Free The Glitter Dome by Joseph Wambaugh Page B

of Uncle Nigel. It’d blow their minds. It blew his mind just thinking about it. Imagine having the killer of Uncle Nigel in his gunsights!
    â€œB LOOO-EEE!” Herman III yelled, this time scaring the living crap out of Al Mackey and Martin Welborn.
    â€œListen, guys,” Herman III said, “a week from Friday my cousin Syd’s having a party at my granddad’s place in Holmby Hills. I got a killer of an idea! How about if you two come … undercover? Everyone in The Business is gonna be there. We might make a list of suspects. I can introduce you as, say, environmental lobbyists from Washington. The party’s to raise funds to save the pine trees from the greedy lumber interests.”
    The detectives promised to come to the party. Al Mackey wouldn’t have missed it after he heard that Herman III was inviting both his secretaries. Al Mackey was almost positive that Gilda Latour winked at him when she brought his fourth bourbon on the rocks.
    And actually, he had begun to have a warm feeling for the suntanned baby mogul. Herman III was obviously a big spender and might see to the detectives’ every need. Besides, he was kind of a sweet kid and had a voice like Donald Duck.

5
    The Street Monsters
    When Al Mackey was to look back on the Nigel St. Claire case, he would ponder if it all had significance, those seemingly unrelated incidents which somehow link all men in the Endless Chain. Otherwise, how could the first break in the Nigel St. Claire case have come because a marine pissed in a clay pot?
    While Al Mackey and Martin Welborn were saying good-bye to Herman III, and while a marine was pissing in a clay pot, a Hollywood Boulevard fruit-hustler was lurking around the corner of McCadden Place observing that Tyrannosaurus was alive and well and strolling down the boulevard dressed in blue. He was referring, of course, to the street monster Buckmore Phipps, who was perfectly ecstatic today. The reason for Buckmore Phipps’ delight was strolling along beside him: his old partner, Gibson Hand. And the fruit-hustler had only to take one look at that bad news nigger to know it was time to go pushin. Actually, Buck-more Phipps never even noticed anymore that Gibson Hand was a nigger. Buckmore Phipps hated all niggers. He also hated greasers, slopeheads, kikes, judges, lawyers, fags, dopers, reporters, politicians in general, Democrats for sure, his brother and sisters, the chief of police, his ex-wife most assuredly, and all but a handful of other cops. Gibson Hand was one of the few people he didn’t hate. The reason he didn’t hate Gibson Hand is that Gibson Hand hated everybody .
    Buckmore Phipps had first met Gibson Hand when they had both been in on the famous siege wherein the Symbionese Liberation Army was cooked by a tear gas grenade that set fire to their house. Buckmore Phipps sensed a kindred spirit in Gibson Hand when Gibson Hand’s snarling brown face brightened as he strained to hear fat frying and screams of terror. Then, when Gibson Hand spoke to him, he was sure they were soul mates. The black cop turned to him and said, “Guess what S.L.A. stands for?”
    Before Buckmore Phipps could reply, Gibson Hand grabbed a bullhorn and became a police folk hero by shouting: “S.L.A. means So Long, Assholes!”
    Buckmore Phipps had decided then and there that he had to work with Gibson Hand. They tried a month together in a radio car and Buckmore Phipps was to enjoy some of his warmest memories.
    Gibson Hand sensed from the start that his partner had the stuff of which police folklore is made. He was proved correct on the night they found a dismembered corpse in the trash bin of a department store. The stock boy thought it was a mannequin at first, since it was missing its legs. Then he saw the legs behind the trash bin being eaten by rats. After he stopped retching he called the cops.
    The deceased was an eighteen-year-old cheerleader from Pomona who thought