Spermwhale Whalen very quietly said, "Knuckles Garrity died as a direct result of his police duties. As sure as any cop who was ever blown up in a Shootout. Knuckles Garrity was the best fuckin cop we ever had in this station and that cunt of a captain should be proud to have his picture on the wall."
"I'm sorry," the lieutenant said, turning and walking back to his office, leaving Spermwhale with the picture in his enormous red hands.
"I could shoot somebody," said Spermwhale Whalen when he got back in the radio car after the incident.
Baxter Slate fired up the engine and turned on the lights as darkness settled in.
"Anybody in particular?"
"The captain. The lieutenant maybe. Anybody," Spermwhale said, not knowing that in exactly two hours he would shoot somebody and that it would give him almost as much pleasure as if it had been the captain or the lieutenant.
But before Spermwhale had that pleasure he and Baxter received a call in 7-A-85's area because Roscoe Rules and Whaddayamean Dean were handling a call in 7-A-33's area because Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie had received a fateful call which almost made them the only team in LAPD history to get beaten up by a man three feet tall:
"Seven-A-Thirty-three, Seven-A-Thirty-three, see the woman, three-eleven suspect, First and Harvard."
"Seven-A-Thirty-three, roger on the call," Father Willie automatically answered and then turned suddenly to Spencer. "She say First and Harvard?"
"Yeah," Spencer replied absently.
"A wienie wagger at First and Harvard!" said Father Willie.
Spencer was puzzled for a moment and then said, "Oh."
"Filthy Herman!" they both cried at once and then a noisy string of obscenities from the black and white startled a woman pedestrian waiting for the light to change on Beverly Boulevard.
"Niles and Bloomguard are out fucking off again!" Spencer whined. "Why aren't they handling the call? It's their area!"
"Darn it!" Father Willie said. "No, wait a minute, I saw them in the station penciling out an arrest report."
"Filthy Herman!" Spencer groaned as the black and white came to a stop in some heavy evening traffic near the Wilshire Country Club, which further angered the policeman.
"Just put your mind in neutral with the ear, partner," Father Willie advised. "We aren't going anywhere in this traffic for a while."
"Goddamnit!" snapped Spencer, yelling to any motorist within earshot "If you're gonna camp here, pitch a fucking tent!"
The reason that Spencer Van Moot was so angry and Father Willie so apprehensive was Filthy Herman. He was a legless wienie wagger who lived in a boardinghouse near First and Harvard owned by his daughter Rosie Muldoon who struck it rich by marrying an extremely successful anesthesiologist and now could afford to keep her father, Filthy Herman, in a piece of rental property across town from her.
It was ordinarily a good arrangement The house was large and Herman often had it filled with other alcoholics who congregated in the Eighth Street bars, a half mile from Herman's home. Filthy Herman was somewhat of a celebrity on Eighth Street, partly because of his grotesque physical presence. He was a torso in a wheelchair. Both legs had been amputated at the buttocks when he was thirty-seven years old, a powerful ironworker until a steel beam crushed him. He was also a celebrity because, with the monthly allowance from the daughter who visited him once a year on Christmas, Herman would buy drinks for every man who could not afford to buy his own. This meant that Filthy Herman had a group of some thirty to forty admirers and hangers-on among his Eighth Street entourage. What he didn't spend on drinks he gambled away in gin rummy games or with the many bookies who frequented the area.
About twice a year, for no apparent reason, Filthy Herman would live up to his name and his normal alcoholic binge would end with his standing on two inch stumps on the wooden porch of his home, naked except for a Dodger baseball cap, screaming, "My cock's dragging the ground, how about yours?" Which indeed it was, what with the absence of legs.
Then the unfortunate radio car officers who got the call would be subjected to a barrage of incredible obscenities, empty bottles, beer cans, spitting, bites on the leg and surprisingly painful punches from the gnarled fists of Filthy Herman, who at fifty was not devoid of the strength acquired while an ironworker.
Any officer who had worked the division long enough had seen the legless torso of Filthy Herman bouncing across the asphalt as he was dragged cursing into the station by two disheveled policemen. Because of his physical impairment he was a pathetic sight when cleaned up and no judge had ever given him more than sixty days in the county jail for battery on a police officer.
The outraged victim of Filthy Herman was standing with her husband on the northwest corner of First and Harvard when the policemen arrived. Spencer sighed, parked on the east side of Harvard, slowly set the brake and turned off the headlights. He grabbed his flashlight and baton and followed Father Willie across the street.
"You call?" Father Willie asked the fortyish mousy woman who held a white toy poodle to her face and deferred to her tight lipped husband, a big man in a loose golf sweater and checkered pants.
"My wife was walking the dog," the man sputtered. "Just out walking our dog and she passed a house up there on Harvard and this filthy animal, this creature, exposed himself to her!"
"Where'd it happen?" Father Willie asked, opening his report book and leaning against a car at the curb, his hat tipped back as he wrote.
"Back up the street," the man said, "The third or fourth house."
"You see it, sir?" Father Willie asked.
"No, my wife ran home and got me, and came back here with her and she pointed out the house, but there was nobody on the porch. I was going to kill him." And the man put his arm around the skinny woman who clutched the toy poodle more tightly, lip quivering.
"What'd he do, ma'am?" asked Willie as he filled in the blanks for type of crime and location.
"He exposed himself! I told you!" said the man.
"Have to hear it from the witness," Spencer said.
"He yelled something horrible to me as I walked by," the woman answered brokenly. "And he showed himself. Oh, he was a horrible creature!"
"What'd he look like" asked Father Willie, writing a cursory narrative.
"He. he had no legs!" cried the woman. "He was a horrible, ugly little creature with, oh, I don't know, grayish hair and a horribly twisted body. And he had no legs! And he was naked! Except for a blue baseball cap!"
"I see," said Father Willie and then, unable to resist, "Did you notice anything unusual about him?"
And the woman answered, "Well, he had a tattoo on his chest, a woman or something. His porch light was on and I could see him very well."
"What'd he say to you when you passed?"
"Oh, God!" the woman said and the poodle yapped when she squeezed it to her face.
"Do we have to?" the man asked. "I'd like to go back and kick that little freak clear off the porch."
"You could," shrugged Spencer, "but he's a wiry little guy. Probably bite you in the knee and give you lockjaw."
"He said. he said. God!" the woman sobbed "Yeah," Spencer encouraged her.
"He said, 'I ain't got no left knee and no right knee, but look at my wienie!'Oh, God!"
"Yeah, that's our man all right," said Father Willie grimly. "Filthy Herman!"
After taking the complaining party's name, address and other routine information, the two policemen told them to go home and let the law deal with the little criminal. And they knew they stood a good chance of being punched in the balls or bitten on the thigh if they weren't careful. In that Filthy Herman was a legless man, not one team of policemen had ever had the good sense to call for assistance when arresting him. It was a matter of pride that two policemen with four legs between them should not have to call brother officers to help with this recurring problem.
"I'd like to punt the little prick sixty yards," Spencer said nervously as they climbed the steps to the d
arkened house of Filthy Herman.
"Wish we had a gunnysack to put him in. I hear he bites like a crocodile," said Father Willie, leading the way with his flashlight beam trained on the doorway.
The officers banged on the door and rang the bell several times until Spencer finally said, "Let's cut out. We tried. He's probably in there hiding. Let the dicks get a warrant and go down on Eighth Street during the day and pluck him off the bar at one of those gin mills where he plays the horses."
"Fine by me," Father Willie breathed, starting to imagine he heard a ghostly dragging chain above him in the dark old house. He looked up and saw dust falling from the porch roof which was sagging and full of holes and patched in several places with plywood and canvas.
Then they heard canvas tear and shingles fell on their heads as Filthy Herman sprung his surprise which put Spencer in Central Receiving Hospital for observation.
Spencer Van Moot was jolted forward almost out of his shoes, leaving his hat and flashlight behind as he flew crashing through Filthy Herman's front door while Father Willie stared in shock.
Father Willie slowly and incredulously realized what had happened when Filthy Herman came swinging back out the door, suspended by a heavy chain, and spit as he passed. Then he swung back in toward the doorway screaming, "C'mon and fight, you big sissy!" and spit again. Detectives who filed felony charges against Filthy Herman for the violent assault against Spencer Van Moot were to piece together the story the next day. The self-confessed attacker said he had become tired of being dragged off to jail every time he got a little bit drunk and flogged his dummy on the porch. Filthy Herman had decided to frustrate the next arrest by chaining himself to an ancient steel and porcelain freestanding bathtub in the second story bathroom of his home. He had acquired a fifty foot piece of chain from a fellow horse player on Eighth Street who worked at a wrecking yard, and with a tempered steel lock supplied by the same friend, had crisscrossed his torso, using the chain like the bandolier of a Mexican bandit. Then he encircled his waist and locked it in the front.
After his crime against the woman with the poodle, Filthy Herman had been in the bathroom on the second floor when he saw the officers arrive. He had planned to fight it out there in the bathroom but suddenly the swashbuckling plan burst forth. He crawled out on the porch roof, dragging his chain, until he was just over the unsuspecting officers at the front door beneath him. And without anticipating the consequences, he yelled "Geronimo!" and pitched forward through a hole in the porch roof, swinging down and in, striking Spencer Van Moot behind the neck with 150 pounds of beefy torso and propelling the policeman through the front door, splitting it in two and knocking the doorjamb ten feet across the room. Then he was swinging back and forth, screaming obscenities, spitting, snapping and challenging the bewildered Father Willie.
When Father Willie eventually came to his senses with Filthy Herman swaying dizzily in front of his eyes, the choirboy began yelling, "You dirty little bugger!" and swinging the nightstick wildly until he broke it on Filthy Herman's head.
Then by the time the neighbors, who were sick and tired of the crashing and screaming, called for additional police, Father Willie, had Filthy Herman punched silly.
It took an hour and a half to get Filthy Herman dragged back up on the roof by his chain, pulled into the bathroom and covered with a bathrobe until an officer from Central Property could arrive with bolt cutters large enough to handle the heavy links.
Spencer Van Moot was in the hospital neck and back spasms. Father Willie was out a week with two broken bones in his right hand. Filthy Herman had one tooth knocked loose, two black eyes and a broken nose.
Both Filthy Herman and his daughter wept in each others arms in court three weeks later and Herman was eventually put on probation for one year with the stipulation that he drink no alcoholic beverage. One week after the sentence Filthy Herman got drunk again, masturbated from the step of a fire truck and threw a fire extinguisher at an amazed fireman: Filthy Herman got six months in jail for that one, which proved what all policemen already knew: it's more risky to beat up firemen because they're popular.
So, while Spencer was meeting his Waterloo at the hands of Filthy Herman, Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate had to meander south into the ghetto of Wilshire Division, which would probably not be called a ghetto in any other large city in the world, to answer a call that ended up being just another attempt by Clyde Percy to get into Camarillo State Hospital. Clyde Percy was a seventy year old black man who lived in the vicinity of the Baldwin Hills reservoir. Because in the great flood of 1963 he had plunged into the raging water and rescued a drowning woman who was trapped in her overturned car, Clyde Percy was presented with a commendation by the City of Los Angeles, the first official praise he had ever been given in his entire life. Now he simply couldn't wander too far from the scene of his triumph and was the object of numerous radio calls. People would find Clyde Percy asleep in their unlocked cars or in the storage sheds of small businesses, and once, in a piece de resistance, he slept all night on a posture perfect mattress in the window of a department store in the Crenshaw shopping district. The next morning he was discovered by passing shoppers still in the store window, fully clothed, muddy shoes and all. He was snoring peacefully, slobbering out the side of his toothless mouth, dreaming of some woman far far back in his memory, holding onto an erection which only came in sleep. Clyde got ninety days that time.
"Wonder why Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie weren't assigned the call," Spermwhale grumbled to Baxter Slate. 'I'll bet they're off in some fuckin clothin store buyin some Lord Fauntleroy bow tie for Spencer or some tooty fruity boots. Man's forty years old and he dresses like an interior decorator or somethin."
The radio call which Spermwhale and Baxter Slate received concerned an open door a tremulous security-guard had found while making his rounds at a furniture store on the east side of Crenshaw. The security officer had heard ghostly sounds coming from within the store and though the sun had not yet set, it was dim and shadow filled inside. The guard was seventy-five years old and didn't really want to be a security guard but if he relied on Social Security to support him and his seventy-three year old wife they'd have to eat dog food five days a week instead of two.
"Go on about your rounds," Spermwhale told the old man. "Well check it out."
"I'll be right over there across the street by my car if you need me," the guard promised. 'I'll be close to my radio in case you need help."
"Sure," Spermwhale said, "stay there in case we need you."
And he patted the guard on the shoulder and pointed him toward his car which was not across the street as he thought but in the parking lot back of the building. The old man lost his car at least once a night.
When they were alone and dusk was deepening, Baxter said, "We're calling for another car, aren't we?"
"Nope," said Spermwhale, "it's just old Clyde Percy."
"Who?"
"Clyde the lifeguard. The old dingaling that pulled the broad outta the sewer back in the flood. Ain't you heard a him? He's always gettin busted for somethin or other."
"How do you know it's him?"
"His MO. He breaks into places right after they close and he eats up whatever's around and goes to sleep. I know it's him because a the noises the doorshaker said he made. Like a ghost. They always say that, people who call in."
"What's the noise?"
"He cries. Sits in there and cries. He sounds like a mournful moose. I tell you it's Clyde Percy in there."
But just in case, Baxter Slate unlocked the Ithaca shotgun from the rack and jacked one in the chamber when they walked single file into the darkened store looking for the mournful moose.
It was a small furniture store which advertised entire living room sets for six hundred dollars. Clyde Percy would have none of the cheap furniture. They found him in the rear on the second floor by the manager's office sprawled out on a nine hundred dollar tufted Chesterfield, eating a half empty bag of potato
chips and a banana, which one of the clerks had left behind. He wore his regular attire, which was two dirty undershirts and three outer shirts with a ragged colorless turtleneck sweater over all, a pair of stout flannel pants over longjohn underwear, run over combat boots and a World War II flier's hat without the goggles.
"H'lo, Clyde," Spermwhale said as Baxter lowered the riot gun and ejected the live round from the chamber.
"Aw right, Officer, aw right," said Clyde Percy, grinning happily and standing at attention, his purple lips smeared with banana, his skin blue-black in the shadows. "Y'all caught me fair an square. Don't need no handcuffs. I'm gonna come peaceable. Course if you wanna use handcuffs it's okay too."
"Ain't seen you around for a while, Clyde," Spermwhale said as they walked the old man down the stairs, each policeman holding an elbow because he reeked of wine and staggered on the landing.
"Got locked up last November. Jist in time for Thanksgivin. Ain't missed a Thanksgivin at Central Jail in twenny-eight years."
"You've been in jail since November?" Baxter asked as he navigated down the steep stairs gingerly, holding Clyde and the shotgun and now needing a flashlight in the gloom.
"No suh," Clyde Percy said. "This time a wunmiful thing happened to ol Clyde. I was sent to Camarilla State Hospital. The public defender say ol Clyde's crazy. An first I din't wanna go cause I likes your jail. I likes the sheriff's jail even better, no offense to you officers. He tell me, Clyde, we gonna get you sent to this crazy hospital and you gonna like it even better'n jail. So I say okay, and off I go up to Camarilla, and know what? They gives me a job up there teachin."
"Teaching?" Baxter said and stumbled with Clyde at the bottom of the stairs, dropping his riot gun and flashlight, kicking the light under, a counter in the dark.
While the two policemen got down on their knees to look for the lost flashlight, Clyde Percy picked up the riot gun helpfully and was holding it cradled in his arms like a baby when Sergeant Nick Yanov came through the front door.
"Holy shit!" yelled Nick Yanov, drawing, crouching, throwing his flashlight beam on Clyde Percy who had lifted the gun to his shoulder upside down and started eating potato chips over the prone bodies of the two policemen.
the Choirboys (1996) Page 14
