“Aw right, Officer, aw right,” said Clyde Percy, grinning happily and standing at attention, his purple lips smeared with banana, his skin blue-black in the shadows. “Y’all caught me fair an square. Don’t need no handcuffs. I’m gonna come peaceable. Course if you wanna use handcuffs it’s okay too.”
“Ain’t seen you around for a while, Clyde,” Spermwhale said as they walked the old man down the stairs, each policeman holding an elbow because he reeked of wine and staggered on the landing.
“Got locked up last November. Jist in time for Thanksgivin. Ain’t missed a Thanksgivin at Central Jail in twenny-eight years.”
“You’ve been in jail since November?” Baxter asked as he navigated down the steep stairs gingerly, holding Clyde and the shotgun and now needing a flashlight in the gloom.
“No suh,” Clyde Percy said. “This time a wunnuful thing happened to ol Clyde. I was sent to Camarilla State Hospital. The public defender say ol Clyde’s crazy. An first I din’t wanna go cause I likes your jail. I likes the sheriff’s jail even better, no offense to you officers. He tell me, Clyde, we gonna get you sent to this crazy hospital and you gonna like it even better’n jail. So I say okay, and off I go up to Camarilla, and know what? They gives me a job up there teachin.”
“Teaching?” Baxter said and stumbled with Clyde at the bottom of the stairs, dropping his riot gun and flashlight, kicking the light under a counter in the dark.
While the two policemen got down on their knees to look for the last flashlight, Clyde Percy picked up the riot gun helpfully and was holding it cradled in his arms like a baby when Sergeant Nick Yanov came through the front door.
“Holy shit!” yelled Nick Yanov, drawing, crouching, throwing his flashlight beam on Clyde Percy who had lifted the gun to his shoulder upside down and started eating potato chips over the prone bodies of the two policemen.
“Drop the fucking gun or I’ll blow you away!” Nick Yanov screamed.
The next few minutes involved several panic stricken shouts after which Spermwhale sat the sergeant down on a display couch, gave him a cigarette and convinced him they were alive, that Baxter had unloaded the magazine when he ejected the live round, that Clyde Percy was a harmless old acquaintance of Spermwhale Whalen’s and that Sergeant Yanov should remain on the couch until his legs steadied.
“Sure glad it was you, Sarge,” Spermwhale Whalen said to the chesty, bristle jawed sergeant. “If it was one a them other cunt supervisors he’d a probably cut old Clyde in half and we’d a ended up with another suspension for lettin Clyde get wasted.”
“Why do you do things like this to me,” Nick Yanov said, drawing heavily on the cigarette as some color returned to his face.
Then the two policemen and Clyde Percy helped the weak kneed Sergeant Yanov out of the store and to his car, Clyde Percy apologizing profusely for scaring him to death.
“Where’s the nearest gas station?” Sergeant Yanov asked as he got back in his black and white and threw his hat and light on the seat, running both hands through his heavy black hair.
“Why, you gotta take a crap?” Spermwhale grinned.
“No, I just did! I gotta clean up!” said Nick Yanov as he fired up the radio car and roared away.
“Good fuckin sergeant,” Spermwhale Whalen mused in an extremely rare moment, and then reverted to his old self. “Not like that eunuch lieutenant and that gelding captain and all the other cocksuckin sergeants on the nightwatch.”
“So what’s with the teaching you say you did at Camarillo?” Baxter asked when they got Clyde safely in the radio car and were on their way to jail to book him for drunk.
“I tell you, Officer,” said Clyde Percy munching toothlessly on potato chips, “it was such a fine place. They was all these kids, retarded, you know? Ain’t nobody come to visit em most a the time. They gives em jobs to keep em busy like makin these little balloon toys. You puts the balloons on the little blow-up stems like. So they gives me the job a helpin watch over all the kids. So I does things like make sure they kin attach balloons right and that they don’t fight too much and don’t fall on their heads and bite their tongues and so forth like that. And then one day I made a invention. I drills holes in this board to put the stems in and then the kids kin attach three balloons at once and makes it easier to hold em. One a the bosses there says to me, ‘Clyde, you jist about the best we ever have workin here.’ So I tells him bout the time I save the lady in the flood and he say, ‘Clyde, you kin stay here if you wants to.’”
“Why’re you out then?” asked Spermwhale, driving the black and white west on Venice Boulevard.
“They say one day they jist ain’t no more room, jist room for real crazy people and I ain’t that crazy. So that night I start sayin I’m the President and mayor, and like that. But they say it ain’t no good, Clyde, we know you ain’t really crazy like some folks, leastways you ain’t so crazy you gonna hurt somebody. And then I thought bout hurtin one a the technicians, punchin em or somethin, but they all so nice to me I couldn’t. So they put me out and here I is, back home agin.”
“That’s a goddamn shame,” Spermwhale said angrily, turning in his seat toward Baxter. “I seen fifty dollar a trick whores, and dopers and pimps, and thieves and assholes for three generations all on welfare and we can’t even afford a fuckin bed and three squares at a state hospital for Clyde. That pisses me off!”
“Think you kin do somethin to git me back there?” asked the old man, his blue lips flaked with potato chips, the left earflap of his flier’s cap turned up from the scuffle with Sergeant Yanov.
“By God, if there’s any justice in this miserable world, which there ain’t, somebody oughtta help you. Tell you what, you plead not guilty at your arraignment tomorrow. Then I’ll be in court on trial day. I’ll talk to the city attorney and tell him that you’re always walkin around the street threatenin everybody and sayin you’re the Easter Bunny and wavin your dong at housewives and stuffin dog shit in mailboxes and settin trash fires and in general bein a bigger pain in the ass than Francis Tanaguchi.”
“Francis who?”
“Oh, never mind,” Spermwhale said as they parked in the station parking lot and got out of the car. “Anyways, I’m gonna tell him you’re the Wilshire Division whacko and a horrible asshole and you shouldn’t be put away for ninety days for drunk like you usually are because you’re a dingaling. And then I’ll say I think you should get a sanity hearin and shipped off to Camarillo again.”
“Oh, Officer,” said Clyde, and the tears welled in the old man’s eyes and he even stopped eating potato chips. “Oh, I’ll be crazier than you say I is, I kin stand on my head…”
“No, don’t go too far,” Spermwhale said. “Just stare off in space and say somethin goofy every time somebody asks you somethin.”
“I’ll shoo skeeters that ain’t there,” said Clyde as they shuffled toward the steps of the station.
“Yeah, like that,” Spermwhale said as they half lifted the old man up the steps.
“I’ll punch a policeman right in the mouf,” said Clyde.
“No, don’t do that,” said Spermwhale.
“A public defender?” Baxter Slate suggested.
“No, no,” Spermwhale said as they opened the side door and took Clyde inside.
“A judge? How about a judge?” Baxter offered.
“No,” Spermwhale said, “let’s not overdo it. Just swat invisible mosquitoes or beat off at the jury or somethin.”
Then Clyde Percy came to a limping halt in front of the barred jail doors and looked up at Spermwhale, and Clyde’s face, dust covered, but charcoal black in places, was streaked and wet.
“I appreciates it, Officer,” he said to the fat policeman. “I wants to go back to the chirruns, back to Camarilla. I appreciates what you doin for me.” And then he took Spermwhale’s big hand in his and wept.
“Jesus, Clyde! Okay! Okay!” Spermwhale said, pulling his hand away and looking around to see if other policemen were looking. “It’s okay. You don’t have to … it’s gonna be all right. I don’t mind bein there in court. I ain’t got nothin to do anyways. Jesus, it’s okay. Quit cryin, will ya?”