the New Centurions (1971)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "He'll probably steal the goddamn thing," said Serge, disgustedly.

  "You're probably right. That's what I like about you, kid, you're a realist."

  It was an old two-story house and Serge guessed it housed a family on each floor. They were standing in a living room which had two twin beds shoved into a far corner. The kitchen was in the rear of the house and another room which he could not see into. It was probably another bedroom. It was a very large old house, very large for one family. At least it was very large for one family on welfare, as he guessed this one was, for there were no man signs around the house, only children's and women's things.

  "Up here, please," said the woman, who stood at the top of the staircase in the darkness. She was pregnant and carried a baby in her arms who was not more than a year old.

  "The light over the steps is out. I'm sorry," she said, as they used their flashlights to light the creaking, precarious steps.

  "In here, please," she said entering the room to the left of the landing.

  It looked very much like the room downstairs, a combination living room and bedroom where at least two children slept. There was a half-dead portable television on a low end table and three girls and the boy they had sent upstairs were sitting in front of it watching a grotesque cowboy whose elongated head sat atop an enormous avocado body.

  "That TV needs repair," said Milton.

  "Oh yes," she smiled. "I'm going to get it fixed soon."

  "You know Jesse's TV Shop on First Street?" asked Milton.

  "I think so," she nodded, "near the bank?"

  "Yeah. Take it to him. He's honest. He's been around here at least twenty years that I know of."

  "I will, thank you," she said, giving the fat baby to the oldest girl, a child of about ten, who was sitting on the end of the blanket-covered couch.

  "What's the problem?" asked Serge.

  "My oldest boy got beat up today," said the woman. "He's in the bedroom. When I told him I called the cops, he went in there and won't come out. His head is bleeding and he won't let me take him to General Hospital or nothing. Could you please talk to him or something?"

  "We can't talk if he won't open the door," said Serge.

  "He'll open it," said the woman. Her huge stomach was tearing the shapeless black dress at the seams. She shuffled barefoot to the closed door at the rear of a cluttered hallway.

  "Nacho," she called. "Nacho! Open the door! He's stubborn," she said turning to the two policemen. "Ignacio, you open it!"

  Serge wondered when was the last time Nacho had been kicked in the ass by his mother. Never, probably. If there had ever been a real father living in the pad, he probably didn't care enough to do the job. He would never have dared to defy his own mother like this, Serge thought. And she had raised them without a father. And the house was always spotless, not like this filth. And she had worked and he was glad because if they had given away welfare in those days like they did today, they probably would have accepted it because who could refuse money.

  "Come on, Nacho, open the door and let's stop playing around," said Milton. "And hurry up! We're not going to stand around all night."

  The lock turned and a chunky shirtless boy of about sixteen opened the door, turned his back, and walked across the room to a wicker chair where he had apparently been sitting. He held a grimy washcloth to his head, the webs of his fingers crusty with blood and car grease.

  "What happened to you?" asked Milton, entering the room and turning up a table lamp to examine the boy's head.

  "I fell," he said, with a surly look at Milton and another at Serge. The look he gave his mother infuriated Serge who shook a cigarette from his pack and lit it.

  "Look, we don't care whether your head gets infected or not," said Milton. "And we don't care if you want to be stupid and get in gang beefs and die like a stupid _vato__ in the street. That's your business. But you think about it, because we're only going to give you about two minutes to decide whether you want to let us take you to the hospital and get your head sewed up and tell us what happened, or whether you want to go to bed like that and wake up with gangrene of the superego which usually only takes three hours to kill you. I can see that wound is already getting green flakes all over it. That's a sure sign."

  The boy looked at Milton's expressionless beefy face for a moment. "All right, you might as well take me to the hospital," he said, snatching a soiled T-shirt from the bedpost.

  "What happened? _Los Rojos__ get you?" asked Milton, turning sideways to get down the narrow creaking stairway with Nacho.

  "Will you bring him home?" asked the woman.

  "We'll take him to Lincoln Heights Receiving Hospital," said Serge. "You'll have to bring him home."

  "I don't got a car," said the woman. "And I got the kids here. Maybe I can get Ralph next door to take me. Can you wait a minute?"

  "We'll bring him home after he's fixed up," said Milton.

  It was that kind of thing that made Serge damn mad at Milton at least once every working night. It was not their responsibility to bring people home from the hospital, or jail, or anywhere else they took them. Police cars made one-way trips. It was Saturday night and there were lots more interesting things to do than nursemaid this kid. It would never have occurred to Milton to ask him what _he__ wanted to do, thought Serge. Serge would need ten more years as a cop before he rated simple consideration from Milton. Besides, that was the trouble with people like these, someone was always doing for them what they should do for themselves.

  "We'll have him back in less than an hour," said Milton to the panting woman who rested her big belly against the precarious banister and apparently decided not to descend the entire stairway.

  When Serge turned to go he noticed that above the doorway in the living room of the downstairs family were two eight-by-four-inch holy cards. One was Our Lady of Guadalupe and the other Blessed Martin de Porres. In the center was another card, a bit larger, which contained a green and gold horseshoe covered with glitter and a border of four-leaf clovers.

  Nacho had mastered the stride of the Mexican gang member and Serge was looking at him as they crossed the front yard. He didn't see the car cruising slowly down the street, lights out, until it was close. At first he thought it was another radio car on early prowler patrol and then he saw it was a green metal-flaked Chevrolet. Four or five heads barely showed above the window ledges which told Serge automatically that the seats were dropped and that it was probably a gang car.

  "Who are those low riders?" Serge asked, turning to Nacho, who was gaping in terror at the car. The car stopped near Nacho's alley and for the first time the low riders seemed to notice the radio car which was partially hidden from view behind a junk-laden van parked in front.

  Nacho bolted for the house at the same moment that Serge realized these were _Los Rojos__ who had attacked the boy and were probably returning to be more thorough.

  Nacho's little brother gave a happy blast on the police whistle.

  _"La jura!"__ said a voice from the car, apparently seeing the policemen step from the shadows into the light from the open doorway. The driver turned on the lights and the car lurched forward and stalled as Serge ran toward it, ignoring Milton who shouted, "Duran, get your ass back here!"

  Serge had a half-formed thought of jerking the cursing driver out of the car as he ground the starter desperately, but when Serge was ten feet from the car he heard a pop, and an orange fiery blossom flashed from the interior of the car. Serge froze as he instinctively knew what it was before his mind fully comprehended, and the Chevy started, faltered, and roared east on Brooklyn Avenue.

  "The keys!" Milton roared, standing beside the open driver's door of the radio car. "Throw the keys!"

  Serge obeyed immediately although still stunned by the realization that they had fired at him point-blank. He barely jumped in the passenger seat when Milton squealed from the curb and the flashing red light and siren brought Serge back to reality.

  "Four-A-Elev
en in pursuit!" Serge yelled into the open microphone, and began shouting the streets they were passing as the Communications operator cleared the frequency of conversation so that all units could be informed that Four-A-Eleven was pursuing a 1948 Chevrolet eastbound on Marengo.

  "Four-A-Eleven, your location!" shouted the Communications operator.

  Serge turned the radio as loud as it would go and rolled up the window but could still hardly hear Milton and the operator over the din of the siren and the roaring engine as Milton gained on the careening low riders who narrowly missed a head-on collision with a left turner.

  "Four-A-Eleven approaching Soto Street, still eastbound on Marengo," Serge shouted, and then realized his seat belt was not fastened.

  "Four-A-Eleven your location! Come in Four-A-Eleven!" shouted the Communications operator as Serge fumbled with the seat belt, cursed, and dropped the mike.

  "They're bailing out!" Milton shouted and Serge looked up to see the Chevrolet skidding to a stop in the middle of Soto Street as all four doors were flung open.

  "The one in the right rear fired the shot. Get him!" Milton yelled as Serge was running in the street before the radio car finished the jolting sliding stop.

  Several passing cars slammed on brakes as Serge chased the _Rojo__ in the brown hat and yellow Pendleton shirt down Soto and east on Wabash. Serge was utterly unaware that he had run two blocks at top speed when suddenly the air scorched his lungs and his legs turned weak, but they were still running through the darkness. He had lost his baton and his hat, and the flashlight fluttering in his swinging left hand lighted nothing but empty sidewalk in front of him. Then his man was gone. Serge stopped and scanned the street frantically. The street was quiet and badly lit. He heard nothing but his outraged thudding heart and the sawing breaths that frightened him. He heard a barking dog close to his left, and another, and a crash in the rear yard of a run-down yellow frame house behind him. He turned off the flashlight, picked a yard farther west and crept between two houses. When he reached the rear of the house he stopped, listened, and crouched down. The first dog, two doors away, had stopped barking, but the other in the next yard was snarling and yelping as though he was bumping against a taut chain. The lights were going on and Serge waited. He jerked his gun out as the figure appeared from the yard gracefully with a light leap over the wooden fence. He was there in the driveway silhouetted against the whitewashed background of the two-car garage like the paper man on the pistol range, and Serge was struck with the thought that he was no doubt a juvenile and should not be shot under any circumstances but defense of your life. Yet he decided quite calmly that this _Rojo__ was not getting another shot at Serge Duran, and he cocked the gun which did not startle the dark figure who was twelve feet away, but the flashlight did, and there he was in the intense beam of the five cell. Serge had already taken up the slack of the fleshy padding of the right index finger and this _Rojo__ would never know that only a microscopic layer of human flesh over unyielding finger bone kept the hammer from falling as Serge exerted perhaps a pound of pull on the trigger of the cocked revolver which was pointed at the stomach of the boy.

  "Freeze," Serge breathed, watching the hands of the boy and deciding that if they moved, if they moved at all...

  "Don't! Don't," said the boy, who stared at the beam, but stood motionless, one foot turned to the side, as in a clumsy stop-action camera shot. "Oh, don't," he said and Serge realized he was creeping forward in a duck walk, the gun extended in front of him. He also realized how much pressure he was exerting on the trigger and he always wondered why the hammer had not fallen.

  "Just move," Serge whispered, as he circled the quivering boy and moved in behind him, the flashlight under his arm as he patted the _Rojo__ down for the gun that had made the orange flash.

  "I don't got a weapon," said the boy.

  "Shut your mouth," said Serge, teeth clenched, and as he found no gun his stomach began to loosen a bit and the breathing evened.

  Serge handcuffed the boy carefully behind his back, tightening the iron until the boy winced. He uncocked and holstered the gun and his hand shook so badly that for a second he almost considered holstering the gun still cocked because he was afraid the hammer might slip while he uncocked it.

  "Let's go," he said, finally, shoving the boy ahead of him.

  When they got to the front street, Serge saw several people on the porches, and two police cars were driving slowly from opposite directions, spotlights flashing, undoubtedly looking for him.

  Serge shoved the boy into the street and when the beam of the first spotlight hit them the radio car accelerated and jerked to a stop in front of them.

  Ruben Gonsalvez was the passenger officer, and he ran around the car throwing open the door on the near side.

  "This the one who fired at you?" he asked.

  "You prove it, _puto__," the boy said, grinning now in the presence of the other officers and the three or four onlookers who were standing on porches, as dogs for three blocks howled and barked at the siren of the help car which had raced code three to their aid.

  Serge grasped the boy by the neck, bent his head and shoved him in the back seat, crawling in beside him and forcing him to the right side of the car.

  "Tough now that you got your friends, ain't you, _pinchi jura__, _"__ said the boy and Serge tightened the iron again until the boy sobbed, "You dirty motherfucking cop."

  "Shut your mouth," said Serge.

  _"Chinga tu madre!__" said the boy.

  "I should have killed you."

  _"Tu madre!"__

  And then Serge realized he was squeezing the hard rubber grips of the Smith & Wesson. He was pressing the trigger guard and he remembered the way he felt when he had the boy in his sights, the black shadow who had almost ended him at age twenty-four when his entire life was ahead, for reasons not he nor this little _vato__ could understand. He had not known he was capable of this kind of terrifying rage. But to be almost murdered. It was utterly absurd.

  _"Tu madre,"__ the boy repeated, and the fury crept over Serge again. It wasn't the same in Spanish, he thought. It was so much filthier, almost unbearable, that this gutter animal would dare to mention her like that...

  "You don't like that, do you, gringo?" said the boy, baring his white teeth in the darkness. "You understand some Spanish, huh? You don't like me talking about your moth..."

  And Serge was choking him, down, down, to the floor he took him, screaming silently, staring into the exposed whites of swollen horrified eyes, and Serge through the irresistible shroud of smothering fury probed for the little bones in front of the throat, which if broken... and then Gonsalvez was holding Serge across the forehead and bending him backward in a bow. Then he was lying flat on his back in the street and Gonsalvez was kneeling beside him, panting and babbling incoherently in Spanish and English, patting him on the shoulder but keeping a firm grip on one arm.

  "Easy, easy easy," said Gonsalvez. _"Hombre,__ Jesus Christ! Sergio, _no es nada,__ man. You're okay, now. Relax, _hombre. Hijo la..."__

  Serge turned his back to the radio car and supported himself against it. He had never wept, he thought, never in his life, not when she died, not ever. And he did not weep now, as he shakily accepted the cigarette which Gonsalvez had lit for him.

  "Nobody saw nothing, Sergio," said Gonsalvez, as Serge sucked dully on the cigarette, filled with a hopeless sickness which he did not want to analyze now, hoping he could maintain control of himself because he was more afraid than he had ever been in his life, and he knew vaguely it was things in himself he feared.

  "Good thing those people on the porch went in the pad," Gonsalvez whispered. "Nobody saw nothing."

  "I'm going to sue you, motherfucker," said the raspy sobbing voice inside the car. "I'm going to get you."

  Gonsalvez tightened his grip on Serge's arm. "Don't listen to that _cabrone.__ I think he's going to have bruises on his neck. If he does, he got them when you arrested him in the backyard. He fought with you
and you grabbed him by the neck during the fight, got it?"

  Serge nodded, not caring about anything but the slight pleasure the cigarette was giving him as he breathed only smoke, exhaling a cloud through his nose as he sucked in another fiery puff.

  When Serge sat in the detective squad room at two o'clock that morning, he appreciated Milton as he never had before. He came now to understand how little he had known about the blustering, red-faced old policeman who, after a whispered conversation with Gonsalvez, took charge of the young prisoner, reported verbally to the sergeant and the detectives, and generally left Serge to sit in the detective squad room, smoke, and go through the motions of participating in the writing of reports. The night watch detectives and juvenile officers were all kept overtime interrogating suspects and witnesses. Four radio cars were assigned to search the streets, yards, sidewalks and sewers in the route of the pursuit from the point of inception to the dark driveway where Serge made his arrest. But as of two o'clock the boy's gun had not been found.

  "Want some more coffee?" asked Milton, placing a mug of black coffee on the table where Serge sat listlessly penciling out a statement on the shooting that would be retyped on the arrest report.

  "They find the gun yet?" asked Serge.

  Milton shook his head, taking a sip from his own cup. "The way I figure it, the kid you chased had the gun with him and dumped it when he was in those yards. You realize the thousands of places a gun could be concealed in one junky little yard? And he was probably in several yards jumping fences. He could've thrown it on the roof of one of the houses. He could've pulled up a little grass and buried it. He could've thrown it as far as he could over to the next street. He could've got rid of it during the pursuit, too. The guys couldn't possibly check every inch of every yard, every ivy patch, every roof of every building, and every parked car along the route where he could've thrown it."

  "Sounds like you think they won't find it?"

  "You should be ready for the possibility," Milton shrugged. "Without the gun, we've got no case. These con wise little mothers are sticking together pretty damn good on their stories. There was no gun, they say."