“Let’s read some crimes,” the watch commander said, picking up a sheaf of papers. “There was an ADW on a teacher at the high school. Says here a thirty-four year old schoolteacher had just started her third period when…”
“Kind of late in life, ain’t it?” Francis Tanaguchi giggled and Lieutenant Finque jerked spasmodically and tore the report.
Lieutenant Finque blinked several times and simply could not regain the thread. “This report’s terrible. It’s sloppy Who did it?” And his eyes were so watery he couldn’t read the name.
“Just a few pencigraphical errors, sir,” said the culprit, Harold Bloomguard.
“Uh… Intelligence has a rumor,” Lieutenant Finque said, forgetting the crimes and going on disjointedly to a note in the rotating folder. “We may have a riot in the vicinity of Dorsey High School between four and four thirty this afternoon. Some militant…”
“A half hour riot?” said Calvin Potts and Lieutenant Finque’s thread came totally unraveled. He began talking to Sergeant Yanov on his right as though they were alone in the room.
“You know, Yanov, there’s a rumor that these young Vietnam vets they’re hiring these days are smoking pot. You see how hard it is to make them keep their hair off their collars and their moustaches trimmed? And there’s a rumor about fragging! Someone heard some policemen talking about bombing a watch commander!”
“I’ll read the crimes,” Sergeant Yanov said abruptly, putting a steadying hand on Lieutenant Finque’s arm while the assembly of policemen looked at one another in growing realization. “Let’s see, here’s one to perk up your evening. A rapist stuck his automatic down in his belt while he made the victim blow him and he got so excited he shot his balls off right in the middle of the headjob!”
The explosion of cheers startled the shit out of Lieutenant Finque who thought he was being fragged. He only kept from jumping up because Sergent Yanov’s strong left hand held his arm pressed to the table top as the sergeant regained control of the rollcall.
“Keep an eyeball out for Melvin Barnes,” Sergeant Yanov continued. “His picture’s on the board. Local boy and he’s running from his parole officer. He’ll be around Western Avenue. He likes to run because he’s a celebrity on the avenue when the cops’re looking for him. But he’ll be around because he doesn’t mind getting busted. He’s an institutional man. There’re thousands like him.”
“Amen,” Spermwhale Whalen said. “Ask me, I think half the fuckin population craves some kind of institution or other. They can’t get it, they’ll get taken care of some other way. If we just made our jails comfortable, gave the boys some pussy and all, shit, we couldn’t blast em out on the streets. Be a lot cheaper makin em happy and keepin em inside the rest a their lives than runnin them through the fuckin system over and over again while a few people get hurt along the way.”
“You got lots of ideas, Spermwhale,” said Harold Bloomguard. “Ever consider getting perverted to sergeant?”
As Sergeant Yanov got everyone in a better frame of mind to go out into the streets, Lieutenant Finque sat going through some envelopes which came to him through department mail. The voice of Yanov and the others seemed far away. He never noticed Francis Tanaguchi grin at his partner Calvin Potts when the lieutenant tore open the last envelope. It was a crime lab photo of a ninety year old black woman who had been dead for three weeks when her body was found and the picture taken. Her white hair was electric. Her silver eyes were open and her blackened tongue protruded. The note attached to the photo said, “Dear Lieutenant Finque, how come you don’t come to see me no more now that you transferred to the west-side? You cute little blue eyed devil!”
The lieutenant blinked and twitched and hoped he could get out of the station this night alive without being either framed or fragged. He stood up suddenly and said something unintelligible to Sergeant Yanov before walking out the door.
That night someone put a taped roll of freeway flares attached to a cheap alarm clock under the watch commander’s desk when Lieutenant Finque was having coffee. At 10:00 P.M. the bomb squad was at Wilshire Station assuring the captain by telephone that it was not dynamite but only a prank evidently played by some member of the nightwatch. At 11:00 P.M. Lieutenant Finque left Daniel Freeman Hospital severely tranquilized. He was off sick for seven days with something not unlike combat fatigue. Due to his splendid record as a whistle salesman he was taken downtown and made the adjutant of Chief Lynch. He was definitely an up-and-comer.
At six feet two inches and 185 pounds Sam Niles was not a particularly big man but next to Harold Bloomguard he felt like Gulliver. Harold Bloomguard was, at 149 pounds on a delicate frame, the smallest choirboy of them all. He had gorged himself with a banana-soybean mixture for three days to pass his original police department physical.
The choirboys always said that what Harold lacked in physical stature he made up for in physical weakness. Both Ora Lee Tingle and Caroline Moon had beaten him in arm wrestling on the same night at choir practice, and Harold, who usually loved fun and frolic, waded off in his underwear and sulked with the ducks on Duck Island. He wouldn’t come back until all of the choirboys had either gotten drunk or gone home.
“What’s it all about, Harold? What’s it all about, Harold?” cried Whaddayamean Dean to the lonely white figure huddled in the darkness of Duck Island which was a thirty by thirty mound of dirt and shrubbery in the middle of the large duck pond they called MacArthur Lake.
“What’d he say, Dean?” asked Harold Bloomguard’s partner, Sam Niles, as Whaddayamean Dean rejoined the choirboys who were trying to persuade Carolina Moon to pull that train even if she was tired from being on her feet all night hustling drinks at the Peppermint Club in Hollywood.
“What’d who say?”
“Harold! Who the hell were you just off yelling at, for chrissake!”
“I don’t know,” said Whaddayamean Dean, his brow screwed in confusion.
“Harold Bloomguard, goddamnit!” said Spermwhale, who got more pissed off at Whaddayamean Dean than anyone since Spermwhale more or less looked after him when he was drunk like this.
“You were yelling at Harold over on Duck Island, weren’t you?” asked Ora Lee Tingle patiently as Francis Tanaguchi crawled around behind her on the grass in his LAPD baseball shirt with number 69 on the back and pinched her ample buttocks and yelled when she punched him in the shoulder and knocked him over the cushiony Carolina Moon who grabbed him and smothered him in her enormous breasts and chubby arms and said, “Ya cute little fuckin Nip, ya!”
“I admit I was yelling but I don’t remember at who,” said Whaddayamean Dean, wishing everyone would stop picking on him and just let him drink and lie down on top of Ora Lee Tingle and rest his brain for a while. “I think I heard someone answer.”
“Well, you simple asshole, what’d he say?” demanded Spermwhale.
“I think he said, ‘Quack quack.’”
As all the choirboys moaned and fell over and rolled their eyes disgustedly, Spermwhale grabbed Whaddayamean Dean by the back of the Bugs Bunny sweatshirt and said, “That was a fuckin duck! Ducks say quack quack. Harold don’t say quack quack. You was talkin to a duck!”
“At least he didn’t yell at me,” Whaddayamean Dean sniffled and a large salty globular tear rolled out his left eye. “I don’t know what you mean. What’re you trying to say? Why is everybody picking on me? Huh? Huh?”