The Glitter Dome

by Joseph Wambaugh

  It was a 1920s Spanish-style apartment building, which meant it had a basement for sure. Ten minutes later the two young narcs were in the basement with their homemade resistors, wires and alligator clips, perfectly willing to risk a few years in the slam for illegal wiretapping.

  Poor old Cal Greenberg had said it best: An unlucky policeman’s life passes through four phases—cockiness, care, compromise, despair. The lucky ones don’t reach phase four. The Weasel and Ferret were still in phase one. Swashbucklers.

  But the telephone box was practically inaccessible with all the furniture and piles of junk stacked everywhere. Besides, the guy wasn’t worth all this trouble. The Ferret went back to the car and returned with a stethoscope from their bag of tricks. Then they were in the upstairs hallway, the Ferret watching the stairway and the Weasel with his stethoscope pressed to the door, listening for hot talk from Tuna Can Tommy. But the telephone was too far away.

  After fifteen minutes Tuna Can Tommy made a call. All the Weasel could hear was a brief muffled monologue. The Weasel took the stethoscope out of his ears, signaled to the Ferret, and both narcs then went to the window leading out onto the fire escape. Tuna Can Tommy’s draped window was four feet from the railing, close enough to hang on with one hand, reach across the brick wall with the other, and raise the window if it was unlocked. The entire illegal maneuver if mismanaged could result in a three-story fall to the alley below. They didn’t hesitate. After a quick huddle, the Ferret, being the most agile, climbed over the railing and the Weasel went to distract Tuna Can Tommy. Daredevils.

  The Weasel knocked at the door, and after a moment Tuna Can Tommy opened it with the chain lock holding.

  “Pardon me,” the Weasel said. “I’m looking for Martha Beagle-lump. Does she live here?”

  “Never heard of her,” Tuna Can Tommy said.

  “Oh, that’s odd. I was sure this was the right apartment.”

  “No, you have the wrong apartment.”

  “Do you know a lady about fifty years old in this building? Lives alone? Wears butterfly glasses? Sort of walks like a rabbit? Hippety hop?”

  “No, not in this apartment,” Tuna Can Tommy insisted.

  “Thanks anyway,” the Weasel said cheerfully, as the fat man closed the door.

  Two minutes later he joined the Ferret on the fire escape, where the heavily draped window was now opened eight inches.

  “Hello, lemme talk to Flameout,” they heard him say on the telephone. After a pause he said, “Flameout? It’s me, Dudley. How’s Tarnished Gem look in the fifth? Yeah? Okay, get me down for five across. Yeah, that’s all. Thanks.”

  Shit. He was calling his bookie. It was a goddamn vice case all the way. Lewd phone calls. Gambling. Next thing he’d turn into a whore or something. Heavyweight drug dealer? Bullshit!

  Then Tuna Can Tommy dialed the telephone again and he said, very officiously: “Hello, is this Roberta Philbert? Yes? Mrs. Philbert, I’m calling for the Santa Monica Research Institute of Consumer Affairs. We’re trying to determine what kind of laundry detergent the average housewife uses. We’ll be happy to send you, with our compliments, a gift certificate for fifty dollars’ worth of the detergent of your choice if you’ll just answer a few simple questions.”

  There was a pause, and the Ferret and Weasel began grinning like cats. This sounded like old Tuna Can Tommy, all right.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Tuna Can Tommy. “First, I’d like to know which detergent you’re using now. Yes. Uh huh, and is it strong enough to get the dirt out of your kids’ playclothes? Yes? How about your husband’s shirts? Does he wear white shirts? No? How does it perform on white? Say, underwear? Your husband’s underwear? Yes? And the kids’ underwear? Does it perform adequately? And your underwear? Uh huh, and can you tell me, what kind of underwear? No, not theirs. Yours. Do you wear white underwear? Uh huh, and do you wear other colors? How about red? Do you wear bikini underwear? Hello? Hello!”

  The Weasel and Ferret held a quick conversation outside Tuna Can Tommy’s door.

  “We got nothing to bust him for,” said the Ferret. “Nothing that’ll hold up in court.”

  “This is bull shit anyway,” the Ferret said. “We’re narcs!”

  “Let’s jack him up a little bit. We could spend a month sticking to his wall like freaking mosquitoes. If he confesses and throws himself on the mercy of the cop, we’ll take him down and book him. Otherwise we’ll terrorize him a little bit and tell him to take his Polaroids to Malibu. Virgin territory and all that.”

  “Go for it,” the Ferret agreed, and this time it was he who knocked on the door, yelling, “Mr. Small! It’s the mailman! I have a registered letter for you!”

  And when Tuna Can Tommy unslid his chain and turned the latch, the door burst open and he was caught in a wristlock and choke hold by what had to be a Hell’s Angels enforcement squad and he had a passing panicky wish that he’d given away all the Polaroids. When the mortician gave his mother his remains and personal things, he didn’t want her to know about the other life.

  Tuna Can Tommy could have kissed both of them after they pushed him down on the couch and told him to stop screaming or they’d cut his fucking throat and that they were Los Angeles police officers. He examined the badge closely.

  “You are cops! You are cops!” Tuna Can Tommy cried. That badge is just like the one on Dragnet!”

  “Jesus, you’re a real screamer, ain’t ya,” the Weasel said. “Can’t you talk in an ordinary tone a voice?”

  “I’m sorry,” Tuna Can Tommy said. “I was so frightened! I’m so happy you’re cops!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the Ferret said. “Listen, we can’t dick around with ya. We got information you’re the masked man leaving his nudie pictures around town. No sense lying about it. Our crime lab is the best in the world. Interpol and Scotland Yard come to us. Our scientists subjected your pictures to a spectograph, monograph, and polygraph. There’s no point in lyin and denyin. They got every freckle and mole on your tubby little frame pinpointed by a fluoroscope and gyroscope.”

  “All we gotta do is get a court order, make you pull your pants down, bingo, it’s all over,” the Weasel said. “I don’t see how you can get outa this one.”

  “Ain’t no way,” the Ferret said. “You might as well tell us all about it, make you feel better.”

  “Can’t say I blame you for what you done,” the Weasel said. “I got a thing for sucking their pants off myself. And I don’t care what kind a detergent they use.”

  “You know everything!” Tuna Can Tommy sobbed.

  “A course we know everything,” the Weasel said. “Ya said ya watch Dragnet, for chrissake!”

  “I’m sorry I did it,” Tuna Can Tommy blubbered. “Can’t you give me another chance? I never been arrested.”

  “Well, we might, but we heard some other tidbits lately. Oh, by the way, they been directing sound waves at your house for about a month now. You feel funny sometimes when you go to bed? Itchy in the crotch maybe? Funny sort a wiggly feeling in your tummy? Maybe after one a your phone calls? Maybe your dork gets hard?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Tuna Can Tommy said, weeping openly.

  “That’s from the sound waves,” the Ferret said. “We learned it from the Russians. They do it to our embassies. Makes you goofy after a while. Half the fucking ambassadors in Europe end up making phone calls late at night asking broads about their underwear. It ain’t all your fault, Tommy.”

  “My name’s Dudley,” the fat man cried. “Tommy’s my alias!”

  “Well, we gotta tell ya, your bad habits know no limits, Tommy,” the Weasel said, but Tuna Can Tommy was crying so hard he could hardly hear him. “We discovered through our latest sound waves that you’re also involved with bookmakers. Christ, I like underwear too, but I try to control some bad habits: Polaroids, bookmakers, flogging your dummy. You gotta stop somewhere, Tommy.”

  “I only bet on horses once in a while,” Tuna Can Tommy wailed. “I won’t do it anymore!�
��

  “And the last thing is, we know you’re a doper, Tommy,” the Ferret said. “Now just turn over your stash to me and it’ll go a lot easier on ya.”

  “I’m not!” Tuna Can Tommy wailed. “I’m not. I work every night at the Swifty Messenger Service. I’m the best and speediest deliveryman they have. Speedy messengers can’t be dope fiends!”

  “You can’t give some people a break,” the Weasel said to the Ferret. “Get your coat, Tommy, we ain’t gonna stand here and watch your sinuses drain.”

  “Wait, please!” Tuna Can Tommy cried, getting up and running into the bedroom toward the nightstand drawer.

  Both startled narcs drew their guns, and after they got Tuna Can Tommy’s renewed burst of terror under control, they sat him on the bed and removed the package from the drawer. He had exactly fifteen dexis and twelve reds, depending upon whether he wanted to go up or down. “That’s all the dope I’ve got,” Tuna Can Tommy sobbed. “I got it at Flameout Farrell’s place. You probably know he’s my bookie.”

  “We know everything.” The Weasel nodded.

  Then the Weasel said, “Bookies don’t usually offer uppers and downers to their clients.”

  “Flameout didn’t sell them to me. In fact, nobody sold them. Some guy came in Flameout’s restaurant and gave them to me one day. Drives a Bentley. I think he’s a big coke connection!”

  “Another big connection,” the Ferret groaned. “What makes you think that?”

  “Somebody mentioned it. He’s also a big horseplayer. I heard he drops maybe a thousand a day at the track and thinks nothing about it!”

  “Yeah?” the Weasel said. A grand a day. Maybe this could turn into a drug case after all. The Ferret nodded at him. They were getting sick and tired of dicking around with Tuna Can Tommy.

  “Okay, Tommy, now you listen to me,” the Weasel said. “We might be able to let you slide this time if you’re cooperative. It’s called trading up. Little fish for big fish. You understand?”

  “No.”

  “What’s this dude’s name, the flash who gave you the uppers and downers?”

  “Lemme think,” Tuna Can Tommy said. “You got me so scared I can’t think!”

  “Aw right, aw right,” the Ferret said, “get your act together. Mellow out. Lay down on the bed.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  “Gang-bang ya, whadda ya think? LAY DOWN ON THE FUCKIN BED!”

  Whereupon Tuna Can Tommy plopped down, belly up to prevent the gang bang as long as possible. He stared at the two ferocious narcs with terror in his eyes.

  “You got any spit left, or you scared spitless?” the Ferret asked.

  “I don’t know!” Tuna Can Tommy wailed.

  “Open your mouth,” the Ferret commanded.

  Tuna Can Tommy, sweating buckets, his gelatinous body quivering from neck to knee, opened his mouth and closed his eyes, and gagged when something hit the back of his throat.

  “Now swallow it, you got any spit left,” the Ferret ordered.

  Tuna Can Tommy gulped once, twice, and got it down. He smiled. It was one of the reds.

  “Hey, lemme try that!” the Weasel said, taking a capsule from the Ferret’s hand. “Open up again.”

  This time Tommy nodded eagerly and opened his rubber lips. (God, he did have ugly tufts of red hair hanging out his snoot. Gross!)

  The Weasel stood at the foot of the bed and hit him in the eye with the first Seconal capsule. “Leave it!” he ordered, when Tuna Can Tommy tried to gobble it up. The second one was a bull’s-eye landing right in that big pink mouth and the fat man swallowed it easily. Less fear, more spit.

  The Ferret and the Weasel, who were now starting to enjoy themselves, each got one more in Tommy’s gaping maw, missing a few, but getting better with each toss.

  “Now, goddamnit, you starting to kick back?” the Weasel wanted to know.

  “I feel better, Officer.” Tuna Can Tommy smiled.

  “Okay, what’s the name of the big player, might be a coke dealer?”

  “Lloyd,” Tuna Can Tommy said without hesitation. “Lloyd. I wasn’t told his last name. Drives a black Bentley. I’ve never even seen coke. I don’t have every bad habit.”

  “Okay, where’s Flameout Farrell work out of?” the Ferret asked.

  “You know that dirty-book store on Hollywood Boulevard?”

  “Which dirty-book store, for chrissake?”

  “The one with the big Greek statue? Where the statue’s urinating in the pond? That one. The one near the freeway.”

  “He owns the bookstore?”

  “No. He owns the little restaurant three doors down. Stays open till nine. I eat my supper there sometimes. I don’t think he’s much of a bookmaker. The phone doesn’t ring that much. You won’t tell him I told on him, will ya?”

  “Now if we didn’t protect the confidentiality of our … agents, we couldn’t trade little one for big ones, could we?”

  “An agent!” Tuna Can Tommy beamed. This was a better fantasy than sucking underwear. He boldly opened his mouth and pointed. Now that he was an agent he could make certain demands.

  The Weasel flipped one more in there and said that is fucking it. Any more downers and he’d be the late secret agent. Which reminded Tuna Can Tommy of the mortician and the personal belongings. He glanced involuntarily toward the other drawer, and the Ferret noticed.

  The Ferret reached inside and found four self-photographed portraits in cowboys boots, hat and mask.

  The Ferret cried, “Out of freaking sight!”

  “Those are real ostrich boots,” Tuna Can Tommy said proudly.

  The Weasel, who was writing in his notebook, mumbled, “You wear five-hundred-dollar ostrich, I wear thirty-dollar shit kickers. There’s gotta be a moral somewheres.”

  “It ain’t your boots, masked man!” the Ferret cried to Tuna Can Tommy. “Now I know how you got your nickname!”

  “What nickname? I always sign the picture Tommy.”

  “The vice cops didn’t show us your Polaroids. Now I know why they call you Tuna Can Tommy!”

  “Do they call me that? Oh, that’s mean!” He looked as though he might start crying again. “I can’t help the way I’m built!”

  The Weasel stopped making notes about Flameout Farrell and Lloyd the alleged coke dealer and took the pictures from the Ferret.

  “My God!” the Weasel cried. “Your putz! It’s nearly three inches in diameter!”

  But, alas, it was less than two inches in length. It was shaped exactly like a tuna can.

  11

  The Gunfighter

  Tuesday morning was a bad day in the squadroom. The United States Supreme Court had just decreed that it was no fair if the cops used a third-party conversation to “trick” a murderer into confessing. Henceforth, Schultz had to watch what he said to Simon in the presence of any more stranglers they arrested if what he said somehow persuaded the strangler that the jig was up and he might as well confess where he buried his corpses and piano wire. It was a very black Tuesday.

  In fact, the nine old pussies of the Potomac had made Schultz so mad he couldn’t take a joke when the call came in from Gloria La Marr down at the county lockup. The Weasel said they write lots of songs about lovers parted by prison walls, and Schultz informed the Weasel that the health plan includes dental care now, so go ahead and keep dumping on him.

  “Hello, Gunther, how are you?” Gloria La Marr purred.

  “Hi, Gloria,” Schultz said, then turned his bearish body toward the pin map on the wall and put his hand over the mouthpiece, since the entire squadroom was eavesdropping.

  “I told them at my arraignment that I just wanted to plead guilty so as not to be no more trouble,” Gloria La Marr said.

  “That’s the right thing to do, Gloria,” Schultz said.

  “This is a very confidential call. You were awful nice to me, buying me drinks and all, and never making fun of me like other people sometimes do.”

  “You’re a ni
ce person, Gloria,” Schultz said.

  “Thank you, Gunther. Well, they have me in the sissy tank with all the gay people so I don’t think I have to worry about being … attacked or nothing like that.”

  “That’s good, Gloria,” Schultz said. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “I’m going to have the rest of my operation just as soon as I get out.”

  “That’s good too, Gloria,” Schultz said.

  “Reason I called you is, well, I know I can trust you and I know nobody in jail will ever find out and … well, if anything good should happen as a result of what I’m going to tell you, well, I just know you’d talk to the judge and …”

  “I’ll help you any way I can, you know that.”

  “Thank you, Gunther,” Gloria said. And then she knocked off the cooing and her voice became more tense and masculine. “I never snitched off nobody before, you understand. I never gave nobody up, but … well, there’s a boss queen down here named Violet. She read all about the thing where two of your cops started following a silver Mercedes in Hollywood and ended up in San Pedro. Violet was in the army ten years ago and she spent a year in Vietnam and she knows a little of the language. She swears she tricked with Bozwell, that guy the cops arrested. Him and a Vietnamese guy picked her up on the street in that Mercedes a few nights before she read about the bust. The guy Bozwell was drunk and talked to the other guy in rice-paddy lingo. About gold. She caught that word, all right. She says Bozwell offered to take her to a restaurant on Melrose near Western that looked Chinese. They dropped the Vietnamese guy there and she never saw them after that night.”

  “I’ll pass it on,” Schultz said.

  “It probably don’t mean much, Gunther, but if something good should come out of it, you’ll put in a word for me, won’t you?”

  “Sure I will, Gloria.”

  Then Gloria La Marr sounded feminine again. She started to weep. “Now that I’m … almost a woman, I … I hate jail. I just hate it now. It’s different for a … a woman!”

  “If anything comes of it, I’ll put in a word, kid. I promise.”