The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online

Dean! One for your partner! And get em in a wristlock! Bend em down! Make em bite their own balls! Then play catch-up with your stick! Then kneedrop them! Puncture their kidneys! Rupture their spleens! Make em do the chicken!"
    Five people went to jail that night for various charges ranging from resisting officers to plain drunk. The black man was picked up two weeks later at the Hod Carriers Local. After five court continuances he spent ten days in jail which he was permitted to serve on weekends because of his work and large family. The Mexican hod carrier who also had a large family was given a longer jail term because of his youthful record of violence. All but fifteen days were suspended.
    Both men were heroes with their families and neighbors for some time to come, and the Mexican, who had been experiencing a diminished sex drive, discovered after his release from jail that he was like a young stallion. His wife said she never had it so good.
    After Roscoe Rules recovered from the beating at the hands of the hod carriers he was anxious to get back to the streets and make the citizenry of Wilshire Division pay for his wounds and humiliation. There was no shame in the injuries themselves. On the contrary, Roscoe wore his scars as proudly as the Mexican wore the mementos of his youthful gang fights. What humiliated Roscoe was that they got punched and stomped two on two. When he told the story to other officers the number of assailants grew in number until even Whaddayamean Dean wasn't sure just how many people had a piece of him. Roscoe never did know. The entire experience was blurred in his mind what with vomiting and painful fearful days in the hospital when he erroneously thought his manhood would be forever compromised. He admitted to his partner that he had no clear recollection of what had happened and even after his total recovery referred to the experience grimly as The Day My Balls Blew Up.
    But from then on, Roscoe was more cautious than before. If a suspect even looked as though he might be anxious to cause trouble he would find himself wearing Roscoe's unauthorized sap in his hair. During his one month convalescence Roscoe was unable to raise what Harold Bloomguard called a "diamond cutter" or even a "blue veiner" due to the shooting pains in his groin. His wife told a sympathetic neighbor she never had it so good.
    But Roscoe never lost his sense of humor. While he was off duty recuperating he invited Whaddayamean Dean to his ranch east of Chino for a down home pit barbecue.
    "Not like that nigger slop you see in all these greasy spoons to town," he promised, but a real barbecue, worthy of the Middle American farmers Roscoe had sprung from.
    When Whaddayamean Dean asked Roscoe if he planned to return to the Midwest when he retired from police work, Roscoe said, fuck no, that those redneck maggots like to read their Bibles over you while they screwed you in the ass. Once when waxing philosophical he admitted that he had only truly been happy in Vietnam, and that if he hadn't been dumb enough to knock up his old lady and get married young he'd have loved to have gone to Africa and hired out as a mercenary.
    "Imagine getting paid to kill niggers," he mused.
    Then he proved that he hadn't lost his sense of humor when his eight year old son Clyde came crying into the yard where Roscoe and Whaddayamean Dean sat drinking beer from the cans and working on a radio controlled airplane which Roscoe Rules had bought for his son's birthday two years ago and not let him play with because he wasn't old enough. Roscoe loved to sit in the yard and terrorize the pony by divebombing it with the roaring little airplane. It was a Messerschmitt with authentic German insignia and an added touch of a swastika on the tail.
    "Daddy!" said his son Clyde. "Look at Pookie!"
    "What's wrong with him, son?" asked Roscoe solicitously as the boy held the little box turtle in his hands. The creature's head drooped, obviously near death from