Joseph Wambaugh - The Choirboys

Then Sam jumped up and burst through the door behind Spermwhale Whalen. Harold Bloomguard started up, thought better of it and sat back down.

Nick Yanov called the roll and dismissed the watch without another word.

There was speculation and many rumors in the parking lot about Baxter Slate’s suicide, and several members of the Wilshire nightwatch spent a lingering fearful evening handling calls, cruising, smoking silently, trying to avoid thinking of that most terminal of all policeman’s diseases. Wondering how one catches it and how one avoids it.

None of the choirboys took the initiative to do police work that night. It was as though a monotonous routine would be somehow comforting, reassuring. The only thing out of the ordinary done by a nightwatch radio car was that 7-A-29 drove to West Los Angeles Police Station, the area in which Baxter Slate had resided because he loved Westwood Village and the cultural activities at UCLA and the theater which showed foreign films and a small unpretentious French restaurant with wonderful wines.

“I’d like to see the homicide team. Whoever’s handling Officer Slate’s suicide,” Sam Niles said to the lone detective in the squad room.

“All gone home, Officer. Can you come back tomorrow?”

The detective wasn’t much older than Sam and like Sam he had a moustache. His suit coat was thrown over a chair. He wore an uncomfortable looking shoulder holster.

“I’d like to see the death report on Baxter Slate,” Sam Niles said.

“I can’t go into homicide’s cases. Come back tomorrow. You can talk to …”

“Please,” said Sam Niles. “I only want to see the report. Please.”

And the detective was about to refuse, but he looked at Harold Bloomguard who turned and walked out of the office, and he looked at Sam Niles who did not walk away. He looked at Sam’s face and asked, “Was he a friend?”

“Please let me see the report. I have to see it. I don’t know why.”

“Have a seat,” the detective said and walked to a filing cabinet drawer marked “Suicides -1974” and pulled out a manila folder, removed the pictures in the file which Sam Niles definitely did not want to see and gave the file to the choirboy.

Sam read the perfunctory death report which listed the landlady as the person discovering the body. The person hearing the shot was a neighbor, Mrs. Flynn. He saw that Baxter’s mother who was in Hawaii had not been contacted as yet. His married sister in San Diego was the nearest relative notified. The speckled pup which Baxter had been caring for since he found her on the street outside Wilshire Station was taken to the animal shelter where she would soon be as dead as her master. The narrative told him nothing except that Baxter had fired one shot into his mouth at 11:00 A.M. that morning on a sunny smogless delightful day.

In the file was a note to the milkman which Baxter had written asking that two quarts of skim milk be left. The handwriting was scratchy, halting, not the sure flowing stroke of Baxter Slate. No more than that horrible grimace of consummate humiliation in Gina Summers’ apartment had been a Baxter Slate grin.

The report said that several books were scattered around the table where the body was found. Baxter Slate had gone to his classics at the end. Disjointedly. Desperately. The detective had torn several pages from the clothbound texts. He had thought the pages marked by that same spidery crawl might prove enlightening.

One marked passage from Socrates read: “No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”

Another from Euripides said: “When good men die their goodness does not perish, but lives though they are gone. As for the bad, all that was theirs dies and is buried with them.”

Baxter had marked a passage from Cicero, the only one not specifically mentioning good and evil and death. It made Sam Niles moan aloud which startled the nightwatch detective. It said: “He removes the greatest ornament of friendship who takes away from it respect.”

Sam removed his glasses and cleaned them before reading the last page. The page was powdery from dried blood. Sam’s hands were shaking so badly the nightwatch detective was alarmed. Sam read it and left the squad room without thanking the detective for his help. The passage was underlined. It simply said: “What is it, Catullus? Why do you not make haste to die?”

THE MOANING MAN

At the end of that tour of duty on the day Baxter Slate died, the choirboys were more anxious for a choir practice than they had ever been. When Father Willie asked quietly, “Are we still going to have choir practice?” Spencer Van Moot said angrily, “Of course we’re having choir practice. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Never had the choirboys drunk so obsessively in MacArthur Park. They were snarling at each other and guzzling sullenly all except Roscoe who had gotten a station call to transfer an overflow of five drunks from Wilshire to Central Jail and had not yet shown up at choir practice by 1:00 A.M.

Before they could be too thankful for the absence of Roscoe a blue panel truck appeared from nowhere, grinding and rumbling across the grass in MacArthur Park with its lights out, clanking to a stop under the trees in the darkest shadows.

“I was hopin I could get drunk painlessly,” Calvin Potts said as Roscoe Rules, still in uniform, jumped out of the drunk wagon and came trotting across the grass.

“Hey!” yelled Roscoe cheerfully , which was enough to make everyone mad to begin with, “I was on my way back to the station but I couldn’t wait to tell you!”

“Tell us what, Roscoe?” Spermwhale grumbled. He was lying on his blanket, a can of beer on his huge stomach, looking up at the moonless, smog-filled summer sky which even hid Baxter Slate’s great star.

“Down at Central Jail after I transported the drunks I ran into a guy I know. Works homicide downtown. Guess what they found when the coroner posted Baxter Slate’s body? Whip marks! All over his back! Whip marks! They think he musta been a pervert. I always said he was weird, but whip marks!”

“What? What did you say?” Sam Niles said as he sat in the darkness on the cool grass and cut his hands when he suddenly tore an empty beer can in half.

“Well I liked him as much as the next guy” said Roscoe, “but kee-rist, whip marks on his back! The dicks think he was some kind a freak or pervert. You know how faggy he always talked…”

Then Roscoe Rules was even more astonished than Gina Summers had been at how quickly Sam Niles could move. Roscoe was hit twice with each of Sam’s fists before he fell heavily on his back. Sam lifted him by the front of his uniform and hit him so hard the third time that Sam’s glasses flew farther than the chip from Roscoe’s tooth.

Spermwhale Whalen overpowered Sam and several others restrained Roscoe who tried to kneedrop Sam as he lay pinned to the ground by Spermwhale, and the park was alive with shouting choirboys and quacking ducks, and four park fairies came running to the sounds of fighting.

Father Willie Wright staggered drunkenly over to examine the body of Roscoe Rules who fell in the bushes just as a park fairy said, “A policeman! What happened to him?”

“Stand back, give him room to breath,” commanded Father Willie. “Lemme work on him.”

“Are you a doctor?” asked the second fairy.

“I’m a priest,” answered Father Willie as Spermwhale roared the fairies away.

“People like you killed him!” Sam Niles yelled as Spermwhale Whalen enveloped him in his enormous arms and pinned him to the ground saying, “Calm down, kid. Calm down.”

“I’ll kill you , you scrote!” screamed the revived Roscoe Rules as three choirboys held him and took away his gun.