The Choirboys Read Online Free PDF Page B

said Harold Bloomguard who looked at his grinning partner, Sam Niles.
    Minutes after rollcall, 7-A-29 was speeding to the station call but was beaten by ten other nightwatch policemen swarming all over the tavern checking out the barmaids.

FIVE

7-A-85: ROSCOE RULES AND DEAN PRATT

    P robably the most choir practices were called by Harold Bloomguard of 7-A-29. Probably the least choir practices were called by 7-A-85. Roscoe Rules just didn’t seem to need them as much.
    One choir practice however was hastily called by Dean Pratt of 7-A-85, five months before the choir practice killing. It was on the night Roscoe Rules became a legend in his own time.
    Henry Rules was nicknamed “Roscoe” by Harold Bloomguard at another midnight choir practice when Rules, who had just seen an old Bogart movie on television, finished telling the others of a recent arrest: “This black ass, abba dabba motherfucker looked like he was gonna rabbit, so I drew down and zonked him across the gourd with my roscoe.”
    For a moment drunken Harold Bloomguard looked at his partner Sam Niles in disbelief. Rules had not said “gun” or “piece” or “.38” but had actually said “roscoe.”
    “Oh, lizard shit!” cried Bloomguard. “Roscoe! Roscoe! Did you hear that?”
    “You mean your ‘gat,’ Rules?” roared Sam Niles, who was also drunk, and he rolled over on his blanket in the grass, spilling half a gallon of wine worth about three dollars.
    From then on, to all the choirboys, Henry Rules became known as “Roscoe” Rules. The only one to call him “Henry” occasionally was his partner Dean Pratt who was afraid of him.
    Roscoe Rules was a five year policeman. He had long armsand veiny hands. He was tall and hard and strong. And mean. No one who talked as mean as Roscoe Rules could have survived twenty-nine years on this earth without
being
mean. His parents had been struggling farmers in Idaho, then in the San Joaquin Valley of California where they acquired a little property before each died in early middle age.
    “Roscoe Rules handed out towels in the showers at Auschwitz,” the policemen said.
    “Roscoe Rules was a Manson family reject—too nasty.”
    “Roscoe Rules believes in feeding stray puppies and kittens—to his piranha.”
    And so forth.
    If there was one thing Roscoe Rules wished, after having seen all of the world he cared to see, it was that there was a word as dirty as “nigger” to apply to all mankind. Since he had little imagination he had to settle for “asshole.” But he realized that all Los Angeles policemen and most American policemen used that as the best of all possible words.
    Calvin Potts, the only black choirboy agreed wholeheartedly with Roscoe when he drunkenly expressed his dilemma one night at choir practice in the park.
    “That’s the only thing I like about you, Roscoe,” Calvin said. “You don’t just hate brothers. You hate
everyone
. Even more than I do. Without prejudice or bias.”
    “Gimme a word then,” Roscoe said. He was reeling and vomitous, looking over his shoulder for Harold Bloomguard who at 150 pounds would fight anyone who was cruel to the MacArthur Park ducks.
    “Gimme a word,” Roscoe repeated and furtively chucked a large jagged rock at a fuzzy duckling who swam too close, just missing the baby who went squawking to its mother.
    Everyone went through the ordinary police repertoire for Roscoe Rules.
    “How about fartsuckers?”
    “Not rotten enough.”
    “Slimeballs?”
    “That’s getting old.”
    “Scumbags?”
    “Naw.”
    “Cumbuckets?”
    “Too long.”
    “Hemorrhoids?”
    “Everybody uses that.”
    “Scrotums?”
    “Not bad, but too long.”
    “Scrotes, then,” said Willie Wright who was now drunk enough to use unwholesome language.
    “That’s it!” Roscoe Rules shouted. “Scrotes! That’s what all people are: ignorant filthy disgusting ugly worthless scrotes. I like that! Scrotes!”
    “A man’s philosophy expressed in a word,” said