When they got out of the car Spencer said to Baxter, “Ever hear of somebody lipping off to you?” And he held up a clean mayonnaise jar which contained a ragged pink object something like a sliver of veal.
“It’s a piece of a woman’s lip.” Father Willie grimaced while Spencer Van Moot laughed uproariously.
“There was a fight here half an hour ago,” Sergeant Yanov explained. “Two neighborhood women got in a hassle over the husband of one of them. There was kicking and gouging and biting and one broad ran home with her eyeball half torn out. When she recovered from the shock fifteen minutes later she found her neighbor’s lip in her mouth. She must’ve bit off half of it. At least it looks like a lip.”
Baxter Slate examined the raw meat in the jar and said, “It’s a lip.”
“The lipless lady, Mrs. Dooley was taken to the hospital by a friend,” Nick Yanov said. “So we’re gonna take the biter on down to the hospital for an MT too. After that, we’ll bring them both to the dick’s bureau. Meantime, how about taking the lip in and seeing if they have to book it in any special way to preserve it. I really don’t know. I never had a lip to take care of before.”
So Baxter and Spermwhale drove part of Mrs. Dooley to the detective bureau in Wilshire Station while Spencer and Father Willie located the rest of her at Daniel Freeman Hospital. The detective just smiled when Baxter showed him the lip and said it would require no special handling because undoubtedly both ladies would make up before the case ever went to trial and it would be dismissed in the interest of justice after four court continuances.
When Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie found the rest of Mrs. Dooley at the emergency ward and arrested her for mayhem, she objected and they had a row with her. She had to be handcuffed and Spencer received a handcuff cut on the finger, a common injury for policemen who wrestle with slippery arms and sharp steel ratchets. The cut was not deep enough to require sutures and Spencer sat on a stool in the same emergency ward, no longer weak from laughing at the lip in the jar but from seeing his blood running down his hand.
He was white and dizzy when the crusty old nurse applied disinfectant and a butterfly bandage to the one inch wound. Father Willie helped support him on the right side while Spencer stood shakily. He was too nauseated to get mad when the nurse said, “Why don’t you bite a bullet?”
When Baxter Slate and Spermwhale left Wilshire Station without Mrs. Dooley’s lip, Baxter turned south on La Brea, causing Spermwhale to ask, “Where we goin, kid? Our area’s east.”
“Just felt like driving around the ghetto for a while,” Baxter smiled. The slim policeman had an extraordinarily wide mouth which made his smile infectious and convincing even when he didn’t mean it. And he didn’t mean it now.
“Suit yourself,” Spermwhale shrugged. “I just wanna take it easy tonight.”
Suddenly Baxter said: “You know what I think is the best a cop can hope for?”
“Tell me, professor.”
“The very best, most optimistic hope we can cling to is that we’re tic birds who ride the rhino’s back and eat the parasites out of the flesh and keep the beast from disease and hope we’re not parasites too. In the end we suspect it’s all vanity and delusion. Parasites, all of us.”
“Yeah,” Spermwhale said, trying to think of where they could get a free or half price meal tonight now that greedy Roscoe Rules had burned up their eating spot at Sam’s by not only demanding free food for himself and Dean, but wanting four hamburgers to go after they finished. Roscoe Rules could fuck up a wet dream, Spermwhale said.
“Do you know how sad it would be to live in a place where a woman couldn’t walk on the street after certain hours because she would either be robbed, raped or taken for a prostitute?”
“I don’t think about it,” Spermwhale answered.
“See that pedestrian underpass? When I worked Juvenile I met with some black mothers who said that six children were hit by cars at this intersection in one school year and yet the underpass had to be fenced off and locked up because juvenile muggers made it dangerous to use. The city couldn’t keep lights in the tunnel. They were broken twice a day. So it’s locked up and the children get hit by cars.”
“What can we do about that kind a bullshit? It’s not our problem.”
“It’s somebody’s problem. I caught two of the muggers down there one day waiting to rip off the smaller kids for their lunch money. They were loaded from sniffing paint and had felony records from when they were ten years old. At the hearing the judge went along with the defense contention that I should’ve had the paint analyzed in the lab to determine if the kids really were under the influence of paint. I told them we were talking about the health of these boys. They were staggering when I busted them. But the case got kicked and…”
“Look, the whole juvenile justice system is a fuckin joke. Everybody knows that, so what’s new?”
“It’s just that it used to be an equity proceeding. It was supposedly for the good of the child. Now every kid has the public defender representing him and it’s just as adversary as adult court. Kids are taught early on to get a mouthpiece and keep their mouths shut.”
“That’s the way it should be, you want my opinion. Give every five year old a shyster. Then send em to the joint if you convict em.”
“But at sentencing it reverts to an equity court or a burlesque on one, and a kid who should be taken away from his miserable home is left on the streets after the fifth serious felony. It’s crazy. Juvenile court is a revolving door, and then suddenly the kid turns eighteen, goes out and commits a strong arm robbery just like always but ends up in adult jail for six months. Then he’s crying for his mother and saying, ‘But you always sent me home before. You always gave me another chance.’ And he can’t understand it and why should he?”
“Baxter, I’m startin to worry about where your head is. I mean if you’re gonna start frettin about injustice in the system…”
“I just hated being a kiddy cop. I’m glad I’m out. Today’s street warriors were yesterday’s hoodlums but now they’re government funded. Do you have any idea how many ineffectual parents with whiskey voices and unconcerned delinquent kids I’ve counseled? Hundreds. Thousands, maybe.”
As Baxter talked, a black child about five years old stood at the corner and waited for the police car to drive off from the stop sign.
“Go ahead, kid,” Spermwhale said, waving at the boy to cross.
But the child walked up to the car on the driver’s side and grinned and said, “Who you lookin for?”
“I’m looking for a little guy in a blue shirt with two teeth missing in front,” Baxter said. “Seen him around?”
The boy giggled toothlessly and said, “You really be lookin for Ladybug, ain’t you?”
“Maybe, what’s she doing wrong?” Baxter asked.
“She round behind the house right now wif her head in a glue bag,” said the child.
“Well, we’d sure like to bust her, sonny,” Spermwhale said. “But we got this big murder case to work on. Now you tell Ladybug to get her dumb head outta that glue bag, okay?”
“Okay, Mr. PO-lice.”
The boy waved as Baxter drove away saying, “Bet Ladybug’s mother runs off and leaves her in a county foster home. And I’ll bet the county just places her right back with her when she comes off her little spree because the taxpayers can’t afford to keep Ladybug in a foster home. And what the hell, if we supported every little black kid that’s neglected…”
“I am really startin to worry about you, Baxter,” Spermwhale said. “You are really startin to worry me with all this crybaby social worker bullshit. Man, you never shoulda left patrol and went to Juvenile. I don’t know what happened to you workin with those kiddy cops but whatever it was you better get your mind together. Shine it on, baby.”