Gradually he found it was advantageous to be Japanese. There were many Mexican-American policemen but there were few Japanese-American policemen, even though Los Angeles has the largest Japanese-American population in California.
Sometimes Francis and his black partner, Calvin Potts, had profound philosophical discussions about their ethnic roots.
“So now if I wanna get somewhere in the department I gotta be a Buddhahead,” Francis moaned to his partner.
“You think you got problems?” Calvin remarked. “How about me? How’d you like to be a brother in your paddy world, huh?”
“Who said I’m a paddy for chrissake?” Francis answered. “Goddamnit, I’m a Mexican.”
“You’re a Nip, Francis,” Calvin reminded him.
“So quit calling me a paddy.”
“You all look alike.”
“It’s goddamn hard becoming a Jap when you’re my age. I been at it four years now and I still can’t take a picture or mow a lawn straight.”
“You think you got it rough,” Calvin said. “How’d you like to have other policemen put you down when you date a white chick. How’d you like that, Francis?”
“I ain’t seen it stop you yet, Calvin.”
“That’s because I’m drunk when I date a white chick. I get drunk to stop the hurt.”
“You get drunk when you date any chick. In fact, everybody knows you’re an alcoholic, for chrissake.”
“I’m only an alcoholic because it dulls the hurtin,” said Calvin.
“How’d you like to get sick to your stomach every time you look a fish head in the eye?”
“I do get sick to my stomach every time I look a fish head in the eye.”
“Yeah, but that asshole Lieutenant Finque ain’t trying to duke you into the Oriental community by using you as a part time community relations officer at Japanese luncheons where you force down three raw squid and puke all the way to Daniel Freeman Hospital afterward.”
“That’s all in your head, that reaction to Nip soul food.”
“That’s the worst place to be sick-in the head. And that prick Lieutenant Finque is doing it to me.”
“We’ll talk to the guys at the next choir practice. Roscoe or one a those whackos’ll think up some way to fix his ass.”
Calvin Potts, at twenty-eight, was three years older than Francis Tanaguchi and had been a policeman two years longer. He was tall, athletic, divorced, the son of a Los Angeles bail bondsman. He had been raised in Baldwin Hills when there were only a few black families on the hill. He had dated girls and women of all colors all his life. In truth he seldom had any trouble with racial slur. It wouldn’t have bothered him much if he had. He was an alcoholic because his father was an alcoholic, as was a brother, a sister, two uncles and numerous cousins. He came from a hard drinking family. He had been a Scotch drinker at sixteen. He was also an alcoholic because he was insane about his ex-wife, Martha Twogood Potts, whose father was one of the most successful black trial lawyers in Los Angeles.
Martha Twogood Potts had decided in the second year of their marriage, after several reasonably successful sexual encounters with more marriageable men, that she had been goofy to marry a no-account cop. She scooped Calvin Jr. out of the crib and called her daddy who convinced a Superior Court judge that it would not be unreasonable for Officer Calvin Potts to pay child support and alimony equal to thirty-five percent of his net pay. This left fifteen percent for the car payment, twenty-five percent for food, twenty percent for gas and car repairs, and forty percent for an enormous personal loan he incurred getting started lavishly in married life. Since the total outlay was 135 percent, Calvin remedied the situation by letting the Mercedes be repossessed and buying a second-hand gearless Schwinn bicycle which he rode back and forth to work. He then divided the twenty-five percent food allowance into two equal parts, half for food and half for booze, and discovered that twelve and a half percent of a policeman’s net salary would not buy enough booze for even an average alcoholic. So he moved in with a girl known as Lottie LaFarb, a part time telephone operator who made certain calls on company time which earned her up to two hundred dollars a night when she got home.
Calvin Potts had been working with Francis Tanaguchi for six months and they had become inseparable. Calvin could not begin to understand this since he hated people in general and Francis Tanaguchi was by all odds the biggest pain in the ass at Wilshire Station. But there it was. They were always together. Everyone called them The Gook and The Spook.
There were several very good reasons why Francis Tanaguchi was such an enormous pain in the ass. He did annoying things, some of which were cyclical, some more or less permanent. One of the permanent annoying things he was accused of doing was arranging calls to the other choirboys’ residences at 4:00 A.M. A mysterious woman with a lasciviously voluptuous voice would begin to talk as the sleepy choirboy was coming awake in the darkness. The listener would be treated to a low crooning lush sexual litany which could transform almost any old three ounce cylinder of flesh, vein and muscle into a diamond cutter. Though it was generally suspected that Francis Tanaguchi was responsible for these bizarre calls, it was never proved and he never admitted it. Drunk and sober, Calvin Potts had begged threatened and bribed him to no avail.
No one had ever seen the Dragon Lady as they had come to call the owner of the voice. And no one had ever been able to hang up once she was into her routine. All had wet dreams about her. The wife of Spencer Van Moot had left him for the third time when she, on another phone extension, heard the erotic, blood boiling promises.
Perhaps the greatest harm was done to Father Willie Wright one night as his fat dumpling of a wife lay snoring beside him. Father Willie answered the phone and sat galvanized in the darkness while the Dragon Lady promised to use her body and Willie’s in a way that any reasonable man should have known was physically impossible. But Father Willie was not reasonable at this moment. He was gulping, dizzy, disoriented. He was speechless and frenzied. The Dragon Lady began making incredibly luxurious, unwholesome, juicy noises. Then she hung up.
Father Willie lay there for a moment then fell on the sleeping Jehovah’s Witness who only tolerated sex when she was awake and prepared for it.
The next afternoon before rollcall, Father Willie Wright, his left eye blood red from a desperate blow by a chubby little fist in the night, waited at Francis Tanaguchi’s locker and challenged him to a fight to the death in the basement of Wilshire Police Station. Calvin Potts and several other officers interceded while Francis professed total innocence. Father Willie was led into the rollcall room swallowing tears of rage, swearing for the very first time in anyone’s memory.
“Ya fuck, ya!” yelled Father Willie. “Ya dirty slant-eyed heathen godless little fuck, ya!”
Francis Tanaguchi had other annoying habits, not the least of which was biting people on the neck. It started when Francis went to a shabby Melrose Boulevard movie house where they were offering a Bela Lugosi Film Festival to a college crowd which hooted and yelled and smoked pot and ate popcorn.
Francis was with a chilly clerk typist named Daphne Simon who worked the morning watch at Wilshire Records and seldom dated policemen because she felt they were too horny. Francis had won her heart by sending a thirty dollar floral arrangement which he had gotten free by stopping at a Japanese nursery near Crenshaw Boulevard and thrilling the immigrant proprietors with his blue clad Oriental body. Francis had only planned to try to get them to bounce for a handful of violets, but when he saw how delighted they were with him, he promoted the sort to multicolored carnations.
As he sat in the smoke filled movie house, Daphne Simon roughly pulled his hand out from between her legs every time he let it accidentally fall there. It made him wish he had saved the flowers for Ora Lee Tingle at choir practice. Francis Tanaguchi came to dislike Daphne Simon who was in some exotic way giving him a blue veiner by squeezing his hand saucily before she slammed it down on the wooden armrest between the seats. But if he was starting to dislike Daphne Simon he was falling in love with Bela Lugosi.