The old man was nowhere.
He’d jumped parole; prowling his L.A. haunts turned up nothing. Bud kept looking, kept waking to the sound of women screaming. He always investigated; it was always just wisps of noise. Once he kicked in a door and found a woman who’d burned her hand. Once he crashed in on a husband and wife making love.
The old man was nowhere.
He made the Bureau, partnered up with Dick Stens. Dick showed him the ropes, heard out his story, told him to pick his shots to get even. Pops would stay nowhere, but thumping wife beaters might drive the nightmares out of his system. Bud picked a great first shot: a domestic squawk, the complainant a longtime punching bag, the arrestee a three-time loser. He detoured on the way to the station, asked the guy if he’d like to tango with a man for a change: no cuffs, a walk on the charge if he won. The guy agreed; Bud broke his nose, his jaw, ruptured his spleen with a dropkick. Dick was right: his bad dreams stopped.
His rep as _the_ toughest man in the LAPD grew.
He kept it up; he followed up: intimidation calls if the fuckers got acquitted, welcome home strongarms if they did time and got parole. He forced himself not to take gratitude lays and found women elsewhere. He kept a list of court and parole dates and sent the fuckers postcards at the honor farm; he got hit with excessive-force complaints and toughed them out. Dick Stens made him a decent detective; now he played nursemaid to his teacher: keeping him half sober on duty, holding him back when he got a hard-on to shoot for kicks. He’d learned to keep himself in check; Stens was now all bad habits: scrounging at bars, letting stick-up men slide for snitch dope.
The music inside went off key–wrong, not really music. Bud caught screeches–screams from the jail.
The noise doubled, tripled. Bud saw a stampede: muster room to cellblock. A flash: Stens going crazy, booze, a jamboree–bash the cop bashers. He ran over, hit the door at a sprint.
The catwalk packed tight, cell doors open, lines forming. Exley shouting for order, pressing into the swarm, getting nowhere. Bud found the prisoner list; checkmarks after “Sanchez, Dinardo,” “Carbijal, Juan,” “Garcia, Ezekiel,” “Chasco, Reyes,” “Rice, Dennis,” “Valupeyk, Clinton”–all six cop beaters in custody.
The bums in the drunk cage egged the men on.
Stens hit the #4 cell–waving brass knucks.
Willie Tristano pinned Exley to the wall; Crum Crumley grabbed his keys.
Cops shoved cell to cell. Elmer Lentz, blood splattered, grinning. Jack Vincennes by the watch commander’s office– Lieutenant Frieling snoring at his desk.
Bud stormed into it.
He caught elbows going in; the men saw who it was and cleared a path. Stens slid into 3; Bud pushed in. Dick was working a skinny pachuco–head saps–the kid on his knees, catching teeth. Bud grabbed Stensland; the Mex spat blood. “Heey, Mister White. I knowww you, _puto_. You beat up my frien’ Caldo ’cause he whipped his _puto_ wife. She was a fuckin’ hooer, _pendejo_. Ain’ you got no fuckin’ brains?”
Bud let Stens go; the Mex gave him the finger. Bud kicked him prone, picked him up by the neck. Cheers, attaboys, holy fucks. Bud banged the punk’s head on the ceiling; a bluesuit moved in hard. Ed Exley’s rich-kid voice: “Stop it, Officer–that’s an order!”
The Mex kicked him in the balls–a dangling shot. Bud keeled into the bars; the kid stumbled out of the cell, smack into Vincennes. Trashcan, aghast–blood on his cashmere blazer. He put the punk down with a left-right; Exley ran out of the cellblock.
Yells, shouts, shrieks: louder than a thousand Code 3 sirens.
Stens whipped out a pint of gin. Bud saw every man there skunked to niggertown forever. Up on his tiptoes, a prime view–Exley dumping booze in the storeroom.
Voices: attaboy, Big Bud. Faces to the voices–skewed, wrong. Exley still dumping, Mr. Teetotaler Witness. Bud ran down the catwalk, locked him in tight.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shut into a room eight feet square. No windows, no telephone, no intercom. Shelves spilling forms, mops, brooms, a clogged-up sink filled with vodka and rum. The door was steel-reinforced; the liquor stew smelled like vomit. Shouts and thudding sounds- boomed through a heat vent.