class of December ’61.
The Department was shorthanded. He was pre-assigned to the Hall of Justice Jail. He met some celebrated killers straight off.
He met John Deptula. Crazy John burglarized a bowling alley and woke up a live-in handyman named Roger Alan Mosser. Deptula beat Mosser to death and carted his body out to the Angeles National Forest. He decapitated Mosser and stuck his head down a campground porta-toilet. Ward Hallinen cleared the case for Sheriff’s Homicide.
He met Sam LoCigno. LoCigno popped Jack “The Enforcer” Whalen. It was a contract hit. It occurred at Rondelli’s Restaurant in December ’59. The hit was botched six ways from Sunday.
His tier featured drag queens and badass armed robbers. He listened to them and learned things. He entered the Academy and devoured a four-month course in criminal justice. He met a good-looking blonde named Ann Schumacher. She was working at the Autonetics plant in Downey. They made plans to go out on his graduation night.
He graduated the Academy in April ’62. He took Ann to the Crescendo on the swinging Sunset Strip. Ann looked good. He looked good. He was packing a .38 snub-nose. He was twenty-one years old and unassailably cool.
He wanted to work a prowl-car beat. The Sheriff’s were running patrol units out of fourteen stations. He wanted full-time action.
He got jail duty.
They assigned him to the Wayside Honor Rancho. It was sixty-five miles from his pad. The job initiated his long and ugly relationship with freeways.
Wayside knocked some youth out of him. Wayside was a good course in pre-breakdown American justice.
Wayside housed inmates sentenced to county time and Hall of Justice Jail overflow headed to the joint. Whites, Negroes and Mexicans hated each other but refrained from racial warfare. Wayside was an efficient cog in a still- operational system. The system worked because criminal numbers were far short of stratospheric and most criminals did not employ violence. Heroin was the big bad drug of the era. Heroin was a well-contained dope epidemic. Heroin made you pull B&Es and pimp your girlfriend to support your habit. Heroin made you nod out. Heroin did not make you freak out and chop up your girlfriend—like crack would 20 years later. The system worked because felons and misdemeanants plead guilty most of the time and did not file nuisance appeals routinely. The system worked because pre-breakdown jail time was doable. Criminals were pre-psychologized. They accepted authority. They knew they were lowlife scum because they saw it on TV and read it in the papers. They were locked into a rigged game. Authority usually won. They took pleasure in picayune triumphs and reveled in the game’s machinations. The game was insiderism. Insiderism and fatalism were hip. If you stayed shy of the gas chamber, the worst you’d get was penitentiary time. Pre-breakdown joint time was doable. You could drink pruno and fuck sissies in the ass. The system worked because America was yet to buck race riots and assassinations and environmental bullshit and gender confusion and drug proliferation and gun mania and religious psychoses linked to a media implosion and an emerging cult of victimhood—a 25-year transit of divisive bad juju that resulted in a stultifying mass skepticism.
He became a cop at just the right time. He could cleave to simple notions with a clear conscience. He could kick ass with legal impunity. He could postpone aspects of his cop education and come of age as a homicide detective.
He bought the whole illusion back in 1962. He knew the system worked. Jail duty was doable. He got a twisted kick out of the inmates. They played their roles according to the script of the time. The jailers did, too.
He married Ann in December ’62. He transferred to Nor-walk Station a year later. He spent his first anniversary out in a patrol car. Ann was hurt and pissed.
They started fighting. Ann wanted all of his time. He wanted all of her time precisely synced to his schedule. The L.A. County Sheriff’s demanded most of his time. Something had to give.
They fought. His marriage turned into his parents’ marriage with the volume up and lots of “Fuck you”s. Ann had this abandonment complex. Her mother left her and shacked up with an armed robber. The guy took Mom with him on a cross-country heist spree. Ann had this overtly screwed-up childhood.
They fought. They reconciled. They fought. He resisted scads of cop-chaser women out to throw him some trim. The LASD hovered as his potential divorce co-respondent.
He loved patrol work. He loved the flow of unexpected events and the daily mix of new people in trouble. Norwalk was a “gentlemen’s station.” The population was white and the pace was slow. The county ding farm was on his beat. The dings wandered off and pulled amusing stunts stark naked. The Norwalk deputies ran a ding taxi service. They were always running some ding back to the farm.
He enjoyed his Norwalk tour of duty. The system worked and crime was containable. Some of the older guys saw hard times coming. The Miranda decision was fucking things up. The balance of power had shifted from cops to criminal suspects. You couldn’t log confessions with sweat-box tricks and phone-book shots to the kidneys.
He didn’t hold with those tactics. He didn’t pack black-leather sap gloves with 16-ounce palm weights. He wasn’t a violent guy. He tried to reason with unruly types and only fought when he had to.
He flipped his patrol car in mid-pursuit and almost died on the spot. He tangled with a teenage glue sniffer and took some heavyweight lumps. He responded to an accident call and swooped down a two-vehicle pile-up. A man was dead in his truck. His head smashed into the radio dials and kicked the volume way up. You could hear the song “Charade” for blocks around.
Norwalk gave him some wild moments. They were bush league compared to Watts in August ’65.
Ann was eight months pregnant. They were driving north on the Long Beach Freeway. Their view was high and expansive. They saw a dozen fires blazing.
He pulled off the freeway and called Norwalk Station. The watch commander told him to suit up and report to Harvey Aluminum. Harvey was deep in a labor-management conflict. The LASD had a command post set up there already.
He dropped Ann off and blasted over to Harvey. The parking lot was jammed with black & whites and deputies in full riot gear. The command post was dispatching four-man units. He grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and three temporary partners.
The deal was 12-hour shifts. The deal was go bust looters and firebugs. The deal was scour Watts and
