locked the radio car.

  “But how the hell we gonna get a violation?” Harold asked.

  They crossed the street, looking up at the lighted window, entered the unlocked apartment building, took the carpeted stairs two at a time, clear to the fourth floor.

  “We have to be able to hear the offer and the action,” Sam said.

  “That’s impossible,” Harold answered, puffing up the stairs.

  “I’ve got good ears.”

  “Scuz said never to perjure yourself for a chickenshit vice arrest, remember?”

  “Don’t worry. Did you see the fire escape by her window? Baxter and I always had it planned if we saw a trick inside we’d go out on the fire escape. It’s only three feet from her bedroom. I’m positive I could hear anything that was happening from there.”

  “Well,” Harold shrugged and then they stopped and rested on the fifth landing.

  Harold longed for the elevator. But he knew why Sam disliked the confinement.

  At last they reached the sixth floor, and while Harold Bloomguard had second and third thoughts about doing vice work in uniform, Sam Niles climbed out on the fire escape and was squatting in the darkness catching his breath. Then Sam heard female laughter and a muffled male voice in Gina Summers’ bedroom.

  He took off his hat and glasses and wiped his forehead on his blue woolen shirtsleeve and cleaned his glasses with his handkerchief, catching a breeze near the rooftops.

  He listened. The voices were low but after three minutes he heard a woman’s voice say, “Is this what you want?”

  And then the crack of leather and a man’s gasp of pain.

  “I can do better, honey. This isn’t much,” said the woman’s voice again, followed by another crack and a man’s cry and then another crack and a groan.

  Then the woman’s voice got more husky and guttural. She said, “You feel like you belong to me now, don’t you, baby? Well you do, you bastard! You worthless son of a bitch! Right now Gina owns you! You’re not a man. You’re an animal! Gina’s animal!”

  Then there were three cracks of leather and unbroken groaning. Sam Niles was chilled from the rib cage to the top of his head and furiously beckoned for Harold to climb out on the fire escape.

  “But I can do better.” The woman’s laugh was like a bark. “I can really hurt, baby, you give me a chance. There’s no extra charge. Same price.”

  And the man whimpered and moaned. Then there were three quick sharp cracks. And silence.

  Harold Bloomguard crawled through the window and huddled next to his partner during the quiet moments.

  “We’ve got it,” Sam whispered. “Goddamnit, we’ve got it. I heard it. The money offer. The act.”

  Sam crawled back through the window into the hallway and Harold followed him down the hall where they ducked into an alcove.

  “I heard her saying something about no extra charge,” Sam said. “I heard the act. It’s a good legal pinch!”

  “What act? Screwing?”

  “No. She’s whipping some guy!”

  “Far out!” whistled Harold Bloomguard. “I sure never made a bust like this. Sex, money. We got her for prostitution. And him. Wait, is whipping considered a sex act?”

  “I think so,” Sam Niles said, putting his hat on and pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Isn’t it?”

  “You got me. I haven’t had that fantasy yet,” said Harold Bloomguard who thought he probably would by the time he got in bed tonight.

  “Let’s go. I say we’ve got her,” Sam said. “We’ll just wait until he comes out…”

  “Can’t we knock? I don’t wanna waste the whole night here. I haven’t eaten all day.”

  “Okay let’s go. They’re probably through by now. Unless he’s gonna let her beat him to death.”

  While Harold stood back against the wall Sam Niles knocked at the door. There was no response so he knocked again, saying, “Miss Summers!”

  Then they heard frantic footsteps and a woman’s voice, soft and sultry now. “Who is it?”

  “Assistant manager, Miss Summers. There’s a gas leak on this floor, ma’am. We’re evacuating the building.”


  The door opened a few inches, but before she could slam it, Sam Niles shouldered it wide open and the naked girl was thrown back against the wall saying, “Hey, what’s the big idea?” as both policemen rushed into the apartment past the naked brunette.

  “Just go in the room there with my partner while I have a talk with your friend,” Sam Niles said as he rushed down the hall to arrest the other party to the prostitution.

  Then he was in the bedroom face to face with the customer who was putting on his pants. Shivering. Sweat soaked. Face like alabaster.

  “Baxter!” Sam Niles gasped. Freezing in his tracks. Face to face with Baxter Slate who was naked to the waist, his body wet and gleaming.

  Then Sam heard Gina Summers threatening Harold Bloomguard with false arrest while Harold nodded placatingly and leered at her naked breasts.

  Sam Niles closed the bedroom door and Baxter Slate went to the window and looked out and choked off a sob. Sam Niles stared at the ugly raw welts and stripes on Baxter’s body which already were swelling and said, “Why, Baxter?”

  Then Sam went to a chair and sat. And disbelieved. He removed his hat and ran his hand through his hair and looked at his friend who wiped his pale sweating face with a shirt but never turned from the window.

  “Why?” groaned Sam Niles who couldn’t take his eyes from Baxter’s welted flesh.

  “What’s happening, Sam?” called Harold Bloomguard from the hall outside where Gina Summers was demanding to call her lawyer.

  Yet she made no move to the phone nor to the closet where her robes hung with the whips and boots and exotic underwear. Harold Bloomguard went on explaining the arrest to her while she stood nude, hands on her hips.

  “I thought we didn’t work vice anymore, Sam,” Baxter said finally with a quivering smile which was nothing, nothing like a Baxter Slate smile. He went to the bed and sat, his wounded back still turned to his friend.

  “Why?” Sam Niles asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know for sure, Sam.”

  “Does she know you’re a cop?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Sam Niles lit a cigarette and sighed and turned from the sight of Baxter’s tortured flesh and said, “I’ll tell her it was a mistake. She’ll be damn glad not to be hitting the slammer so she won’t ask any questions of me.”

  “And Harold?”

  “I’ll tell Harold the guy in the room was a deputy from the sheriff’s department and I decided to give him a break. I can take care of Harold. You tell that fucking whore you bought me off for fifty bucks. Then everybody’s happy.”

  When Sam stood and turned to go out the door, Baxter Slate called desperately, “Sam!”

  “What is it, Baxter?” Sam answered without looking at his friend.

  “It’s … it’s just that I was afraid to park my own car near here. I took a cab from Pico and La Brea. And I gave her every dime. Well…,” and then he tried another twisted smile which was so unlike Baxter Slate’s easy grin it made Sam Niles want to turn and run. “Could you maybe drop Harold at the station and think of some excuse to come back? I could use the ride. I’m too weak to walk, Sam.”

  Then Sam dug in his pockets and found seven dollars and some change. “Here!” he said, throwing the money on the bed. “Catch a cab!”

  “You… you couldn’t… I wouldn’t mind waiting if you could drive me, Sam. I could wait out front…. I’d really appreciate … I could maybe meet you after you get off work and talk… explain…”

  “Goddamnit, I gave you my last dollar for a cab! What the fuck do you want from me?”

  “Nothing, Sam. Nothing. Thanks for the money” said Baxter Slate.

  And as Sam Niles jerked the bedroom door open he heard Baxter Slate say, “It’s not evil, Sam. I haven’t enough dignity to be evil.”

  Then Sam was stalking down the hall to the living room where Gina Summers was sidling up to Harold Bloomguard and trying to convince him that his partner could not possibly have heard what he thought he heard and why doesn’t everyone just forget the whole thing?

  “Come on, let’s go, Harold,” Sam said.

  “Go?”

  “Yeah, go. We made a mistake.”

  “A mistake?”

  “Goddamnit, let’s go! We made a mistake!”

  As Sam started for the front door with his bewildered partner trailing behind, Gina Summers then made the mistake of saying, “Well I coulda told you that. You’ll be lucky if I don’t sue over this. You’ll be lucky…”

  She was astonished by how quickly Sam Niles moved as he whirled and grabbed her by the throat and pinched off the carotid artery with his powerful right hand. Gina Summers came up off the floor, naked, clinging to his wrist with both hands, fighting for breath, gaping at Sam Niles’ unblinking iron gray eyes, slightly magnified by his steel rimmed glasses.

  “If I ever hear you complain about anything,” he whispered, “I’ll be back here. And if you’re not here I’ll be where you are, baby. You groove on handing out pain? Well maybe you don’t know what it is to feel pain. I’ll show you. Can you dig it?”

  And as Gina Summers nodded and gripped his wrist and gurgled, Sam Niles released her throat and she fell to her knees, gasping. The two policemen burst out the door quicker than they had come in.

  Sam Niles literally hurtled down those six flights, leaving Harold half a landing behind. He hated Harold Bloomguard like he never had before. As he hated Baxter Slate. They were weaklings. They were bleeders. They were sick, wretched, disgusting.

  Sam Niles got dizzy as he flew down those stairs and swung past the landings holding the handrails. Hating them. They bleed. They need. Like the Moaning Man as he lay there bleeding and needing past the grave. Hands reaching out. They never let you alone. Reaching past death. Until someone touched them. He despised them all. He hated them as he had hated his weak sick disgusting parents. Sam Niles had never needed anyone. Except for one minute, sixty seconds in his life.

  He stopped on the last landing and waited for the puffing little man who had seen him need that one time. And he feared that if Harold had ever mentioned that moment in the suffocating blackness of that cave, he would now, at this moment, draw his revolver and shoot him dead on the staircase. But Harold had never talked about it. Not even to Sam. Sam hoped that Harold had somehow forgotten it in his own terrible fear. Sometimes Sam Niles even believed that it never had happened.

  “What’s the hurry, Sam?” Harold stammered, trying to catch his breath before the last flight of steps. Never once suggesting they use the elevator because he understood his partner better than his partner dreamed. “What’s the rush?”

  “Nothing,” Sam said viciously. “There’s no rush. None at all.”

  Five minutes later in the car Sam Niles shouted, “God-damnit, he was a deputy sheriff I know from court! You don’t know him. Never mind his fucking name. I wanted to give him a break. He told me he had a wife and kids and was going to a psychiatrist. I made a decision and I DON’T WANT TO EVER TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN!”

  And though they never did, Harold Bloomguard scratched his neck with a penknife and blew spit bubbles not only that night but the next afternoon when Baxter Slate suddenly called off sick, saying he had the flu. Harold heard Sam Niles question Baxter’s partner Spermwhale Whalen as to whether he had heard from Baxter. Harold saw that Sam seemed troubled that Spermwhale had not.

  When Baxter Slate did not come to work the Thursday of choir practice and Sam Niles was jumpy as a cat while putting on his uniform, Harold Bloomguard developed a brand new rash all over his neck and began to suspect that Gina Summers’ trick was not a deputy sheriff after all.

  The choirboys were happy that Thursday afternoon in the assembly room because Sergeant Nick Yanov was conducting the rollcall alone. But Nick Yanov entered the room grimly and didn’t seem to hear a few jokes directed his way from men in the front row. Though his jaws were as dark and fierce as always from his incredibly thick whiskers which he had shaved only three hours
earlier, his forehead and Baltic cheekbones were white. He was white around the eyes. His hands were unsteady when he lit a cigarette. The men quieted down. Something was very wrong with Nick Yanov.

  He took a deep puff on the cigarette, sucked it into his lungs and said, “Baxter Slate’s dead. They just found him in his apartment. Shot himself. Spermwhale, you’ll be working a report car tonight. Seven-U-One is your unit. Would you like to go down now and get your car?”

  The rollcall room was deathly still for a moment. No one moved or spoke as Nick Yanov waited for Spermwhale. One could hear the hum of the wall clock. Spermwhale Whalen finally said to the sergeant, “Are you sure?”

  “Go on down and get your car, Spermwhale,” said Nick Yanov quietly But as shaky as Spermwhale looked when he gathered his things and walked through the door, Harold Bloomguard looked even shakier when he looked at Sam Niles who had broken out in a violent sweat and had ripped open his collar and was having trouble getting enough air.

  Then Sam jumped up and burst through the door behind Spermwhale Whalen. Harold Bloomguard started up, thought better of it and sat back down.

  Nick Yanov called the roll and dismissed the watch without another word.

  There was speculation and many rumors in the parking lot about Baxter Slate’s suicide, and several members of the Wilshire nightwatch spent a lingering fearful evening handling calls, cruising, smoking silently, trying to avoid thinking of that most terminal of all policeman’s diseases. Wondering how one catches it and how one avoids it.

  None of the choirboys took the initiative to do police work that night. It was as though a monotonous routine would be somehow comforting, reassuring. The only thing out of the ordinary done by a nightwatch radio car was that 7-A-29 drove to West Los Angeles Police Station, the area in which Baxter Slate had resided because he loved Westwood Village and the cultural activities at UCLA and the theater which showed foreign films and a small unpretentious French restaurant with wonderful wines.

  “I’d like to see the homicide team. Whoever’s handling Officer Slate’s suicide,” Sam Niles said to the lone detective in the squad room.