"Yo there, Underhill," he said to me as Sergeant McDonald walked away from us. "Welcome to the Congo."
"Thanks," I said and stuck out my hand, instantly regretting it as Norsworthy crushed it in his huge fist.
He laughed. "You like that old handshake of mine? I been workin' on it with one o' them hand-squeezer babies. I'm the champeen arm wrestler of this station."
"I believe you. What are we going to do on the beat tonight, Norsworthy?"
"Call me Nors. What should I call you?"
"Fred."
"All right there, Fred. Tonight we're gonna take a long walk up Central Avenue and let our presence be known. They got call boxes every two blocks, and we call the station every hour for instructions. Old Mac at the desk lets us know where there's trouble brewin'. I gotta key for the call boxes. Them boxes is ironclad. If we don't keep 'em all sealed up, them delinquents'd be bustin' into 'em and makin' all kinds of funny noises.
"We break up lots o' unlawful assemblies. An unlawful assembly is two or more niggers hangin' around after dark. We lean on known troublemakers, which is just about every wiseass on the street. We check out the bars and liquor stores and haul out the bad jigaboos. That's where this job gets to be fun. You like to whomp on niggers, Fred?"
"I've never tried it," I said. "Is it fun?"
Nors laughed again. "You got a sense of humor. I heard 'bout you. You dispatched two taco-benders to the big frijole patch in the sky when you was workin' Wilshire. You a genuine hero. But you gotta be some kind of fuckup or you wouldn't a got transferred here. You my kind of cop. We gonna be great buddies."
Norsworthy impulsively grabbed for my hand and crushed it again. I pulled it away before he could break any bones. "Whoa, partner," I said, "I need that hand to write reports with."
Norsworthy laughed. "You gonna be needin' that right hand for lots more'n writin' reports in this here division, white boy," he said.
If Norsworthy was less than sensitive, then he was more than instructive. Grudgingly, despite his racism and crudeness, I started to like him. I expected him to be brutal, but he wasn't: he was stern and civil with the people we dealt with on the street, and when violence was required in subduing unarmed suspects his method was, by Seventy-seventh Street standards, mild—he would grasp the person in a fierce bear hug, squeeze them until their limbs took on a purple sheen, then drop them to the pavement, unconscious. It worked.
When we patrolled Central Avenue south of 100th Street, an area Norsworthy called "Darkest Africa," nobody save the far-gone drunks, hopheads, and the unknowing would give us anything but frightened nods. Norsworthy was so secure in his knowledge of how dangerous he was that he granted the Negroes whom he privately maligned a stern respect, almost by rote. He never had to raise his voice. His gargantuan, tobacco-chewing presence was enough, and I, as his partner, caught the edge of the awed, fearful respect he received.
So our partnership jelled—for a while. We walked the beat and made lots of arrests for drunkenness, possession of narcotics, and assault. We would go into bars and arrest brawlers. Usually, Norsworthy would quell an incipient brawl just by walking in and clearing his throat, but sometimes we would have to go in with billy clubs flying and beat the brawlers to the ground, then handcuff them and call for a patrol car to take them to the station.
The "unlawful assemblies" that Norsworthy had told me about were easy to disperse. We would walk coolly by them, Nors would say, "Good evening, fellows," and the group would seem to vanish into thin air.
Thus the job went. But it started to bore me, and I started to resent my partner. His constant stream of talk—about his service in Italy during the war, his athletic prowess, the size of his dick, "niggers," "kikes," "greaseballs," and "gooks"—vexed and depressed me and undercut the wonder and strangeness of life in Watts. I wanted to be free of the awesome and fearful presence of my partner to be able to pursue the wonder in peace on my own, so I concocted a plan: I convinced Norsworthy that we could be twice as effective patrolling separately, on opposite sides of the street, within sight and earshot of each other. It took a lot of convincing, but finally he bought it, on the proviso that since it was against the rules, we get together once an hour to compare notes and deliberate on potential hot spots that might require the both of us.
So I was freed, somewhat, to let my mind drift and wander with fragments of the dusky neon night music. I grieved less and less for Wacky, and my once-rampant curiosity about Lorna Weinberg abated.
When I became more comfortable with solitary patrol, I would ditch out on Norsworthy completely and hit the numbered side streets off Central—tawdry rows of small, white-framed houses, tarpaper shacks, and overcrowded tenement buildings. I bought three pairs of expensive binoculars and secreted them on the rooftops of buildings on my beat. Late at night, I would scan lighted windows with them, looking for crime and wonder. I found it. The whole gamut, from homosexuality—which I didn't bother with—to wild jazz sessions, to heated lovemaking, to tears. I also found dope addiction—which I did act on, always relaying my information on reefer smoking and worse to the dicks, never trying to grandstand and make the collar myself. I wanted to prove I was a team player, something I never was at Wilshire, and I wanted class-A fitness reports to go with the sergeancy that would be mine shortly after my twenty-eighth birthday.
And I made collars, good ones. I found myself a cracker-jack snitch, a crazy-acting old shoeshine man who hated hopheads and pushers. Willy saw and retained everything, and he had the perfect cover. The neighborhood pimps, lowlifes, and pushers came to him to "glaze their alligators," and they talked freely in front of him—he was considered to be a blubbering idiot, rendered that way by thirty years of sniffing shoe polish.
He went along with the act, working for peanuts at his shine stand and selling information to me for a sizable chunk of my pay. Through Willy I was able to effect the arrest of a whole slew of grasshoppers and heroin pushers, including a guy wanted on a murder warrant back east.
Norsworthy resented my successes, feeling that I had usurped his power, making his fitness reports look bad by comparison. I felt his resentment and his frustration building. I knew what he was going to do, and took immediate steps to circumvent it.
I went to the commander of the detective squad and leveled. I told him of the collars I had given his men, and how I obtained the information that led to them—I had been walking my beat, at night, alone, free of my intrusive patrol partner.
The grizzled, skinny old lieutenant liked this. He thought I was a tough guy. I told him old big-dick Bob Norsworthy was about to blow all this to hell, that he was pissed off and wanted to horn in on my action, and was about to rat on me to Captain Jurgensen for ditching out on the beat.
The old lieutenant shook his head. "We can't let that happen, can we, son?" he said. "As of now, Underhill, you are the only solitary foot patrolman in this station. God have mercy on your soul if you ever run into trouble, or if Norsworthy ever quits the department."
"Thanks, Lieutenant," I said, "you won't regret it."
"That remains to be seen. One word of advice, son. Watch out for ambition. Sometimes it hurts more than it helps. Now close the door behind you, I want to turn on my fan."
7