The Choirboys

SIX

7-A-33: SPENCER VAN MOOT AND

FATHER WILLIE WRIGHT

Willie Wright was also destined to become a police celebrity It happened four months before the choir practice killing. On the night he met a brother in the basement.

Of course he could not have dreamed of the bizarre turns this tour of duty would take when he sat in the rollcall room late that afternoon and wished he could grow a moustache like the one belonging to Sam Niles of 7-A-29, or Calvin Potts of 7-A-77 who had a heavy one which made the muscular black policeman look even more formidable.

Willie was sure that if he grew one it would look like Francis Tanaguchi’s sparse and sad one, which many old women could duplicate.

It was a peaceful, untraumatic rollcall that afternoon. Lieutenant Finque was on a day off and Sergeant Yanov sat before them alone at his table on the platform.

“Got an unusual one last night,” Sergeant Yanov said, trying to look through the crimes to find one that might amuse the watch. “Guy tried to shove a Pepsi bottle in his wife’s giz after he caught her stepping out on him.”

“I took that report,” said Sam Niles. “It was nothing. The bottle didn’t have the cap on it.”

“Reminds me of the guy stuck a screwdriver up his ass to scratch his prostate. Remember that, partner?” Roscoe asked Whaddayamean Dean. “Couldn’t get it out and the wife called the police. That was funny!” Rules chuckled as he pulled at his crotch and made Harold Bloomguard sick.

Then Roscoe blushed and got angry when Sergeant Yanov said, “By the way an unnamed officer turned in a report last night where he wrote a pursesnatcher was l-e-r-k-i-n-g and p-r-a-y-i-n-g on his victims. Check the dictionary if you’re not sure. These reports end up in courts of law. Makes us look dumb.”

“I told you to check my spelling, goddamnit,” Roscoe whispered to Dean Pratt who smiled weakly and said, “Sorry, partner.”

“One word of advice,” Sergeant Yanov said. “The captain is uptight about the pissy wino they found sleeping in the back of Sergeant Sneed’s car. They suspect one of you guys put him there.”

“Me? Why me all the time?” Francis Tanaguchi cried when all eyes turned to him.

“Gee, rollcalls are quiet without the lieutenant here,” observed Spermwhale Whalen, who then turned to Willie Wright and said, “Hey, kid, how about comin in the bathroom with me? My back’s hurt and I ain’t supposed to lift nothin heavy.”

Spencer Van Moot was happy when rollcall ended early It gave him more time to shop. Spencer was, at forty the second oldest choirboy, next to fifty-two year old Spermwhale Whalen, the two of them the only choirboys over thirty. Spencer Van Moot had convinced Harold Bloomguard that he should be accepted as a MacArthur Park choirboy because he was only temporarily married, was hated by his wife Tootie and her three kids and would probably soon be thrice divorced like Spermwhale Whalen.

Harold welcomed the complainer Spencer Van Moot for the same reason he welcomed Roscoe Rules. He invited Spencer Van Moot because he was the most artistic scrounger and promoter at Wilshire Station.

Spencer knew every retail store within a mile of his beat. His “police discounts” had furnished his house princely. He wore the finest Italian imports from the racks of the Miracle Mile clothing stores. He dined superbly in one of three expensive restaurants near Wilshire and Catalina which were actually in Rampart Division. Retailers became convinced that Spencer Van Moot could ward off burglars, shoplifters, fire and vandalism. That somehow this tall blond recruiting poster policeman with the confident jaw and the small foppish moustache could even forestall economic reversal.

Despite his natural morose nature and his self pitying complaints about his unhappy marriage, he was accepted at once by the choirboys. He arrived with a dowry of three cases of cold beer and four bottles of Chivas Regal Scotch. And he brought his partner, Willie Wright.

Willie was one of the smallest choirboys, along with Francis Tanaguchi and Harold Bloomguard, under five feet nine inches tall. Willie in fact had stretched to make five feet eight and was almost disqualified when he took his first police physical. He was a devoutly religious young man, raised as a Baptist, converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses when he married Geneva Smythe, his high school sweetheart. Willie was now twenty-four and Geneva twenty-five. She, like Willie, was short and chubby. She took Watchtower magazines door to door three times a week. Willie accompanied her on his days off.

Spencer Van Moot loved him as a partner because Willie thought it was crooked to accept gifts or wholesale prices from retail stores, thereby leaving Spencer a double share of everything he could promote. The only concession Willie would make was a nightly free meal in one of Spencer Van Moot’s gourmet restaurants.

After being practically dragged to the first choir practice by Spencer, Willie Wright discovered something totally extraordinary: that choir practice was fun, more fun in fact than anything he had ever done in his young life. He was accepted by the other choirboys almost from the start because he entertained them by preaching squeaky sermons. He told them how wrong it was to drink and lust after the two camp followers, Ora Lee Tingle and Carolina Moon, who often turned up at choir practice. But then when drunk he turned into an evil eyed little mustang.

Harold Bloomguard dubbed him official chaplain of the MacArthur Park choirboys. He was thereafter known as The Padre, Father Willie Wright.

The night that Father Willie Wright personally called for choir practice was the night he found the brother in the basement. It had begun much like every other night, with Spencer Van Moot driving the radio car madly to all of his various stops before the stores closed. First he had to make three cigarette stops where he picked up two packs of cigarettes for each of them, which Father Willie didn’t use. Father Willie suspected quite rightly that Spencer wholesaled the cigarettes to his neighbors.

And then there was the dairy stop where Spencer got his daily allotment of buttermilk and yogurt, one quart for each partner, which Willie likewise refused. Each night at 10:00 P.M. the manager walked swiftly to his car under the protective beam of Spencer’s spotlight. Then there were other stops, if he could get them in, at various men’s shops on Wilshire Boulevard where Spencer and salesmen tossed around Italian names like Brioni and Valentino and which invariably ended in Spencer’s trying on something in a fine cabretta leather jacket over his blue police uniform. Father Willie sat bored in the dressing room holding his partner’s Sam Browne, gun and hat while Spencer preened.

Sometimes a new salesman would make the mistake of quoting the retail price to the tall policeman and would find himself cowering before an indignant stare, a twitching toothbrush moustache and a withering piece of advice to “Check with the manager about my police discount.”

Father Willie often thought about asking for a new partner but he didn’t want to hurt Spencer’s feelings. Spencer had tried for years to find a partner like Father Willie, who would not accept his rightful share of free cigarettes, wholesale merchandise and free liquor. It had gotten to be tedious for Spencer breaking in new partners:

“You smoke?”

“No, Spencer.”

“Today you do. I’ll take both packs if you don’t want them.”

And inevitably a partner would become greedy. “I’ll take a pack today Spencer.”

“What for? You don’t smoke.”

“I’ll give them to my brother. What the hell, three packs a day I’m entitled to.”

Spencer got to keep Willie’s share of petty booty in every case. And Father Willie never complained when Spencer scrounged up some liquor for choir practices.

“We’re having a retirement party for one of our detective lieutenants,” Spencer would inevitably lie to a long suffering liquor store proprietor who would take two bottles of Scotch from the shelf behind him.

“We’re having a big big party.” Spencer would smile benignly until the proprietor would get the message and bring up another two bottles.

But Spencer was considerate about spreading it around and rarely went to the same liquor store more than once a month for anything but cigarettes. The cigarette shop however was a relentless daily ritual. It was said that during the Watts riot of 1965, Spencer drove a half burned black and white with every window shot out ten miles to Beverly Boulevard, his face streaked with soot and sweat, and managed to make all three cigarette stops before the stores closed at 2:00 A.M.

Spencer Van Moot had accepted a thousand packs of cigarettes and as many free meals in his time. And though he had bought enough clothing at wholesale prices to dress a dozen movie stars, he had never even considered taking a five dollar bill nor was one ever offered except once when he stopped a Chicago grocer in Los Angeles on vacation. The police department and its members made an exact distinction between petty gratuities and cash offerings, which were considered money bribes no matter how slight and would result in a merciless dismissal as well as criminal prosecution.

It was not that the citizens and police of Los Angeles were inherently less debased than their Eastern counterparts, it was that the West, being a network of sprawling young towns and cities, did not lend itself to the old intimate teeming ward or ghetto where political patronage and organized crime bedded down together. The numbers racket, for instance, had been a dismal failure in western America. The average citizen of Los Angeles hadn’t the faintest idea how it worked. Yet in the Pennsylvania steel town where Spencer Van Moot was born, every living soul had played numbers and consulted dream books for winners and contributed to organized crime’s greatest source of revenue in that region. The bookies came door to door. They even accepted children’s penny bets. Western criminals had found it impossible to organize a crazy quilt collection of several communities which existed inside the 460 square mile limits of the city where there was an automobile for every adult. The city had geography and history going for it.

So it was that Spencer Van Moot’s supplication provided about half of the beverage consumed at choir practice, the rest provided by Roscoe Rules who bullied the free booze from cowering liquor store owners on his beat.

After making his various stops and depositing his treasures in the back of his camper truck in the station parking lot, Spencer began whinning again about his unhappy domestic life.

“I mean how can you understand a woman, Padre?” Spencer complained as the setting sun filtered through the smog and burned Father Willie’s sensitive, bulging blue eyes.

“I don’t know, Spencer,” Father Willie sighed, and wondered how long Spencer would use him as a sounding board tonight. Sometimes when he was lucky the complaining would stop after the first two hours of their tour of duty.

“I’m forty years old, Father Willie,” Spencer griped, touching his twenty dollar haircut which he got free in a Wilshire Boulevard styling parlor. “Look at my hair, it’s getting gray. Why should I live in such misery.”

“I’m twenty-four,” Father Willie reminded him, “and you have more hair than I do. Who cares if it’s gray.”

“She’s a bitch, Padre. It’s hell, believe me,” Spencer whined. “She’s worse by far than my first two wives put together. And she’s turned her kids against me. They hate me more than she does because she tells them lies about me, that I drink a lot and run around with other women.”

“That’s not a lie, Spencer,” Father Willie reminded him. “You do drink a lot and run around with other women.”

“It’s nothing to tell teenagers, for god’s sake!” Spencer answered. “I never shoulda married an older broad with kids. Damn, forty-two years old and her legs’re turning green. Green, I tell you! And here I am with only four years to go until I can pull the pin and retire. And what happens, she gets knocked up!”

“Maybe it’ll work out, Spencer,” Father Willie offered as his partner drove east on Eighth Street away from the sun’s dying harsh rays.

“Work out? Work out? Four years to my pension and she’s gonna foal, and then how can I retire with a little rug rat crawling around?”

“Oh well,” Father Willie shrugged. “Oh well.”

“A man gets drunk and careless and screws himself into another ten years on the job. It ain’t fair.”

“Oh well,” said Father Willie.

“Everything happens to me!” Spencer said.

Spencer Van Moot was interrupted for a moment by catching a glimpse of a seventy year old pensioner who lived in a Seventh Street fleabag called the Restful Arms Motel. He pushed his wheelchair down the sidewalk backward with his foot as he held his useless arthritic hands in his lap. The pensioner was trying to get to the mom-and-pop market one block west where he could buy two cans of nutritious dog food for his dinner.

“Things could always be worse, Spencer.”

“Oh sure, I’m gonna be unloading shitty diapers at forty years old and…”

“You’ve got a new camper. You can get away with your wife sometimes and go fishing.”

“Oh sure. I got a new camper. I’m so thrilled, so happy! I’m in debt again. I was getting insecure not owing money.”

“It’ll work out.”

“Yeah, it will. I’ll be dead soon. No one in my family lives very long. I got an uncle that died of old age at forty-five. That’s what the doctor said. Every organ in the man’s body was old, dissipated. I won’t last long. At least then I’ll be rid of my old lady I tell you, Padre, she’s got a tongue so sharp it’s a wonder she don’t cut her mouth to pieces and bleed to death.”

“You want to come to church with Geneva and me?” Father Willie offered. “Some of the best Witnesses I know came to God later in life. And what with the early deaths in your family…”

“Goddamnit, I ain’t dead yet!” Spencer cried, suddenly frightened. “Padre, gimme a chance! I ain’t lived yet!”

“Well, I only meant with poor health and all…”

“Poor health? Poor health? I’m too young to be thinking about dying. Jesus, partner, you’re getting morbid!”

It was almost an hour before Spencer fully recovered from the suggestion of his imminent demise. He had the worst sick record on the nightwatch. He was tall and strong, in the prime of life, and had seen vats of spilled blood and acres of mutilated flesh in his sixteen years of police work, but he became faint when he’d scratch his finger. He could bear any pain but his own.

Just before dark they passed the Mary Sinclair Adams Home for Girls, a funded institution where young women who were pregnant and indigent could be cared for. It was a converted two story home two blocks east of Hancock Park and had once been a palatial residence of an eighty year old virgin who died envying young girls the fun they had growing round bellies.

There was a teenage girl with an eight month stomach standing in front of the house: cigarette dangling, eyebrows plucked to nothing, eyes shadowed to three inch black orbs, talking to three young men on chopper motorcycles.

“The Stork Club,” Spencer remarked, shaking his head disgustedly “They go in there, drop a frog and cut out.”

“I hear the county’s okayed the installation of interuterine devices in some of these girls they place in foster homes,” Father Willie said.

“Someone shoulda plugged my old lady’s birdbath and I wouldn’t be in this fix,” Spencer answered, blowing a cloud of smoke out the window. “Old dried up sponge, I don’t know how she ever got knocked up. I’ll just have to cut down on expenses, live like a goddamn Trappist monk. I won’t be able to eat like a human being anymore, that’s all.”

“It’ll work out all right,” Father Willie said. Then, “Spencer, we’ll still be able to eat roast duckling with orange sauce, won’t we?”

“Oh sure.”

“With glazed carrots and shallots?”

“Oh, we’ll still eat at our restaurants for free just like we always have,” said Spencer, allaying Father Willie’s fears. “I meant at home I’ll have to starve. My wife and kids’ll have to go without and maybe wear old clothes with patches.”

Father Willie felt like suggesting Spencer could make patches with some of the fourteen Italian suits which hung in his closet, when he spotted a Lincoln blow the red light on Wilshire and Western. The Lincoln pulled over the moment Father Willie tooted his horn.

“You just have to learn to budget,” Spencer sighed as they gathered up hats and ticket book and flashlights now that dusk had settled. “Mail your check for the telephone bill to the gas company and theirs to the electric company. By the time they send them back and forth you can balance your checkbook.”

Father Willie nodded as they got out of the black and white Matador and walked forward, crisscrossing so that Father Willie, whose turn it was, could approach the driver’s side while Spencer went to the other side and shined the light in the window to protect Father Willie’s approach.

The driver, a balding fat man about Spencer’s age, smiled and said, “What’s the problem, boys?” He offered Father Willie his driver’s license without being asked.

“You were a full second late on that red light, sir,” Father Willie said, his light on the license, checking that it was not expired, noting the Beverly Hills address in Trousdale Estates.

“That doesn’t seem possible,” the man said, getting out of the car and following the little officer to the police car where Spencer waited in the headlight beam between the two cars.

“Careful, sir,” Father Willie warned, as a car sped by very close to the Matador which was stopped behind the Lincoln, three feet farther into the traffic lane to protect the approaching officer from being picked off by a motorist who might be driving HUA which meant: Head Up Ass.

“Officer!” the fat man appealed to Spencer as Father Willie began to write the ticket on the hood of the radio car. “Surely I wasn’t late on the red light, and if I was I didn’t mean it.”

He offered Spencer his business card which said, “Murray Fern’s Stereo Emporium.”

Spencer Van Moot’s eyes brightened with visions of a new stereo system in his barroom at home. At wholesale, of course. He was about to suggest to his partner that Mr. Fern probably deserved some professional courtesy when he saw that it was too late. The ticket was already started, and since they were numbered it was impossible to cancel one without a report and explanation. So Spencer shrugged sadly and handed the business card back to the man.

“You gonna write me a ticket?” Murray Fern asked Father Willie.

“Yes sir,” Father Willie said, never looking up as he wrote.

“Why me? Why me?” Murray Fern demanded, reminding Father Willie of Spencer.

“You ran a red light, sir,” Father Willie said, looking up for the first time then continuing with the citation.

“But I can’t get another ticket. One more and they’ll suspend my license. Christ, gimme a break!”

Father Willie did not answer but continued to write in embarrassed silence.

“Just my luck to get stopped by a couple of pricks,” the fat man said as he paced in a tight circle. “A couple of ticket hungry heartless pricks.”

Now Spencer Van Moot no longer cared about a cut rate stereo set and looked around the rear of the car for a taillight violation that Willie could add to the ticket.

“A couple of two bit, ticket happy, stupid fucking pricks!” Murray Fern said as Father Willie continued his writing without comment.

“Sign on the line,” Spencer said coldly, speaking for the first time.

“Fuck you,” said Murray Fern. “I’m innocent and I’m not signing.”

“You’re not admitting guilt,” Father Willie said quietly. “If you don’t sign, thereby promising to appear, we’ll have to take you in and book you on the violation.”

“Prick!” the fat man said, brushing Father Willie’s ballpoint aside, taking a gold plated fountain pen from his inside coat pocket and leaning on the hood to study the ticket.

“It’s only a promise …”

“I know what the fuck it is!” the man interrupted. “What I’d like to know is why you tinhorns aren’t out catching criminals instead of harassing honest citizens, that’s what I’d like to know.”

The fat man scrawled his name across the ticket and turned his back on the two officers while Father Willie tore off the violator’s copy and handed it to him along with his driver’s license.

“I’ll see you in court!” Murray Fern sputtered as he snatched his copy and license from Father Willie’s hand. “I’ll have a lawyer. I’ll beat you. I’ll make you go to court on your day off and I’ll make you look like the dumb shit you are!”

He spun around and jammed the ticket, pen and license into his coat pocket. But when he jerked his hand out, a tiny.25 caliber automatic clattered to the pavement.

“Oh shit,” said Murray Fern bleakly as Spencer Van Moot quickly pulled and pointed his.38 at the fat man’s eyes.

“Who says there’s no God?” Father Willie grinned happily.

“I only carry a gun when I make bank deposits,” croaked Murray Fern. “I know it’s against the law but I’m a businessman! You’re not gonna put me in jail for something as petty as this?”

“Who says there’s no God?” Father Willie repeated as he drew his handcuffs.

By the time the two policemen obtained the booking approval and ran a record check on Murray Fern who had three drunk driving arrests, but no other criminal record, the fat man had threatened every officer at Wilshire Station with a lawsuit. It was 8:30 P.M. when they stood with Murray Fern in front of the booking officer, Elwood Banks, a fifty-year old black man and former partner of Spencer Van Moot.

“How’s the retail trade in Los Angeles holdin up?” he asked Spencer when they brought the prisoner inside the lockup.

“Fair to middling, Elwood,” Spencer answered. “Booking this guy for CCW.”

“Kinda old to be playin with guns, ain’t you, Dad?” commented Elwood Banks, looking up from his typewriter as he inserted a booking form.

“I’ll sue you too, you bastard,” Murray Fern warned. “Just one more smart remark and I’ll put you on the lawsuit.”

Sitting on a bench to the side of the booking cage, waiting to be fingerprinted, was a tall, once powerful derelict with a bloody wet bandage over one eye. He was forty-eight years old, looked sixty-five, and had fought with the officers who had arrested him for plain drunk. The assault on the officers made him a felon now, but his fourteen page rap sheet included fifty-four arrests for only plain drunk and vagrancy, so now he would be tried and sentenced as a misdemeanant.

Elwood Banks knew the derelict as Timothy “Clickety-clack” Reilly so called because his ill-fitting false teeth clicked together when he talked. Elwood Banks had booked Clickety-clack three times in the past, had never known him to be violent and rightly guessed that the young arresting officer, Roscoe Rules, had antagonized the derelict. His smashed nose and scarred eyes should have been a tip-off to Roscoe. Clickety-clack had once been a ranked heavyweight.

When Clickety-clack was brought inside the station by Roscoe he had merely said what he said to every arresting officer from Boston to Los Angeles: “I could whip you, Officer. In a fair fight I could whip you from here to East Fifth Street, know that?”

And most arresting officers answered something like: “Yeah, Clickety-clack, I know you could-in a fair fight. But if you try it, it ain’t gonna be a fair fight cause my partner and me and half the nightwatch are gonna work out on your gourd with our sticks and do the fandango on your kisser. But in a fair fight you’d kick my ass, that’s for sure.”

And Clickety-clack would be satisfied. But on this night when he made the same speech to Roscoe Rules, Roscoe replied, “Oh yeah, you’re gonna whip me, old man?”

And then in the corridor of Wilshire Station by the front desk in the presence of luscious Officer Reba Hadley whom he was trying to impress, Roscoe Rules took off his hat, slammed it on the desk, stood on the balls of his feet in front of the hulking derelict, put on his black gloves dramatically, both fists on his hips and said, “You think you can whip my ass, you wrinkled wart? You stinking tub a puke. Think you can whip me in a fair fight, huh?”

And Clickety-clack just said, “Yeah.” And from a corner of his all but destroyed brain, he found a memory, a rhythm, an instinct and sent a picture left hook whistling through the air. Roscoe Rules woke up three minutes later in the lap of luscious Officer Reba Hadley who said to him, “You dumb shit.”

Clickety-clack Reilly was of course buried by five of six blue uniforms and ended up with a badly cut lip and three more stitches in his eyes which made no difference at all to that caved in, monstrous face.

But now he sat, calm and secure and happy in the jail of Elwood Banks who knew exactly how to pacify him, thereby eliminating the possibility of further problems for himself.

“You okay Mister Reilly?” he asked when Spencer and Father Willie entered the jail with Murray Fern. “Mind if I book this prisoner for these officers so they can get back out on the street?”

“No, Officer, I don’t mind,” the derelict smiled painfully to the black jailor. He looked as though he would love to hear it again, that word applied to him so seldom in his bitter lonely life.

“Thanks a lot, Mister Reilly” Elwood Banks said. “We’ll just be a minute.”

“Glad to hear you quit eatin in those greasy spoons down on Jefferson,” Elwood Banks said to Spencer without even looking at Murray Fern. Then to Father Willie, “Once we was eatin in this soul kitchen and we caught a momma cockroach and three babies crawlin on his plate. Spencer just told them to fry it. It was free.”

“My tastes’ve changed since those days,” Spencer remarked.

“I knew you wasn’t the soul food type at heart, Spencer,” Elwood Banks said. Then he turned to Murray Fern and said, “Name?”

“Go to hell,” the arrestee answered.

“Man, your face is red as a bucket a blood,” Elwood Banks said. “Calm down, make it easy on yourself.”

“I’m including you in the lawsuit,” said Murray Fern.

“You’re sure lucky you got these easygoin officers here,” Elwood Banks said. “You was busted by an officer named Roscoe Rules he’d a been up side your head long ago. They’d a needed a sewing machine to put in the stitches.”

“I demand an attorney.”

“After you’re booked you can call one,” said Elwood Banks.

“I demand an MD. I’m on medication for a serious allergy.”

“Ain’t none here,” Elwood Banks said. “Boys can take you to the hospital if you want, right now before they book you.”

“That’ll take too long. I’m bailing out of here at once.”

“Then why do you want a doctor?”

“Because I do. I demand an MD be brought here.”

“Well there ain’t none here.”

“Then I demand an RN.”

“You keep this shit up and you’re gonna get an RIN,” the black jailor informed him.

“What’s that?” asked Murray Fern.

“A rap in the nuts. Now gimme your full name and address.”

“I refuse to answer.”

“That does it,” Elwood Banks said, his lip curling as he came out from behind the counter. “I usually search after booking but I’m gonna make an exception. Strip down.”

“What?” Murray Fern asked nervously “What are you gonna do?”

“Nothin. If you do like I say.” Elwood Banks wore crisp jail khakis, his LAPD badge was highly polished, his feet were spread as he stood before the fat white man whose courage and insolence were in direct proportion to what was on his body and in his pockets. Or as Elwood Banks often put it, “Strip em down and show em what they are: nothin!”

“You want me to take off all my clothes?” Murray Fern asked, looking from one policeman to another as Elwood Banks reached roughly into his pockets, removing his wallet, keys, handkerchief, cigarettes and chewing gum.

“Turn em inside out,” Elwood Banks said, and Murray Fern obeyed, trying to beat the jailor to the pockets, fearing he would rip them.

“Satisfied?” Murray Fern asked, when everything including his Patek Philippe wristwatch was on the counter.

“No way baby” said Elwood Banks. “Get them fancy threads off that chubby body and on the counter. I mean strip and do it now!”

Thirty seconds later, Murray Fern stood before the three policemen wearing only ninety dollar boots of imported Swiss leather, knee length blue silk socks, and silk boxer shorts dotted with tiny hearts.

“Satisfied?” he asked again, but now his authoritative baritone was a tenuous rasp and his eyes darted past the men to the corridor outside.

“I said strip, damnit!” Elwood Banks ordered. “Now get them boots and britches off before I rip em off!”

In a moment Murray Fern stood utterly naked before them, turning his body to one side and another, his composure breaking to pieces before their eyes, the rolls of textured fat shaking as he squirmed and wriggled with nowhere to hide.

“Turn around and bend over and spread your cheeks, Murray” Elwood Banks said, for the first time using the fat man’s name.

“Bend over?”

“Bend over and show me that round brown,” Elwood Banks said. “I gotta see if you’re hiding a machine gun in there.”

When Murray Fern timidly did as he was told Elwood Banks said, “Humph, my kid’s basset hound got better makins than that. Okay boy lift your feet up one at a time and show me the bottoms.”

Murray Fern obeyed quickly and quietly.

When he was finished, Elwood Banks said, “Okay, Murray now turn around and face me and open your mouth and lift up your balls. We don’t want you ratholin twenty bucks in some little crease down there. You can’t be no better off than Mr. Reilly when we lock you in the tank together.”

As Murray Fern opened his mouth for inspection he unconsciously held his hands over his shriveled penis, which was lost in the hair and layers of overhanging fat.

Elwood Banks then delivered the coup de grace. “Okay Murray now take your hands away and skin your wee wee back. I once knew a bookie kept bettin markers hid under his foreskin.”

When the search and booking were finished, Murray Fern was docile, tamed by the jailor who knew that this soft wealthy white man could be subdued as easily as a black pimp could be mastered by the threat to book his flash money as evidence. As easily as fighting derelict could be pacified simply by calling him “sir” and “mister.” Elwood Banks had never set foot in a college classroom, but life had made him a psychologist.

“Wanna use the phone now, Murray?” Elwood Banks asked when he finished the fingerprinting and offered Murray Fern a cigarette.

“Yes sir,” said Murray Fern, who was ever so grateful to the black jailor for giving him his silk underwear with the little hearts, a cigarette and a dime for a phone call.

After booking Murray Fern, Spencer longed to get up to Wilshire Boulevard and eat liver pâté and poached turbot with sautéed cucumbers. But Father Willie made the mistake of clearing on the radio and they were given a call at once. “Seven-A-Thirty-three, Seven-Adam-Thirty-three, see the woman, Eleventh and Ardmore, possible DB.”

“A dead body at eleven fifteen! Goddamnit, Padre, how many times I told you about picking up that frigging mike and clearing?”

“I know, Spencer, I know,” Willie answered.

“You’re too goddamn conscientious!”

“I know.”

“Wait’ll you been on the job awhile. You think the sergeants care we bust our balls? You think that cunt Lieutenant Finque cares?”

“I know, Spencer, I know.”

“Christ, I got a headache already. All that jawing from that fat prick, Murray Fern. My head aches and I’m sick to my stomach.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t get my vichyssoise tonight, for chrissake.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t get my veau à la crème.”

“There’s nothing I can do …”

“And I had my heart set on maybe some Coquilles St. Jacques Parisienne!” Spencer cried.

“Is that the one with scallops, garlic and herbs?”

“No that’s Provençale. This is the one with scallops and mushrooms.”

“In a white wine sauce?”

“Yeah.”

“I like that one.”

“And I had my heart set on some artichoke hearts and truffles!” Spencer continued. “Oh God!”

“I’m really awful sorry, Spencer,” Father Willie said.

“When you started working with me you thought all menus were printed on the wall. I trained you!” reminded Spencer Van Moot.

“I know, Spencer, I know.”

“And this is the thanks I get. All because you’re so goddamn gung ho and have to pick up the mike and clear. Now I gotta smell a dead body instead of a soufflé au chocolat! Oh God!”

“I’ll make it up to you, Spencer,” promised Father Willie, wondering when he was going to learn to act like a veteran.

A wizened crone in a black dress and dirty sweat-socks was drinking beer on the porch of a two story frame house just south of the corner. She waved as Spencer flashed their spotlight around, hoping not to find the caller.

Spencer lagged behind disgustedly as they parked, and gathered up his flashlight and hat slowly He always put the hat on while looking in the rearview mirror so as not to disturb the hairstyle.

“Yes, ma’am?” Father Willie turned his light on the porch steps as the old woman drained the can without getting out of her rocking chair. She steamed like dank mulching weeds.

“Think my tenant’s dead in the basement,” the old woman grinned in triumph.

“What makes you think… uh, oh,” said Spencer as he got to the top step of the porch and smelled the tenant who made them forget the old woman’s putrescence.

“When did you discover him?” Father Willie asked, as Spencer sneered, thinking he would have to endure this instead of peach Melba.

“Ain’t seen him in about three days. Thought he moved out without paying the rent. Sort of discovered him, you might say, about an hour ago when the wind started stirring things around.”

Spencer sighed and nodded and led Father Willie through the musty hallway of the boardinghouse which was partitioned off to accommodate seven single men. They found the basement door slightly ajar.

“Wonder if that witch is drinking beer or bat milk?” Spencer remarked.

“He’s down there all right,” Father Willie said, almost retching as they tried the stairs.

Then Spencer found the light switch and led Father Willie down the ancient wooden stairway where next to a gravity-heat furnace they found the tenant hanging from the ceiling joists, his knees almost dragging the ground.

“Kee-rist!” Spencer said, forgetting the overpowering smell for a moment.

The neck of the hanging man was almost ten inches long and the dragging legs formed a bridge for a column of ants which trooped up his legs to his face and ears and nose where they nested and fed with a velvety spider. And there were wounds on the man’s neck which Father Willie realized were rat bites after he saw the mounds of droppings on the floor beneath the hanging man.

“Wonder how long he’s been hanging around here?” Spencer quipped to his little partner who had a handkerchief pressed to his nose.

“He probably reached the end of his rope,” Spencer said, but Father Willie didn’t hear Spencer’s gags.

Willie Wright had not seen that many dead men in his three year police career and he was struck by the youth of this man and by the swollen hands darkened by draining blood and by the gray face which looked as if it belonged in a wax cabinet. And though the elongated neck shocked him, because he did not dream it could happen like this, he was almost shocked because for the first time in twenty-four years Father Willie Wright realized something. He looked at that one dull eye open and truly believed that he would join the waxen hanging man. That they were brothers going somewhere. Or nowhere.

It was just a young man consciously coming to a basic truth for the first time. But Father Willie, not knowing the source of his fear, became very frightened by the hunk of fat in his belly and had a hard time keeping Spencer Van Moot from noticing.

This was the night that Father Willie Wright encouraged the others to go to choir practice. It was the first time Father Willie had been the prime mover.

And later that very night, perhaps because of the hanging man, Father Willie Wright was to become a beloved MacArthur Park choirboy for what he did to put that hoity toity bitch, Officer Reba Hadley in her place.

There were two Officer Hadleys, no relation, in Wilshire Division: Phillip Hadley, a policeman on the daywatch, and Reba Hadley, the policewoman on the nightwatch. So as to know which Hadley one was talking about, the other officers referred to them as Balls Hadley and No-Balls Hadley.

No-Balls Hadley was on the nightwatch desk. She had been in the department two years, had an M.A. in Business Administration from UCLA, and believed that the brass of the department was discriminating against women by not promoting them past the rank of sergeant. And by humiliating women in forcing them to undergo the same police training as the men. She felt it was degrading and ludicrous that women in patrol assignments had to wear short hair and a man’s uniform complete to the trousers and hat, obviously an attempt by the brass to discourage those women who had been forced on them. Of course she was right.

She also vociferously proclaimed that it took little or no brains or administrative ability to wrestle a pukey drunk into a radio car, to chase and subdue a burglar in an alley or to drive a high speed chase after some joyriding bubblegummer. She was again right.

No-Balls Hadley, who was sometimes called Dickless Tracy was also right when she declared fearlessly at a policewomen’s meeting attended by chauvinist spies for Commander Moss that he, as well as most high ranking officers of the department, had little or no street experience and had advanced quickly through the ranks because they could pass exams, not because they were street cops.

So No-Balls Hadley was considered a rabble-rouser and troublemaker by those high ranking members of the Los Angeles Police Department who believed that women had some value in rape cases, juvenile investigations and public relations. But otherwise should keep their big fat insecure libber mouths shut because they were probably bull dykes at heart and were out to steal men’s jobs. No-Balls Hadley knew that the brass was not about to give up those jobs since they had kissed so many asses to get them.

In short, No-Balls Hadley was intelligent, articulate, courageous and correct most of the time. She was utterly feminine, with long shapely legs, tapering fingers, honey colored bobbed hair, naturally jutting young breasts. She was also discriminating in the men she dated, preferring professional men of breeding and affluence, thus dashing the hopes of every policeman on the Wilshire nightwatch. For this reason she was considered an insufferable bitch and it took the person who loved her more than anyone on earth to put her in her place.

It happened after work at 2:00 A.M. on the night Father Willie found the brother in the basement. Father Willie was dozing drunkenly at choir practice in MacArthur Park when Spencer Van Moot grabbed the little man by the jaws.

“Leave me alone, Spencer,” Willie squeaked while his partner held him by the chin, saying, “Get up, Padre. Goddamnit, wake up!”

“The hanging man!” Father Willie cried in confusion as the earth heaved. “The hanging man!”

“Never mind the hanging man,” Spencer said. “Bloomguard and Niles just showed up. They been at a party at Sergeant Yanov’s apartment. We’re all going over there.”

“No, no,” Father Willie moaned, and tried to lie back down on his blanket but Spencer wouldn’t have it.

Father Willie was the last choirboy to arise. The others were already gunning their car motors, turning on lights, driving toward the apartment near Fourth and Bronson where the bachelor sergeant resided. Though Yanov wisely declined choir practice invitations, he occasionally threw an impromptu party of his own.

“Come on, Padre,” Spencer said, dragging the little man to his feet, careful not to get any of the duck slime from Willie’s checkered bermuda shorts on his fifty-five dollar tie dyed jeans with the needlepoint patches which he had bought at a police discount from a men’s store on Beverly Boulevard. “Father Willie, listen! No-Balls Hadley’s there!”

And Father Willie’s swollen eyelids cracked apart. The little man shook his thin wheat-colored hair out of his eyes, shot a hopeful grin at his partner and took his arm as Spencer led him to the car on Parkview Street just south of Wilshire.

“You sobering up?” Spencer asked as he drove them in Father Willie’s station wagon, a five year old Dodge with a “God Is Love” bumper sticker on front and back.

“Yes,” said Father Willie who was getting drunker with each bump and rumble, catching fire with a consuming passionate gut wrenching love for No-Balls Hadley whom he never discussed while sober.

He had succeeded in driving away his sweet obsessive fantasies except for those infrequent moments when his Jehovah’s Witness wife would consent to a five minute straight lay without too much annoying foreplay. At those times it was not the plump little Witness he was mounting, but Officer Reba Hadley No-Balls Hadley of the splendid breasts, elegant legs and caustic tongue who never so much as glanced at little Father Willie Wright when he passed the desk and screwed up enough courage to say “Good afternoon” or “Good evening” or “The desk pretty busy tonight?”

She would sometimes mumble a perfunctory reply when not busy with a ringing phone or routine report which she felt beneath her to write in the first place. But once, as she leaned on the counter chatting into the telephone, dressed in the tailored blue long sleeved blouse and fitted skirt of a desk officer, instead of a man’s uniform like a female patrol officer, she asked Father Willie if he would mind getting her a soft drink from the machine because she had three crime reports going and couldn’t leave the phone.

Father Willie Wright dropped his pocket change all over the floor in his haste to get the coins in the machine and was careful not to spill a single drop as he set it before No-Balls Hadley as reverently as any real priest ever offered a chalice at the altar.

No-Balls Hadley said into the phone, “Look, Madge, we have to have the nerve to walk into the chief’s office and say what we think. Of course he hates our guts but he’s afraid of us now. We’ve got the media with us. Damn it, Madge, what’ve we got to lose? You think I want to spend a career standing at this desk writing bike reports and making inane small talk to a bunch of semiliterate slobs?”

One of the semiliterate slobs of whom she spoke stood shyly across the counter, the large gap in his front teeth bared to No-Balls Hadley who had forgotten he was there until she saw the dime still on the counter in front of her.

“Just a minute, Madge,” she said testily into the mouthpiece, then held her hand over it and said, “Officer…”

“Wright,” Father Willie said. “Willie Wright’s my name!”

“Yes, of course,” she said impatiently “You think I don’t know every man on the nightwatch? I’ve only been chained to this desk six months. I ought to know.”

“Oh sure,” said Father Willie, who was so plain, so small, so unassuming that she could never remember his name.

“Listen, Wright, did you want something?”

“Oh no,” Father Willie said to the tall girl while his mad impetuous young heart longed to say, “Oh yes! Oh yes, Reba! Oh yes!”

He had never called her “Reba,” never once in the six months she had been in Wilshire Division after being transferred from Parker Center where she tried to stage a policewomen’s work slowdown.

“Well, what do you want then, Wright? How about taking your dime and excusing me? I have this important call.”

“Sure, Officer Hadley.” Father Willie reddened and turned awkwardly.

“Just a minute, Wright. Take your dime for the drink.”

“Oh no,” Willie mumbled. “It’s my pleasure. Honestly I…”

“Take the dime,” said No-Balls Hadley, her eyes narrowing as she momentarily forgot the phone she held pressed in her hands.

“Really it’s my…”

“Look, buster,” No-Balls Hadley said, “I pay my own way just like every officer in this station. I don’t need you to buy my Bubble-up. Now you take this dime!”

Father Willie snatched the dime in his sweaty hand, scurried down the steps to the parking lot, got in the radio car and roared out onto Venice Boulevard.

“What’s the matter with you?” Spencer had asked, seeing Father Willie’s brick red face.

“Nothing. Nothing.”

Father Willie had vowed to forget No-Balls Hadley but found to his shame and dismay that she was even more desirable.

When Spencer and Father Willie arrived at the party at Sergeant Yanov’s apartment, Willie had not been thinking of his previous unsuccessful encounter with No-Balls Hadley. His gin ravaged brain would not admit those warnings and fears which keep most men from achieving celebrity.

When Father Willie Wright set foot in that raucous smoke filled steamy apartment he was roaring drunk. He squirmed past sweaty bodies which danced wall to wall in the suffocating rooms. The party spilled out onto the balcony and even extended to the pool where at least a dozen clerks from Wilshire and Rampart and Hollywood stations swam bikini clad while goatish policemen swam naked until the apartment house manager threatened to call the police-the ones with clothes on. The men then swam in their underwear or trousers until the manager scurried back inside then stripped again.

Father Willie’s protuberant blue eyes were red and raw by the time he bumped his way through the crowd. The smoke was making him slightly sick and defeated when he heard it coming from the bedroom. Her voice!

“Listen, Sheila,” she was saying to Officer Sheila Franklin, a personable brunette who worked Juvenile at Central, “I want to leave right this minute and I don’t care if you are worried about Nick Yanov’s feelings. Damn it, he should control these stupid disgusting drunks if he expects people to stay at the party. Of course I got out of the pool! I’m not staying there while these pea brained chest beaters swim around nude! I’m not interested in Sergeant Nick Yanov or any of these creeps and I only came here because you…”

And as Father Willie strained to hear the voice of his secret love, Francis Tanaguchi abruptly changed the tape from Elton John to The Carpenters because he had finally managed to get a dance with Ida Keely a cute communications operator with eyes like a deer. He had a blue veiner even before the song began.

Lookin back on how it was in years

gone by and the

good times that I had

Makes today seem rather sad

so much has changed.

Officer Sheila Franklin sighed, stood and made her way out of the cluttered bedroom where most of the living room furniture had been pushed to make room for the dancers. She stopped before opening the door and said, “All right, Reba, I’ve asked you to be sociable and stay a little while because you know how I feel about Nick Yanov. But if you have to go …”

“I can call a cab. You stay.”

“Damn it, Reba, I brought you here. I’ll take you back to your car. But you know something? It’s not a rough party. They’re just dancing and…”

“I was practically mauled in the swimming pool!”

“One drunk grabbed your ass. Come on, Reba, you’re a cop too, for God’s sake. They’re just a little drunk.”

“I’ll call a cab.”

“No, no, no, I’ll tell Nick we’re leaving. Go ahead and change.”

And then as Father Willie ducked into the bathroom the partially opened bedroom door swung open and Sheila Franklin, still wearing her wet bikini under a blue terry cloth robe, crossed the hallway and went out a side door which opened onto a terrace where Sergeant Nick Yanov sat playing nickel and dime poker with five other policemen.

It was songs of love that I would sing to

them

And I’d memorize each word.

Those old melodies still sound so good to me

As they melt the years away.

No-Balls Hadley still sat where Sheila Franklin had left her. On a large glass coffee table. In her wet bathing suit. A short robe she had borrowed from Nick Yanov covered her sleek flesh as Father Willie Wright quietly pushed open the door behind her.

The sound of No-Balls Hadley’s voice. The heart searing voice of Karen Carpenter. The unbearable nostalgia of his high school days. Twelve ounces of gin fermenting in his young bloodstream. Father Willie Wright had very little to do with what happened next. Seldom has a legend been born more spontaneously.

All my best memories come back clearly

to me,

Some can even make me cry-just like be-

fore.

It’s yesterday once more.

First, Father Willie tried to formulate a perfect sentence: something tender, loving, endearing but he could not. He leaned against the wall, unseen behind No-Balls Hadley Breathing became labored. Nostrils flared. Bulging eyes rolled back in unbearable ecstasy and passion. Like Byron on the Acropolis.

Ev’ry sha-la-la-la, ev’ry wo-oh-wo-oh still

shines

Ev’ry shing-a-ling-ling that they’re startin’ to

sing so fine.

He knew instinctively that this was his moment. His life had led him here. Behind her where she sat perched on the glass table, pissed off at her friend Sheila Franklin and these swinish policemen and men in general. And no man could have stopped what happened next when, still wearing the short robe, she slipped off her bikini bottom and kicked it against the wall in a wet and angry plop.

The coffee table was suddenly cold on the bare buttocks of No-Balls Hadley and she tried to tuck the robe under her as she thought again of that fat hairy ugly pig, Spermwhale Whalen, and how he had tried to dive under the water and grab her by the ass. As she sat fuming on the glass coffee table, Father Willie Wright knew he was not worthy to touch this exquisite golden girl who had filled his young life with torment and guilt.

Ev’ry sha-la-la-la, ev’ry wo-oh-wo-oh still

shines

Ev’ry shing-a-ling-ling that they’re startin’ to

sing so fine…

Father Willie Wright found himself on his knees crawling across the red carpet. Without willing it he was on his back worming forward under the glass table.

Then No-Balls Hadley thought she heard something. A sound, wet and sticky. But with the noise in the living room she dismissed it and smoldered and waited for her friend, determined not even to go in the other room to get her clothes. She would let Sheila bring them to her. She wouldn’t risk an encounter with another drunken cop.

She heard the sound again. Louder. A smacking sound, close but somehow distant. Then she heard it directly beneath her! She uncrossed her legs and spread them and looked down in horror at the white and bloodless nose and lips of Father Willie Wright pressed against the underside of the glass table, smearing the glass directly beneath her bare bottom with wet and loving kisses while his blue eyes crossed and bulged from the meticulous maddening scrutiny of the golden twat of his beloved.

No-Balls Hadley screamed. She shrieked in consummate disgust as Father Willie Wright, unaware that she was gone from the glass, still slurped tenderly and vaguely wondered what someone was yelling about.

No-Balls Hadley screamed. And screamed.

Before the first three policemen had burst through the door Father Willie realized that something was wrong, his face pressed like a fish against the smeary wet glass, eyes popping. Then Father Willie understood that he was discovered.

“God love ya!” Father Willie whispered reverently just before No-Balls Hadley picked up a huge ceramic lamp and smashed it down on the tempered glass while all hell broke loose around the confused and troubled choirboy chaplain.

Then someone pulled him out from under the table to save him while No-Balls Hadley grabbed a three iron from the golf bag of Sergeant Nick Yanov and began breaking chunks from the glass. Father Willie went skidding across the floor, Spencer Van Moot dragging him by the heels.

Someone wrestled the three iron from No-Balls Hadley who yelled, “You filthy disgusting obscene little motherfucker! I’ll kill you!”

She tore a picture from the wall and threw it crashing through the bedroom window to the terrace outside where it thudded against the side of the head of a poker player, sending him to the emergency ward for five stitches.

No-Balls Hadley, minus her robe which had been pulled away by a policeman trying to restrain her, clad only in a green bikini top, began beating Father Willie Wright back against the sliding closet door and kicking him in the soft belly.

Then she was sitting on top of Father Willie, pummeling him with both fists as he covered his little face with both arms saying, “But I love you, Officer Hadley. Don’t you see?”

Finally Sergeant Nick Yanov, one of the few sober policemen at the party, overpowered the spitting kicking cursing policewoman and dragged her still naked into the other bedroom where Officer Sheila Franklin got her in a wristlock until she fell exhausted, blurting what Father Willie had done.

As the bleeding bewildered Father Willie Wright was being carried to his car by Spencer Van Moot and Harold Bloomguard, he turned his battered face to Harold Bloomguard and said, “What’d I do wrong, Harold? What’d I do?”

“I’ll tell you what you did, Padre! You put that hoity-toity bitch No-Balls Hadley in her place, is all!” Harold Bloomguard cried proudly as they carried Father Willie down the sidewalk. “You just became a Legend in Your Own Time!”

From that day on, in choirboy folklore, the episode of No-Balls Hadley became known as The Night the Padre Tried to Eat Pressed Ham Through the Wrapper.