After the nightwatch stopped applauding the scowling Roscoe Rules, Lieutenant Finque tried to get everyone in really good spirits by showing them photos he had borrowed from homicide detectives of the monstrously bloody corpse of Nathan Zelinski, a seventy-two year old janitor who had been stomped to death by two sixteen year old boys during a burglary at a junior high school three years earlier.
"Drove his nose bones right down his throat," Lieutenant Finque said, "Old man actually drowned on his own blood. Took him almost forty-five minutes to die. According to their confessions they kept coming over and looking at him every once in a while."
"They have a fascination for such things," Baxter Slate whispered to no one in particular.
"Who?" Spermwhale asked.
"Kids."
"Reason I showed you;" the lieutenant continued, "is that the second boy was just released from Camp and is back in our division. The first got out four months ago."
And while the nightwatch passed the pictures around and cursed the courts and penal authorities and their lot in general, Sergeant Nick Yanov asked under his breath, "Lieutenant, did you have to do this?"
"Of course," the lieutenant answered. "I want them to know what kind of idiots we have to fight within the system."
"Don't you think they know? Why keep reminding them they're shoveling shit against the tide? Why?"
"We'll talk about it later," Lieutenant Finque said.
But they never did. On Nick Yanov's next rating report Lieutenant Finque wrote, "Sergeant Yanov needs a lot of seasoning before he can hope to be a top supervisor. Lacks maturity."
And to continue to show Sergeant Yanov who was boss, Lieutenant Finque said to the assembly, "Oh, and by the way, did you hear about the other young kids the Youth Opportunity folks placed at General Hospital for summer employment. They had lengthy drug records so they put them in the pharmacy washing bottles. You can guess the rest. And a couple of things we discussed at the supervisors' meeting," the lieutenant went on, now that he was getting warmed up. "We have some local businessmen who make frequent burglary and theft reports and don't want uniformed officers coming in the front door to take reports. Gives the place a bad name."
The lieutenant smiled smugly when he heard the roar this tidbit aroused. "Of course the captain gave them what for. You would've been proud of him."
"I always knew he was behind us," said Spermwhale Whalen. "I felt him there many times."
The lieutenant didn't know how to interpret Spermwhale's observation so he continued with the good news. "And you can all just quit grousing about how long you have to wait in court until your case is called. I've talked it over with the captain and he talked it over with the commander and he talked it over with the deputy chief."
"And he talked it over with Dear Abby who's runin this fuckin department," said Spermwhale Whalen.
"And he talked it over with his counterpart at the courts." said Lieutenant Finque ignoring the laughter. "Private counsel simply has priority at court trials over defendants with public defenders."
"Yeah," Spermwhale said, "most a the people we bust have public defenders who don't have to get out quick to make a few more bucks from some other client, so us cops and our civilian witnesses and victims have to cool our heel's while these black-robed pussies take care a their fuckin fraternity brothers. If they ain't got a monopoly I don't know who does. Who worries about cops?"
"Who worries about victims?" Baxter Slate observed.
"Them too," Spermwhale nodded.
"Well, it's good to get these things off our chests at roll-call," Lieutenant Finque said jauntily now that he had turned twenty-eight cheerful men into seething blue avengers. Then Lieutenant Finque said, "Sergeant Yanov's going to hold a gun inspection while I keep an appointment with the captain. There have been some dirty guns in recent inspections and the captain says he's going to start coming down hard on you men. You may not appreciate it but you work a damned good division. Even the people we serve are the best. Our citizens show a great interest in the Basic Car Plan meetings and they purchase lots of whistles."
"Hey, Lieutenant," Spermwhale said. "Is it true the station buys those whistles for seven cents?"
"I don't know the details," said Lieutenant Finque.
"That's a forty-three cent profit on each whistle," said Spermwhale.
"I don't know the details."
"Jesus, we musta made thousands a bucks with this caper," Spermwhale observed.
"I don't know, but it's for our Youth Services Fund so it's a worthy cause."
"Is it true there's some civilian whistle maker flyin all over the goddamn country tryin to sell the idea to other departments?"
"I'm not familiar."
"What a scam. You gotta hand it to some a the eunuchs in this department. Once in a while they come up with an idea. Why didn't I think a that? I coulda made enough in one year to pay off all my ex-wives!"
"Enough on whistles," Lieutenant Finque smiled nervously, since he was the eunuch who thought of it or at least who stole the idea from the senile old lady who thought crime could be stamped out if there were thousands of other old ladies running around blowing whistles, at bad guys.
"Maybe I could get in on the action, Lieutenant," Spermwhale persisted. "I got this idea for sellin one to every broad in the city. See, we design a whistle shaped like a cock and the part you hold is shaped like a pair a balls with two LAPD badges pinned to them. Our sales motto could be 'Blow for your local policeman.'"
"It might work, Lieutenant!" cried Francis Tanaguchi.
"That's a swell idea, Spermwhale!" cried Spencer Van Moot.
"I know a guy could design the whistles!" cried Harold Bloomguard.
Lieutenant Finque felt like crying. It always happened like this. He'd discuss a serious subject with the men and they'd end up making fun of him. Supervisor or not, he would have given, anything to punch Spermwhale Whalen right in his big, red, scarred up nose. And he'd have done it too if he weren't petrified of the fat policeman and if he weren't absolutely sure Spermwhale would break his back.
"I think you better hurry if you're going to make your appointment," Sergeant Yanov suggested, to save his superior officer from further trauma.
But before Lieutenant Finque walked out the door he said, "I'll tell you men one thing. Because of our whistles we've developed excellent rapport with the people we serve. If you should get in a fight with a suspect out there on these streets you don't have to worry. Our good people won't stand by and let you get kicked in the head!"
"No, they'll cut it off and shrink it," Roscoe Rules said dryly as Lieutenant Finque exited trembling.
Sergeant Yanov tried to make the gun inspection palatable by taking Harold Bloomguard's gun, looking down the barrel and saying, "Kee-rist, Harold, when was the last time you cleaned this thing? There's a spider been down there so long he has three hash marks on his sleeve."
Baxter Slate was one of three college graduates among the choirboys, the others being Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard, both of whom obtained degrees while police officers. Two of the others were upperclassmen in part time studies, and all but Spermwhale Whalen had some college units. Baxter Slate not only had his baccalaureate in the classics, but had been a graduate student and honors candidate when he dropped out of college in disgust and impulsively joined the Los Angeles Police Department five years earlier. He was an unusually handsome young man, almost twenty-seven years old. He lived alone in a one bedroom apartment. He had no plans for marrying and no ambition to advance in rank. He said he liked working uniform patrol, that it gave him a chance to live more intensely, that sometimes he seemed to live a week or a month in a single night.
Whereas Calvin Potts read every new book in the police library which he thought might help him pass the coming sergeant's examination, Baxter Slate read no books in the police library Since they invariably dealt with law, crime and police; Though Baxter Slate enjoyed doing police work he hated reading about it. And though Baxte
r Slate firmly believed that his extensive education in the classics had been the most colossal waste of money his mother had ever squandered and that his degree would never at any time in his life be worth more than the surprisingly cheap paper it was printed on, he nevertheless could not break old habits. He would occasionally, for the fun of it, struggle with Virgil and Pliny the Elder to see if he could apply their admonitions to the sensual, self-contained, alcoholic microcosm of choir practice which to Baxter Slate made more sense than the larger world outside.
Most of the choirboys had worked with Baxter as a partner at one time or another. He had been in the division three years and had worked Juvenile for nine months until he discovered he was a lousy Juvenile officer. Baxter thought he was also a lousy patrol officer. No one else said that Baxter was a lousy anything, except Roscoe Rules, who disliked Baxter for having ideas which confused Roscoe. At choir practice often drunkenly accused Baxter of using ten dollar words just to show off in front of Ora Lee Tingle who was so bombed on gin and vodka she wouldn't have known the difference if Baxter had spoken Latin. And as a matter of fact, Baxter could tell dirty jokes in Latin which amused all the choirboys except Roscoe.
"You and your faggy big words," Roscoe shouted one night as he soaked his feet in the MacArthur Park duck pond, watching warily that the ducks did not swim by and attack his toes.
"Baxter don't use big words," Spermwhale Whalen said, looking as though he would like to pulverize Roscoe Rules, who feared and hated Spermwhale even more than he feared and hated the little ducks.
"Well I think he does, goddamnit," Roscoe said but was careful to smile at Spermwhale when he said it.
Baxter was some forty feet away in the darkness, lying on a blanket and shaking his head in wonder that even here in the idyllic tranquilized and totally artificial world of choir practice, it was not entirely possible to escape hostility and violence.
"I think it's faggy and uppity to talk like that," Roscoe Rules said, while the other choirboys drank and teased Ora Lee Tingle or played mumbletypeg in the grass with confiscated and illegal ten inch stilettos or, like Spermwhale Whalen, tossed little stones on the water to watch the ripples, and to neck with Carolina Moon.
Finally Baxter uncoiled his lean body, brushed back his heavy umber hair, longer than anyone's but Spencer Van Moot's, who was constantly under fire from the watch commander to get a haircut, and said, "Roscoe, I sincerely try not to use any big words."
"There! See, you did it again!" Roscoe pointed, banging On the arm of his partner Whaddayamean Dean Pratt who was dozing on his blanket. "See, you said 'sincerely.' Shit. Faggy word. Faggy is what it is."
"I simply asked the fellows if."
"See! You did it again!" shouted the mean and drunken Roscoe Rules as he punched on Dean to arouse him, but his partner only whimpered drunkenly. "'Fellows.' How many cops you ever hear say 'fellows'? Cops say 'guys' or 'dudes' or 'studs' or 'cats,' but no cop in the history of LAPD ever said 'fellows. Nobody but you, Baxter Slate."
"He didn't say nothin faggy I heard," Calvin Potts said, and the tall black policeman was suddenly standing behind Roscoe Rules who was thinking that the only thing worse than a fag is a nigger and how much fun it would be to kneedrop Calvin Potts and puncture his kidney and smash his spleen like a rotten peach.
"For chrissake. Baxter, tell Roscoe what you said so I can relax," said Francis Tanaguchi who was lost in the expansive bosom of Ora Lee Tingle, trying to persuade her to pull the train for a few of the choirboys. She was now wearing only Spermwhale's T-shirt and her own skintight black flares as she held Francis Tanaguchi in her arms saying how fucking cute Nips are.
"Roscoe," Baxter said patiently, "I only said that policemen see the worst of people and people at their worst. I was simply trying to explain to you and me and all of us our premature cynicism. That's all I said and I wish I'd keep my big mouth shut."
"So do I," muttered Roscoe. "Fucking ten dollar words. A policeman only needs about a hundred words in his whole vocabulary."
"The only big words I use were taught me in the police academy, Roscoe," said Baxter. "Words like hemorrhage and defecation." Baxter took a drink of cold vodka and said, "You know, Roscoe, even you use euphemisms, police euphemisms, like calling your nightstick a baton because the LAPD says to call it that. I refuse to call it that. A baton is a plaything for young girls. There's no phallic connotation whatsoever. If I'm going to carry something to beat people over the head with I insist it have Freudian implications. I learned that in graduate school. Everything must have Freudian implications."
"You making fun a me, Slate?" Roscoe demanded, trying to stagger to his feet.
"You know, a graduate student would love to use a big faggy word like 'emasculated' on you, Roscoe. That's a favorite word of all graduate students. And they would say of your baton that's the true symbol of your sexual identity is the wooden appendage you store at the station. In other words, your cock's in your locker."
"Oh, I don't like you, Slate, I never liked you," said Roscoe Rules who really didn't like Baxter Slate any less than he liked Harold Bloomguard, Francis Tanaguchi, Calvin Potts and Spermwhale Whalen, not necessarily in that order. He only just tolerated his partner, Dean Pratt, who was starting to get on his nerves, and Father Willie Wright who seemed to be afraid of him.
"Let's talk economics instead of philosophy, Roscoe," Baxter Slate said, deciding to test the meanest choirboy. "I think that the inflationary period follows the prediction of the deficit meanders of corollary Harry, that Roscoes cannot breed in captivity and that Chandu the Magician is a cousin of the condor at Santa Barbara."
"I don't buy that faggy idea any more than the last one," Roscoe Rules said, passing the test.
"Whaddaya mean, Baxter? Whaddaya mean?" asked Whaddayamean Dean who had crawled across the grass into the conversation area.
"What do I mean, Dean, my friend?" said Baxter Slate. "I mean that I was a lousy Juvenile officer, that's what I mean. I mean that a battered child has a marvelous capacity to adjust to his torture and will ceaselessly love his battering parents. I mean that the mother of a sexually molested child will not leave nor truly protect the child from the father as long as the man has a good job or otherwise preserves that mother from an economic life which is more horrifying to her than the molestation of her child. I mean that the weakness of the human race is stupefying and that it's not the capacity for evil which astounds young policemen like you and me, Dean. Rather it's the mind boggling worthlessness of human beings. There's not enough dignity in mankind for evil and that's the most terrifying thing a policeman learns."
"Whaddaya trying to say, Baxter? Whaddaya trying to say?" pleaded Whaddayamean Dean drunkenly.
"I mean that twelve good men and true are a gaggle of nonprofessional neophytes conditioned by the heroics of cinema juries which inevitably free the defendant who is inevitably innocent. I mean that they can never really believe that a natural father could do such an unnatural thing to his child."
"I don't get it! I don't get it!" cried Whaddayamean Dean.
"I mean that doctors and professional men are the most arrogant and incompetent witnesses at any criminal proceedings and that they'll screw up your case for sure.
"I mean that the weak and inept parents will always refuse to surrender their neglected children to the authorities because they want to atone for failures with older children and the cycle inevitably repeats itself.
"I mean that perhaps economics, not morality, is our last consideration, and that the judge has a point when you plead with him to put a man away to save that man's family and the judge says, 'Swell, but who do you want me to let out?'"
"What's he mean? What's he mean?" yelled Whaddayamean Dean to the drunken choirboys. Dean was boozy enough for a crying jag now, the tears welling as he bobbed and weaved and almost fell over backward.
"And I mean that when policemen have to deal with small inflexible men in their own ranks, perhaps it becomes too much. And perhaps part
of the reason that Roscoe Rules is small and inflexible and insensitive is because traditional police administrators-men like Captain Drobeck and Commander Moss and Chief Lynch-are small and inflexible and insensitive and."
"I heard that faggy remark, Slate, you scrote!" said Roscoe Rules, still unable to stand.
"I mean that cops chase society's devils as well as their own, which becomes unbearably terrifying since the devil is at last only the mirror image of a creature utterly without worth or dignity. And that the physical dangers of police work are grossly overrated but the emotional dangers make it the most hazardous job on earth."
"Oh, Baxter, oh, Baxter," moaned the bewildered Whaddayamean Dean who was starting to get sick.
"I mean that I carry only two memories from my childhood in Dominican boarding schools where I was placed by my beautiful, well traveled mother: if you touch the communion wafer with your teeth it's not so good and should be avoided. And the only unforgivable sin is to murder yourself because there is absolutely no possibility of absolution and redemption, and."
"What the fuck're you babblin about, Baxter?" asked Spermwhale Whalen who was suddenly behind Baxter, having slept long enough to be more or less capable of driving home before dawn.
"Spermwhale! Thought you were stacking those Z's." Baxter Slate offered his partner a quick wide grin and a drink of vodka.
"Baxter, you sound like a silly pseudo intellectual horse's ass. You're gettin embarrassin. C'mon, I'll drive you to your pad." Spermwhale felt a stab of pain across the front of his skull when he lifted his young partner to his feet and helped steady him. Actually, Baxter Slate was rarely such a silly pseudo intellectual horse's ass, but he had been undergoing a prolonged period of despondency brought about partly because he thought he had been such an unsuccessful Juvenile officer.
The murder of Tommy Rivers was the final blow to his career as a Juvenile officer because Baxter Slate had foreseen the imminent demise of Tommy Rivers and had been powerless, or rationalized that he was powerless, to prevent it.
the Choirboys (1996) Page 16
