the Black Marble (1977)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Homer's head was hanging around the squad room for a few days after they found it. The preserving fluid had long since leaked, and now Homer's head was putrefied, blackened, engorged.

  Homer took with him to eternity the face of a gorilla.

  One day Ambrose Schultz happened to notice that clerk typist, Lupe Rodriguez, had made her weekly trip to the panaderia and bought four pounds of delicious stone-ground, corn tortillas, handmade in Boyle Heights by Mexican women squatting over brick firepits. Ambrose stole the tortillas out of Lupe's sack when she went to the john, and he left Homer's head inside. Lupe Rodriguez, a perennial dieter and incurable nibbler, was right in the middle of reading a sexy crime report when she reached down inside the sack to nibble. It was odd. The tortillas felt soggy. And hairy? They say her shrieks could be heard clear up in the chief's office. It was the best joke Ambrose Schultz pulled that year.

  Until Ambrose happened to be handling a homosexual murder wherein one lover strangled the other one and whacked off his penis with a handsaw. Rodney, the demented survivor, said he kept Claude's ragged frontispiece in a fish- bowl on his mantel to show his friends at a dinner party he gave after his lover had disappeared. The dinner party was not a success in that the first guest to examine the strange floating fish ran screaming to a telephone. Rodney couldn't understand it because he had spent a fortune on stuffed squab and party favors. He later told detectives he couldn't bear to part with that part of Claude just yet, and besides, he thought the penis in a pickle jar would be tacky, but in a fish- bowl it would be a great conversation piece. The fishbowl and contents ended up in the care of Ambrose Schultz. Poor Lupe Rodriguez transferred to Personnel Division after that one. Memories.

  "I said we've still got several victim contacts to make."

  "Pardon me, Natalie?"

  "I was talking to you."

  "Sorry," he said, smiling pleasantly. "We have some more victims to contact, I think."

  And that was the way the day went. Almost. The difference being that at 6:00 p. M. that day, when she should have been off-duty-when she should have been home in the bathtub, sipping a gin and tonic, listening to Englebert Hum- perdinck sing his heart out-she was cowering on a napless carpet of a dingy apartment corridor, trying her best to keep her sphincter muscles tight and her bladder in control. (Oh God, I'm not wearing panties today!) For the first time in her entire police career she was on the verge of being shot to death. And it was all her fault. Not Valnikov's. Hers.

  The call came at 4:20 p. M. It s never a call exactly, it's a scream. First the hotshot beeper over the radio. Then a shrill voice: "All units in the vicinity and 6-A-39! Officers need help, Lexington and Vermont! Shots fired! Officers under sniper fire!"

  And then, heaven help any pedestrian or motorist within a hundred feet of a police car. Coffee cups splashing in the street. Dozing policemen jerking upright. Seat belts click and whir tight. Engines roar, transmissions scream. A hundred yards of burning rubber is smeared on Hollywood asphalt, curb, sidewalk. And, all too often, two police cars (one in compliance with regulations, using siren, another in a hurry to be first, also using his siren) collide at a blind intersection and never get to the call.

  Probably the only Hollywood unit on the street which proceeded in its original direction was 6-W-232. Natalie was outraged.

  "Valnikov, didn't you hear the hotshot call?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Aren't you going to roll on it?"

  "Well, I hadn't planned to. We're over a mile away in heavy traffic. Besides, there'll be plenty of coverage."

  "Well that tears it!" Natalie sneered. "Are you a police officer or not!"

  "Do you want me to go to the call? If you do . . ."

  "Of course I do. Jesus Christ!"

  "All right, Natalie," Valnikov shrugged. Then to please her, he stepped on the accelerator. They speeded up to twenty miles an hour. Natalie was beside herself.

  "Put your frigging foot in the carburetor!" she yelled.

  "All right, Natalie. Calm yourself," he said.

  Valnikov looked around cautiously, tightened his grip on the wheel, and speeded up to thirty miles an hour. Natalie gurgled and rolled her eyes.

  Surprisingly, there were only four radio cars and one other plainclothes unit at the scene when they arrived. Still, it was bedlam. The radio cars were parked on the curbs, their doors wide open on the street side. Rush-hour traffic couldn't pass down the narrow street and was backed up for blocks. People were on their front lawns, and on balconies of nearby apartment buildings, and hiding behind palm trees. No one wanted to miss the police shooting somebody to death. Or being shot.

  One young policeman, hatless, red-faced, was crouching behind his radio car screaming into the uncoiled hand mike. When he was finished he threw the mike into the car.

  "Down! Get down!" he screamed at Natalie as she jumped out of the detective car and ran toward the black-and-white, skirt hiked up over her knees, revolver in hand.

  "What's going on?" Natalie yelled, eyes ablaze.

  Valnikov struggled to get free of his seat belt. He'd never pulled it so tight before. Natalie had startled him into it.

  "A barricaded suspect!" the young bluesuit yelled. "Upstairs in the back! He threatened to kill his wife and when she ran out the door he starts popping caps at her! She safys he's got an army rifle and three handguns in there!"

  "You call for SWAT?" Natalie yelled. They were ten inches apart, screaming into each other's face.

  "Yes!" the young cop yelled, spraying her with saliva.

  "Is there a sergeant here!" Natalie sprayed him back.

  "No!" he screamed.

  "Valnikov!" Natalie screamed over her shoulder as he finally got out of the car and came toward them. "Valnikov, you're in charge here!"

  "Are you a sergeant?" The young cop sprayed him wetter than Natalie had.

  Valnikov couldn't seem to find his handkerchief but he remembered it was soiled from the flow of vodka-induced mucus that morning. He didn't want Natalie to see a dirty handkerchief so he wiped his face discreetly on his sleeve.

  "Are you a sergeant!" the young bluecoat screamed again.

  "Yes," Valnikov said, wishing everyone would stop yelling. Then he decided he'd better pin his badge to his coat pocket before a young policeman shot him dead.

  "Whadda you want me to do, Sergeant!" the young cop yelled.

  "Well," Valnikov began, as tactfully as possible, "I was wondering if you could stop spitting in my face? And, Natalie, I think you should wipe the moisture off your glasses. This is a dangerous situation and you've got to be able to see."

  "SWAT's on the way, Sergeant!" the young cop screamed. "I've called for detectives and the watch commander! I've called for an ambulance in case we have any wounded! I've ..."

  Valnikov turned away letting the spray strike his left cheek and then he did something Natalie thought extraordinary. He put his hand over the young policeman's mouth. A broad, strong hand. He clamped the lad's mouth shut and held on.

  "Please, son," Valnikov said quietly. "I can't hear you because you're hollering so loud. When I let you talk again I want you to try to whisper. Now, whisper to me where the barricaded suspect is."

  Natalie watched the young policeman's bulging eyes start to stabilize. His face was reddening, however, because he was having trouble breathing through his nose. He grabbed Valnikov's wrist and nodded. Valnikov released him.

  "Thanks, Sergeant, I needed that," he said.

  "Oh, Jesus Christ!" Natalie said to her Friz.

  "Follow me, Sergeant!" the young cop said, and before Valnikov could grab him again, he was gone, duck-walking across the lawn toward the open door of the apartment building where another policeman crouched, fingering the trigger guard of a shotgun.

  "I'm sorry we got involved in this, Natalie," Valnikov said reproachfully as he followed the cop across the lawn toward the ominous opening. Then they heard glass break, which caused everyone, Valnikov included, to fall flat
on the pavement by the doorway.

  "Son of a bitch aims a rifle out the window every minute or so!" said a craggy cop with a shotgun. "His wife says he's got a semiautomatic rifle and ..."

  "Where's the rest of the policemen?" Valnikov asked.

  "Upstairs, second landing," said the craggy cop.

  The young cop who screamed so much was crouched behind Valnikov, peeking up at that shattered broken window, his service revolver at the ready. Pointed right at Natalie's temple. , Natalie turned and found herself looking down the black hole of a four-inch Smith and Wesson. She could see the lands and grooves from a glint of sunshine.

  "Oh, my God," she said and Valnikov quickly pushed the gun muzzle away. The young cop hadn't noticed a thing.

  And then all hell broke loose. PLOOM! PLOOM! PLOOM! A whoosh of air. Windows shattered. A tire exploded.

  "Who's shooting?"

  "What the hell!"

  'The bastard's got a cannon!"

  So far, Valnikov noted, nothing unusual had happened. It was a typical barricaded-suspect situation. The kind that rates a small column in the second section of the morning paper, unless a cop gets killed. Then it's front page. So far it was ordinary. Everything screwed up.

  A domestic scene. Probably caught his wife cheating. Or she caught him. Maybe the scrambled eggs were too slimy. I love you. I hate you. I love you so much I'm going to kill you. And he tries. He fails. I'm going to kill myself, then.

  But first of all I'm going to shoot up the goddamn street.

  Actually, the berserk gunman yearned for the same things a "sustaining" Junior Leaguer in a Pasadena mansion did: attention, recognition, celebrity. He could only get it by playing a scene he'd seen in a thousand movies all his life: He was going out with guns blazing. Watch out, you coppers! Stanley Kravitz ain't going alone!

  All of this was going incoherently through Valnikov's mind. Usually, he'd been called in when Stanley Kravitz lay dead, having tired of the game, having put his own rifle in his mouth and fired with his big toe. Valnikov had learned it's hard to fire with the big toe. Sometimes they missed and the side of their skulls cracked off but they lived. On an intravenous diet forever. Never again to complain about slimy scrambled eggs. Looking rather like slimy scrambled eggs. Sometimes, like this, Valnikov was there even before Stanley Kravitz fired with his big toe. But then a young cop with eyes like balloons would usually put one right in Stanley's ten ring, doing a better job on Stanley than he could have done on himself.

  Before Valnikov moved up the stairs toward the upper landing where five policemen with shotguns and revolvers had fired twenty-three rounds through Stanley Kravitz' door, before he tried to quiet down five other policemen with balloon eyes. Valnikov turned to Natalie and said sadly, "Why did you want to come here, Natalie? I wish you hadn't insisted on it."

  And then Stanley Kravitz (whose real name was William Allen Livingston) opened Act II with an M-14 and pinned everybody inside the building for two hours. And darkness fell.

  A command post was set up. The SWAT truck arrived with spotlights. Deputy Chief Digby Bates hovered safely over the building in a helicopter, his teeth clenched in determination, face pressed to the glass, hoping the photographers below had enough light, and telephoto lenses on their Nikons.

  It was ten minutes after dark that William Allen Livingston got sick and tired of the noisy police helicopter, and risked leaning out the window to fire up at the chopper. He shot a six-inch shard out of the bubble, causing Deputy Chief Digby Bates to forget about photographers with telephoto lenses and scream: "Let's get the fuck OUT of here!" spraying the pilot with saliva.

  And then the situation got totally out of control, and twenty guns responded to the sniper by making a ruin of the side of the building where Livingston had barricaded himself. The police officers trapped inside heard Livingston speak for the first time. He played Act IV the way he'd been taught in Saturday matinees. He said, "I'm coming out, coppers! With guns blazing!"

  But before the barricaded suspect could get his guns blazing, a frenzied young cop on the stairwell screamed, "The lights!" And five bluecoats banged away with revolvers at the two wall sconces lighting the narrow hallway now that the sun had set.

  Valnikov was momentarily deafened. Natalie was holding her ears. The uniformed cops fired eighteen rounds at the two lights. In the movies one would do. In real life, when adrenaline turns an arm to licorice, eighteen rounds won't do. They were covered with plaster dust. They could hardly breathe from the falling plaster and burning gunpowder. They missed the two lights completely. There was one hole in a lampshade.

  They were reloading when Valnikov raised his voice for the first time. He shouted: "Stop it! This is giving me a headache!"

  "The lights, Sergeant!" a young cop babbled.

  "We're exposed to his fire!" a tall cop added.

  "He'll be coming out!" a fat cop promised.

  And then Natalie gasped because Valnikov stood, his gun in front of him at the ready, and advanced down the hallway toward the bullet-riddled door of William Allen Livingston, known to Valnikov as Stanley Kravitz, corpse-to-be.

  Watching the door carefully, keeping as close to the wall as possible, covered with dust from the bullet-riddled walls and ceiling, Valnikov did something that no one had thought of.

  He unscrewed the light bulb.

  The hallway was immediately plunged into darkness. One policeman had a flashlight. He trained it on the door when Valnikov returned to his position.

  Never one to avoid a cliche, William Allen Livingston yelled again. He said: "I'm coming out coppers and I'm taking some of you with me!"

  "Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" Valnikov yelled back. "Let's talk about it. Let me come in and talk to you. I'm sure there's something we can ..."

  When the door flew open, Valnikov threw his heavy body across Natalie Zimmerman. William Allen Livingston lost several ounces of urine and defecation when the fusillade of .38 caliber and .00 buckshot devastated him, but, considering he was struck with twenty-seven lead projectiles, his total weight was increased considerably. The homicide detectives discovered later that the gun he died with was unloaded. He had obviously decided not to take anybody with him. But at least he got one wish. Even though he hadn't shot a cop and didn't rate any more than page thirteen, the siege was so grandiose that it was on the inside front page the next morning.

  It made a hell of a flaming explosion, that last volley. One continuous roar in fact, which stayed with Natalie Zimmerman through it all, even while Valnikov, arms around her, led her down the back stairway, through the throngs of policemen, past the reporters, by the command post where Deputy Chief Digby Bates, wearing a flak jacket, was already preparing his statement, his good side facing the television camera crew across the street. Luckily, the detective car was not boxed in by the crowds of laughing, jeering, cheering, Hollywood onlookers who were having a whale of a good time.

  There was a Good Humor man double parked beside their detective car selling frozen bananas. He'd busted two stoplights when he heard about the seige on the radio. Last time there was a big deal like this he'd been lucky enough to be there when a young rock singer leaped eight stories from the penthouse suite of a record company that wouldn't publish his music. The Good Humor man had strolled through the crowd and made thirty-two bucks selling ice cream and soda pop to all the folks with throats parched from yelling: "Jump, you chickenshit!"

  Valnikov waited until the Good Humor man made a triple sale to a guy with two kids. One child sat on daddy's shoulders to see the body better when it was removed.

  Natalie got in the car, lit a cigarette and smoked shakily. She couldn't keep her legs still. Nor her chin.

  Finally Valnikov said, "Move that ice cream truck. I've got to get out.''

  "Fuck you, Jack," said the Good Humor man, not knowing Valnikov was a cop. "I'm selling ice cream."

  Then Valnikov drew the revolver from his waist holster, pointed it at the astonished ice cream vendor who wa
s holding an ice cream bar in one hand and a fistful of currency in the other.

  "If you don't move that truck, I'll put a hole right through your Fudgsicle," Valnikov said.

  While the ice cream truck clanked across a driveway with its driver yelling to the bluecoats that he'd found another madman with a gun, Valnikov was driving Natalie Zimmerman back toward Hollywood Station.

  Finally she said, "Valnikov, where're we going?"

  "We're going end-of-watch," he said. "We've had a very long day."

  "We've got to go back! We were witnesses! We've got to give our statements!"

  Valnikov shook his head and said persuasively: "There were so many policemen, nobody'll even remember us. Besides, what can we say? We didn't fire any shots. Our story isn't important or relevant. A man committed suicide. A dozen policemen witnessed it and helped him do it."

  "But ..."

  "Somebody might find out we were at the scene and ask us some questions later. We didn't take part in the man's suicide. Why should we sit up all night while the shooting team interviews and reinterviews, and draws diagrams and takes pictures and . . . well, I think I'm too tired for all that nonsense so I'd just as soon go home, Natalie."

  It was a very dark night in Hollywood. For a Friday, the car traffic was not particularly heavy. Of course Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard were a mess thanks to the tourists, but Valnikov took the side streets. He drove, as always, ten miles an hour.

  Natalie said, "Valnikov."

  "Yes."

  "I'm sorry I browbeat you into driving to that call."

  "Browbeat me?"

  "Well ... we didn't ... I didn't . . . well . . . you were ..."

  "Natalie, would you like to go to a movie? Not tonight, of course. Maybe next week? Or in two weeks? Maybe you could pick a first-run movie you'd like to see? I haven't been to a movie in ... I don't know how long."