The Choirboys Read Online Free PDF Page A

different genus but served much the same purpose as rousing choral work. It was called by various names at other police departments. It was merely an off-duty meeting, usually in a secluded hideaway for policemen who, having just finished their tour of duty, were too tense or stimulated or electrified to go to a silent sleeping house and lie down like ordinary people while nerve ends sparked. One hadn’t always enough money to go to a policemen’s bar. Still one felt the need to uncoil and have a drink and talk with others who had been on the streets that night. To reassure oneself.
    Sergeant Nick Yanov could have been a charter member during those five months when the MacArthur Park choir practices were being held. He was invited by Harold Bloomguard one evening after a 3:00 P.M. nightwatch rollcall at which the uniformed policemen had a surprise visit from Captain Stanley Drobeck. The station commander wore a silk suit with a belt in the back, and black and white patent leather shoes. When Captain Drobeck entered the assembly room he caused Lieutenant Alvin Finque, who was conducting the roll-call, to jump unconsciously to attention which embarrassed the blue uniformed patrol officers. Since police service is not nearly as GI as military service, the only time one stands at attention is during inspection or formal ceremonies.
    Lieutenant Finque blushed and sat back down. He blinked and said “Hi Skipper” to Captain Drobeck.
    “Whoever made the pinch on the burglar in Seven-A-One’s area deserves a good smoke!” the captain announced, as he threw four fifteen-cent cigars out into the audience of twenty-eight nightwatch officers and, smiling with self-satisfaction, strode out the door. His hair was freshly rinsed and was blue white that day.
    Only three nightwatch officers were old enough to smoke a cigar without looking silly One was Herbert “Spermwhale” Whalen and he had caught the burglar. He was a MacArthur Park choirboy.
    Like all old veterans, Spermwhale sat in the back row and insisted on wearing his hat. Cocked to the side, of course. Spermwhale picked up one of the cigars from the floor, examined the brand, sat on it and loosed an enormous fart which moved out every policeman nearby Then he tossed the cigar back on the floor. Another choirboy, Spencer Van Moot of 7-A-33, picked it up gingerly with two fingers, stripped off the cellophane and said, “It’ll be okay after it dries out.”
    • • •
    Lieutenant Finque had just replaced Lieutenant Grimsley whose transfer was mysteriously precipitated by Spermwhale Whalen. Lieutenant Finque was of medium height with straight hair which was parted and combed straight back much as his father had done when his father was still in style in 1939, the year of Lieutenant Finque’s birth. The lieutenant was unsure in his new rank but rarely if ever heeded the advice he always asked for from Sergeant Nick Yanov, the hipless chesty field sergeant, who had to shave twice a day to control his whiskers.
    Sergeant Yanov was an eleven year officer, and at age thirty-four actually had less supervisory experience than Lieutenant Finque. But he had the distinction of being the only person of supervisory rank ever to be invited to a MacArthur Park choir practice, which he wisely declined.
    Sergeant Yanov’s only immediate passion in life, like many officers at Wilshire Station, was some night to drag Officer Reba Hadley away from the nightwatch desk and into the basement and rip her tight blue uniform blouse and skirt from her tantalizing young body and literally screw the badge right off her. Which was perhaps symbolically linked with Yanov’s avowed belief that superior officers like Lieutenant Finque had been screwing him mercilessly for the past eleven years.
    Lieutenant Finque had a different passion. He wanted to be the first watch commander in Wilshire Division history to catch every single member of his watch out of his car with his hat off or drinking free coffee