The Choirboys

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “I know. Can’t you help them?” Nick Yanov pleaded.

  By 5:00 P.M., Deputy Chief Lynch was on the phone, chatting good naturedly with Assistant Chief Buster Llewellyn.

  “Right, Buster, I wish we could fire them too. And throw them in the slammer. But that would attract attention. As it is we’ve got it under control.”

  “Thank God the victim was just some fag. Imagine if it’d been someone decent,” said Assistant Chief Buster Llewellyn, sipping on his coffee, wondering for the hundredth time about the mysterious stain on his hand tooled blotter.

  “Nobody decent would be in MacArthur Park at that time of night. Nobody except fruits. And this group of policemen.”

  “Talk to the victim’s mother, Adrian?”

  “Personally” smiled Chief Lynch. “She took it pretty hard. But you know, I think his old man was actually kind of relieved.”

  “Better off,” Chief Llewellyn nodded. “Woulda got his throat cut in some fruit hustle sooner or later anyway. If he didn’t die of syphilis.”

  “So we came out all right. Mr. and Mrs. Blaney know there were some policemen in the park and that one of them dropped his gun and it went off and that the perpetrator went nuts after the accident and is now in the squirrel tank getting his head shocked. The newspapers know basically the same information except I had to level with them that the officers had a beer or two. And that nine were involved and that there was some withholding of all the facts at first but that it was an accident pure and simple.”

  “Thank God that officer went crazy afterward.”

  “Well actually he went nuts before, Buster. When they locked him in the wagon.”

  “No one knows about that?”

  “Not necessary to tell all the details. Doesn’t change the facts. We’ve got it effectively stonewalled.”

  “Blast it, Adrian, don’t use that word!”

  “Sorry, Buster.”

  “What’re we going to give them?”

  “The maximum, short of firing, which we can’t very well do if we don’t want too many rumors about choir practice to come out. Of course I’d be happy if we could scare all of them into voluntarily resigning under the threat of criminal prosecution.”

  “Think they will?”

  “Maybe. One of them already has: Bloomguard. Of course, Niles is really batty they tell me and if he doesn’t come around that’s two down right away Not to mention that Officer Slate who killed himself the other night. He was one of the gang, I’m told. But he had the good grace to blow his brains out before this shooting in the park.”

  “It’s these young policemen we’re getting these days,” said Assistant Chief Llewellyn. “No morality in the country anymore. The young policemen reflect it. Imagine them trying to withhold the facts and cover up something like that!”

  “Yes, sir, it’s pathetic. Honesty is a rare commodity nowadays.”

  “Well you did a fine job, Adrian. You should be commended. There was hardly a mention in the papers and nothing on television.”

  “Thank you, Buster,” said Deputy Chief Lynch, hoping this would be only the start of his praise and recognition for the coverup.

  Dr. Emil Moody, the police department psychologist, was sick and tired of being nothing but a marriage counselor. And he was sick and tired of writing his monthly column in the police magazine. He rarely had the opportunity to examine psychotic officers like Sam Niles. The department and the city got great public relations mileage from the infrequent knifing, slugging and shooting of policemen but hated to admit that something as unglamorous and expensive as mental illness should be added to heart disease, tuberculosis, hernia and whiplash, the more common job-induced police cripplers.

  Lacking the information for a psychological workup, he did a brief profile on the MacArthur Park choirboys for his own education. He found that unlike policemen from other generations these were not of the working class and not of foreign born parents. Bloomguard, Slate, Pratt, Potts, Wright, Tanaguchi and Van Moot had solid middle class upbringing. Whalen and Rules were of working class families and only one, Sam Niles, had a childhood history of poverty and parental neglect.

  Only three were married: Van Moot, Wright and Rules. Three had been divorced: Potts, Whalen, and Niles, Whalen having been thrice divorced, Van Moot divorced and remarried.

  Van Moot was a veteran of the Korean War. Niles, Bloomguard, Rules and Potts were Vietnam vets. Tanaguchi had seen service but not combat. Slate, Wright and Pratt had not been in the military. Whalen had, incredibly enough, seen combat in World War II, Korea and even in Vietnam on weekend flights from March Air Force Base.

  Nine had college training and most were still making efforts to obtain a degree. Three had bachelor’s degrees: Bloomguard in business administration, Niles in political science, Slate in classical literature. Most were pursuing degrees in police science or prelaw. Whalen had never gone to college.

  With the exception of fifty-two year old Herbert Whalen and forty year old Spencer Van Moot, they were all young men in their twenties, all apparently in good physical health.

  In short the brief profile proved exactly nothing. Dr. Moody wrote it, read it and threw it in the wastebasket. He had hoped to promote a thesis that policemen are entitled to effective preventive medicine for job-induced mental illness.

  He wanted very much to contact Officer Niles’ best friend, Officer Bloomguard, who had resigned on the morning of the shooting. He wanted to consult with psychiatrists at General Hospital where Niles was committed. He wanted most to visit Niles himself. He suspected there was more to the incident than the administration knew. He suspected that the suicide of Officer Baxter Slate contributed to the deadly episode in the park.

  But Dr. Moody went back to his innocuous writing of an innocuous column for the innocuous police magazine. The police department liked people who could get along. He had a nice steady job and wanted to keep it.

  Just as Chief Lynch thought everything was going to work out smoothly Spencer Van Moot got stubborn. Since he was unconscious during the shooting he didn’t think he deserved a six month suspension. He pleaded not guilty at his trial board. Father Willie Wright, hearing Spencer plead not guilty and thinking what six months loss of pay would do to him did the same thing.

  Some said theirs were the quickest trial boards anyone ever had for a firing offense. The witnesses were heard in two hours. Spermwhale Whalen was the chief witness for the department advocate. He was gray and trembling when he testified against his fellow choirboys. He had lost twenty pounds since the shooting. His fat had lost its ferocious tone. He looked soft. And old.

  Theoretically the trial boards are unbiased hearings before superior officers of the rank of captain or higher. But like any hierarchy particularly a hierarchy of quasi-military persuasion, the captains knew exactly the wishes of Assistant Chief Buster Llewellyn who answered only to the big chief and to God. And they also knew the wishes of Deputy Chief Adrian Lynch who answered only to Assistant Chief Llewellyn and to Theda Gunther, who was so impressed and thrilled with Chief Lynch’s masterful subjugation of Spermwhale Whalen and the subsequent uncovery of the disgusting orgy that she banged him in his office one afternoon, putting a stain on his blotter and tearing his toupee to shreds. His hairpiece looked moth-eaten. It lay on his head like a dead squirrel. When it was time to go home to his wife he had to leave the police building in a golf cap.

  Spencer was found guilty of insubordination, lying to investigators and withholding evidence. His defender, Lieutenant Rudy Ortiz, pleaded for leniency. Sergeant Nick Yanov testified to Spencer’s good character and work performance. But there were examples to be made. The custom of choir practice was to be discouraged. He was fired in record time. Sixteen years went up in smoke.

  Lieutenant Rudy Ortiz angrily accused the trial board, Internal Affairs Division and the department brass of being ruthless and cavalier. He admitted that for some time he had been in favor of civilian review boards. Not to protect citizens fro
m overzealous street cops since there were legal remedies for that. But to protect street cops from overzealous disciplinarians within the ranks. He denounced forced polygraphs and their admission as evidence, the acceptance of hearsay, investigator’s opinion as to truth and lie, the arbitrary searches of person and locker, private cars and officers’ homes under threat of insubordination, a firing offense.

  Lieutenant Rudy Ortiz finally had his say about internal investigations and the constitutional rights of policemen all right. And so did Assistant Chief Adrian Lynch. He said privately that the only way that dumpy little greaseball Ortiz would ever make captain was by joining the Mexican Army.

  Father Willie Wright’s trial board was even quicker. Unlike Spencer, who went out shakily but defiant, Father Willie openly wept at the penalty.

  When Spencer and Father Willie were fired the other choirboys stopped complaining. They all freely admitted their guilt at their own trial boards. They gladly accepted the six months’ suspension. Spermwhale Whalen was given only a thirty day suspension as a reward for helping Internal Affairs crack the case by informing on all of them.

  Sam Niles was still hospitalized and was quietly released by the police department. Since he had less than five years’ service, the city did not have to pay him a pension for the incapacitating illness which the city said did not happen as a result of police service. Sam Niles was confined for a time at the Veterans Hospital and was later transferred to Camarillo State Hospital.

  Harold Bloomguard was asked to stop visiting him because his visits seemed to upset the patient.

  EPILOGUE

  It was somehow eerie to be standing there in MacArthur Park on a cold and damp and shadowy winter night in February. Sergeant Nick Yanov was looking at a place he had never cared to visit, satisfying the curiosity of his new boss, Lieutenant Willard Woodcock, a recently promoted thirty-one year old whiz kid who they said was going places in the department. They said he had lots of top spin.

  “So this is where it happened?” Lieutenant Woodcock observed, his brand new hat with the gold lieutenant’s badge a bit too large. It slid down to his ears over the fresh haircut.

  “Yes, right here from what they tell me,” Sergeant Nick Yanov said, his hands in the pockets of his blue jacket, a cigarette dangling from his lips, white against his glowering jaw. Since he had only shaved once today his lower jaws were dark and fierce.

  “Been about six months now, hasn’t it?”

  “Just about.”

  “They’ll be back to work very soon then. I think we should make plans.”

  “Plans.”

  “We can’t let them bunch up again.”

  “Aren’t many in the bunch anymore,” Nick Yanov said, pushing his hands deeper into the pockets and pulling up the collar of the old wool jacket with the frayed sergeant’s chevrons ripping from one sleeve.

  “There’re enough to cause trouble.”

  “Slate’s dead. Niles is mutilating himself from time to time in the state hospital. Bloomguard resigned…”

  “Where’s the big one now? The one who became a witness for the department?”

  “Whalen, he’s retired. Took his pension last month. I hear they’re sending his checks to some remote little town in Utah. Wright’s fired. Van Moot’s fired. That only leaves four, Lieutenant: Rules, Dean Pratt, Tanaguchi and Potts. After six months without pay I’ll just bet they’re pretty well pacified.”

  “I still think it was a bad idea to leave them in Wilshire Division. They should’ve been scattered to hell and gone after their six months’ suspension.”

  “But this way the department can show that discipline works on troublemakers. They’ll be tame ex-troublemakers, isn’t that it?”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s the theory,” said Lieutenant Woodcock.

  “Except that they weren’t troublemakers.”

  “What do you mean by that?” the lieutenant said, trying to examine the face of the sergeant who had his cigarette half smoked, not touching it with his hands.

  Nick Yanov stared at the sleeping ducks in the peaceful pond and said, “They were just policemen. Rather ordinary young guys, I thought. Maybe a little lonelier than some. Maybe they banded together when they were especially lonely. Or scared.”

  “Ordinary! How can you say that, Yanov? I’ve heard they were animals. They brought sluts here for orgies. One of them was possibly a pillhead and a pervert. The one that killed himself. What was his name?”

  “Baxter Slate. I liked him.”

  “Christ, Yanov, there’s a lesson to be learned here for policemen everywhere!”

  “What lesson have you learned, Lieutenant?”

  Lieutenant Woodcock glared at the big chested sergeant who never took his eyes off the shimmering water. The lieutenant made a mental note to keep tabs on this field sergeant and mention the incident to Captain Drobeck and perhaps cancel the special day off which Nick Yanov had requested. Finally the lieutenant said, “Suicidal degenerates. Drunken killers. Whoremongers. Probably dopeheads. Sergeant, these guys would try to seduce an eighty year old nun. Or break her arm.”

  “Maybe,” Nick Yanov said, blowing a cloud of smoke through his nose, the cigarette glowing in the darkness. “But they wouldn’t steal her purse.”

  “Is that the test of a policeman, Yanov? Is that all there is to making a good policeman?”

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant. I truly don’t know what makes a good policeman. Or a good anything.”

  “Let’s go back to the station,” said the disgusted watch commander. “It’s cold out here.”

  But for a moment Sergeant Nick Yanov stood there alone on the wet grass, his weight pressing footprints in the black spongy earth. The grass smelled washed and fresh and the rows of trees crouched like huge quail. The duck pond was silver and black sapphire. The treetops shivered and rustled in the cold wind and loosened the white blossoms of a flowering pear.

  Nick Yanov looked up at the brooding darkness, at the tarnished misty moon. There were no stars. Not even the great star could pierce that black sky. Nick Yanov stood where they had put their blankets down, close enough to the water to pretend they were with nature, here in the bowels of the violent city. He felt some light mocking rain, yet longed to stay in the solitude, while dead leaves scraped at his feet like perishing brown parchment.

  Then he flipped the cigarette into the pond and heard the hiss and watched it float. He was immediately sorry he did it. Yet there was other debris on the still water and in the bushes if one used the moonlight to look closely.

  He didn’t want to look closely. He preferred to think it was lovely and clean and pastoral here by the silent lagoon and the slumbering ducks in the icy water. Where the choirboys frolicked in the duck shit.

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