The Choirboys (15 page)

"Seven-X-L-Five, Seven-X-L-Five, see the woman, prowler complaint, Crescent Heights and Colgate."

"He'll drop everything to roll on that one," said Francis. "I know how his mind works. He'll figure it's a peeping tom complaint and that she might be good enough to deserve the peeping. All ahead full!"

Francis turned his hat around backward and brought the periscope out from under the seat as they glided toward Wolfgang's car.

The big German was getting out of the car, flashlight in one hand and report notebook in the other. He didn't see them as they cruised closer, their engine cut by Calvin Potts. Then Francis yelled, "Achtung! Fire one! Fire two!" Wolfgang whirled, the flashlight clattered and broke on the asphalt and the German had his clamshell holster open and was halfway into a draw when Francis Tanaguchi said, "Sssss ww w w wooooosh."

"Francis, did we get him?" Calvin asked as he switched on the engine and lights and dropped a yard and a half of smoking LAPD rubber on the asphalt. "Banzai! Banzai!" Francis giggled mysteriously. They didn't see Wolfgang until end-of-watch in the locker room when he came to Francis locker before changing and said with a tight grin, "Okay, Francis, you sunk me vunce. Vut say ve meg a truce?"

Francis only smiled inscrutably and left with Calvin to choir practice to brag to Harold Bloomguard that he was driving Wolfgang crackers. He called his U-boat the S. S. Chorizo after the spicy Mexican sausage.

The very last time Francis' boat went to sea was the night he had blood on his hands, when Wolfgang Werner was standing in front of Wilshire Police Station talking to his newest girlfriend: a big rosy lusty girl named Olga who waited, tables at a La Brea drive-in which fed the car in the area for free. "Let it go, baby," Calvin said as they pulled out of the station parking lot onto Venice Boulevard and Francis Tanaguchi leered at Olga and turned his cap around.

"Go back," Francis said grimly and pulled the periscope from under the seat.

"That dude is gonna kick your little ass and I ain't woofin."

"Go back, Calvin."

"That cat is gonna tear your head off and piss in the hole, Francis."

"You scared of him?"

"You gud-damn right."

"If you take me on one more attack I promise I'll throw away my periscope."

"Okay, but why now?"

"I'm in love with Olga. She's so big! Go back and I swear I'll never fire another torpedo."

"You swear?"

"Yes."

"You swear to Buddha?"

"Knock off that Jap stuff, goddamnit. That fuckin Lieutenant Finque made me go to another Nip luncheon today. How'd you like a shirt full of vomity squid, asshole?"

"Okay, I'm goin back. But that storm trooper is gonna burn you down."

"Let's go!" Francis said as Calvin wheeled the radio car around and headed back toward Venice Boulevard.

Wolfgang was turned away from them as they drove in from the west, this time in a fast glide and with lights on because of the westbound traffic.

"This is the last fuckin time I go to sea, Francis," Calvin warned.

"Okay, okay, now you're making me nervous," said the commander, as he sighted in, peeking up over the window ledge because the eyehole of the periscope revealed nothing but a three inch color photograph of a hairy vagina which Calvin had cut from a Playboy magazine and glued inside the plastic tube to amuse Francis.

"Steer an evasive course afterward," Francis ordered as Wolfgang turned from Olga who was dressed in the sheerest tightest hiphugging bellbottoms Francis Tanaguchi had ever seen. She was pantyless and her crotch was dark beneath the sheer yellow bells.

Francis leaned out the window, periscope extended, and aimed it not at Wolfgang but at Olga's bulging fluff.

"Ssssswwwwwooooosh," cried Francis Tanaguchi and Calvin Potts sped away, fearfully stealing a glance at the grim face of Wolfgang Werner.

That night in the locker room Wolfgang grabbed Francis by the throat without warning and said, "If you efen tink uf putting your lousy torpedo vere you pudt it tonight, I vill tvist you neg off. You vood be smart to decommission your U-boat, Francis."

Wolfgang made Francis promise by squeezing and encouraging him to bob his head. Then he left Francis gasping in front of the locker while Calvin Potts pretended to need another trip to the urinal, away from Wolfgang Werner.

When Calvin returned he said, "I think we better put the S. S. Chorizo in dry dock for good, Francis."

That last dangerous attack on the German came after the call which would awaken Francis sweating in the night with red in the crevices of his knuckles and under his nails, "Seven-A-Seventy-seven, see the woman, unknown trouble, Pico and Ogden."

"Seven-A-Seventy-seven, roger," Francis muttered and threw the hand mike on the seat. "Damn it, I'm drooling for a guacamole taco!"

"This must be it," Calvin said five minutes later and Francis looked up as Calvin hit the high beam, lighting a man and woman who stood in front of a seedy apartment house which was still located in a predominately white neighborhood, but which was experiencing a high vacancy factor because blacks were getting more numerous.

"Hope this is a quickie," Francis said as they gathered up their flashlights, hats and notebook. The smog hung over the streets and the building like airbrushed, painted smoke.

"I'm the one that called," said a woman in a quilted bathrobe, her orange hair frizzing beneath a hairnet.

A balding man with a sloppy grin sat on the steps beside her. There were six empty beer cans between them.

"What's the problem?" Francis asked, slightly uneasy over an "unknown trouble" call, which can mean anything but sometimes means only that the communications officer who took the call could not think of a convenient category in which to classify it."

"I'm the manager," said the woman, bunching the robe at the bosom as though she were not twenty years past the age when most policemen would look. "I got a tenant up there in number twelve. Name's Mrs. Stafford. She got three little kids and I shouldn't oughtta have rented to her cause we don't want no more than one kid per apartment."

"So what happened?" Calvin asked impatiently, wondering if Francis would object too strongly if he were to stop by McGoon's Saloon and have a little taste. Just maybe one little Johnnie Walker on the rocks.

"Well, see don't you think it's unusual? I hear this noise about two hours ago just when it was getting dark. Then I don't hear nothing. They go to bed awful early, her and her kids. I feel so sorry for them I loaned them an old TV. She just got here from Arkansas and ain't eligible for welfare or nothing yet so she's trying to find work as a waitress. But it's hard."

"The noise," Calvin said. "The noise."

"Yeah, so then I thought I heard screaming. Not too loud, but a scream. But kids always holler. And then, then about twenty minutes ago I see a man go out and then nothing. There ain't no lights on in there. Just nothing. I went up and knocked but nothing."

"So?"

"They're home. They didn't go out. I woulda saw them if they went out."

"So they're asleep."

"The TV's on."

"They just forgot."

"Look sir," the woman said, turning to Francis, "it's an old TV but it works good. I can hear the station. It's the same channel as I'm watching. And I peek in through the drapes and I can see the screen and it's all white and sparkly. You can't hardly make out the picture."

"What's that mean?"

"I don't know, sir." The woman turned to Calvin again. "She don't have many friends. Poor little woman stays with her kids all day and all night. Just trying to find work is only time she leaves them and then I keep an eye on them."

"Why don't you use your passkey and go on in?"

"That's the problem, I ain't got one. Last tenant didn't turn his in and I gave her my passkey. Can you just go in and see if everything's all right?"

"Don't suppose you want us to break the door down?" Calvin muttered as the two policemen started up the steps. "Can't you just slip the look like all the cops in the movies?"

"No, and I can't open a safe by listenin to the tumblers either," Calvin said as Francis reached the landing first and knocked loudly on the door of number twelve.

"I don't want you to break the door." The landlady stood at the foot of the stairs helplessly.

Francis began fiddling with the sliding window beside the front door and said, "Hold this," to Calvin, giving his tall partner the notebook. Then he pushed hard on the window with the tips of the fingers of one hand while he pried at the frame with a coin from his pocket. There was a metallic snap and the window slid to the left.

"Oughtta be a burglar, Francis," Calvin observed.

"Too respectable. I'd rather be a cop." Francis pushed back the faded draperies and lifted himself up and into the dark room, lit only from the snow filled screen of the TV set whose volume was barely audible. "Calvin!" Francis suddenly whispered.

"What is it?" His,partner instinctively grabbed his gun and stepped to the side of the window.

"Calvin!" Francis repeated, weakly this time, and Calvin Potts dropped the notebook, convinced that his partner was in danger. Calvin crouched, looked for cover, considered the distance to the steps.

"Calvin!" Francis said again, and Calvin Potts drew his gun while the landlady below shrieked and ran to her apartment to escape a gun battle.

The door opened slowly and Calvin flattened himself against the wall, adrenalin jetting. Francis stepped woodenly across the threshold.

"Calvin!" he said as softly as a child.

"What is it? What the fuck is it?" Calvin demanded, his gun pointed directly at Francis who did not seem to notice. "There's some people murdered in there!"

"Gud-damn it, Francis!" Calvin pushed his partner aside and entered the apartment, gun still drawn, flashlight sweeping the room until he found the light switch.

The first one Calvin saw was the woman. She was unbelievably thin and pale with huge eye sockets. She lay on the couch on her back, the nightgown gathered around her hips. Her legs were spread, knees up, head thrown back in agony. The classic pose of a victim raped and murdered.

The TV antenna wire was knotted around her neck and her eyes and mouth were open. The dead eyes, still clear and unclouded, stared at the top of the doorway which led to the two bedrooms. Hanging from the doorway was a blonde baby doll. The doll wore a red party dress trimmed in white. The dress had been washed many times and the painted face of the doll was chipped and worn. The doll was hanging by the neck, dangling from the doorjamb by a bathrobe sash which was taped to the jamb with adhesive tape. The tape roll was on the floor in the doorway to the bathroom.

As Calvin made a mental note to put the tape roll aside for prints, Francis startled him by walking up behind him and saying, "The kitchen!"

Calvin took two steps to his left into a tiny kitchen with a small yellow refrigerator and apartment stove. On the floor by the sink lay a sandy haired boy of seven. The telephone cord was spiraled around his neck and his face rested on a pillow as though the killer wanted him comfortable. The green velvet pillow was wet from the fluids which ran from the child's mouth while he was strangling. His pajama top was pulled up and there were two cigarette burns on his back and another on his neck. His eyes were closed, more tightly than Calvin had ever before seen in death. As though he had died crying hopelessly for his mother, his face pressed into the velvet pillow.

"The bathroom!" Francis said and Calvin nodded mechanically and followed his partner across the little room, pausing to look at the baby doll hanging in the doorway. It turned gently as Francis' hat touched the fat rubber foot when he passed.

Francis looked in the bathroom to verify what he had already seen before he opened the door for his partner. Then he looked at the pink baby doll and back to Calvin.

Calvin Potts knew for certain what he would find in the bathroom and his heart was banging in his ears when Francis switched on the light and stepped aside to let his partner see the child dangling from the bar over the shower stall.

She was the youngest, four, clad in animal cracker pajamas. She was hanging by two pair of panty hose knotted together. The coroner was to say later it probably took her longest to die. Calvin did not want to see if she had been burned. He did not want to touch her. Her eyes were open like her mother's. Her mouth was closed because the head hung forward on her chest. She turned slowly when Francis touched her foot. . "What the fuck you doin?"

"Huh?" Francis said dumbly.

"Keep your hands off them!"

"Huh?" Francis said, not knowing he had reached out and consolingly patted the tiny feet which were strapped together at the ankles with a brown belt and were pointed toes downward like a ballerina's.

"Let's go outside and get the dicks down here right now!" Calvin wiped his dripping forehead with the back of his hand. "Wait a minute! How many kids she say there was?"

"I'm not sure."

"Three, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, it was three," Francis said, sounding very sick. "The bedrooms!" Calvin switched on the light in the main bedroom which contained a double bed where the woman slept with the youngest child. He was breathing heavily as he looked in the closet and behind a box of old toys.