The New Centurions Page 7

  “Here, sir,” said Gus, and then cursed himself for saying “sir.” He was out of the academy now. “Sirs” were reserved for lieutenants and higher.

  “We have three new officers with us,” said the pipe-smoking sergeant. “Glad to have you men. I’m Sergeant Bridget and this ruddy Irishman on my right is Sergeant O’Toole. Looks just like the big Irish cop you see in all the old B movies, doesn’t he?”

  Sergeant O’Toole grinned broadly and nodded to the new officers.

  “Before we read the crimes, I want to talk about the supervisor’s meeting today,” said Sergeant Bridget as he thumbed through one of the manila folders.

  Gus gazed around the room at the several maps of University Division which were covered with multicolored pins that he thought must signify certain crimes or arrests. Soon he would know all the little things and he would be one of them. Or would he be one of them? His forehead and armpits began to perspire and he thought, I will not think that. It’s self-defeating and neurotic to think like that. I’m just as good as any of them. I was tops in my class in physical training. What right do I have to degrade myself. I promised myself I’d stop doing that.

  “One thing the captain talked about at the supervisor’s meeting was the time and mileage check,” said Bridget. “He wanted us to remind you guys to broadcast your time and mileage every time you transport a female in a police car—for any reason. Some bitch in Newton Division beefed a policeman last week. Says he took her in a park and tried to lay her. It was easy to prove she lied because the policeman gave his mileage to Communications at ten minutes past eleven when he left her pad and he gave his mileage again at eleven twenty-three when he arrived at the Main Jail. His mileage and the time check proved he couldn’t have driven her up in Elysian Park like she claimed.”

  “Hey Sarge,” said a lean swarthy policeman near the front. “If the Newton Street policeman who she accused is Harry Ferndale, she’s probably telling the truth. He’s so horny he’d plow a dead alligator or even a live one if somebody’d hold the tail.”

  “Damn it, Leoni,” grinned Sergeant Bridget as the others chuckled, “we got some new men here tonight. You roll call pop-offs ought to be trying to set some kind of example, at least on their first night. This is serious shit I’m reading. The next thing the captain wanted us to bring up is that some Seventy-seventh Street officer in traffic court was asked by the defendant’s lawyer what drew his attention to the defendant’s vehicle to cite it for an illegal turn, and the officer said because the defendant was driving with his arm around a well-known Negro prostitute.”

  The roll call room burst into laughter and Bridget held up a hand to quiet them. “I know that’s funny and all that, but number one, you can prejudice a case by implying that you were trying to suppress prostitution, not enforce traffic laws. And number two, this little remark got back to the guy’s old lady and he’s beefing the policeman. An investigation started already.”

  “Is it true?” asked Matthews.

  “Yeah, he was with a whore I guess.”

  “Then let the asshole beef,” said Matthews, and Gus realized that they used “asshole” as much here in the divisions as the instructors did in the academy and he guessed it was the favorite epithet of policemen, at least Los Angeles policemen.

  “Anyway, the captain says no more of it,” Bridget continued, “and another thing the old man says is that you guys are not at any time to push cars with your police vehicle. Snider on the day watch was giving a poor stranded motorist a push and he jumped the bumper and busted the guy’s taillights and dented his deck lid and the prick is threatening to sue the city if his car isn’t fixed. So no more pushing.”

  “How about on the freeway, or when a stalled car has a street bottled up?” asked Leoni.

  “Okay, you and I know there are exceptions to everything in this business, but in almost all cases no pushing, okay?”

  “Has the captain ever done police work out in the street?” asked Matthews. “I bet he had some cushy office job since he’s been on the Department.”

  “Let’s not get personal, Mike,” smiled Bridget. “The next thing is these preliminary investigations in burglary and robbery cases. Now, you guys aren’t detectives, but you aren’t mere report writers either. You’re supposed to conduct a preliminary investigation out there, not just fill in a bunch of blanks on a crime report.” Bridget paused and lit the long-stemmed pipe he had been toying with. “We all know that we seldom get good latent prints from a gun because of the broken surface, but Jesus Christ, a couple weeks ago an officer of this division didn’t bother worrying about prints on a gun a suspect dropped at the scene of a liquor store robbery! And the dicks had a damned good suspect in custody the next day but the dumb ass liquor store owner was some idiot who claimed he was new in the business in this part of town and he couldn’t tell Negroes apart. There wouldn’t have been any case at all because the officer handled the suspect’s gun and ruined any prints there might have been, except for one thing—it was an automatic. Lucky for the officer, because he might’ve got a couple days suspension for screwing up the case like that.”

  “Were the prints on the clip?” asked Lafitte.

  “No, the officer screwed those up when he took the clip out, but there were prints on the cartridges. They got part of the friction ridges on the center portion of the suspect’s right thumb on several of the shells where he’d pushed them in the clip. The officer claimed the liquor store owner had handled the gun first so the officer decided all possibility of getting prints was destroyed. I’d like to know how the hell he knew that. It doesn’t matter who handles the gun, you should still treat it like it’s printable and notify the latent prints specialists.”

  “Tell them about the rags,” said Sergeant O’Toole without looking up.

  “Oh yeah. In another job recently, an officer had to be reminded by a sergeant at the scene to book the rags the suspect used to bind the victim. And the suspect had brought the rags with him! Christ, they could have laundry marks or they could be matched up with other rags that the dicks might later find in the suspect’s pad or on some other job. I know you guys know most of this shit, but some of you are getting awful careless. Okay, that’s all the bitching I have for you, I guess. Any questions on the supervisor’s meeting?”

  “Yeah, you ever talk about the good things we do?” asked Matthews.

  “Glad you asked that, Mike,” said Sergeant Bridget, his teeth clenched on the black pipe stem. “As a matter of fact the lieutenant wrote you a little commendation for the hot roller you got the other night. Come on up and sign it.”

  “In eighteen years I guess I got a hundred of these things,” grumbled Matthews, striding heavy-footed to the front of the room, “but I still get the same goddamn skinny paycheck every two weeks.”

  “You’re getting almost six bills a month, Mike. Quit your kicking,” said Bridget, then turning to the others said, “Mike went in pursuit and brought down a hot car driven by a damn good burglar and he likes a little ‘at-a-boy’ once in a while just like the rest of us, despite his bitching. You new men are going to find out that if you have a yen for lots of thanks and praise, you picked the wrong profession. Want to read the crimes, William, me boy?” he said to Sergeant O’Toole.

  “Lots of crimes in the division last night, but not too many good descriptions,” said O’Toole with a trace of a New York accent. “Got one happy moment on the crime sheet though. Cornelius Arps, the Western Avenue pimp, got cut by one of his whores and he EX-pired at 3:00 A.M. in General Hospital.”

  A loud cheer went up in the room. It startled Gus.

  “Which whore did it?” shouted Leoni.

  “One calls herself Tammy Randolph. Anybody know her?”

  “She worked usually around Twenty-first and Western,” said Kilvinsky, and Gus turned for another appraisal of his partner who looked more like a doctor than what he imagined a policeman should look like. The older ones, he noticed, looked hard around the
mouth and their eyes seemed to watch things not just look at things, but to watch as though they were waiting for something, but that might be his imagination, he thought.

  “How’d she do him?” asked Lafitte.

  “You’ll never believe this,” said O’Toole, “but the old canoe maker at the autopsy today claimed that she punctured the aorta with a three and a half inch blade! She hit him so hard in the side with this little pocket knife that it severed a rib and punctured the aorta. Now how could a broad do that?”

  “You never saw Tammy Randolph,” said Kilvinsky quietly. “A hundred and ninety pounds of fighting whore. She’s the one that beat hell out of the vice officer last summer, remember?”

  “Oh, is that the same bitch?” asked Bridget. “Well, she atoned for it by juking Cornelius Arps.”

  “Why didn’t you get the lieutenant to write her an at-a-boy like he did me?” asked Matthews as the men laughed.

  “Here’s a suspect wanted for attempted murder and two-eleven,” said O’Toole. “Name is Calvin Tubbs, male, Negro, born 6-12-35, five ten, one eighty-five, black hair, brown eyes, medium complexion, wears his hair marcelled, full moustache, drives a 1959 Ford convertible, white over maroon, license John Victor David one seven three. Hangs out here in University at Normandie and Adams, and at Western and Adams. Robbed a bread truck driver and shot him for the hell of it. They made him on six other jobs—all bread trucks. He’s bought and paid for, you can render that asshole.”

  “Really raping those bread trucks and buses, ain’t they?” said Matthews.

  “You know it,” said O’Toole, glancing over the bifocals. “For the benefit of you new men, we should tell you it’s not safe to ride a bus in this part of town. Armed bandits rob a bus almost every day and sometimes rob the passengers too. So if you have a flat tire on your way to work, call a cab. And the bread truck drivers or anybody else that’s a street vendor gets hit regular, too. I know one bread truck driver that was held up twenty-one times in one year.”

  “That guy’s a professional victim,” said Leoni.

  “He can probably run a show-up better than the robbery dicks,” said Matthews.

  Gus glanced over at the two Negro officers who sat together near the front, but they laughed when the others did and showed no sign of discomfort. Gus knew that all the “down heres” referred to the Negro divisions and he wondered if all the cracks about the crimes affected them personally. He decided they must be used to it.

  “Had kind of an interesting homicide the other night,” O’Toole continued in his monotone. “Family beef. Some dude told his old lady she was a bum lay and she shot him twice and he fell off the porch and broke his leg and she ran inside, got a kitchen knife and came back and started cutting where the jagged bone stuck out. Almost got the leg all the way off by the time the first radio car got there. They tell me they couldn’t even take a regular blood test. There was no blood left in the guy’s veins. Had to take it from the spleen.”

  “Wonder if she was a bum lay,” said Leoni.

  “By the way,” said Sergeant Bridget, “any of you guys know an old lady named Alice Hockington? Lives on Twenty-eighth near Hoover?”

  No one answered and Sergeant Bridget said, “She called last night and said a car came by on a prowler call last week. Who was it?”

  “Why do you want to know?” asked a bass voice from the last table.

  “Goddamn suspicious cops,” Bridget said, shaking his head. “Well screw you guys then. I was just going to tell you the old girl died and left ten thousand dollars to the nice policemen who chased a prowler away. Now, who wants to cop out?”

  “That was me, Sarge,” said Leoni.

  “Bullshit,” said Matthews, “that was me and Cavanaugh.”

  The others laughed and Bridget said, “Anyway, the old girl called last night. She didn’t really die, but she’s thinking about it. She said she wanted that handsome tall young policeman with the black moustache (that sounds like you, Lafitte) to come by every afternoon and check for the evening newspaper. If it’s still on her porch at five o’clock it means she’s dead and she wants you to bust the door in if that happens. Because of her dog, she said.”

  “She afraid he’ll starve or she afraid he won’t starve?” asked Lafitte.

  “The sympathy of these guys really is touching,” said Bridget.

  “Can I go on with the crimes or am I boring you guys,” said O’Toole. “Attempt rape, last night, 11:10 P.M., three-six-nine West Thirty-seventh Place. Suspect awoke victim by placing hand over her mouth, said, ‘Don’t move. I love you and I want to prove it.’ Fondled victim’s private parts while he held a two-inch blue steel revolver in the air for her to see. Suspect wore a blue suit . . .”

  “Bluesuit?” asked Lafitte. “Sounds like a policeman.”

  “Suspect wore blue suit and light-colored shirt,” O’Toole continued. “Was male, Negro, twenty-eight to thirty, six foot two, hundred ninety, black, brown, medium complexion.”

  “Sounds exactly like Gladstone. I think we can solve this one,” Lafitte said.

  “Victim screamed and suspect jumped out window and was seen getting into a late model yellow vehicle parked on Hoover.”

  “What kind of car you got, Gladstone?” asked Lafitte and the big Negro policeman turned and grinned, “She wouldn’t have screamed if it’d been me.”

  “The hell she wouldn’t,” said Matthews. “I seen Glad in the academy showers one time. That would be assault with a deadly weapon.”

  “Assault with a friendly weapon,” said Gladstone.

  “Let’s go to work,” said Sergeant Bridget, and Gus was glad there was no inspection because he didn’t think his buttons would pass and he wondered how often they had inspections here in the divisions. Not very often, he guessed, from the uniforms he saw around him, which were certainly not up to academy standards. He guessed things would be relaxed out here. Soon, he would be relaxed too. He would be part of it.

  Gus stood with his notebook a few steps from Kilvinsky and smiled when Kilvinsky turned around.

  “Gus Plebesly,” said Gus, shaking Kilvinsky’s wide, smooth hand.

  “Andy’s the first name,” said Kilvinsky looking down at Gus with an easy grin. Gus guessed he might be six feet four.

  “Guess you’re stuck with me tonight,” said Gus.

  “All month. And I don’t mind.”

  “Whatever you say is okay with me.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “Oh, yes sir.”

  “You don’t have to sir me,” Kilvinsky laughed. “My gray hair only means that I’ve been around a long time. We’re partners. You have a notebook?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, you keep books for the first week or so. After you learn to take a report and get to know the streets a little bit, I’ll let you drive. All new policemen love to drive.”

  “Anything. Anything is okay with me.”

  “Guess I’m ready, Gus. Let’s go downstairs,” said Kilvinsky, and they walked side by side through the double doors and down the turning stairway of old University station.

  “See those pictures, partner?” said Kilvinsky pointing to the glass-covered portraits of University policemen who had been killed on duty. “These guys aren’t heroes. Those guys just screwed up and they’re dead. Pretty soon you’ll get comfortable and relaxed out there, just like the rest of us. But don’t get too comfortable. Remember the guys in the pictures.”

  “I don’t feel like I’ll ever get comfortable,” Gus said.

  “You will, partner. You will,” said Kilvinsky. “Let’s find our black and white and go to work.”

  The inadequate parking lot was teeming with blue uniforms as the night watch relieved the day watch at 3:45 P.M. The sun was still very hot and ties could remain off until later in the evening. Gus wondered at the heavy long-sleeved blue uniforms. His arms were sweating and the wool was harsh.

  “I’m not used to wearing such heavy clothes in the heat,�
�� he smiled to Kilvinsky, as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “You’ll get used to it,” said Kilvinsky, sitting carefully on the sun-heated vinyl seat and releasing the seat lock to slide back and make room for his long legs.

  Gus placed the new hot sheet in the holder and wrote 3-A-99 on the notebook pad so that he would not forget who they were. That seemed odd, he thought. He was now 3-A-99. He felt his heart race and he knew he was more excited than he should be. He hoped it was just that—excitement. There was nothing yet to fear.

  “The passenger officer handles the radio, Gus.”

  “Okay.”

  “You won’t hear our calls at first. That radio will just be an incoherent mess of conversation for a while. In a week or so you’ll start to hear our calls.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ready for a night of romance, intrigue and adventure on the streets of the asphalt jungle?” asked Kilvinsky dramatically.

  “Sure,” Gus smiled.

  “Okay, kid,” Kilvinsky laughed. “You a little thrilled?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s the way you should be.”

  As Kilvinsky drove from the station parking lot he turned west on Jefferson and Gus flipped down the visor and squinted into the sun. The radio car smelled faintly of vomit.

  “Want a tour of the division?” asked Kilvinsky.

  “Sure.”

  “Almost all the citizens here are Negroes. Some whites. Some Mexicans. Mostly Negroes. Lots of crime when you have lots of Negroes. We work Ninety-nine. Our area is all black. Close to Newton. Ours are eastside Negroes. When they got some money they move west of Figueroa and Vermont and maybe west of Western. Then they call themselves westside Negroes and expect to be treated differently. I treat everyone the same, white or black. I’m civil to all people, courteous to none. I think courtesy implies servility. Policemen don’t have to be servile or apologize to anyone for doing their job. This is a philosophy lesson I throw in free to every rookie I break in. Old-timers like me love to hear themselves talk. You’ll get used to radio car philosophers.”