Francis was on his knees between the beds, his hat and flashlight on the floor beside him, the beam shining under the bed lighting the body of the five year old boy.
Calvin dropped to his knees, removed his hat and using Francis’ flashlight, looked under. The bundle was drenched in blood, the pajamas shredded around the tiny huddled body unrecognizable as a child except for some short blond hair not blood soaked.
“Musta crawled under there to get away from him,” Calvin said hoarsely. “The killer musta crawled after him and cut the kid up there under the bed. Just laid there under that bed slashin and slashin. Musta been that way It’s clean all around the outside a the bed. The little thing hidin under the bed and the killer crawlin under after him with the knife. There ain’t no God, Francis! I swear there ain’t!”
Then Francis was on his feet, throwing the bed aside and pulling at the little form, dragging it through the viscous red puddle until Calvin stopped him.
“Don’t touch that body!”
“I think I saw him move, Calvin! I think maybe he’s still alive!”
“Francis!” Calvin shouted, jerking his partner up as the little body thudded softly to the floor, splashing heavy drops onto the dirty wallpaper. “His insides are all over the fuckin floor! Look!” And he pointed at the ominous red blossoms. “Look at the blood! Look at the face! That child’s dead, Francis.”
Francis Tanaguchi looked at his partner for a moment, looked at his own bloody hands, then said, “Oh. I can’t see too good without my glasses. I guess I should wear my glasses.”
“Let’s go call the dicks,” Calvin said, gently leading his partner out of the apartment which in thirty minutes was swarming with detectives, fingerprint specialists, photographers, deputy coroners and high ranking police administrators who had nothing to do with the investigation but who were always the ones who acted as spokesmen on the television news.
Deputy Chief Lynch was there, his hairpiece a little askew because he had just been in a motel with Theda Gunther.
Commander Moss was there, waving and grinning until he finally persuaded a newsman to take his picture. He pretended that he was examining a lift of a latent fingerprint found on the side of the television set. He held the lift upside down as he scrutinized it. Then he waved with both arms at the newsmen as he was leaving, his blond wavy hair glowing under the lights. One journalist said he acted like a Rose Queen on a flower float.
There were few clues left by the killer. The latent print was found to have belonged to the victim, Mrs. Mary Stafford. An old boyfriend of hers was ultimately arrested for the murders but the evidence was not sufficient for a complaint. Commander Moss’ picture never appeared in the newspapers.
It was later that night, with a child’s blood still lodged in the creases of his fingers, that Francis Tanaguchi raised a plastic periscope and began that last obsessive U-boat attack on Wolfgang Werner and big Olga. Then he called for a choir practice and drank and worried about the nightmares sure to come.
EIGHT
7-A-1: SPERMWHALE WHALEN
AND BAXTER SLATE
At first, Spermwhale Whalen was uncommonly quiet at roll-call on a smoggy June afternoon, just two months before the choir practice killing. Spermwhale was not over the death of a son who claimed to despise him as much as he loved the son. Actually, they hardly knew each other.
Baxter Slate, his partner, was never a boisterous young man so it was not unusual that he said very little while half the nightwatch hooted and jeered at Roscoe Rules and Lieutenant Finque.
“Damn it, Lieutenant, I resent the investigators showing my picture all the time to rape victims,” Roscoe Rules complained. “I didn’t know they were doing it till last month.”
“Apparently they just noticed that your picture mixes well with white sex suspects,” Lieutenant Finque replied, getting a migraine as he always did at rollcall these days.
“Yeah, well I shoulda got suspicious when that pussy kiddy cop caught me in civvies and asked to let her snap a Polaroid a me to test out the new camera.”
“No harm, Roscoe,” Sergeant Yanov grinned.
“No? That cunt’s been using my picture in a mug shot showup every fucking time a paddy rapes somebody around here!”
“She can’t help it you look like such a deviate,” Spermwhale said, as his partner Baxter Slate grinned. “I think she’ll stop, Roscoe, by the time two or three victims pick you out of the lineup.”
“They’d probably have the right guy,” said Harold Bloomguard.
“Naw, he can’t even get a blue veiner, let alone a diamond cutter,” said Calvin Potts. “We ever get a limp dick bandit around here he’ll be a prime suspect.”
“Very funny Potts, very fucking funny,” Roscoe Rules said murderously as he unconsciously pulled on his limp dick.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do, Rules,” the lieutenant said. “Now onto the next subject of our supervisors’ meeting. That is: excessive force complaints. The captain says he had an awful lot of paper work to do because an officer on the morning watch broke a suspect’s arm with a wristlock. Just be careful in the future. Remember, a wristlock is very hard to put on if a man resists, so don’t get carried away.”
“Question, Lieutenant,” Baxter Slate said.
“Yes?”
“If a man didn’t resist, why would you ever put it on in the first place?”
Sergeant Yanov saved his superior officer by taking control of the rollcall and saying, “How about my reading the crimes. Here’s a sex story Might perk up your evening.”
And as Sergeant Yanov rescued his lieutenant from further embarrassing faux pas, Lieutenant Finque smoldered. Yanov related so easily with men, was so obviously well liked, that Finque knew he had to be a rotten supervisor. This belief was bolstered in that Yanov had been working for him three months and had never yet been capable of catching a policeman with his hat off or smoking in public view. Lieutenant Finque made a note to mention to Captain Drobeck that Yanov, at thirty-four just a few months younger than Lieutenant Finque, was probably too young and inexperienced to be an effective field sergeant and should be encouraged to go into the detective bureau.
Captain Drobeck would be the first to agree with such a proposal because he had hated Yanov ever since the sergeant openly disagreed with the captain at a meeting of all the Wilshire Division supervisors. Yanov refuted an “administrative suggestion” from the captain and argued that he would willingly fool the chief of police and lie to the mayor, and to his own wife if he still had one, but never to his men. Because he never asked his chief, mayor or wife to fight for him or save his ass.
Captain Drobeck wrote on Sergeant Yanov’s rating report: “Is yet too young and immature to grasp the fundamentals of supervision.”
To get even with the troops Lieutenant Finque interrupted Sergeant Yanov’s reading of the noteworthy crimes. Lieutenant Finque decided to inform them of what he had just heard prior to rollcalclass="underline" that a Superior Court jury had acquitted a man charged with the murder of Los Angeles police officer.
“Acquitted?” thundered Spermwhale Whalen when the lieutenant announced it, but even Spermwhale’s bellow was lost in the deafening clamor which went up in that room.
The accused was thought to be a narcotic dealer. He went to a hotel with an undercover officer who posed as a buyer, and a third man, a police informant. The officer was prepared to make a large buy but as it turned out the accused had no drugs. He did have a small caliber pistol with which he shot and killed the officer who returned fire ineffectively before his death. The accused stole the suitcase full of money and ran out the door but was arrested immediately by other officers hiding outside.