Joseph Wambaugh - The Choirboys

“What’s happening, Sam?” called Harold Bloomguard from the hall outside where Gina Summers was demanding to call her lawyer.

Yet she made no move to the phone nor to the closet where her robes hung with the whips and boots and exotic underwear. Harold Bloomguard went on explaining the arrest to her while she stood nude, hands on her hips.

“I thought we didn’t work vice anymore, Sam,” Baxter said finally with a quivering smile which was nothing, nothing like a Baxter Slate smile. He went to the bed and sat, his wounded back still turned to his friend.

“Why?” Sam Niles asked. “Why?”

“I don’t know for sure, Sam.”

“Does she know you’re a cop?”

“No, of course not.”

Sam Niles lit a cigarette and sighed and turned from the sight of Baxter’s tortured flesh and said, “I’ll tell her it was a mistake. She’ll be damn glad not to be hitting the slammer so she won’t ask any questions of me.”

“And Harold?”

“I’ll tell Harold the guy in the room was a deputy from the sheriff’s department and I decided to give him a break. I can take care of Harold. You tell that fucking whore you bought me off for fifty bucks. Then everybody’s happy.”

When Sam stood and turned to go out the door, Baxter Slate called desperately, “Sam!”

“What is it, Baxter?” Sam answered without looking at his friend.

“It’s … it’s just that I was afraid to park my own car near here. I took a cab from Pico and La Brea. And I gave her every dime. Well…,” and then he tried another twisted smile which was so unlike Baxter Slate’s easy grin it made Sam Niles want to turn and run. “Could you maybe drop Harold at the station and think of some excuse to come back? I could use the ride. I’m too weak to walk, Sam.”

Then Sam dug in his pockets and found seven dollars and some change. “Here!” he said, throwing the money on the bed. “Catch a cab!”

“You… you couldn’t… I wouldn’t mind waiting if you could drive me, Sam. I could wait out front…. I’d really appreciate … I could maybe meet you after you get off work and talk… explain…”

“Goddamnit, I gave you my last dollar for a cab! What the fuck do you want from me?”

“Nothing, Sam. Nothing. Thanks for the money” said Baxter Slate.

And as Sam Niles jerked the bedroom door open he heard Baxter Slate say, “It’s not evil, Sam. I haven’t enough dignity to be evil.”

Then Sam was stalking down the hall to the living room where Gina Summers was sidling up to Harold Bloomguard and trying to convince him that his partner could not possibly have heard what he thought he heard and why doesn’t everyone just forget the whole thing?

“Come on, let’s go, Harold,” Sam said.

“Go?”

“Yeah, go. We made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Goddamnit, let’s go! We made a mistake!”

As Sam started for the front door with his bewildered partner trailing behind, Gina Summers then made the mistake of saying, “Well I coulda told you that. You’ll be lucky if I don’t sue over this. You’ll be lucky…”

She was astonished by how quickly Sam Niles moved as he whirled and grabbed her by the throat and pinched off the carotid artery with his powerful right hand. Gina Summers came up off the floor, naked, clinging to his wrist with both hands, fighting for breath, gaping at Sam Niles’ unblinking iron gray eyes, slightly magnified by his steel rimmed glasses.

“If I ever hear you complain about anything,” he whispered, “I’ll be back here. And if you’re not here I’ll be where you are, baby. You groove on handing out pain? Well maybe you don’t know what it is to feel pain . I’ll show you. Can you dig it?”

And as Gina Summers nodded and gripped his wrist and gurgled, Sam Niles released her throat and she fell to her knees, gasping. The two policemen burst out the door quicker than they had come in.

Sam Niles literally hurtled down those six flights, leaving Harold half a landing behind. He hated Harold Bloomguard like he never had before. As he hated Baxter Slate. They were weaklings. They were bleeders. They were sick, wretched, disgusting.

Sam Niles got dizzy as he flew down those stairs and swung past the landings holding the handrails. Hating them. They bleed. They need. Like the Moaning Man as he lay there bleeding and needing past the grave. Hands reaching out. They never let you alone. Reaching past death. Until someone touched them. He despised them all. He hated them as he had hated his weak sick disgusting parents. Sam Niles had never needed anyone. Except for one minute, sixty seconds in his life.

He stopped on the last landing and waited for the puffing little man who had seen him need that one time. And he feared that if Harold had ever mentioned that moment in the suffocating blackness of that cave, he would now, at this moment, draw his revolver and shoot him dead on the staircase. But Harold had never talked about it. Not even to Sam. Sam hoped that Harold had somehow forgotten it in his own terrible fear. Sometimes Sam Niles even believed that it never had happened.

“What’s the hurry, Sam?” Harold stammered, trying to catch his breath before the last flight of steps. Never once suggesting they use the elevator because he understood his partner better than his partner dreamed. “What’s the rush?”

“Nothing,” Sam said viciously. “There’s no rush. None at all.”

Five minutes later in the car Sam Niles shouted, “God-damnit, he was a deputy sheriff I know from court! You don’t know him. Never mind his fucking name. I wanted to give him a break. He told me he had a wife and kids and was going to a psychiatrist. I made a decision and I DON’T WANT TO EVER TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN!”

And though they never did, Harold Bloomguard scratched his neck with a penknife and blew spit bubbles not only that night but the next afternoon when Baxter Slate suddenly called off sick, saying he had the flu. Harold heard Sam Niles question Baxter’s partner Spermwhale Whalen as to whether he had heard from Baxter. Harold saw that Sam seemed troubled that Spermwhale had not.

When Baxter Slate did not come to work the Thursday of choir practice and Sam Niles was jumpy as a cat while putting on his uniform, Harold Bloomguard developed a brand new rash all over his neck and began to suspect that Gina Summers’ trick was not a deputy sheriff after all.

The choirboys were happy that Thursday afternoon in the assembly room because Sergeant Nick Yanov was conducting the rollcall alone. But Nick Yanov entered the room grimly and didn’t seem to hear a few jokes directed his way from men in the front row. Though his jaws were as dark and fierce as always from his incredibly thick whiskers which he had shaved only three hours earlier, his forehead and Baltic cheekbones were white. He was white around the eyes. His hands were unsteady when he lit a cigarette. The men quieted down. Something was very wrong with Nick Yanov.

He took a deep puff on the cigarette, sucked it into his lungs and said, “Baxter Slate’s dead. They just found him in his apartment. Shot himself. Spermwhale, you’ll be working a report car tonight. Seven-U-One is your unit. Would you like to go down now and get your car?”

The rollcall room was deathly still for a moment. No one moved or spoke as Nick Yanov waited for Spermwhale. One could hear the hum of the wall clock. Spermwhale Whalen finally said to the sergeant, “Are you sure?”

“Go on down and get your car, Spermwhale,” said Nick Yanov quietly But as shaky as Spermwhale looked when he gathered his things and walked through the door, Harold Bloomguard looked even shakier when he looked at Sam Niles who had broken out in a violent sweat and had ripped open his collar and was having trouble getting enough air.