“Maybe you’re a cop and maybe not. I wish you’d all stay for a while so I can find out what’s happening!” the disappointed old man answered, but Harold Bloomguard had to concentrate on the prostitutes who had now passed a house where five young black men had been playing cards in the kitchen and were now attracted to the commotion out front.
The young men laughed as the girls ran past and the tallest one blocked the sidewalk and drained a bottle of beer and then tapped the bottle on his hand. Harold Bloomguard stopped.
“What for you chasin those little girls, man?” the youth demanded.
Harold Bloomguard puffed and panted and stood his ground. He reached for his badge and said, “I’m a police officer. Let me pass.”
Then the others laughed and the tall one said, “That ain’t no real badge. How I know who you be? I think you better jam off, baby. Leave those little girls alone.”
Suddenly Harold Bloomguard was gripped by strangely exhilarating rage. “Okay, asshole, I’m not a cop,” he said, pulling his gun and pointing it at the mouth of the young black man. “I’m a rapist! What the hell you gonna do about it?”
“No, I think maybe you are the PO-lice,” the youth grinned, dropping the bottle to the sidewalk and stepping back for Harold to pass, as all the young men hooted and whistled while the chase continued.
The girls were plodding down Pico Boulevard now, trying to reach Western Avenue. Harold had to run hard to catch them, his purses still over the left arm, the gun in his right hand, the shirttail still protruding from his fly.
Sabrina ran into the street making a desperate lunge toward a car which had slowed on Pico at the sight of the two frantic women. She jerked the door open and was pleading with the man behind the wheel when Harold came running up behind, grabbed her hair and jerked her flat on her back as he fell, taking her with him.
Two women passing in a green Oldsmobile began to scream hysterically and the car screeched to a stop as Harold fumbled with his gun and purses.
“I’m a policeman!” Harold yelled to them, thinking that all a vice cop ever did was tell people he’s a policeman.
As Sabrina limped to her feet, Tammy teetered on the curb, puffing, blowing, staring vacantly into space. Then Sabrina was running toward Tammy and pulling her coat sleeve, and miraculously the pregnant girl began to run.
Harold still pursued, catching misty glimpses of people driving and walking by shaggv blurs. And he heard disconnected sounds as he wiped the sweat from his eyes and caught the two whores at the busy intersection.
Sabrina spun around and swung desperately at Harold but missed, and her hand slammed into the wooden wall of a vacant newsstand. She cried out and turned, but Harold grabbed her hair again and his neck was burning as Sabrina broke loose and fell into the street, crawling twenty feet into the center of the intersection where she sprawled on her stomach, her dress pulled up over her plump pantyless behind.
Tammy then limped frantically into the street, arms dangling, coat half torn from her back, belly bulging dangerously. She skidded while yet fifteen feet from her partner and toppled over slowly to her knees. Then she leaned forward, almost in slow motion, until her distended belly touched the asphalt. Harold knelt on the pavement and panted and stared for many seconds as she tottered on the enormous mound. Then she rolled over slowly and deliberately and floundered there belly up like a harpooned walrus. Tammy blocked two lanes of traffic and Sabrina one and a half.
The air was still razor sharp when Harold Bloomguard, taking large gulps of it, dragged Sabrina bumping and crying out of the traffic lane across the asphalt until her foot lay next to the hand of Tammy who was all but unconscious, lying there, panting softly, eyes closed, pink tongue protruding.
Harold finally had the chance to put his gun back in his waistband, and he handcuffed Sabrina’s ankle to Tammy’s wrist with no resistance whatever. Then he sat down in the traffic lane, in the glow of many headlights, as motorists yelled and blew horns and made every guess but the right one as to what the hell was going on.
Finally he heard the siren and instinctively behaved like a policeman trying to clear the intersection. He waved his purses at the motorists who became frightened and ran from their cars, leaving them abandoned and making things worse.
They came from all directions, painting the streets with rubber: radio cars, motorcycles, plainclothes units. Five separate hotshot calls had gone out. Neighbors complained of a man with a gun, a woman screaming, a purse snatch in progress, a man assaulting women and a mental case exposing himself. A code four, that suspects were in custody, was broadcast and still they came. Their emergency lights bathing Pico Boulevard in a crimson glow, lining up on both sides of the street, making the traffic jam more impossible.
Sergeant Yanov specifically put out an order for units to resume patrol. And yet they came. For policemen are by nature and training inquisitive and obtrusive. Twenty-one police units ultimately responded and a huge crowd gathered after Harold, Sabrina and Tammy had been whisked away. Officers and citizens asked many questions of each other which none could answer.
The prostitutes were treated at the emergency hospital for contusions and abrasions prior to being booked and Harold Bloomguard was surprised to discover a seven inch cut that began at his left earlobe, crossed the jawbone and ended on the neck. It was not a deep cut and only required a disinfectant.
“Must’ve gotten it from Sabrina’s fingernails,” Harold told Scuz when the girls were booked and they were back at the station composing a complicated arrest report.
“Harold, I thought you was smart,” Scuz said. “I told you these’re fucking misdemeanors. They ain’t worth nothing, these vice cases. Who told you to go out and get hurt?”
“Sorry, Scuz, I just… I just wanted to win the game.”
“I oughtta kick your ass for gettin hurt.”
“I didn’t get hurt, just this scratch on my neck.”
“You coulda got killed! For what? A game? I ask you don’t get hurt. That asking too much?”
“Sorry, Scuz.”
“There’s lots a vice sergeants in this town that’d pat you on the ass and write you an attaboy for bringing down the whores. But I ain’t one a them. Risking your life for a shitty vice pinch! I thought you was smart!”
Then Sergeant Scuzzi paced around the vice office stepping on his shoestrings, and Harold sat quietly with the other two new kids on the block. Sam Niles and Baxter Slate were falling down drunk after having sat in the bar for three hours waiting for Scuz and Harold Bloomguard who were busy with other things. The two choirboys had swilled free drinks all evening.
“You kicking me off the squad?” Harold asked sheepishly.
“I oughtta kick you all off. Christ, you almost get killed and these other two twenty-six year old rummies get swacked sucking up bourbon.”
“I was drinking Scotch, Scuz,” said Sam Niles who held his head in both hands.
“Shut up, Niles!” Scuz said, relighting his cigar which was so badly chewed there were soppy flakes of tobacco stuck all over his lips and chin.
“Okay you three just watch it from now on. Bloomguard, you need a keeper. I’m gonna supervise you personal. Make sure you stay alive the weeks you’re here. Slate, you and Niles better keep your boozing under control, hear me?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Baxter Slate said. He was sitting woodenly trying to convince Sergeant Scuzzi that he was cold sober.
“Fucking kids,” Scuz said, shaking his head at the three repentant choirboys. “And another thing, Slate and Niles, I’d like to know how Pete Zoony got that knot on his face tonight. He was working fruits with you two a little earlier, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Baxter Slate said.
“Don’t call me sergeant.”