The New Centurions Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 1970 by Joseph Wambaugh

  Excerpt from Hollywood Crows copyright © 2008 by Joseph Wambaugh

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

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  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: April 2008

  ISBN: 978-0-446-53902-9

  Contents

  ACCLAIM FOR JOSEPH WAMBAUGH’S NOVELS

  ALSO BY JOSEPH WAMBAUGH

  DEDICATION

  WHOEVER FIGHTS MONSTERS

  EARLY SUMMER 1960

  1: THE RUNNER

  2: STRESS

  3: THE SCHOLAR

  AUGUST 1960

  4: HUERO

  5: THE CENTURIONS

  6: THE SWAMPER

  AUGUST 1961

  7: GUERRA!

  8: CLASSROOMS

  9: SPADE BIT

  AUGUST 1962

  10: THE LOTUS EATERS

  11: THE VETERAN

  12: ENEMA

  AUGUST 1963

  13: THE MADONNA

  14: THE OPERATOR

  15: CONCEPTION

  AUGUST 1964

  16: THE SAINT

  17: KIDDY COPS

  18: THE HUCKSTER

  AUGUST 1965

  19: THE QUEUE

  20: THE CHASE

  21: THE GOLDEN KNIGHT

  22: REUNION

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  ACCLAIM FOR JOSEPH WAMBAUGH’S NOVELS

  THE NEW CENTURIONS

  “Do you like cops? Read THE NEW CENTURIONS. Do you hate cops? Read THE NEW CENTURIONS . . . This novel performs one of the essential and enduring functions the novel—and the novel alone—can perform. It takes us into the hearts and minds, into the nerves, and into the guts of other beings.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Wambaugh’s great and enviable accomplishment is that he has made his police come alive as human beings.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “A rattling good narrative of life on a big city police force, the gutsy chronicle of how a cop is made.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Wambaugh puts the readers down there on the firing line with the cops—giving it to them like it really is with his stomach-twisting, fascinating novel.”

  —Associated Press

  “You’ll never forget it!”

  —Pittsburgh Press

  THE BLUE KNIGHT

  “Fascinating . . . a cop’s-eye view of police brutality . . . [with] courage and compassion.”

  —New York Times

  “Marvelous . . . realistic, frightening, touching in its humanity.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “An extraordinary piece of craftsmanship.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “A bang-up job . . . Wambaugh has captured the excitement, terror, pity, and occasional tedium of police work.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Hard-hitting, tough-talking, utterly realistic.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Beyond the adventure, beyond the revelation of daily life, there is another kind of suspense; the gradual and surprising tale of a human being emerging from a stereotype.”

  —Los Angeles Times Calendar

  HOLLYWOOD STATION

  “Exhilarating . . . blisteringly funny . . . colorful . . . a pleasure . . . It has all the authority, outrage, compassion, and humor of the great early novels.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Astonishing, wildly funny, poignant, and horrifying . . . hands down the best crime fiction I’ve read this year.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Highly entertaining . . . outrageous and hilarious . . . all of Wambaugh’s trademark jet-black humor is intact.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Cops just want to have fun! As you turn the pages of Wambaugh’s newest offering on the subject of the foibles and ferocities of the LAPD, you are going to have quite a good time yourself.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Sharp characterization, fine plotting, and irreverent humor that mark Joseph Wambaugh’s best work.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Hollywood Station is Mr. Wambaugh’s comeback novel, and it is more than impressive; it is memorable, a flawless ride through the streets of L.A. with a crew of cops as colorful as the bad guys they pursue . . . if this dark, funny, poignant, and realistic stunner of a novel doesn’t get an Edgar nomination, we will be witnesses to the crime of the year.”

  —Otto Penzler, New York Sun

  “Offers all the characteristic Wambaugh magic: unlikable and conflicted characters we grow to love; a perfect mix of good guys and bad; and small vignettes that tie together seamlessly by the end.”

  —Atlantic Monthly

  “Even after a ten-year break, Wambaugh can still write an enlightening and entertaining novel.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “A deeply felt paean to those who protect and serve that also proves that there’s one veteran of the LAPD crime scene who can still run with the best of them.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “The freedom to imagine allows a writer to create truer pictures than do portraits of real people and factual events—at least when the writer is a wise and masterful storyteller like Joseph Wambaugh.”

  —San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Shows Wambaugh in perfect form.”

  —Seattle Times

  “[Wambaugh’s] is the rare police procedural less fixated on the central crime or the criminals . . . than on, well, police procedure: the day-to-day lives of cops.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Required reading . . . It’s clear that the author of The Onion Field has lost none of his talent for keen observation.”

  —New York Post

  “[Wambaugh’s] voice is subtler; more ironic than it used to be. Enough art has been added to the mixture (magically, without taking away any of the savage humor) to justify the major awards that have been fired at Wambaugh’s head recently by his Mystery Writers of America peers.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Reading Wambaugh’s latest may not be the most fun you’ve ever had, but it will come close.”

  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “An excellent ear for dialogue and a telling eye for detail . . . Hollywood Station continues the award-winning author’s longtime exploration of the Los Angeles Police Department . . . a master at work in the milieu he knows better than almost anyone else.”

  —Baltimore Sun

  “A triumphant return . . . high-voltage suspense drives the tale, and as always Wambaugh’s characters, language, and war stories exude authenticity . . . Terrific.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  ALSO BY JOSEPH WAMBAUGH

  FICTION

  The Blue Knight

  The Choirboys

  The Black Marble

  The Glitter Dome

  The Delta Star

  The Secrets of Harry Bright

  The Golden Orange

  Fugitive Nights

&nb
sp; Finnegan’s Week

  Floaters

  Hollywood Station

  NONFICTION

  The Onion Field

  Lines and Shadows

  Echoes in the Darkness

  The Blooding

  Fire Lover

  For Dee

  And of course

  For all the centurions

  WHOEVER FIGHTS MONSTERS

  AN APPRECIATION OF JOSEPH WAMBAUGH

  THERE IS A BEDROCK TRUTH that resides in the heart of this book. And that is that the best crime stories are not about how cops work on cases. They are about how cases work on cops. They are not about how the cops work the streets. They are about how the streets work the cops. Procedure is window dressing. Character is king.

  This is a truth we learn when we read the work of Joseph Wambaugh. No assessment of this novel or the other work of this policeman turned writer can conclude that he is anything other than one of the great innovators of the crime novel. Wambaugh brought the truth with him when he left the police department for the publishing house.

  A century after its first inception the crime novel had moved from the hands of Edgar Allan Poe to the practitioners of the private eye novel. More often than not, these tomes told the story of the loner detective who works outside of the system he distrusts and even despises, who must overcome obstacles that often happen to be the corrupted police themselves. It fell to Wambaugh, with his stark and gritty realism, to take the story inside the system to the police station and the patrol car where it truly belonged. To tell the stories of the men who did the real work and risked their lives and their sanity to do it. And to explore a different kind of corruption—the premature cynicism and tarnished nobility of the cop who has looked too often and too long into humanity’s dark abyss.

  Wambaugh used the crime novel and the lives of his character cops as the lens with which he examined society. Within the ranks of his police officers he explored the great socio-economic divide of our cities, racism, alcoholism and many other facets of the rapidly changing world. He used cops to make sense of the chaos. And he did it by simply telling their stories. The episodic narrative of this book and those that followed became his signature. And along the way he gave us looks into the lives of characters like Serge Duran, Roy Fehler, and Bumper Morgan, full blooded and flawed, and placed them on the sunswept streets of Los Angeles. His first two books, The New Centurions and The Blue Knight, are perfect bookends that offer the full scope of police life and Wambaugh’s power. The former traced three officers through the police academy and their early years on the job. The latter traced a veteran officer’s last three days on the job. No one had ever read books like these before. They were the mark of a true innovator.

  It is important to note that Wambaugh wrote his first books while still on the job. The detective sergeant did the real work by day while pounding out the made-up stuff at night on a portable Royal typewriter. His family had to sleep through the clatter. The results were uncontested as some of the most vivid police prose ever put on paper. Wambaugh opened up a world to the reader, a world no one outside of those who did the real work had ever seen before. Cop novelist Evan Hunter called it right on the money in the New York Times when he said, “Mr. Wambaugh is, in fact, a writer of genuine power, style, wit, and originality who has chosen to write about police in particular as a means of expressing his views on society in general.”

  A hundred years ago the philosopher Friedrich Nietz-sche warned us that whoever fights monsters should take care not to become a monster himself. He reminded us that when we stare into the abyss that the abyss stares right back into us. So then these are the poles that hold up the Wambaugh tent. These are the battle lines that every cop faces and Wambaugh so intimately delineates in this book and others. He writes about how cops shield themselves, medicate themselves, and distract themselves from the view of the abyss. Think of it in terms of a physics lesson. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So then if you go into darkness then darkness goes into you. The question is how much darkness has gotten inside and what can be done about it. How can you pull yourself back from the edge of the abyss. In this book, and all of his books, Joseph Wambaugh tells us the answers.

  —Michael Connelly

  EARLY SUMMER 1960

  1

  THE RUNNER

  LYING PROSTRATE, SERGE DURAN gaped at Augustus Plebesly who was racing inexorably around the track. That’s a ridiculous name, thought Serge—Augustus Plebesly. It’s a ridiculous name for a puny runt who can run like a goddamn antelope.

  Plebesly ran abreast of, and was matching strides with, the feared P.T. instructor, Officer Randolph. If Randolph took up the challenge he’d never stop. Twenty laps. Twenty-five. Until there was nothing left but forty-nine sweat suit–covered corpses and forty-nine puddles of puke. Serge had already vomited once and knew another was coming up.

  “Get up, Duran!” a voice thundered from above.

  Serge’s eyes focused on the massive blur standing over him.

  “Get up! Get up!” roared Officer Randolph, who had halted the wretched weary group of cadets.

  Serge staggered to his feet and limped after his classmates as Officer Randolph ran ahead to catch Plebesly. Porfirio Rodriguez dropped back and patted Serge on the shoulder. “Don’t give up, Sergio,” Rodriguez panted. “Stay with ’em, man.”

  Serge ignored him and lurched forward in anguish. That’s just like a Texas Chicano, he thought. Afraid I’ll disgrace him in front of the gabachos. If I wasn’t a Mexican he’d let me lay until the crabgrass was growing out my ears.

  If he could only remember how many laps they had run. Twenty was their record before today, and today was hot, ninety-five degrees at least. And sultry. It was only their fourth week in the police academy. They weren’t in shape yet. Randolph wouldn’t dare run them more than twenty laps today. Serge leaned forward and concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other.

  After another half-lap the burning in his chest was no longer bearable. He tasted something strange and choked in panic; he was going to faint. But luckily, Roy Fehler picked that exact moment to fall on his face, causing the collapse of eight other police cadets. Serge gave silent thanks to Fehler who was bleeding from the nose. The class had lost its momentum and a minor mutiny occurred as one cadet after another dropped to his knees and retched. Only Plebesly and a few others remained standing.

  “You want to be Los Angeles policemen!” shouted Randolph. “You aren’t fit to wash police cars! And I guarantee you one thing, if you aren’t on your feet in five seconds, you’ll never ride in one!”

  One by one the sullen cadets got to their feet and soon all were standing except Fehler who was unsuccessfully trying to stop the nosebleed by lying on his back, his handsome face tilted up to the white sun. Fehler’s pale crew cut was streaked with dust and blood. Officer Randolph strode over to him.

  “Okay, Fehler, go take a shower and report to the sergeant. We’ll get you to Central Receiving Hospital for an X ray.”

  Serge glanced fearfully at Plebesly who was doing some knee bends to keep loose. Oh no, Serge thought; look tired, Plebesly! Be human! You stupid ass, you’ll antagonize Randolph!

  Serge saw Officer Randolph regarding Plebesly, but the instructor only said, “Okay, you weaklings. That’s enough running for today. Get on your back and we’ll do some sit-ups.”

  With relief the class began the less painful session of calisthenics and self-defense. Serge wished he wasn’t so big. He’d like to get paired up with Plebesly so he could crush the little bastard when they were practicing the police holds.

  After several minutes of sit-ups, leg-ups, and push-ups, Randolph shouted, “Okay, onesies on twosies! Let’s go!”

  The class formed a circle and Serge was again teamed with Andrews, the man who marched next to him in formation. Andrews was big, even bigger than Serge, and infinitely harder and stronger. Like Plebesly, Andrews seemed bent on doing his very best, and he
had almost choked Serge into unconsciousness the day before when they were practicing the bar strangle. When Serge recovered, he blindly grabbed Andrews by the shirt front and whispered a violent threat that he couldn’t clearly remember when his rage subsided. To his surprise, Andrews apologized, a frightened look on the broad flat face as he realized that Serge had been hurt. He apologized three times that same day and beamed when Serge finally assured him there were no hard feelings. He’s just an overgrown Plebesly, Serge thought. These dedicated types are all alike. They’re so damn serious you can’t hate them like you should.

  “Okay, switch around,” shouted Randolph. “Twosies on onesies this time.”

  Each man changed with his partner. This time Andrews played the role of suspect and it was Serge’s job to control him.

  “Okay, let’s try the come-along again,” shouted Randolph. “And do it right, this time. Ready? One!”

  Serge took Andrews’ wide hand at the count of one but realized that the come-along hold had vanished in the intellectual darkness that fifteen or more laps temporarily brought about.

  “Two!” shouted Randolph.

  “Is this the come-along, Andrews?” whispered Serge, as he saw Randolph helping another cadet who was even more confused.

  Andrews responded by twisting his own hand into the come-along position and wincing so that Randolph would think that Serge had him writhing in agony, hence, a “proper” come-along. When Randolph passed he nodded in satisfaction at the pain Serge was inflicting.

  “I’m not hurting you, am I?” Serge whispered.

  “No, I’m okay,” smiled Andrews, baring his large gapped teeth.

  You just can’t hate these serious ones, Serge thought, and looked around the sweating ring of gray-clad cadets for Plebesly. You had to admire the control the squirt had over his slim little body. On their first physical qualification test Plebesly had done twenty-five perfect chins, a hundred sit-ups in eighty-five seconds, and threatened to break the academy record for running the obstacle course. It was that which Serge feared most. The obstacle course with the dreaded wall that defeated him at first glance.

  It was inexplicable that he should fear that wall. He was an athlete, at least he had been, six years ago at Chino High School. He had lettered in football three years, a lineman, but quick, and well-coordinated for his size. And his size was inexplicable, six feet three, large-boned, slightly freckled, with light brown hair and eyes—so that it was a family joke that he could not possibly be a Mexican boy, at least not of the Duran family who were especially small and dark—and if his mother had not been from the old country and not disposed to off-color chistes they might have teased her with remarks about the blond gabacho giant who owned the small grocery store where for years she bought harina and maíz for the tortillas which she made by hand. His mother had never put store-bought tortillas on the family table. And suddenly he wondered why he was thinking about his mother now, and what good it did to ever think of the dead.