Then Spermwhale, moving like a younger, slimmer man, was out of the car before it stopped, chasing the fleeing rapist across the parking lot shouting, “Stop, you motherfucker, or you’re maggot meat!”
Baxter Slate, finally getting his flashlight to work by banging it on his hip as he ran, caught up with Spermwhale who was standing motionless and aiming two handed at a running shadow eighty feet away. Then there were three explosions in Baxter’s ear and the Regretful Rapist dropped to the asphalt shrieking in terror from a slight wound which entered his lower back, broke two ribs, ricocheted around the rib cage, following the path of least resistance, and exited in the front, causing, aside from the broken ribs, little more than a flesh wound. And this caused Roscoe Rules at the next afternoon’s rollcall to scream loudly for the hundredth time that they should be permitted to carry dumdums and high velocity ammo.
When the two policemen got to the wounded suspect and stood over him, he shook his mop of sweaty hair out of his face and yelled in panic and shock, “You shot me in the back, you chickenshit!”
Spermwhale, panting heavily from excitement and exhaustion, yelled back, “There ain’t no rules out here, you cock-sucker! The Marquis of Queensberry’s just some fag over on Eighth Street!”
And the Regretful Rapist was caught. Spermwhale Whalen and Baxter Slate each received a Class A commendation which was worth exactly nothing in terms of promotion, prestige or economic remuneration. They both offered to trade it for the four days’ pay which had been taken away for accepting the imprudent avocados, but the watch commander told them he didn’t think that was very funny.
Perhaps Spermwhale Whalen’s greatest contribution was the rapport he established with the rapist in the five hours they were together at the emergency hospital, the detective bureau and finally the General Hospital jail ward where they booked him.
It started when Spermwhale bought two candy bars for himself and his starving partner and discovered that he had punched the wrong button and got one full of caramel which he never ate because it stuck to his partial plate.
“Here, want some candy?” he asked the rapist as the young man was sitting handcuffed to a chair in the emergency ward.
“Thanks,” the rapist said, and Spermwhale noticed that his eyes were glassy and shining from tears, and though he had refused to speak to detectives, the fat policeman said, “Pretty good candy, ain’t it? You like candy?”
“It’s okay,” the rapist said, his large blue eyes moving around the room.
Then Spermwhale said, “I did you a favor by shootin you.”
The rapist turned, wiped his face on the shoulder of his torn jacket and said, “How’s that?”
“You woulda been booked in an LAPD jail. We wake our prisoners up at five A.M. and serve them meals of red death, Gainesburgers and donkey dicks. This way you’re gonna be in the hospital jail ward and then in the county jail when you heal up. Chow’s a hundred percent better. Same with the bed and cell. I did you a favor.”
“Thanks.”
“You know, I don’t blame you for what you done. I get the urge sometimes myself. Ugly guy like me and all the pussy around just teasin a guy with this no bra stuff and tight pants. Shit, they ask for it.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. We all got our bad habits. Hell, I can’t quit smokin and drinkin, how can I criticize you?”
The Regretful Rapist smiled at the fat policeman and eventually accepted two more candy bars with caramel and almonds and confessed to more than thirty rapes, including twelve which had never been reported to the police but were verified through a detective follow-up.
Spermwhale Whalen was given his usual subpar score the very next time he went before a board on a promotional exam. He had for years been wasting his off-duty time flying 200,000 pounds of mechanized and human cargo for his country instead of taking police science classes at night school.
As Captain Drobeck said at a private staff meeting, who in the hell wants supervisors and executives who were only good for flying airplanes and catching dangerous crooks like the Regretful Rapist? Besides, Spermwhale Whalen was unpolished and fat and had ridiculous feet. He wore a wide triple E shoe but his feet were an abnormally short size 7 1/2. It looked like he was walking on waffles.
NINE
TOMMY RIVERS
Kudos to Roscoe Rules!” Sergeant Nick Yanov announced at rollcall on the night Baxter Slate shot the ordinary guy. “Roscoe just had his annual physical, and the medical report here says his Phthirius pubis count is very low this year. I looked that up and it means body crabs.”
After the nightwatch stopped applauding the scowling Roscoe Rules, Lieutenant Finque tried to get everyone in really good spirits by showing them photos he had borrowed from homicide detectives of the monstrously bloody corpse of Nathan Zelinski, a seventy-two year old janitor who had been stomped to death by two sixteen year old boys during a burglary at a junior high school three years earlier.
“Drove his nose bones right down his throat,” Lieutenant Finque said. “Old man actually drowned on his own blood. Took him almost forty-five minutes to die. According to their confessions they kept coming over and looking at him every once in a while.”
“They have a fascination for such things,” Baxter Slate whispered to no one in particular.
“Who?” Spermwhale asked.
“Kids.”
“Reason I showed you,” the lieutenant continued, “is that the second boy was just released from camp and is back in our division. The first got out four months ago.”
And while the nightwatch passed the pictures around and cursed the courts and penal authorities and their lot in general, Sergeant Nick Yanov asked under his breath, “Lieutenant, did you have to do this?”
“Of course,” the lieutenant answered. “I want them to know what kind of idiots we have to fight within the system.”
“Don’t you think they know? Why keep reminding them they’re shoveling shit against the tide? Why?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Lieutenant Finque said.
But they never did. On Nick Yanov’s next rating report Lieutenant Finque wrote, “Sergeant Yanov needs a lot of seasoning before he can hope to be a top supervisor. Lacks maturity.”
And to continue to show Sergeant Yanov who was boss, Lieutenant Finque said to the assembly, “Oh, and by the way, did you hear about the other young kids the Youth Opportunity folks placed at General Hospital for summer employment. They had lengthy drug records so they put them in the pharmacy washing bottles. You can guess the rest. And a couple of things we discussed at the supervisors’ meeting,” the lieutenant went on, now that he was getting warmed up. “We have some local businessmen who make frequent burglary and theft reports and don’t want uniformed officers coming in the front door to take reports. Gives the place a bad name.”
The lieutenant smiled smugly when he heard the roar this tidbit aroused. “Of course the captain gave them what for. You would’ve been proud of him.”
“I always knew he was behind us,” said Spermwhale Whalen. “I felt him there many times.”
The lieutenant didn’t know how to interpret Spermwhale’s observation so he continued with the good news. “And you can all just quit grousing about how long you have to wait in court until your case is called. I’ve talked it over with the captain and he talked it over with the commander and he talked it over with the deputy chief…”
“And he talked it over with Dear Abby who’s runnin this fuckin department,” said Spermwhale Whalen.
“And he talked it over with his counterpart at the courts,” said Lieutenant Finque ignoring the laughter. “Private counsel simply has priority at court trials over defendants with public defenders.”