“So what happened?” Roscoe asked. “I suppose the Catholic bishop reported Lard to the captain?”
“The very same day.”
“You gotta learn not to tell the truth in this world. Some guys never learn,” Roscoe said. “I got two days off once when I had to make a notification in Watts to this bitch. Her old man got his ass killed in a poolroom knife fight. I knocked on the door and when she answered I said, ‘You the widow Brown?’ She said, ‘No, I ain’t a widow’ I said, ‘The hell you ain’t.’”
“Hey, Spermwhale,” said Father Willie, “is it true one time your neighbors complained and the captain got you for cue-bow and gave you two days off for refusing to mow your lawn?”
When Spermwhale muttered something unintelligible, Whaddayamean Dean said, “I heard your lawn was four feet high just before you left your third old lady.”
Roscoe Rules, now near the beer cooler, decided it was time to gripe about the headhunters of Internal Affairs Division whom they all naturally despised.
“Yeah, I remember a few years back when I worked Central they get a rumor me and my partner was rolling drunks,” said Roscoe. “You imagine? Rolling drunks in the B-wagon? How many pissy ass winos have more’n a dollar fifty anytime? So one a those headhunters gets himself all dirtied up, thinks he looks like a drunk and lays down on the corner of Fifth and Stanford and pretends he’s passed out. With a wallet sticking outta his pocket no less. So we drive up and see the asshole but my partner recognizes the bastard from when he worked Foothill traffic. So he winks at me and gives me a note saying this drunk’s a cop and probably working IAD. So we pick the cocksucker up and throw him in the wagon just like any wino and then we go down East Fifth Street and prowl the alleys till we find three old smelly shitters. You know, with the skin rotting off them and the piss and vomit all over them? And just for good measure we scoop up some dog crap and put it in their pockets and we throw them in the wagon with the headhunter. Then we ride around for an hour and a half before we make the Central Jail booking run. And that’s what I think a headhunters!”
“You know, Roscoe, maybe I been misjudgin you,” said Spermwhale. “You’re startin to sound like a class guy after all.”
And as smoky clouds crossed the moon and shadows deepened and a summer breeze rippled over the duck pond, the choirboys settled back to eat and drink and unwind. Baxter Slate looked skyward, reassured to see that the light from the great star slithered easily through the smog tonight.
Spermwhale’s rare praise had put Roscoe in good enough spirits to turn storyteller. He scratched his head and leered at the two fat girls who were still making over Francis Tanaguchi, feeding him beef like a shogun in a geisha house.
Roscoe said, “I just loved working that B-wagon. Only thing I liked about Central in fact. Never forget the night we got the old fag wino in back a the wagon. I turn around and see him through the cage going down on some young drunk that’s passed out. So I stop the wagon and me and my partner open the back door and know what? He won’t stop. Said later it was the first taste he had in a year and he just wouldn’t give it up. I took out my sap and hit him upside the gourd every time he went down on the guy. His head was like a clump a grapes when I finished sapping him. Goddamn it was fun working that wagon!”
Baxter Slate then said, “Tell you what, Roscoe. For our next choir practice we’ll go to a hatchery and buy a gross of rabbits. Then we’ll get a yard of piano wire and all come to the park and sit around the whole night watching you garroting baby bunnies.”
And Roscoe, who was getting very drunk very early said, “You know, Slate, I never liked you.”
Spermwhale Whalen said, “Roscoe, you got class all right and it’s all low. You got the class of a hyena.”
Since Roscoe Rules was scared to death of Spermwhale Whalen he merely pouted and said, “All right. See if I come to choir practice, that’s the way you feel. How would you like to start buying your booze instead of me bringing it?”
“Now wait a minute,” said Calvin Potts, jumping off his blanket, “don’t let’s get hasty, Roscoe!”
And Spermwhale quickly added, “Right. I was only kiddin, Roscoe.”
“You’re a hell of a guy, Roscoe,” Sam Niles said, patting Roscoe on the cheek as Roscoe smiled and accepted it all magnanimously.
Whaddayamean Dean, whose mind was not yet obliterated from the bourbon, was trying to console Father Willie Wright who had begun to pine for No-Balls Hadley. The chaplain had seen her that night driving by the station on her way to meet a neurosurgeon she was dating.
Father Willie had waved hopefully but No-Balls Hadley now working Central daywatch, merely curled her lip and mouthed an obscenity and flipped Father Willie the middle digit.
“God she’s so beautiful, Dean!” said Father Willie. “I swear I’d leave my wife for her.”
“I know how it is, Padre,” said Whaddayamean Dean sadly. “You’d eat the peanuts out of her shit. I know how it is.”
“She’s so beautiful!”
“Confidentially, what’d her poon look like, Father?”
“Dean, it was all perfect,” said Father Willie who really didn’t remember.
“Wow! Even her asshole?”
“It was a pearl,” said the choirboy chaplain as he gulped down the Scotch.
“Imagine that!” said Whaddayamean Dean, visibly impressed. “An asshole like a pearl!”
And as the choir practice gained momentum, a slender boy sat across the water quietly feeding the ducks from a sack of breadcrumbs he carried. Alexander Blaney sensed that this was going to be a memorable choir practice since at 2:00 A.M. six choirboys were roaring drunk and four others were not far behind.
Arguments began raging all over the grass there by the duck pond.
“You can’t prove it was me who had the Dragon Lady call you up that time,” said Francis Tanaguchi who had his head in Carolina’s lap and his feet in Ora Lee’s.
“I can’t prove it but I know it was you,” said Father Willie Wright who was in an extremely rare mood of belligerence thinking of No-Balls Hadley’s upraised finger.
“Well you should have proof before you accuse somebody” Francis said, his little eyes glowing wildly in the moonlight.
“You sound like a hype on the street,” Calvin Potts said, turning on his partner. “Prove it. Prove it. Shit!”
“And you sound like Roscoe Rules the time he tried to choke me because the Dragon Lady called him. Fine partner you are!”
“I think you’re guilty is what I think. And I’d like to meet the Dragon Lady to prove it,” Calvin Potts challenged. And then Calvin lay back on the grass, savoring the Scotch, fantasizing about the Dragon Lady, who in his thoughts greatly resembled that bitch, Martha Two-good Potts.
“That was a filthy thing to say Spencer! I heard that!” Carolina Moon suddenly yelled to Spencer Van Moot who was drinking with Harold Bloomguard.
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
“Yes you was. I heard you say fat!”
“My wife’s got an ass twice as wide as yours. I wasn’t talking about you!”
“What’d he say?” asked Ora Lee who was drinking champagne out of Francis Tanaguchi’s tennis shoe.
“He said he’d like to rebush somebody by sticking a picnic ham in her unit and pulling the bone out, is what he said!”
“I swear I wasn’t talking about you! It was my wife!” Spencer pleaded, fearing that Carolina might pull that train tonight and leave him off. “Why is everybody so sensitive tonight?”
“Oh stop it,” Francis said. “Carolina, want some Japanese food?”
“You cute little shitbird,” she giggled, pounding Francis on the head. “Is it like Chinese food?”
“Better,” said Francis lasciviously.
“That Chinese food,” Ora Lee giggled. “You know a half hour later…”
“Way she accuses me,” Spencer pouted. “And I like her so much I balled her on the same night my first wife was delivering our last kid.”