the New Centurions (1971)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

THE CENTURIONS

  "HERE COMES LAFITTE," said the tall policeman. "Three minutes till roll call but he'll be on time. Watch him."

  Gus watched Lafitte grin at the tall policeman, and open his locker with one hand, while the other unbuttoned the yellow sport shirt. When Gus looked up again after giving his shoes a last touch with the shine rag, Lafitte was fully dressed in his uniform and was fastening the Sam Browne.

  "I'll bet it takes you longer to get into your jammies at night than it does to throw on that blue suit, eh Lafitte?" said the tall policeman.

  "Your pay doesn't start till 3:00 P.M.," Lafitte answered. "No sense giving the Department any extra minutes. It all adds up in a year."

  Gus stole a glance at Lafitte's brass buttons on his shirt pocket flaps and epaulets and saw the tiny holes in the center of the star on the buttons. This proved the buttons had seen a good deal of polishing, he thought. A hole was worn in the middle. He looked at his own brass buttons and saw they were not a lustrous gold like Lafitte's. If he had been in the service he would have learned a good deal about such things, he thought. On the opposite side of the metal lockers was the roll call room, lockers, rows of benches, tables, and the watch commander's desk at the front, all crammed into one thirty by fifty foot room. Gus was told that the old station would be replaced in a few years by a new station, but it thrilled him just as it was. This was his first night in University Division. He was not a cadet now; the academy was finished and he could not believe it was Gus Plebesly inside this tailored blue woolen shirt which bore the glistening oval shield. He took a place at the second row of tables from the rear of the room. This seemed safe enough. The rear table was almost filled with older officers, and no one sat at the front one. The second row from the rear should be safe enough, he thought.

  There were twenty-two policemen at this early night watch roll call and he felt reassured when he saw Griggs and Patzloff, two of his academy classmates, who had also been sent to University Division from the academy.

  Griggs and Patzloff were talking quietly and Gus debated about moving across the room to their table but he decided it might attract too much attention, and anyway, it was one minute to roll call. The doors at the rear of the room swung open and a man in civilian clothes entered, and a burly, bald policeman at the rear table shouted, "Salone, why ain't you suited up?"

  "Light duty," said Salone. "I'm working the desk tonight. No roll call."

  "Son of a bitch," said the burly policeman, "too sick to ride around with me in a radio car? What the hell's wrong with you?"

  "Gum infection."

  "You don't sit on your gums, Salone," said the burly policeman. "Son of a bitch. Now I guess I'll get stuck with one of these slick-sleeved little RE-cruits."

  Everyone laughed and Gus's face turned hot and he pretended he didn't hear the remark. Then he realized why the burly policeman had said "slick-sleeved." He glanced over his shoulder and saw the rows of white service stripes on the lower sleeves of the policemen at the rear table, one stripe for each five years' service, and he understood the epithet. The doors swung open and two sergeants entered carrying manila folders and a large square board from which the car plan would be read.

  "Three-A-Five, Hill and Matthews," said the pipe-smoking sergeant with the receding hairline.

  "Here."

  "Here."

  "Three-A-Nine, Carson and Lafitte."

  "Here."

  "Here," said Lafitte, and Gus recognized the voice.

  "Three-A-Eleven, Ball and Gladstone."

  "Here," said one of the two Negro policemen in the room.

  "Here," said the other Negro.

  Gus was afraid he would be put with the burly policeman and was glad to hear him answer "Here" when he was assigned with someone else.

  Finally the sergeant said, "Three-A-Ninety-nine, Kilvinsky and Plebesly."

  "Here," said Kilvinsky and Gus turned, smiling nervously at the tall silver-haired policeman in the back row who smiled back at him.

  "Here, sir," said Gus, and then cursed himself for saying "sir." He was out of the academy now. "Sirs" were reserved for lieutenants and higher.

  "We have three new officers with us," said the pipe-smoking sergeant. "Glad to have you men. I'm Sergeant Bridget and this ruddy Irishman on my right is Sergeant O'Toole. Looks just like the big Irish cop you see in all the old B movies, doesn't he?"

  Sergeant O'Toole grinned broadly and nodded to the new officers.

  "Before we read the crimes, I want to talk about the supervisor's meeting today," said Sergeant Bridget as he thumbed through one of the manila folders.

  Gus gazed around the room at the several maps of University Division which were covered with multicolored pins that he thought must signify certain crimes or arrests. Soon he would know all the little things and he would be one of them. Or would he be one of them? His forehead and armpits began to perspire and he thought, I will not think that. It's self-defeating and neurotic to think like that. I'm just as good as any of them. I was tops in my class in physical training. What right do I have to degrade myself. I promised myself I'd stop doing that.

  "One thing the captain talked about at the supervisor's meeting was the time and mileage check," said Bridget. "He wanted us to remind you guys to broadcast your time and mileage _every__ time you transport a female in a police car--for any reason. Some bitch in Newton Division beefed a policeman last week. Says he took her in a park and tried to lay her. It was easy to prove she lied because the policeman gave his mileage to Communications at ten minutes past eleven when he left her pad and he gave his mileage again at eleven twenty-three when he arrived at the Main Jail. His mileage and the time check proved he couldn't have driven her up in Elysian Park like she claimed."

  "Hey Sarge," said a lean swarthy policeman near the front. "If the Newton Street policeman who she accused is Harry Ferndale, she's probably telling the truth. He's so horny he'd plow a dead alligator or even a live one if somebody'd hold the tail."

  "Damn it, Leoni," grinned Sergeant Bridget as the others chuckled, "we got some new men here tonight. You roll call pop-offs ought to be trying to set some kind of example, at least on their first night. This is serious shit I'm reading. The next thing the captain wanted us to bring up is that some Seventy-seventh Street officer in traffic court was asked by the defendant's lawyer what drew his attention to the defendant's vehicle to cite it for an illegal turn, and the officer said because the defendant was driving with his arm around a well-known Negro prostitute."

  The roll call room burst into laughter and Bridget held up a hand to quiet them. "I know that's funny and all that, but number one, you can prejudice a case by implying that you were trying to suppress prostitution, not enforce traffic laws. And number two, this little remark got back to the guy's old lady and he's beefing the policeman. An investigation started already."

  "Is it true?" asked Matthews.

  "Yeah, he was with a whore I guess."

  "Then let the asshole beef," said Matthews, and Gus realized that they used "asshole" as much here in the divisions as the instructors did in the academy and he guessed it was the favorite epithet of policemen, at least Los Angeles policemen.

  "Anyway, the captain says no more of it," Bridget continued, "and another thing the old man says is that you guys are not at _any__ time to push cars with your police vehicle. Snider on the day watch was giving a poor stranded motorist a push and he jumped the bumper and busted the guy's taillights and dented his deck lid and the prick is threatening to sue the city if his car isn't fixed. So no more pushing."

  "How about on the freeway, or when a stalled car has a street bottled up?" asked Leoni.

  "Okay, you and I know there are exceptions to everything in this business, but in almost all cases no pushing, okay?"

  "Has the captain ever done police work out in the street?" asked Matthews. "I bet he had some cushy office job since he's been on the Department."

  "Let's not get personal, Mike," smiled Bridget. "T
he next thing is these preliminary investigations in burglary and robbery cases. Now, you guys aren't detectives, but you aren't mere report writers either. You're supposed to conduct a preliminary investigation out there, not just fill in a bunch of blanks on a crime report." Bridget paused and lit the long-stemmed pipe he had been toying with. "We all know that we seldom get good latent prints from a gun because of the broken surface, but Jesus Christ, a couple weeks ago an officer of this division didn't bother worrying about prints on a gun a suspect dropped at the scene of a liquor store robbery! And the dicks had a damned good suspect in custody the next day but the dumb ass liquor store owner was some idiot who claimed he was new in the business in this part of town and he couldn't tell Negroes apart. There wouldn't have been any case at all because the officer handled the suspect's gun and ruined any prints there might have been, except for one thing--it was an automatic. Lucky for the officer, because he might've got a couple days suspension for screwing up the case like that."

  "Were the prints on the clip?" asked Lafitte.

  "No, the officer screwed those up when he took the clip out, but there were prints on the cartridges. They got part of the friction ridges on the center portion of the suspect's right thumb on several of the shells where he'd pushed them in the clip. The officer claimed the liquor store owner had handled the gun first so the officer decided all possibility of getting prints was destroyed. I'd like to know how the hell he knew that. It doesn't matter who handles the gun, you should still treat it like it's printable and notify the latent prints specialists."

  "Tell them about the rags," said Sergeant O'Toole without looking up.

  "Oh yeah. In another job recently, an officer had to be reminded by a sergeant at the scene to book the rags the suspect used to bind the victim. And the suspect had brought the rags with him! Christ, they could have laundry marks or they could be matched up with other rags that the dicks might later find in the suspect's pad or on some other job. I know you guys know most of this shit, but some of you are getting awful careless. Okay, that's all the bitching I have for you, I guess. Any questions on the supervisor's meeting?"

  "Yeah, you ever talk about the good things we do?" asked Matthews.

  "Glad you asked that, Mike," said Sergeant Bridget, his teeth clenched on the black pipe stem. "As a matter of fact the lieutenant wrote you a little commendation for the hot roller you got the other night. Come on up and sign it."

  "In eighteen years I guess I got a hundred of these things," grumbled Matthews, striding heavy-footed to the front of the room, "but I still get the same goddamn skinny paycheck every two weeks."

  "You're getting almost six bills a month, Mike. Quit your kicking," said Bridget, then turning to the others said, "Mike went in pursuit and brought down a hot car driven by a damn good burglar and he likes a little 'at-a-boy' once in a while just like the rest of us, despite his bitching. You new men are going to find out that if you have a yen for lots of thanks and praise, you picked the wrong profession. Want to read the crimes, William, me boy?" he said to Sergeant O'Toole.

  "Lots of crimes in the division last night, but not too many good descriptions," said O'Toole with a trace of a New York accent. "Got one happy moment on the crime sheet though. Cornelius Arps, the Western Avenue pimp, got cut by one of his whores and he EX-pired at 3:00 A.M. in General Hospital."

  A loud cheer went up in the room. It startled Gus.

  "Which whore did it?" shouted Leoni.

  "One calls herself Tammy Randolph. Anybody know her?"

  "She worked usually around Twenty-first and Western," said Kilvinsky, and Gus turned for another appraisal of his partner who looked more like a doctor than what he imagined a policeman should look like. The older ones, he noticed, looked hard around the mouth and their eyes seemed to watch things not just look at things, but to watch as though they were waiting for something, but that might be his imagination, he thought.

  "How'd she do him?" asked Lafitte.

  "You'll never believe this," said O'Toole, "but the old canoe maker at the autopsy today claimed that she punctured the aorta with a three and a half inch blade! She hit him so hard in the side with this little pocket knife that it severed a rib and punctured the aorta. Now how could a broad do that?"

  "You never saw Tammy Randolph," said Kilvinsky quietly. "A hundred and ninety pounds of fighting whore. She's the one that beat hell out of the vice officer last summer, remember?"

  "Oh, is that the same bitch?" asked Bridget. "Well, she atoned for it by juking Cornelius Arps."

  "Why didn't you get the lieutenant to write her an at-a-boy like he did me?" asked Matthews as the men laughed.

  "Here's a suspect wanted for attempted murder and two-eleven," said O'Toole. "Name is Calvin Tubbs, male, Negro, born 6-12-35, five ten, one eighty-five, black hair, brown eyes, medium complexion, wears his hair marcelled, full moustache, drives a 1959 Ford convertible, white over maroon, license John Victor David one seven three. Hangs out here in University at Normandie and Adams, and at Western and Adams. Robbed a bread truck driver and shot him for the hell of it. They made him on six other jobs--all bread trucks. He's bought and paid for, you can render that asshole."

  "Really raping those bread trucks and buses, ain't they?" said Matthews.

  "You know it," said O'Toole, glancing over the bifocals. "For the benefit of you new men, we should tell you it's not safe to ride a bus in this part of town. Armed bandits rob a bus almost every day and sometimes rob the passengers too. So if you have a flat tire on your way to work, call a cab. And the bread truck drivers or anybody else that's a street vendor gets hit regular, too. I know one bread truck driver that was held up twenty-one times in one year."

  "That guy's a professional victim," said Leoni.

  "He can probably run a show-up better than the robbery dicks," said Matthews.

  Gus glanced over at the two Negro officers who sat together near the front, but they laughed when the others did and showed no sign of discomfort. Gus knew that all the "down heres" referred to the Negro divisions and he wondered if all the cracks about the crimes affected them personally. He decided they must be used to it.

  "Had kind of an interesting homicide the other night," O'Toole continued in his monotone. "Family beef. Some dude told his old lady she was a bum lay and she shot him twice and he fell off the porch and broke his leg and she ran inside, got a kitchen knife and came back and started cutting where the jagged bone stuck out. Almost got the leg all the way off by the time the first radio car got there. They tell me they couldn't even take a regular blood test. There was no blood left in the guy's veins. Had to take it from the spleen."

  "Wonder if she _was__ a bum lay," said Leoni.

  "By the way," said Sergeant Bridget, "any of you guys know an old lady named Alice Hockington? Lives on Twenty-eighth near Hoover?"

  No one answered and Sergeant Bridget said, "She called last night and said a car came by on a prowler call last week. Who was it?"

  "Why do you want to know?" asked a bass voice from the last table.

  "Goddamn suspicious cops," Bridget said, shaking his head. "Well screw you guys then. I was just going to tell you the old girl died and left ten thousand dollars to the nice policemen who chased a prowler away. Now, who wants to cop out?"

  "That was me, Sarge," said Leoni.

  "Bullshit," said Matthews, "that was me and Cavanaugh."

  The others laughed and Bridget said, "Anyway, the old girl called last night. She didn't really die, but she's thinking about it. She said she wanted that handsome tall young policeman with the black moustache (that sounds like you, Lafitte) to come by every afternoon and check for the evening newspaper. If it's still on her porch at five o'clock it means she's dead and she wants you to bust the door in if that happens. Because of her dog, she said."

  "She afraid he'll starve or she afraid he won't starve?" asked Lafitte.

  "The sympathy of these guys really is touching," said Bridget.

  "Can I go on with
the crimes or am I boring you guys," said O'Toole. "Attempt rape, last night, 11:10 P.M., three-six-nine West Thirty-seventh Place. Suspect awoke victim by placing hand over her mouth, said, 'Don't move. I love you and I want to prove it.' Fondled victim's private parts while he held a two-inch blue steel revolver in the air for her to see. Suspect wore a blue suit..."

  "Bluesuit?" asked Lafitte. "Sounds like a policeman."

  "Suspect wore blue suit and light-colored shirt," O'Toole continued. "Was male, Negro, twenty-eight to thirty, six foot two, hundred ninety, black, brown, medium complexion."

  "Sounds exactly like Gladstone. I think we can solve this one," Lafitte said.

  "Victim screamed and suspect jumped out window and was seen getting into a late model yellow vehicle parked on Hoover."

  "What kind of car you got, Gladstone?" asked Lafitte and the big Negro policeman turned and grinned, "She wouldn't have screamed if it'd been me."

  "The hell she wouldn't," said Matthews. "I seen Glad in the academy showers one time. That would be assault with a deadly weapon."

  "Assault with a friendly weapon," said Gladstone.

  "Let's go to work," said Sergeant Bridget, and Gus was glad there was no inspection because he didn't think his buttons would pass and he wondered how often they had inspections here in the divisions. Not very often, he guessed, from the uniforms he saw around him, which were certainly not up to academy standards. He guessed things would be relaxed out here. Soon, he would be relaxed too. He would be part of it.

  Gus stood with his notebook a few steps from Kilvinsky and smiled when Kilvinsky turned around.

  "Gus Plebesly," said Gus, shaking Kilvinsky's wide, smooth hand.

  "Andy's the first name," said Kilvinsky looking down at Gus with an easy grin. Gus guessed he might be six feet four.

  "Guess you're stuck with me tonight," said Gus.

  "All month. And I don't mind."

  "Whatever you say is okay with me."

  "That goes without saying."

  "Oh, yes sir."

  "You don't have to sir me," Kilvinsky laughed. "My gray hair only means that I've been around a long time. We're partners. You have a notebook?"