Free The Secrets of Harry Bright by Joseph Wambaugh Page B

number. The hooker would only then make the call and discuss the transaction. She di d m ost of her business with male tourists so they didn't mind leaving the telephone numbers of hotel rooms.
    Wingnut was told that they wanted the hooker to become acquainted with his telephone voice so there would be no problem when he showed up later at the rendezvous. He was told by the other cops that he was to get on the telephone and read a carefully worded script.
    After reading the vice cops' message, Wingnut Bates said, "But isn't that entrapment, saying stuff like this to a hooker?"
    "N0000 problem," the vice cops told him. "The laws on entrapment are constantly changing. Just say exactly what's in the script."
    So, while Wingnut rehearsed his lines in the squad room until all three vice cops agreed that he had it just right, one of them dialed the hooker's number. Only it wasn't the hooker's number. It was Wingnut's home number. The vice cop waited until Wingnut's new bride answered and then said, "Just a second," into the phone. Only it wasn't Wingnut's new bride. It was her mother, Eunice, who didn't think much of her Penny marrying a cop when she'd had an offer from a Costa Mesa dentist with some prospects in life.
    When Eunice said, "Who is this?" the phone was handed to Wingnut Bates, who delivered his lines. He said, "Hello, lover-buns. Yes, I got your message and yes, I want you to sit on my nose and yes, fifty bucks is 000-kay! Just talking to you I got me a woody bigger 'n a thirty-eight-ounce Louisville slugger!"
    And then Wingnut Bates heard his mother-in-law scream, "Willard! Willard! Have you gone crazy?"
    That was the kind of thing that happened to new vice cops. Once he was operating a complaint about wienie waggers inside a movie house adjoining a dirty bookstore that was disturbingly close to Disneyland. The cinema was showing Doing Debbie Dirty, which starred a surprisingly hot-looking porn star with a supporting cast of thirty-seven guys. They put Wingnut down in the front row with instructions to come running toward the back of the theater if they gave a signal. A signal meant they'd caugh t s ome guy milking the anaconda. They also told him they hoped he'd worn a jockstrap because it would be very unprofessional if he were to grow a woody watching Debbie being done dirty.
    Five minutes later, one of the vice cops posing as a customer stormed huffily out to the lobby and told the manager, "That little guy in the front row with the gremlin ears, he's low-crawling people's crotches! He's a pervert! I want my money back!"
    And then another vice cop posing as a customer stalked out saying indignantly, "I goddamn near broke my ankle slipping on the floor down in front! There's a little jerkoff down there going splooey all over the place! You could hydroplane on all the sapazzola in this freak show! I want my money back!"
    And so forth.
    While the vice cops went outside to giggle, the theater manager, who was sick and tired of dummy floggers chasing off legitimate customers, grabbed Wingnut by the scruff of the neck and dragged him right out of his seat, which resulted in a reflexive swing by Wingnut and a retaliatory punch by the theater manager, and pretty soon there was a screaming wrestling match that had all the customers pouring out of the cinema in panic.
    By the time the other cops realized that another prank had backfired, and came running back into the theater, the fight had spilled over next door into the X-rated bookstore where the theater manager was doing a rain dance from having taken a swing and smacked the wall. He was jumping up and down with a busted hand, yelling and screaming, and Wingnut was sprawled between the dildos and the transvestite pinups thinking that vice wasn't going to be much better than patrol.
    His Orange County police career ended not because of any backfired pranks but on a legitimate whore operation at a high-rise hotel where he almost got shot. On this operation, Wingnut was