The Choirboys (41 page)

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 swigging 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 til 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 shithouse 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 cock-sucker 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 head-hunter. 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 Twogood 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.