“Well, nothing’s happened since we’ve been here,” Baxter said. “Maybe the fruits stopped coming here.”
“Maybe so. Think I’ll mosey outside and see there’s any new broads I haven’t met. When you come out for a break take a look at the set of tits works the perfume counter right across from junior miss clothes. I hear a policeman from North Hollywood’s balling her. Dynamite! Catch you later.”
And Pete Zoony was out the door looking for willing young clerks when he spotted two uniformed policemen entering the office of store security. Out of curiosity he sauntered across the floor and caught one of the three night security officers coming out.
“What’s happening?” Pete Zoony asked the plainclothes security officer who knew all the vice cops from the rest room watch.
“Shoplifter. No big thing. Second time we caught her. Gonna put her in the slammer this time to see if it discourages her. Make her steal from Sears instead of us.”
Pete Zoony nodded and decided to go leer at the girl who balled the North Hollywood policeman but had been coyly resisting Zoony’s persistent advances.
Then one of the uniformed policemen came out of the security office and headed straight for the rest room. Pete Zoony, who generally worked daywatch vice, was not known by many bluesuits on the nightwatch. He made a regrettable error in judgment by deciding to have a little fun and entertain the two new kids on the block. He followed the uniformed cop into the rest room.
“Roscoe Rules!” whispered Sam and Baxter simultaneously when the door to the rest room opened.
Then it was a matter of trying to suppress giggles as Roscoe, a helmet, relieved himself at the urinal and afterward stepped to the sink singing some Stevie Wonder.
He took off his cap carefully and teased his mousy hair, making it fall over the ears as much as possible without offending the lieutenant. Then he squeezed a watery pimple on his nose, straightened his tie and smiled with satisfaction while Baxter and Sam leaned on each other, smothering back the laughter. Their fellow choirboy stepped from the mirror, put the hat squarely on his head, held both fists against his hips and stood spraddle legged and broad shouldered, admiring the whole picture. And Sam Niles almost fell off the platfrom in muffled hysterics just as the rest room door flew open again and Pete Zoony came swishing in.
“Sam! Sam!” Baxter whispered, pulling his friend back to the screen as Pete minced past Roscoe Rules singing, “I Got a Crush on You, Sweetie Pie!”
He stepped to the urinal, peeked coyly over his shoulder at the unbelieving policeman and pretended to be taking a leak while he batted his eyelashes at the choirboy.
“Well I’ll be a motherfucker!” said the outraged Roscoe Rules.
“Oh, I hope you’re not!” Pete Zoony squealed as he zipped up his pants and swished across the room to the washbasin where he put a few drops of water on his fingers and patted his cheeks.
He dabbed daintily with a paper towel, singing, “Couldja coo, couldja care…”
“You got a lot a guts, you know that?” Roscoe Rules said as Pete Zoony peeked at him from time to time and giggled.
“Why whatever do you mean, Officer?” Pete lisped.
“You… you, you come in here and act like… like I’m a civilian!”
“Well I don’t care what you are. You’re just cute as can be, is all you are,” said Pete Zoony, primping in the mirror as the choirboys behind the wall desperately tried to see through their tears.
“Goddamn you! How dare you talk to a police officer like this! Gimme some identification!” Roscoe sputtered.
“Gosh, don’t get so upset,” Pete Zoony lisped. “I mean just because a person pays you a compliment.”
“You break out some ID right now,” Roscoe demanded and Pete Zoony was preparing to pull his police badge from his back pocket when he erred, not knowing Roscoe Rules.
“Now, I’m gonna show you my driver’s license, see, but I want you to promise you won’t ask for my phone number cause I don’t know you that well yet.”
“You fag! You insolent fucking sissy!” screamed Roscoe Rules.
“Well!” said Pete Zoony huffily, so carried away with his role that he underestimated the light in Roscoe’s close set eyes. “You wouldn’t make fun of a person because he’s crippled, wouldja? Huh?”
“You bastard!” Roscoe shrieked.
Pete Zoony pursed his lips and smacked a little kiss and said, “Oh, you’re so cute when you’re all mad! You blue meanie!”
Then Roscoe Rules reared back and slapped Pete Zoony across the moustache with the heel of his hand, catching him flush on the jaw and the vice cop was skidding across the slippery floor and banging against the metal trash can.
The two choirboys in the trap yelled, “No, Roscoe!” and jumped down from the platform and out the door, running down the corridor to the rest room.
They entered in time to intercept Pete Zoony who was growling and cursing and sliding on the floor attempting to get his feet under him as the bewildered Roscoe Rules looked up at the walls and ceiling, certain that he had heard ghostly voices shout his name.
“Niles! Slate!” Roscoe exclaimed as his fellow choirboys jumped on Pete Zoony to keep something terrible from happening which could get them all in trouble.
“You cocksucker!” shouted the outraged Pete Zoony, desperate to play catchup with Roscoe.
“Me, cocksucker? Me, cocksucker? You got a lotta guts, ya fag!” said Roscoe Rules.
It took a full five minutes to get Pete Zoony calmed down and Roscoe filled in on the prank that backfired. Finally the glassy eyed Pete Zoony smiled tightly and said, “No hard feelings, Rules,” and swung a roundhouse left which caught Roscoe on the right cheekbone and dumped him into a toilet stall, wherein both choirboys switched their attack to the cursing, raging Roscoe Rules who might have shot Pete Zoony to death were it not for Sam Niles keeping a wristlock on his gun hand.
The toilet stakeout was called off for the night then and there. Sam Niles would not release his wristlock on Roscoe until Baxter Slate had taken Pete Zoony out of the rest room to the parking lot in the rear. They found a pay phone and had Pete’s partner pick them all up to rendezvous with Scuz and Harold Bloomguard.
When Spermwhale Whalen heard about the incident later that night at choir practice, he shook his head and said, “Someone’s always punchin Roscoe Rules. Kid, you oughtta wear a catcher’s mask.”
• • •
“Greetings and hallucinations!” cried frightened Harold Bloomguard to the first street whore he spotted after cruising the streets for twenty minutes.
“Say what?” the tawny black girl said as she stopped on the sidewalk and cautiously approached the Charger which was parked under the streetlight in the red zone at Pico and Western.
She wore mint green pants, skin tight to the ankles where they flared out over patent green clogs. Her stomach was bare and she wore a green halter top which tied at the neck. Harold was sure he had seen her several times before but Scuz had assured him that the girls have a difficult time recognizing uniform cops when they see them in plainclothes. To whores, as to most people, the patrol cop is a badge and blue suit and little more.
“Hello hello!” said Harold Bloomguard, turning off his headlights and bravado as the girl approached the car, walking with the traffic so that customers could pull to the curb without making an illegal U-turn that might draw a police car.
“Well, hi there, baby,” smiled the whore when she saw how “good” Harold looked.
But just then a set of headlights behind them flashed a high beam and a black and white pulled up beside him, preparing to write a parking ticket, thus doing its bit to combat prostitution. It was Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie.
“Okay, sir,” Spencer said as the radio car double parked. “Let’s…”
And then Spencer found himself looking into the tense, bespectacled face of his fellow choirboy Harold Bloomguard, who he knew was on temporary vice loan.