“You got a driver’s license?” Calvin asked, right hand on his gun, three cell light in his left hand, searching for the right hand of the driver which was hidden from view.
He relaxed when the driver brought his hand up to the steering wheel and said, “Who me?”
“You know, I once shot a player like you,” Calvin lied. “Dude laid there with two Magnums in his belly and when I said, ‘Leroy you got any last words?’ he said, ‘Who me?’ and fell over dead. Now break out somethin with your name on it since I know you ain’t got a driver’s license.”
“Sure, Officer,” the man said, stepping out onto the street without being told after Calvin jerked open the door of the Cadillac.
Calvin shined his light over the alligators and crab apple green knicker suit with silky orange knee length socks while the man fumbled in the kangaroo wallet nervously.
“Here it is, Officer,” he smiled, as Calvin admired the five inch hammered medallion on the bare chest of the young man.
Calvin took the slip of paper which was a speeding ticket issued one week earlier by an LAPD motor officer.
“This all you got with your name on it?” Calvin asked.
“That was gave me by one of your PO-licemen. It’s official, ain’t it?”
“Shit,” Calvin said. “Fuckin motor cops only care about writin a ticket. Bet he took your word about who you are. Bet you keep this ticket for ID until it’s time to go to warrant and then get another ticket and use that for a while. Bet every fuckin one is in a different name. What’s your real name?”
“Jist like it say there, James Holiday.”
“Why you sweatin, James?” Calvin asked, flashlight in his sap pocket now, both fists on his hips, stretching so that he could be taller than the pimp and look down on him.
“You makin me nervous cause you don’t believe me.” The man licked his lips when they popped dryly.
“Gimme that wallet,” Calvin said suddenly.
“Ain’t that illegal search and seizure, Officer?” asked the pimp.
“Gimme that wallet, chump, or it’s gonna be a search and squeez-ure of your fuckin neck!”
“Okay, okay” the young man said, handing Calvin the wallet. “Looky here, I ain’t no crook or nothin. I owns two or three bars in San Diego.”
“Two or three,” Francis observed.
“Three, probably” said Calvin, pulling a bail receipt out of an inner compartment of the wallet.
“Uh oh,” said the man.
“Uh huh,” said Calvin.
“What’s his real name?” Francis asked, stepping to the open door of the radio car and pulling the hand mike outside to run a make.
“Omar Wellington,” Calvin said. “How about savin us a little time, Omar? You got warrants out or what?”
“Uh-huh,” said Omar Wellington. “Couple traffic warrants.”
“Well that ain’t so bad,” said Calvin.
“Oh man, I don’t wanna go to jail tonight!”
“No big thing,” Calvin said, touching his handcuffs. “We don’t have to hook you up, do we?”
“Handcuffs? Naw, I ain’t gonna give nobody no trouble. I’m nonviolent. How come you stopped me? It’s them fuckin license plates, ain’t it?”
Calvin looked at the personalized license plate and replied, “Didn’t even notice em, Omar.”
“Then how’d you tumble? They’s lots a players around here in Cadillacs. It was my orange hat, wasn’t it? You wouldn’t even a saw me if it wasn’t for that motherfuckin hat.”
“Yeah, it was the hat, Omar,” Francis said to pacify the pimp, who like most street people believed superstitiously that there was one explainable reason for being singled out.
“What do your friends call you, Omar?”
“They jist calls me Omar.”
“Okay Omar, get in the black and white. Let’s get goin so you can bail out tonight.”
“I only got a hundred bucks on me. The mother fuckin warrants are for more than that. And a bail-bondsman don’t work on traffic cases. And I ain’t got no one I can get hold of for four hours. Ain’t this some bullshit?”
“Tell me, Omar,” Francis said, sliding in beside the pimp in the back seat. “Why don’t you just pay the tickets when you get them?”
“Shee-it! You don’t give The Man your money till you has to!” Omar Wellington looked at Francis as though he were a cretin. “Y’unnerstan?”
After booking the pimp Calvin repeated that he wasn’t hungry Nothing Francis said seemed to help Calvin out of his depression this night and Francis was constrained to try his last resort.
“Calvin, is the periscope still in the trunk?” he asked innocently.
“Now jist a minute, Francis. Jist one fuckin minute!”
“Pull over, Calvin. Lemme just see it.”
“Gud-damn you, Francis, you promised.”
“Wolfgang’s working alone tonight in a report car. He’s all alone!” Francis said, trying his inscrutable smile on Calvin Potts.
Wolfgang Werner, a twenty-four year old formidable specimen in tailored blue, had been in America from Stuttgart ten years before joining the police department. Francis and Wolfgang had shared a radio car the month before Calvin Potts and Francis formed their partnership. Francis didn’t mind working with Wolfgang. At first he found Wolfgang hilarious. “If you dundt sign zat traffic ticket we must luck you in ze slummer!” He only began to hate Wolfgang when the huge German went to Lieutenant Finque and asked to be assigned to another partner because of a personality conflict.
Francis thought it reprehensible of the German. It was customary on the Los Angeles force for police supervisors to leave unquestioned the ambiguous phrase “personality conflict” which masked a plethora of problems. Often it simply meant that two cops hated each other’s guts and would be venting their feelings on the citizens if left together for a protracted period in the incredibly gritty intimate world of the radio car. Francis was furious because too many “personality conflicts” would result in a policeman’s receiving a reputation of “not being able to get along.”
The department was still controlled by men who wanted subordinates who could “get along” and who firmly believed that “a good follower makes a good leader.”
Francis Tanaguchi never believed in following since there was no one to follow when you were making life and death decisions on the street at night. So Francis said that Wolfgang Werner was a schmuck. He said he knew the real reason that Wolfgang had dumped him. It was because he couldn’t abide what Harold Bloomguard named them, which was quickly picked up by the other officers. Harold called them The Axis Partners.
One night, after Francis had stopped being an Axis Partner and had become half of the Gook and the Spook team, they were cruising Crenshaw Boulevard on a quiet Wednesday when Francis spotted Wolfgang talking with a red haired motorist whom he had stopped near Rodeo Road ostensibly to write a ticket for a burned out taillight.
“Vell, I dunt sink ve neet to write ze ticket zis time, miss,” Wolfgang lisped, standing tall in the street next to the lime Mustang, staring at the driver’s license, memorizing the address, eyes hidden under the brim of his hat which was always pulled too far forward à la Roscoe Rules.
“Thank you, Officer,” the girl giggled, measuring the massive shoulders and chest of this young Hercules who dripped with Freudian symbolism. There were the phallic objects: the gun, the badge. Not to mention the oversized sap hanging from the sap pocket. And in Wolfgang’s case (he was the only night-watch officer who never got out of his car without it) there was the nightstick. The obtuse girl had not the slightest understanding of the siege these accoutrements laid to her libido.
When Wolfgang handed her back the license with a practiced Teutonic grin, Francis knew that Wolfgang would now say, “Vut say ve meedt ufter vork for a little chin and tunick?”
“That phony krauthead,” Francis complained as he watched the pantomime from his passenger seat in the radio car.
He ordered Calvin to park near the opposite corner, saying, “I’m gonna sink that sausage eating Aryan son of a bitch.” Later that night he bought a plastic periscope at a five-and-dime. Francis knew Wolfgang Werner could not abide an assault on his dignity The U-boat attacks began.