The Choirboys

TWELVE

ALEXANDER BLANEY

Alexander Blaney was not a choirboy but he had witnessed his share of choir practices. He had even come to know some of the choirboys by name as he sat alone two hundred feet across the grass in the darkness of MacArthur Park and listened to the lusty voices carry over the water.

Alexander Blaney often wished he could meet the choirboys, at least some of them. He knew of course that they were off-duty policemen. He wondered what Father Willie looked like and the one called Dean who cried a lot when he was drunk. And he would have liked to meet Harold Bloomguard who was always protecting the ducks of MacArthur Park. There was one he didn’t want to meet, not under any circumstances. He didn’t want to meet Roscoe Rules whose talk was full of threats and violence. He didn’t know what it meant to do the chicken but he was certain he wouldn’t like it if Roscoe Rules made him do the chicken.

Alexander Blaney had grown up less than three blocks from MacArthur Park and was well known by some of the Juvenile officers at nearby Rampart Police Station. He was not known to the choirboys of Wilshire Station. Alexander was a handsome boy even more handsome than Baxter Slate. He had dark curls and bright blue eyes, and though he was six feet tall, he hardly ate, weighing only 130 pounds.

Alexander Blaney was known by Rampart Juvenile officers because since the age of fourteen he had come to them with complaints about men who allegedly accosted him in MacArthur Park where he had played as long as he could remember. Alexander, an only child, had usually played alone. Since the neighborhood around Alvarado Street was predominantly white with a sprinkling of Cubans and Indians, it was not considered a ghetto. His parents never knew about the halfway houses nearby or of the number of men frequenting MacArthur Park who had spent years behind bars buggering young men who were not half as handsome and vulnerable as Alexander Blaney.

This is not to say that the neighborhood made Alexander Blaney what he was. No one, not even Alexander Blaney, knew what made him what he was. What he was not was the golden young conqueror his father had read about in his salad days when he dreamed of being more than a semi-invalid elevator operator. But if the lad had never acquired his namesake’s taste for battle and glory he had developed the sexual preference of the Greek warrior. For Alexander Blaney was, at eighteen and a half, a rubber wristed, lisping, mincing faggot.

While Alexander Blaney began getting accustomed to being gay and could not fool anyone by trying to hide the fact, Harold Bloomguard, nearing the end of his two weeks of vice duty got drunk and came to the same conclusion.

“You’re what?” Sam Niles asked as he and Harold sat alone in a vice car on a nighttime whore stakeout after having drunk six pitchers of beer in a beer bar they failed to operate effectively.

“I’m afraid I’m turning homosexual, Sam,” said the beery choirboy. “And I’m terrified. I’m probably going to shoot myself or go to live with my mom in the funny place!”

“Oh please! Why me? Why me?” cried Sam Niles, slumping down in the car seat and pushing up his steel rims, so he could look at a heaven he did not believe in, to a God he knew did not exist. “All right, let’s get this over with. When did you discover you were gay?”

“Just this week working the traps. You see, I started to wonder if a guy couldn’t begin to identify what with seeing that all the time, and with identifying comes acceptance and then… well, once I wondered if I might get a blue veiner watching that stuff sometime, and if I did it would mean I’m turning. And I’d have to kill myself.”

“And did you get a blue veiner?”

“Well no, but maybe it’s only my straight inhibitions stopping it. See what I mean?”

“I see,” said Sam, lighting a cigarette. “And what’s your next move? Gonna shoot yourself over on Duck Island?”

“I don’t know,” Harold belched. “You know how insanity runs in my family. I’ll probably end up with Mom no matter what.”

“You know, Harold, I think having you around might be more effective than electroshock. Your mother’ll probably cure herself just to get away from you.”

“Don’t get testy with me, Sam. You’re the only real friend I’ve got. I’m a sick man.”

“You’ve been a sick man since you joined my fire team in Nam! You’ve been a sick man all your life, I’m sure. But somehow you survive all this by telling me all the screwy loony goofy neurotic fears you have THAT I DON’T WANNA HEAR ABOUT! I tell you I’ll be the one doing the nudie tap dance with your mom in the state hospital!”

“Sam, you can tell your problems to me. I’d love to hear about your fears and…”

“I don’t want you to be my confessor. I don’t need a confessor, Harold.”

“Everybody should tell his problems to someone, Sam, and you’re my best…”

“Don’t say it, Harold,” Sam interrupted, trying to calm himself. “Please don’t say I’m your best anything. We’ve been together a long time, I know. God, how I know.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll never burden you again,” Harold said boozily.

“Oh yes you will. In a day or two you’ll tell me you’ve discovered you’re a sadist and you want me to keep an eye on you in case you start sticking pencils in somebody’s eyeballs.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. I never meant to be a burden.”

They sat quietly for a moment and then Sam said, “Harold, did you ball Carolina Moon Tuesday night at choir practice?”

“Sort of, but only because I was drunk. And first.”

“Well anyone who likes pussy enough to screw that fat bitch can’t be a fruit, okay?”

“You know I never thought of that!” said Harold Bloomguard, brightening. “I never thought of that! Thanks, Sam. You always come through for me. If it weren’t for you…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said the bored and disgusted Sam Niles.

Then Harold Bloomguard thought a moment and said, “How do I know I’m not bisexual?”

Harold Bloomguard’s fears of being a bisexual were soon displaced by a more pressing fear when he decided he had cancer. Harold’s discovery of the cancer came as a result of Scuz giving them the vice complaint against the Gypsy fortune teller, Margarita Palmara, who lived in back of a modest wood frame cottage near Twelfth and Irolo. The tiny building had been painted a garish yellow but was otherwise not unlike other homes in the area. The residence of Margarita Palmara was a garage apartment which had been converted from a chicken coop. The husband of Margarita Palmara literally flew the coop one day and left Mrs. Palmara to fend for her five children which she did in Gypsy fashion by con games, shoplifting and fortune-telling to supplement the welfare check. But then she had the good luck to tell a woman thought to be dying of a radium treated cancer that she would soon get well, and lo, she did. From then on Margarita Palmara was called upon by neighborhood women, who hailed from a dozen Latin countries, to cure anything from acne to leukemia. Just prior to the Wilshire vice detail’s receiving a complaint from a disgruntled patient, Mrs. Palmara had quickly earned more than ten thousand dollars from the Spanish speaking women of the neighborhood. Never one to overdo a good thing she was thinking it was time she flew the coop herself before the cops heard about her.

But she waited a bit too long and the cops did hear about her. A middle aged Mexican-American policewoman named Nena Santos was ordered to pose as a neighborhood housewife and attempt to operate Margarita Palmara to get a violation of law.

“I see you will soon be cured of that which you believe to be cancer in your breast,” the Gypsy said in Spanish to the undercover policewoman. “And this thing which is not a cancer, but an evil visitation, will leave your body. And you will feel twenty years old again and enjoy your man in bed as you have never enjoyed him before. And your luck will change. Your husband will find a better job that will pay as much as twelve thousand dollars a year. All this will happen if you keep the charm I am going to give you and if you faithfully say the words I am going to teach you and if you donate three hundred dollars to me which I shall use to support the orphans of my native land.”

But instead of crossing the Gypsy’s palm with three hundred scoots, Nena Santos crossed the Gypsy’s wrists with sixteen bucks worth of steel, and Margarita Palmara was busted.

Harold Bloomguard and Sam Niles were only two of the vice cops detailed to the stakeout across the street, and after getting the signal from Nena Santos, they went inside to meet the Gypsy and drive her to jail where she would be booked and released on bail that afternoon. Ultimately she was made to come to court and pay a fine of 150 dollars before she moved to El Monte, California, where she was able to make fourteen thousand dollars telling fortunes before being arrested again. It kept her and her children in fine style even after an angry judge then fined her 250 dollars to teach her a lesson.

But before she was taken from the house that day she left a curse or two behind.

Harold Bloomguard, along with Sergeant Scuzzi, Sam Niles and Baxter Slate, was roaming around the Gypsy’s chicken coop waiting for the woman to make arrangements with a neighbor to take care of the children until she could bail out. In a little bedroom of the chicken coop the officers found a frightened seven year old Gypsy girl in a Communion dress.

She was a husky child, with a broad peasant face and black hair which grew too far down her forehead. Her skin was so dark it made the antique Communion dress look marshmallow white to Harold Bloomguard.

“Cómo se llama?” Harold Bloomguard asked with an atrocious accent which embarrased Sam Niles and made him snort in disgust.

In fact every time Harold made a good natured attempt to speak Spanish to people it embarrassed Sam Niles who said he knew enough Spanish to keep his mouth shut by not trying to speak it.

Sam argued with Harold Bloomguard later when Harold claimed the homely little girl was beautiful and that her dress was charming, when Sam could see it was a hand-me-down and almost gray from so many washings. Sam said that she was nothing but an ugly little thief who would grow up to be an ugly big thief like her mother.

As they were leaving the house the angry Gyspy turned a sagging chamois face to the gathering of vice cops and said in English, “You believe I not have power? That I cheat people? Very well then. I prove you are wrong. I can cure. I can make sick. You!” And the golden bracelets clanged as she pointed a scrawny finger at Harold Bloomguard. “You shall get the sickness!”

It was a terrified and bleary eyed Harold Bloomguard who was in the district attorney’s office the next day nervously blowing spit bubbles as he filed a complaint against the Gypsy for grand theft. He was absolutely certain that the prosecution of the Gypsy would seal his fate.

It was actually weeks before Harold stopped asking other choirboys to feel his breasts for suspicious lumps he knew lurked beneath the flesh. He only desisted when one night at choir practice Spermwhale Whalen agreed to feel the left one and got Harold in a headlock and stroked his tiny nipple lasciviously and said, “Harold, this’s givin me a blue veiner!” And threw Harold down on the grass, dropping on top of him, making the little choirboy scream for help. After that Harold suffered in silence and never asked anyone to feel his breasts.

Alexander Blaney didn’t know he was going to be an admitted homosexual and arrested at age eighteen and a half, when at the age of fourteen he started noticing the cruel looking men with pasty jailhouse complexions who would stare at him in the park rest rooms. But he became aware early on that MacArthur Park was more than a place for old men to play at lawn bowling or for immigrants to kick a soccer ball or city dwellers to sit on the grass and picnic, throwing crumbs to the ubiquitous ducks in the large pond.

Alexander saw and understood the eye signals, the furtive smiles, the men who met and paired off to disappear in the bushes at night or to meet and join inside the rest room where vice officers often arrested them and sometimes got in bloody fights before the eyes of the boy.

The lad was once reading a book on the grass by a park rest room when he was startled by the noise inside and saw a huge ex-convict they called The Hippo crashing through the door, beaten to a bloody pulp by a cursing, burly vice cop whose lip was split and hanging loose and who was playing catchup on The Hippo with a sixteen ounce sap.

Alexander Blaney saw far more than that in the same park rest room. He once saw a young man masturbating at a urinal and watched in fascination until the young man stepped away and ejaculated against the dirty tile wall between the urinals and toilets only to have a white haired man with flesh like onionskin and arms like pencils get up off the toilet and wipe the semen off the wall with his fingers and put it in his mouth. He smiled at Alexander Blaney and sickened the boy.

And it was about that time that Alexander Blaney became known to Rampart Juvenile officers. The boy would come in at least once a month to report a lurid sex act he had observed in MacArthur Park. Once he claimed to have seen a big man sitting on the toilet with his trousers at his ankles stuffing his penis in his own rectum. And then there was the hermaphrodite who found Alexander Blaney lying on the grass composing madrigals to his music teacher. Alexander was fifteen and the busty hermaphrodite showed the boy her undeveloped penis and said she liked women not men, having been given male hormone shots since birth. And when darkness fell proved it was a lie by attempting to rape Alexander.

And all of the lad’s stories were more or less taken with a grain of salt until at sixteen he finally came to the Juvenile sergeant and said that a handsome young man had dragged him away into the bushes and made Alexander Blaney orally copulate him and in turn forcibly performed the same act on Alexander. When he was finished with his account, the Juvenile sergeant said, “Is this the first time, Alexander?”

And Alexander Blaney cried and said yes and he wanted the police to arrest the young man but didn’t know his name. The Juvenile sergeant bought the boy an ice cream bar and walked him to the door and told Alexander he wanted to talk to his parents.

When the boy was gone the sergeant said, “Well, Alexander finally turned himself out. We won’t be seeing him anymore.”

And the sergeant was right. Alexander Blaney came out of the closet at that time and was promptly beaten bloody by a high school friend whom he made the mistake of propositioning and who had hitherto liked and befriended him.

Alexander, who had always been a sensitive, nervous lad, then began getting even thinner than usual and suffered from insomnia as well as weight loss and spent many tearful evenings with his mother and father saying over and over, “But I don’t know why I’m gay I just am.”

His mother wept and his father pleaded with him not to be what he could not help being. Finally, after many homosexual encounters, most of them in MacArthur Park, which terrified, excited, degraded and confused the boy he was arrested by a Rampart Division vice officer.

The vice officer was to Alexander Blaney not unlike the first young man whom he had reported to the police for dragging him unwillingly into the bushes. The vice officer was tall and clean, and Alexander, not knowing he was a vice officer, was unable to control the tremble in his voice when their eyes met. They sat not far apart on the grass where Alexander tossed popcorn to the ducks, some of which he actually knew one from the other.

But the vice officer was not anxious to work fruits and wanted Alexander Blaney to get on with an offer so he could bust him and go to a favorite bar to shoot snooker for the remainder of his tour of duty.

Therefore when Alexander said shyly, “I don’t meet too many people here,” the vice cop replied, “Do you have something in mind or not?”

And Alexander, startled by the young man’s boldness, almost decided to say “No, no I have nothing in mind,” but he was afraid to lose the young man who looked so clean and decent.

Alexander said, “Well, I thought we might go to a movie and get to know each other.”

The vice cop sighed impatiently and said, “Look, do you suck or not?”

Alexander felt like crying because this one would be no better than most and probably even more cruel than some. Alexander arrogantly replied, “Yes, I’ll do that. If that’s all you want. I guess I can do that all right.”

The vice officer whistled for his partner who was hiding behind the trees and showed his badge to Alexander Blaney and looked disgusted when the boy lowered his head to weep.

The vice cop later wrote in his arrest report: “Defendant stated: ‘I’ll suck you or do anything you want. I guess I can do that all right.’”

Alexander pled guilty to a lesser misdemeanor after the city attorney dropped the lewd conduct violation in the plea bargaining session, and Alexander Blaney had a police record. But the thing which he could not forget, and which made him burn with humiliation, was that the vice cop didn’t seem to care one way or the other what happened to him. If he had hated homosexuals and beaten him up Alexander would have found it more tolerable. It’s just that he was nothing to the policeman, and even in court the vice officer didn’t seem to recognize him and just shrugged when the city attorney asked him if he had any objection to Alexander’s lawyer getting the charge reduced and pleading him guilty.

• • •

The tour on vice for the three choirboys ended on an unsuccessful note in that a call girl they had been staking out never took the bait which was a phone call from Baxter Slate who was given a duke-in name of Gaylord Bottomley. A snitch said Bottomley was a savings and loan executive who had introduced certain circumspect friends to the exotic call girl.

The snitch was a paid confidential informant who belonged to Pete Zoony and the moustachioed vice cop jealously guarded his informant’s identity. Real policemen, unlike movie cops, actually cherish and protect a good informant as they would a sibling. Informants are people to be bribed, threatened, cajoled, but above all protected. It was not uncommon for a policeman to guard the identity of a good snitch even from a partner he rode with nightly.

As Pete Zoony said, “I never gave a snitch’s righteous name since I been on the job. Once we ripped off some dopers and some stupid cop calls me on the radio and gives the snitch’s name right over the air! But we always used a code name and he didn’t get a rat jacket behind it. Nobody knows my snitch’s name, not even my lieutenant. Nobody.”

Pefe’s informant told them about Gina Summers who lived in a thousand-a-month apartment near Wilshire Boulevard. Allegedly she was a specialist in applying just the required amount of imaginative punishment to genteel but eager customers who paid from fifty to five hundred dollars for her unique services.

Sam and Baxter had watched one man and sometimes two a night come and go and often saw the voluptuous brunette herself leaving and entering the apartment. None of the vice cops had been able to operate her successfully. The informant had told them that the vivacious girl had a chamber of horrors in her bedroom closet which included ancient thumbscrews, brands, scourges and other collector’s items. Actually most were seldom needed. Customers could usually be satisfied by less painful acts of degradation such as a urine shower. And often an ordinary spanking with a leather belt would do them just fine.

Because she was such an extraordinary hooker the vice cops naturally wanted to arrest her badly but the hours of stakeouts were to no avail.

On a sultry August night Baxter Slate watched through binoculars as she undressed before an open window on the sixth floor of her apartment house, and said to Sam, “If that bitch weren’t a brunette she’d remind me a lot of a nude dancer I used to know.”

“Yeah?” Sam answered, totally bored with the stakeout and his two weeks of vice duty. “The other one that good looking?”

“Oh, I guess they don’t exactly look alike. But they’re both sisters at heart.”

Sam Niles never bothered to ask Baxter to explain the allusion. He was just glad it was their last night on vice and that the choir practice they had planned should be a memorable one.

The choir practice which celebrated the return of the three choirboys from the tour of vice squad duty was bound to be a memorable one. After all Roscoe Rules outdid himself when he scrounged fifteen bottles of booze from the liquor stores of Wilshire Division in a single night.

“I tell you the captain’s throwing a big big party goddamnit,” he informed some of the more reluctant proprietors who were offering only one fifth to Roscoe, wearing his black gloves, standing tall and menacing.

And what Roscoe couldn’t scrounge with intimidation Spencer Van Moot obtained by his incredible rapport with the merchants on his beat. They said they couldn’t wait for his retirement from the police department when he would open a retail store on the Miracle Mile and implement his merchandising genius for the mutual benefit of all.

Therefore there was enough liquor, wine and beer to kill them all, and trays of foil covered barbecue, salami, pastrami, roast beef and turkey, not to mention German potato salad, bean salad, sourdough rolls and condiments.

Strangely enough, despite the humiliation of his arrest, or perhaps because of it and the overwhelming guilt it engendered, Alexander Blaney was back in MacArthur Park for every homosexual contact from then on. It had never been more enticing now that he was aware of the possibility of vice officers and the courts and the impersonal retribution of the law.

So at eighteen and a half, with a genuine affection for policemen which was a remnant of his numerous trips to Rampart Juvenile Division and which was not vitiated by his single arrest by the Rampart vice officer, Alexander Blaney loved to sit across the water at night in the cool enveloping darkness and feed the ducks and listen to the antics of the choirboys and wonder if Calvin Potts was the only black man among them and if Francis Tanaguchi was as comical to look at as he was to listen to and to hope that Whaddayamean Dean would never become like his partner Roscoe Rules.

He had never let the choirboys see him, but on this night, when gunfire would shatter the sylvan stillness, he revealed himself to the two roommates, Ora Lee Tingle and Carolina Moon. The plump cocktail waitresses trotted across the grass from the yellow Buick which they always left on Park View Street when they got off work.

Alexander had been lying very still listening to the crickets chirp and watching Jupiter, the only star one could see in the Los Angeles summer sky when it was very smoggy. Alexander watched for it ever since he heard the policeman called Baxter telling the others that it was reassuring to at least have one great star pierce the smog and that Baxter would find the sky unbearably lonely without it.

As the laughing, chattering girls approached, Alexander was afraid he might frighten them sitting there in the dark, so when they got within thirty feet the boy called out, “Hi, nice evening isn’t it?”

“Real nice,” Carolina said, slowing a bit until she saw the slender harmless boy lying in the grass with three ducklings.

“Whatcha doing out here in the dark, honey?” asked Ora Lee Tingle as Alexander looked at her massive bustline and wide hips and sticky upswept blonde hair and thought she looked exactly as he pictured her.

“Just feeding the ducks,” said Alexander.

“Watch yourself, honey,” Carolina said. “There’s rapists around here.”

“Yeah,” Ora Lee giggled, “and we’re gonna go join a bunch of em.”

They hurried off across the grass and Alexander heard Carolina say, “Feeding the ducks. Sure.”

All ten choirboys were there that night and already half drunk an hour after arriving. They wore their usual summertime choir practice garb: safari jackets, sweatshirts, tank tops, LAPD baseball or basketball shirts, faded jeans and denim, Nike and Adidas athletic shoes, or Wallabees. They wore nothing which would be ruined if someone fell or was pushed in the duck pond when a choir practice got rough. They were absolutely delighted when Ora Lee Tingle and Carolina Moon surprised them by bouncing across the grass at 1:00 A.M. The girls were still wearing their mesh stockings and short skirts which barely covered their red ruffled panties. They wore peasant blouses with laced midriffs which forced their enormous breasts up and out, guaranteed to drive bar patrons wild and keep them swilling booze at $1.85 a throw.

“Surprise! The boss let us off early!” yelled Carolina as both fat girls literally threw themselves into the festivities by bouncing on the blanket of their favorite, Francis Tanaguchi, burying the little choirboy under a total of three hundred and ten pounds of young willing flesh as he joyfully screamed, “You girls just gotta do a part in my dirty movie! Now part your legs and let’s see how you act!”

The choir practice had officially begun. As usual, they first had to ventilate with a gripe session. Spermwhale began it by complaining about Lieutenant Finque who had brought charges of Conduct Unbecoming an Officer against the night-watch desk officer, Lard Logan, resulting in a five day suspension.

“That eunuch, Finque!” Spermwhale growled. “Snuck around like a spy and nailed Lard for remarks to citizens which he decides are unprofessional. I can’t wait till I get my twenty in so I can tell that gelding what I think a him!”

“What happened to old Lard?” Roscoe beamed, thrilled that Spermwhale was actually talking to him.

“First one, this dingaling came in off the street and told Lard she wants to see the captain. Naturally he tries to shine her on. Finally she starts tellin him her problem which is that her sixteen year old girl got knocked up from swimmin in the L.A. High School pool. And her little girl’s a virgin and she read that spermatozoa can swim and she wants the crime lab to go make a sperm count in the pool so she can sue the Board of Education. And all Lard did was listen patiently and say, ‘Lady if the water done it it musta been awful hard water.’ And boom! The lieutenant writes him up for cue-bow.”

“Well that ain’t enough to get five days for,” Roscoe observed.

“No, but then the lieutenant adds another count when Lard takes this theft report from some rich broad in the Towers who had her two Persian cats ripped off. Just for a gag he writes in the MO box: ‘Suspect deals in hot pussy’”

“I’d say fuck that lieutenant,” Roscoe said. “Probably be a good one at that. He’s enough of a cunt!”

“Then poor Lard gets shanked in the back by the lieutenant for making his press statement, hear about that, Sam?”

“Haven’t heard anything,” Sam Niles yawned, bored by all the talk of Lieutenant Finque.

“You remember the slut roamed into Sears and had the baby in the rest room?”

“What about her?”

“She cut the cord with her fingernails and just dumped the little toad in the trash can and left it for the janitor to find next day. And the dicks couldn’t prove the baby ever drew breath and she cried all over the courtroom and they couldn’t find her guilty of manslaughter or nothin. Anyways, some dude from one a these Right to Life groups comes into the station to interview the detectives on how they felt about it and the dicks kissed him off down to the desk officer who happened to be Lard. And Lard says, ‘You want my opinion, the little third-generation welfare pig shoulda been sterilized when she turned fourteen so she wouldn’t be runnin around foalin in every shit-house in town. Far as a crime’s concerned she did the taxpayers a favor. Only crime she should be found guilty of is litterbug.’”

“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.”

“You both had a baby on the same night!” Harold Bloomguard observed.

“Hey munchkin!” yelled Roscoe Rules to Harold Bloomguard. “You’re the littlest guy around here. Settle this argument. Do you think there’s anything immoral about screwing a midget?”

“I didn’t say immoral,” protested Father Willie. “I just said it seemed a little perverted.”

“Well I’m not sorry,” said Roscoe, sneering at Carolina Moon. “She was a lot better than some big girls I could name.”

“Roscoe’d screw the crack of dawn,” said Father Willie who was creeping closer to Carolina Moon who was sick of playing with Francis’ bare feet while he sang Spanish songs.

“You’re bilingual, ain’t you, Francis?” asked Carolina Moon.

“Does that mean he licks girls and boys?” asked Spermwhale.

“I’m just afraid my marriage isn’t going to work,” Father Willie said to Carolina Moon who was suddenly holding his head in her lap.

“Why do you say that?” asked Carolina.

“My wife just doesn’t like sex. She’d rather hand out Watchtowers than…”

“She ever catch you coming home with a slight odor of vagina on your breath, Padre?” Calvin Potts giggled as he tried to decide at what point Carolina Moon would become more exciting than the fifth of Johnnie Walker he was demolishing.

“Gosh no,” blushed Father Willie as Carolina Moon groped him good naturedly under his blanket.

“Oughtta be glad she wasn’t like that bitch I was married to,” grumbled Calvin. “I hadda check to see if the toilet seat was up or down every time I came home.”

“Why don’t you get a hair transplant, Spermy?” asked Ora Lee Tingle, waddling past the fat policeman who was sprawled back on his elbows. She bumped him on the side of the head with her enormous ass saying, “Make it pubic hair. Stands up when a girl walks past.”

Then Ora Lee squealed as he rolled over and made a grab for her. She eluded him and jumped over Whaddayamean Dean and fell on Sam Niles, slapping him on the side of the face with one gigantic tit which knocked his glasses into the bushes.

“Where’s my glasses? Where’s my glasses?” yelled Sam Niles, crawling around Calvin Potts who decided the Johnnie Walker was preferable to Carolina Moon for the moment.

“Calvin probably stole your glasses,” said Spencer Van Moot. “You know you shouldn’t leave nothing around these people.”

“Your daddy had three dollars stead a two dollars you’d be black too, chump,” said Calvin Potts as Sam Niles found the glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail.

“Where’d Roscoe go?” asked Father Willie who staggered around several sprawling choirboys. “Roscoe! Where are you? Roscoe!”

“Hey, Roscoe! Roscoe!” yelled Francis.

“Roscoe!” yelled several choirboys who didn’t give a shit where Roscoe was.

“Roscoe, you there?” yelled Spermwhale Whalen, unzipping his fly and looking inside at which time Carolina Moon made a grab for him.

“Ain’t time yet, me beauty” said Spermwhale, zipping up and kissing the girl in a quivering fleshy embrace.

“I’ll pay you two anything to do a dirty movie for me!” screamed Francis Tanaguchi.

“You looked like a blue eyed home boy,” said Calvin Potts to Whaddayamean Dean who was leaning against a tree gnawing on spareribs with barbecue sauce all over his face.

“Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?” asked Whaddayamean Dean, and all the choirboys looked knowingly at each other, silently agreeing that Whaddayamean Dean had done it again.

“You gonna slip old Carolina a roll of tarpaper tonight, Calvin?” Francis whispered.

“Not if I ain’t first. I ain’t drunk enough for that,” said Calvin Potts.

“I feel like a construction engineer,” Spencer Van Moot said, overhearing the conversation. “Gonna lay some pipe, six inches at a time!”

“Stealing a girl’s cherry is cock robbin,” said Carolina Moon to Whaddayamean Dean who looked at her blankly.

“Darn it, did you fart?” Father Willie suddenly asked Sam Niles.

“No, was I supposed to?” replied the weary choirboy.

“So I can’t take you away from Carolina, huh?” said Ora Lee Tingle to Spermwhale Whalen after she won a two dollar bet by finishing a half bottle of champagne without taking it from her mouth.

“I said you can’t get me there right now,” Spermwhale corrected her and gave one of her huge thighs a playful pinch, tearing her mesh stocking.

“Well it’s easier to… let’s see. Padre! Father Willie!” Ora Lee yelled. “How’s it go? In the Bible about the camel and the eye of a needle?”

“I dunno, something about a humping hype,” said Father Willie, reaching the stage of drunkenness wherein he was revolted by his uncontrollable sinfulness, yet not to the point where he goatishly succumbed.

“Mothers, brothers and others, lend me your ears,” said Harold Bloomguard, staggering to his feet. “Hear about Calvin and Francis almost blowing up some dude tonight?”

“No, what happened?” asked Baxter Slate as the choirboys quieted down for a cops ‘n’ robbers story.

“No big thing,” Calvin said. “Cat on a family dispute almost draws down on Francis when he tried to lay the iron on his wrists after the dude had went upside Momma’s head.”

“It was nothing,” Francis said. “He was drunk. Makes a grab for what I thought was a gun. Was his wallet. All I did is whack him across the arm with my flashlight.”

“I almost blew the sucker away,” Calvin said. “Thought it was a piece the way he went to the drawer. Was ready to bust a cap between his fuckin horns.”

“Be glad you didn’t,” said Baxter Slate soberly.

“Could you live with yourself if you blew up a guy by mistake that way?” asked Father Willie Wright.

“I could a blowed him up and lived with his foxy old lady,” said Calvin Potts.

“Remember that time you busted your flashlight on the black belt guy, Spermwhale?” Spencer Van Moot asked. “This hamburger they were busting thinks he’s Kung Fu and tries to drop Baxter. He says, ‘Yaaa!’ and kicks Baxter and Spermwhale yells, ‘Ever-ready!’ and hits him with his flashlight. Then Spermwhale gave him nine from the sky with his stick.”

Spencer Van Moot then stumbled over Spermwhale’s feet and fell against Calvin Potts.

“What’s a matter? Fall off your wallet?” Calvin asked the richest choirboy.

“Must give you a hernia carrying that money belt around,” said Sam Niles.

“Careful a your head when you fall,” Spermwhale said. “All that fuckin hair spray you use could cause brain damage.”

“With your money why don’t you hire a coolie to pull you around the park so you won’t be tripping all over everybody?” said Harold Bloomguard.

And Spencer Van Moot, the best dressed and richest choirboy lay back on the grass and laughed uproariously when Carolina Moon fell on him lovingly and smothered him in kisses while she felt his body up and down to see if he really did have a money belt.

Roscoe Rules looked at his comrades and now thought they weren’t such bad guys. He was even able to tolerate the Gook and the Spook tonight.

Roscoe had met Francis and Calvin at the first choir practice months before when Francis was going through his vampire period.

When they met, both Calvin and Francis were drunk and sullen and sat together in the shadows examining the new choirboy.

“Are you the two they call the Gook and the Spook?” Roscoe had asked with a big smile that was met with stony silence.

“Yeah,” said Calvin Potts finally, glaring at Roscoe since Calvin didn’t yet know that Roscoe had brought three fifths of Scotch with him.

“Uh, what do your friends call you?” Roscoe asked, having a hard time seeing their faces in the dark.

“You can call me the Gook,” said the Gook.

“You can call me the Spook,” said the Spook. “But if you do I’ll kick your face off.”

And after that Roscoe had sat furious and quiet and wondered why people didn’t like him. After all he had been willing to treat them all the same, even niggers and slopeheads. Then he started looking hard at the Gook. And it looked as if his teeth had grown grotesquely. Roscoe was sure it was the drink because there in the darkness of MacArthur Park it looked as if the Gook had fangs! But of course that was silly. Yet five minutes later when Roscoe got up to walk off into the trees to relieve himself, he was bushwhacked by a hissing demon which leaped on his back and bit him on the neck while Roscoe screamed in terror and tried to reach for his gun as he wet all over his shoes.

It had taken Spermwhale Whalen to pry Francis Tanaguchi from Roscoe Rules’ throat that first night, and as Roscoe threatened to kill Francis, it was Harold Bloomguard who explained to Calvin and Francis that the new kid on the block had brought three fifths of Scotch to choir practice which they could expect at any future choir practice Roscoe might attend.

After hearing that, Francis and Calvin became very tolerant of the insufferable prick and Roscoe Rules was an accepted choirboy. He was able to sit now at this memorable choir practice and not think that nobody liked him. And he could pinch Ora Lee and Carolina just like the other guys.

While Roscoe remembered his first choir practice and felt all cozy and secure because now he belonged, he started talking to Sam Niles who was already mightily pissed off because one of the lenses on his glasses got scratched when Ora Lee slapped him in the face with a tit.

“Niles, we just gotta get the department to give us good ammo,” Roscoe began. “You see, high velocity shock waves’re like sonic booms and they burst the veins and arteries. But they don’t stop like the hollow points and the blunt nose. A copper casing holds the lead together. Centrifugal force breaks up the lead. You only need a pointed projectile for accuracy. Get it?”

“I get it,” Sam sighed.

Then Roscoe said, “I ever tell you what I used to do to all the pricks in the juvie gangs when they turned eighteen? I used to send them a Xerox of the page of the LAPD manual which tells about shooting at adults only. With the page I’d enclose a dumdum bullet and a greeting card. On the card I’d write, ‘You are now, by law, an adult. Have a nice eighteenth birthday, asshole.’”

“That’s about as interesting as a night in the drunk tank,” said Sam Niles, who lay back smoking, looking at the great star while the bourbon went to work on his entire body, turning it to rock.

“Looky here, Ora Lee,” said Calvin Potts as he was starting to think that the fat girls weren’t so repulsive after all. In fact, depending on how you looked at her, Ora Lee was starting to get downright gorgeous.

“Looky here, what?” asked Ora Lee. “You boys aren’t interested in us girls tonight. You’re all sitting around like that bunch of fruits hangs around the other side of the duck pond.”

“Well you know, consenting adults!” said Francis Tanaguchi, kissing his partner Calvin Potts who pushed him away.

“… and I been thinking about buying this baby falcon,” said Roscoe Rules to Harold Bloomguard. “I live out in the country with decent people. Room for an eagle even. I could train him to kill on command. Shit, how many guys own a hunting hawk?”

“Last guy I know of was William the Conqueror,” said Baxter Slate.

“Would really be great!” Roscoe mused. “Your own killing bird!”

“You could feed him raw meat right out of your hand,” said Baxter.

“Sure!” said Roscoe.

“And to save feed money you could train him to fly over the kindergarten and carry off kids,” Baxter Slate said.

“You know, I never liked you, Slate,” said Roscoe Rules, turning sullen.

“Roscoe needs his steel plate buffed!” Spencer said gleefully.

“Are you trying to incinerate that Roscoe belongs in the funny place?” asked Harold Bloomguard, taking pleasure in the thought that someone else might be going there with him someday.

“What’re you trying to say? What’re you trying to say?” Whaddayamean Dean blurted, still propped against the same tree, a pile of rib bones on his lap, a half empty bourbon bottle resting on his chest.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” said Father Willie, arguing a point of law with Spencer Van Moot. “In these unlawful sex cases a boy of thirteen can be booked as opposed to the old statutory rape charge where he couldn’t. Who enjoys it more, the ear being scratched or the finger scratching?”

“If they’re doing it in the ear they deserve to be booked, the perverts!” said Carolina Moon as Spermwhale Whalen threw her down and kissed her again.

“I’d give anything to direct this scene!” cried Francis Tanaguchi.

“You know she wouldn’t do nothing in front of everybody. They’re just kissing,” said Ora Lee Tingle as Spermwhale kneaded and squeezed every inch of Carolina’s ample body.

“Why doesn’t a Jap have a camera anyway, I’d like to know?” Roscoe remarked suspiciously. “Maybe Francis is really a Chinaman. A Commie, no doubt.”

“I’m a Mexican and you can go scratch your ass,” said Francis Tanaguchi.

“I’m gonna have you defrocked, Padre,” Ora Lee giggled when Father Willie groped her.

“Anybody gets frocked it better be me!” Carolina whooped when Spermwhale let her breathe.

Just then Harold Bloomguard staggered a few paces away and threw up. He was the first. Everybody jeered and hooted and he walked ashamedly down to the duck pond and washed his face in dirty water.

“… so this guy demands his rights when I arrest him,” said Roscoe Rules to Whaddayamean Dean who hadn’t the foggiest idea what Roscoe was talking about. “And I say, ‘You’ll get your rights and a few lefts too, asshole! Bang! Pow! Splat!’”

Whereas Spencer Van Moot only whined to Father Willie Wright when he was sober, he was now whining to as many assembled choirboys as would listen now that he was drunk.

“This dirty scummy rotten bitch that lives next door…”

“Watch that fuckin language,” said Spermwhale Whalen who was passionately kissing Carolina Moon a few feet away in the shadows while Francis Tanaguchi knelt beside them, grinning.

“Sorry, Spermwhale. Sorry girls,” said Spencer who belched sourly and quickly took a few sips of beer. “Anyway this bitch always wears these short shorts and comes out by the fence when I’m down on my knees trimming the grass. So finally after three months of this I kneel there and look right at her bird and up it goes!”

“A blue veiner?” asked Father Willie.

“A goddamn diamond cutter!” said Spencer and Ora Lee said, “Ooooooohhhhhhh, Spencer, that’s sexy!” and fell over backward as Francis Tanaguchi pounced on her and smothered her with kisses.

“Why do you wear those sissy faggy mod clothes, Spencer?” asked Roscoe, beginning to turn mean. “And why does a man your age have one of those kiss-me-quick haircuts?”

“Lemme finish my story, goddamnit.”

“Spencer’s so mod he wears flared jockey shorts,” said Harold Bloomguard who was trying to stand with the aid of a broken willow branch.

“Why do we need a motel?” Ora Lee said to Roscoe who whispered something in her ear. “You can beat off in a nickel toilet, you cheap little fuck, ya.”

“Anyway,” Spencer continued, “my neighbor sees my diamond cutter and she runs into her house. Runs. And I mean after she’d done everything but rub my face in it. She runs in and calls my wife and tells her that I’m going around the yard looking at her with a big hard on.”

“Probably a libber,” said Roscoe Rules. “All these cunts’re like that these days. Wanna be truck drivers. I say back em up and give em a load, they wanna be truck drivers.”

“You ain’t got a load, Roscoe, you dirty mouthed chauvinist pig!” said Carolina Moon, coming up for air, while Spermwhale Whalen looked around, saw double, got dizzy and had to stagger away to relieve himself.

“Who asked you? You a libber or something?” Roscoe challenged.

“I know you ain’t got a load,” said Carolina, taking a drink from Calvin’s bottle. “You walk into a wall with your little hard on and you’ll break your nose.”

To keep Roscoe and Carolina from fighting, Harold Bloomguard began to sing a soothing song he just made up called “She’ll not puncture your kidney, Sidney. And he shan’t rupture your spleen, Kathleen.”

But Spermwhale Whalen hobbled back in their midst and his enormous presence looming over Roscoe quieted down the meanest choirboy. Especially when Spermwhale said, “You look like a ruptured rectum sittin there with your mean little mouth all scrunched up. Why don’t you quit pickin on the ladies?”

“Yeah, it makes you ugly Roscoe,” said Ora Lee. “You get drunk you get uglier than usual.”

“I don’t have to take this,” Roscoe Rules said, struggling to his feet and heading toward the duck pond, hoping to find a duck he could kneedrop.

“He gets so ugly he looks like something carved off the back of Quasimodo,” Spencer Van Moot observed.

“Hey, stick around, Roscoe!” Carolina yelled. “Every choir practice needs a soprano.”

“Don’t get nasty now,” Spermwhale whispered as he bit the fat girl on the neck and sent her into paroxysms of passion. They resumed their interminable kiss and rolled around on the ground, making the earth shake under the ear of Francis Tanaguchi, who said, “Dynamite!” and lay next to them hoping the behemoths would couple before his very eyes.

Just then a park homosexual with sandals, long hair and beard walked by the group curiously.

The choirboys looked at this Biblical apparition and Sam Niles said, “Think he’ll take us to heaven?”

“I can use my ticket validated by somebody,” said Father Willie who was furiously trying to think of a way to steal Carolina Moon from Spermwhale Whalen.

“All I can say is I get treated like a dog at home,” Spencer Van Moot whined, returning to his favorite subject.

“Anytime they wanna teach you a lesson they just hold back the sex,” Father Willie agreed, suddenly having a miserable vision of the chubby Jehovah’s Witness seeing him drunk and playing with the thigh of Ora Lee Tingle.

“Well who cares?” said Spencer. “The three most overrated things in the world are: home cooking, home pussy and the FBI.”

“You know, Spermy you got more hair in your nose than on your head,” Carolina Moon said from the shadows where she and Spermwhale and Francis Tanaguchi rolled around.

“What dialogue! What dialogue! I could make you a star, girl!” cried Francis. “Say something back to her, Spermwhale! Something romantic!”

“Okay. I adore you, my darling,” Spermwhale crooned to the sighing fat girl. “Your ass is springy as a life raft.”

“And I love you, Ora Lee,” Francis Tanaguchi blurted suddenly, running to the other cocktail waitress, dragging his fingers through her upswept hairdo, which was no mean task given the half can of hair spray that was on it.

“That’s just whiskey talking, you cute little shit.”

“No it ain’t! I love! I love you!” Francis proclaimed. “If you had a hysterectomy and took your teeth out and owned a liquor store, I swear I’d marry you!”

“Thanks, Junior,” said the disgusted waitress as she pushed Francis away. “You handled that love scene like a real pro-a prophylactic!”

Just then the bearded park fairy with the ascetic face, shoulder-length hair and sandals encountered Roscoe Rules down by the duck pond trying to entice a black duck out of the water so he could hit it with a rock and drown it.

“Hello,” said the Jesus fairy.

“Holy Christ!” said Roscoe Rules and the remark was not that inappropriate.

“Are you with those others?” asked the bearded man, stooping to scoop some water in both hands.

“Yeah. Who the fuck’re you, John the Baptist?”

Ignoring the remark the man said, “Do you men actually screw those women in the park?”

“No, in the cunt,” said Roscoe. “Now take a walk, John, before I bring your fucking head to Salome.”

Meanwhile, back at the choir practice Father Willie was going to hell in a hurry. He had stripped off his shirt and shoes and was asking Ora Lee if she dared him to streak through the park as Harold Bloomguard composed a song called “I Left My Heart in Titty City.”

“Put your shirt back on, Padre,” said his partner Spencer Van Moot. “I gotta quit feeding you all the cherries jubilee. You’re getting to look like a basketball.”

“How’s your como se llama these days, Ora Lee?” asked Francis as he tried to squeeze a finger inside the leg of Ora Lee’s ruffled pants, causing her to honk him severely, making him cry out in pain.

“How do you like being a sex object, huh?” the fat girl grinned.

“See, you’re not a real Mexican!” yelled shirtless Father Willie who was staggering around looking for trouble. “You’re not even a Jap! A real Mexican like General Zapata could take a little hurt without whimpering!”

“How’d you like to get your nuts crushed by this big moose?” said the injured choirboy, holding himself.

“Who’s a moose?” demanded Ora Lee Tingle, glowering at Francis. “You call me names I’ll hit you so hard and fast you’ll think you was in a gang fight!”

“Carolina’s putting on a little more weight,” Baxter Slate observed as he sat next to Sam Niles and the two quietly tried to drink themselves into unconsciousness.

“Maybe she’s pregnant,” Sam observed.

“What’re you trying to say, what’re you trying to say Sam?” Whaddayamean Dean cried out but quieted down when Baxter handed him a full bottle of bourbon.

“If she’s pregnant I’ll take her soon as her milk comes in,” said Spencer Van Moot. “I can’t feed my wife and kids no more on a policeman’s pay what with the inflation and all.”

“That’s cause you spend all your money on faggy clothes! A man your age!” said a voice from the darkness as Roscoe Rules got tired of waiting for someone to coax him back to the flock.

Then Francis Tanaguchi staggered away from the other choirboys and they heard him retching on the grass.

“Booo! Booo! Zapata my rear end!” giggled Father Willie Wright.

And while the party entered its final phase, Alexander Blaney slept on the grass not a hundred feet away beside two friendly ducklings while his mother wept at home and imagined him locked in the cruel embrace of a tattooed merchant seaman in some skid row flop-house.

At the end of that memorable choir practice some ordinary and extraordinary things started to happen.

An ordinary thing was that Whaddayamean Dean broke out in several crying jags and sobbed, “What’re you trying to say?” every time a choirboy was foolish enough to send a remark in his direction.

An extraordinary thing was that Spermwhale Whalen lost his diamond cutter and in fact lost the use of all his muscles. He could only sit against an elm tree and snarl at anyone who came near him. Spermwhale, the biggest strongest and bravest choirboy, was so drunk he was as helpless as the baby ducks out of water.

Another ordinary thing was that Roscoe Rules became as mean as a rabid dog, and with Sam Niles drunk and Spermwhale Whalen helpless, it seemed for a time that no one was around who could tame the young policeman. He was going around jealously insulting Ora Lee and Carolina because they didn’t feel like pulling that train and in any event wouldn’t let anyone as mean as Roscoe have a ride.

“Pig fuckers!” Roscoe Rules sneered. “If you don’t oink they won’t touch you! Gotta lead you up to a trough first to see if you’re worthwhile, huh?”

Sam Niles looked up from where he lay on his stomach groaning, and said, “Roscoe, this just might be the night I get you in a lip lock and shut you up for good.”

“Yeah, go ahead and try it, Niles,” Roscoe said. “You and your friend Slate together couldn’t handle me. Don’t think I don’t know you dopeheads go over there by Duck Island and smoke grass. You ain’t fooling nobody, you two.”

“Who’s got grass?” piped Harold Bloomguard.

“Better knock off that talk about grass, Harold,” Father Willie advised as he tried in vain to slap Spermwhale Whalen alive so he could scare Roscoe Rules and make him quit throwing his weight around.

“I told you about smokin grass, Harold!” the paralyzed Spermwhale growled. “I got nineteen and a half years on the job and that don’t ring the bell. You bring any pot here and get me fired and lose my pension with only six months to go and I’ll buy a whole kilo a grass. And I’ll pound it right up your ass and bury your head in the dirt and let the fuckin ducks get loaded by eatin the seeds outta your shit! YOU GOT ME?”

“I was just kidding, Spermwhale,” Harold gulped.

“Well I know Slate and Niles smoke grass, the fucking degenerates,” said Roscoe Rules.

Actually Roscoe was partly right. Baxter and Sam did go down by the duck pond occasionally for an illicit drug. But it wasn’t marijuana. Baxter had been dating a nurse who lived in his apartment building who was an inveterate pill popper and kept Baxter supplied with sedatives and hypnotics. So it was red capsules and yellow ones which Baxter and Sam swallowed with their booze down by the duck pond, both knowing the risks involved when they mixed the drugs with heavy drinking. In fact, Baxter Slate only seemed to want the barbiturates when he had been drinking excessively.

Roscoe walked over to Father Willie Wright who was telling Ora Lee Tingle how cute she was as the fat girl’s head started to drop on her shoulder.

Roscoe sniffed and said, “Padre, fucking that pig without a rubber is like playing the Rams without a helmet. Hope you got protection.”

“Well I like her!” shouted Father Willie, lurching to his feet combatively. “She’s better’n Frank Buck any old day. She really brings em back alive!”

“Siddown, you drunken little prick,” Roscoe Rules said, shoving the chaplain to the ground, making Father Willie yell, “Darn you, Roscoe! Gosh darn you, you bully!”

“Hey, Tanaguchi!” the jealous Roscoe yelled as he saw Francis stroking Carolina’s quaking buttocks. “I hear when Carolina was living with that Greek bartender he used to butt-fuck her all the time.”

“Never on Sunday!” Carolina answered and Francis’ giggles made Roscoe angrier.

“Her box is so big she wouldn’t even feel your hand unless you wore a wristwatch,” Roscoe grumbled.

“You can bet you ain’t gonna know, Roscoe!” said Carolina, throwing Francis off her as she sat up and rearranged her clothing. “Cause Father Willie told me you got clap!”

“I didn’t say that!” Father Willie protested. “I just told how when we were at Daniel Freeman Hospital that time you talked to the doctor about the strain you were having down there. And he said, ‘Do you have a discharge, Officer?’ and you said, ‘Yes, Honorable.’ And then you turned red when the doc and me cracked up. Oh God, that was funny!”

The chaplain rolled up in a little ball and cackled hilariously until Roscoe Rules was standing over him saying dangerously, “Padre, I thought I warned you not to tell anyone that story.”

Then Father Willie sobered up and said, “Gosh I forgot, Roscoe. I’m sorry.”

“I oughtta punch your lights out,” Roscoe said, eyes like a cobra.

“I’m sorry, Roscoe.”

“I oughtta kneedrop you right now.”

“What a cunt!” Spermwhale Whalen said to Roscoe, stirring around against the tree, trying to get control of his legs so he could come over and throw Roscoe Rules in the duck pond.

Father Willie started sniveling and said, “I’m really sorry, Roscoe.”

Spermwhale Whalen got disgusted with the chaplain and glared at him, saying, “What a cunt!”

And Carolina Moon squatted by the liquor case and found the Scotch all gone and thought Roscoe Rules was ruining the choir practice. She started to cry great drunken tears.

Spermwhale Whalen looked at her and said, “What a cunt!”

Carolina sniffed and said, “Thank you, Spermy. At least somebody appreciates me.”

Whaddayamean Dean suddenly said, “What’s it all about, Roscoe? What’s it all about?”

“Oh the hell with all a you,” said Roscoe Rules. “You’re all a bunch a scrotes!”

The meanest choirboy took a full bottle of bourbon, the last in fact, and stalked off into the darkness to think about what he’d like to do to all of them and drink bourbon and absently pull on his whang while he fantasized.

“Gimme Scotch,” said Ora Lee Tingle suddenly as her head stopped lolling.

“Ain’t none,” said Carolina who stopped crying and got happy again now that Roscoe was gone.

“Gimme beer,” said Ora Lee Tingle as Francis Tanaguchi lurched toward the duck pond to soak his head so that he wouldn’t miss the rest of the choir practice by passing out like his partner Calvin Potts who dozed next to one of Ora Lee Tingle’s big legs.

“I wish we had a stereo,” said Spencer Van Moot, mummified on the grass, his blanket wrapped tightly around him until only his face was exposed. “I’m older than you kids. I’d like some old music.”

“I’m older than Christ Almighty,” groaned Spermwhale Whalen, at last able to wiggle his fingers and toes.

“I’m old,” Spencer continued, “so I remember things you kids only saw in movies. Like the big bands. They were still around when I was young. Great times. Christ, I graduated high school in 1952. Imagine that.”

“I was killing gooks in 1952,” Spermwhale muttered. “No offense, Francis. And that was my second war.”

“If we had a stereo we could dance on the grass,” said Spencer nostalgically.

“God, you can get sweet sometimes, Spencer,” croaked Ora Lee Tingle as she crawled over and lay on top of the blanket-wrapped choirboy making him gasp for air.

“I’ve got a portable stereo,” offered Harold Bloomguard. “But my tweeter and woofer aren’t very big.”

“Get some hormone shots,” offered Father Willie Wright, scrounging desperately through the debris of boxes and packages for some more beer.

“Oh, that’s funny!” Carolina Moon screamed suddenly “Francis just says he told this waitress he wanted to be a counterspy and so he leans over the counter and spies up her dress. Oh, you horny little Nip!” and she honked him so clumsily he fell to his knees groaning in pain.

“Boooo!” cried Father Willie. “Booooo! Mexican my rear end!”

“Knock it off, Padre!” said Calvin Potts. “You jist woke me up.”

“Well he oughtta be able to take a little pain, he’s Pancho Villa or somebody,” said the choirboy chaplain, belching up some beer on his bare chest and making them all boo him.

The weight of Ora Lee Tingle on the blanketed Spencer Van Moot caused the choirboy to gag violently and the fat girl leaped off him surprisingly fast.

“My cop runneth over!” whooped Ora Lee Tingle, causing Harold Bloomguard to collapse in hysterical laughter in her great pink arms.

Just then Roscoe Rules, still holding his bourbon bottle which was only two thirds full, came staggering back among them. “Yeah? I’ll tell you what you are, you big titted scrote. You’re just a camp follower! A station house groupie! A cop sucker!”

Then Roscoe wheeled and headed back toward the duck pond where Spencer Van Moot was already washing his vomity blanket. Roscoe paused only for an instant by Baxter Slate’s blanket and quickly grabbed a set of car keys and when he was sure no one was watching, threw them into the middle of the pond.

Then Carolina Moon started showing off. The big girl quickly overpowered Francis Tanaguchi and got him in a wrist-lock Spermwhale had taught her, which came in handy with rowdy customers at the cocktail lounge where she worked. As the other choirboys cheered, Carolina played rough by forcing the groaning choirboy forward until his head was on the ground and his LAPD basketball jersey was falling down over his face. Then she picked him up by the belled bottoms of his faded white jeans and started bouncing him off the grass.

“Yea, Carolina! Yea!” shouted Father Willie Wright who was still shirtless and barefoot, pacing around the wrestlers.

Then while the puffing fat girl was shaking the upside-down choirboy against her plump dimpled belly some coins, keys, a comb and a package of prophylactics fell out of Francis’ pocket causing Carolina Moon to drop him abruptly on his head.

“Rubbers!” exclaimed Carolina in sweaty disbelief, her stiff lacquered hair stuck to her face. “Rubbers! Ora Lee, this chickenshit is carrying rubbers!”

“Pancho Villa, my rear end!” said Father Willie. “Booooo! Booooo!”

“A cundrum!” cried Carolina Moon. “This is what you think of us! I oughtta pull it over your head, you little prick!”

“Black Jack Pershing woulda whipped faggy Mexicans like Francis!” yelled Roscoe Rules from his exile in the darkness.

“I’ll never forget the first time I met Carolina Moon,” said Spencer Van Moot romantically as he limped back from the duck pond, smelling of vomit and rancid water, causing Carolina to scurry away from him.

“She was younger then and so lovely,” Spencer said with a liquid burp that scared everyone. “It was before your time, guys, and I was a younger buck and this gorgeous blonde girl with bazooms like volleyballs walks up to my radio car when we’re parked in the drive-in on La Brea, and she looks me right in the eyeball and says, ‘Gee, I thought I blew every cop in Wilshire.’ I just loved that girl from then on!”

Carolina smiled shyly and said, “Spence, honey you’re a doll. But why don’t you think about going home to your wife and kiddies now? You smell awful ripe.”

Spencer wrapped his blanket around him like a toga and downed a can of warm beer he found in the grass and belched perilously again. His pinky ring glittered and his little blond toothbrush moustache twitched as he breathed the night air and looked at the smog-filled night sky for the great star and yearned for his lost youth.

“Gud-damn, Spencer stinks,” Calvin Potts complained. “I think we better call the coroner.”

“It’s all right, Spencer. You look like Marcus Aurelius,” Baxter Slate grinned, raising his head surprisingly well from where he had dozed for over an hour. “You long for those days when we didn’t think we would fail. When we didn’t think we would die! When we were young.”

“I heard you, Slate,” a slurred gravel voice shouted from the darkness. “So don’t start that faggy talk. And don’t think you and Niles can sneak off and smoke pot. I’m watching you!”

“But who guards the guards, Roscoe?” Baxter yelled.

“Who said that?” Roscoe suddenly confused the voices.

“Juvenal,” Baxter Slate said.

“Who you calling a juvenile?” snapped Roscoe Rules.

“Now’s the time for drinking! Horace said that, Roscoe,” Baxter Slate yelled.

“Horace! Horace!” answered Roscoe. “Never catch a cop with a name like that. Some faggy friend a yours, huh?”

And with his bottle of bourbon three quarters gone Roscoe Rules decided to punch Baxter Slate’s faggy lights out once and for all. But he found his legs didn’t work and he fell heavily on his chest and panted quietly for a moment and went to sleep.

“Yeah I remember the good old days, Spencer,” said Carolina Moon who also felt nostalgic. “We was wild young kids then, Ora Lee and me. Remember how we used to say we did more to relieve policemen than the whole Los Angeles Police Relief Association?” she asked her slightly older roommate who had fallen fast asleep and was snoring noisily.

Carolina shrugged and said, “When they put that slogan ‘To Protect and To Serve’ on all police cars we had one made for our Pontiac saying, ‘To Protect and To Service.’ One time Ora Lee and me figured we sucked off more cops than the whole police wives’ association.”

“Impossible!” cried Harold Bloomguard.

“Well it’s true,” said Carolina. “We got seven thousand cops in this town, right? And I bet there ain’t five hundred whose wives belong to that group. Am I right, Spencer?”

“Right,” said Spencer starting to be offended by his own smelly toga.

“Most of em are ladies, ain’t they Spencer? Probably only blew one, two policemen?” Carolina asked.

“No more than that,” said Spencer Van Moot.

“My wife never even did one,” Father Willie Wright noted. “That’s my trouble.”

“See,” said Carolina to the assembly. “That means they couldn’t a did more than eight hundred at most. Christ, Ora Lee and me done more than that one summer when we were hanging around Seventy-seventh Station!”

“They do have a lot of guys working down there,” Spencer had to admit.

And it was finally conceded that the two girls had easily outfaced the entire police wives’ association. But just as the girls were thinking about pulling that train for a couple of their favorites Francis Tanaguchi came charging into their midst from the direction of the duck pond.

“Come see what I did!” giggled the choirboy prankster.

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

“Not now, not now,” said Spencer Van Moot, leering at Carolina Moon.

“Now! Now!” said Francis Tanaguchi, shaking all the drunken choirboys.

“What’s it all about? What’s it all about?” cried Whaddayamean Dean.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” said Calvin Potts as Whaddayamean Dean had them all talking double action.

Carolina Moon got up and stumbled after Francis. And all the choirboys, even Spermwhale Whalen, walked or crawled toward the duck pond where Roscoe Rules slept soundly on his back with a large white duck hanging out his fly.

“My word!” said Baxter Slate.

“How’d you manage that, Francis?” asked Sam Niles, impressed out of his ennui.

“Now that’s class!” mumbled Spermwhale Whalen gravely as he was finally able to stand up shakily like an enormous toddler.

“I just took some bread and sprinkled it from the water to Roscoe’s crotch,” giggled Francis Tanaguchi. “Then I unzipped his pants and dropped some inside!”

“He’d a caught you he’d a said it was a faggy thing to do,” Father Willie remarked.

“Boy that duck’s really working out on old Roscoe,” Carolina Moon said admiringly as the fat white body worked itself between Roscoe’s legs and the greedy head burrowed and ate.

“Roscoe was never one to duck a fuck, but to fuck a duck?” said Spencer Van Moot.

“Wake up, Roscoe, you cunt!” growled Spermwhale, throwing an empty beer can at Roscoe which startled the duck and made it flap and jump around.

“Don’t throw things! You might hit the duck!” said Harold Bloomguard.

“Hey!” Calvin Potts said. “That sucker can’t get his pecker outta Roscoe’s pants!”

“They got bills not peckers,” said Francis.

The choirboys watched in fascination as the duck thrashed and flapped and squawked with his head entangled in the fly of Roscoe’s jockey shorts. Suddenly the meanest choirboy who had always hated and feared the loathsome creatures, awakened to see one attacking his balls.

“YAAAAAA!” screamed Roscoe Rules, awakening Alexander Blaney who had been sleeping peacefully on the grass across the water.

Then there was pandemonium as the hopelessly drunk Roscoe Rules lurched to his feet and began running in circles, screaming and pulling at the duck who was panicked and quacking in rage and terror.

“Don’t hurt the duck!” yelled Harold Bloomguard as several choirboys rushed to aid the creature before Roscoe broke its neck as he ran shrieking and fell headlong into the pond.

“He’ll drown it!” Harold Bloomguard cried as Father Willie and Francis plunged into the water to rescue the bird.

Roscoe Rules pitched wildly in the slime and choked on filthy water and shouted for Spencer who didn’t want to get his eighty dollar shoes wet.

They grabbed Roscoe and dragged him and the duck onto shore just as the bird got a death grip on the sac containing Roscoe’s left testicle. Roscoe shrieked again and broke through the drunken ranks and ran bellowing toward the blankets where he had left his gun, wallet, and keys. He fell over the body of Ora Lee Tingle who woke up to blink sleepily at the dripping man standing six feet away with a fat white object swaying wildly between his legs. She said, “I don’t know who you are, honey but welcome to choir practice!”

“He’ll break its neck!” yelled Harold Bloomguard who led the charge toward the horror stricken Roscoe Rules who was pitching wildly side to side, the duck swinging like a pendulum.

Harold tackled Roscoe at the ankles and several choirboys pulled off Roscoe’s pants and extricated the bird from his shorts. Then there was more pandemonium as Roscoe Rules, naked from the waist down except for wet shoes and socks, made a screaming lunge for the gun. But by then they were crawling all over him. Sam Niles jumped on Roscoe’s gun and Father Willie yelled, “Handcuffs! Anybody got some cuffs?”

“I do!” yelled Baxter Slate and ran to his gunbelt which he had wrapped in his blanket.

“Over there! Over there to the tree!” commanded Spermwhale Whalen as they dragged the kicking biting Roscoe Rules to the elm tree where he snapped and snarled like a rabid dog.

“Put his arms around the tree!” Spermwhale ordered, and then Roscoe found himself hugging the elm, his wrists locked together in front.

“I’ll kill you for this!” Roscoe screamed. “I’ll kill you all!”

“Don’t kill me, Roscoe, I’m your pal,” Father Willie belched but the half naked policeman kicked out at him with a drippy shoe.

“Did the duck hurt your dick, Roscoe?” asked Carolina Moon solicitously.

“I’ll kill you for sure, you scrotes!” Roscoe howled, now kneeling against the tree, the bark rough against his wounded genitals.

“Let’s just leave him alone for a few minutes,” Spermwhale Whalen said. “Just leave him be.”

“I think he’s really mad at us this time,” said Father Willie as they went back to the blankets to suck the last few drops of booze out of the empty bottles.

“I think we should make a rule, no guns at choir practice,” said Harold Bloomguard.

While the handcuffed Roscoe Rules raged and cursed around the elm tree, the choirboys returned to their places because Carolina Moon announced that she was going to take her blanket off into the bushes and pull that train.

“I’m first! I’m the engineer!” cried Harold Bloomguard.

“I’m second! I’m conductor!” cried Spencer Van Moot.

“I know who rides the caboose,” Father Willie pouted.

But Carolina Moon put Spermwhale Whalen’s big arm around her shoulder and helped the hulking choirboy off to her nest while Calvin Potts yelled grumpily, “You’re gonna die in the push-up position, Spermwhale. You oughtta slow down, man your age.”

By now it was after 4:00 A.M. Alexander Blaney had gone home and was at this moment trying to explain to his bawling mother that he had been asleep alone in MacArthur Park and hadn’t been bedded by a tattooed merchant seaman.

And by now Ora Lee Tingle had decided to pull her own choo choo and made public her choice of engineer.

“I want Whaddayamean Dean,” she said.

“Why him? He can’t even understand what we’re talking about,” Spencer Van Moot whined.

“Him first or nobody” said Ora Lee Tingle.

“What’re you trying to say? What’re you trying to say?” asked Whaddayamean Dean blankly and the choirboys cursed and swore and walked in nervous circles.

“Well I’m taking my blankets and going to the bushes in private,” announced Ora Lee Tingle, “and if there’s gonna be a choo choo, I better see Whaddayamean Dean first.”

So then the choirboys squatted and began lightly slapping Whaddayamean Dean on the cheeks and rubbing his wrists and ankles as he stared vacantly from one to the other with a drunken, sincere, idiotic smile that chilled their hearts.

Especially when Spermwhale Whalen stepped out of the brush and said, “Train jumped the track.”

“Whaddayamean? Whaddayamean?” asked Father Willie, not Whaddayamean Dean.

“I mean Carolina passed out. I guess I ain’t so old after all, boys. Just wear em out is what I do.”

“Well passed out or not, I’m next,” whined Spencer Van Moot.

“No you ain’t,” said the glowering Spermwhale Whalen. “We ain’t animals to take advantage of a passed-out girl!”

Then there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in MacArthur Park as several choirboys pleaded in vain with Spermwhale Whalen who of course dominated them all by his age, seniority, courage and ability to kick the living shit out of them.

“What’s the matter with Ora Lee? She’s conscious, ain’t she?” asked Spermwhale.

“Yeah, but she wants Dean first or nobody” Father Willie whined, starting to sound like his partner Spencer Van Moot.

“I see,” said Spermwhale, shaking his head sadly as he looked over at the simpering choirboy sitting on the grass, red hair tousled by Harold Bloomguard who still worked frantically massaging his wrists and neck.

Then Francis Tanaguchi sat by Whaddayamean Dean, telling him exaggerated lascivious impossible things that Ora Lee Tingle was going to do to him, and Father Willie shouted, “That’s exactly what the Dragon Lady promised to do to me the night she phoned and made my wife punch me in the eye! Now I know who the Dragon Lady works for, ya dirty Godless heathen little fuck, ya!”

And temporarily everyone forgot Ora Lee and looked at Father Willie in astonishment because he had uttered the second vulgarity of his life.

“I can’t help it,” Father Willie said sheepishly “That was the dirtiest trick anyone ever played on me.”

“Lemme try,” said Calvin Potts. “Since Dean can’t understand regular English I think you should talk to him like we talked to the whores in Vietnam. We always managed to communicate and they couldn’t talk no English.”

Several choirboys agreed that it was worth a try so Calvin knelt in front of the placid redhead whose face from eyebrows to chin was caked with dried barbecue sauce and tried pidgin. “Ora Lee like bang bang. Her plenty good. All time bang bang. Plenty good. You sabby?”

And Whaddayamean Dean clapped his hands happily and chuckled.

“Jesus, you’re just entertaining him,” said Spencer Van Moot. “That ain’t getting us nowhere. He ain’t a gook. That rice paddy talk ain’t the answer.”

“You got a better idea?” Calvin asked.

“Yeah I do,” said Spencer. “I been analyzing this. He’s sitting there now with the mind of a three year old, right?”

“Approximately” nodded Harold Bloomguard.

“Okay,” said Spencer. “We couldn’t tell a three year old to go screw in the bushes, could we? You have to talk to a three year old like a three year old.”

Spencer Van Moot elbowed Calvin out of the way and squatted in front of Whaddaymean Dean. “Spencer has secret for Deanie,” Spencer said desperately “Ora Lee loves Deanie. Ora Lee take Deanie and blow up like biiiiiig balloon!” And Spencer Van Moot drew a biiiiiig sausage-shaped balloon in the air before the watery eyes of Whaddayamean Dean who sat cross legged in his barbecue-stained Bugs Bunny sweatshirt and clapped his hands like an infant. And squealed.

“My God, he’s regressing,” said Harold Bloomguard grimly.

“He’ll be spitting up in a minute,” Father Willie observed.

“We’ll have to burp him, for chrissake,” said Francis Tanaguchi.

“All right, all right, outta the way!” said Spermwhale Whalen, staggering forward and sitting on the grass next to the simpering redhead who now had his hands folded uselessly in his lap, his brain marinated.

“Gimme a can a beer,” Spermwhale said and Baxter Slate flipped him one.

While the other choirboys watched, Spermwhale popped it open and soaked a paper napkin in beer and sat in front of Dean and washed all the barbecue from his face and plastered down the tangle of hair as Whaddayamean Dean sat unprotesting.

When the young man was cleaned up Spermwhale said, “Listen. Dean. Listen, son. It’s me, your da da. It’s Spermwhale. You know me, don’t ya?”

And Whaddayamean Dean licked his chops happily and cried, “Beer! Beer!”

“No no,” said Spermwhale Whalen. “First you listen. Then beer beer. Get it?”

Whaddayamean Dean eyed them all craftily and chuckled at some private joke.

“Now, Dean, my boy we been pals awhile and I know you trust old Spermwhale. So listen careful. This thing that booze does to you, turnin you into a carrot, this ain’t a good thing for you. You gotta master the effect a that booze. I been doin it for years. Remember when I flew us on that Palm Springs raid, dead drunk?”

And Whaddayamean Dean filled their hearts with hope, for he nodded at all of them.

“That’s right!” Spermwhale said. “You do remember! See, I know you understand. Just concentrate. Okay, so here’s what’s happened tonight. Old Spermwhale’s just too much man and screwed old Carolina Moon till she went fast asleep. Now that means there’s only Ora Lee Tingle to pull that train for a few a the boys. And guess what? She picked you first. And that means you gotta go over there behind those bushes and show Ora Lee what a sport you are. And then maybe a couple a other fellas can get on the track. Get it?”

But Whaddayamean Dean cocked his head and wrinkled his brow in confusion and filled their hearts with dread.

“I’ll make it simpler, son,” said Spermwhale. “You just gotta go over there and do a number on Ora Lee, that’s all you gotta do. So I want you to stand up now and show these fellas that my boy ain’t no radish. Now you just listen to old Spermwhale and go over there and fuck old Ora Lee’s socks off. Get it?”

The eager ring of faces shone sweatily in the moonlight and no one breathed as the grinning simpering redhead struggled valiantly with the words. They came and went from his consciousness and at times almost hung together coherently.

Finally he looked Spermwhale Whalen dead in the eye and raised a hand to the oldest choirboy’s pink jowls and said sincerely, “Whaddayamean, Spermwhale? Just tell me what you mean.”

And then eight choirboys-minus Roscoe Rules who was handcuffed to a tree and Whaddayamean Dean who sat and flashed a bewildered smile-beat their own heads with their fists or strangled phantoms in the air or showed white eyeballs and groaned pitifully.

Suddenly Spermwhale Whalen roared to his feet and grabbed Dean by the belt and the back of the shirt and lifted him four feet in the air as Harold Bloomguard yelled, “Don’t hurt him, Spermwhale!”

And Baxter Slate shouted, “He can’t help it, Spermwhale!”

And Spencer Van Moot yelled, “Kill the fucking idiot!”

And Whaddayamean Dean broke into tears and bawled, “Why’s everyone picking on me? I don’t get it! I don’t get it!”

Spermwhale Whalen carried the weeping choirboy toward the bushes, toward Ora Lee Tingle and threw the redhead on top of the snoozing fat girl. “There!” Spermwhale bellowed. “You stupid goofy simple minded idiotic fuckin moron! Is exactly WHAT I MEAN!”

“Oh hi, Dean honey,” said Ora Lee Tingle, waking up and pulling him down on her bulk.

The whimpering choirboy wiped his eyes on his sweatshirt and sniffed and looked back at Spermwhale and the others and then down to the fat girl he was sitting on as she licked her lips seductively.

“Oh!” said Whaddayamean Dean. “Oh! Why didn’t you say so? Now I get it! Now I get it!”

And the choirboys sighed in unison and staggered back to their blankets and fell to the ground in relief.

Meanwhile, a fifty-one year old insomniac hairdresser who lived in an Alvarado Street hotel had come for a very early morning stroll through the cool invigorating darkness of MacArthur Park and found a man nude from the waist down sitting beside an elm tree with his arms enveloping the trunk. The hairdresser’s name was Luther Quigly and it was the most carnal erotic sight he had ever seen. It was his wildest libidinous fantasy come true.

“My God! My God!” Luther Quigly whispered.

“Who’s there?” Roscoe exclaimed.

“Oh!” said Luther Quigly. “Oh!” And the tiny balding hairdresser leaned back against a eucalyptus and tried to calm his pounding heart.

“Who’re you?” Roscoe demanded, suffering terrible pain in his shoulders and back from having been totally forgotten by the drunken choirboys.

“Anyone you want me to be,” answered Luther Quigly.

“Listen, goddamnit, go over by the duck pond. There’s some drunks there. Go get one of em!”

“Who needs anyone else?” gasped Luther Quigly. “Three’s a crowd!”

“I do! I’m chained to this tree!”

“Chained!” cried Luther Quigly. It was truly a mad salacious fantasy! It just couldn’t be! A man naked except for his shirt and shoes! Chained to a tree!

“Oh, my lord!” cried Luther Quigly, getting faint.

Roscoe scurried around the elm, keeping it between himself and Luther Quigly, saying, “Stay away from me! I’ll kill you you touch me, you faggy son of a bitch! I’ll kneedrop you, so help me! I’ll puncture your kidneys! I’ll rupture your spleen! SPERMWHALE!”

Then Luther Quigly heard running footsteps across the grass. He jumped up and fled toward Seventh Street and ran all the way home to sit shakily in his room and wonder if it had all been a fantasy after all. He decided it had and called his psychiatrist later that morning.

The choirboys were full of apologies when they took the handcuffs off Roscoe Rules and brought him his wet underwear and pants.

“We forgot, Roscoe,” said Harold Bloomguard.

“Real sorry fella,” said Spermwhale Whalen.

“Forgive us, Roscoe, forgive us,” said Father Willie.

“It was that goddamn Dean,” said Spencer. “We got preoccupied and forgot.”

“You okay man? How’s your wrists?” said Calvin Potts.

Roscoe betrayed nothing in his manner as he put on his underwear and wrung out his pants, stepping into each soppy leg, and walked slowly and deliberately back toward his blanket.

“Roscoe, wait up a minute, will ya?” Spermwhale said, the first to get suspicious. He tried to trot past Roscoe who was heading directly toward his belongings.

But he was too late. Roscoe broke into a mad thirty yard sprint as Spermwhale screamed, “THE GUN!”

Seconds later Roscoe Rules was running back toward the ducking diving fleeing choirboys with his four inch Magnum in his hand. Sphincter muscles and bladders were loosening all around and Francis Tanaguchi thought he was dead for sure as three explosions deafened the closest choirboys.

Harold Bloomguard was the first to look up and see Roscoe Rules insanely wading into the duck pond blasting away at the birds whose bills had been tucked securely under their wings but now squawked and flapped and swam for their lives from the orange fireballs and the terrifying explosions. Then when he clicked three times on empty cylinders Roscoe caught a hapless duck by the throat and tried to pistol-whip it and punch its lights out and drag it to shore where he could kneedrop it, rupturing its spleen.

“Stop him!” screamed Francis Tanaguchi.

“Get the gun!” yelled Spermwhale Whalen.

“Save the ducks!” yelled Harold Bloomguard while five frightened choirboys jumped on Roscoe and took away his gun and held his head under water for twenty seconds.

Then they dragged him and the duck onto the shore as Roscoe bellowed, “Lemme go! Lemme go! I’ll strangle that cocksucker! I’ll make that fuckin duck do the chicken!”

And as they pried the duck’s neck from Roscoe’s fist he swung a left and a right, the first of which socked the hissing bird on the bill, the second of which caught Spermwhale Whalen in the eye. There was yet a third punch thrown, this by Spermwhale, and it knocked the rabies right out of Roscoe.

The choir practice ended in a hurry with everyone running to his car to get away in case someone heard the shots and was calling the police. Unfortunately Roscoe could not leave, not after he discovered it was his own set of keys he had thrown into the middle of the pond. He waded in the buttery mud and dove in the mucky water until daybreak.

The quietus was uttered by Ora Lee Tingle as she and Carolina Moon were bouncing half dressed across the grass toward Park View Street at 5:00 A.M.

She turned and yelled, “It was a swell choir practice, fellas! And don’t worry, Roscoe, we ain’t gonna start calling you a duck socker!”