The Choirboys

FOUR

SERGEANT NICK YANOV

Actually there were dozens of choir practices in MacArthur Park attended faithfully by ten policemen who worked out of Wilshire Police Station but chose MacArthur Park as the choir practice site because it was in Rampart Station’s territory. They believed that one does not shit in one’s own nest.

The first choir practice in MacArthur Park took place in the early spring when the nights became warm enough. Most of the choirboys were unencumbered. That was by design of Harold Bloomguard who was really the driving force behind the inception of the MacArthur Park choir practice. Harold always maintained that they shouldn’t have married men in the group because they would quite likely have to go home early and early dropouts were the death of any good choir practice.

“The songs must go on!” was the way Harold always put it.

Of course no one ever really sang at choir practice. Their “songs” were of a different genus but served much the same purpose as rousing choral work. It was called by various names at other police departments. It was merely an off-duty meeting, usually in a secluded hideaway for policemen who, having just finished their tour of duty, were too tense or stimulated or electrified to go to a silent sleeping house and lie down like ordinary people while nerve ends sparked. One hadn’t always enough money to go to a policemen’s bar. Still one felt the need to uncoil and have a drink and talk with others who had been on the streets that night. To reassure oneself.

Sergeant Nick Yanov could have been a charter member during those five months when the MacArthur Park choir practices were being held. He was invited by Harold Bloomguard one evening after a 3:00 P.M. nightwatch rollcall at which the uniformed policemen had a surprise visit from Captain Stanley Drobeck. The station commander wore a silk suit with a belt in the back, and black and white patent leather shoes. When Captain Drobeck entered the assembly room he caused Lieutenant Alvin Finque, who was conducting the roll-call, to jump unconsciously to attention which embarrassed the blue uniformed patrol officers. Since police service is not nearly as GI as military service, the only time one stands at attention is during inspection or formal ceremonies.

Lieutenant Finque blushed and sat back down. He blinked and said “Hi Skipper” to Captain Drobeck.

“Whoever made the pinch on the burglar in Seven-A-One’s area deserves a good smoke!” the captain announced, as he threw four fifteen-cent cigars out into the audience of twenty-eight nightwatch officers and, smiling with self-satisfaction, strode out the door. His hair was freshly rinsed and was blue white that day.

Only three nightwatch officers were old enough to smoke a cigar without looking silly One was Herbert “Spermwhale” Whalen and he had caught the burglar. He was a MacArthur Park choirboy.

Like all old veterans, Spermwhale sat in the back row and insisted on wearing his hat. Cocked to the side, of course. Spermwhale picked up one of the cigars from the floor, examined the brand, sat on it and loosed an enormous fart which moved out every policeman nearby Then he tossed the cigar back on the floor. Another choirboy, Spencer Van Moot of 7-A-33, picked it up gingerly with two fingers, stripped off the cellophane and said, “It’ll be okay after it dries out.”

• • •

Lieutenant Finque had just replaced Lieutenant Grimsley whose transfer was mysteriously precipitated by Spermwhale Whalen. Lieutenant Finque was of medium height with straight hair which was parted and combed straight back much as his father had done when his father was still in style in 1939, the year of Lieutenant Finque’s birth. The lieutenant was unsure in his new rank but rarely if ever heeded the advice he always asked for from Sergeant Nick Yanov, the hipless chesty field sergeant, who had to shave twice a day to control his whiskers.

Sergeant Yanov was an eleven year officer, and at age thirty-four actually had less supervisory experience than Lieutenant Finque. But he had the distinction of being the only person of supervisory rank ever to be invited to a MacArthur Park choir practice, which he wisely declined.

Sergeant Yanov’s only immediate passion in life, like many officers at Wilshire Station, was some night to drag Officer Reba Hadley away from the nightwatch desk and into the basement and rip her tight blue uniform blouse and skirt from her tantalizing young body and literally screw the badge right off her. Which was perhaps symbolically linked with Yanov’s avowed belief that superior officers like Lieutenant Finque had been screwing him mercilessly for the past eleven years.

Lieutenant Finque had a different passion. He wanted to be the first watch commander in Wilshire Division history to catch every single member of his watch out of his car with his hat off or drinking free coffee or failing to answer a telephone properly.

When things quieted down from Spermwhale’s contribution to rollcall, Lieutenant Finque said, “Fellows, we have some rollcall material to give you on diplomatic immunity in misdemeanor cases. In case you should have the occasion to run into a consul or ambassador in the course of your duties, does everyone know the difference between a consul and an ambassador?”

“An ambassador is a Nash,” said Harold Bloomguard of 7-A-29. “Don’t see too many these days.”

“I heard those consulate cocksuckers just wipe their ass with their parking tickets in New York,” offered Roscoe Rules of 7-A-85.

“If you work for the UN you can do no wrong in the first place,” said Spencer Van Moot of 7-A-33.

“Well, I hope you all read the material,” Lieutenant Finque said jauntily as the drops of acid formed. He was never sure if they were being insubordinate.

“Finque’s rollcalls are about as exciting as a parking ticket,” whispered Francis Tanaguchi of 7-A-77 to his partner, Calvin Potts.

“And to think I left a sick bed to come to work today,” Calvin groaned.

“Your girl wasn’t feeling well?” Francis asked.

“On to more important things, men,” Lieutenant Finque said, as Sergeant Nick Yanov, who sat on his left on the platform in front of the assembly, looked at the ceiling and drummed nervously on the table with his fingers. “I hope you men have been trying to sell whistles. The nightwatch has been doing pretty badly compared to the daywatch.”

This announcement caused Sergeant Yanov to lean back in his chair and start rubbing his eyes with the heels of both hands so that he would not have to see the eye rolling, lip curling, head shaking, feet shuffling, which was utterly lost on Lieutenant Finque who had given birth to the whistle selling campaign.

It had been a master stroke which actually was suggested by an eighty year old spinster who attended every single Basic Car Plan meeting. Since Lieutenant Finque was pretty sure the old woman was senile and would not remember she had thought of it, he adopted the idea as his own and the uniformed patrol force of Wilshire Station found themselves being forced to sell black plastic whistles for fifty cents to women they contacted on their calls. The object was that if a woman were ever accosted on the street by thugs she should pull out her whistle and blow it.

The proceeds from the whistle sales went to the station’s Youth Services Fund and quickly earned several thousand dollars. Lieutenant Finque was hoping the idea would earn him a written commendation from Deputy Chief Lynch, which wouldn’t look bad in his personnel package.

Spermwhale Whalen had sold the most whistles on the nightwatch, six in fact. But actually he had bought them himself and given them to his favorite streetwalking whores with the instruction that if they ever had a slow evening and felt like giving away a free blowjob to an old pal just to pucker on the whistle when 7-A-1 came cruising by.

There was not a recorded case of a radio car in the vast and crowded district ever hearing a distress whistle, but it was said that the whistle saved the property of one woman on LaCienega Boulevard when a purse snatcher almost fell to the sidewalk in a giggling fit at the sight of a sixty year old matron in a chinchilla coat blowing a little plastic whistle until her face looked like a rotten strawberry.

“One last order of business before we have inspection and hit the streets,” the lieutenant said. “The detectives would like the cars in the area to keep an eye on Wilbur’s Tavern on Sixth Street. They have reports that the owner is beating up barmaids who’re too intimidated to make a report. He apparently only hires girls willing to orally copulate him. And if they start to object after a time, he beats them up and threatens them. Seven-A-Twenty-nine, how about stopping in there once every couple days?”

“Right, Lieutenant,” said Harold Bloomguard who looked at his grinning partner, Sam Niles.

Minutes after rollcall, 7-A-29 was speeding to the station call but was beaten by ten other nightwatch policemen swarming all over the tavern checking out the barmaids.