The Choirboys (20 page)

"Got locked up last November. Jist in time for Thanksgivin. Ain't missed a Thanksgivin at Central Jail in twenny-eight years."

"You've been in jail since November?" Baxter asked as he navigated down the steep stairs gingerly, holding Clyde and the shotgun and now needing a flashlight in the gloom.

"No suh," Clyde Percy said. "This time a wunmiful thing happened to ol Clyde. I was sent to Camarilla State Hospital. The public defender say ol Clyde's crazy. An first I din't wanna go cause I likes your jail. I likes the sheriff's jail even better, no offense to you officers. He tell me, Clyde, we gonna get you sent to this crazy hospital and you gonna like it even better'n jail. So I say okay, and off I go up to Camarilla, and know what? They gives me a job up there teachin."

"Teaching?" Baxter said and stumbled with Clyde at the bottom of the stairs, dropping his riot gun and flashlight, kicking the light under, a counter in the dark.

While the two policemen got down on their knees to look for the lost flashlight, Clyde Percy picked up the riot gun helpfully and was holding it cradled in his arms like a baby when Sergeant Nick Yanov came through the front door.

"Holy shit!" yelled Nick Yanov, drawing, crouching, throwing his flashlight beam on Clyde Percy who had lifted the gun to his shoulder upside down and started eating potato chips over the prone bodies of the two policemen.

"Drop the fucking gun or I'll blow you away!" Nick Yanov screamed.

The next few minutes involved several panic stricken shouts after which Spermwhale sat the sergeant down on a display couch, gave him a cigarette and convinced him they were alive, that Baxter had unloaded the magazine when he ejected the live round, that Clyde Percy was a harmless old acquaintance of Spermwhale Whalen's and that Sergeant Yanov should remain on the couch until his legs steadied.

"Sure glad it was you, Sarge," Spermwhale Whalen said to the chesty, bristle jawed sergeant. "If it was one a them other cunt supervisors he'd a probably cut old Clyde in half and we'd a ended up with another suspension for lettin Clyde get wasted."

"Why do you do things like this to me," Nick Yanov said, drawing heavily on the cigarette as some color returned to his face.

Then the two policemen and Clyde Percy helped the weak kneed Sergeant Yanov out of the store and to his car, Clyde Percy apologizing profusely for scaring him to death.

"Where's the nearest gas station?" Sergeant Yanov asked as he got back in his black and white and threw his hat and light on the seat, running both hands through his heavy black hair "Why, you gotta take -a crap?" Spermwhale grinned.

"No, I just did! I gotta clean up!" said Nick Yanov as he fired up the radio car and roared away.

"Good fuckin sergeant," Spermwhale Whalen mused in an extremely rare moment, and then reverted to his old self. "Not like that eunuch lieutenant and that gelding captain and all the other cocksuckin sergeants on the nightwatch."

"So what's with the teaching you say you did at Camarillo?" Baxter asked when they got Clyde safely in the radio car and were on their way to jail to book him for drunk.

"I tell you, Officer," said Clyde Percy, munching toothlessly on potato chips, "it was such a fine place. They was all these kids, retarded, you know? Ain't nobody come to visit em most a the time. They gives em jobs to keep em busy, like makin these little balloon toys. You puts the balloons on the, little blow-up stems like. So they gives me the job a helpin watch over all the kids. So I does things like make sure they kin attach balloons right and that they don't fight too much and don't fall on their heads and bite their tongues and so forth like that. And then one day I made a invention. I drills holes in this board to put the stems in and then the kids kin attach three balloons at once and makes it easier to hold em. One a the bosses there says to me, 'Clyde, you jist about the best we ever have workin here.' So I tells him bout the time I save the lady in the flood and he say, 'Clyde, you kin stay here if you wants to.'"

"Why're you out then?" asked Spermwhale, driving the black and white west on Venice Boulevard.

"They say one day they jist ain't no more room, jist room for real crazy people and I ain't that crazy. So that night I start sayin I'm the President and mayor, and like that. But they say it aint no good, Clyde, we know you ain't really crazy like some folks, leastways you ain't so crazy you gonna hurt somebody. And then I thought bout hurtin one a the technicians, punchin em or somethin, but they all so nice to me I couldn't. So they put me out and here I is, back home agin."

"That's a goddamn shame," Spermwhale said angrily, turning in his seat toward Baxter. "I seen fifty dollar a trick whores, and dopers and pimps, and thieves and assholes for three generations all on welfare and we can't even afford a fuckin bed and three squares at a state hospital for Clyde. That pisses me off!"

"Think you kin do somethin to git me back there?" asked the old man, his blue lips flaked with potato chips, the left earflap of his flier's cap turned up from the scuffle with Sergeant Yanov."

"By God, if there's any justice in this miserable world, which there ain't, somebody oughtta help you. Tell you what, you plead not guilty at your arraignment tomorrow. Then I'll be in court on trial day. I'll talk to the city attorney and tell him that you're always walkin around the street threatenin everybody and sayin you're the Easter Bunny and wavin your dong at housewives and stuffin dog shit in mailboxes and settin trash fires and in general bein a bigger pain in the ass than Francis Tanaguchi."

"Francis who?"

"Oh, never mind," Spermwhale said as they parked in the station parking lot and got out of the car. "Anyways, I'm gonna tell him you're the Wilshire Division whacko and a horrible asshole and you shouldn't be put away for ninety days for drunk like you usually are because you're a dingaling. And then I'll say I think you should get a sanity hearin and shipped off to Camarillo again."

"Oh, Officer," said Clyde, and the tears welled in the old man's eyes and he even stopped eating potato chips. "Oh, I'll be crazier than you say I is, I kin stand on my head."

"No, don't go too far," Spermwhale said. "Just stare off in space and say somethin goofy every time somebody asks you somethin."

"I'll shoo skeeters that ain't there," said Clyde as they shuffled toward the steps of the station.

"Yeah, like that," Spermwhale said as they half lifted the old man up the steps.

"I'll punch a policeman right in the mouf," said Clyde.

"No, don't do that," said Spermwhale.

"A public defender?" Baxter Slate suggested.

"No, no," Spermwhale said as they opened the side door and took Clyde inside.

"A judge? How about a judge?" Baxter offered.

"No," Spermwhale said, "let's not overdo it. Just swat invisible mosquitoes or beat off at the jury or somethin."

Then Clyde Percy came to a limping halt in front of the barred jail doors and looked up at Spermwhale, and Clyde's face, dust covered, but charcoal black in places, was streaked and wet.

"I appreciates it, Officer," he said to the fat policeman. "I wants to go back to the chirruns, back to Camarilla. I appreciates what you doin for me." And then he took Spermwhale's big hand in his and wept.

"Jesus, Clyde! Okay! Okay!" Spermwhale said, pulling his hand away and looking around to see if other policemen were looking. "It's okay. You don't have to. it's gonna be all right. I don't mind bein there in court. I ain't got nothin to do anyways. Jesus, it's okay. Quit cryin, will ya?"

Spermwhale Whalen did go to the court trial of Clyde Percy, and did succeed in getting a sanity hearing for the old man. But Clyde Percy was deemed not to be a hazard to himself or others and sane enough to be released. He was released, after which he walked one mile downtown, shoplifted a short dog of wine, poured it over his head and lay down in the middle of the intersection at First and Los Angeles streets having to wait only ninety seconds until a police car heading into the police building was forced to stop, pick up the Baldwin Hills lifeguard and book him into Central Jail on a plain drunk charge. He was given ninety days in the county jail, which was better than nothing but a far cry from Camarillo State Hospital where he invented the device to help retarded children blow up balloons.

When Whaddayamean Dean broke into one of his numerous drunken crying jags at choir practice after hearing of the ultimate fate of Clyde Percy, Roscoe Rules called him a nigger lover and said the old cocksucker probably wanted to go back to Camarillo in the first place just to molest the little dummies. Spermwhale Whalen was in a foul mood after they booked Clyde Percy. The mail drop had arrived at Wilshire Station and contained an eight by ten glossy photo sent to Spermwhale by his classmate, Sergeant Harry Bragg of the police department photo lab. The picture was a mug shot of Spermwhale Whalen's eldest son, Patrick, who had died thirteen months earlier of a drug overdose. It was the only picture the boy had taken in the last two years of his life, this one when he was arrested for car theft in Van Nuys.

Spermwhale, the veteran of three failed marriages, had not seen much of the boy after adolescence, and he studied the photo carefully, appreciating the skill of Sergeant Harry Bragg who had removed the booking number and profile shot, and blown up the full face part of the double mug shot until probably only a policeman would suspect from whence it had come.

Technically it was a successful picture, artistically a dismal failure. He could detect none of the boy's considerable intelligence in the arrogant eyes and narrow mouth. The shoulder length hair was totally unfamiliar, as was a small fresh scar over the right eye. It was not the son he wanted to remember, not if he wished to keep the guilt from overtaking him.

Spermwhale was scowling and chewing a cigar to shreds when he and Baxter went back to the radio car. The night had become exceptionally black.

"What's wrong with you?" Baxter asked.

"Nothin."

"Look a little mad."

"I ain't mad. Why should I be mad? I make seventeen grand a year, don't I? Course after income tax and pension contribution and Police Relief and Police Protective League and the credit union and three wives and rent, I have about a dollar thirty cents to eat on between paydays. And I just come off a four day suspension so I gotta stop eatin for about two weeks. So what've I got to be pissed off about?"

"That it? Money?"

"Money, who needs money? Just because I been cuffed around a little bit by the heavy hand a justice? Just because I lost four days' pay? Shit, that ain't nothin. I only got three ex-wives to support, and three ex-kids. no, two ex-kids to feed. And an ex-dog and my turtle. Course the turtle's sometimes in hibernation so he don't eat too much. It's only fair that I got four days' suspension for keepin those avocados Francis gave me. But the thing bothers me. I wonder if Lieutenant Grimsley and all them IAD headhunters get a finder's fee when they nail a cop? Maybe they get a percentage of what the city saves off our paycheck when we get suspended. Ever think a that?"

"I could loan you twenty bucks till payday."

"Fuck it, I don't need money. Old Clyde gets along without it, don't he?"

"It's pretty decent what you're going to do for him." Slate said. "The way you're going to bat to get the back in the laughing academy."

"Listen, partner," Spermwhale said, and now the cigar almost eaten and he was spitting black leafy tobacco out the window of the radio car, "just because I seem to care about people once in a while, don't make no mistakes about me. Nineteen plus years a workin these streets has taught me that people are shit. They're scum. Only reason I don't treat em like Roscoe Rules or some a those black glove hotdogs is what's that do for you? Gets you fired for brutality or an ulcer or somethin. For what? The human race is no fuckin good but workin with these rotten bastards is all we got, right? It's the only game in town so you gotta play like you're still in the game. If you don't, if you drop out, you take your fuckin six inch Colt and see can you pull the trigger twice while you're eatin it. I just don't wanna off myself like so many cops do. So once in a while I do somethin that might look to you like I give a fuck about some a these scumbags. But there's nothin more rotten than people."

And the very next call of the night did nothing to change Spermwhale's mind.

"Think I'll go see my ex-wife tomorrow," Spermwhale said to Baxter who had just suggested taking code seven at the half price restaurant north of Wilshire on Western.

"Which one?" asked Baxter.

"The second ex-wife," Spermwhale said. "I like her best in some ways. She had the most balls. Took every dime I had. I like to see her once in a while and visit my ex-dog and my ex-car."

"She still give you a little?"

"Wouldn't want it. Her ass is so big she has to sit down in shifts. And she's as old as runnin water. I like them young animals like Carolina Moon. Her fat's all smooth and bouncy. I like em with enough strength to fight!"

"Gonna have to call a choir practice one of these nights," said Baxter Slate, as the Regretful Rapist was pulling a black woman out of her Ford sedan just two blocks ahead and trying to drag her off behind a large trash dumpster in the darkness.

She screamed at two men passing by who just kept walking, observing the golden rule of city dwellers: Do unto others if you want to risk getting your fucking head blown off.