The Black Marble by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online Page A

ain’t his escape goat. And you nigger!” She aimed a skinny finger at Nate Farmer. “You I’m suin for defecation of character!”
    All the yelling was interrupted when a radio voice came over the monitor. It was the police helicopter.
    â€œThis is Air Six,” the radio voice said. “Anything for us?”
    And then, as always, three or four ex-vice cops called out suggestions:
    â€œYeah, bomb the dopers on Sunset.”
    â€œStrafe the pimps on Hollywood Boulevard.”
    â€œNapalm the fruits on Selma Avenue.”
    And so forth.
    Suddenly Frick threw his arrest reports to Frack. “Rape and murder. Rape and murder. I’m getting sick of it!” Frick cried.
    â€œHmph,” Clarence Cromwell snorted. “You the one doin all the rape and murder, chump. Killin time and screwin the city.”
    All conversations, bitching, and dramatic outcries were suddenly interrupted. It became breathlessly still.
    Dora Simpson, the record clerk from downstairs, sashayed into the squad room, dropped some reports on the desk of Woodenlips Mockett, and wriggled out again.
    â€œWith those lungs, that girl could stay underwater for days ,” Fuzzy Spinks sighed.
    Dora Simpson had gone unnoticed during ten years of employment with the Los Angeles Police Department, until she transferred from Northeast Station to Hollywood Station. Then she had begun dating a retired plastic surgeon with a Pygmalion complex.
    Dr. Henry Sprackle took a centimeter off the bridge of her nose and two off the tip. He implanted nearly a pound of foam in her sagging breasts and buttocks. He whacked away the loose flesh from under her chin and eyes and hacked off two and a half inches of belly fat.
    Finally, he threw away her cat’s-eye horn-rims and had her fitted with tinted contact lenses. He took her to Elizabeth Arden’s for a Far-rah Fawcett feather-cut and she was almost perfect. Then he took her to Frederick’s of Hollywood and bought her ten pairs of crotchless black underwear and she was perfect.
    Dora Simpson was born again, but no Baptist preacher had a hand in it. A former ugly duckling was now the object of many a wet dream at Hollywood Station, and indeed all over the Los Angeles Police Department. They said that Deputy Chief Digby Bates, the most notorious swain among the ranking brass, had offered the area commander four additional patrol officers if he would release Dora Simpson for a transfer.
    Frick and Frack were insane over her. The two young cops had worked together six years, both in patrol and detectives, and they’d bedded the same station house groupies for so long they’d begun to have similar erotic fantasies. Most of them these days involved Dora Simpson because they thought of her as an android. She wasn’t human. She was sculpted in the laboratory of Dr. Henry Sprackle.
    All that jiggly stuffing in there! Imagine searching for the surgical scars! Would she do anything her master told her? It was wildly decadent and perverse. Frick said that as soon as his second divorce was final he was going to propose to her. Frack said that he was going to propose to Dr. Sprackle, since Dora Simpson as an android was not in a position to accept on her own behalf.
    She was the station house celebrity for sure. Everyone called her Spareparts Simpson.
    â€œLooks like you’re goin to a funeral, and it’s yours,” Clarence Cromwell said when Valnikov weaved through the maze of tables and coffee-drinking detectives with his second cup of tea.
    The voices. The noise. The painful cacophony of two dozen detectives wearing out the only essential tools of an investigator: pencil and telephone.
    â€œLight workload, Clarence?” Valnikov asked.
    â€œNothin to it,” Clarence Cromwell said. Broad-chested with a face as creased and shiny as old leather, he was a twenty-five-year cop who had also worked “downtown” in better days.
    Covering for a high-rolling