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head and pulled the trigger two times. At the first hammer click Haines shrieked; at the second he clasped his hands and began murmuring prayers. Lloyd knelt beside him. “It’s over, Whitey. For you, for Teddy, maybe even for me. Tell me why you and Craigie raped him.”
Lloyd listened to Haines’s prayers wind down, catching the tail end of the rosary in Latin. When he finished, Haines smoothed his sweat drenched khaki shirt and adjusted his badge. His voice was perfectly calm as he said,
“I always figured that someone knew, that God would tell someone to hurt me for it. I’ve been seeing priests in my dreams for years. I always figured God would tell a priest to get me. I never figured he’d send a cop.”
Lloyd sat down facing Haines, watching his features soften in his prelude to confession.
“Teddy Verplanck was weird,” Whitey Haines said. “He didn’t fit in and he didn’t care. He wasn’t a sosh and he wasn’t an athlete and he wasn’t a badass. He wasn’t a loner, he was just different. He didn’t have to prove himself by doing crazy shit, he just walked around school in his fruity ivy league clothes, and every time he looked at you you knew he thought you were scum. He printed up this poetry newspaper and stuffed it into every locker on the fucking campus. He made fun of me and Birdy and the Surfers and Vatos and nobody would fuck with him because he had this weird kind of juice, like he could read your mind, and if you fucked with him he’d put it in his newspaper and everyone would know.
“There were these love poems that he used to put in his paper. My sister was real smart; she figured out all the big words and the symbolic shit and told me that the poems were ripoffs of the great poets and dedicated to that snooty bitch Kathleen McCarthy. Sis sat next to her in Home Ec, she told me that the McCarthy cunt lived in this fantasy world where she thought that half the guys at Marshall had the hots for her and the other stuck-up bitches she hung out with. ‘Cathy’s Clown’ was a big hit song then, and the McCarthy bitch told Sis that she had a hundred personal ‘Cathy Clowns.’
But Verplanck was the only clown, and he was afraid to hit up on McCarthy and she didn’t even know he had the hots for her.
“Then Verplanck printed these poems attacking the Bird and me. People started giving us the fisheye in the quad. I was cracking jokes when Kennedy got knocked off, and Verplanck stared me down. It was like he was ripping off my juice for himself. I waited for a long time, until just before graduation of ’64. Then I figured it out. I had my sister write this fake note from Kathy McCarthy to Verplanck, telling him to meet her in the bell 178
L.A. NOIR
tower room after school. Birdy and I were there. We were only going to hurt him. We kicked his ass good, but even when he was all beat up he still had more juice than we did. That’s why I did it. Birdy just followed me like he always did.”
Haines hesitated. Lloyd watched him grope for words to conclude his story. When nothing came, he said, “Do you feel shame, Haines? Pity? Do you feel anything?”
Whitey Haines pulled his features into a rock hard mask that brooked no mercy. “I’m glad I told you,” he said, “but I don’t think I feel nothing. I feel bad about the Birdman, but he was born to die freaky. I’ve been revenging myself all my life. I was born to live hard. Verplanck was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got what he paid for. I say tough shit. I say I’ve paid my dues all the way down the line. I say fuck ’em all and save six for the pallbearers.” It was the most eloquent moment of his life. Haines looked at Lloyd and said, “Well, Sergeant. What now?”
“You have no right to be a policeman,” Lloyd said, opening his shirt and showing Haines the tape recorder hook-up. “You deserve to die, but I’m not equipped for cold-blooded killing. This tape will be on Captain Magruder’s desk in the morning. You’ll be through as a Deputy Sheriff.”
Haines breathed out slowly as his sentence was passed. “What are you going to do with Verplanck?” he asked.
Lloyd smiled. “Save him or kill him. Whatever it takes.”
Haines smiled back. “Right on, homeboy. Right on.”
Lloyd took out a handkerchief and wiped the door knob, the arms of the chair and the grips of Haines’s service revolver. “It’ll only take a second, Whitey,” he said.
Haines nodded. “I know.”
“You won’t feel much.”
“I know.”
Lloyd walked to the door. Haines said, “Those were blanks in your gun, right?” Lloyd raised a hand in farewell. It felt like a giving of absolution.
“Yeah. Take care, homeboy.”
When the door closed, Whitey Haines walked into the bedroom and unlocked his gunrack. He reached up and took out his favorite possession—a sawed-off .10 gauge double barrelled shotgun, the weapon he was saving for the close quarters apocalypse that he knew would one day come his way. After slipping shells into the chambers, Whitey let his mind drift back to