The Choirboys (10 page)

"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 sweatsocks 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 most 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 Mac Arthur 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, ho," 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 chiefs 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."