Things got out of hand with The Den Mother when cops from San Pedro to Foothill were asking to be taken to her hospital when they were injured on duty. One evening there were more cops with phony bandages in the waiting room than had attended the nightwatch roll call. Some of the uniformed cops weren't even on duty. That's when Pipeline Jones and the other supervisors were ordered to put a stop to it.
The Final Order came from on high, as it were. From Deputy Chief Delmore Downs, the chaplain of the police department and a fundamentalist Christian who wasn't born again because, the cops said, he came here by immaculate deception the first time. Deputy Chief Delmore Downs went so far as to offer a prayer at Rampart Division roll call when he was giving a hellfire warning about the Hollywood cops who had just been exposed in the media for having engaged in everything from grand theft and burglary to sex encounters in Griffith Park, with everyone from street prostitutes to girl scouts.
Deputy Chief Downs hadn't liked it one bit when someone pulled a dirty trick on him that day. An unknown lyricist had penned a disgusting religious song with bawdy biblical allusions. It was recorded on cassette and broadcast from the deputy chief's own car radio to all hands. The religious song was dedicated to Deputy Chief Delmore Downs and was sung by a male soprano.
The final straw was when some unknown cop penciled out a bogus crime report alleging multiple counts of child molestation around the playground in Echo Park and listing as the suspect someone who unquestionably fit the description of the gangly deputy chief, who was speaking to an Echo Park citizens group that day. The rumor that the deputy chief was a child molester spread like herpes. There were hundreds of cops only too willing to believe it. Finally, a cartoon appeared in the vilest underground newspaper in Los Angeles. It was penned by someone who identified himself as the Renoir of Rampart Station. It was a picture of a huge ugly chickenhawk carrying off a baby. The chickenhawk wore the hat and insignia of a deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Deputy Chief Downs took Pipeline Jones aside on his last visit to Rampart Division. He told the little sergeant that he knew he could be trusted. He said that he would be eternally grateful for his help. He wanted the balls of the "artist" who drew the scurrilous cartoon.
Pipeline Jones was everywhere. Cops complained that they saw him in their rearview mirror wherever they went. That he watched them with binoculars from the roofs of buildings. That their lockers were disturbed each time they returned at end-of-watch, and the glove compartments of their private cars were ransacked. Of course, the majority of the complaints were symptoms of the paranoia that inflicts police everywhere. Pipeline Jones could not have done a fraction of the things he was accused of, but he did in fact poke through lockers when the cops were out on the streets. He sprung a few of their traps, which proved it: broken threads and tiny bits of paper which paranoid police officers attach to the doors of their lockers.
And after two frustrating weeks of not finding a single lead in the locker room of the troops, Pipeline Jones on his own authority checked the locker room of fellow supervisors, even those who outranked him, which was about the bravest act of his police career. The reason he considered such a daring maneuver was that he heard two cops in the rest room (they couldn't hope for privacy even sitting on the toilet) engaged in a conversation about a certain lieutenant being an "artiste." In that same conversation he heard one of the cops announce to the cop in the neighboring stall that the lieutenant said that Deputy Chief Downs likes to read the Old Testament while he makes your asshole tight.
What Pipeline Jones didn't know was that for three days every cop on the day watch was talking sotto voce about that certain lieutenant, hoping to be overheard by Pipeline Jones. It finally worked, in the toilets.
Pipeline Jones immediately crept into the supervisor's locker room and with fluttering heartbeat approached the locker of a very salty twenty-five-year morning-watch lieutenant whose balls really clanged when he walked.
With his own balls as cold and clammy as his hands and armpits, Pipeline Jones held his breath and, using the master key, dared to open the locker of the salty lieutenant, dreaming of the glory that would be his if he found some evidence. He didn't know that the morning-watch lieutenant had been on vacation for three weeks. But the day-watch troops knew it for sure.
When Pipeline Jones opened the locker, a loop of fishing line pulled the pin from a hand grenade. The spoon flew in the face of Pipeline Jones, giving him a shiner. He yelped, grabbed his eye, heard a hiss, smelled sulfur or cordite, and even before the "explosion," which was the equivalent of a cherry bomb but sounded much louder within the locker, Pipeline Jones was on the deck experiencing what they called a mild heart attack. He ended up in the emergency ward of the hospital where The Den Mother gave him the E. K. G., leered, and offered him a little flower.
It was a U. S. Army practice grenade which proved to be untraceable. The vacationing lieutenant knew nothing about it but wasn't particularly sorry when told that someone used his locker for the dirty trick. Pipeline Jones went off, I. O. D. (injured on duty), and began to display every stress symptom known to medicine including asthma attacks.
The Bad Czech and the others were allowed to leave after the headhunters interrogated everyone for three hours. That meant that he and Jane Wayne ended up at The House of Misery at eight o'clock and settled for two bowls of disgusting gruel which Leery called clam chowder.
They were half blitzed, but both Dolly and Dilford were totally wrecked when Mario Villalobos came in at ten o'clock.
"Disgustmg Rew/ring!" Jane Wayne said of her chowder as Mario Villalobos took his accustomed seat at the end of the bar.
The detective thought that Jane Wayne was looking particularly androgynous tonight in her cowboy shirt, riding boots and skin-tight jeans. The Bad Czech was reading the L. A. Times while eating chowder at the bar and was wearing his brand new Jordache jeans.
Which caused Dolly to say, "I see The Bad Czech has on his Sergio Valente portlies. If someone told him to haul ass, it'd take two trips."
"Those big buns're so bound up I don't think he could fart," Dilford noted boozily.
"That's okay with me," Dolly said, weaving on the stool.
"I'll have a very dry vodka martini," Mario Villalobos said to Leery, who nodded and gave him three ounces of straight vodka, no twist, no rocks.
Leery winked at Rumpled Ronald as if to say, very dry martini. Sure. Give Leery straight-vodka drinkers every time.
Rumpled Ronald turned his rumpled face to Mario Villalobos and scratched his rumpled belly and said, "I only got twenty-five hours and fifty minutes to go. I think I'm gonna make it!"
"That's wonderful, Ronald," Mario Villalobos said.
"I ain't givin odds on makin it to thirty," Cecil Higgins observed, gargling his Johnnie Walker Red. "Bein partners with The Bad Czech I don't think I kin last that long without landin in San Quentin and gettin my asshole stretched big enough for ten midgets to dance a polka in."
Dilford sipped his Scotch and turned to Dolly saying, "Maybe it ain't gonna be so bad after all, working with the crack squad. Maybe there's a place for broads. Okay, so you're a five-foot mini-cop. We'd probably have Toulouse-Lautrec walking a beat if he was around today."
"I'm glad John Wayne isn't alive to see what police work's come to," Dolly said sarcastically.
Suddenly Jane Wayne yelled, "Goddamnit, Leery! There's something in my clam chowder with six legs and it's doing a backstroke medley!"
"So drop it on the floor and break its neck," The Bad Czech said. He hated yelling and screaming while he was reading the L. A Times, which was nerve-racking enough.
Then The Bad Czech started yelling and screaming: "Goddamnii, listen to this! It says here, 'California's foreign born is the highest in the whole country, most from Latin America and Asia. Los Angeles is the port of entry for the world. Four times as many refugees as New York. Hollywood High has students from forty-three countries!' "
"If I live to get
my pension I gotta get outa here!" Rumpled Ronald suddenly cried boozily. "I went to the department shrink the other day and told him I should get a seventy-five percent stress pension. I got symptoms. I'm a burnout. He asks me if I got a pension what would I do? Can you imagine? What would I do? I'd move back to the United States of America! What does he think I'd do? I'm sick a El Salvadorans and Nicaraguans and Cubans and Puerto Ricans. I'm sick a Cambodians and Laotians and Vietnamese and ..."
"I just don't like people putting paws in petunias," Jane Wayne said very softly, and The Bad Czech patted her hand as if to say, there, there.
To change the subject and get Rumpled Ronald quieted down, since everyone knew he was totally bonzo from being so close to his pension, The Bad Czech said, "Here's one for ya. It says in the Times that the Russians caught some official sellin large amounts a caviar to a Western firm. Get this. He labeled it smoked herring and pocketed the difference. Whaddaya think ya get in Russia when they catch ya sellin dead fish to a captalist? Anybody wanna guess? Siberia? Castration? Nope." The Bad Czech tossed down his seventh double of the night and said, "I'll tell ya. Ya get exceptional means of punishment. That means a bullet in the back a your fuckin head. Whaddaya get in L. A. for blowin away your neighbor cause he won't let ya steal his stereo? Ya get a hunnerd-dollar fine for shootin a gun in the city limits is what ya get."
"Maybe I oughtta move to Russia," Rumpled Ronald cried. "Maybe there ain't no U. S. A. no more!"
"Lighten up, Ronald," Dilford whined. "Somebody call the animal shelter and shoot a tranquilizer dart in his ass!"
"Wait'll you're twenty-five hours and fifty . .." Then the rumpled cop looked at his watch and said, "No. Forty minutes from a pension. Then you'll see!"
Dolly turned to Jane Wayne, who was trying to persuade The Bad Czech to dance, and said, "Didn't you give Ronald his lithium today?"
"Did I have a pulse when I came in here?" Cecil Higgins said in deadly earnest to Mario Villalobos, who of course didn't know about the hanging wino and the paws in the petunias. All he knew was that it must've been an off day. Everyone was cranky.
Suddenly the ordinary yelling and griping was interrupted by a god-awful howling outside in the street. It sounded like Wooooooooo!
"Oh no!" Leery cried. "It's Ludwig!"
When the door came crashing open to admit Ludwig, Hans and two groupies from Chinatown, you couldn't be sure if man was leading dog or dog was leading man. One end of the leash was attached to Ludwig's off-duty choker chain and the other to Hans' hand-tooled western belt with the big silver buckle studded with red glass.
"I told you to keep that goddamn animal outa here!" Leery screamed, hopping around behind the bar and furiously banging an empty beer mug on the keg, breaking it off at the handle and showering everyone with glass, which really made them mad.
"Goddamn you, Leery!" Dilford screamed.
"You got glass in my clam chowder! I want new clam chowder!" The Bad Czech yelled.
"How'd you like to find out if the carotid artery of seventy-year-old misers opens like normal people!" Dolly cried, drunk and belligerent.
Dolly was beginning to impress the hell out of Dilford. "Hey, Dolly," he said. "Do you dickless Tracys beat the shit out of civilian guys when they don't satisfy you? Tell me dirty stories. I'm starting to like broads in uniform."
"I ain't serving you and I ain't serving that dog!" Leery yelled, acting as though he was going to pick up the telephone. "You better get him outa here, Hans!"
"Put that fuckin phone down or I'll shoot it off the wall!" The Bad Czech bellowed, scaring the crap out of everyone but Ludwig. "I don't like Hans and his fuckin mutt any more than you do, but there ain't nobody gonna call the cops in my drinkin spot!"
"But, Czech, I can't serve that dog," Leery whined, while Ludwig, who had already hit two saloons in Chinatown, began howling, rising up with his front feet on the bar, glaring at Leery and going Wooooooooo!
"I'll buy the beer for the fuckin dog!" The Bad Czech screamed dementedly, holding his hands over his ears. "Jist stop that fuckin howlin!"
"Settle, Czech. Settle, baby," Jane Wayne said soothingly, tugging The Bad Czech's furry eyebrows and stroking his temples. "Mellow, mellow. That's better." Then she said, "Leery, the noise in here'd make the Falklands war sound like baby farts. I suggest you give that creature a glass of beer."
After Hans and Ludwig were reluctantly served, the entire establishment quieted down. Ludwig was the only one to know when he'd had enough, and was getting sleepy and eyeing the pool table next to the three-coffin dance floor where Jane Wayne and The Bad Czech rubbed their Jordache jeans together and bit on each other's ears. Hans and the groupies were getting very tense by telling outlandish and fanciful accounts of orgies they'd allegedly attended. Dilford and Dolly were so bombed they were not only talking to each other but Dolly had her arm around Dilford's shoulder, saying, "I don't want to have nightmares about what we saw today. I don't want to wake up to ugliness."
Which caused the eavesdropping Cecil Higgins to say, "You should see my wife. I always wake up to ugliness."
"I killed another parakeet," Rumpled Ronald suddenly announced weepily.
"Nobody asked ya, Ronald," Dilford said. "I had enough dead things for one day."
Cecil Higgins said, "My wife's uglier than Yassir Arafat, Tom Hayden and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar."
Rumpled Ronald had spoken only in non-sequiturs for the past hour, and made announcements. "I killed four other parakeets," he said. "If she knew it was me killing the parakeets she'd dump me like she did her first husband. She owns the house and car. And then if I didn't get my pension I'd end up living at the Midnight Mission on skid row. And selling my blood."
Suddenly Rumpled Ronald's voice broke, causing Mario Villalobos to say, "That is freaking it! Crying jags. Time to go home."
In that Leery was the only coherent one in the saloon, he got curious and said, "Why do you kill parakeets, Ronald?"
"They're filthy. They shit everywhere," Rumpled Ronald said weepily. "My old lady lets them outa their cage and they fly all over the house. How would you like parakeet shit in your Cream of Wheat?"
"I never even cook Cream of Wheat, living alone like I do," Dilford said. Now he was getting weepy and feeling sorry for himself. "You should see my bacon, Dolly. It's all green with hair on it. I hate living alone. Nobody cares for me!"
"How do you kill the parakeets?" Leery wanted to know.
"It's for great truths like these that you stay in business and don't retire to Sun City," Mario Villalobos noted. "It's not the money."
"I spray them in the snoot with a little spray starch," Rumpled Ronald said. "It's a merciful death and undetectable. They just do a little header right off the perch."
"I think you're disgusting," Dolly said, pugnaciously. "Somebody oughtta squeeze your carotid artery."
"Somebody oughtta squeeze my prick till I scream!" Hans cried to the groupies, making Dolly call him a pervert.
"I love to see tiny girls get hostile," Dilford said. "Hey, Leery, I wanna buy Dolly a drink and break down her resistance."
"This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship," Leery said happily, while he poured the booze, grabbed Dilford's dough and leered like a gargoyle.
"There's a place in Nevada this wholesome," Mario Villalobos said. "It's called The Mustang Ranch."
"I like that!" Hans suddenly shrieked in his irritating singsong voice while one of his groupies sucked on his neck. "She said you should never run over a Mexican on a bike cause it might be yoursl" Then Hans remembered the counterfeit Mexican and said, "No offense, Mario."
Just then the door opened and a lithe slender figure with shoulder-length hair floated through the gloom and smoke and sat at the bar, silently signaling for whiskey. They all quieted down a bit. They were vaguely troubled by him and didn't know why. It was The Gooned-out Vice Cop.
The others resumed their conversation when The Gooned-out Vice Cop swallowed the double shot of bar wh
iskey. He stared at his mirror image in Leery's spider web of a pub mirror. The Gooned-out Vice Cop smiled ever so slightly at his bifurcated face, green from neon light. The Gooned-out Vice Cop signaled for another, drank it down, left his money on the bar and stood up.
In the time he had been coming to Leery's he had never spoken to anyone, and Dilford impulsively decided to make him speak. Dilford said, "Better be careful. Leery's bar whiskey'll make you go blind."
The Gooned-out Vice Cop just smiled serenely with eyes like bullet holes and said, "That's all right. I've seen enough. Haven't you?"
And then he floated through the gloom and smoke out onto smog-shrouded Sunset Boulevard.
It was a fairly ordinary night at The House of Misery, all things considered. The only thing unusual happened when The Bad Czech tried to pay the evening's tab with his credit card.
"You know I don't take credit cards no more," Leery said. "Too much hassle. Cash on the barrelhead."
"Long as I been comin here, you ain't gonna honor my card?" The Bad Czech glared, and with a melodramatic flourish slammed his hand down on the bar, nearly flattening the embossed name on the plastic card.
As old as he was, Leery still had the eyes of a vulture. He looked down at the card and said, "Well, I sure as hell ain't gonna honor that card. Not unless your name's Lester Beemer."
"What're you talkin about?" The Bad Czech said, picking up the credit card and trying to read it. But he was seeing two credit cards, two Leerys, two Jane Waynes.
Then two Mario Villaloboses walked up to him and said, "What's the name on that card?"
"Lester Beemer," Leery said. "Better call bunco-forgery. The Czech's trying to hang bad paper."
"Goddamn! Where'd I get this card?" The Bad Czech demanded of Leery.
"How the hell do I know?" Leery grumbled. "I just want my money. You owe me thirty-three bucks."
the Delta Star (1983) Page 9
