The Glitter Dome by Joseph Wambaugh Page A

Sox Wilson.
    â€œI dunno, I dunno, Weasel,” Sox Wilson whined. “If I’m lyin, I’m flyin.”
    â€œIf you’re lyin, you’re fryin,” the Weasel corrected him.
    â€œIf you’re lyin, you’re dyin,” the Ferret corrected them both, cleaning his fingernails with his stiletto.
    â€œThey call him Bill,” Sox Wilson pleaded. “Just plain Bill.”
    It wasn’t that a hash bust was worth mowing blisters on your hands, or facing heat exhaustion from throwing footballs all day, but Captain Woofer happened to live on this street, and when he heard that dope was being dealt there (Weasel’s dumb mistake in telling him) he ordered the two narcs to crawl out of all their leather, look as respectable as they were capable of looking without cutting their beards and ponytails, and get that son of a bitch who dared to sully the street where the captain had resided for twenty-three years. It was almost the only investigation going on at present that Captain Woofer gave a damn about except the one involving Nigel St. Claire. The Weasel and the Ferret expected to get their balls whacked good if they didn’t nail Just Plain Bill in the next few days.
    There was another investigation going on which concerned Captain Woofer more than Just Plain Bill and Nigel St. Claire put together. It was an ultra-secret investigation being conducted by Internal Affairs Division. The fact was that someone was trying to drive Captain Woofer bonzo. It had been going on for over three months. Although neither Captain Woofer nor the Internal Affairs headhunters had been able to put it together, it all began the morning after a local television showing of Gaslight , where Charles Boyer tried to drive Ingrid Bergman bonzo and nearly succeeded.
    As all policemen learn: Life imitates not art but melodrama.
    During the month of February, when the captain and his wife, Sybil, went for a weekend fishing trip in San Diego, someone listed their home with a local realtor for such a ridiculously low price that it was sold before the Woofers returned from the holiday. The listing party’s description could have fit a thousand sleazeballs from the boulevard. Captain Woofer looked at over five hundred mug shots of known confidence men to no avail. The Woofers got sick and tired of realtors showing up with prospective buyers for the next two weeks, and finally put a Not For Sale sign in the front yard. The transaction was nullified and the whole incident was dismissed by bunco detectives as an obvious prank.
    The investigation was revived and Internal Affairs Division was brought into the picture when, three weeks later, the license number of Captain Woofer’s family car was plugged into the statewide computer as a stolen vehicle containing armed and dangerous occupants. It wasn’t a damn bit funny when Sybil Woofer and her best friend, Mrs. Commander Peterson, were jacked-up by two cops with shotguns and ordered out of the “stolen” station wagon in front of the Hermès store in Beverly Hills.
    While the two women screamed and cried, with their hands planted firmly on top of their coiffured blue hair, a crowd of ogling Arabs, Iranians, Texans and other wogs quickly gathered and shook their heads and spoke to each other in their exotic tongues about the anarchy in California where female desperadoes disguised themselves to look like window-shoppers from Van Nuys.
    The most despicable incident had occurred one week before Al Mackey and Martin Welborn were given the Nigel St. Claire case. It happened when Captain Woofer, echoing Deputy Chief Julian Francis’ call for better police relations with the swelling tide of ethnic minorities in Los Angeles, mentioned to the squad-room full of bored detectives that he too had always been kind to Negroes . Which caused the Weasel and Ferret to exchange knowing looks. Within a week, two things happened: First, someone forged Captain Woofer’s