The New Centurions Part 12

"Yeah, get it up in there real tight, whitey," said a voice at the rear of the crowd of teenagers, "so it feels real good when you come."

This brought peals of laughter from the high school crowd who had run across from the hot dog stand on the opposite corner.

"Yes, I just love working down here," said Rantlee in a toneless voice, but his red face betrayed him and he stopped. "Lock your truck," he said finally.

"See how they treats black people, brothers and sisters," the man shouted, turning to the crowd on the sidewalk which had doubled in the last minute and now blocked access to the police car, and Gus's jaw was trembling so that he clamped his teeth shut tight. It's gone too far, thought Gus.

"See how they is?" shouted the man, and several children in the front of the crowd joined a tall belligerent drunk in his early twenties who lurched into the street from the Easy Time Shine Parlor and announced that he could kill any motherf.u.c.kin' white cop that ever lived with his two black hands, which brought a whoop and cheer from the younger children who urged him on.

Rantlee pushed through the crowd suddenly and Gus knew he was going to the radio, and for an agonizing moment Gus was alone in the center of the ring of faces, some of which he told himself, would surely help him. If anything happened someone would help him. He told himself it was not hate he saw in every face because his imagination was rampant now and the fear subsided only slightly when Rantlee pushed his way back through the crowd.

"Okay, there're five cars on the way," Rantlee said to Gus and turned to the truck driver. "Now, you sign or if you want to start something, we got enough help that'll be here in two minutes to take care of you and anybody else that decides to be froggy and leap."

"You got your quota to write, don't you?" the man sneered.

"No, we used to have a quota, now I can write every G.o.dd.a.m.n ticket I want to," Rantlee said, and held the pencil up to the driver's face. "And this is your last chance to sign, 'cause when the first police car gets here, you go to jail, whether you sign or not."

The man took a step forward and stared in the young policeman's gray eyes for a long moment. Gus saw that he was as tall as Rantlee and just as well built. Then Gus looked at the three young men in black Russian peasant hats and white tunics who whispered together on the curb, watching Gus. He knew it would be them that he would have to contend with if anything happened.

"Your day is comin'," said the driver, ripping the pencil from Rantlee's hand and scrawling his name across the face of the citation. "You ain't goin' to be top dog much longer."

While Rantlee tore the white violator's copy from the ticket book, the driver let Rantlee's pencil fall to the ground and Rantlee pretended not to notice. He gave the ticket to the driver who s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the policeman's hand and was still talking to the dispersing crowd when Gus and Rantlee were back in the car, pulling slowly from the curb while several young Negroes grudgingly stepped from their path. They both ignored a loud thump and knew that one of the ones in the peasant caps had kicked their fender, to the delight of the children.

They stopped for a few seconds and Gus locked his door while a boy in a yellow shirt in a last show of bravado sauntered out of the path of the b.u.mper. Gus recoiled when he turned to the right and saw a brown face only a few inches from his, but it was only a boy of about nine years and he studied Gus while Rantlee impatiently revved the engine. Gus saw only childlike curiosity in the face and all but the three in the peasant caps were now walking away. Gus smiled at the little face and the black eyes which never left his.

"h.e.l.lo, young man," said Gus, but his voice was weak.

"Why do you like to shoot black people?" asked the boy.

"Who told you that? That's not . . ." The lurching police car threw him back in his seat and Rantlee was roaring south on Broadway and west on Fifty-fourth Street back to their area. Gus turned and saw the little boy still standing in the street looking after the speeding radio car.

"They never used to gather like that," said Rantlee lighting a cigarette. "Three years ago when I first came on the job, I used to like working down here because Negroes understood our job almost as well as we did and crowds never used to gather like that. Not nowadays. They gather for any excuse. They're getting ready for something. I shouldn't let them bait me. I shouldn't argue at all. But the pressure is starting to get to me. Were you very scared?"

"Yeah," said Gus, wondering how obvious it was that he was paralyzed out there, like he had been on only a few other occasions in the past year. One of these days, he was going to have to take direct forceful action when he was paralyzed like that. Then he'd know about himself. So far, something always intervened. He had escaped his fate, but one of these days, he'd know.

"I wasn't a bit scared," said Rantlee.

"You weren't?"

"No, but somebody s.h.i.t on my seat," he grinned, smoking the cigarette and they both laughed the hearty laugh of tension relieved.

"Crowd like that could do you in two minutes," said Rantlee, blowing a plume of smoke out the window, and Gus thought that he hadn't shown the slightest fear to the onlookers. Rantlee was only twenty-four years old and looked younger with his auburn hair and rosy complexion.

"Think we ought to cancel the a.s.sistance you called for?" asked Gus. "We don't need them now."

"Sure, go ahead," said Rantlee and eyed Gus curiously as Gus said, "Three-A-Ninety-one, cancel the a.s.sistance to Fifty-first and south Broadway, crowd has dispersed." Gus received no reply and Rantlee grinned wider and Gus for the first time noticed that the radio was dead. Then he saw the mike cord dangling impotently and he realized that someone had jerked the wire out while they had been surrounded.

"You were bluffing them when you told him help was coming."

"Was I ever!" said Rantlee, and Gus was very glad to be driving toward the radio shop and after that to the Crenshaw area which was the "silk stocking" part of University Division, where large numbers of whites still resided. The Negroes there were "west-side Negroes" and the sixty-thousand-dollar homes in Baldwin Hills overlooked the large department stores, where you would not be surrounded by a hostile ring of black faces.

On the side of a stucco apartment building facing the Harbor Freeway, Gus saw sprayed in letters four feet high "Oncle Remus is an Oncle Tom," and then Rantlee was on the freeway speeding north. In a few moments the tall palms which line the freeway in south central Los Angeles were replaced by the civic center buildings and they were downtown driving leisurely toward the police building radio shop to have the mike replaced.

Gus admired the beautiful women who always seemed to be plentiful on the downtown streets and he felt a faint rumble of heat and hoped Vickie would still be awake tonight. Despite the precautions, Vickie was not the same lover she had been, but he guessed it was only natural. Then he felt the creeping guilt which he had been experiencing periodically since Billy was born and he knew it was ridiculous to blame himself, but yet any intelligent man would have seen to it that a twenty-three-year-old girl did not give birth to three children in less than five years of marriage, especially when the girl was not really mature, depending on her man for all but the most basic decisions, when she believed her man was a strong man, and oh, what a laugh that was.

Since he had admitted to himself that marriage had been a mistake, it had somehow become easier. Once you face something you can live with it, he thought. How could he have known at age eighteen what things were all about? He still didn't know but at least he now knew life was more than a ceaseless yearning for s.e.x and romantic love. Vickie had been a pretty girl with a fine body and he had had to settle for plain girls all his life, even in his senior year in high school when he could not find a date for the Christmas formal, ending up with Mildred Greer, his next door neighbor, who was only sixteen and built like a shot-putter. She had embarra.s.sed him by wearing a pink chiffon that would have been old-fashioned ten years before. So it was not his fault entirely that he had married Vickie when they were much too young and knew nothing except each other's bodies. What else mattered at age eighteen?

"You see that guy with the mop of blond hair?" asked Rantlee.

"Which guy?"

"The one in the green T-shirt. You see him make us and run through the parking lot?"

"No."

"Funny, how many people get black and white fever and start moving fast in the opposite direction. You can't go after them all. You think about them though. They make you hinky. What's their secret? You always wonder."

"I know what you mean," said Gus and then wondered how a pretty girl like Vickie could be so dependent and weak. He had always thought that attractive people should naturally have a certain amount of confidence. He always thought that if he had been a big man that he would not have been so afraid of people, so unable to converse freely with anyone but intimate friends. The intimate friends were few in number, and at this moment other than his boyhood friend, Bill Halleran, he could think of no one he really wanted to be with. Except Kilvinsky. But Kilvinsky was so much older and he had no family now that his ex-wife was remarried. Every time Kilvinsky came to his house for dinner he played with Gus's children and then became morose, so that even Vickie noticed it. As much as he liked Kilvinsky, whom he felt was a teacher and more than a friend, he didn't really see him much after Kilvinsky had decided to transfer to Communications Division which he said was out to pasture for old cops. Last month he had retired suddenly and was gone to Oregon where Gus pictured him in an extra-large khaki shirt and khaki trousers, his silver hair matted down from the baseball cap he always wore when he fished.

The fishing trip to the Colorado River that he had taken with Kilvinsky and three other policemen had been a wonderful trip and now he could think of Kilvinsky like he had been at the river, chewing on the battered cigarette holder while he all but ignored the burning cigarette it held, casting and reeling in the line with ease, showing that the wide hard hands were nimble and quick, not merely strong. Once when Kilvinsky had been to their house for dinner, right after they bought the three-bedroom house and were still short on furniture, Kilvinsky had taken little John into the almost bare living room and tossed him in the air with his big sure hands until John and even Gus who watched were laughing so hard they could hardly breathe. And, inevitably, Kilvinsky became gloomy after the children went to bed. Once when Gus asked him about his family he said they were now living in New Jersey and Gus realized he must not question him further. All of the other policeman friends were "on duty" friends. Why couldn't he like anyone else the way he liked Kilvinsky, he wondered.

"I gotta transfer out of University," said Rantlee.

"Why?"

"n.i.g.g.e.rs are driving me crazy. Sometimes I think I'll kill one someday when he does what that b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the tow truck did. If someone would've made the first move those savages would've cut off our heads and shrunk them. Before I came on this job I wouldn't even use the word 'n.i.g.g.e.r.' It embarra.s.sed me. Now it's the most used word in my vocabulary. It says everything I feel. I've never used it in front of one yet but I probably will sooner or later and he'll beef me and I'll get suspended."

"Remember Kilvinsky?" asked Gus. "He always used to say that the black people were only the spearhead of a bigger attack on authority and law that was surely coming in the next ten years. He always said not to make the mistake of thinking your enemy was the Negro. It wasn't that simple, he said."

"It's strange as h.e.l.l what happens to you," said Rantlee. "I'm finding myself agreeing with every right wing son of a b.i.t.c.h I ever read about. I wasn't brought up that way. My father's a flaming liberal and we're getting so we hate to see each other anymore because a big argument starts. I'm even getting to become sympathetic with some of these rabid anticommunist causes. Yet at the same time I admire the Reds for their efficiency. They can keep order, for chrissake. They know just how far you can let people go before you pull the chain. It's all mixed up, Plebesly. I haven't figured things out yet." Rantlee ran his hand through his wavy hair and tapped on the window ledge as he talked and then turned right on First Street. Gus thought he wouldn't mind working Central Division because downtown Los Angeles seemed exciting with the lights and the rush of people, but it was also sordid if you looked closely at the people who inhabit the downtown streets. At least most of them were white and you didn't have the feeling of being in an enemy camp.

"Maybe I'm wrong in blaming it all on the Negroes," said Rantlee. "Maybe it's a combination of causes, but by G.o.d the Negroes are a big part of it."

Gus hadn't yet finished his coffee when their radio was repaired and he hurried to the radio shop bathroom and on the way out noticed in the mirror that his always thin straw-colored hair was now falling out badly. He guessed he'd be bald at thirty, but what did it matter anyway he thought wryly. He noticed also that his uniform was becoming shiny which was the mark of a veteran but it was also fraying at the collar and the cuffs. He dreaded the thought of buying another because they were outrageously expensive. The uniform dealers kept the price up all over Los Angeles and you had to pay it.

Rantlee seemed in better spirits as they drove back down the Harbor Freeway to their beat.

"Hear about the shooting in Newton Street?"

"No," said Gus.

"They got a policeman on the fire for shooting a guy that works in a liquor store on Olympic. Officer rolls up to the store answering a silent alarm, and just as he's getting ready to peek in the window to see if it's for real or phony, the proprietor comes running out and starts screaming and pointing toward the alley across the street. One officer runs in the alley and the other circles the block and picks a spot where he thinks anybody back there would come out, and in a few minutes he hears running footsteps and hides behind the corner of an apartment house with his gun out and ready, and in a few seconds a guy comes busting around the corner with a Mauser in his hand and the officer yells freeze and the guy whirls around and the officer naturally lets go and puts five right in the ten ring." Rantlee placed his clenched fist against his chest to indicate the tight pattern of the bullets.

"So what's wrong with the shooting?" asked Gus.

"The guy was an employee in the store who was chasing the suspect with his boss's gun."

"The officer couldn't have known. I don't see any real problem. It's unfortunate, but . . ."

"The guy was black and some of the black newspapers are playing it up, you know, how innocent people are killed every day by the storm troops in occupied south central Los Angeles. And how the Jew proprietor in the ghetto sends his black lackeys to do the jobs he hasn't got the guts to do. Odd how the Jews can support the blacks who hate them so much."

"I guess they haven't forgotten how they suffered themselves," said Gus.

"That's a kind thought," said Rantlee. "But I think it's because they make so G.o.dd.a.m.n much money off these poor ignorant black people from their stores and rents. They sure as h.e.l.l don't live among them. Jesus Christ, now I'm a Jew hater. I tell you, Plebesly, I'm transferring to the valley or West L.A. or somewhere. These n.i.g.g.e.rs are driving me crazy."

They were barely back to their area when Gus logged the family dispute call on Main Street.

"Oh, no," Rantlee groaned. "Back on the G.o.dd.a.m.n east side." And Gus noticed that Rantlee, who was not a particularly slow driver, headed for the call at a snail's pace. In a few minutes they were parked in front of an ancient two-story house which was tall and narrow and gray. It seemed to be used by four families and they knew which door to knock on by the shouts which could be heard from the street. Rantlee kicked three times against the base of the door to be heard over the din of voices inside.

A sagging square-shouldered woman of about forty opened the door. She held a plump brown baby in one arm and in the other hand she held a bowl of gray baby food and a spoon. The baby food was all over the infant's face and his diaper was as gray as the siding of the house.

"Come in, Officers," she nodded. "I'm the one who called."

"Yeah, that's right, you punk a.s.s b.i.t.c.h, call the law," said the watery-eyed man in a dirty undershirt. "But while they're here, tell them how you drinks away the welfare check and how I has to support these here kids and three of them ain't even mine. Tell them."

"Okay, okay," said Rantlee, holding up his hands for silence and Gus noticed that the four children sprawled on the sagging couch watched the TV set with little or no interest in the fight or the officers' arrival.

"You some husban'," she spat. "You know, when he drunk, Officer, he jist climbs on me and starts ruttin'. Don't make no diff'ence if the chirrun' is here or not. That the kind of man he is."

"That is a gud-dam lie," said the man, and Gus saw they were both half drunk. The man must have been fifty but his shoulders were blocklike and his biceps heavily veined. "I'm goin' tell you like it is," he said to Rantlee. "You a man and I'm a man and I works ever' day."

Rantlee turned to Gus and winked and Gus wondered how many black men he had heard preface a remark to him with, "You a man and I'm a man," fearful that the white law did not truly believe it. They knew how policemen could be impressed by the fact that they worked and did not draw welfare. He wondered how many black men he had heard saying, "I works ever' day," to the white law, and well they might, Gus thought, because he had seen how it did did work, how a policeman could be talked out of issuing a traffic ticket to a black man with a workman's helmet, or a lunch bucket, or a floor polisher, or some other proof of toil. Gus realized that policemen expected so little of Negroes that a job alone and clean children were unalterable proof that this was a decent man as opposed to the ones with dirty children, who were probably the enemy. work, how a policeman could be talked out of issuing a traffic ticket to a black man with a workman's helmet, or a lunch bucket, or a floor polisher, or some other proof of toil. Gus realized that policemen expected so little of Negroes that a job alone and clean children were unalterable proof that this was a decent man as opposed to the ones with dirty children, who were probably the enemy.

"We didn't come to referee a brawl," said Rantlee. "Why don't we quiet down and talk. You come in here, sir, and talk to me. You talk to my partner, ma'am," Rantlee walked the man into the kitchen to separate them which was of course what Gus knew he would do.

Gus listened to the woman, hardly hearing her, because he had heard similar stories so many times and after they had told the officers their problems, the problems would diminish. Then they could probably talk the man into taking a walk for a while and coming home when things had cooled off and that was the whole secret of handling disputes.

"That man is a righteous dog, Officer," said the woman, shoving a spoonful of food into the pink little mouth of the greedy baby who would only be silenced by the spoon. "That man is terrible jealous and he drink all the time and he don't really work. He live on my county check and he jist lay up here and don't never give nothin' to me 'cept chirrun'. I jist wants you to take him out of here."

"You legally married?" asked Gus.

"No, we's common law."

"How long you been together?"

"Ten years and that is too long. Last week, when I cashed my check and bought some groc'ries and came home, why that man s.n.a.t.c.hed the change right outten my hand and went out and laid up wif some woman fo' two days and come back here wif not a cent and I takes him back and then tonight that n.i.g.g.e.r hits me wif his fist 'cause I ain't go no mo' money fo' him to drink up. An' that's as true as this baby here."

"Well, we'll try to talk him into leaving for a while."

"I wants him outten this house fo' good!"

"We'll talk to him."

"I'm tryin' to raise my chirruns right 'cause I sees all these chirruns nowadays jist jumpin' rope and smokin' dope."

A loud burst of staccato raps startled Gus and the woman stepped to the door and opened it for a furious, very dark, middle-aged man in a tattered flannel bathrobe.

"H'lo Harvey," she said.

"I'm gittin gud-dam sick of the noise in this apartment," said the man.

"He hit me agin, Harvey."

"You goin' to have to git out if you can't git along. I got other tenants in this house."

"What do you want?" shouted the woman's husband who crossed the living room in three angry strides. "We got our rent paid up. You got no right in here."

"This is my house. I got all the right I need," said the man in the bathrobe.

"You git yo' raggedy a.s.s outa my apartment before I throws you out," said the man in the undershirt and Gus saw that the landlord was not as fierce as he seemed and he took a step backward even though Rantlee stepped between them.

"That's enough," said Rantlee.

"Why don't you take him out, Officers," said the landlord, wilting before the glare of the smaller man in the undershirt.

"Yeah, so you kin come sniffin' roun' here after my woman. That would tickle you wouldn' it?"

"Why don't you go back to your apartment, sir," said Rantlee to the landlord, "until we get things settled."

"Don't worry, Officers," said the man in the undershirt, drilling the landlord with his watery black eyes, the blue black lips forming a deliberate sneer, "I wouldn't hurt that. That's p.u.s.s.y."

n.o.body can manage an insult like them, Gus thought. And he looked with awe at the rough black face, and how the nostrils had flared, and the eyes and mouth and nostrils had joined to create the quintessence of contempt. "I wouldn' even touch that wif a angry hand. That ain't no man. That's jist p.u.s.s.y!"

They can teach me, thought Gus. There is no other people like them. There was fear, but he could learn things here. And where could he go where there would not be fear?

9.

SPADE BIT.

IT WAS WEDNESDAY and Roy Fehler hurried to the station because he was sure he would be on the transfer list. Most of his academy cla.s.smates had their transfers by now and he had been requesting North Hollywood or Highland Park for five months. When he did not find his name on the transfer he was bitterly disappointed and now he knew he must intensify his efforts in college to complete his degree so he could quit this thankless job. And it was thankless, they all knew it. They all talked about it often enough. If you want grat.i.tude for your work, be a fireman they always said. and Roy Fehler hurried to the station because he was sure he would be on the transfer list. Most of his academy cla.s.smates had their transfers by now and he had been requesting North Hollywood or Highland Park for five months. When he did not find his name on the transfer he was bitterly disappointed and now he knew he must intensify his efforts in college to complete his degree so he could quit this thankless job. And it was thankless, they all knew it. They all talked about it often enough. If you want grat.i.tude for your work, be a fireman they always said.

He had done his best for the past year. He had brought compa.s.sion to all his dealings with the Negro. He had learned from them, and hoped he had taught them something. It was time to move on now. He had wanted to work on the other side of town. There was still so much to learn about people yet they left him here at Newton Street. They had forgotten him. He'd increase his unit load next semester, and to h.e.l.l with concentrating his efforts on being a good police officer. What had it gotten him? He had earned only six units in the past two semesters and had gotten only C's because he read law and police science textbooks when he should have been working on course a.s.signments. At this rate it would take years to finish his degree. Even Professor Raymond seldom wrote anymore. Everyone had forgotten him.

Roy examined his lean body in the full-length mirror and thought the uniform still fit as well as the day he left the academy. He hadn't been exercising but he watched what he ate and thought he still wore the blue suit well.

He was a few minutes late for roll call and muttered "Here" when Lieutenant Bilkins called his name, but he didn't hear Bilkins read the daily crimes and wanted suspects even though he mechanically wrote the information in his notebook just as all the others did. Sam Tucker came straggling in ten minutes after roll call, still adjusting his tie clip with his heavily veined blue-black hands as he sat down at the bench in front of the first row of tables.

"If we could get old Sam to quit counting his money, we could get him here on time," said Bilkins, glancing down at the grizzled Negro officer with his blank narrow eyes.

"Today's rent day, Lieutenant," said Tucker. "Got to stop by my tenants' and collect my share of their welfare checks before they blow it on booze."

"Just like you Jew landlords," sniffed Bilkins, '"bleed the ghetto black man, keep him down in the east side."