She heard the sound again. Louder. A smacking sound, close but somehow distant. Then she heard it directly beneath her! She uncrossed her legs and spread them and looked down in horror at the white and bloodless nose and lips of Father Willie Wright pressed against the underside of the glass table, smearing the glass directly beneath her bare bottom with wet and loving kisses while his blue eyes crossed and bulged from the meticulous maddening scrutiny of the golden twat of his beloved.
No-Balls Hadley screamed. She shrieked in consummate disgust as Father Willie Wright, unaware that she was gone from the glass, still slurped tenderly and vaguely wondered what someone was yelling about.
No-Balls Hadley screamed. And screamed.
Before the first three policemen had burst through the door Father Willie realized that something was wrong, his face pressed like a fish against the smeary wet glass, eyes popping. Then Father Willie understood that he was discovered.
“God love ya!” Father Willie whispered reverently just before No-Balls Hadley picked up a huge ceramic lamp and smashed it down on the tempered glass while all hell broke loose around the confused and troubled choirboy chaplain.
Then someone pulled him out from under the table to save him while No-Balls Hadley grabbed a three iron from the golf bag of Sergeant Nick Yanov and began breaking chunks from the glass. Father Willie went skidding across the floor, Spencer Van Moot dragging him by the heels.
Someone wrestled the three iron from No-Balls Hadley who yelled, “You filthy disgusting obscene little motherfucker! I’ll kill you!”
She tore a picture from the wall and threw it crashing through the bedroom window to the terrace outside where it thudded against the side of the head of a poker player, sending him to the emergency ward for five stitches.
No-Balls Hadley, minus her robe which had been pulled away by a policeman trying to restrain her, clad only in a green bikini top, began beating Father Willie Wright back against the sliding closet door and kicking him in the soft belly.
Then she was sitting on top of Father Willie, pummeling him with both fists as he covered his little face with both arms saying, “But I love you, Officer Hadley. Don’t you see?”
Finally Sergeant Nick Yanov, one of the few sober policemen at the party, overpowered the spitting kicking cursing policewoman and dragged her still naked into the other bedroom where Officer Sheila Franklin got her in a wristlock until she fell exhausted, blurting what Father Willie had done.
As the bleeding bewildered Father Willie Wright was being carried to his car by Spencer Van Moot and Harold Bloomguard, he turned his battered face to Harold Bloomguard and said, “What’d I do wrong, Harold? What’d I do?”
“I’ll tell you what you did, Padre! You put that hoity-toity bitch No-Balls Hadley in her place, is all!” Harold Bloomguard cried proudly as they carried Father Willie down the sidewalk. “You just became a Legend in Your Own Time!”
From that day on, in choirboy folklore, the episode of No-Balls Hadley became known as The Night the Padre Tried to Eat Pressed Ham Through the Wrapper.
SEVEN
7-A-77: CALVIN POTTS AND
FRANCIS TANAGUCHI
A choir practice was certainly in order and was called for by Francis Tanaguchi on The Night the U-Boat Was Decommissioned. It was three months before the killing in MacArthur Park.
The night was bound to be an extraordinary one, beginning as it did with a noisy argument in which the nightwatch ganged up on Lieutenant Finque who was trying to defend the department’s disciplinary policies to the rebellious assembly of bluesuited young men who thought he was full of shit.
“Look,” the exasperated watch commander argued, “that West Los Angeles officer deserved thirty days off for what he did.”
“Deserved?” Deserved?” Spermwhale Whalen thundered. “His old man and his old man’s old man owned that fuckin bar for thirty years. He grew up behind the bar.”
“Department policy forbids policemen to engage in off-duty employment in places where alcoholic beverages…”
“What would you do if your old man was pressed for a bartender for a couple weeks?”
“He only got thirty days.”
“Only? Only! Take thirty days’ pay off me and I’d starve to death. So would my ex-wives and my ex-kids and my turtle. Where the fuck else does a guy get fined for somethin he does during nonworkin hours that don’t violate no laws?”
“Professional sports,” said Lieutenant Finque.
“They can afford it, we can’t,” Spermwhale shot back. “All I can say is I’m glad I got my twenty in next January I’m gonna start speakin my mind then.”
“The lieutenant needs that like a dose of clap,” said Sergeant Nick Yanov, who winked at Spermwhale.
“Fuckin pussies run this outfit,” Spermwhale growled, settling down a little under the placating grin of Sergeant Yanov. “I know why all the brass downtown go up to Chinatown for lunch. They operate this fuckin department from the fortune cookies.”
“Well, what say we read the crimes?” Sergeant Yanov asked, much to the relief of Lieutenant Finque who feared gross and ugly and dangerous old cops like Spermwhale Whalen. Lieutenant Finque could never seem to reason with them.
“Here’s one on Virginia Road where a housewife invented a do it yourself antiburglary kit,” Nick Yanov said, rubbing his bristling chin as he read. “She’s an invalid who stays in bed all day with a Colt.38 under her pillow. Blew up a burglar the other day when he opened the kitchen window and tippy-toed in. Her second.”
After everyone finished cheering, Sergeant Yanov looked at the clock and said, “Not much time left. Here’s a mug shot of that dude the dicks want for shanking his old lady Cut her long, deep and continuous. Hangs around the poolroom on Adams.”
“Hey, Sarge,” Spencer Van Moot said, “I’m getting tired of all these station calls to the old broad lives on West Boulevard. Doesn’t the desk officer know she’s a dingaling? She always wants to know things like where does she buy a crash helmet big enough for her thirty-five year old epileptic son who keeps falling on his head.”
“Only takes a minute,” Sergeant Yanov said. “Her boy’s been dead for five years. Makes the old woman feel good talking to a big good looking blond like you, Spencer. You probably remind her of him.”
“Well she’s not my type and I got better things to do,” Spencer answered, and then he got mad as the assembly room exploded into hoots and laughter because everyone but Lieutenant Finque knew that Spencer’s better things to do were bargain hunting on Wilshire Boulevard.
“It’s time we hit the streets,” Lieutenant Finque repeated, since he believed that a lieutenant should never let a sergeant, especially one as lenient as Nick Yanov, take over the rollcall.
Unquestionably, the biggest pain in the ass on the night-watch at Wilshire Station was Francis Tanaguchi. He was twenty-five years old, a third generation Japanese-American who grew up in the barrio of East Los Angeles and spoke good street Spanish but not a word of Japanese. He adored guacamole, chile relleno, barbacoa, menudo, albondigas soup and tequila with anything. He hated sushi, tempura, teriyaki steak, sake and could not operate a pair of chopsticks to save his life.
As a teenage member of a Chicano youth gang he had spray painted “Peewee Raiders” on more walls than any other gang member. Still, he was never totally accepted by Mexican boys who lumped all Orientals together by invariably nicknaming them “Chino” or “Chink.” Francis fought to be called “Francisco” or at least “Pancho” but settled for “Chink-ano.” It stayed with him until he joined the Los Angeles Police Department at the age of twenty-one.