The Choirboys

NINE

TOMMY RIVERS

Kudos to Roscoe Rules!” Sergeant Nick Yanov announced at rollcall on the night Baxter Slate shot the ordinary guy. “Roscoe just had his annual physical, and the medical report here says his Phthirius pubis count is very low this year. I looked that up and it means body crabs.”

After the nightwatch stopped applauding the scowling Roscoe Rules, Lieutenant Finque tried to get everyone in really good spirits by showing them photos he had borrowed from homicide detectives of the monstrously bloody corpse of Nathan Zelinski, a seventy-two year old janitor who had been stomped to death by two sixteen year old boys during a burglary at a junior high school three years earlier.

“Drove his nose bones right down his throat,” Lieutenant Finque said. “Old man actually drowned on his own blood. Took him almost forty-five minutes to die. According to their confessions they kept coming over and looking at him every once in a while.”

“They have a fascination for such things,” Baxter Slate whispered to no one in particular.

“Who?” Spermwhale asked.

“Kids.”

“Reason I showed you,” the lieutenant continued, “is that the second boy was just released from camp and is back in our division. The first got out four months ago.”

And while the nightwatch passed the pictures around and cursed the courts and penal authorities and their lot in general, Sergeant Nick Yanov asked under his breath, “Lieutenant, did you have to do this?”

“Of course,” the lieutenant answered. “I want them to know what kind of idiots we have to fight within the system.”

“Don’t you think they know? Why keep reminding them they’re shoveling shit against the tide? Why?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Lieutenant Finque said.

But they never did. On Nick Yanov’s next rating report Lieutenant Finque wrote, “Sergeant Yanov needs a lot of seasoning before he can hope to be a top supervisor. Lacks maturity.”

And to continue to show Sergeant Yanov who was boss, Lieutenant Finque said to the assembly, “Oh, and by the way, did you hear about the other young kids the Youth Opportunity folks placed at General Hospital for summer employment. They had lengthy drug records so they put them in the pharmacy washing bottles. You can guess the rest. And a couple of things we discussed at the supervisors’ meeting,” the lieutenant went on, now that he was getting warmed up. “We have some local businessmen who make frequent burglary and theft reports and don’t want uniformed officers coming in the front door to take reports. Gives the place a bad name.”

The lieutenant smiled smugly when he heard the roar this tidbit aroused. “Of course the captain gave them what for. You would’ve been proud of him.”

“I always knew he was behind us,” said Spermwhale Whalen. “I felt him there many times.”

The lieutenant didn’t know how to interpret Spermwhale’s observation so he continued with the good news. “And you can all just quit grousing about how long you have to wait in court until your case is called. I’ve talked it over with the captain and he talked it over with the commander and he talked it over with the deputy chief…”

“And he talked it over with Dear Abby who’s runnin this fuckin department,” said Spermwhale Whalen.

“And he talked it over with his counterpart at the courts,” said Lieutenant Finque ignoring the laughter. “Private counsel simply has priority at court trials over defendants with public defenders.”

“Yeah,” Spermwhale said, “most a the people we bust have public defenders who don’t have to get out quick to make a few more bucks from some other client, so us cops and our civilian witnesses and victims have to cool our heels while these black-robed pussies take care a their fuckin fraternity brothers. If they ain’t got a monopoly I don’t know who does. Who worries about cops?”

“Who worries about victims?” Baxter Slate observed.

“Them too,” Spermwhale nodded.

“Well, it’s good to get these things off our chests at roll-call,” Lieutenant Finque said jauntily now that he had turned twenty-eight cheerful men into seething blue avengers. Then Lieutenant Finque said, “Sergeant Yanov’s going to hold a gun inspection while I keep an appointment with the captain. There’ve been some dirty guns in recent inspections and the captain says he’s going to start coming down hard on you men. You may not appreciate it but you work a damned good division. Even the people we serve are the best. Our citizens show a great interest in the Basic Car Plan meetings and they purchase lots of whistles.”

“Hey, Lieutenant,” Spermwhale said. “Is it true the station buys those whistles for seven cents?”

“I don’t know the details,” said Lieutenant Finque.

“That’s a forty-three cent profit on each whistle,” said Spermwhale.

“I don’t know the details.”

“Jesus, we musta made thousands a bucks with this caper,” Spermwhale observed.

“I don’t know, but it’s for our Youth Services Fund so it’s a worthy cause.”

“Is is true there’s some civilian whistle maker flyin all over the goddamn country tryin to sell the idea to other departments?”

“I’m not familiar.”

“What a scam. You gotta hand it to some a the eunuchs in this department. Once in a while they come up with an idea. Why didn’t I think a that? I coulda made enough in one year to pay off all my ex-wives!”

“Enough on whistles,” Lieutenant Finque smiled nervously since he was the eunuch who thought of it or at least who stole the idea from the senile old lady who thought crime could be stamped out if there were thousands of other old ladies running around blowing whistles at bad guys.

“Maybe I could get in on the action, Lieutenant,” Spermwhale persisted. “I got this idea for sellin one to every broad in the city. See, we design a whistle shaped like a cock and the part you hold is shaped like a pair a balls with two LAPD badges pinned to them. Our sales motto could be ‘Blow for your local policeman.’”

“It might work, Lieutenant!” cried Francis Tanaguchi.

“That’s a swell idea, Spermwhale!” cried Spencer Van Moot.

“I know a guy could design the whistles!” cried Harold Bloomguard.

Lieutenant Finque felt like crying. It always happened like this. He’d discuss a serious subject with the men and they’d end up making fun of him. Supervisor or not, he would have given anything to punch Spermwhale Whalen right in his big, red, scarred up nose. And he’d have done it too if he weren’t petrified of the fat policeman and if he weren’t absolutely sure Spermwhale would break his back.

“I think you better hurry if you’re going to make your appointment,” Sergeant Yanov suggested, to save his superior officer from further trauma.

But before Lieutenant Finque walked out the door he said, “I’ll tell you men one thing. Because of our whistles we’ve developed excellent rapport with the people we serve. If you should get in a fight with a suspect out there on these streets you don’t have to worry. Our good people won’t stand by and let you get kicked in the head!”

“No, they’ll cut it off and shrink it,” Roscoe Rules said dryly as Lieutenant Finque exited trembling.

Sergeant Yanov tried to make the gun inspection palatable by taking Harold Bloomguard’s gun, looking down the barrel and saying, “Kee-rist, Harold, when was the last time you cleaned this thing? There’s a spider been down there so long he has three hash marks on his sleeve.”

Baxter Slate was one of three college graduates among the choirboys, the others being Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard, both of whom obtained degrees while police officers. Two of the others were upperclassmen in part time studies, and all but Spermwhale Whalen had some college units. Baxter Slate not only had his baccalaureate in the classics, but had been a graduate student and honors candidate when he dropped out of college in disgust and impulsively joined the Los Angeles Police Department five years earlier. He was an unusually handsome young man, almost twenty-seven years old. He lived alone in a one bedroom apartment. He had no plans for marrying and no ambition to advance in rank. He said he liked working uniform patrol, that it gave him a chance to live more intensely, that sometimes he seemed to live a week or a month in a single night.

Whereas Calvin Potts read every new book in the police library which he thought might help him pass the coming sergeant’s examination, Baxter Slate read no books in the police library since they invariably dealt with law, crime and police. Though Baxter Slate enjoyed doing police work he hated reading about it. And though Baxter Slate firmly believed that his extensive education in the classics had been the most colossal waste of money his mother had ever squandered and that his degree would never at any time in his life be worth more than the surprisingly cheap paper it was printed on, he nevertheless could not break old habits. He would occasionally for the fun of it, struggle with Virgil and Pliny the Elder to see if he could apply their admonitions to the sensual, self-contained, alcoholic microcosm of choir practice which to Baxter Slate made more sense than the larger world outside.

Most of the choirboys had worked with Baxter as a partner at one time or another. He had been in the division three years and had worked Juvenile for nine months until he discovered he was a lousy Juvenile officer. Baxter thought he was also a lousy patrol officer. No one else said that Baxter was a lousy anything, except Roscoe Rules, who disliked Baxter for having ideas which confused Roscoe. At choir practice Roscoe often drunkenly accused Baxter of using ten dollar words just to show off in front of Ora Lee Tingle who was so bombed out on gin and vodka she wouldn’t have known the difference if Baxter had spoken Latin. And as a matter of fact, Baxter could tell dirty jokes in Latin which amused the choirboys except for Roscoe.

“You and your faggy big words,” Roscoe shouted one night as he soaked his feet in the MacArthur Park duck pond, watching warily that the ducks did not swim by and attack his toes.

“Baxter don’t use big words,” Spermwhale Whalen said, looking as though he would like to pulverize Roscoe Rules, who feared and hated Spermwhale even more than he feared and hated the little ducks.

“Well I think he does, goddamnit,” Roscoe said but was careful to smile at Spermwhale when he said it.

Baxter was some forty feet away in the darkness, lying on a blanket and shaking his head in wonder that even here in the idyllic tranquilized and totally artificial world of choir practice, it was not entirely possible to escape hostility and violence.

“I think it’s faggy and uppity to talk like that,” Roscoe Rules said, while the other choirboys drank and teased Ora Lee Tingle or played mumbletypeg in the grass with confiscated and illegal ten inch stilettos or, like Spermwhale Whalen, tossed little stones on the water to watch the ripples, and to neck with Carolina Moon.

Finally Baxter uncoiled his lean body, brushed back his heavy umber hair, longer than anyone’s but Spencer Van Moot’s, who was constantly under fire from the watch commander to get a haircut, and said, “Roscoe, I sincerely try not to use any big words.”

“There! See, you did it again!” Roscoe pointed, banging on the arm of his partner Whaddayamean Dean Pratt who was dozing on his blanket. “See, you said ‘sincerely’ Shit. Faggy word. Faggy is what it is.”

“I simply asked the fellows if…”

“See! You did it again!” shouted the mean and drunken Roscoe Rules as he punched on Dean to arouse him, but his partner only whimpered drunkenly “‘Fellows.’ How many cops you ever hear say ‘fellows’? Cops say ‘guys’ or ‘dudes’ or ‘studs’ or ‘cats,’ but no cop in the history of LAPD ever said ‘fellows.’ Nobody but you, Baxter Slate.”

“He didn’t say nothin faggy I heard,” Calvin Potts said, and the tall black policeman was suddenly standing behind Roscoe Rules who was thinking that the only thing worse than a fag is a nigger and how much fun it would be to kneedrop Calvin Potts and puncture his kidney and smash his spleen like a rotten peach.

“For chrissake, Baxter, tell Roscoe what you said so I can relax,” said Francis Tanaguchi who was lost in the expansive bosom of Ora Lee Tingle, trying to persuade her to pull the train for a few of the choirboys. She was now wearing only Spermwhale’s T-shirt and her own skintight black flares as she held Francis Tanaguchi in her arms saying how fucking cute Nips are.

“Roscoe,” Baxter said patiently “I only said that policemen see the worst of people and people at their worst. I was simply trying to explain to you and me and all of us our premature cynicism. That’s all I said and I wish I’d keep my big mouth shut.”

“So do I,” muttered Roscoe. “Fucking ten dollar words. A policeman only needs about a hundred words in his whole vocabulary.”

“The only big words I use were taught me in the police academy Roscoe,” said Baxter. “Words like hemorrhage and defecation.” Baxter took a drink of cold vodka and said, “You know, Roscoe, even you use euphemisms, police euphemisms, like calling your night-stick a baton because the LAPD says to call it that. I refuse to call it that. A baton is a plaything for young girls. There’s no phallic connotation whatsoever. If I’m going to carry something to beat people over the head with I insist it have Freudian implications. I learned that in graduate school. Everything must have Freudian implications.”

“You making fun a me, Slate?” Roscoe demanded, trying to stagger to his feet.

“You know, a graduate student would love to use a big faggy word like ‘emasculated’ on you, Roscoe. That’s a favorite word of all graduate students. And they would say of your baton that the true symbol of your sexual identity is the wooden appendage you store at the station. In other words, your cock’s in your locker.”

“Oh, I don’t like you, Slate, I never liked you,” said Roscoe Rules who really didn’t like Baxter Slate any less than he liked Harold Bloomguard, Francis Tanaguchi, Calvin Potts and Spermwhale Whalen, not necessarily in that order. He only just tolerated his partner, Dean Pratt, who was starting to get on his nerves, and Father Willie Wright who seemed to be afraid of him.

“Let’s talk economics instead of philosophy, Roscoe,” Baxter Slate said, deciding to test the meanest choirboy. “I think that the inflationary period follows the prediction of the deficit meanders of corollary Harry that Roscoes cannot breed in captivity and that Chandu the Magician is a cousin of the condor at Santa Barbara.”

“I don’t buy that faggy idea any more than the last one,” Roscoe Rules said, passing the test.

“Whaddaya mean, Baxter? Whaddaya mean?” asked Whaddayamean Dean who had crawled across the grass into the converstion area.

“What do I mean, Dean, my friend?” said Baxter Slate. “I mean that I was a lousy Juvenile officer, that’s what I mean. I mean that a battered child has a marvelous capacity to adjust to his torture and will ceaselessly love his battering parents. I mean that the mother of a sexually molested child will not leave nor truly protect the child from the father as long as the man has a good job or otherwise preserves that mother from an economic life which is more horrifying to her than the molestation of her child. I mean that the weakness of the human race is stupefying and that it’s not the capacity for evil which astounds young policemen like you and me, Dean. Rather it’s the mind boggling worthlessness of human beings. There’s not enough dignity in mankind for evil and that’s the most terrifying thing a policeman learns.”

“Whaddaya trying to say, Baxter? Whaddaya trying to say?” pleaded Whaddayamean Dean drunkenly.

“I mean that twelve good men and true are a gaggle of non-professional neophytes conditioned by the heroics of cinema juries which inevitably free the defendant who is inevitably innocent. I mean that they can never really believe that a natural father could do such an unnatural thing to his child.”

“I don’t get it! I don’t get it!” cried Whaddayamean Dean.

“I mean that doctors and professional men are the most arrogant and incompetent witnesses at any criminal proceedings and that they’ll screw up your case for sure.

“I mean that the weak and inept parents will always refuse to surrender their neglected children to the authorities because they want to atone for failures with older children and the cycle inevitably repeats itself.

“I mean that perhaps economics, not morality is our last consideration, and that the judge has a point when you plead with him to put a man away to save that man’s family and the judge says, ‘Swell, but who do you want me to let out?’”

“What’s he mean? What’s he mean?” yelled Whaddayamean Dean to the drunken choirboys. Dean was boozy enough for a crying jag now, the tears welling as he bobbed and weaved and almost fell over backward.

“And I mean that when policemen have to deal with small inflexible men in their own ranks, perhaps it becomes too much. And perhaps part of the reason that Roscoe Rules is small and inflexible and insensitive is because traditional police administrators-men like Captain Drobeck, and Commander Moss and Chief Lynch-are small and inflexible and insensitive and…”

“I heard that faggy remark, Slate, you scrote!” said Roscoe Rules, still unable to stand.

“I mean that cops chase society’s devils as well as their own, which becomes unbearably terrifying since the devil is at last only the mirror image of a creature utterly without worth or dignity. And that the physical dangers of police work are grossly overrated but the emotional dangers make it the most hazardous job on earth.”

“Oh, Baxter, oh, Baxter,” moaned the bewildered Whaddayamean Dean who was starting to get sick.

“I mean that I carry only two memories from my childhood in Dominican boarding schools where I was placed by my beautiful, well traveled mother: if you touch the communion wafer with your teeth it’s not so good and should be avoided. And the only unforgivable sin is to murder yourself because there is absolutely no possibility of absolution and redemption, and…”

“What the fuck’re you babblin about, Baxter?” asked Spermwhale Whalen who was suddenly behind Baxter, having slept long enough to be more or less capable of driving home before dawn.

“Spermwhale! Thought you were stacking those Z’s.” Baxter Slate offered his partner a quick wide grin and a drink of vodka.

“Baxter, you sound like a silly pseudointellectual horse’s ass. You’re gettin embarrassin. C’mon, I’ll drive you to your pad.” Spermwhale felt a stab of pain across the front of his skull when he lifted his young partner to his feet and helped steady him.

Actually, Baxter Slate was rarely such a silly pseudointellectual horse’s ass, but he had been undergoing a prolonged period of despondency brought about partly because he thought he had been such an unsuccessful Juvenile officer.

The murder of Tommy Rivers was the final blow to his career as a Juvenile officer because Baxter Slate had foreseen the imminent demise of Tommy Rivers and had been powerless, or rationalized that he was powerless, to prevent it.

It was three months to the day after Tommy Rivers’ death and almost two months before the choir practice shooting that Baxter Slate became the only one of the ten choirboys to kill a man on duty.

Contrary to film and fiction, policemen rarely fire their guns in combat, and even Spermwhale Whalen with nineteen and a half years service and Spencer Van Moot with sixteen years had never killed a man on duty. The flesh wound to the Regretful Rapist was the only time Spermwhale had ever fired his revolver outside of monthly qualification shooting, even including the Watts Riot. So it naturally became a topic of conversation during choir practice when Baxter Slate killed a man.

The night Baxter Slate killed a man started out a busy one. Ten minutes after they hit the bricks and cleared at 3:45 in the afternoon, Roscoe Rules and Dean Pratt put out an “officers need assistance” call on Chesapeake Avenue in the vicinity of Dorsey High School.

A call for either help or assistance demands all-out coverage, and every car on the nightwatch made a squealing turn and headed south through the heavy afternoon traffic, figuring that Roscoe Rules had probably caused a riot at the school.

As it turned out the call was indeed put out by Roscoe Rules. He and Dean had been driving by the campus so Roscoe could show off by parading his tailored blue body and gleaming badge in front of the high school girls, when they spotted a young black car stripper struggling with the bucket seats of a Porsche which was parked in the faculty parking lot.

Whaddayamean Dean had dropped his baton getting out of the radio car and the clatter of wood on asphalt caused the sweating car stripper to look back and see the “Mickey Mouse ears” on the roof of the police car, which is what students call the siren lights. The car stripper was off in a 9.5 hundred yard dash which left Dean far behind and Roscoe radioing for assistance.

During the chase, the car stripper ran right into the arms of a pretty twenty-five year old, white history teacher named Pamela Brockington who saw the exhausted policeman hotfooting after the boy. She pushed the boy into the gymnasium and was standing in front of the door when the lanky redhead came panting up to her.

“That boy go in there?” Dean gasped.

“I know that boy, Officer,” Pamela Brockington said. “Whatever happened we can settle it without your running through the school grounds and starting a problem.”

“Out… out of the way, lady” Dean puffed.

“Listen, you’re on Board of Education property,” the teacher said, planting her feet and spreading her legs, which wasn’t easy, her blue jersey skirt being so tightly fitted.

“You know him, okay it’s no problem,” Dean said, catching his breath. “Just give us his name and we’ll pick him up at home.”

“Well, what did he do?” For the first time the teacher looked unsure of herself.

“Tried to rip off the bucket seats from a white Porsche in the parking lot. What’s the kid’s name?”

“Oh,” the teacher said in a small voice.

“Your car?”

“No, Mr. Krump’s car. Oh.”

“What’s his name?”

“Well, I don’t actually know his name but he’s always around.” Pamela Brockington moved aside to let Dean into the gym. But it was far too late and the car stripper had gone out the other door.

“He goes to school here, doesn’t he? You can pick his picture out of your school mug shots,” Dean said, removing his hat and wiping the sweat from his freckled brow.

“Well, I don’t think he actually goes to school here, but…” and the young woman started to wither under the outraged scowl Dean was working up to. “He’s… he’s always hanging around the streets after school and I’m sure you could find him again tomorrow or the next day.”

When Dean returned to the radio car without the car stripper and with the tale of Pamela Brockington, Roscoe Rules smiled ironically and in a very soft voice said, “Now ain’t that typical, partner? I mean that’s just so typical of some bleeding heart, left wing social science teacher, now ain’t it?”

“I don’t know if she teaches social science,” Dean offered as Roscoe’s voice rose an octave.

“Yes, well it certainly is typical and now our little mother-fucking car stripper is halfway to Watts or wherever the hell.”

“You broadcast a description?” Dean asked as he saw the familiar mad glint working its way into Roscoe’s blue eyes as his hairless brows knitted and unknitted, making Dean terribly nervous because he didn’t know if Roscoe would suddenly turn on him. Which he did.

“And you… partner,” Roscoe said, his voice getting louder still as he revved the black and white, ready to leave half a tire on the pavement. “You, partner, let this little pinko, scum eating, shit sucking cunt keep you from hot pursuit? It’s hard to believe!”

“Well… partner,” Dean gulped. “We’ll get him some other time. Maybe.”

“And now you’re sounding just like what this nigger loving split tail must’ve sounded like, partner. If I’d been there I’d a grabbed that come licking, do-gooder little cunt and CHOKED HER OUT AND MADE HER DO THE FUCKING CHICKEN! YOU HEAR ME?”

It was quite an ordinary Roscoe Rules incident, interesting later to Baxter because the car stripper ran across Exposition Boulevard and up Palmgrove Avenue where he made the almost fatal error of crossing through the fenced yard of Yolanda Gutierrez, aged sixty-two, and her niece, Rosario Apodaca, aged fifty-one, who, unlike Pamela Brockington, spoke no English but understood immediately what it meant when this young boy leaped their fence and crouched behind a hibiscus as a black and white cruised by with the officers craning their necks.

Yolanda Gutierrez calmly opened a trunk belonging to her son who had been killed in Korea twenty-three years earlier, removed his Colt.45 automatic and drew down on the boy.

The young car stripper laughed like hell at the old woman holding the heavy gun until Yolanda Gutierrez fired one for effect and blew out the window of the car parked in front of the house. The car stripper fell shrieking to the ground, not knowing the old lady had lost the bucking gun and her glasses and was crawling around the porch trying to find both when two black and whites attracted by the explosion came roaring down the street and arrested the car stripper.

“Something to be learned here,” Baxter Slate remarked later to Spermwhale. “How two social classes perceive reality. The educated schoolteacher and the simple old woman.”

“Who gives a fuck about reality anyway?” Spermwhale mumbled.

“Not me,” Baxter grinned cheerfully. “I prefer choir practice to reality any old day.”

Then Baxter’s wide grin vanished as he watched a yellow gangrenous dog being dragged down the street by a larger bitch who had him locked inside her, his passion having turned to agony and howling terror. A gang of black kindergarteners, as guileless as a bunch of plums, laughed and pelted both muddy animals with rocks and tin cans.

“Maybe I’ll fly another raid with some a the guys my next day off,” Spermwhale suddenly said. “Need some excitement around here.”

“Don’t start that nonsense again,” Baxter said, putting on his sunglasses and driving back toward their beat.

Spermwhale began to think about the mission he had flown three weeks earlier. It had started innocently enough with some alcoholic conversation at choir practice about how the white men of Palm Springs had cheated the Indians out of their birthright by stealing the desert spa from the Indians. Roscoe Rules had corrected them by pointing out that Jews and not white men had done it and that he wished the tribe would rise up and massacre every one of those kike bastards and cut off their scalps and kneedrop them.

Then, at precisely fifteen minutes before dawn, Francis Tanaguchi slapped Spermwhale Whalen awake where he slept entwined in the chubby arms of Carolina Moon.

“I’d love to see those two in a lewd movie,” Francis Tanaguchi remarked as they threw dirty pond water in Spermwhale’s face until he gagged and choked for air.

“Why bother?” Calvin said. “You can see them in real life anytime you want just by sneakin behind the bushes where they usually mate.”

“Yeah, but it’d be different in a movie,” Francis answered. “You know, a red sexy room with a red silky bedspread and Carolina and Spermwhale all fat and white and oiled and sliding around!”

“You’d need a cinemascope lens,” Baxter Slate offered. “A wide wide angle to take all that flesh.”

“Wall to Wall Meat! What a title! Outta sight!” cried Francis Tanaguchi.

An hour later, Francis, Calvin, Dean and Spermwhale, who were all off duty the next night, were in Spermwhale’s rented orange and white Cessna 172 at Burbank Airport where Spermwhale often flew if he could get someone to pay for the rental and gasoline. Spermwhale had taken off without a flight plan, but with three hungover choirboys, two fifths of Scotch and one of gin, on a mission to recapture Palm Springs by way of Ontario Airport where Spermwhale reluctantly agreed to land because whaddayamean Dean wanted some potato chips. They were reprimanded at Ontario by a man in the tower for landing without using the radio, but Spermwhale told him to fuck off and decided to hire a taxi to the Ontario Motor Speedway to watch some motorcycles qualifying for a race.

It was a long hot day at the racetrack spent sleeping shirtless in the bleachers, drinking the two fifths of Scotch and a case of beer and eating all the potato chips Whaddayamean Dean could hold.

Nothing eventful happened at the speedway until late in the afternoon when the choirboys wandered down to the track and a bearded racer told Spermwhale to get his fat ass off his bike. Spermwhale replied that he could fix it so the bearded racer could equal Evel Knievel’s record for broken bones on a motor track.

The racer then called for track security officers and after being threatened with arrest the four choirboys put on their tank tops and basketball jerseys and scuttled off, moaning about never being able to find a cop when you want one. Whaddayamean Dean was so drunk he had to be helped into his filthy yellow sweatshirt and they got it on backward with the picture of Bugs Bunny on the back and “What’s Up, Doc?” on the front.

The choirboys discovered something extraordinary during the flight from Ontario to Palm Springs: that flying with a blood alcohol reading of.20 was actually invigorating. They celebrated by breaking open the fifth of gin almost immediately after takeoff and cruising at a carefree five thousand feet.

“I hate gin,” Spermwhale said, tipping the bottle and drinking a quarter of a pint without taking it from his lips, flying the airplane as steady as a rock.

“It’s what the brothers drink when they can’t get Scotch,” remarked Calvin Potts, who rode behind the self styled navigator, Francis Tanaguchi, who had never flown in any aircraft except once in the Army on the way to Fort Ord.

“But you people can drink airplane fuel,” Francis said, grimacing from the burning gin.

“Yeah, and you Chicanos are models of sobriety,” said Calvin.

“He’s not a Chicano, you fuckin idiot. He’s a Jap.” Spermwhale said.

“That’s right,” said Calvin Potts, shaking his head. “Gud-damn. I better start layin off the booze. I’m gettin simple!”

“It’s confusin workin with a madman like Francis, is all,” said Spermwhale, belching wetly.

“Gin! Gin!” cried Whaddayamean Dean, taking the bottle from Calvin and after three long swallows dropping into complete obliterating drunkenness.

Twenty minutes from the Palm Springs Airport, Spermwhale discovered he was well off the course through Banning Pass and was coming in dangerously low over the San Jacinto Mountains. “Aw shit!” he said and took the plane up seven thousand feet.

“Dynamite!” chuckled Calvin Potts as they climbed.

“My ears hurt! My ears hurt!” Whaddayamean Dean moaned.

“Far out!” Francis exclaimed as they soared through a cloud and came in like a Ping-Pong ball in the turbulence over the mountains.

“Hey, I can see that guy’s eyeballs down there!” Calvin Potts said.

“What guy?” Spermwhale asked.

“The guy in the brown uniform. Looks like a forest ranger or somethin. The guy that jumped off the rock and fell on his ass when we buzzed him.”

“We didn’t buzz nobody,” Spermwhale said. “Not on purpose.”

“Well, ain’t we flying a little low to the mountaintop?” asked Calvin.

“Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?” asked Whaddayamean Dean.

“You know, there’s somethin wrong. Somethin’s fucked up,” Spermwhale said. “We ain’t comin in on the airport. We’re comin in on somethin else looks a little different. I think maybe I’m a little more off course than I thought.”

Then Calvin Potts was suddenly draped around Spermwhale’s neck screaming, “Are we gonna crash?”

“Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?” yelled Whaddayamean Dean.

“Get off my fuckin neck, Calvin, goddamnit!” Spermwhale ordered, prying Calvin’s fingers loose. “Damn! You remind me a that vampire partner of yours. Jumpin around people’s necks!”

“We are most certainly not going to crash,” said Francis Tanaguchi, who was giggling idiotically as the airplane swooped down and up again. “As long as I am navigator we shall not crash!”

“Crash? Crash?” said Whaddayamean Dean.

“Give Dean another drink and take one yourself, Calvin,” Spermwhale said as they dropped down toward the business district of Palm Springs and the airplane’s engine started to attract attention below.

Then they were buzzing the Canyon Country Club. Calvin Potts, his red tank top soaked and plastered to him, cinnamon shoulders gleaming, said, “That’s a green motherfuckin airport, Spermwhale. That’s a… GUD-DAMN! THAT’S A GOLF COURSE!”

And Spermwhale jerked the wheel and the airplane pulled out and up, throwing them all back against their seats.

“We’re gonna be all right,” Spermwhale assured everybody. “I’m just a little lost is all.”

“Lost? Lost?” cried Whaddayamean Dean. “What’s he mean, Calvin? What’s he mean, Calvin?”

“Here,” said Francis Tanaguchi and Whaddayamean Dean accepted the bottle and was happy again.

As often happened when the choirboys would get drunk with the simpering redhead, they would find themselves un-consciously talking rapid fire and double action after hearing Whaddayamean Dean for a time.

Spermwhale was next to do it when he said, “I could use a drink. I could use a drink.”

“Here. Here. Drink. Drink,” said Francis.

“You had enough. You had enough,” said Calvin Potts.

“What’re you trying to say? What’re you trying to say?” said Whaddayamean Dean.

Francis played with the gauge and pretended he was a real pilot while Spermwhale turned around for a second pass over what he thought had to be the airport but was another golf course.

“Motherfucker’s shootin at us!” screamed Calvin Potts as Spermwhale Whalen swooped down over the fifteenth fairway and then up toward the mountaintop.

“Who is?” demanded Spermwhale Whalen, deliberately turning the roaring little airplane around and diving belligerently toward the golf course.

“It was nothing,” said Francis disgustedly “Some guy pointing a golf club is all it was. He jumped into the sand trap that time down.”

Then Spermwhale circled downtown Palm Springs for another few minutes as the police department sent two cars to sight and identify the aircraft.

Francis suddenly turned surly to the chagrin of Calvin Potts who had stopped drinking fifteen minutes ago.

“Rotten paleface assholes!” screamed Francis. “Steal the Indians’ land! I wish Roscoe Rules was here, you lousy scrotes. Roscoe’d fix you. He’d make you do the fucking chicken!”

“Whaddayamean, Francis? Whaddayamean, Francis?” asked Whaddayamean Dean.

“They stole the land!” said Francis, and the sadness in his voice was all that Whaddayamean Dean understood but it was enough to make him cry and wail, “They stole the land! They stole the land!”

“Shut up, Dean, goddamnit!” growled Spermwhale. “That’s all we need now, for you to start bawlin.”

“Have a drink, Dean,” Calvin Potts said, shakily handing Whaddayamean Dean the bottle as Spermwhale circled the town and Francis raged against all white men.

“Thank you, Calvin. Thank you, Calvin,” Whaddayamean Dean said, smiling bravely. Then he wiped his moist eyes on his sleeve and sat back sucking up the gin, wondering what everything meant.

“Dive! Dive! Dive!” commanded the angry navigator, but Calvin Potts said, “Don’t you motherfuckers be talkin that crazy shit now! You sound like when we sunk ol Wolfgang. But this ain’t no play submarine. THIS IS A REAL MOTHERFUCKIN AIRPLANE!”

“Dive! Dive! Dive!” Francis repeated, staring saucer eyed at the reeling pilot who said, “I want gin!” causing Calvin Potts’ heart to stop and making him want to weep with Whaddayamean Dean, who actually wasn’t weeping but was giggling at Calvin as he held the almost empty gin bottle in front of his face, playing peekaboo, enjoying Calvin’s hilariously distorted black moustache through the glass.

“Where should I dive to?” Spermwhale asked finally and Francis said, “That fucking golf course. We’re landing and claiming this whole town for the tribe. If you don’t you’re chicken-shit!”

“Me, chickenshit? Me, chickenshit?” Spermwhale yelled, and as Calvin screamed the airplane dove in a gut-erupting 190 mph dive which threatened the design limitations of the little aircraft, and Whaddayamean Dean shouted, “I just wanna know: What’s it all mean? What’s it all mean?” which Calvin Potts decided was the most intelligent remark he had heard lately as the airplane leveled out and climbed with Whaddayamean Dean throwing up all over everybody.

“Goddamn you, Dean!” Spermwhale yelled.

“That does it!” Francis raged. “I hate all thieving white men, even the ones in this airplane. I feel like crashing just to kill all you pukey pricks!”

“How about me? How about me?” Calvin Potts pleaded. “I ain’t a white man. Why kill me?”

“You’re all alike,” Francis said.

“Whaddayamean Dean puked. I didn’t puke,” Calvin pleaded, and then Calvin realized that Whaddayamean Dean was vomiting in Calvin’s lap so Calvin did too, in his own lap.

“See, you’re all alike,” said Francis disgustedly. “All a bunch of pukey white men. I wish Roscoe Rules was here to rupture your spleens!”

“I swear I’m not a white man,” said Calvin Potts as he upchucked a second time.

“Okay I dived. What the fuck else can I do?” Spermwhale Whalen challenged. “Want some aerobatics? Might as well spread all this vomit around.”

“Buzz that golf course one more time,” the exultant navigator commanded, while both Whaddayamean Dean and Calvin moaned and rolled their heads and craved sweet cool air.

“Where is it?” asked Spermwhale.

“Jesus Christ, Spermwhale, it’s green, ain’t it? Just go straight ahead only down lower. We can’t miss something that big!”

But they could. They just missed the mountains, barely.

Spermwhale obeyed the navigator and dived down toward the golf course again, though he was starting to come to his senses from the concentrated effort of flying. He was beginning to realize that someone might not like Francis’ little prank of landing on a golf course claiming it for the Cahuilla Tribe. He was flying so low he made Calvin Potts scream in terror when he got over the golf course and Francis flapped the windows open and threw the empty gin bottle which shattered on the patio of the clubhouse, ending the attack on Palm Springs Indian land.

Ten minutes later, Spermwhale Whalen was heading in the general direction of Los Angeles, starting to think of mundane things like whether or not they would be arrested upon landing at Burbank. But within an hour he had stopped worrying about being arrested at Burbank. Night had fallen and brought with it dense fog, and he was glancing at his fuel gauge and wondering why he could not see the Burbank Airport. For the first time that day he made the concession of turning on his radio and he said to the other choirboys, “You guys see anything through all this soup? I mean in the last five minutes or so?”

“I saw somethin about fifteen minutes ago,” Calvin Potts said, the only one of the passengers sober enough and frightened enough to be completely awake. “I saw a string a lights.”

“Whaddaya mean lights? Whaddaya mean?” asked Spermwhale. “Jesus, I’m startin to sound like Dean.”

“Well, it looked like a ribbon a lights. Coulda been street lights or headlights.”

“Headlights?” murmured Spermwhale, straining his eyes but seeing nothing below them. Nothing but fog and darkness. “Hold on, I’m goin down.”

“Down, you’re goin down?” yelled Calvin Potts.

“Who’s going down?” Francis asked, waking with a smile. “Ora Lee?”

“You sober now?” Calvin asked. “You’re gettin sober, ain’t you, Spermwhale?”

“Yeah, I’m gettin… Oh, mother! Oh, mother! I think I know where we are!”

“I see somethin. I see somethin,” said Calvin Potts when they were at a hundred feet.

“What is it? What the fuck is it?” Francis demanded, awake and sober enough to share Calvin’s sweaty terror.

“The ocean!” yelled the horrified choirboy “That’s the fuckin ocean down there! Oh, Lord!”

“The ocean!” screamed Francis.

“The ocean! The ocean! Which ocean?” yelled Whaddayamean Dean, waking from his deep alcoholic sleep.

“Keep the fuck off my back, Calvin,” shouted Spermwhale, shoving Calvin back and making the black policeman jump on Francis’ back instead.

“We gonna go down, Spermwhale? We gonna go down?” Francis croaked, unaware that Calvin was choking him.

“We ain’t goin nowhere but back to Burbank. Now shut the fuck up!” Spermwhale yelled.

But he looked at his fuel gauge and believed deep in his heart that this was his last flight. He hoped that somehow he could get in close to the coast when he was forced to put her down in the water, probably killing them all on impact. But he still flew as calmly as he had flown into Ontario Airport that morning.

“I see it! I see it!” shouted Calvin suddenly. “The ribbon a light!”

“Okay that’s the coast highway,” Spermwhale said, sighing imperceptibly. “Santa Monica Airport’s probably really socked in.” He turned on his Burbank VOR, watched the dial and said, “Come on needle, come on needle.”

Then he took the plane up over the Santa Monica mountains, and ten minutes later with less than two gallons of gasoline in each tank the choirboys landed at Burbank Airport, dragged Whaddayamean Dean out of the plane and drove home together.

“That old bastard ain’t got a nerve in his body. He ain’t afraid a nothin,” Calvin said to Francis Tanaguchi the next night on patrol.

“Nobody got our airplane numbers?”

“Guess not. Nothin’s happened,” said Calvin.

“Outta sight!” cried Francis Tanaguchi, shaking his black hair off his thin little face, as he started making airplane noises behind the wheel of the radio car, pretending he was Spermwhale Whalen flying a fearless mission into downtown Palm Springs. “Too much!” Francis exclaimed, now that he had a real hero. “I just gotta see Spermwhale and Carolina Moon in a lewd movie if I have to produce it myself!”

And at the next choir practice, Francis tried to convince her that she should star with Spermwhale Whalen in the dirty movie he was going to produce. Spermwhale said okay, but next year after he had his twenty years’ service and a pension locked up. Carolina Moon said she wasn’t that kind of a girl.

Spermwhale was joking when he mentioned another mission like the Palm Springs raid to Baxter Slate on the night Baxter killed the ordinary guy but Baxter Slate, not knowing the full extent of their terror that night over the dark lonely water, wondered if he meant it. Baxter was about to ask him if he was serious when they received a radio call to meet the officers at Ninth Street and Hudson.

Baxter drove easily to the location since there was no code on the call and met Sergeant Nick Yanov and 7-A-33. Spencer Van Moot was laughing while Father Willie stood glumly, hands in the pockets of his uniform pants, pushing out his gun on one side and baton on the other, making him look shorter and chubbier than he was.

When they got out of the car Spencer said to Baxter, “Ever hear of somebody lipping off to you?” And he held up a clean mayonnaise jar which contained a ragged pink object something like a sliver of veal.

“It’s a piece of a woman’s lip.” Father Willie grimaced while Spencer Van Moot laughed uproariously.

“There was a fight here half an hour ago,” Sergeant Yanov explained. “Two neighborhood women got in a hassle over the husband of one of them. There was kicking and gouging and biting and one broad ran home with her eyeball half torn out. When she recovered from the shock fifteen minutes later she found her neighbor’s lip in her mouth. She must’ve bit off half of it. At least it looks like a lip.”

Baxter Slate examined the raw meat in the jar and said, “It’s a lip.”

“The lipless lady, Mrs. Dooley was taken to the hospital by a friend,” Nick Yanov said. “So we’re gonna take the biter on down to the hospital for an MT too. After that, we’ll bring them both to the dick’s bureau. Meantime, how about taking the lip in and seeing if they have to book it in any special way to preserve it. I really don’t know. I never had a lip to take care of before.”

So Baxter and Spermwhale drove part of Mrs. Dooley to the detective bureau in Wilshire Station while Spencer and Father Willie located the rest of her at Daniel Freeman Hospital. The detective just smiled when Baxter showed him the lip and said it would require no special handling because undoubtedly both ladies would make up before the case ever went to trial and it would be dismissed in the interest of justice after four court continuances.

When Spencer Van Moot and Father Willie found the rest of Mrs. Dooley at the emergency ward and arrested her for mayhem, she objected and they had a row with her. She had to be handcuffed and Spencer received a handcuff cut on the finger, a common injury for policemen who wrestle with slippery arms and sharp steel ratchets. The cut was not deep enough to require sutures and Spencer sat on a stool in the same emergency ward, no longer weak from laughing at the lip in the jar but from seeing his blood running down his hand.

He was white and dizzy when the crusty old nurse applied disinfectant and a butterfly bandage to the one inch wound. Father Willie helped support him on the right side while Spencer stood shakily. He was too nauseated to get mad when the nurse said, “Why don’t you bite a bullet?”

When Baxter Slate and Spermwhale left Wilshire Station without Mrs. Dooley’s lip, Baxter turned south on La Brea, causing Spermwhale to ask, “Where we goin, kid? Our area’s east.”

“Just felt like driving around the ghetto for a while,” Baxter smiled. The slim policeman had an extraordinarily wide mouth which made his smile infectious and convincing even when he didn’t mean it. And he didn’t mean it now.

“Suit yourself,” Spermwhale shrugged. “I just wanna take it easy tonight.”

Suddenly Baxter said: “You know what I think is the best a cop can hope for?”

“Tell me, professor.”

“The very best, most optimistic hope we can cling to is that we’re tic birds who ride the rhino’s back and eat the parasites out of the flesh and keep the beast from disease and hope we’re not parasites too. In the end we suspect it’s all vanity and delusion. Parasites, all of us.”

“Yeah,” Spermwhale said, trying to think of where they could get a free or half price meal tonight now that greedy Roscoe Rules had burned up their eating spot at Sam’s by not only demanding free food for himself and Dean, but wanting four hamburgers to go after they finished. Roscoe Rules could fuck up a wet dream, Spermwhale said.

“Do you know how sad it would be to live in a place where a woman couldn’t walk on the street after certain hours because she would either be robbed, raped or taken for a prostitute?”

“I don’t think about it,” Spermwhale answered.

“See that pedestrian underpass? When I worked Juvenile I met with some black mothers who said that six children were hit by cars at this intersection in one school year and yet the underpass had to be fenced off and locked up because juvenile muggers made it dangerous to use. The city couldn’t keep lights in the tunnel. They were broken twice a day. So it’s locked up and the children get hit by cars.”

“What can we do about that kind a bullshit? It’s not our problem.”

“It’s somebody’s problem. I caught two of the muggers down there one day waiting to rip off the smaller kids for their lunch money. They were loaded from sniffing paint and had felony records from when they were ten years old. At the hearing the judge went along with the defense contention that I should’ve had the paint analyzed in the lab to determine if the kids really were under the influence of paint. I told them we were talking about the health of these boys. They were staggering when I busted them. But the case got kicked and…”

“Look, the whole juvenile justice system is a fuckin joke. Everybody knows that, so what’s new?”

“It’s just that it used to be an equity proceeding. It was supposedly for the good of the child. Now every kid has the public defender representing him and it’s just as adversary as adult court. Kids are taught early on to get a mouthpiece and keep their mouths shut.”

“That’s the way it should be, you want my opinion. Give every five year old a shyster. Then send em to the joint if you convict em.”

“But at sentencing it reverts to an equity court or a burlesque on one, and a kid who should be taken away from his miserable home is left on the streets after the fifth serious felony. It’s crazy. Juvenile court is a revolving door, and then suddenly the kid turns eighteen, goes out and commits a strong arm robbery just like always but ends up in adult jail for six months. Then he’s crying for his mother and saying, ‘But you always sent me home before. You always gave me another chance.’ And he can’t understand it and why should he?”

“Baxter, I’m startin to worry about where your head is. I mean if you’re gonna start frettin about injustice in the system…”

“I just hated being a kiddy cop. I’m glad I’m out. Today’s street warriors were yesterday’s hoodlums but now they’re government funded. Do you have any idea how many ineffectual parents with whiskey voices and unconcerned delinquent kids I’ve counseled? Hundreds. Thousands, maybe.”

As Baxter talked, a black child about five years old stood at the corner and waited for the police car to drive off from the stop sign.

“Go ahead, kid,” Spermwhale said, waving at the boy to cross.

But the child walked up to the car on the driver’s side and grinned and said, “Who you lookin for?”

“I’m looking for a little guy in a blue shirt with two teeth missing in front,” Baxter said. “Seen him around?”

The boy giggled toothlessly and said, “You really be lookin for Ladybug, ain’t you?”

“Maybe, what’s she doing wrong?” Baxter asked.

“She round behind the house right now wif her head in a glue bag,” said the child.

“Well, we’d sure like to bust her, sonny,” Spermwhale said. “But we got this big murder case to work on. Now you tell Ladybug to get her dumb head outta that glue bag, okay?”

“Okay, Mr. PO-lice.”

The boy waved as Baxter drove away saying, “Bet Ladybug’s mother runs off and leaves her in a county foster home. And I’ll bet the county just places her right back with her when she comes off her little spree because the taxpayers can’t afford to keep Ladybug in a foster home. And what the hell, if we supported every little black kid that’s neglected…”

“I am really startin to worry about you, Baxter,” Spermwhale said. “You are really startin to worry me with all this crybaby social worker bullshit. Man, you never shoulda left patrol and went to Juvenile. I don’t know what happened to you workin with those kiddy cops but whatever it was you better get your mind together. Shine it on, baby.”

“Okay” Baxter grinned, pushing his umber hair back from his forehead. “I’m just going to shine it on.”

But Baxter Slate wasn’t sure what in his life he should shine on, unless it was Foxy Farrell. And anyone with an ounce of sense should know that. But the more despondent he had become lately, the more he wanted Foxy Farrell. The five foot two inch, ninety-eight pound, copper haired nude dancer somehow scratched deep and bewildering itches in Baxter’s soul.

And no other girl would do though there were many possibilities. Baxter Slate’s imposing figure, penetrating green eyes, heavy lashes and wide boyish grin made him quite popular with the clerk typists around the station as well as with the single girls in his apartment building. He tried to enjoy other women and made it a point to stay away from Foxy for days at a time. But he would always go back and despise her as she laughed and talked obscenely about what she didn’t do to other men in his absence, while she did it to him. And afterward she would chatter about a flashy boyfriend of one of the dancers and talk of how cute and sexy he was and why didn’t Baxter dress in a white jump suit with a fur collar instead of a stupid woolly herringbone sport coat and a dumb striped necktie like a fucking schoolteacher.

Spermwhale had persuaded Baxter to take him to the Sunset Strip once after work to meet Foxy and the two policemen were taken backstage by a burly assistant manager. Foxy was standing nude in her dressing room combing her pubic hair and pushing the vaginal lips back inside before the second show.

“Flops out once in a while,” she smiled, upon seeing the two men standing there. “Hi, you must be Spermwhale. I’m Foxy.”

“Yes, you are! You are!” cried Spermwhale Whalen. Spermwhale found that Foxy Farrell made him itch all over- to throw her down and bury his face in the burnished thatch of pubic hair which had been shaved to the shape of a heart, and dyed by squatting in a dish of hair color twice a month and brushing it carefully.

“Jesus, Foxy,” Baxter said, “can’t you occasionally act like a… oh what’s the use?”

“He’s a prude,” Foxy laughed, throwing her coppery hair over her shoulder and slipping into a sheer peignoir. “Baxter’s such a prude. That’s why we love each other.”

And she stepped over to the disgusted young policeman and rubbed her naked body against him and pulled his face down to hers, holding him by the ears.

Spermwhale watched and swallowed twice and developed a diamond cutter which delighted Foxy Farrell.

Baxter Slate despised Foxy Farrell. Which was why he wanted to be with her every moment he was off duty and even dared to drive the black and white up to the Sunset Strip in full uniform and leave Spermwhale in the car while he sneaked in the back door of the nightclub and listened at the door, catching Foxy Farrell blowing some fat cat in the dressing room.

Baxter had actually done this twice and each time he had the presence of mind to leave without being seen and wait to deal with Foxy Farrell when he was off duty. The way he dealt with her the last time was to accuse and rage and finally slap her, which she didn’t mind as long as he didn’t raise lumps or make her so black and blue that it would show on the stage.

When his anger was spent and he fell in her arms she smiled. Peppermint breath. Perfumed. Overripe. “Baxter, sweetie, it’s okay, it’s okay. Mama understands her baby. Honest, honey, I didn’t do nothing to that guy. Only fooled around with him a little. I wasn’t Frenching him. It sounded like that because you were all upset and playing vice cop and your imagination ran away with you.”

Baxter smiled grimly and said, “You disgusting bitch. You’re worthless, you know that? Irredeemably worthless. Without honor. Without humanity And someday somebody’ll kill you. But really, what good would that do?”

Foxy smiled slant eyed and licked Baxter on the cheek. “Honest, honey,” she purred, “I wouldn’t go down there and kiss that rich man’s cock and suck his balls like I’m gonna do to you right now. You know I wouldn’t do that to no other man, don’t you, honey?”

And while she did it, Baxter Slate clenched his teeth and whispered, “You worthless slut. You worthless slut. I hate you.”

He whispered it again and again. She gave him the most sensual and agonizing moments of his entire life and this time even she enjoyed it and laughed excitedly all the way, her cheek throbbing where he had struck her.

Baxter seldom talked to Foxy Farrell cruelly Usually he treated her like a perfect lady which she hated. And took her to intimate French restaurants which bored her. And brought her bottles of Bordeaux wines he really couldn’t afford, which she served to other friends over icecubes. In fact she rather disliked everything about Baxter except that he was unquestionably good looking, and being a cop could get her out of minor scrapes with the law or at least might help if she were ever picked up by vice cops for going too far during her nude dancing routine. She sometimes did go too far and once was taken from the stage by a vice officer for pulling a customer’s face into her bumping groin. A phone call to Baxter Slate saved Foxy from going to jail because the vice cop was an academy classmate of Baxter’s and liked him very much, as did all other policemen with the exception of Roscoe Rules.

Eventually, Foxy Farrell found Baxter Slate a terrible bore and was starting to hate him as much as Spermwhale found Foxy Farrell exciting and was starting to love her. But she found a twenty-five year old pimp named Goldie Grant irresistible. He saw her whenever she could ditch Baxter and eventually he became her real old man instead of her play old man and moved in with her and let her support him and go down on lots of fat cats and high rollers for lots of money and beat her up maybe twice a month whether she needed it or not. They were very happy together and everyone said made a handsome couple.

When Baxter did not appear unhappy enough one night Foxy told a story of how a cute and sexy player had taken her out for a drink after work and tried to give her a hundred dollars just to let him push her face in his lap and only stopped when she told him how her boyfriend was a cop. And what a hard on the player had!

Then Foxy feigned hurt and shock when Baxter grinned crookedly and said, “What a cheap stupid little animal you are.”

She pouted and said, “Honest, Baxter, I didn’t do this to him.” And she began the little charade which would end in his passionate moaning and her excited laughter.

But no matter how much she despised Baxter Slate, Foxy Farrell could not have begun to fathom how much he was starting to despise the same young man.

The relationship with Foxy Farrell had begun after Baxter’s tour of duty at Wilshire Juvenile where he felt he failed miserably as a kiddy cop and had not prevented the demise of Tommy Rivers, age six and a half.

Of course no one guessed that Baxter Slate somehow felt responsible for the fate of Tommy Rivers.

What made Baxter think he could have prevented Tommy Rivers’ death was that he had, before transferring to Juvenile, received the very first radio call to the home of Lena Rivers shortly after she was reunited with her then five year old son Tommy who in his blue sailor suit looked like little Shirley Temple with a haircut.

Lena Rivers had three children by the husband who preceded Tommy’s father who was a petty officer in the U.S. Navy. Lena had farmed the boy out to her mother six months after his birth when the sailor shipped out for good and never returned. Lena Rivers had undergone shock treatments after that and had hated the sailor relentlessly and never wanted the child he spawned. Now, five years later, with Lena’s mother ill, Lena had been forced to drive to the Greyhound Depot in downtown Los Angeles and pick up the little sailor who had traveled several hundred miles alone without a whimper, the darling of the bus.

The first thing Lena Rivers did, according to later statements from her other children, was to take Tommy home and tear the sailor suit from his body. Some weeks later Baxter Slate received a radio call to the Rivers house from a neighbor who reported that several older neighborhood children had begun hanging around the Rivers home and that some behaved as though they had been drinking. And that the new arrival, Tommy, seldom came outside and looked very sick when he did.

Baxter Slate, working alone on the daywatch at that time, had gone to the Rivers house and met Lena Rivers. She was drunk and dirty and her house was a mess. He had asked to see her youngest child and held his ground when she protested that he was taking a nap.

Finally Lena Rivers did admit Baxter Slate to the child’s room and he did in fact find the child: unwashed, fully clothed, in a crib too small for him. When Baxter later became a Juvenile officer and saw many neglected children he was to remember that Tommy Rivers’ pants looked almost as though they were pressed flat on the bed but he did not realize at the time that starving children can often be distinguished from very thin children by the absence of buttocks.

But at that time Baxter Slate knew very little about starving children, never having been in war like some of the other choirboys. So he had retreated when Mrs. Rivers ordered him out of her house. Baxter had often retreated, especially when working alone, if he felt he was on shaky constitutional grounds. Baxter Slate had always believed implicitly in limited police power, due process, the jury system. And even now though his years on the street had eroded his beliefs he still insisted on not overstepping his authority. This caused many partners to say, “Baxter’s a good partner to work with, goes along with most anything you want to do, but he’s so naïve I think he was brought up in a bottle.”

The Wilburn Military Academy was not exactly a bottle, but it was a hothouse for upper middle class children, which Baxter was until his mother foolishly lost her fat alimony check by impetuously marrying an alarm clock manufacturer who lost most of his money by diversifying into offshore oil drilling. Then the years at the authoritarian Dominican boarding school taught the boy what pansies the teachers at Wilburn were as they played at being soldiers. God’s army had much more dedicated generals. It was surprising that a boy who had been cuffed around and dealt with so strictly and splendidly educated in the traditional sense-virtually without parents unless one counted holidays and summers with Mom-would be the kind of policeman who would worry about human rights and due process. After all, they had always been denied him. But he did worry about such things. Fiercely. Even after he concluded that he had been a fool to entertain such notions.

Once, Baxter Slate, working alone in the West Adams district, saw a car driving by with two young white children waving frantically from the rear window and then dropping out of sight on the seat. The driver was a black man in a stingy brim hat. Baxter followed the car two miles for another glimpse of the white children, asking himself if he would be doing this had the driver been white, wondering if it were just a children’s prank. Finally, Baxter turned on his red lights and stopped the car. The white children were crouched down on the seat in the rear, giggling. The man, a boyfriend of the children’s mother, asked angrily, “Would you have stopped me if those kids had been black?” And Baxter Slate lied and said he would, but he never forgot.

Two weeks before Tommy Rivers died Baxter Slate received the second radio call to the Rivers home. This one from a neighbor on the other side of the street who reported that there was definitely something wrong. Tommy had come to live with his mother nine months before but had been seen only occasionally as he sat with a brother or sister in the front yard.

“I believe he’s a sick boy” the woman had said to Baxter Slate when he responded to the radio call.

And this time Baxter Slate did overstep his authority a bit in demanding to see Tommy Rivers and scaring Lena Rivers with an implied threat to call in Juvenile officers if she refused.

Lena Rivers finally consented, and the gaunt young woman with bright darting eyes went to the bedroom and returned with a dirty but obviously fat and healthy child of seven who smiled at the policeman and asked to touch his gun.

“Satisfied?” Lena Rivers said. “Meddling neighbors oughtta mind their own business.”

Baxter Slate looked at Lena Rivers, at her scraggly colorless ponytail and dark rimmed blinking eyes, at the face already starting to bloat from alcohol despite her skinny build and relative youthfulness.

“That little boy looks different from when I saw him last,” said Baxter.

“When did you see him?” the woman slurred as Baxter smelled the booze.

“I was called here once before,” Baxter said, still standing in the doorway. “I was the one you let into the bedroom to look at Tommy, remember?”

“Oh yeah. You’re gonna spend your career hassling me, is that it?”

“No, I guess not,” Baxter said.

Every skill he had picked up during his four years as a policeman told him that this woman was lying. As with most policemen the hardest thing to learn was what consummate liars people are, and it was even more difficult for Baxter because he had been brought up to believe there is such a thing as unvarnished truth and that most people speak it.

“Is that the same boy I saw before?” Baxter asked and he believed it was a lie when she said, “Of course it is!”

“What’s your name, son?” Baxter asked, stooping and smiling at the child.

“Tommy Rivers,” the boy said and looked up at his mother.

“I don’t believe that’s the same child I saw. He was thin, very very thin.”

“So he’s gained a few pounds. He was sick. Did my nosy neighbor tell you he was sick?”

And Baxter Slate nodded because the neighbor had said that, and yet…

“Look,” Baxter said, trying his broad, winning smile on Lena Rivers, “this is my second call here. Tell you what, I’ll just come in for a look around and then everybody’ll be satisfied and you won’t see me again. Okay?”

And then the woman stepped out on the porch in the sunlight and Baxter was no longer looking at her through the screen door and could see the yellow pouches around her sparkling demented eyes.

“You been cooperated with all you’re gonna be. You got no right here and I want you outta my face and off my property So I don’t keep a spic and span house, so what? My kids’re cared for and here’s the one you’re so goddamn worried about. Now tell that bitch she got any more complaints I’ll go over there and kick her ass all over the neighborhood!”

Lena Rivers went inside and slammed the door, leaving Baxter Slate standing indecisively on the front porch.

For months after that Baxter wondered how much of his hesitancy would be attributed to his boarding school politeness and whether perhaps the more obtrusive working class produced the best cops after all, that perhaps police departments were foolish to recruit from any other social group.

But no matter how many times he postulated a hypothetical situation to other policemen, never daring to admit to them he had contact with Tommy Rivers, he had to come to the inescapable conclusion that very few would have stood on that porch. As tentative as Hamlet. Only to wipe sweat from his hat brim and drive away to another call.

The answers to his hypothetical question varied slightly:

“I think I’d have called for a backup unit and maybe a supervisor or Juvenile officer and gone on in. I mean if I really suspected she had switched kids on me.” That from Father Willie Wright.

“I’da walked over the cunt and looked for the little whelp.” That from Roscoe Rules.

Not one of the choirboys, and he asked each privately, had suggested that he would consider that there was not enough probable cause to enter the woman’s home or cause her further discomfiture. Most agreed with Francis Tanaguchi who shrugged and said, “I don’t worry about it when a little kid’s safety’s at stake. If the court wants to kick the case out, groovy, but I’ll see that the kid’s okay.”

They thought it absurd even to consider constitutional questions which get in the way of police work. “We’ll worry about the United States Supreme Court when we’re writing our arrest reports,” as Spencer Van Moot succinctly put it.

And Baxter Slate believed that was the general attitude of all policemen, not just the choirboys. It was absurdly easy for any high school graduate with a year’s police experience to skirt the most sophisticated and intricate edict arrived at by nine aging men who could never guard against the fact that restrictive rules of law simply produced facile liars among policemen. There wasn’t a choirboy who had not lied in probable cause situations to ensure a prosecution of a guilty defendant.

Not a choirboy except Baxter Slate who had heard too much about Truth and Honor and Sin in Dominican schools. Even Father Willie Wright lied but when he did it from the witness stand he always held his hands under his legs, fingers crossed.

And in the case of Tommy Rivers Baxter Slate need not have lied. He simply had to open the unlocked door and enter Lena Rivers’ home and walk through her house ignoring her drunken threats and search for the real Tommy Rivers. But since he had only a suspicion, since he was not sure, since he could never be convinced that people lied so outrageously, since it was too bizarre to suspect foul play when Mrs. Rivers had several other healthy children, since he was Baxter Slate and not Roscoe Rules, he threw in his hand and lost to a bluff. And Lena Rivers was free to continue with her gradual murder of Tommy Rivers.

When Baxter Slate read Bruce Simpson’s arrest report the first time, his heart was banging so loud he actually believed the man next to him could hear it, and he foolishly cleared his throat and shuffled his feet on the asphalt tile in the squad-room. The second time through the report he believed his heart had stopped, so shallow was his breathing. The third time through he didn’t think about his heart at all.

Bruce Simpson’s arrest report was a minor classic in kiddy cop circles because he did not write like most policemen in the bald vernacular: “Person reporting stated…”

Arresting officer Simpson composed a horror story which included every tiny fragment of gruesome detail-when it was necessary and when it was not. Simpson did it because there was a policewoman named Doris Guber, whose pants Simpson was trying to penetrate, who loved to work the sex detail and always asked teenage runaways about their illicit sex lives and included in her reports exactly how many times an illicit penis was inserted and withdrawn from an illicit vagina. Which wasn’t all that important to the prosecution of delinquent youngsters.

Doris always loved to find out about the orgasm, whether it occurred, and if so how big it was and of what duration. She’d get Simpson hot just talking about it so he started doing his reports the same way.

“Did you have an orgasm with the girl?” Doris once asked a surly eighteen year old black boy she wanted to prosecute for banging his neighbor.

“Did I have a what?”

“Did you come?” asked Doris Guber, eyes shining.

“Oh yeah. Like a hound dog.”

Bruce Simpson’s inimitably colorful prose left nothing out. The pages reeked of agony and death. He described how Lena Rivers had shredded the little sailor suit from Tommy Rivers the first day. He hypothesized how Tommy had resembled the long gone, fair haired sailor who had shattered the romantic dreams of Lena Rivers by taking his discharge from the Navy and heading for parts unknown. Bruce Simpson delineated in the sharpest detail how Tommy Rivers entered hell that day and was not released from torment until he died ten months later.

Lena Rivers had begun by subjecting Tommy to a sustained barrage of verbal abuse which was unrelenting up to and including the period when daily beatings gave way to starvation and torture. But as cruel as Lena Rivers was to Tommy she was kinder than ever before to her other three children who ranged in age from seven to ten. And she was exceptionally kind to the older children of the neighborhood and frequently entertained the teenage boys by supplying beer and gambling money from her bimonthly checks from the Bureau of Public Assistance and finally by deflowering three of them after a game of strip poker.

It became gossip among the adolescents of the block that Lena Rivers was awfully tough on the new arrival, her six year old son Tommy. Then later it was positively established that at least two of the lads, who were learning more than poker from Lena Rivers, had seen acts amounting to felony crimes committed on Tommy Rivers. Lena had been observed on two occasions thrusting the boy’s hand into the flame of the gas stove for bedwetting. On another occasion she had ordered the child to copulate orally one of her poker playing sixteen year old lovers but the older boy claimed he declined, during his testimony at Lena’s trial. Finally, no less than three teenage boys who were ordinary products of the ordinary neighborhood saw Lena Rivers carrying the naked, screaming, twenty-eight pound child through the house by a pair of pliers clamped to his penis.

Lena Rivers had less exotic punishment for Tommy Rivers during that ten month siege of terror, such as locking him in a kitchen broom closet every time he cried for his grandmother whom he would never see again. The broom closet eventually became a refuge for Tommy, and Lena Rivers would often forget he was there and leave him alone in the peaceful darkness for hours at a time. His older siblings sometimes brought food to him beyond his daily ration but never enough to sustain him in health, and eventually the broom closet became his permanent bedroom. He built himself a nest of rags and newspapers next to a water heater which was warm in the night.

Baxter Slate was always to rationalize that even if he had been less indecisive that day he might never have found the little figure cowering in the corner of the broom closet, might never have verified his suspicions that Lena Rivers had shown him the wrong son.

Baxter was to question more experienced Juvenile officers at a later time and consult texts on abnormal psychology and ask again and again: “But how could the other children, especially the older neighborhood children, have failed to report it to the police? They knew what was going on. Even the little ones knew how wrong it was!”

But the most frequent explanation was: “Kids are awfully curious and have a morbid fascination for the bizarre. She was supplying booze and sex for the older ones and her own could see by Tommy what could happen to them if Mama stopped loving them, so …”

Later as a kiddy cop Baxter encountered case after case of witnesses who ignored flagrant acts of brutality, not just youngsters, but adults: neighbors and family. Then Baxter Slate, former Roman Catholic, age twenty-six, learned how tenuous is the life of the soul. And realized that his soul, if he truly had one, was starting to die.

Baxter asked for and received a transfer back to patrol for “personal reasons” and decided to quit police work. But he made inquiries and discovered how valueless was his education in the classics. He had an offer to teach elementary school but that job was conditional since Baxter did not have a teaching credential and had not the ambition to get one. And actually policemen received a better wage.

So he became satisfied with working uniform patrol again and did not aspire to a more exalted position. He never again tried to borrow money from his mother who was now divorced for the fourth time, and most of all he was very cautious never to let anyone know he was intelligent and educated since it could offend people like Roscoe Rules who assumed that Baxter had studied police science in college.

Baxter always made it a point to throw a few “don’ts” in place of “doesn’ts” in his conversation with other policemen and unless he was drunk at choir practice he never used adverbs in the presence of Roscoe Rules who became infuriated because it sounded so faggy.

Tommy Rivers, reduced to a shroud of flesh on a little skeleton, eventually died from the blow of a hammer that a healthy child could probably have survived. Lena Rivers was arrested, giving Bruce Simpson the opportunity to titillate Doris Guber with his purple prose. And Baxter Slate quit being a Juvenile officer because he thought he was the worst one in history and intensified his relationship with Foxy Farrell. He only broke it off when during their mating she bit into his chest so savagely she tore the skin and kissed him with a bloody mouth crooning, “You liked it, Baxter! You liked it, you bastard! Admit it, you pig motherfucker! Want me to do it again? Or do you want me to tell you what I did to Goldie last night after I left you? Goldie’s cock is so …”

And then Baxter was weeping for shame and fury and was backhanding Foxy Farrell and more blood was on her mouth mixing with his blood. Then her eyes glassed over and she held his wrists and the words dripped like blood from thin dark lips: “That’s enough. I know what you like, honey. It’s okay Mama knows. Mama knows.”

So after he stopped being a kiddy cop and after he stopped thinking so much about the things Foxy Farrell had taught him about himself which he never should have learned and after he started dating other women and trying to enjoy a more ordinary sex life, Baxter Slate became the only choirboy to kill a man in the line of duty. He killed the ordinary guy.

Baxter and Spermwhale liked to meet for coffee with the other north end cars, particularly 7-A-29, manned by Sam Niles and Harold Bloomguard. They would meet at about 7:00 P.M. on week nights at the drive-in on Olympic Boulevard when the air wasn’t too busy.

Policemen always asked, “How’s the air?” or “The air busy?” referring to the radio airwaves which directed their working lives. “Quiet air” was what the policemen longed for so that they could be free to cruise and look for real crooks instead of being twenty-five year old marriage counselors to fifty-five year old unhappily married couples.

To Baxter Slate quiet air meant only a prolonged coffee break at the drive-in, where they might meet one or two other radio cars and hope an angry citizen didn’t call the station and report them for bunching up and wasting taxpayers’ money by swilling coffee instead of catching burglars and thieves.

It was usually the same outraged citizen who, when getting a traffic ticket by a policeman who was not drinking coffee, would demand to know why he was writing tickets instead of catching burglars and thieves. The same question about burglars and thieves was asked of narcotics officers by dopers and of vice cops by whores, tricks and gamblers. And of motor cops by drunk drivers.

Burglars and thieves sometimes complained that they only committed crimes against property, not like muggers and rapists. Muggers and rapists never faulted policemen at all, which caused the choirboys to comment that as a rule muggers and rapists were the most appreciative people they contacted.

But Baxter just wanted to drink coffee on the night he killed the ordinary guy. He was content to sit at the drive-in with Spermwhale and joke with the carhops.

While Baxter and Spermwhale drank their coffee a Porsche pulled in beside them and Spermwhale remarked to the lone driver that her blonde hair was complemented by the canary yellow Porsche.

The girl laughed and said, “How many girls do you stop for tickets because their hair coordinates with their paint jobs?”

“None that I ever wrote a ticket to,” Spermwhale leered as Baxter automatically put his hand on his gun because a man shuffled over to the left side of the car with his hand inside a topcoat.

It was seventy-five degrees that night but the man wore his tan trench coat turned up. He also wore a black hat with a wide brim that had been out of style for twenty years but was now coming back. His face was round and cleft like putty smashed by a fist.

He reached inside his coat, and while Spermwhale talked to the girl with canary hair, he flipped out toy handcuffs and a plastic wallet with a dime store badge pinned inside. He said, “I’m working this neighborhood. Any tips for me? Anybody you’re after? Be glad to help out.”

Baxter relaxed his gun hand and still sitting behind the wheel of the radio car, looked up at the man, at the vacant blue eyes peering out from under the hat brim, with a hint of a mongoloid fault in those eyes. Baxter guessed the man’s mental age to be about ten.

Spermwhale just shook his head and said, “Partner, you’re a born blood donor,” because Baxter Slate dug through their notebook and found some old mug shots of suspects long since in jail and gave them to the retardee who could hardly believe his good fortune.

“Gosh, thanks!” said the play detective. “I’ll get right on the case! I’ll find these guys! I’ll help you make the pinch!”

“Okay, just give us a call when you find them,” Baxter smiled as the young man shuffled away, beaming at the mug shots.

After being unable to entice a telephone number from the laughing girl in the yellow Porsche, Spermwhale looked at her license number and ran a DMV check over the radio, writing down her name and address. Then he leaned out the window of the police car and said, “You know, you remind me of a girl used to live up in Hollywood on Fountain, next to where I used to live.”

The girl looked stunned and said, “You lived on Fountain?”

“Yeah,” Spermwhale said convincingly. “There was this girl, lived in the six thousand block. I used to see her coming out her apartment. I fell in love with her but I never met her. Once I asked the manager of her building what her name was and he said, Norma. You sure look like her.”

“I look… but that’s me! My name’s Norma!”

And then she saw Baxter grinning and she reddened and said, “Okay how’d you know? Oh yeah, my license plate. Your radio. Oh yeah.”

“But it coulda happened like that,” Spermwhale said, his scarred furry eyebrows pulled down contritely.

“Well, since you have my name and address, I might as well give you my phone number,” said the girl with the canary hair who was impressed with the powers of the law and by Baxter’s good looks.

While Spermwhale flirted, Baxter sipped coffee and thought of how the smog had been at twilight. How blue it was and even purple in the deep shadows. Poison can be lovely thought Baxter Slate.

Then another radio car pulled into the drive-in and parked in the last stall near the darkened alley and Baxter decided he’d leave Spermwhale to romance the blonde. Baxter left his hat and flashlight but took his coffee and strolled over to talk with the other choirboys.

And at that moment the rear door window on the passenger side of 7-A-77’s car shattered before his eyes! Then the front fender went THUNK!

Calvin Potts screamed, “SOMEBODY’S SHOOTIN AS US!”

Baxter Slate dove to the pavement as the doors to the black and white burst open. Calvin and Francis were down with him crawling on their bellies and no one else, not even Spermwhale who had a blue veiner, even noticed.

Then Spermwhale turned down the police radio which had begun to get noisy and looked across the parking lot at the three choirboys on their bellies just as his windshield shattered and he went flying out the passenger door even faster than Lieutenant Grimsley when they put the angry ducks in his car.

“Did you see the flash?” yelled Baxter, who was on his knees scrambling for the protection of his black and white as business went on around them as usual. Car radios blared cacophonously Dishes clattered. Trays clanged. People slurped creamy milkshakes. Chewed blissfully on fat hamburgers. Gossiped. No one perceived a threat. No one noticed four blue suited men crawling on their bellies. Finally a miniskirted carhop stopped and said to Baxter, “Lose your contact lens or something, honey?”

Then all four policemen were on their feet running for a fence which separated the parking lot from the alley where the shots had to have come from.

Baxter got his wits about him and yelled, “Spermwhale, go call for help!”

Then gingerly shining his light through the darkness, Francis Tanaguchi shouted, “There’s a rifle in the alley!”

Calvin Potts crawled forward out of sight for a few minutes, then, crouching, ran back out of the alley carrying a modified.22 caliber rifle with a tommy gun grip and an infrared scope lovingly mounted on the stock. The gun could fire hollow points almost as fast as you could pull the trigger, and what possibly saved the policemen was that the sniper had jammed the gun in his excitement.

Baxter Slate was the first to suggest driving around to the street on the west, and while Francis and Calvin quickly cleared glass from the seat, Baxter was squealing out, knocking coffee cups all over the parking lot as the siren of the nearest help car could already be heard in the distance.

Spermwhale asked to be dropped near the mouth of the alley on the next residential block west while Baxter circled one block farther on the theory that a man could run very far and fast after just having tried to ambush some policemen.

On St. Andrew’s Place, Baxter Slate saw a dark running shadow. He jammed down the accelerator and the next sixty seconds became a fragmented impression as he screeched to a stop beside the running figure and jumped out in the darkness, gun drawn. He was met by a fanatical screaming charge by what turned out to be a weaponless man, and for once Baxter Slate did not intellectualize. He simply obeyed his instinct and training and emptied his gun at point blank range, hitting the man three times out of six, one bullet cracking through the left frontal lobe killing him almost at once. He discovered that unlike choreographed slow motion movie violence the real thing is swift and oblique and incoherent.

After intensive interrogation by the Robbery-Homicide Division shooting team and after his own reports were written, a pale and tense Baxter Slate met the other nine choirboys at MacArthur Park and tried to fill them in as best he could on the details. The trouble was there weren’t any.

The young man’s name was Brian Greene, and luckily for Baxter his fingerprints were found on the rifle. He was twenty-two years old. He was white. He had no arrest record. He had no history of mental illness. The Vietnam War was long over and he was not a veteran. He was not a student. He cared nothing about politics. He was a garage mechanic. He had a wife and baby.

Francis was beside himself that night at choir practice, not so much in fear but rage. And finally despair.

“So quit talkin about it,” Calvin said. “I’m sick a hearin about it. The asshole tried to shoot us and it’s over and that’s it.”

“But Calvin, don’t you see? He didn’t even know us. We’re just… just… blue symbols!”

“Okay so we’re blue,” Calvin reminded him. “You only see black and blue around the ghetto when the sun goes down.”

“But we were on Olympic Boulevard. That’s not a ghetto. He was white. Why’d he shoot? Who was he? Doesn’t he know we’re more than bluecoats and badges? It’s weird. I don’t know where these people are coming from. I dunno.”

“I dunno where you’re comin from,” Calvin said angrily.

“I dunno where I’m coming from either,” Francis said. “I don’t know where my head is.”

“What fuckin Establishment did we represent to him?” Spermwhale demanded to know. “I’m tired a bein a symbol! I’m not a symbol to my ex-wives and ex-kids. Why does an ordinary guy wanna shoot me?”

And all the choirboys looked at each other in the moonlight but there were no answers forthcoming.

“I didn’t want to kill him,” Baxter Slate said quietly. “I never wanted to kill anybody.”

It was suddenly cold in the park. They were ecstatic when Ora Lee Tingle showed up and hinted she might pull that train.