Then he felt guilty for thinking about the girl Mariana like this because eighteen years, despite what the law said, did not make you an adult. He was twenty-six now and wondered if another ten years would do the job for him. If he could continue to profit from all the lies and cruelty and violence this job had shown him, maybe he could grow up sooner. If he could quit seeing a saint in the tawny face of a perfectly healthy little animal like Mariana he would be so much closer to maturity. Maybe that's the part of being a Chicano I can't shake off, Serge thought, the superstitious longing--brown magic--The Sorceress of Guadelupe--or Guadalajara--a simple bastard yearning for the Madonna in a miserable Mexican restaurant.
Chapter 14
THE OPERATOR
"NO WONDER PLEBESLY gets more whore offers than anybody else on the squad. Look at him. Does this boy look like a cop?" roared Bonelli, stocky, middle-aged and balding, with dark whiskers which when they were two days old were dirty gray. They always seemed at least two days old, and whenever Sergeant Anderson objected, Bonelli just reminded him that this was Wilshire vice squad and not a goddamned military academy and he was only trying to look like the rest of the assholes out on the street so he could fit in better as an undercover operator. He always addressed Anderson by his first name which was Mike and so did the others because it was customary in a vice squad to be more intimate with your supervisors, but Gus did not like or trust Anderson and neither did the others. He was on the lieutenant's list and would probably someday be a captain at least, but the lanky young man with the blond sparse moustache was a natural disciplinarian and would be better, they all concluded, in a patrol function which was more GI than a vice squad.
"One whore Gus got last week never did believe he was a cop," laughed Bonelli, throwing his feet up on the table in the vice office and spilling some cigar ashes on a report which Sergeant Anderson was writing. Anderson's lips tightened under the pale moustache, but he said nothing, got up and went to his own desk to work.
"I remember that one, Sal," said Petrie to Bonelli. "Old Salvatore had to save Gus from that whore. She thought he was a PO-lice impersonator when he finally badged her."
They all laughed at Petrie's affected Negro dialect, even Hunter, the slim Negro officer who was the only Negro on the night watch. He laughed heartily, but Gus laughed nervously partly because they were roasting him but partly because he could never get used to Negro jokes in front of a Negro even though he had been a vice officer for three months now and should be accustomed to the merciless chiding which went on ritually every night before they went out to the streets. Each of them subjected the other to cracks which stopped at neither race, religion, or physical defects.
Yet the six policemen and Sergeant Handle, who was one of _them,__ went to Bonelli's apartment at least once a week after work and played pool and drank a case of beer at least. Or sometimes they went to Sergeant Handle's house and played poker all night. Once when they had gone to Hunter's apartment which was here in Wilshire Division in the racially mixed neighborhood near Pico and La Brea, Bonelli had made a whispered remark to Hunter that he had been kicked in the shoulder by a whore while making a lewd conduct arrest and that at his age arthritis might set in. Bonelli couldn't pull the sleeve of his outrageous Hawaiian shirt over the hairy shoulder to show Hunter because the shoulder was too large, and finally, Bonelli said, "Anyway, the bruise is the color of your ass." When Hunter's lithe mahogany-colored wife Marie, who had entered the room unnoticed, said, "What, red?" with a perfectly sober expression, Gus began to enjoy the camaraderie which was not affected or strained and did not pretend that being policemen made them brothers or more than brothers.
But they did have a secret which seemed to unite them more closely than normal friendship and that was the knowledge that they _knew__ things, basic things about strength and weakness, courage and fear, good and evil, especially good and evil. Even though arguments would rage especially when Bonelli was drunk, they all agreed on very fundamental things and usually did not discuss these things because any policeman who had common sense and had been a policeman long enough would surely learn the truth and it was useless to talk about it. They mostly talked about their work and women, and either fishing, golf, or baseball, depending upon whether Farrell or Schulmann or Hunter was controlling the conversation. But when Petrie was working they talked about movies, since Petrie had an uncle who was a director, and Petrie was starstruck even though he had been a policeman five years.
There were a few more cracks made about Gus's meek appearance and how none of the whores could believe he was a policeman which made him the best whore operator on the watch, but then they began talking about other things because Gus never joked back and it was not as much fun as picking on Bonelli who had a caustic tongue and was quick at repartee.
"Hey Marty," said Farrell to Hunter who was trying to pencil out a follow-up to a vice complaint. He held his forehead in a smooth brown hand while the pencil moved jerkily and stopped often while Hunter laughed at something Bonelli said. It was obvious that Hunter would rather work with Bonelli than any of the others, but Sergeant Anderson figured the deployment carefully so that certain men were working on certain nights because he had fixed opinions on supervision and deployment. He informed them that he was very close to his degree in government and he had twelve units in psychology and only _he__ was in a position to know who should work with whom, and Bonelli had whispered gruffly, "How did this cunt get on the vice squad?"
"Hey, Marty," Farrell repeated, until Hunter looked up. "How come you people are always complaining that there aren't enough blacks in this job or that group or something and then when we _do__ use enough you still bitch. Listen to this article in the _Times, '__The NAACP sought a class action on behalf of all the men on death row because it contends a disproportionate number of them are Negroes.'"
"People are never satisfied," said Hunter.
"By the way Marty, you getting your share of that white liberal pussy that's floating around the _ghetto__ these days?" asked Bernbaum.
"Marty's going to pass the sergeant's exam this time, ain't you, Marty," said Bonelli. "He'll get forty points on his own and they'll give him forty more for being black."
"And when we get to be on top, first thing I'm going to do is go after your woman, Sal," said Hunter, glancing up from his report.
"Oh, Christ, Marty, do me a favor, go after Elsie right now, will you? That bitch does nothing but talk about marriage anymore and me with three divorces behind me. I need another wife like..."
"Do any of you have any rubbers?" asked Sergeant Anderson, suddenly walking into the working area of the vice office separated from his desk by a row of lockers.
"No, if we think a broad is bad enough for rubbers, we generally get a head job," said Farrell, his close-set blue eyes examining Anderson with humor.
"I was referring to the use of rubbers for evidence containers," said Anderson coldly. "We still use them to pour drinks into, don't we?"
"We got a box in the locker, Mike," said Bonelli, and they became quiet when they saw he disliked Farrell's joke. "Working a bar tonight?"
"We've had a complaint about The Cellar for two weeks now. I thought we'd try to take it."
"They serving after hours?" asked Farrell.
"If you could take time out from your joke writing and look at the vice complaints you'd see that the bartender at The Cellar lives in an apartment upstairs and that after two o'clock he sometimes invites customers up to the pad where he continues to operate a bar. After hours."
"We'll try it for you tonight, Mike," said Bonelli with his conciliatory tone, but Gus thought that the heavily browed brown eyes were not conciliatory. They fixed Anderson with a bland expression.
"I want to work it myself," said Anderson. "I'll meet you and Plebesly at Third and Western at eleven and we'll decide then whether to go together or separate."
"I can't go at all," said Bonelli. "I made too many pinches around there. The bartender knows me."<
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"Might be a good idea for you to go in with one of us," said Bernbaum, scratching his wiry brush of red hair with a pencil. "We could have a drink and leave. They wouldn't suspect the joint was full of cops. They'd probably be satisfied that everything was cool after us two left."
"I think there's a couple of whores working in there," said Hunter. "Me and Bonelli were in there one night and there was an ugly little brunette and another old bat that sure looked like hookers."
"Alright, we'll all meet at Andre's Restaurant at eleven and talk it over," said Anderson going back to his desk. "And another thing, the streetwalkers are getting pretty thick out there on Sunday and Monday nights, I hear. They must know those are the vice squad's nights off so some of you are going to start working Sundays."
"You guys see those magazines the day watch picked up at a trick pad?" asked Bernbaum, and the conversation again picked up now that Anderson was finished.
"I seen enough of that garbage to last me a lifetime," said Bonelli.
"No, these weren't regular nudie mags," said Bernbaum. "These were pinup mags, but somebody had taken about a hundred Polaroid pictures of guys' dicks and cut them out and stuck them on the girls in the magazines."
"Psychos. The world is full of psychos," said Farrell.
"By the way, are we working fruits tonight, Marty?" asked Petrie.
"Lord, no. We busted enough last week to last all month."
"Think I'll go on days for a while," said Bernbaum. "I'd like to work books. Get me away from all these slimes you have to bust at night."
"Well I'll guarantee you, bookmakers are assholes," said Bonelli. "They're mostly Jews, ain't they?"
"Oh yeah, the Mafia's all Jews too," said Bernbaum. "I think there's a few Italian bookmakers up on Eighth Street last I heard."
Gus felt Bonelli look at him when Bernbaum said it and he knew Bonelli was thinking about Lou Scalise, the bookmaking agent and collector for the loan sharks whom Bonelli hated with a hatred that now made Gus's palms sweat as he thought of it.
"Incidentally, Petrie," said Marty Hunter, slamming the logbook, "the next time we take a fighter, how about using the sap on _him,__ not on _me.__ Last night we take Biff's Cocktail Lounge for serving a drunk and when we try to bust the drunk he starts a fight and _I__ get sapped by my partner."
"Bullshit, Marty. I just grazed your elbow with the sap."
"Anytime more than one policeman jumps a suspect the policeman ends up getting hurt," said Farrell. "I remember the night we had that fairy lumberjack. " They laughed and Farrell looked appealingly to Bonelli. "Yeah the guy was a lumberman from Oregon. And he's a suck_or__ not a suck _ee__. Comes to L. A. and wears eye shadow. Anyway, he's swishing around Lafayette Park and gropes Bonelli, remember, Sal?"
"I'll never forget that asshole."
"Anyway, there were five of us in the park that night and for fifteen minutes we all battle that puke. He threw me in the pond and threw Steve in there twice. We thumped the shit out of each other with saps and it finally ended when Sal held his head underwater for a few minutes. He never did get sapped or even hurt and every one of us policemen had to get patched up."
"Funny thing," said Bernbaum, "when Sal had him about half drowned and he was panicky and all, know what he does? He yells, 'Help, police!' Imagine that, with five policemen all over him, he yells that."
"He know you were policemen?" asked Gus.
"Sure he knew," said Farrell. "He said to Bonelli, 'Ain't no cop in the world can take me.' He didn't figure on five, though."
"I had a guy yell that one time when I was in full uniform," said Bernbaum. "Funny what people say when you're wrestling them off to jail."
"Garbage," said Bonelli. "Garbage."
"You handle these assholes, you got to wash your hands _before__ you take a leak," said Hunter.
"Remember the time the swish kissed you, Ben?" said Farrell to Bernbaum, and the ruddy-faced young policeman winced in disgust.
"Walked into a bar where we got a complaint some fruits were dancing," said Hunter, "and this little blond swish flits right up to Ben as we were sitting at the bar and plants a smack right on his kisser and then he dances away into the dark. Ben goes to the head and washes his mouth with hand soap and we leave without even working the joint."
"I heard enough. I'm going to take a crap and then we're going to work," said Bonelli standing up, scratching his stomach and lumbering toward the toilet across the hall.
"You say you're going in there to give birth to a sergeant?" said Farrell, winking at Petrie who shook his head and whispered, "Anderson doesn't appreciate your humor."
When Bonelli returned, he and Gus gathered their binoculars and small flashlights and batons which they would put under the seat of the vice car in case of emergency. After reassuring Anderson they wouldn't forget to meet him they went to their car without deciding what they were going to do.
"Want to work complaints, or whores?" asked Bonelli.
"We got some crappy three eighteens," said Gus. "One about the floating card game in the hotel sounds like fun, but it only goes on Saturdays."
"Yeah, let's work whores," said Bonelli.
"Tail or operate?"
"Feel like operating?"
"I don't mind. I'll get my car," said Gus.
"Got enough gas? That cheap prick Anderson won't break loose with any more operating money till next week. You'd think it was his bread and not the city's."
"I've got gas," said Gus. "I'll take a sweep around Washington and La Brea and meet you in the back of the drive-in in fifteen minutes. Sooner, if I get a whore."
"Get a whore. We need the pinches. This's been a slim month."
Gus drove down West Boulevard to Washington and over Washington toward La Brea, but he hadn't gotten two blocks on Washington until he spotted two prostitutes. He was preparing to swing in toward the curb when he saw one was Margaret Pearl whom he had arrested almost three months ago when he first came to the vice squad and she would surely recognize him so he drove past. Already the pulse beat was advancing.
Gus remembered how it had been when he had first come to vice, or rather, he did not remember clearly. Those first nights and those first few arrests were difficult to envision coherently. There was a red cloud of fear enveloping his memory of those nights and that was something else he could not understand. Why did he see or rather feel a red mist about his memories when he was very much afraid? Why were all such memories red-tinged? Was it blood or fire or what? He had been so thoroughly frightened that the prostitutes had come to his car with their offers without questioning his identity. They hadn't dreamed he was a cop, and he had been a vastly successful vice operator. Now that he had some confidence and was no longer so afraid except of things he should be afraid of, he was having to work much harder to get an offer. He was being turned down occasionally by girls who suspected he might be a policeman. Still, he could get twice the girls that any of the others could, only because he looked less like a policeman than any of them. Bonelli had told him it was not just his size. He was actually as tall and heavy as Marty Hunter. It was his diffidence, and Bonelli said that was a shame because the meek would inherit this miserable earth and Gus was too nice a guy to get stuck with it.
Gus hoped he would spot a white whore tonight. He had only arrested a few white whores and these were in bars on Vermont. He had never gotten a white streetwalker, although there were some of them here in this Negro half of Wilshire Division, but there weren't many. He thought Wilshire Division was a good division to work because of the variety. He could leave this Negro section and drive to the northwest boundaries of the division and be on the Miracle Mile and Restaurant Row. There was great variety in a few square miles. He was glad they had transferred him here, and almost immediately he had been marked as a future vice officer by his watch commander Lieutenant Goskin who had finally recommended him when the opening came. Gus wondered how many of his academy classmates were working plainclothes assignments yet. It wa
s good, and it would be very good when the nauseating fear at last disappeared, the fear of being on the streets alone without the security of the blue uniform and badge. There was not too much else to really fear because if you were careful you would never have to fight anyone alone. If you were careful, you would always have Bonelli with you and Bonelli was as powerful and reassuring as Kilvinsky, but of course he did not have Kilvinsky's intellect.
Gus reminded himself that he had not answered Kilvinsky's last letter and he would do that tomorrow. It had worried him. Kilvinsky did not talk of the fishing and the lake and the peaceful mountains anymore. He talked of his children and his ex-wife and Kilvinsky had never talked of them when he had been here. He told of how his youngest son had written him and how his answer to the boy had been returned unopened and how he and his ex-wife had promised themselves years ago that it would be better if the boy forgot him, but he didn't say why. Gus knew that he had never gone East to visit them at his wife's home, and Gus never knew why, and he thought he would give a great deal to learn Kilvinsky's secrets. The latest letters indicated that Kilvinsky wanted to tell someone, wanted to tell Gus, and Gus decided to ask the big man to come to Los Angeles for a visit before the summer ended. Lord, it would be good to see his friend, Gus thought.
Then Gus realized he also had to send a check to his mother and John because it was less painful than going to see them and hearing how they could no longer make it on seventy-five a month from him even with the welfare check, because things were so dear today and poor John can't work, what with his slipped disc which Gus knew was an excuse for workman's compensation and a free ride from Gus. He was ashamed of his disgust as he thought of those weaklings and then he thought of Vickie. He wondered why his mother and his brother and his wife were all weaklings and depended so completely on him, and anger made him feel better as always, purged him. He saw a chubby Negro prostitute wiggling down Washington Boulevard toward Cloverdale. He pulled to the curb beside her and feigned the nervous smile which used to come so naturally.
the New Centurions (1971) Page 23
