“You wanna go where, Francis?” Calvin Potts squinted, when Francis settled into the black and white the next afternoon.
“To that big costume store on Western,” Francis repeated.
“You goin to a masquerade?”
“No.”
“I know, you’re gonna buy a polar bear suit for you and Ora Lee to wear while you flog each other with dead baby ducks at the next choir practice.”
“I’m gonna buy some fangs,” Francis said simply.
For three weeks, which was about as long as one of Francis’ whims lasted, he was called the Nisei Nipper by the policemen at Wilshire Station. He skulked around the station with two blood dripping fangs slipped over his incisors, attacking the throat of everyone below the rank of sergeant.
“It was okay for a while,” Spencer Van Moot complained to Calvin Potts one day “But those frigging teeth hurt. And it starts to get really depressing having Francis draped around your neck all the time.”
And even as he spoke Francis leaped from behind a wall and onto Spencer’s back, nipping him on the neck with the gory plastic fangs.
Sam Niles finally came to work with a bullet painted silver and let Francis see him putting it in his gun.
Harold Bloomguard hung parsley over his locker and told Francis it was wolfsbane. Then Whaddayamean Dean, and finally everyone else, started carrying crosses to ward off the Oriental vampire who would hiss and snarl when a cross was produced and slink back to his locker until he spotted someone with his back turned.
Spermwhale Whalen finally grabbed Francis by the collar and said, “There’s so fuckin many crosses around this locker room it looks like a platoon a nuns’ dresses here. Francis, I’m gonna stick those goofy teeth right up your skinny ass if you don’t knock it off!”
“Okay I’m getting sick and tired of tasting all these crummy necks anyway,” Francis said, and the vampire returned to earth permanently.
The night that Francis got bloody hands and decommissioned the U-boat was a smoggy evening in late spring. It started as usual with Calvin complaining that he always drove.
“Looky here, Francis, I been on the job longer than you, and I been on this miserable earth longer and I don’t know why the fuck I let you jive me around like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like drivin you around like a fuckin chauffeur every night.”
“I write better English than you so you should drive while I should keep books.”
“You what? You write half the time like some ignorant wetback. You didn’t learn no English in those Chicano East L.A. schools.”
“Well you drive better than me.”
“Bullshit. You ever seen a brother drivin at Indianapolis?”
“You ever seen a Buddhahead driving? Every cop knows a Buddhahead is a worse driver even than a brother.”
“Tomorrow you drive.”
“I can’t. I don’t want nobody to see me with glasses on. They make me look like an Iwo Jima sniper. It embarrasses me.”
“I never seen you with glasses.”
“I only wear them when I wanna see.”
“And we been partners all this time and you never wanted to see?”
“There’s nothing on this job I wanna see, Calvin. The only time I put em on is when other guys take em off. I put em on to get laid. That’s all I wanna see anymore.”
“Do you put em on at choir practice when you ball Ora Lee Tingle or Carolina Moon?”
“No, that’s another thing I don’t wanna see.”
Then Calvin started getting sullen. It came over him more frequently of late and he was drinking more than ever before. He had been forcing himself lately to stop thinking of that bitch, Martha Twogood Potts and her sleek caramel flesh. But he could not repress his thoughts of Calvin Jr. and how the toddler hardly knew him now and did not even want to be with his father on weekends. And how he truly didn’t want the boy with him in the apartment of Lottie LaFarb, even though she was a kind-hearted telephone operator and barely a prostitute and lavished him with pussy and what money she had and loved Calvin Jr. unequivocally.
Sometimes he wanted to beat the shit out of Lottie LaFarb and Francis Tanaguchi, the only two people in the world who, he felt, gave a damn whether or not he stuck that Smith K-38 in his mouth and blew the top of his skull all over the tobacco stained plastic headliner in that black and white Matador which at the moment smelled of urine and vomit from the drunk the daywatch had booked near end-of-watch.
Calvin Potts’ surging anger was broken when the honey voice the choirboys had come to love said, “Seven-A-Seventy-seven, Seven-A-Seventy-seven, see the woman, family dispute at the bar, Adams and Cloverdale.”
“That’s us, Calvin,” Francis said jauntily, jotting the call on the pad affixed to the hotsheet holder on the dashboard.
“Well, roger it then, goddamnit,” Calvin said viciously.
“Seven-A-Seventy-seven, roger,” Francis said, looking at his partner whose coffee face was polished by the dipping hazy sunlight as they drove west at dusk. “What’re you pissed off at, Calvin?”
“Nothin. I’m just gettin sick and tired a workin this car. Why can’t we go back up to the north end next month?”
“We can, I thought you wanted action.”
“I’m sick a action. I’m sick a these eastside trashy niggers that’ve took over this area down here. I’d rather work the Fairfax beat. I could easier put up with all the Hebes in Kosher Canyon chippin their teeth every time you give them a ticket.”
“Okay We’ll talk to the boss about working a north end car next month. I know what you need.”
“What?”
“A little trim.”
“Oh yeah, just what I need,” said Calvin looking skyward for a disgusted instant.
“I know Lottie’s taking care of your everyday needs but I got a special one just moved in my apartment building. Meant to tell you about her.”
“The Dragon Lady?” Calvin said suddenly and for a moment he felt the depression subside a bit.
“Now, Calvin, you know I don’t know any more about the Dragon Lady than you guys,” said Francis, with his attempt at an inscrutable mysterious Oriental grin.
“Well, what’s she like?”
“Better than that lanky one we met at the party in the Hollywood Hills.”
“She better be.”
“Too bad you didn’t score with that one.”
“Yeah, well she woulda came on in if it wasn’t for that lawyer throwin his wallet open every two minutes showin all that bread. People just wear me down when they start that bullshit.”
“It’s all he has going for him,” Francis observed.
“I bet she woulda got up off some pussy if I coulda showed a few fifty dollar bills.”
“If you gotta buy it it ain’t worth it.”
“I woulda bought it that night. I was hurtin for certain. She had me by the joint, you know.”
“Sure.”
“I told you that, didn’t I?”
“Another alcoholic fantasy Calvin. You better come down off that Johnnie Walker bottle you’re living in.”
“Listen, you slant eyed little fenderhead, I’m tellin you she was lopin my mule under the table.”
“Calvin, you were so bombed that night even the Dragon Lady couldn’t’ve given you a blue veiner. I mean a black veiner.”
“Now you’re wearin me down, Francis.”
“I just ain’t going for it, Calvin.”
Calvin Potts was glaring at Francis and almost failed to stand on the brakes in time to keep from broadsiding a dilapidated ten year old Pontiac which had limped onto Adams Boulevard from the driveway of Elmer’s Barbeque Kitchen which was one half block from the family dispute call.