Baxter always made it a point to throw a few “don’ts” in place of “doesn’ts” in his conversation with other policemen and unless he was drunk at choir practice he never used adverbs in the presence of Roscoe Rules who became infuriated because it sounded so faggy.
Tommy Rivers, reduced to a shroud of flesh on a little skeleton, eventually died from the blow of a hammer that a healthy child could probably have survived. Lena Rivers was arrested, giving Bruce Simpson the opportunity to titillate Doris Guber with his purple prose. And Baxter Slate quit being a Juvenile officer because he thought he was the worst one in history and intensified his relationship with Foxy Farrell. He only broke it off when during their mating she bit into his chest so savagely she tore the skin and kissed him with a bloody mouth crooning, “You liked it, Baxter! You liked it, you bastard! Admit it, you pig motherfucker! Want me to do it again? Or do you want me to tell you what I did to Goldie last night after I left you? Goldie’s cock is so …”
And then Baxter was weeping for shame and fury and was backhanding Foxy Farrell and more blood was on her mouth mixing with his blood. Then her eyes glassed over and she held his wrists and the words dripped like blood from thin dark lips: “That’s enough. I know what you like, honey. It’s okay Mama knows. Mama knows.”
So after he stopped being a kiddy cop and after he stopped thinking so much about the things Foxy Farrell had taught him about himself which he never should have learned and after he started dating other women and trying to enjoy a more ordinary sex life, Baxter Slate became the only choirboy to kill a man in the line of duty. He killed the ordinary guy.
Baxter and Spermwhale liked to meet for coffee with the other north end cars, particularly 7-A-29, manned by Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard. They would meet at about 7:00 P.M. on week nights at the drive-in on Olympic Boulevard when the air wasn’t too busy.
Policemen always asked, “How’s the air?” or “The air busy?” referring to the radio airwaves which directed their working lives. “Quiet air” was what the policemen longed for so that they could be free to cruise and look for real crooks instead of being twenty-five year old marriage counselors to fifty-five year old unhappily married couples.
To Baxter Slate quiet air meant only a prolonged coffee break at the drive-in, where they might meet one or two other radio cars and hope an angry citizen didn’t call the station and report them for bunching up and wasting taxpayers’ money by swilling coffee instead of catching burglars and thieves.
It was usually the same outraged citizen who, when getting a traffic ticket by a policeman who was not drinking coffee, would demand to know why he was writing tickets instead of catching burglars and thieves. The same question about burglars and thieves was asked of narcotics officers by dopers and of vice cops by whores, tricks and gamblers. And of motor cops by drunk drivers.
Burglars and thieves sometimes complained that they only committed crimes against property, not like muggers and rapists. Muggers and rapists never faulted policemen at all, which caused the choirboys to comment that as a rule muggers and rapists were the most appreciative people they contacted.
But Baxter just wanted to drink coffee on the night he killed the ordinary guy. He was content to sit at the drive-in with Spermwhale and joke with the carhops.
While Baxter and Spermwhale drank their coffee a Porsche pulled in beside them and Spermwhale remarked to the lone driver that her blonde hair was complemented by the canary yellow Porsche.
The girl laughed and said, “How many girls do you stop for tickets because their hair coordinates with their paint jobs?”
“None that I ever wrote a ticket to,” Spermwhale leered as Baxter automatically put his hand on his gun because a man shuffled over to the left side of the car with his hand inside a topcoat.
It was seventy-five degrees that night but the man wore his tan trench coat turned up. He also wore a black hat with a wide brim that had been out of style for twenty years but was now coming back. His face was round and cleft like putty smashed by a fist.
He reached inside his coat, and while Spermwhale talked to the girl with canary hair, he flipped out toy handcuffs and a plastic wallet with a dime store badge pinned inside. He said, “I’m working this neighborhood. Any tips for me? Anybody you’re after? Be glad to help out.”
Baxter relaxed his gun hand and still sitting behind the wheel of the radio car, looked up at the man, at the vacant blue eyes peering out from under the hat brim, with a hint of a mongoloid fault in those eyes. Baxter guessed the man’s mental age to be about ten.
Spermwhale just shook his head and said, “Partner, you’re a born blood donor,” because Baxter Slate dug through their notebook and found some old mug shots of suspects long since in jail and gave them to the retardee who could hardly believe his good fortune.
“Gosh, thanks!” said the play detective. “I’ll get right on the case! I’ll find these guys! I’ll help you make the pinch!”
“Okay, just give us a call when you find them,” Baxter smiled as the young man shuffled away, beaming at the mug shots.
After being unable to entice a telephone number from the laughing girl in the yellow Porsche, Spermwhale looked at her license number and ran a DMV check over the radio, writing down her name and address. Then he leaned out the window of the police car and said, “You know, you remind me of a girl used to live up in Hollywood on Fountain, next to where I used to live.”
The girl looked stunned and said, “You lived on Fountain?”
“Yeah,” Spermwhale said convincingly. “There was this girl, lived in the six thousand block. I used to see her coming out her apartment. I fell in love with her but I never met her. Once I asked the manager of her building what her name was and he said, Norma. You sure look like her.”
“I look… but that’s me! My name’s Norma!”
And then she saw Baxter grinning and she reddened and said, “Okay how’d you know? Oh yeah, my license plate. Your radio. Oh yeah.”
“But it coulda happened like that,” Spermwhale said, his scarred furry eyebrows pulled down contritely.
“Well, since you have my name and address, I might as well give you my phone number,” said the girl with the canary hair who was impressed with the powers of the law and by Baxter’s good looks.
While Spermwhale flirted, Baxter sipped coffee and thought of how the smog had been at twilight. How blue it was and even purple in the deep shadows. Poison can be lovely thought Baxter Slate.
Then another radio car pulled into the drive-in and parked in the last stall near the darkened alley and Baxter decided he’d leave Spermwhale to romance the blonde. Baxter left his hat and flashlight but took his coffee and strolled over to talk with the other choirboys.
And at that moment the rear door window on the passenger side of 7-A-77’s car shattered before his eyes! Then the front fender went THUNK!
Calvin Potts screamed, “SOMEBODY’S SHOOTIN AS US!”
Baxter Slate dove to the pavement as the doors to the black and white burst open. Calvin and Francis were down with him crawling on their bellies and no one else, not even Spermwhale who had a blue veiner, even noticed.
Then Spermwhale turned down the police radio which had begun to get noisy and looked across the parking lot at the three choirboys on their bellies just as his windshield shattered and he went flying out the passenger door even faster than Lieutenant Grimsley when they put the angry ducks in his car.
“Did you see the flash?” yelled Baxter, who was on his knees scrambling for the protection of his black and white as business went on around them as usual. Car radios blared cacophonously Dishes clattered. Trays clanged. People slurped creamy milkshakes. Chewed blissfully on fat hamburgers. Gossiped. No one perceived a threat. No one noticed four blue suited men crawling on their bellies. Finally a miniskirted carhop stopped and said to Baxter, “Lose your contact lens or something, honey?”