The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh

and humiliation. There was no shame in the injuries themselves. On the contrary Roscoe wore his scars as proudly as the Mexican wore the mementoes 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 in town,” he promised, but a real barbecue, worthy of the Middle American farmers Roscoe had sprung from.
    When Whaddayamean Dean asked Roscoe if he plannedto 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 some reptile malady.
    “It’s a goner, get rid of it,” Roscoe said without touching the turtle.
    “No, Daddy!” cried the boy “He’ll be okay! Pookie’s gonna be okay!”
    “Give him here,” Roscoe said, winking at Whaddayamean Dean. “I’ll see what I can do.”
    Then he snatched the little turtle from the child’s hand and with the cutting pliers he was using to repair the gas engine of the Messerschmitt, snipped the head of the box turtle off at the base of the shell, the feet kicking frantically in death.
    “Now we can use him for a paperweight,” Roscoe said.
    He told the story all over Wilshire Station the next day,claiming it proved he was the meanest, baaaaadest motherfucker that ever wore a blue suit in Wilshire Station, while Whaddayamean Dean unknowingly used exactly the phrase which had been used by Roscoe’s last five partners. He whispered that Roscoe was an insufferable prick.
    Roscoe Rules continued pretty much as before despite his Waterloo at the hands of the hod carriers. He asked to return to 7-A-85 so he could be in the south end of Wilshire Division