While the other choirboys watched, Sperm whale popped it open and soaked a paper napkin in beer and sat in front of Dean and washed all the barbecue from his face and plastered down the tangle of hair as Whaddayamean Dean sat unprotesting.

When the young man was cleaned up Spermwhale said, "Listen, Dean. Listen, son. It's me, your da da. It's Spermwhale. You know me, don't ya?"

And Whaddayamean Dean licked his chops happily and cried, "Beer! Beer!"

"No no," said Spermwhale Whalen. "First you listen. Then beer beer. Get it?"

Whaddayamean Dean eyed them all craftily and chuckled at some private joke.

"Now, Dean, my boy, we been pals awhile and I know you trust old Spermwhale. So listen careful. This thing that booze does to you, turnin you into a carrot, this ain't a good thing for you. You gotta master the effect a that booze. I been doin it for years. Remember when I flew us on that Palm Springs raid, dead drunk?"

And Whaddayamean Dean filled their hearts with hope, for he nodded at all of them.

"That's right!" Spermwhale said. "You do remember! See, I know you understand. Just concentrate. Okay, so here's what's happened tonight. Old Spermwhale's just too much man and screwed old Carolina Moon till she went fast asleep. Now that means there's only Ora Lee Tingle to pull that train for a few a the boys. And guess what? She picked you first. And that means you gotta go over there behind those bushes and show Ora Lee what a sport you are. And then maybe a couple a other fellas can get on the track. Get it?"

But Whaddayamean Dean cocked his head and wrinkled his brow in confusion and filled their hearts with dread.

"I'll make it simpler, son," said Spermwhale. "You just gotta go over there and do a number on Ora Lee, that's all you gotta do. So I want you to stand up now and show these fellas that my boy ain't no radish. Now you just listen to old Spermwhale and go over there and fuck old Ora Lee's socks off. Get it?" The eager ring of faces shone sweatily in the moonlight and no one breathed as the grinning simpering redhead struggled valiantly with the words. They came and went from his consciousness and at times almost hung together coherently.

Finally he looked Spermwhale Whalen dead in the eye and raised a hand to the oldest choirboy's pink jowls and said sincerely, "Whaddayamean, Spermwhale? Just tell me what you mean."

And then eight choirboysa"minus Roscoe Rules who was handcuffed to a tree and Whaddayamean Dean who sat and flashed a bewildered smilea"beat their own heads with their fists or strangled phantoms in the air or showed white eyeballs and groaned pitifully.

Suddenly Spermwhale Whalen roared to his feet and grabbed Dean by the belt and the back of the shirt and lifted him four feet in the air as Harold Bloomguard yelled, "Don't hurt him, Spermwhale!"

And Baxter Slate shouted, "He can't help it, Spermwhale!"

And Spencer Van Moot yelled, "Kill the fucking idiot!"

And Whaddayamean Dean broke into tears and bawled, "Why's everyone picking on me? I don't get it! I don't get it!"

Spermwhale Whalen carried the weeping choirboy toward the bushes, toward Ora Lee Tingle and threw the redhead on top of the snoozing fat girl. "There!" Spermwhale bellowed "You stupid goofy simple minded idiotic fuckin moron! Is exactly WHAT I MEAN!"

"Oh hi, Dean honey," said Ora Lee Tingle, waking up and pulling him down on her bulk.

The whimpering choirboy wiped his eyes on his sweatshirt and sniffled and looked back at Spermwhale and the others and then down to the fat girl he was sitting on as she licked her lips seductively.

"Oh!" said Whaddayamean Dean. "Oh! Why didn't you say so? Now I get it! Now I get it!"

And the choirboys sighed in unison and staggered back to their blankets and fell to the ground in relief.

Meanwhile, a fifty-one year old insomniac hairdresser who lived in an Alvarado Street hotel had come for a very early morning stroll through the cool invigorating darkness of MacArthur Park and found a man nude from the waist down sitting beside an elm tree with his arms enveloping the trunk. The hairdresser's name was Luther Quigly and it was the most carnal erotic sight he had ever seen. It was his wildest libidinous fantasy come true.

"My God! My God!" Luther Quigly whispered.

"Who's there?" Roscoe exclaimed.

"Oh!" said Luther Quigly. "Oh!" And the tiny balding hairdresser leaned back against a eucalyptus and tried to calm his pounding heart.

"Who're you?" Roscoe demanded, suffering terrible pain to his shoulders and back from having been totally forgotten by the drunken choirboys.

"Anyone you want me to be," answered Luther Quigly.

"Listen, goddamnit, go over by the duck pond. There's some drunks there. Go get one of em!"

"Who needs anyone else?" gasped Luther Quigly. "Three's a crowd!"

"I do! I'm chained to this tree!"

"Chained!" cried Luther Quigly. It was truly a mad salacious fantasy! It just couldn't be! A man naked except for his shirt and shoes! Chained to a tree!

"Oh, my lord!" cried Luther Quigly, getting faint.

Roscoe scurried around the elm, keeping it between himself and Luther Quigly, saying, "Stay away from me! I'll kill you you touch me, you faggy son of a bitch! I'll kneedrop you, so help me! I'll puncture your kidneys! I'll rupture your spleen! SPERMWHALE!"

Then Luther Quigly heard running footsteps across the grass. He jumped up and fled toward Seventh Street and ran all the way home to sit shakily in his room and wonder if it had all been a fantasy after all. He decided it had and called his psychiatrist later that morning.

The choirboys were full of apologies when they took the handcuffs off Roscoe Rules and brought him his wet underwear and pants.

"We forgot, Roscoe," said Harold Bloomguard.

"Real sorry, fella," said Spermwhale Whalen.

"Forgive us, Roscoe, forgive us," said Father Willie.

"It was that goddamn Dean," said Spencer. "We got preoccupied and forgot."

"You okay, man? How's your wrists?" said Calvin Potts.

Roscoe betrayed nothing in his manner as he put on his underwear and wrung out his pants, stepping into each soppy leg, and walked slowly and deliberately back toward his blanket.

"Roscoe, wait up a minute, will ya?" Spermwhale said, the first to get suspicious. He tried to trot past Roscoe who was heading directly toward his belongings.

But he was too late. Roscoe broke into a mad thirty yard sprint as Spermwhale screamed, "THE GUN!"

Seconds later Roscoe Rules was running back toward the ducking diving fleeing choirboys with his four inch magnum in his hand. Sphincter muscles and bladders were loosening all around and Francis Taoaguchi thought he was dead for sure as three explosions deafened the closest choirboys.

Harold Bloomguard was the first to look up and see Roscoe Rules insanely wading into the duck pond blasting away at the birds whose bills had been tucked securely under their wings but now squawked and flapped and swam for their lives from the orange fireballs and the terrifying explosions. Then when he clicked three times on empty cylinders Roscoe caught a hapless duck by the throat and tried to pistolwhip it and punch its lights out and drag it to shore where he could knee-drop it, rupturing its spleen.

"Stop him!" screaked Francis Tanaguchi.

"Get the gun!" yelled Spermwhale Whalen.

"Save the duck!" yelled Harold Bloomguard while five frightened choirboys jumped on Roscoe and took away his gun and held his head under water for twenty seconds.

Then they dragged him and the duck onto the shore as Roscoe bellowed, "Lemme go! Lemme go! I'll strangle that cocksucker! I'll make that fuckin duck do the chicken!"

And as they pried the duck's neck from Roscoe's fist he swung a left and a right, the first of which socked the hissing bird on the bill, the second of which caught Spermwhale Whalen in the eye. There was yet a third punch thrown, this by Spermwhale, and it knocked the rabies right out of Roscoe.

The choir practice ended in a hurry with everyone running to his car to get away in case someone heard the shots and was calling the police. Unfortunately Roscoe could not leave, not after he discovered it was his own set of keys he had thrown into the middle of the pond. He waded in the buttery mud and dove in the mucky water until daybreak.

The quietus was uttered by Ora Lee Tingle as she and Carolina Moon were bouncing half dressed across the grass toward Park View Street at 5:00 A.M.

She turned and yelled, "It was a swell choir practice, fellas! And don't worry, Roscoe, we ain't gonna start calling you a duck sucker!"

THIRTEEN.

Catullus.

It was two weeks after that memorable choir practice before there was talk of going to MacArthur Park. Roscoe's shootout with the ducks had unnerved everyone and had caused ten choirboys and two cocktail waitresses to study the newspapers the next day for any mention of persons hit with stray bullets in the vicinity of the park. There was done. They were ready to try again. It was scheduled for a Thursday night near the end of August. Harold Bloomguard intended to make sure all the choirboys left their guns in their cars.

"We can't have any more shooting at ducks," Harold had informed the others.

"How about shooting at fags?" Roscoe Rules had remarked.

"Believe it or not it's kind of nice to get back in a radio car after two weeks on vice," said Sam Niles to Harold Bloomguard the Tuesday night before.

"I was getting tired of those smelly rest rooms," Harold agreed as he blew a spit bubble against the steering wheel.

Sam slouched in the black and white and glanced languidly at the traffic which was light at this time of night. He didn't mind when Harold drove toward the Miracle Mile for a change of scenery.

"Remember the whore who lived there?" asked Sam as they passed a freshly painted lemon and white townhouse apartment building.

"Yeah, sometimes vice was fun," said Harold.

Then Sam Niles said something he would profoundly regret: "Just for kicks, drive by Gina Summers' apartment, right off Wilshire."

"Who?"

"That sadist whore, the one who takes those special tricks and does a number on them in her little torture chamber."

"Oh yeah," Harold said. "I never did see her. I remember you and Baxter talking about her."

"Wanna see if she's undressing up by her window tonight?" Sam asked. "Then you can see her. Tits like avocados."

"All right!" Harold said.

When Harold pulled to the curb beside Gina Summers' apartment and turned the lights out, Sam Niles said, "Yeah, she's home. See the light up there in the sixth floor corner apartment? Just sit for a minute, see if she parades in front of the window naked."

"Got lots of time." Harold had his eyes glued to the light.

But after they sat for five minutes Harold got antsy and said, "Well?"

"No action tonight. Let's split," said Sam.

Just then Gina Summers walked in front of the window, a long piece of leather draped around her neck She unbuttoned her blouse and stood naked to the waist, the leather resting on one breast as she lowered the shade.

"Outta sight!" Harold Bloomguard exclaimed.

"Harold, that was a man's belt, wasn't ?" Sara Niles asked.

"It was a long fat leather belt. Mighta been a whip!"

"Goddamn. She's got a trick up there."

"So what?"

"So what? Do you know that Scuz had Baxter and I stake out four nights straight trying to dose the vice complaint on this bitch? We never got close. Now she's got a trick up there. And she's got her whip!"

"So? We're not working vice anymore."

"It's police work, isn't it? Besides, Scuz'd get his rocks off if a couple of bluesuits brought in Gina Summers on a vice pinch when his squad's been working on her so long."

"Come on, Sam," Harold said. "It's only a lousy misdemeanor like Scuz always said. Besides we can't sneak and peek in full uniform."

"Let's try. You might get to see her bare ass, Harold."

"That's different. Let's go," Harold Bloomguard said, and the partners gathered up their hats and flashlights and locked the radio car.

"But how the hell we gonna get a violation?" Harold asked.

They crossed the street, looking up at the lighted window, entered the unlocked apartment building, took the carpeted stairs two at a time, clear to the fourth floor.

"We have to be able to hear the offer and the action," Sam said.

"That's impossible," Harold answered, puffing up the stairs.

"I've got good ears."

"Scuz said never to perjure yourself for a chickenshit vice arrest, remember?"

"Don't worry. Did you see the fire escape by her window? Baxter and I always had it planned if we saw a trick inside we'd go out on the fire escape. It's only three feet from her bedroom. I'm positive I could hear anything that was happening from there."

"Well," Harold shrugged and then they stopped and rested on the fifth landing.

Harold longed for the elevator. But he knew why Sam disliked the confinement.

At last they reached the sixth floor, and while Harold Bloomguard had second and third thoughts about doing vice work in uniform, Sam Niles climbed out on the fire escape and was squatting in the darkness catching his breath. Then Sam heard female laughter and a muffled male voice in Gina Summers' bedroom.

He took off his hat and glasses and wiped his forehead on his blue woolen shirtsleeve and cleaned his glasses with his handkerchief, catching a breeze near the rooftops.