"You're a fuck for the city," I said, and flipped his necktie up into his face.
It had started to rain by the time I got to Wacky's apartment. His landlady, intimidated by my uniform, let me in.
The living room was in a shambles. I found out why—Night Train had been left alone there since Wacky's death, and had torn the sofa and chairs apart looking for food. I found him in the backyard. The resourceful Labrador had chewed his way through a screen door and was now lying under a large eucalyptus tree munching on the carcass of a cat.
He came to me when I called him. "Wacky's dead, Train," I said. "He shuffled off this mortal coil, but don't worry, you can live with me if you don't shit in the house." Night Train dropped the dead cat and nuzzled my legs.
I went back into the apartment. I found Wacky's poetry bin: three large metal filing cabinets. Wacky was messy about everything and his apartment was completely disordered, but his poetry was immaculately kept—filed, dated, and numbered.
I carried his life's work out to my car and locked it in the trunk, then went back inside and found his golf clubs in the heavy leather bag he loved so much and brought them out, too.
Night Train hopped into the front seat with me, giving me quizzical looks. I found some raucous jazz on the radio and turned up the volume. Night Train wagged his tail happily as I drove him to his new home.
I found a safe, dry spot in my hall closet for the three filing cabinets. I cooked Night Train some hamburger and sat down to write a short biography of Wacky, one to send out to publishers with samples of his poetry.
I wrote: "Herbert Lawton Walker was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1918. In 1942 he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1943, while serving in the Pacific theater. In 1946 he moved to Los Angeles, California, and in 1947 joined the Los Angeles Police Department. He was shot and killed by a holdup man on February 18, 1951. He wrote poetry, unique in its humorous preoccupation with death, from 1939 to the time of his own death."
I sat back and thought: I could cull the files and look for what I thought to be Wacky's best. I could also look for poetry authorities and pay them to go through the filing cabinets and select what they thought were his best works, then send them off to publishers and poetry journals. Maybe Big Sid had some friends in the publishing racket he could fix me up with. If all else failed, I could have Wacky's complete opus printed up and distributed by a vanity press. It had to be done.
But it didn't seem enough. I needed to do penance. Then it hit me. I got my golf bag out of the bedroom and hauled it, along with Wacky's, out to my car.
Still wearing my uniform, I drove all the way out to East L.A. and stopped at the edge of the concrete sewage sluice known affectionately as the Los Angeles River. I looked down into it, some thirty feet below me. The water was five or six feet deep all the way across and flowing south very swiftly. I waited for a break in the rain to give me time to reminisce and try to savor the wonder that Wacky had said was there in death. I waited a long time. When the rain finally abated it was getting dark. I hauled the two golf bags to the edge of the cement embankment and dumped them into the garbage-strewn water, then watched the tangle of iron, wood, and leather move south out of my vision, carrying with it a thousand dreams and illusions. It was the end of my youth.
II
Death by Strangulation
6
Wacky Walker never made it to Seventy-seventh Street Division, Watts, L.A.'s heart of darkness, but I did.
Beckworth bided his time and in June, when Captain Larson retired, to muted fanfare, after thirty-three years on the job, I got my orders: Officer Frederick U. Underhill, 1647, to Seventy-seventh Street Division to fill manpower shortage.
Which was a joke: the ranks at Seventy-seventh Street were swelled to bursting. The ancient red brick building that served the hottest per capita crime area in the city was pitifully overstaffed with cops, and undersupplied with every crime-fighting provision from toilet paper to fingerprinting ink. There was a shortage of chairs, tables, floor space, lockers, soap, brooms, mops, and even writing implements. There was no shortage, however, of prisoners. There was an unsurpassed daily and nightly parade of burglars, purse snatchers, dope addicts, drunks, wife beaters, brawlers, pimps, hookers, perverts, and cranks.
The fifteen four-man cells held at least twice their capacity every day, and weekends were the worst. The drunks were kicked out on the street, usually to return several hours later, and the other misdemeanor offenders were released on their own recognizance—which left the tiny, sweltering jail filled with a minimum of a hundred howling felons, with more coming in every hour.
Standing at my first evening roll call I felt like a pygmy at a reunion of the Paul Bunyan family. At six feet two and a hundred ninety pounds, I was a shrimp, a dwarf, a Lilliputian compared to the gland cases I served with. They were all cut from the same mold: World War II combat vets from the South or Midwest with low academy test scores and extensive body-building experience who all hated Negroes and who all seemed to possess a hundred esoteric synonyms for "nigger."
Physically, they were splendidly equipped for fighting crime, what with their great size and illegal dumdum bullets, but there their efficacy ended. They were sent to the Seventy-seventh to hold clown the lid of a boiling cauldron, by scaring or beating the shit out of suspects real and imagined, and that was it. They had no capacity for wonder, only a mania for order. Knowing that, and knowing I would pass the sergeant's exam with very high marks in less than a year, I decided to make the most of Watts and to throw myself into police work as I never had before. Actually, that would be easy. Night foot patrol would put the kibosh on chasing women and let me observe the wonder close up.
After roll call the station commander, a harsh-looking old captain named Jurgensen, called me into his office. I saluted and he pointed me to a chair. He had my personnel file open on his desk, and I could tell he was baffled: in a sense that was good; it meant that he wasn't a buddy of Beckworth's and that they hadn't conspired together on my transfer.
Jurgensen gave me a handshake that matched his face in sternness, then got right to the point: "You have an excellent record, Underhill. College man. Top-flight marks at the academy. Killed two holdup men who killed your partner. Excellent fitness reports. What the hell are you doing here?"
"May I be candid, sir?" I asked.
"By all means, Officer."
"Sir, Captain Beckworth, the new commander of Wilshire Station, hates my guts. It's personal, which is why no dissatisfaction with my performance is reflected on my fitness reports."
Jurgensen considered this. I could tell he believed me. "Well, Underhill," he said, "that's too bad. What are your plans regarding the department?"
"Sir, to go as far as I can as fast as I can."
"Then you have the opportunity to do some real police work. Right here in this tragic sinkhole."
"Sir, I'm looking forward to it."
"I believe you are, Officer. Every man who comes to this division starts out the same way, walking a beat at night in the heart of the jungle. Sergeant McDonald will fix you up with a partner."
Jurgensen motioned his head toward the door, indicating dismissal. "Good luck, Underhill," he said.
When I met my new partner in the crowded, sweltering muster room, I knew I was going to need luck—and more. His name was Bob Norsworthy. He was from Texas and he chewed tobacco. He fingered his Sam Browne belt and rotated his billy club out from his right hip in a perfect circle as the desk sergeant introduced us. Norsworthy was six and a half feet tall and weighed in at about two-thirty-five. He had black hair cut extra close to his flat head and blue eyes so light that they looked like he sent them out to be bleached.