The Choirboys Read Free Page A

describe.
    Captain Drobeck felt that a station captain truly had the hot seat in the police department. All the big chief did was make speeches and hog headlines. It was the captains who were deluged by paper work, who made the decisions and who were there. It certainly wasn't the big chief and it wasn't Deputy Chief Adrian Lynch, who, Drobeck knew, spent the entire day trying to seduce his secretary, Theda Gunther, whose lieutenant husband was not likely ever to get transferred any closer to downtown and had taken to riding a motorbike to save gas.
    Captain Drobeck despised libertiries like Deputy Chief Lynch and Captain Cunkle of Wilshire Detectives, who had been the cause of his latest and largest internal discipline matter before the MacArthur Park killing.
    Cunkle was a loathsome veteran detective who had somehow managed to pass his promotion exams without more than a high school education and had conned his way past the promotion, boards. When former Inspector Moss convinced the chief he should change the designation of "inspector" to "commander" it was Cunkle who said that the public associated the title of "inspector" with a police officer and that "commander" was purely a military term and that he wanted to be a cop not a soldier.
    It had been Captain Drobeck's recent pleasure to recommend ten days' suspension for a single, male, twenty-five year old policeman who had been found to be living with a single, female, twenty-three year old bank teller. The charge was conduct unbecoming an officer, or CUBO, called "cue-bow" by , the policemen. He had recommended twenty days for a policewoman in the same circumstances in that a female officer should be even more above reproach than a male.
    When Captain Cunkle was finally caught by a private detective in a motel with Hester Billings, the wife of a prominent attorney, Captain Drobeck made the following recommendation to Deputy Chief Lynch:
    Despite the risk of being accused by the rank-and-file officers of applying a double standard if this confidential investigation leaks, I am recommending that you take no action against Captain Wesley Cunkle, who, as you know, was caught in a compromising position with a female person not his wife. The enclosed photos were taken by a well-known private investigator, himself a former police officer, thoroughly unscrupulous, but reportedly discreet. The negatives will be destroyed if the demand of his employer, the female person's husband, is met.
    The demand is: a quick divorce without alimony and with custody of the children for Mr.______
    There is some complication in that' Captain Cunkle is, as you know, to be elevated to the rank of Commander on the next transfer list If he is not promoted, the field policemen may lose confidence in their leaders and get wind of this scandal despite our efforts to keep it stonewalled.
    Respectfully, Chief Lynch read the correspondence and looked at the photos of Captain Cunkle naked on his knees on the floor of a motel his eyes glazed by martinis and lust. Then the chief looked at Mrs. Billings spread-eagled on the bed unaware of Private Investigator Slim Scully snapping his Nikon for all he was worth.
    "What do you think, sir?" asked Captain Drobeck who personally delivered the confidential reports and series of photos to the chief.
    "Damn, she's got a hairy box!" Chief Lynch whistled.
    At the same moment that Captain Drobeck was making his recommendation to Deputy Chief Lynch concerning the secret matter of Captain Cunkle, an early nightwatch rollcall was being conducted at 77th Street Station. An alcoholic twenty-five year policeman named Aaron Mobley said to the sergeant in charge of the rollcall, "Goddamnit, I don't mind how much pussy Cunkle eats, but why does a working copper get a suspension for the same thing a captain does?"
    "Come on," said the florid sergeant. "We been yakking about this for two days. I'd rather do it than talk about it. Let's read off the crimes."
    Finally, Ruben Wilkie, a