the Choirboys (1996) Read Online Free Page B

cents to women they contacted on their calls. The object was that if a woman were ever accosted on the street by thugs she should pull out her whistle and blow it.
    The proceeds from the whistle sales went to the station's Youth Services Fund and quickly earned several thousand dollars. Lieutenant Finque was hoping the idea would earn him a written commendation from Deputy Chief Lynch, which wouldn't look bad in his personnel package.
    Spermwhale Whalen had sold the most whistles on the night-watch, six in fact. But actually he had bought them himself and given them to his favorite streetwalking whores with the instruction that if they ever had a slow evening and felt like giving away a free blowjob to an old pal just to pucker on the whistle when 7-A-l came cruising by.
    There was not a recorded case of a radio car in the vast and crowded district ever hearing a distress whistle, but it was said that the whistle saved the property of one woman on La Cienega Boulevard when a purse snatcher almost fell to the sidewalk in a giggling fit at the sight of a sixty year old matron in a chinchilla coat blowing a little plastic whistle until her face looked like a rotten strawberry.
    "One last order of business before we have inspection and hit the streets," the lieutenant said. "The detectives would like the cars in the area to keep an eye on Wilbur's Tavern on Sixth Street. They have reports that the owner is beating up barmaids who're too intimidated to make a report. He apparently only hires girls willing to orally copulate him. And if they start to object after a time, he beats them up and threatens them. Seven-A-Twenty-nine, how about stopping in there once every couple days?"
    "Right, Lieutenant," 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 night-watch policemen swarming all over the tavern checking out the barmaids.

    Chapter FIVE
    7-A-85: Roscoe Rules and Dean Pratt .
    Probably 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 arms and 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 Joaquln 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