Joseph Wambaugh - The Choirboys

“Shut up, Roscoe!” Spermwhale barked as Sam Niles began to weep for the first time since the spider holes. But only Spermwhale saw and he said softly, “Listen, son, Roscoe’s an asshole but he didn’t kill Baxter.”

“I’ll puncture your kidneys and rupture your spleen, Niles!” screamed the thrashing Roscoe Rules.

Now that Spermwhale was sure he could release his grip on Sam Niles he did so. Spermwhale then stood up and walked across the grass to the pile of bodies on the ground and said, “Roscoe, if you don’t get your mind together and relax, I’m gonna relax you.”

And he held up a big red fist which Roscoe Rules remembered.

After that it was only a matter of everyone dusting Roscoe’s uniform off and apologies all around except from Sam Niles who stalked off to the duck pond to sit and drink and try not to think of Baxter Slate.

Roscoe Rules rubbed his lumpy jaw and touched the broken tooth with his tongue and became appeased by everyone apologizing for Sam Niles and patting him on the shoulder and being nice which he was totally unused to. And Roscoe said, “I’m already long past end-of-watch. I’ll just have a beer before I drive the wagon back in.”

With the police drunk wagon parked on the grass in MacArthur Park under the trees, Roscoe sat there in uniform and had a beer which led to three while Sam Niles drank Scotch without mercy to his flaming throat and stomach. He relentlessly sought the intellectual oblivion which alcohol brought to Whaddayamean Dean Pratt.

At 2:00 A.M. Harold Bloomguard walked quietly up behind his brooding partner and startled him by saying, “Sam, let’s talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to talk about, Harold. Leave me alone.”

“We have to talk.”

“Look, goddamn you. You got problems? A new neurosis that’s bothering you? Eat your fucking gun. Like Baxter. But leave me alone.”

“I don’t wanna talk, Sam. I wanna listen. Please talk to me. About Baxter. About anything you want.”

But Sam Niles cursed and struggled to his knees and pushed up his drooping glasses and held up a fist bloodied by Roscoe’s teeth and said: “I don’t need you. I’ve never needed you. Or anybody. Now you get away from me. YOU LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Harold Bloomguard nodded and trudged back to his blanket, back to the others, and drank silently.

At 2:30 A.M. Spencer Van Moot said, “Hey Roscoe, don’t start on that hard stuff. You’re sitting here in uniform, case you didn’t know. And that funny blue wagon over there is a police vehicle.”

“So bust me for drunk driving,” Roscoe giggled, the pain in his jaw almost anesthetized by now. “Besides, Ora Lee and Carolina might be here soon and they ain’t never seen how good looking I am in uniform.”

“I wish he’d just walk toward Duck Island till his hat floats,” said Calvin Potts.

The choirboys drank quietly and speculated about Baxter Slate and felt the closeness of death and stole glances at Roscoe’s gun and thought how near and familiar the instrument always was to men who somehow contract this policeman’s disease. They wondered if the closeness and familiarity of the instrument had something to do with it or was it the nature of the work which Baxter always called emotionally perilous? Or was it a clutch of other things? And since they didn’t know they drank. And drank.

It was a miserable choir practice. All attempts at jokes fell flat. Harold often looked toward the duck pond where Sam was drinking himself into paralysis but did not go to him. Whaddayamean Dean got on a usual crying jag but this time he cried without respite. Spermwhale took him away from the others and put him down on his blanket and gave him a pint of bourbon.

“Spermwhale! Spermwhale!” Dean cried. “Baxter’s dead! Baxter’s dead!”

“I know, son. I know,” said Spermwhale Whalen, leaving Dean to drink alone on the grass on a gloomy night under a very black sky.

They were grateful that Ora Lee and Carolina didn’t show up that night. Finally as the moon misted over, Spermwhale looked at the glowing Roscoe Rules and said, “Roscoe, you better get that fuckin wagon back to the station. You’re gettin swacked.”

“You guys gonna be here when I come back?”

“I’m going home,” said the miserable Francis Tanaguchi.

“Gimme that fuckin Scotch,” said Calvin Potts as he raised himself up on an elbow.

“I’m going home too,” said Father Willie Wright who was sitting quietly by the trees.

Then Spencer Van Moot stood and tried to walk toward the pond but fell flat on his face.

“Jesus!” said Spermwhale as three choirboys struggled to their feet dizzily and tried to pick up their groaning comrade.

“He can’t drive home,” Father Willie said.

“Somebody drive him home,” said Spermwhale. “Padre, why don’t you drive his car to the station parking lot and one of us’ll take him home?”

But then the body of Spencer Van Moot reacted logically to the abuse being done to it. Spencer sat up and retched and vomited all over himself in enormous bilious waves as the choirboys cursed and scattered.

And that normal physical reaction sealed the fate of a human being in that park.

“Oh shit, he’s covered with puke!” Francis Tanaguchi said.

“Oh gross!” said Harold Bloomguard.

“I ain’t taking him in my car,” said Calvin Potts who strangely enough could not get drunk while thinking of the suicide of Baxter Slate.

“Okay okay” said Spermwhale. “Put him in the back of the wagon. Roscoe, you drive him to the station parking lot. Padre, you drive his car there and put him in it and let him sleep it off for a few hours. I’ll get up at six o’clock or so and go down to the station and wake him up so he can get cleaned up before anybody notices him.”

“Can’t he sleep in the wagon all night?” offered Roscoe.

“Fuck no, stupid!” said Spermwhale. “A sergeant finds him there tomorrow he’ll get racked. Do like I say.”

“Well who’s gonna put him in the wagon now? I don’t wanna touch him!”

“Goddamnit, get outta the way,” Spermwhale said. He grabbed the semiconscious Spencer by the feet and dragged him across the grass and rolled him over on his stomach and back to wipe off some of the vomit. Then he and Calvin Potts took his wrists and ankles and flipped him up to the floor of the wagon and got inside and lifted him up on the bench.

“Better put him on the floor,” Father Willie said. “He’ll fall off the way Roscoe drives.”

As Spencer Van Moot was being ministered to and as Sam Niles was finding himself too drunk to get to his feet and was searching in vain for Baxter Slate’s great star Jupiter, an eighteen year old boy was strolling toward Sam on the other side of the pond, tossing bread crumbs to the ducks, making hopeful plans about his life, how he would make a career for himself and care for his parents.

When Alexander Blaney approached the staggering figure by the pond he stopped in the shadows. He saw that it was a drunken man and he heard the voices off by the trees and saw a blue panel truck parked between the drunken man on the grass and the others. He knew it was the group of policemen again and he debated about whether to try to help the drunken one or to mind his own business. For all he knew the drunken policeman might be the one called Roscoe who raged about fags and might kneedrop him, whatever that meant.

Then Sam Niles, who did not see Alexander Blaney managed to get to his feet and swayed toward the subdued choir practice. But he made it only as far as the panel truck where he found the doors open and saw a pair of feet and a body on the floor.

“That you, Harold?” mumbled Sam as he leaned into the foul and shadowy truck and tugged on the sleeve of the snoring figure.