“Harold, my boy” Scuz said. “First place, I gave you a hint. I said the weirdo has nineteen inch arms!”
“Oh, I see!” said Harold. “Shine him on. Pass him by.”
“You got it!” Scuz said, driving only fifteen miles per hour which was driving Sam Niles to distraction. “Course there ain’t no misdemeanor here in the first place. So happens that some guys like to eat whipped cream off black satin shoes. Just wish they’d do it home and we wouldn’t get no calls about it but thing is they like to do it in public. Anyways there ain’t no law against it I know, so you just hope he gets full a whipped cream in a hurry and gets the hell out before someone calls the station and the station turns the problem over to the vice squad. Ready for another hypothetical?”
“Sure, Scuz,” grinned Baxter Slate, accepting a cigarette from the lethargic Sam Niles who was wondering how it was he had wanted to work vice.
“Okay you’re in the trap, peeking through the screen and some dude walks in the john and he pulls down his jeans and there inside the underwear he carries a toothbrush and a feather. And his dick’s all wrapped in rubber bands and rags to make it bulge outta his tight pants. And he sits down on the pot and reaches down in the toilet water and after he unwraps it he starts splashing cold water up on his dong. And he brushes it off with the toothbrush. Then he pulls out the feather and tickles his balls and when all this is done he’s able to take a leak, which he does sitting down, and then he leaves. Any violation there?”
“None,” Baxter Slate said.
“Okay, what if there ain’t no door on any a the toilets, which there ain’t because the manager a this department store is trying to discourage the fruits who like to meet here and poke their cocks through glory holes and all that. Now there he is, no door, just side walls around the toilet and everybody walks in can see him, including little kids.”
“Well…” Baxter hesitated.
“And just to mix you boys up a little, let’s say that our vice complaint which brought us here in the first place is from some lady lives near here and her kids always come use this rest room on the way home from school, and she says they got propositioned by some grown up fruits and don’t her kids got no rights?”
“Well…” Baxter Slate hesitated.
“Sure, if the fruits didn’t get a naughty kick outta doing it in public johns because it’s guilt and sin and fun and anal obsession and everything all mixed up and it ain’t the same in a private room, well then we wouldn’t have to come here at all. But that ain’t the case and it’s pretty hard to tell the lady her kids just have to put up with some dude propositioning them or blowing some other dude in front a them in the shithouse, ain’t it, Harold?”
“I guess so, Scuz.”
“Agree, Baxter?”
“I guess. Seems as though there should be some other solution.”
“Seems like,” Scuz said, “but there ain’t. Not for us. We got the problem and the complaint. We gotta do something and that something is to make at least one arrest so when the lady calls back because some other fruit tried to grope her kid, we can show her that we took action on her last complaint. See, boys, there’s just a million problems in this world that there ain’t no solutions to and cops get most of those kind.”
“So how would you handle the guy who doesn’t bother any children and just does his number with the toothbrush and feather?” asked Sam Niles whose pose was always boredom whether or not he was bored.
“I shoot him,” Scuz answered.
“You what?” Harold exclaimed.
“I shoot him. With this,” Scuz said, pulling a pink plastic water pistol from the pocket of his baggy gabardines. “I just shoot him through the screen where I’m peeking. First it confuses him, then it scares him soon’s he realizes where it’s coming from. See, I don’t add to his thrill by bracing him and threatening him or any a that shit. Just makes him wanna come back some more. Remember, guilt and punishment and stuff from his kiddy days is partly the reason he has to do all this in a public place. So I just shoot him with my gun. Pretty soon he don’t know who or what’s behind that wall. Sometimes he yells, ‘Who’re you? You store security? You a cop? Who’s shooting me?’”
“What do you say?” asked Harold.
“Nothing. I just shoot him again. It’s humiliating. It degrades him in a way he can’t stand. See, he might wanna degrade himself with the stuff he does in a public shitter but he can’t take the kind of humiliation I give him. I’m saying to him with my water gun that his little act ain’t worth no more than a few squirts a water. That he can’t stand. I’ve seen em go out in tears and never come back. At least not to that rest room and that’s all I can worry about at the moment. Make any sense?”
“Maybe it does at that,” Baxter Slate said as Scuz lit another cigar and turned on Wilshire Boulevard.
“See, I don’t wanna get in a big fight with these guys. I don’t wanna hurt them but I sure don’t wanna have them hurt me or my boys. So I spend most of my time figuring out how I can satisfy the citizens that make the vice complaints and keep my boys from getting hurt at the same time. I know most vice supervisors wouldn’t agree with me but I don’t think it’s too bad a way to run a vice squad.”
“Not bad at all, Scuz,” grinned Baxter Slate, rolling down the window to let out some of the smoke.
“Reason we gotta work this department store tonight is they stay open till nine, and some fruit picks up some cat in the rest room couple weeks ago and offers him ten bucks to let him give the guy a headjob which is okay except he don’t have no money after he does it. And to keep from getting his skull caved in he agrees to let the guy buy ten dollars’ worth a merchandise on his credit card. And the butch guy goes out and buys a hundred dollar suit and tells the fruit if he don’t sign for it he’ll do a fandango on his gourd with his boots. So then the fruit comes and complains about the cowboy. So I say to the guys in the dicks’ bureau, you got an extortion, maybe a credit card hustle, you ain’t got no vice squad case. But our captain says, ‘I think you better take a three-eighteen, Sergeant, and let your vice boys make an arrest there.’ See, he always calls me ‘Sergeant’ when he’s on the rag which is most a the time. So anyways we gotta work the trap in the john and I hope we make a pinch tonight so I can put this vice complaint to bed. I don’t like to make my guys sit around smelling shit.”
A few minutes later the battered vice car bumped into the parking lot at the rear of the large Wilshire Boulevard department store where shoppers were carrying bundles and fighting each other for parking places and stealing packages out of each other’s cars, as smoggy summer darkness finally fell on Los Angeles.
As Scuz led the three choirboys into the building and to the storage room which was attached to the rest room on the second floor, Baxter Slate spotted a man sitting on the floor of the corridor leading from the rest room. A stack of ten newspapers was on the floor beside him. His legs were folded under him like hinged sticks. His right hand was a claw, his left was worse. He scratched at the wall like a mutilated insect, unable to gain his feet. He was a forty year old newspaper vendor and several times a day he had to leave his newsstand to use the rest room in the department store. He had cerebral palsy but could usually get to the rest room and back to his chair quite easily often selling a paper or two along the way. Tonight he was suffering from a summer cold which weakened him like an attack of pneumonia would disable a healthy man.
Scuz turned around and saw two of the choirboys looking down the hallway at the man. Sam Niles wanted to help the man stand up but hated to attract attention to himself and make the other policemen think he was a do-gooder. Baxter Slate wanted to help the man stand up but was afraid the man would interpret his gesture as patronizing and snarl him away with righteous indignation. So both Sam and Baxter pretended not to see the man lolling on the floor and averted their eyes self-consciously. And felt guilt because they were unable to help.