Clandestine

Jurgensen considered this. I could tell he believed me. "Well, Underhill," he said, "that's too bad. What are your plans regarding the department?"

"Sir, to go as far as I can as fast as I can."

"Then you have the opportunity to do some real police work. Right here in this tragic sinkhole."

"Sir, I'm looking forward to it."

"I believe you are, Officer. Every man who comes to this division starts out the same way, walking a beat at night in the heart of the jungle. Sergeant McDonald will fix you up with a partner."

Jurgensen motioned his head toward the door, indicating dismissal. "Good luck, Underhill," he said.

When I met my new partner in the crowded, sweltering muster room, I knew I was going to need luck—and more. His name was Bob Norsworthy. He was from Texas and he chewed tobacco. He fingered his Sam Browne belt and rotated his billy club out from his right hip in a perfect circle as the desk sergeant introduced us. Norsworthy was six and a half feet tall and weighed in at about two-thirty-five. He had black hair cut extra close to his flat head and blue eyes so light that they looked like he sent them out to be bleached.

"Yo there, Underhill," he said to me as Sergeant McDonald walked away from us. "Welcome to the Congo."

"Thanks," I said and stuck out my hand, instantly regretting it as Norsworthy crushed it in his huge fist.

He laughed. "You like that old handshake of mine? I been workin' on it with one o' them hand-squeezer babies. I'm the champeen arm wrestler of this station."

"I believe you. What are we going to do on the beat tonight, Norsworthy?"

"Call me Nors. What should I call you?"

"Fred."

"All right there, Fred. Tonight we're gonna take a long walk up Central Avenue and let our presence be known. They got call boxes every two blocks, and we call the station every hour for instructions. Old Mac at the desk lets us know where there's trouble brewin'. I gotta key for the call boxes. Them boxes is ironclad. If we don't keep 'em all sealed up, them delinquents'd be bustin' into 'em and makin' all kinds of funny noises.

"We break up lots o' unlawful assemblies. An unlawful assembly is two or more niggers hangin' around after dark. We lean on known troublemakers, which is just about every wiseass on the street. We check out the bars and liquor stores and haul out the bad jigaboos. That's where this job gets to be fun. You like to whomp on niggers, Fred?"

"I've never tried it," I said. "Is it fun?"

Nors laughed again. "You got a sense of humor. I heard 'bout you. You dispatched two taco-benders to the big frijole patch in the sky when you was workin' Wilshire. You a genuine hero. But you gotta be some kind of fuckup or you wouldn't a got transferred here. You my kind of cop. We gonna be great buddies."

Norsworthy impulsively grabbed for my hand and crushed it again. I pulled it away before he could break any bones. "Whoa, partner," I said, "I need that hand to write reports with."

Norsworthy laughed. "You gonna be needin' that right hand for lots more'n writin' reports in this here division, white boy," he said.

If Norsworthy was less than sensitive, then he was more than instructive. Grudgingly, despite his racism and crudeness, I started to like him. I expected him to be brutal, but he wasn't: he was stern and civil with the people we dealt with on the street, and when violence was required in subduing unarmed suspects his method was, by Seventy-seventh Street standards, mild—he would grasp the person in a fierce bear hug, squeeze them until their limbs took on a purple sheen, then drop them to the pavement, unconscious. It worked.

When we patrolled Central Avenue south of 100th Street, an area Norsworthy called "Darkest Africa," nobody save the far-gone drunks, hopheads, and the unknowing would give us anything but frightened nods. Norsworthy was so secure in his knowledge of how dangerous he was that he granted the Negroes whom he privately maligned a stern respect, almost by rote. He never had to raise his voice. His gargantuan, tobacco-chewing presence was enough, and I, as his partner, caught the edge of the awed, fearful respect he received.

So our partnership jelled—for a while. We walked the beat and made lots of arrests for drunkenness, possession of narcotics, and assault. We would go into bars and arrest brawlers. Usually, Norsworthy would quell an incipient brawl just by walking in and clearing his throat, but sometimes we would have to go in with billy clubs flying and beat the brawlers to the ground, then handcuff them and call for a patrol car to take them to the station.

The "unlawful assemblies" that Norsworthy had told me about were easy to disperse. We would walk coolly by them, Nors would say, "Good evening, fellows," and the group would seem to vanish into thin air.