Free The Delta Star by Joseph Wambaugh

them. Or when necessary, by talking dirty.
    Dilford, who kept his taffy-colored hair meticulously styled and sprayed, never missed a chance to pounce on any cop-chasing groupie who happened by Rampart Station at change of watch, but had been morally indignant and evinced biblical wrath when earlier that day Dolly had talked a two-hundred-pound fighting-mad bull-dyke into jail after the dyke had broken the jaw, nose and rib of a U. S. Marine (male sergeant) who had been screwing around with the bull-dyke’s girlfriend . Dilford had been outraged when Dolly smiled at the dyke, batted her lashes seductively and gave a sexual promise to the bull-dyke which, though the dyke didn’t believe it, so charmed and enchanted the scar-faced street fighter that she dropped her boxing pose and came along like a kitten.
    After they got the bull-dyke booked, Dilford had sneered, “I suppose all you females dig that kind of thing. Probably got to have a tendency in that direction to even want a man’s job.”
    “Look, Dilford,” she answered, “if I wanted to get in fights I’d get married. Would you rather fight with people or do the job the easy way?”
    “If you were a full-sized man like cops’re supposed to be, we wouldn’t have to embarrass ourselves by offering tits and ass to a frigging bull-dagger,” Dilford sneered.
    “I wonder if you’re gonna be one of those … assholes who deliberately gets his female partner in a physical altercation to try to prove something, Dilford?” Dolly asked, her voice shaking. “I know my limitations, Dilford. I don’t want to get in punch-outs with these people out here. I’m not trying to prove anything.” And then she made the mistake of adding, “I’m secure in my sexual identity, Dilford.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dilford asked, slamming on the brakes at the intersection.
    It was then he spotted the drag queen sashaying down Eighth Street, trying to shag passing motorists and get twenty-five bucks for a head job, and leave the customer thinking he had been partying with a real woman. Which seldom happened in that the drag queen was six feet two inches tall and had shoulders like Mean Joe Green.
    Dilford, as bitchy as he was, knew full well how bitchy drag queens got with female cops, especially if male cops made flash-light-and-nightstick jokes during a pat-down search by a female officer.
    “Let’s see what that Cuban drag queen’s up to,” Dilford said. “I think that’s the one sometimes carries a loaded thirty-eight in his purse.”
    Dolly figured right off that the only .38 the Cuban had was the 38 D-cup filled with latex attached to his chest. And she suspected that Dilford was bitchy enough today to get her into a fight deliberately. Dolly was nervously fiddling with a lock of her sorrel hair which the lieutenant made her pin above her collar with a dumb barrette to comply with ancient department regulations, when her off-duty below-the-collar hairdo was infinitely more attractive. Then Dolly stopped fiddling with her hair and decided that even Dilford couldn’t be enough of a prick to deliberately get her hurt. On the other hand …
    “Sure is a big drag queen,” Dolly said.
    “You scared?” Dilford grinned nastily. “Scared of a mincing faggot?”
    “I heard about a drag queen on Alvarado v/ho tore the uniform and even the T-shirt right off Cecil Higgins one day. This wouldn’t be the one, would it?”
    “I don’t know,” Dilford shrugged. “What if it is?”
    “Well I’m down to my last T-shirt,” Dolly said, trying her best to make an overture in case Dilford had evil intentions. “I own fourteen T-shirts, fourteen pair of socks and fourteen underwear. So I only have to go to the Laundromat every payday. I’m down to my last pair.” She tried a conciliatory smile when she said it.
    “Fourteen underwear,” Dilford sneered acidly. “Do you wear jockey shorts like me?”
    “Let’s talk to the frigging drag queen,” Dolly