The police called the shooting a straight ripoff operation in which the plan was to steal the money. The informant testified that the defendant grabbed the suitcase and fired without warning. The defendant’s testimony was that the slain officer unaccountably drew his gun and the defendant, thinking he was to be ripped off, fired first to protect himself. The investigating officers scoffed. They said it was a “dead bang” case. A cinch. The evidence was overwhelming. There was an eyewitness. The defendant’s story was desperate and ludicrous. He was acquitted.
The judge, upon hearing the verdict, proclaimed that he was shocked. But he was not nearly as shocked as the twenty-eight men in Lieutenant Finque’s rollcall who would never become accustomed to shocking jury verdicts. It took five minutes to quiet them down and get several questions answered. But they weren’t questions. They were statements of indignation and disbelief. Outcries. Then threats. Then a violent obscene damning of the jury system.
Baxter Slate, perhaps the most articulate choirboy, said grimly that this bulwark of democracy was actually a crap game in which twelve telephone operators, mailmen, public utilities employees, pensioners and middle aged housewives, with no knowledge of the law and less of the sociopath, make irrevocable decisions based upon their exposure to movies like Twelve Angry Men and television shows like Perry Mason.
Lieutenant Finque let them rail until he was sure their stomachs were as sour as his always was because of them. He beamed contentedly. He wasn’t even afraid of them at the moment.
Their outrage was so complete that they quickly talked themselves out. One moment shrill trembling voices. Questions unanswered and unanswerable. Then silence. Defeat. Depression. And smoldering fury.
Lieutenant Finque sent them out to do police work with one further blandishment: “You men take with you the captain’s last warning from the supervisors’ meeting. Any wetfoot hotdogs who like to put a shoe in the carburetor better stand by. The next preventable traffic accident is going to mean the commander comes down on the captain, who’s going to come down hard on me and I’m going to have to come down hard on you!”
Finally Spermwhale Whalen spoke. He said, “I know shit rolls downhill. But why am I always livin in the valley?”
Herbert “Spermwhale” Whalen despised the new station Wilshire Division had moved to in early 1974. Daily he would drive by the dilapidated, inadequate old building on Pico Boulevard which, by God, looked like a police station. He longed for the old days.
Spermwhale, at 260 pounds with the pig eyes of a whale, was aptly named. He was of Irish Catholic stock, divorced three times, considering himself thus excommunicated. “It’s just too bad I ain’t rich enough to’ve got a fancy annulment approved by the Pope like all these rich cunts and cocksuckers you read about. Then I coulda stayed in the church.”
It was a refrain often heard at MacArthur Park choir practice when Spermwhale was almost in the tank, a fifth of bourbon or Scotch in the huge red hand. “Now I gotta go to hell cause I’m excommunicated!”
And if Father Willie Wright was drunk enough and suffering from his frequent attacks of overwhelming guilt for having just dismounted Ora Lee Tingle or Carolina Moon, claiming his plump little wife would only ball him dispassionately twice a month, he would say softly, “I’ll be with you, Spermwhale. I’m afraid I’ll be with you!”
Baxter Slate was a good partner for Spermwhale Whalen because he didn’t talk too much and give Spermwhale a headache. Also he had almost five years on the job, having been sworn in on his twenty-second birthday. Spermwhale, a nineteen year veteran, considered anyone with less time a fuzz nutted rookie and couldn’t stand to work with rookie partners.
Also Baxter didn’t complain when Spermwhale would occasionally pick up a streetwalking prostitute whom Spermwhale knew from his old days on the vice squad, saying, “It’s time for a little skull.” Were he to be caught it would mean their jobs, and Spermwhale Whalen was just months away from a pension. It was a calculated risk and Spermwhale sweated it out each time because the LAPD brass definitely did not approve of uniformed officers in black and whites getting a little skull.
It was surprising that Spermwhale would take such a risk. He often said that a sergeant who caught him doing something for which he could be fired would never get back to the station alive, because he, Spermwhale Whalen, would kill any cock-sucker who tried to keep him from making his twenty years and getting that irretrievable pension. Anyone Spermwhale didn’t like was either a “cunt,” a “gelding,” a “eunuch,” or a “cocksucker,” and that included almost all civilians, certainly all police brass and station supervisors (except Sergeant Nick Yanov) and all employees of the Civil Service Department who had designed nitpicking promotional exams which had frustrated him all these years and kept him from advancing past the basic policeman rank.
It was especially galling in that Spermwhale Whalen was a major in the Air Force Reserve and often ran into LAPD lieutenants and captains, also military reservists, who, during summer military exercises, had to salute him.
Spermwhale was proof positive that polish was not necessary to achieve staff rank in the United States Air Force Reserve, just as Commander Moss was proof positive that common sense was not needed to achieve staff rank in the Los Angeles Police Department.
But Spermwhale Whalen was just possibly one of the coolest most competent transport pilots in the 452nd Wing. He had flown in World War II and later in Korea until he left the Air Force and joined the police department. He was the only Los Angeles police officer in history to engage in one of his country’s wars while still an active member of the department. His remarkable feat was accomplished by flying C-124 Globemasters on three and four day missions from March Air Force Base to Danang in 1966 and 1967, almost being shot down twice by Communist surface to air missiles. Spermwhale was, for this reason, a minor legend in the department. In those years it had been fun for the Wilshire policemen to play straight man for Spermwhale among police officers from other stations, saying things like:
“Oh, Marvin, where’d you go on your days off?”
“Disneyland with my sister’s kids, how about you?”
“Fishing with Simon and his girlfriend up to Big Bear Lake, and how about you, Spermwhale?”
“Danang. Wasn’t much happenin. Few rocket attacks is all.”
Spermwhale seldom took two days off a week in those years. Like many policemen, he preferred to work nine and ten days straight to string his days off together. But his were for combat missions for which he was paid a bonus by the government of the United States to give to his three wives, each of whom had borne him a child before the divorce. When Spermwhale was off flying and the nightwatch sat bored in the assembly room, someone would always say when a low-flying aircraft roared over making an approach to LA Internationaclass="underline"
“Well, sounds like Spermwhale’s late for rollcall again.”
Spermwhale bore a Z-shaped scar which began in the fur of one black tufted eyebrow, crossed the flattened bridge of his nose, swooped under his right eye and came back onto the nose showing white in the swatch of red veins. Once at choir practice Carolina Moon asked him how he had gotten that scar.
“Landin in the rain with half my tail shot away.”
“Where, Spermy? Where’d it happen?”
An extraordinary thing happened: Spermwhale could not remember. Not for almost a full minute. The alcohol had temporarily debilitated his brain but it was more than that. He had flown so many missions for his government in which he had been asked to kill or cause the deaths of Oriental people that they had started to run together: Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese. He truly couldn’t answer. Not immediately.