Captain Drobeck never solved the mystery. But one thing was certain: it was a colored voice.
On one of his weekly evenings out on the streets, Lieutenant Grimsley caught eight officers with their hats off, one smoking in public and three others drinking coffee which proved to have been gratuitously received. Just before calling it a night, he added to his score by bagging Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate staked out on a stop sign at 11:00 P.M. on a residential street where a car didn’t pass more often than once every half hour. Both officers were slumped in their seats, heads resting against the windows. But like any veteran policemen, they could rely on years of experience to trigger signals in deep slumber when 7-A-1 was mentioned among the ceaseless garbled almost unintelligible radio messages.
Legally speaking, Lieutenant Hardass Grimsley was a strict constructionist. He could not prove his suspicions that Spermwhale and Baxter were asleep, so their suspension papers said:
Officers failed to remain alert in that officers assumed a position of repose in a parked policed vehicle with eyelids pressed together, breathing heavily and regularly Four days.
In addition, through diligent police work, Lieutenant Grimsley found a bag of avocados in the trunk of the black and white, which he traced to Francis Tanaguchi, who, it turned out, accepted them gratuitously from a Japanese produce market wherein the owner was proud of Francis’ being a Japanese policeman, not knowing that Francis was Mexican at heart and would use the avocados in making guacamole which he would ladle into his tacos. Spermwhale and Baxter were given an additional punishment of a divisional admonishment which read:
I hereby admonish you in that you accepted some avocados from another officer who received them from a private party who was not, in fact, morally correct in giving the avocados without recompense. Moreover, the other officer was guilty of moral turpitude for accepting the free avocados. The acceptance of gratuities is against Department regulations and you were aware of this regulation at the time you imprudently accepted the avocados from the officer who was also aware when he imprudently accepted the avocados from the man who should have been more prudent.
Francis Tanaguchi was not given an admonishment or any other penalty because the community relations officer, Lieutenant Gay, was trying to make public relations inroads with the Oriental community by putting Officer Tanaguchi up as a model policeman. He persuaded Captain Drobeck not to let Lieutenant Grimsley reprimand Francis officially. Lieutenant Grimsley acceded to the decision since it came from the station captain but he was frustrated because there wasn’t something he could get on the old Japanese who gave Francis the avocados. He asked the vice squad to keep an eye on the market in case the old man should sell beer to minors. And he certainly put Lieutenant Gay and Francis on his list.
But if Lieutenant Gay Francis Tanaguchi and the old Japanese were on Lieutenant Grimsley’s list, Lieutenant Grimsley was certainly on Spermwhale Whalen’s list.
“His dance card’s all filled up,” Spermwhale vowed at choir practice when the whole night had been spent on plotting revenge.
“I get the first waltz,” said Francis Tanaguchi, who sat in the dark on a blanket under a tree.
The choirboys began various subtle attacks on Lieutenant Grimsley which ultimately ended up in his transfer from Wilshire Station because according to the station captain he was getting too chummy with certain officers.
The officers he was apparently getting so chummy with were two of the MacArthur Park choirboys, namely Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate, who when they were finished with him could actually walk into Lieutenant Grimsley’s office and muss up his lint covered, thinning hair and say things like, “How about a day off tomorrow, Hardass?” When no one else under the rank of lieutenant ever dared to address him even by his first name, Elliott.
This remarkable familiarity was accomplished by some groundwork supplied by Francis Tanaguchi which included shimming the door of the lieutenant’s private car and putting three MacArthur ducks in the back seat.
It was entertaining for the choirboys to stake out the police parking lot after end-of-watch and see Lieutenant Grimsley trudge through the dark, sleepy after a hard night of paper work, and get into his car only to come flying out five seconds later and fall on his ass from the duck excrement on his shoes. It was said that his wife nagged him for months about the green slime she would find stubbornly clinging to the creases of the leather upholstery.
The choirboys also put a particularly fierce black gander in Lieutenant Grimsley’s locker at the station which resulted in an investigation by officers of Internal Affairs Division which lasted a week.
Harold Bloomguard, the protector of ducks and all animals, in each case volunteered to take the hissing, squawking birds and get rid of them after the duck shit hit the fan. This should have made him a logical suspect since he mysteriously showed up after each duck attack but Lieutenant Grimsley was too outraged to put two and two together. Besides, it was extremely hard to add two and two when your personal belongings were dripping and foul smelling and an enraged loathsome creature had been banging on your head with its bill.
There were minor attacks wherein the siren on the Lieutenant’s police car was fixed so that it wailed and could not be shut off when he started the engine. And his baton, which he kept in the door holder, was removed, carefully sawed in half and replaced.
But the coup which utterly demolished Lieutenant Grimsley and made him a slave to Spermwhale Whalen and precipitated his transfer occurred when Spermwhale bribed a black whore named Fanny Forbes, who was tall and curvy and slender despite her years, to entertain Lieutenant Grimsley Spermwhale Whalen told her in which restaurant the lieutenant ate on Thursday nights when he could break away from his duties which consisted of signing routine reports and trying to catch policemen loafing in the station when they should be handling their calls.
It took Fanny Forbes, who posed as a tourist from Philadelphia, exactly twenty-five minutes to talk Lieutenant Grimsley into driving her and her bogus suitcase, containing the dirty laundry of Spermwhale Whalen, to a motel on La Brea. He parked his black and white on a side street and insisted on carrying her bag up the back stairs while she registered alone.
Eight minutes after she registered, and while Lieutenant Grimsley, naked except for his black police socks, was hotly kissing the well worn source of her income and whispering endearments like, “Oh baby, you don’t seem like a Negro. You look like a Samoan!” Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate crept up the same back stairway and opened the door which the whore had left unlocked.
The two choirboys waited a few minutes more, their ears to the door, and heard Lieutenant Grimsley panting so loudly they were afraid they’d miss the prearranged signal from Fanny Forbes.
“She’s really got him sucking wind.”
“Yeah!” Spermwhale whispered, his hat in hand, ear pressed to the door, waiting, waiting.
And then they heard it, the signaclass="underline" “Oh honey!” cried the whore. “You got balls like a elephant and a whang like a ox!”
Just as Spermwhale burst through the door Lieutenant Grimsley was in the throes of blissful agony. When he withdrew and jumped from the bed his face was like a dead man’s.
“Okay, who called the pol… Lieutenant Grimsley!” cried Spermwhale Whalen.
“What’re you men doing here?” cried Lieutenant Grimsley.
“We got a call a woman was being raped in this room! We had no idea!” cried Baxter Slate.
“Musta been some cop hating neighbor saw you come in with the young lady!” cried Spermwhale Whalen.
“How humiliatin!” cried the whore.
“Let’s keep our voices down,” whispered Lieutenant Grimsley still motionless and pale.