The Weasel and the Ferret were going after Tuna Can Tommy. It wasn’t their idea of course. Every time those lazy pricks on the vice detail couldn’t catch some minor pain in the ass they’d paint a portrait of the pain in the ass as a dope dealer and turn it over to narcotics. Probably Tuna Can Tommy smoked a couple of lids a week. If they iced down everybody who smoked a couple of lids a week they’d have half of Hollywood in the cooler and the other half waiting their turn. Many are chilled, but few are frozen, the two narcs always said.
They’d thought that Captain Woofer would still be tickled to death with the way they brought down Just Plain Bill. But no, a short weekend to recuperate and they get handed some other guy’s problem. (The Ferret had night sweats on Friday and Saturday from dreams where the Asian Assassin was chasing him.) Thirteen more years for their pensions. Why in hell did guys like poor old Cal Greenberg hang around so long?
It seemed that Tuna Can Tommy made lewd telephone calls to Hollywood housewives.
And he occasionally left Polaroids of himself on the windshields of cars parked near the Hollywood Ranch Market. In the photographs he wore a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, a Lone Ranger mask and nothing else. He apparently staked out the area and usually selected cars belonging to women reasonably young and attractive, although sometimes he wasn’t so particular. At least one massive momma came wallumping into the Hollywood vice office bitching about a Tuna Can Tommy Polaroid she found on her windshield. She weighed in at two hundred pounds and was surging out of her shorts and tube top, yelling loud enough to scare Gladys Bruckmeyer clear up in the detective squadroom.
Gladys Bruckmeyer was back to duty after her encounter with caterpillars who conquer the kingdom, but was still spooky when it came to sudden changes in decibel level. The detectives pretended not to notice that Gladys Bruckmeyer would cry out every time Captain Woofer called her name. He’d call, “Gladys!” and she’d scream and hit the tab bar which sent the carriage flying, ringing the margin bell.
It was, “Gladys!” ding! “Gladys!” ding! Which was driving everybody crazy until poor old Cal Greenberg sabotaged the typewriter bell when Gladys took one of her frequent trips down the hall to gobble some Miltowns.
So the Weasel and the Ferret were ordered by Captain Woofer to quit basking in celebrity for capturing Just Plain Bill, and get out there and rid the Hollywood citizens of Tuna Can Tommy. All theirs because the squirrel is suddenly transformed into a dope dealer by an “anonymous informant” who talked with the vice sergeant. Times are pretty goddamn bad, the Weasel complained, when cops started using the same lame lies to each other that they should save for the real Enemies in the judiciary. But the Weasel and the Ferret had to spend most of Monday morning in a fruitless stakeout near the Hollywood Ranch Market for a fruitcake with Polaroids who signed each photograph “Love from Tommy,” and who ended his lewd phone calls with, “Love ya! It’s Tommy!”
“In the first place, what’s he doing so bad in leaving his own personal valentine on these cars?” the Weasel whined, during the second hour of their stakeout.
“Guy doesn’t ask for nothing,” the Ferrett moaned. “Just to show these broads how he looks naked in his Lone Ranger mask and boots. What the hell. How many strangers you run into these days who leave an I love ya! on your car?”
“Most people just say, ‘have a nice day,’“ the Weasel agreed.
“Those lazy pricks on the vice detail,” the Ferret groused. “They probably couldn’t catch him if he left his last name,” the Weasel bitched. “We’ll have to pick up a Polaroid. See what his chubby body looks like.”
“Vice couldn’t catch him if he left his telephone number and address,” the Ferret said. “I’ll be so glad when this loan-out is over. I wanna get back downtown and away from Woofer.”
“Wonder why vice calls the squirrel Tuna Can Tommy?” the Weasel mused. “And I wonder how we got picked for this whole Hollywood assignment in the first place?”
The way the Weasel and Ferret were picked was elementary. Captain Woofer simply begged Deputy Chief Francis to loan him a team of narcs to help mollify the merchants and politicians constantly harping about Hollywood becoming a slum.
And when Fuzznuts Francis asked what kind of narcs he wanted, Captain Woofer said to send him a pair of grungy, ugly, filthy, hairy, disgusting, creepy scumbags who would fit in with the run-of-the-mill Hollywood street folks.
The scumbags were sitting in their battered Toyota by the Hollywood Ranch Market, sharing these woes, when they received the radio call which would plunge them yet deeper into the Nigel St. Claire murder case. The radio call was to phone the station. The Ferret went to a telephone booth and after a few minutes came hurrying back to the Weasel with a happy smile in his beard.
“Huzzah!” the Ferret cried. “We may wrap up Tuna Can Tommy even faster than Just Plain Bill!”
“He give himself up?”
“He made another lewd phone call last night, only this victim says she thinks she recognizes the voice!”
“Yeah?” The Weasel was already firing up the Toyota. “Where we going?”
Rita Roundtree was reading Daily Variety when the two narcs entered the fast-food famous-name restaurant, and took their seats at the counter. She glanced at the two hairballs in leather jackets and took her time finishing the column about a 25-million-dollar movie that was boffo in six openings. Then she looked at the extravagant ads that some talent agencies took for their clients and wondered why she’d hooked up with such a low-rent agent, and no wonder she hadn’t had a job since four months ago when she had one line in a pizza commercial. It was so discouraging she let out a big sigh.
Her sigh took her high-riding 38D cups even higher than the hairballs’ hopes.
They of course knew who she was from her telephone call to the vice unit. When she finally decided the two leather-covered creepos wouldn’t go away she moved sluggishly down the counter, one of an army of Hollywood waitresses seduced not by dreams of streets paved with gold but of sidewalks paved with stars in solid brass.
“What can I get you?” she asked lethargically.
“You Rita Roundtree?” The Weasel grinned.
“How’d you know?” She was suspicious.
“We’re from Hollywood Station,” the Ferret said.
“You’re cops!”
They were used to it. The Ferret slipped his badge from under the shoulder of his leather jacket, showed it to her, and put it back. He didn’t bother with the identification card. She’d never recognize the clean-cut young kisser on that old card anyway.
“It’s just like in the movies,” the Ferret said. “When does Tommy come in here?”
“I don’t know his name’s Tommy,” Rita Roundtree said, disappointed that the cops they sent didn’t look like Starsky and Hutch.
“He calls himself Tommy, right? You told the lieutenant you recognized his voice?”
“He comes in here for breakfast, maybe four, five times a week. He was trying to disguise his voice but I know it was him.”
“What’d he say?”
“Same thing every one a those heavy breathers says when they get on the line.”
“Specifically,” the Ferret said, looking at those high risers.
She caught him ogling. “Would you like me to whisper all the dirty words in your ear, Officer?” she said, and it was clear the Ferret was not her type.
Which let the Weasel know they might as well forget the fantasies and get down to business. “We’ll have you make a crime report if we get him,” the Weasel said. “We have to know the exact words so we can make a case in court.”
“He said he hoped I wore bikini panties cause he’d like to get a mouthful of the crotch and suck them right off my cunt like spaghetti off a spoon, is what he said, if you gotta know.”
“Yeah?” cried the Weasel, pretty damned impressed with this Tuna Can Tommy.
“Really?” cried the Ferret, deciding it was a neat idea if you think about it.
“He’s a goofy fat guy,” Rita Roundtree said, pouring them coffee. “Got these tufts a red hair growing out his ears and nose. Yuk! I hate tufts a hair growing out ears and noses.”
The Weasel and Ferret immediately looked at each other’s ears and noses, but they both had such long hair and bushy beards it was impossible to tell.
“How come the lieutenant told us you wanted to see us right away, if he comes in for breakfast?” the Ferret asked.
“He eats his breakfast at noon, that’s why,” Rita Roundtree answered. “Same thing every time. Two over easy, hashbrowns, bacon, ham and steak. A real geeky porker.”
They only had to wait twenty minutes for the porker. Several other noontime customers had entered but the clump of red hair on the head of the fat man told them even without her nod. Tuna Can Tommy made a little small talk with Rita Roundtree, and eyed her ass when she gave his order to the fry cook. Of course so did every other man at the lunch counter, except for two body builders who were holding hands and sharing a chocolate malt.
Tuna Can Tommy drank three cups of coffee after breakfast and left Rita Roundtree a two-dollar tip which made her somewhat regret calling the cops. With all the cheap fucks around here, a lewd phone call from a big tipper who wants to suck your drawers off isn’t too high a price.
The Ferret went for the Toyota and the Weasel tailed Tuna Can Tommy on foot. It was a piece of cake. A big-time Hollywood dope dealer? Those lazy pricks on the vice squad.
They tailed Tuna Can Tommy to an apartment building just two blocks from the famous Chinese Theater. The throngs of tourists nosing around the concrete footprints (John Wayne’s look so small, they invariably cried) made it that much easier to do the surveillance on foot. The Weasel found it so simple, he practically walked into the apartment building and up to the third floor with the fat man. He spotted the apartment number, returned to the mailbox, and saw that Tuna Can Tommy’s real name was Dudley Small. He rejoined the Ferret, who had parked the nark ark and was hotfooting it toward the apartment house, wiping his ever-sensitive smog-filled eyes.
It was a 1920s Spanish-style apartment building, which meant it had a basement for sure. Ten minutes later the two young narcs were in the basement with their homemade resistors, wires and alligator clips, perfectly willing to risk a few years in the slam for illegal wiretapping.
Poor old Cal Greenberg had said it best: An unlucky policeman’s life passes through four phases--cockiness, care, compromise, despair. The lucky ones don’t reach phase four. The Weasel and Ferret were still in phase one. Swashbucklers.
But the telephone box was practically inaccessible with all the furniture and piles of junk stacked everywhere. Besides, the guy wasn’t worth all this trouble. TheFerret went back to the car and returned with a stethoscope from their bag of tricks. Then they were in the upstairs hallway, the Ferret watching the stairway and the Weasel with his stethoscope pressed to the door, listening for hot talk from Tuna Can Tommy. But the telephone was too far away.
After fifteen minutes Tuna Can Tommy made a call. All the Weasel could hear was a brief muffled monologue. The Weasel took the stethoscope out of his ears, signaled to the Ferret, and both narcs then went to the window leading out onto the fire escape. Tuna Can Tommy’s draped window was four feet from the railing, close enough to hang on with one hand, reach across the brick wall with the other, and raise the window if it was unlocked. The entire illegal maneuver if mismanaged could result in a three-story fall to the alley below. They didn’t hesitate. After a quick huddle, the Ferret, being the most agile, climbed over the railing and the Weasel went to distract Tuna Can Tommy. Daredevils.
The Weasel knocked at the door, and after a moment Tuna Can Tommy opened it with the chain lock holding.
“Pardon me,” the Weasel said. “I’m looking for Martha Beagle-lump. Does she live here?”
“Never heard of her,” Tuna Can Tommy said. “Oh, that’s odd. I was sure this was the right apartment.”
“No, you have the wrong apartment.” “Do you know a lady about fifty years old in this
building? Lives alone? Wears butterfly glasses? Sort of walks like a rabbit? Hippety hop?”
“No, not in this apartment,” Tuna Can Tommy insisted.
“Thanks anyway,” the Weasel said cheerfully, as the fat man closed the door.
Two minutes later he joined the Ferret on the fire escape, where the heavily draped window was now opened eight inches.
“Hello, lemme talk to Flameout,” they heard him say on the telephone. After a pause he said, “Flameout? It’s me, Dudley. How’s Tarnished Gem look in the fifth? Yeah? Okay, get me down for five across. Yeah, that’s all. Thanks.”
Shit. He was calling his bookie. It was a goddamn vice case all the way. Lewd phone calls. Gambling. Next thing he’d turn into a whore or something.
Heavyweight drug dealer? Bullshit!
Then Tuna Can Tommy dialed the telephone again and he said, very officiously: “Hello, is this Roberta Philbert? Yes? Mrs. Philbert, I’m calling for the Santa Monica Research Institute of Consumer Affairs. We’re trying to determine what kind of laundry detergent the average housewife uses. We’ll be happy to send you, with our compliments, a gift certificate for fifty dollars’ worth of the detergent of your choice if you’ll just answer a few simple questions.”
There was a pause, and the Ferret and Weasel began grinning like cats. This sounded like old Tuna Can Tommy, all right.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Tuna Can Tommy. “First, I’d like to know which detergent you’re using now. Yes. Uh huh, and is it strong enough to get the dirt out of your kids’ playclothes? Yes? How about your husband’s shirts? Does he wear white shirts? No? How does it perform on white? Say, underwear? Your husband’s underwear? Yes? And the kids’ underwear? Does it perform adequately? And your underwear? Uh huh, and can you tell me, what kind of underwear? No, not theirs. Yours. Do you wear white underwear? Uh huh, and do you wear other colors? How about red? Do you wear bikini underwear? Hello? Hello!”
The Weasel and Ferret held a quick conversation outside Tuna Can Tommy’s door.
“We got nothing to bust him for,” said the Ferret. “Nothing that’ll hold up in court.”
“This is bullshit anyway,” the Ferret said. “We’re narcs!”
“Let’s jack him up a little bit. We could spend a month sticking to his wall like freaking mosquitoes. If he confesses and throws himself on the mercy of the cop, we’ll take him down and book him. Otherwise we’ll terrorize him a little bit and tell him to take his Polaroids to Malibu. Virgin territory and all that.”
“Go for it,” the Ferret agreed, and this time it was he who knocked on the door, yelling, “Mr. Small! It’s the mailman! I have a registered letter for you!”
And when Tuna Can Tommy unslid his chain and turned the latch, the door burst open and he was caught in a wristlock and choke hold by what had to be a Hell’s Angels enforcement squad and he had a passing panicky wish that he’d given away all the Polaroids. When the mortician gave his mother his remains and personal things, he didn’t want her to know about the other life.
Tuna Can Tommy could have kissed both of them after they pushed him down on the couch and told him to stop screaming or they’d cut his fucking throat and that they were Los Angeles police officers. He examined the badge closely.
“You are cops! You are cops!” Tuna Can Tommy cried. That badge is just like the one on Dragnet!”
“Jesus, you’re a real screamer, ain’t ya,” the Weasel said. “Can’t you talk in an ordinary tone a voice?”
“I’m sorry,” Tuna Can Tommy said. “I was so frightened! I’m so happy you’re cops!”
“Yeah, yeah,” the Ferret said. “Listen, we can’t dick around with ya. We got information you’re the masked man leaving his nudie pictures around town. No sense lying about it. Our crime lab is the best in the world. Interpol and Scotland Yard come to us. Our scientists subjected your pictures to a spectograph, monograph, and polygraph. There’s no point in lyin and denyin. They got every freckle and mole on your tubby little frame pinpointed by a fluoroscope and gyroscope.”
“All we gotta do is get a court order, make you pull your pants down, bingo, it’s all over,” the Weasel said. “I don’t see how you can get outa this one.”
“Ain’t no way,” the Ferret said. “You might as well tell us all about it, make you feel better.”
“Can’t say I blame you for what you done,” the Weasel said. “I got a thing for sucking their pants off myself. And I don’t care what kind a detergent they use.”
“You know everything!” Tuna Can Tommy sobbed.
“A course we know everything,” the Weasel said. “Ya said ya watch Dragnet, for chrissake!”
“I’m sorry I did it,” Tuna Can Tommy blubbered. “Can’t you give me another chance? I never been arrested.”
“Well, we might, but we heard some other tidbits lately. Oh, by the way, they been directing sound waves at your house for about a month now. You feel funny sometimes when you go to bed? Itchy in the crotch maybe? Funny sort a wiggly feeling in your tummy? Maybe after one a your phone calls? Maybe your dork gets hard?”
“Yes! Yes!” Tuna Can Tommy said, weeping openly.
“That’s from the sound waves,” the Ferret said. “We learned it from the Russians. They do it to our embassies. Makes you goofy after a while. Half the fucking ambassadors in Europe end up making phone calls late at night asking broads about their underwear. It ain’t all your fault, Tommy.”
“My name’s Dudley,” the fat man cried. “Tommy’s my alias!”
“Well, we gotta tell ya, your bad habits know no limits, Tommy,” the Weasel said, but Tuna Can Tommy was crying so hard he could hardly hear him. “We discovered through our latest sound waves that you’re also involved with bookmakers. Christ, I like underwear too, but I try to control some bad habits: Polaroids, bookmakers, flogging your dummy. You gotta stop somewhere, Tommy.”
“I only bet on horses once in a while,” Tuna Can Tommy wailed. “I won’t do it anymore!”
“And the last thing is, we know you’re a doper, Tommy,” the Ferret said. “Now just turn over your stash to me and it’ll go a lot easier on ya.”
“I’m not!” Tuna Can Tommy wailed. “I’m not. I work every night at the Swifty Messenger Service. I’m the best and speediest deliveryman they have. Speedy messengers can’t be dope fiends!”
“You can’t give some people a break,” the Weasel said to the Ferret. “Get your coat, Tommy, we ain’t gonna stand here and watch your sinuses drain.”
“Wait, please!” Tuna Can Tommy cried, getting up and running into the bedroom toward the nightstand drawer.
Both startled narcs drew their guns, and after they got Tuna Can Tommy’s renewed burst of terror under control, they sat him on the bed and removed the package from the drawer. He had exactly fifteen dexis and twelve reds, depending upon whether he wanted to go up or down.
“That’s all the dope I’ve got,” Tuna Can Tommy sobbed. “I got it at Flameout Farrell’s place. You probably know he’s my bookie.”
“We know everything.” The Weasel nodded.
Then the Weasel said, “Bookies don’t usually offer uppers and downers to their clients.”
“Flameout didn’t sell them to me. In fact, nobody sold them. Some guy came in Flameout’s restaurant and gave them to me one day. Drives a Bentley. I think he’s a big coke connection!”
“Another big connection,” the Ferret groaned. “What makes you think that?”
“Somebody mentioned it. He’s also a big horseplayer. I heard he drops maybe a thousand a day at the track and thinks nothing about it!”
“Yeah?” the Weasel said. A grand a day. Maybe this could turn into a drug case after all. The Ferret nodded at him. They were getting sick and tired of dicking around with Tuna Can Tommy.
“Okay, Tommy, now you listen to me,’ the Weasel said. “We might be able to let you slide this time if you’re cooperative. It’s called trading up. Little fish for big fish. You understand?”
“No.”
“What’s this dude’s name, the flash who gave you the uppers and downers?”
“Lemme think,” Tuna Can Tommy said. “You got me so scared I can’t think!”
“Aw right, aw right,” the Ferret said, “get your act together. Mellow out. Lay down on the bed.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Gang-bang ya, whadda ya think? Lay down on the fuckin bed!”
Whereupon Tuna Can Tommy plopped down, belly up to prevent the gang bang as long as possible. He stared at the two ferocious narcs with terror in his eyes.
“You got any spit left, or you scared spitless?” the Ferret asked.
“I don’t know!” Tuna Can Tommy wailed.
“Open your mouth,” the Ferret commanded.
Tuna Can Tommy, sweating buckets, his gelatinous body quivering from neck to knee, opened his mouth and closed his eyes, and gagged when something hit the back of his throat.
“Now swallow it, you got any spit left,” the Ferret ordered.
Tuna Can Tommy gulped once, twice, and got it down. He smiled. It was one of the reds.
“Hey, lemme try that!” the Weasel said, taking a capsule from the Ferret’s hand.
“Open up again.”
This time Tommy nodded eagerly and opened his rubber lips. (God, he did have ugly tufts of red hair hanging out his snoot. Gross!)
The Weasel stood at the foot of the bed and hit him in the eye with the first Seconal capsule. “Leave it!” he ordered, when Tuna Can Tommy tried to gobble it up. The second one was a bull’s-eye landing right in that big pink mouth and the fat man swallowed it easily. Less fear, more spit.
The Ferret and the Weasel, who were now starting to enjoy themselves, each got one more in Tommy’s gaping maw, missing a few, but getting better with each toss.
“Now, goddamnit, you starting to kick back?” the Weasel wanted to know.
“I feel better, Officer.” Tuna Can Tommy smiled.
“Okay, what’s the name of the big player, might be a coke dealer?”
“Lloyd,” Tuna Can Tommy said without hesitation. “Lloyd. I wasn’t told his last name. Drives a black Bentley. I’ve never even seen coke. I don’t have every bad habit.”
“Okay, where’s Flameout Farrell work out of?” the Ferret asked.
“You know that dirty-book store on Hollywood Boulevard?”
“Which dirty-book store, for chrissake?”
“The one with the big Greek statue? Where the statue’s urinating in the pond? That one. The one near the freeway.”
“He owns the bookstore?”
“No. He owns the little restaurant three doors down. Stays open till nine. I eat my supper there sometimes. I don’t think he’s much of a bookmaker. The phone doesn’t ring that much. You won’t tell him I told on him, will ya?”
“Now if we didn’t protect the confidentiality of our...agents, we couldn’t trade little one for big ones, could we?”
“An agent!” Tuna Can Tommy beamed. This was a better fantasy than sucking underwear. He boldly opened his mouth and pointed. Now that he was an agent he could make certain demands.
The Weasel flipped one more in there and said that is fucking it. Any more downers and he’d be the late secret agent. Which reminded Tuna Can Tommy of the mortician and the personal belongings. He glanced involuntarily toward the other drawer, and the Ferret noticed.
The Ferret reached inside and found four self-photographed portraits in cowboys boots, hat and mask.
The Ferret cried, “Out of freaking sight!”
“Those are real ostrich boots,” Tuna Can Tommy said proudly. The Weasel, who was writing in his notebook, mumbled, “You wear five-hundred-dollar ostrich, I wear thirty-dollar shit kickers. There’s gotta be a moral somewheres.”
“It ain’t your boots, masked man!” the Ferret cried to Tuna Can Tommy. “Now I know how you got your nickname!”
“What nickname? I always sign the picture Tommy.”
“The vice cops didn’t show us your Polaroids. Now I know why they call you Tuna Can Tommy!”
“Do they call me that? Oh, that’s mean!” He looked as though he might start crying again. “I can’t help the way I’m built!”
The Weasel stopped making notes about Flameout Farrell and Lloyd the alleged coke dealer and took the pictures from the Ferret.
“My God!” the Weasel cried. “Your putz! It’s nearly three inches in diameter!”
But, alas, it was less than two inches in length. It was shaped exactly like a tuna can.
Joseph Wambaugh (1981). The Glitter Dome. New York : Bantam Books, 1982, c1981.. Kindle Edition.
my dick is so magnificent bro, my ex girlfriends name their first born son after me. LOL at breeding another 100 generations of fail and actually having to wipe a baby"s ass; just hit it right and have your name live on forever.
LISTEN while youre busy driving your cocaine submarine, i was out here defending the idea that all star survivor is better against scooter who thinks its a bad idea, JESUS CHRIST YOUR JIMMERY KNOWS NO BOUNDS
Quote:
Originally Posted by neverstop in a PM
. . .
But whatever, yes I can be a huge canadian faggot and you can be terrible yourself but theres no reason we shouldnt be able to co-exist at the very least, ya feelz me??
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