The Black Marble by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online

observed.
    â€œDidn’t know she was raped till the check bounced, huh?” said Frick.
    A Cuban boy, eleven years of age, was sitting in the squad room listening wide-eyed to the raging black detective. The boy was a renowned Hollywood bicycle thief. They called him Earl Scheib Lopez, in honor of the auto painter who could paint any car for $49.95. Earl Scheib Lopez boasted that he could paint any hot bike for a buck and a quarter, in ten minutes, and have enough sniffable paint left to get three of his pals loaded.
    Earl Scheib Lopez always had his jeans stuffed with coins and he was now playing nickel-dime blackjack with Fuzzy Spinks, of auto theft, who could tolerate the little bike bandit ever since the day he rolled over (for a fifty-buck snitch fee) on a Cuban gang who had hijacked a load of Ferraris, and Fuzzy got a leg up toward Investigator III. Earl Scheib Lopez used the fifty scoots to buy two cases of aerosol paint cans and there were three hundred bikes stolen in Hollywood in the next two weeks.
    His latest arrest was for a bit of derring-do: On a whim, the little crook had jumped on a display bike in a department store downtown, ridden it through five screaming sales clerks, down the escalator , and out on the street making a getaway clear to Hollywood in twenty minutes. But he had underestimated his fame. The Central Division investigators had no trouble identifying the bike bandit: only Earl Scheib Lopez was that kind of swashbuckler.
    But he wasn’t swashbuckling now. He was playing blackjack very quietly with Fuzzy Spinks, who was baby-sitting him until they could release him to grandma, who was getting sick and tired of taking a bus to police stations and courtrooms for Earl Scheib Lopez. One day, after his third arrest in one month, she had made an extra bus trip. This one to the “Glass House,” Parker Center downtown, to the office of the chief of police. The old woman waited patiently for two hours to see the chief’s adjutant and then explained through an interpreter in polite and formal Spanish that she had come to sign the necessary American documents—to put Earl Scheib Lopez in the gas chamber.
    Fuzzy could see that the little thug was very anxiously listening to the mean-looking black detective yelling at his “rape victim.”
    â€œYou ever pull any rapes yet, Earl?” Fuzzy asked, peering at the boy over his bifocals, actually trying to get a peek at Earl’s cards because the ante was up to thirty-five cents.
    â€œNo way!” Earl said, staying on fourteen while Fuzzy busted.
    â€œYeah, well don’t ever try it. These detectives here can look right up a broad’s unit and check her lands and grooves. Just like the muzzle of a gun. Understand?”
    â€œYeah?” Earl Scheib Lopez said, pretty damned impressed for once.
    â€œThey match em up with the marks on your rape tool, and you get twenty goddamn years. Get me?”
    â€œYes, sir! ” Earl Scheib Lopez said. He was showing a king of diamonds.
    â€œYou hitting?” the old cop asked hopefully, since he had to hit sixteen and was down to his last ninety cents.
    â€œDamn it!” Max Haffenkamp, from residential burglary, slammed the phone down. “Hollywood’s turned into a frigging ghetto! People’re so evasive they won’t even say hello, they think it’s a cop.”
    â€œTell em you found their welfare check,” Clarence Cromwell said. “ Then they’ll talk to you honkies.”
    â€œLord, I hope there’s a gang killing tonight,” said Frick. “I need some overtime, make my car payment.”
    â€œI’m losing weight, Irma,” Frack leered, sucking in his chest. “Stomach like a washboard. You could wash your lace underwear on my tummy. Anytime.”
    Just then the rape victim stormed out of the interrogation room yelling: “Well if you won’t bust that sucker, I’m goin to the F.B.I. cause I