the New Centurions (1971)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "You saw the muzzle flash," said Serge.

  "Sure, I did. But we got to prove it was a gun."

  "How about that kid Ignacio? He saw it."

  "He saw nothing. At least he says he saw nothing. He claims he was running for the house when he heard the loud crack. Sounded like a backfire, he says."

  "How about his mother. She was on the porch."

  "Says she saw nothing. She don't want to get involved with these gang wars. You can understand her position."

  "I can only understand that little killer has to be taken off the street."

  "I know how you feel, kid," said Milton, putting his hand on Serge's shoulder and pulling a chair close. "And listen, that kid didn't mention anything that happened later, you know what I mean. At least not yet, he didn't. I noticed some marks on his neck, but he's pretty dark-complected. They don't show up."

  Serge looked into the blackness of the cup and swallowed a gulp of the bitter burning coffee.

  "Once a guy swung a blade at me," said Milton quietly. "It wasn't too many years ago. Almost opened up this big pile of guts." Milton patted the bulging belly. "He had a honed, eight-inch blade and he really tried to hit me. Something made me move. I never saw it coming. I was just making a pinch on this guy for holding a little weed, that's all. Something made me move. Maybe I heard it, I don't know. When he missed me, I jumped back, fell on my ass and pulled my gun just as he was getting ready to try again. He dropped the knife and kind of smiled, you know, like, 'This time you win, copper.' I put the gun away, took out the baton and broke two of his ribs and they had to put thirteen stitches in his head. I know I'd have killed him if my partner didn't stop me. I never done that before or since. I mean I never let go before. But I was having personal problems at the time, a divorce and all, and this bastard had tried to render me, and I just let go, that's all. I never had no regrets at what I did to him, understand? I was sick at what I did to myself. I mean, he dragged me down to the jungle floor and made me an animal too, that's what I hated. But I thought about it for a few days and I decided that I had just acted like a regular man and not like a cop. A policeman isn't supposed to be afraid or shocked or mad when some bastard tries to make a canoe out of him with a switchblade. So I just did what any guy might've. But that don't mean I couldn't handle it a little better if it ever happened again. And I'll tell you one thing, he only got a hundred and twenty days for almost murdering me, and that didn't bother him, but I'll bet he learned something from what I did to him and he might think twice before trying to knife another cop. This is a brutal business you're in, kid. So don't stew over things. And if you learn something about yourself that you'd be better off not knowing, well, just slide along, it'll work out."

  Serge nodded at Milton to acknowledge what his partner was trying to do. He drained the coffee cup and lit another cigarette as one of the detectives came in the squad room carrying a flashlight and a yellow legal tablet. The detective took off his coat and crossed the room to Milton and Serge.

  "We're going to sack up these four dudes now," said the detective, a youthful curly-haired sergeant, whose name Serge couldn't remember. "Three of them are seventeen and they're going to Georgia Street, but I'll tell you for sure they'll be out Monday. We got no case."

  "How old is the one that shot at my partner?" asked Milton.

  "Primitivo Chavez? He's an adult. Eighteen years old. He'll go to Central jail, but we'll have to kick him out in forty-eight hours unless we can turn up that gun."

  "How about the bullet?" asked Serge.

  "From where you were standing and from where those guys were sitting in that low rider Chevy, I'm guessing that the trajectory of the bullet would be at least forty-five degrees out the window of the car. It would've hit you in the face if it'd been aimed right, but since it didn't I'm thinking it went approximately between the houses you guys were in and the next one west. That's separated by the other one by about a half acre of vacant lot. In other words, I think the goddamn bullet didn't hit a thing and probably right now is sitting on the freeway out near General Hospital. Sorry, guys, you don't want to nail these four assholes any more than I do. We figure the one cat, Jesus Martinez, is involved in an unsolved gang killing in Highland Park where a kid got blown up. We can't prove that one either."

  "How about the paraffin test, Sam," said Milton. "Can't that show if a guy's fired a gun?"

  "Not worth a shit, Milton," said the detective. "Only in the movie whodunits. A guy can have nitrates on his hands from a thousand other ways. The paraffin test is no good."

  "Maybe a witness or maybe the gun will turn up tomorrow," said Milton.

  "Maybe it will," said the detective doubtfully. "I'm glad I'm not a juvenile officer. They only call us in when these assholes start shooting each other. I'd hate to handle them every day for all their ordinary burglaries and robberies and stuff. I'll stick to adult investigation. At least they get a _little__ time when I convict them."

  "What kind of records they got?" asked Milton.

  "About what you'd expect: lots of burglaries, A. D. W.'s, joy riding galore, robberies, narco and a scattered rape here and there. The Chavez kid's been sent to Youth Authority camp once. The others never have been sent to camp. This is Chavez' first bust as an adult. He only turned eighteen last month. At least he'll get a taste of the men's jail for a few days."

  "That'll just give him something to talk about when he goes back to the neighborhood," said Milton.

  "I guess so," sighed the detective. "He'll already have all the status in the world for getting away with shooting at Duran. I've been trying to learn something from all these little gang hoods you guys bring in. Want to hear something? Follow me." The detective led the way to a locked door which when opened revealed a small closet filled with sound and recording equipment. The detective turned on the switch to the recorder and Serge recognized the insolent thin voice of Primitivo Chavez.

  "I never shot nobody, man. Why should I?"

  "Why not?" said the detective's voice.

  "That's a better question," said the boy.

  "It would be smart to tell the truth, Primo. The truth always makes you feel better and clears the way for a new start."

  "New start? I like my old start. How about a smoke?"

  The tape spun silently for a moment and Serge heard the flicker and spurt of a match and then the detective's steady voice again.

  "Well find the gun, Primo, it's only a matter of time."

  The boy laughed a thin snuffling laugh and Serge felt his heart thump as he remembered how he felt when he had the skinny throat.

  "You ain't never going to find no gun," said the boy. "I ain't worried about that."

  "You hid it pretty good, I bet," said the detective. "You got some brains, I imagine."

  "I didn't say I had a gun. I just said you ain't never going to find no gun."

  "Read that," the detective suddenly commanded.

  "What's that?" asked the boy, suspiciously.

  "Just a news magazine. Just something I found laying around. Read it for me, _ese__."

  "What for, man? What kind of games you playing?"

  "Just my own little experiment. Something I do with all gang members."

  "You trying to prove something?"

  "Maybe."

  "Well prove it with somebody else."

  "How far you go in school, Primo?"

  "Twelfth grade. I quit in twelfth grade."

  "Yeah? Well you can read pretty good, then. Just open the magazine and read anything."

  Serge heard the rustle of pages and then a moment of silence followed by, "Look man, I don't got time for kid games. _Vete a la chingada."__

  "You can't read can you, Primo? And they passed you clear through to the twelfth grade hoping that being in the twelfth grade would make you a twelfth grader and then they made it tough when they realized they couldn't give an illiterate a diploma. These do-gooders really fucked you up, didn't they Primo."

  "What're you t
alking about, man? I'd rather talk about this shooting you say I did than all this other shit."

  "How far you been in your life, Primo?"

  "How far?"

  "Yeah, how far. You live in the housing projects down by the animal shelter, right?"

  "Dogtown, man. You can call it Dogtown, we ain't ashamed of that."

  "Okay, Dogtown. What's the farthest you ever been from Dogtown? Ever been to Lincoln Heights?"

  "Lincoln Heights? Sure, I been there."

  "How many times? Three?"

  "Three, four, I don't know. Hey, I had enough of this kind of talk. I don't know what the hell you want, _Ya estuvo."__

  "Have another cigarette," said the detective. "And take a few for later."

  "Okay, for cigarettes I can put up with this bullshit."

  "Lincoln Heights is maybe two miles from Dogtown. You ever been farther?"

  The tape was silent once again and then the boy said, "I been to El Serreno. How far is that?"

  "About a mile farther."

  "So I seen enough."

  "Ever see the ocean?"

  "No."

  "How about a lake or river?"

  "I seen a river, the goddamn L. A. River runs right by Dogtown, don't it?"

  "Yeah, sometimes there's eight inches of water in the channel."

  "Who cares about that shit anyway. I got everything I want in Dogtown. I don't want to go nowhere."

  The tape was silent once more and the boy said, "Wait a minute. I been somewhere far. A hundred miles, maybe."

  "Where was that?"

  "In camp. The last time I got busted for burglary they sent me away to camp for four months. I was fucking glad to get back to Dogtown."

  The detective smiled and turned off the recorder. "Primitivo Chavez is a typical teenage gang member, I'd say."

  "What're you trying to prove, Sam?" asked Milton. "You going to rehabilitate him?"

  "Not me," the detective smiled. "Nobody could do it now. You could give Primo two million bucks and he'd never leave Dogtown and the gang and the fun of cutting down one of the Easystreeters--or a cop, maybe. Primo is too old. He's molded. He's lost."

  "He deserves to be," said Milton bitterly. "That little son of a bitch'll die by the sword."

  Chapter 8

  CLASSROOMS

  "I'VE ALREADY EXPLAINED to you twice that your signature on this traffic citation is merely a promise to appear. You are not admitting guilt. Understand?" said Rantlee, with a glance at the group of onlookers that suddenly formed.

  "Well, I still ain't signin' nothing," said the tow truck driver, slouched back against his white truck, brown muscular arms folded across his chest. He raised his face to the setting sun at the conclusion of a sentence and cast triumphant looks at the bystanders who now numbered about twenty, and Gus wondered if now was the time to saunter to the radio car and put in a call for assistance.

  Why wait until it started? They could be killed quickly by a mob. But should he wait a few more minutes? Would it seem cowardly to put in a call for backup units at this moment, because the truck driver was merely arguing, putting up a bluff for the onlookers? He would probably sign the ticket in a moment or so.

  "If you refuse to sign, we have no choice but to arrest you," said Rantlee. "If you sign, it's like putting up a bond. Your word is the bond and we can let you go. You have the right to a trial, a jury trial if you want one."

  "That's what I'm going to ask for, too. A jury trial."

  "Fine. Now, please sign the ticket."

  "I'm goin' to make you spend all day in court on your day off."

  "Fine!"

  "You jist like to drive around givin' tickets to Negroes, don't you?"

  "Look around, Mister," said Rantlee, his face crimson now. "There ain't nobody on the streets around here, _but__ Negroes. Now why do you suppose I picked on you and not somebody else?"

  "Any nigger would do, wouldn't it? I jist happened to be the one you picked."

  "You just happened to be the one that ran the red light. Now, are you going to sign this ticket?"

  "You specially likes to pick on wildcat tow truckers, don't you? Always chasin' us away from accident scenes so the truckers that contract with the PO-lice Department can git the tow."

  "Lock up your truck if you're not going to sign. Let's get going to the station."

  "You don't even got my real name on that ticket. My name ain't Wilfred Sentley."

  "That's what your license says."

  "My real name is Wilfred 3X, whitey. Gave to me by the prophet himself."

  "That's fine. But for our purposes, you can sign your slave name to this ticket. Just sign Wilfred Sentley."

  "You jist love workin' down here, don't you? You jist soil your shorts I bet, when you think about comin' here every day and fuckin' all the black people you can."

  "Yeah, get it up in there real tight, whitey," said a voice at the rear of the crowd of teenagers, "so it feels real good when you come."

  This brought peals of laughter from the high school crowd who had run across from the hot dog stand on the opposite corner.

  "Yes, I just love working down here," said Rantlee in a toneless voice, but his red face betrayed him and he stopped. "Lock your truck," he said finally.

  "See how they treats black people, brothers and sisters," the man shouted, turning to the crowd on the sidewalk which had doubled in the last minute and now blocked access to the police car, and Gus's jaw was trembling so that he clamped his teeth shut tight. It's gone too far, thought Gus.

  "See how they is?" shouted the man, and several children in the front of the crowd joined a tall belligerent drunk in his early twenties who lurched into the street from the Easy Time Shine Parlor and announced that he could kill any motherfuckin' white cop that ever lived with his two black hands, which brought a whoop and cheer from the younger children who urged him on.

  Rantlee pushed through the crowd suddenly and Gus knew he was going to the radio, and for an agonizing moment Gus was alone in the center of the ring of faces, some of which he told himself, would surely help him. If anything happened someone would help him. He told himself it was not hate he saw in every face because his imagination was rampant now and the fear subsided only slightly when Rantlee pushed his way back through the crowd.

  "Okay, there're five cars on the way," Rantlee said to Gus and turned to the truck driver. "Now, you sign or if you want to start something, we got enough help that'll be here in two minutes to take care of you and anybody else that decides to be froggy and leap."

  "You got your quota to write, don't you?" the man sneered.

  "No, we used to have a quota, now I can write every goddamn ticket I want to," Rantlee said, and held the pencil up to the driver's face. "And this is your last chance to sign, 'cause when the first police car gets here, you go to jail, whether you sign or not."

  The man took a step forward and stared in the young policeman's gray eyes for a long moment. Gus saw that he was as tall as Rantlee and just as well built. Then Gus looked at the three young men in black Russian peasant hats and white tunics who whispered together on the curb, watching Gus. He knew it would be them that he would have to contend with if anything happened.

  "Your day is comin'," said the driver, ripping the pencil from Rantlee's hand and scrawling his name across the face of the citation. "You ain't goin' to be top dog much longer."

  While Rantlee tore the white violator's copy from the ticket book, the driver let Rantlee's pencil fall to the ground and Rantlee pretended not to notice. He gave the ticket to the driver who snatched it from the policeman's hand and was still talking to the dispersing crowd when Gus and Rantlee were back in the car, pulling slowly from the curb while several young Negroes grudgingly stepped from their path. They both ignored a loud thump and knew that one of the ones in the peasant caps had kicked their fender, to the delight of the children.

  They stopped for a few seconds and Gus locked his door while a boy in a yellow shirt in a last
show of bravado sauntered out of the path of the bumper. Gus recoiled when he turned to the right and saw a brown face only a few inches from his, but it was only a boy of about nine years and he studied Gus while Rantlee impatiently revved the engine. Gus saw only childlike curiosity in the face and all but the three in the peasant caps were now walking away. Gus smiled at the little face and the black eyes which never left his.

  "Hello, young man," said Gus, but his voice was weak.

  "Why do you like to shoot black people?" asked the boy.

  "Who told you that? That's not..." The lurching police car threw him back in his seat and Rantlee was roaring south on Broadway and west on Fifty-fourth Street back to their area. Gus turned and saw the little boy still standing in the street looking after the speeding radio car.

  "They never used to gather like that," said Rantlee lighting a cigarette. "Three years ago when I first came on the job, I used to like working down here because Negroes understood our job almost as well as we did and crowds never used to gather like that. Not nowadays. They gather for any excuse. They're getting ready for something. I shouldn't let them bait me. I shouldn't argue at all. But the pressure is starting to get to me. Were you very scared?"

  "Yeah," said Gus, wondering how obvious it was that he was paralyzed out there, like he had been on only a few other occasions in the past year. One of these days, he was going to have to take direct forceful action when he was paralyzed like that. Then he'd know about himself. So far, something always intervened. He had escaped his fate, but one of these days, he'd know.

  "I wasn't a bit scared," said Rantlee.

  "You weren't?"

  "No, but somebody shit on my seat," he grinned, smoking the cigarette and they both laughed the hearty laugh of tension relieved.

  "Crowd like that could do you in two minutes," said Rantlee, blowing a plume of smoke out the window, and Gus thought that he hadn't shown the slightest fear to the onlookers. Rantlee was only twenty-four years old and looked younger with his auburn hair and rosy complexion.

  "Think we ought to cancel the assistance you called for?" asked Gus. "We don't need them now."