"Slide over me, honey," Tammy said as Sabrina pushed the electric switches which took the white leather seats back and down.
As he was gingerly lifting himself across Tammy's enormous belly, he worried that she might feel the gun, but she didn't. And he thought how sad it was that a pregnant girl should be doing this kind of work, and while he was feeling sad she reached up between his legs and squeezed, making him say, "Woo woo," and sit down on her hand.
"Ouch!" she cried, pulling her hand out. "You fucking near broke my wrist!"
"Sorry," said Harold.
Then he began to wonder if he was doing the right thing by getting in the car. But he knew he was very close to bringing in a two-banger and he just couldn't stop now. "You got fifty dollars, sweetie?" Sabrina asked abruptly.
"Sure."
"Well let's see it."
"Later, after we get where we're going."
"Ain't goin nowhere, We gonna do it right here."
"We are?"
Then it occurred to Harold that he had been honked and he had been solicited for money, but no one had specifically mentioned a sex act and he wondered if the arrest would be legal without it and just then Tammy honked him again and he grabbed her hand.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Harold said, desperately trying to remember the phrases Scuz had told him which would not be construed as entrapment.
"Why you just sittin there blowin bubbles off your tongue?" Sabrina asked.
The air was close in the darkness of the Cadillac with both big women pressing him. Then Harold remembered a word: "I'm looking for excitement!" he cried.
"Well, no shit!" said Tammy, and she honked him again but harder this time because she was getting sick and tired of dicking around, with the little creep.
"What the fuck's wrong with you?" Sabrina demanded and she leaned back against the driver's door and pulled her dress midway up her thigh.
"I just wanna know what I'm gonna get," Harold said, and now his voice was hoarse and parched and he feared he was going to lose it all.
"We tryin to show you!" said Sabrina. "You wanna do it or talk about it, man?"
"Talk about what?" asked Harold Bloomguard who was oh so close to his arrest.
"Ballin! Frenchin! What the fuck you think?" shouted Sabrina.
"Sucky fucky, five bucks, oh thank you," whispered Harold Bloomguard who felt he had his case at last.
"What?"
"Sabrina!" said Tammy as she adroitly unzipped Harold's pants and shoved her hand inside. "He's hung like a hummingbird. He don't wanna ball. He's some kinda freak! Probably wants to beat on us with his shoe or something!"
"No, I don't," said Harold Bloomguard, pulling her hand from his pants and trying to rezip, but getting caught on the shirttail of his white dress shirt which protruded six inches from his fly.
"What's goin on here?" Sabrina demanded.
"Yeah!" said Tammy.
"Nothing," said Harold Bloomguard, struggling with the zipper.
"Feel my pussy if you ain't a freak!" Sabrina ordered and took Harold's hand and dropped it on her thigh.
"Let's get in my car and go to some romantic place," said Harold Bloomguard as his cold wet hand slipped off Sabrina's warm dry flesh.
"Shit," said Sabrina.
"Crapsake," said Tammy.
"You a freak," said Sabrina.
"I'm not!" said Harold.
"You a freak!" Sabrina shouted.
"Like hell!" Harold Bloomguard answered indignantly.
Then he pulled free from Sabrina, reached over Tammy's belly, opened her door and crawled over her lap until he was on the street.
"You a freak!" screamed Sabrina, thinking they had lost the fifty dollar trick.
"I not a freak!" shouted Harold Bloomguard, reaching in his back pocket and exultantly pulling his shield. "I a cop!"
And while the two whores stared dumbstruck, Harold reached inside the car and grabbed both purses and the car keys from the ignition.
"Hey!" Sabrina gathered her wits too late to stop him. "Now I've got your keys and I've got your purses so you're not going anywhere but with me!" said Harold Bloomguard, ripping off the horned rimmed glasses to show them the real man beneath the disguise. "Just don't try anything funny!"
"Well I'll be gud-damned," said Sabrina to Tammy who was about to cry. "Po-lice Department got to be mighty hard up these days to be hirin little cock-a-roaches like this!"
"Out of the car!" demanded the little cock-a-roach, reaching back for his handcuffs, remembering that Scuz had said that in vice cases you always handcuff two suspects and sometimes one if there's any doubt at all.
"We goin with you, man, but you ain't gonna be puttin those things on no pregnant lady, hear me?" Sabrina said as the three were standing on the sidewalk beside the Cadillac.
Harold Bloomguard thought it over, decided not to force the issue now that they were obeying so nicely, and put the handcuffs back in his belt, saying, "All right, but behave yourselves."
As they walked slowly to Harold's car on the dark sidewalk, Harold Bloomguard started to feel a little sad once again.
"You're both so young," said Harold. "Bet you're not over twenty-five, are you?"
When the miserable whores failed to reply, Harold said, "Ever been arrested before?"
"Bout thirty times," said Sabrina.
"Bout forty times," said Tammy.
"Oh," said Harold. And he tried to cheer them up by saying something funny, "I have no altqurniquet but to do my job." Then he added, "I'm sorry about you and your baby and all."
"Why?" snapped Tammy, dabbing at her tears. "You didn't put it in my belly. You couldn't even get it up when I was playing with your dick, for chrissake."
"Well, it's not that I find either of you unattractive," Harold explained, "it's just that I'm a vice off."
And then Sabrina started to groan and the groan quickly turned into a wail and then to a deathless shriek.
"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!"
Sabrina grabbed Tammy's hand and then Tammy started to do it:
"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!'
"Don't do that," said Harold Bloomguard but they didn't listen to him. Harold looked around at the darkness and the houses and said, "You're resisting arrest, you know."
"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!" screamed the two whores in unison, and then, Sabrina leading, they started to run north on Oxford, hand in hand. Lights began coming on. Doors opened. A woman put her head out a window.
"I'm a policeman," said Harold Bloomguard. She closed the window.
Then Harold slung his purses over his arm and began jogging after the two whores, finding it easy to keep up at first, not particularly frightened now, just confused and embarrassed, wondering what the next move should be, wishing he had never presumed to catch a two-banger.
A strange thing happened. The two whores began to outdistance him as they turned west on Fourteenth Street and crossed over to the north sidewalk still screaming for help. Now Harold's heart began working a bit hard and he sprinted to catch up. Tammy turned and saw him closing in and dashed for the porch of the nearest house on the north side of the street where the front yards,were small and the old houses were bunched together.
"Help! Help!" Tammy screamed as she' banged on the door with one hand and held her belly with the other.
It was a sixty-five year old white man who came to the door, pulling his pants up and struggling with a bathrobe.
"What's going on here?" he said, switching on the light and squinting through the darkness.
"Help us!" Sabrina pleaded, standing on the porch next to Tammy, catching her breath.
Harold blocked the steps, holding his badge in his hand. "I'm a police officer!" he panted. "Go to your phone and call for help! Give your address!"
"Don't believe him!" Tammy said, leaning against the porch railing. "Please help me. I'm gonna have a baby!"
"I order you to call the police right now!" said Harold Bloom-guard.
"But you say y
ou're the police," the old man said, scratching his gray jaw stubble and looking from one to the other.
"I order you!" said Harold Bloomguard;
"Now just a minute, young fella, this's my house!" the old man said.
"Fred, you come in here and leave those lunatics be!" said a shrill voice inside.
Then Sabrina grabbed Tammy's hand and both girls pushed past Harold and began running back down the sidewalk the way they had come.
"I order you to get me some help, Fred!" Harold Bloom guard yelled as he turned and pursued the girls.
"Maybe you're a cop and maybe not. I wish you'd all stay for a while so I can find out what's happening!" the disappointed old man answered, but Harold Bloomguard had to concentrate on the prostitutes who had now passed a house where five young black men had been playing cards in the kitchen and were now attracted to the commotion out front.
The young men laughed as the girls ran past and the tallest one blocked the sidewalk and drained a bottle of beer and then tapped the bottle on his hand. Harold Bloomguard stopped.
"What for you chasin those little girls, man?" the youth demanded.
Harold Bloomguard puffed and panted and stood his ground. He reached for his badge and said, "I'm a police officer. Let me pass."
Then the others laughed and the tall one said, "That ain't no real badge. How I know who you be? I think you better jam off, baby. Leave those little girls alone."
Suddenly Harold Bloomguard,was gripped by strangely exhilarating rage, "Okay, asshole, I'm not a cop," he said, pulling, his gun and pointing it at the mouth of the young black man. "I'm a rapist! What the hell you gonna do about it?"
"No, I think maybe you are the PO-lice," the youth grinned, dropping the bottle to the sidewalk and stepping back for Harold to pass, as all the young men hooted and whistled while the chase continued.
The girls were plodding down Pico Boulevard now, trying to reach Western Avenue. Harold had to run hard to catch them, his purses still over the left arm, the gun in his right hand, the shirttail still protruding from his fly.
Sabrina ran into the street making a desperate lunge toward a car which had slowed on Pico at the sight of the two frantic women. She jerked the door open and was pleading with the man behind the wheel when Harold came running up behind, grabbed her hair and jerked her flat on her back as he fell, taking her with him.
Two women parsing in a green Oldsmobile began to scream hysterically and the car screeched to a stop as Harold fumbled with his gun and purses.
"I'm a policeman!" Harold yelled to them, thinking that all a vice cop ever did was tell people he's a policeman.
As Sabrina limped to her feet, Tammy teetered on the curb, puffing, blowing, staring vacantly into space. Then Sabrina was running toward Tammy and pulling her coat sleeve, and miraculously the pregnant girl began to run.
Harold still pursued, catching misty glimpses of people driving and walking by, shaggy blurs. And he heard disconnected sounds as he wiped the sweat from his eyes and caught the two whores at the busy intersection.
Sabrina spun around and swung desperately at Harold but missed, and her hand slammed into the wooden wall of a vacant newsstand. She cried out and turned, but Harold grabbed her hair again and his neck was burning as Sabrina broke loose and fell into the street, crawling twenty feet into the center of the intersection where she sprawled on her stomach, her dress pulled up over her plump pantyless behind.
Tammy then limped frantically into the street, arms dangling, coat half torn from her back, belly bulging dangerously. She skidded while yet fifteen feet from her partner and toppled over slowly to her knees. Then she leaned forward, almost in slow motion, until her distended belly touched the asphalt. Harold knelt on the pavement and panted and stared for many seconds as she tottered on the enormous mound. Then she rolled over slowly and deliberately and floundered there belly up like a harpooned walrus. Tammy blocked two lanes of traffic and Sabrina one and a half.
The air was still razor sharp when Harold Bloomguard, taking large gulps of it, dragged Sabrina bumping and crying out of the traffic lane across the asphalt until her foot lay next to the hand of Tammy who was all but unconscious, lying there, panting softly, eyes closed, pink tongue protruding.
Harold finally had the chance to put his gun back in his waistband, and he handcuffed Sabrina's ankle to Tammy's wrist with no resistance whatever. Then he sat down in the traffic lane, in the glow of many headlights, as motorists yelled and blew horns and made every guess but the right one as to what the hell was going on.
Finally he heard the siren and instinctively behaved like a policeman trying to clear the intersection. He waved his purses at the motorists who became frightened and ran from their cars, leaving them abandoned and making things worse.
They came from all directions, painting the streets with rubber: radio cars, motorcycles, plainclothes units. Five separate hotshot calls had gone out. Neighbors complained of a man with a gun, a woman screaming, a purse snatch in progress, a man assaulting women and a mental case exposing himself. A code four, that suspects were in custody, was broadcast and still they came. Their emergency lights bathing Pico Boulevard in a crimson glow, lining up on both sides of the street, making the traffic jam more impossible.
Sergeant Yanov specifically put out an order for units to resume patrol. And yet they came. For policemen are by nature and training inquisitive and obtrusive. Twenty-one police units ultimately responded and a huge crowd gathered after Harold, Sabrina and Tammy had been whisked away. Officers and citizens asked many questions of each other which none could answer.
The prostitutes were treated at the emergency hospital for contusions and abrasions prior to being booked and Harold Bloomguard was surprised to discover a seven inch cut that began at his left earlobe, crossed the jawbone and ended on the neck. It was not a deep cut and only required a disinfectant.
"Must've gotten it from Sabrina's fingernails," Harold told Scuz when the girls were booked and they were back at the station composing a complicated arrest report.
"Harold, I thought you was smart," Scuz said. "I told you these're fucking misdemeanors. They ain't worth nothing, these vice cases. Who told you to go out and get hurt?"
"Sorry, Scuz, I just. I just wanted to win the game."
"I oughtta kick your ass for gettin hurt."
"I didn't get hurt, just this scratch oh my neck."
"You coulda got killed! For what? A game? I ask you don't get hurt. That asking too much?"
"Sorry, Scuz."
"There's lots a vice sergeants in this town that'd pat you on the ass and write you an attaboy for bringing down the whores. But I ain't one a them. Risking your life for a shitty vice pinch! I thought you was smart!"
Then Sergeant Scuzzi paced around the vice office stepping on his shoestrings, and Harold sat quietly with the other two new lads on the block. Sam Niles and Baxter Slate were falling down drunk after having sat in the bar for three hours waiting for Scuz and Harold Bloomguard who were busy with other things. The two choirboys had swilled free drinks all evening.
"You kicking me off the squad?" Harold asked sheepishly.
"I oughtta kick you all off. Christ, you almost get killed and these other two twenty-six year old rummies get swacked sucking up bourbon."
"I was drinking Scotch, Scuz," said Sam Niles who held his head in both hands.
"Shut up, Niles!" Scuz said, relighting his cigar which was so badly chewed there were soppy flakes of tobacco stuck all over his lips and chin.
"Okay, you three just watch it from now on. Bloomguard, you need a keeper. I'm gonna supervise you personal. Make sure you stay alive the weeks you're here. Slate, you and Niles better keep your boozing under control, hear me?"
"Yes, Sergeant," Baxter Slate said. He was sitting woodenly, trying to convince Sergeant Scuzzi that he was cold sober.
"Fucking kids," Scuz said, shaking his head at the three repentant choirboys. "And another thing, Slate and Niles, I'd like to kno
w how Pete Zoony got that knot on his face tonight. He was working fruits with you two a little earlier, wasn't he?"
"Yes, Sergeant," Baxter Slate said.
"Don't call me sergeant."
"Yes, Scuz," said Baxter Slate, who was trying to keep from vomiting.
"Lotta fucking mysteries around here," said Scuz. "Okay, you three go home and get some sleep. I want you in good shape tomorrow night. Gonna try to take a big poker game. And I'll be along to make sure you don't get killed!"
The three choirboys left then. Baxter vomited in the parking lot and felt much better. Sam said his headache was going away. Harold was buoyant from getting three whores his first night on vice. They wanted to go to choir practice but thought they better heed Scuz's advice. Then they decided to stop at the park just to see if any of the choirboys were still there.
"Drive by Pico and Western on our way," Harold said as Baxter aimed his Volkswagen in an easterly direction, not as sober as he thought he was.
"What for?"
"Wanna show you guys how far we ran," Harold said.
"Who gives a shit?" Sam Niles said, already sorry he had decided to come along to choir practice.
"Come on, lemme just show you," Harold pleaded, and Baxter smiled understandingly and said, "Sure, Harold."
When they got to the intersection, Harold insisted they circle the block and told the interested Baxter Slate and the disinterested Sam Niles how the chase began. He showed them Fred's house and the house where he drew down on the young black man.
"You know it's sad working vice," Harold said. "Those girls were young. All the girls I busted tonight were young."
"Their job demands the hope and vigor of youth," Baxter Slate said. He was beginning to feel better, reviving in the night air.
"Maybe so," Harold said. "Maybe so."
"Just like our job," Baxter added.
"If we're going to choir practice, let's go," Sam Miles said, sitting in the back seat of the Volkswagen with his long legs turned sideways, not enjoying his cigarette because his body wanted more oxygen than he was giving it.
the Choirboys (1996) Page 28
