It was just a young man consciously coming to a basic truth for the first time. But Father Willie, not knowing the source of his fear, became very frightened by the hunk of fat in his belly and had a hard time keeping Spencer Van Moot from noticing.
This was the night that Father Willie Wright encouraged the others to go to choir practice. It was the first time Father Willie had been the prime mover.
And later that very night, perhaps because of the hanging man, Father Willie Wright was to become a beloved MacArthur Park choirboy for what he did to put that hoity toity bitch, Officer Reba Hadley in her place.
There were two Officer Hadleys, no relation, in Wilshire Division: Phillip Hadley, a policeman on the daywatch, and Reba Hadley, the policewoman on the nightwatch. So as to know which Hadley one was talking about, the other officers referred to them as Balls Hadley and No-Balls Hadley.
No-Balls Hadley was on the nightwatch desk. She had been in the department two years, had an M.A. in Business Administration from UCLA, and believed that the brass of the department was discriminating against women by not promoting them past the rank of sergeant. And by humiliating women in forcing them to undergo the same police training as the men. She felt it was degrading and ludicrous that women in patrol assignments had to wear short hair and a man’s uniform complete to the trousers and hat, obviously an attempt by the brass to discourage those women who had been forced on them. Of course she was right.
She also vociferously proclaimed that it took little or no brains or administrative ability to wrestle a pukey drunk into a radio car, to chase and subdue a burglar in an alley or to drive a high speed chase after some joyriding bubblegummer. She was again right.
No-Balls Hadley, who was sometimes called Dickless Tracy was also right when she declared fearlessly at a policewomen’s meeting attended by chauvinist spies for Commander Moss that he, as well as most high ranking officers of the department, had little or no street experience and had advanced quickly through the ranks because they could pass exams, not because they were street cops.
So No-Balls Hadley was considered a rabble-rouser and troublemaker by those high ranking members of the Los Angeles Police Department who believed that women had some value in rape cases, juvenile investigations and public relations. But otherwise should keep their big fat insecure libber mouths shut because they were probably bull dykes at heart and were out to steal men’s jobs. No-Balls Hadley knew that the brass was not about to give up those jobs since they had kissed so many asses to get them.
In short, No-Balls Hadley was intelligent, articulate, courageous and correct most of the time. She was utterly feminine, with long shapely legs, tapering fingers, honey colored bobbed hair, naturally jutting young breasts. She was also discriminating in the men she dated, preferring professional men of breeding and affluence, thus dashing the hopes of every policeman on the Wilshire nightwatch. For this reason she was considered an insufferable bitch and it took the person who loved her more than anyone on earth to put her in her place.
It happened after work at 2:00 A.M. on the night Father Willie found the brother in the basement. Father Willie was dozing drunkenly at choir practice in MacArthur Park when Spencer Van Moot grabbed the little man by the jaws.
“Leave me alone, Spencer,” Willie squeaked while his partner held him by the chin, saying, “Get up, Padre. Goddamnit, wake up!”
“The hanging man!” Father Willie cried in confusion as the earth heaved. “The hanging man!”
“Never mind the hanging man,” Spencer said. “Bloomguard and Niles just showed up. They been at a party at Sergeant Yanov’s apartment. We’re all going over there.”
“No, no,” Father Willie moaned, and tried to lie back down on his blanket but Spencer wouldn’t have it.
Father Willie was the last choirboy to arise. The others were already gunning their car motors, turning on lights, driving toward the apartment near Fourth and Bronson where the bachelor sergeant resided. Though Yanov wisely declined choir practice invitations, he occasionally threw an impromptu party of his own.
“Come on, Padre,” Spencer said, dragging the little man to his feet, careful not to get any of the duck slime from Willie’s checkered bermuda shorts on his fifty-five dollar tie dyed jeans with the needlepoint patches which he had bought at a police discount from a men’s store on Beverly Boulevard. “Father Willie, listen! No-Balls Hadley’s there!”
And Father Willie’s swollen eyelids cracked apart. The little man shook his thin wheat-colored hair out of his eyes, shot a hopeful grin at his partner and took his arm as Spencer led him to the car on Parkview Street just south of Wilshire.
“You sobering up?” Spencer asked as he drove them in Father Willie’s station wagon, a five year old Dodge with a “God Is Love” bumper sticker on front and back.
“Yes,” said Father Willie who was getting drunker with each bump and rumble, catching fire with a consuming passionate gut wrenching love for No-Balls Hadley whom he never discussed while sober.
He had succeeded in driving away his sweet obsessive fantasies except for those infrequent moments when his Jehovah’s Witness wife would consent to a five minute straight lay without too much annoying foreplay. At those times it was not the plump little Witness he was mounting, but Officer Reba Hadley No-Balls Hadley of the splendid breasts, elegant legs and caustic tongue who never so much as glanced at little Father Willie Wright when he passed the desk and screwed up enough courage to say “Good afternoon” or “Good evening” or “The desk pretty busy tonight?”
She would sometimes mumble a perfunctory reply when not busy with a ringing phone or routine report which she felt beneath her to write in the first place. But once, as she leaned on the counter chatting into the telephone, dressed in the tailored blue long sleeved blouse and fitted skirt of a desk officer, instead of a man’s uniform like a female patrol officer, she asked Father Willie if he would mind getting her a soft drink from the machine because she had three crime reports going and couldn’t leave the phone.
Father Willie Wright dropped his pocket change all over the floor in his haste to get the coins in the machine and was careful not to spill a single drop as he set it before No-Balls Hadley as reverently as any real priest ever offered a chalice at the altar.
No-Balls Hadley said into the phone, “Look, Madge, we have to have the nerve to walk into the chief’s office and say what we think. Of course he hates our guts but he’s afraid of us now. We’ve got the media with us. Damn it, Madge, what’ve we got to lose? You think I want to spend a career standing at this desk writing bike reports and making inane small talk to a bunch of semiliterate slobs?”
One of the semiliterate slobs of whom she spoke stood shyly across the counter, the large gap in his front teeth bared to No-Balls Hadley who had forgotten he was there until she saw the dime still on the counter in front of her.
“Just a minute, Madge,” she said testily into the mouthpiece, then held her hand over it and said, “Officer…”
“Wright,” Father Willie said. “Willie Wright’s my name!”
“Yes, of course,” she said impatiently “You think I don’t know every man on the nightwatch? I’ve only been chained to this desk six months. I ought to know.”
“Oh sure,” said Father Willie, who was so plain, so small, so unassuming that she could never remember his name.
“Listen, Wright, did you want something?”
“Oh no,” Father Willie said to the tall girl while his mad impetuous young heart longed to say, “Oh yes! Oh yes, Reba! Oh yes!”