“Right.”
“Did this have anything to do with Branden’s being slain?”
“No. It didn’t. Branden’s death was a revenge slaying,” Bill explained. “Ruddy, the police chief who wouldn’t haul in the guilty rich was killed by a guilty poor man. I don’t say that that’s justice, but it happened.”
“Bill?” Ruddy’s voice called out insistently, though he was staring at the ceiling.
“Yeah?”
“I ain’t no fancy cop,” Ruddy rumbled angrily. “If a man’s guilty, I grab ’im, no matter what. Will the department stand by me?”
“Not only the department but the DA’s office will back you up,” Bill assured him. “Ruddy, I wouldn’t be talking to you here tonight if I didn’t know you were square straight. Now, don’t go and get poor Branden wrong. He was straight, but he went blind, so to speak. You can’t be with the law and have friends whom you admire who break the law. Those things can’t mix. Branden loved the big, rich boys and felt sorry for ’em when they went wrong. And when they spent big money to hide their crimes, Branden wouldn’t insult ’em by insisting upon looking too hard at ’em. He was going to run for country sheriff, and then he was going to try for the mayoralty.”
“Wheew,” Ruddy whistled. Then he rolled his hard, brown eyes at Bill. “There’s a ceiling on my ambitions.”
“There’s a ceiling on every honest man’s ambitions,” Bill amended Ruddy’s statement. “Ruddy, I came from as far down as you. I’m Micky Irish. My people were more than dirt-poor. They had lice on ’em. I had ’em once too. But I’m clean now, and I’m clean in more ways than one.”
“Spill a little more on this child-violation stuff,” Ruddy asked softly.
“Most of the records on that are in my head,” Bill said. “When a rich man’s daughter is molested sexually, he wants it kept under cover. He doesn’t want his property soiled in the public eye, get it? Now let me start backward. Last month two girls, ages six and eight, were raped in Brentwood. We know that from hospital reports.”
“Any leads?”
“Two general leads,” Bill stated. “We know the boy who violated one child. And we know the girl who violated the—”
“A girl?”
“Lesbian.”
“That place is rotten,” Ruddy growled.
“Straight through to the core,” Bill affirmed. “We’ve got a good notion as to who the boy is and also the gal. But—”
“But what?”
“Ruddy, it’ll take a million dollars a piece to convict ’em,” Bill said sadly. “They paint pictures of all kinds of neuroses and complexes, and they’ll end up by making the world feel sorry for the poor rich boys and girls.”
“If the courts are powerless, what can I do?” Ruddy wanted to know.
“You can harass ’em,” Bill jerked out. “You can let ’em know that they are corrupting youth. You can make ’em feel wrong. By God, you can educate the public with ’em. The press’ll be behind you—that is, in the main. The common people are with you. You want to try it?”
“Bill, I’ve nothing to lose,” Ruddy said, smiling bitterly. “I thought I was going to retire in a few months and pal around with that boy genius of mine. But I can’t shrink from this. Bill, I’m a bulldog cop. If you say, ‘Sic ’em,’ then I’m going after ’em.”
Bill stood and clapped Ruddy on the right shoulder. “Good.”
Bill went to his desk and flicked a button and spoke into the office intercommunication system. “Mary Jane, tell Watkins, that corporation lawyer Jacobs, and those two witnesses to come in here. I’m swearing Ruddy in right now.”
Ruddy heard Mary Jane’s voice coming with metallic musicality: “The press is here, Mr. King.”
“Tell ’em to go to hell,” Bill snapped. “I’ll talk to ’em tomorrow afternoon. I’m confronting the entire city with a fait accompli.”
Ruddy stood facing Bill and they were both silent for a moment.
“Nobody has ever trusted me this much before, Bill.”
“I’m trusting you as though you were my own son,” Bill said with a sigh.
Ruddy’s old tension was now reborn in him, that tension that had dogged his footsteps when he had been a rookie. But there was a difference now; that tension was modified. He was no longer a lone colored man with a gun but a well-known and respected one who was being given a mandate to enforce the law among the lawless. Yet he had never regarded the men of wealth and power as being lawless. What Bill had told him had stunned him, not so much for its revelation of moral turpitude but for the seeming guiltlessness of the people whom he would rule, or, to put it another way, for their apparent guiltiness. It all depended on how he looked at them and felt about them. Did he feel identified with the lawless people of Brentwood Park? No. But there slumbered deep in him a sneaking kind of admiration for their strength; he had the feeling that they were somehow right in doing what they did, even if their deeds were against the law. Yes, Branden had no doubt felt that way, and he had agreed with Bill in condemning Branden’s blind waywardness. Yet those people—were they not merely feeling and having their way in an objective manner while he, Ruddy, had had his guilty way years before in a subjective manner? If that was true, why was he being called upon to condemn them? Ruddy had never thought of this before, and had it not been for his pending induction into a new job, he would never have dreamed of it. There was no doubt that there was an attractive and alluring image in the actions of rich people who did as they liked. Did not everybody want to do that? Was freedom to be denied only to the poor or only to the frightened poor? For Ruddy, a policeman, knew quite well that there were many poor people who had and were taking their way with blazing guns. It seemed that only at the two extremes of society, the very top and the very bottom, could there be seen or felt any real freedom. What was freedom then? And what was law?
Ruddy was a policeman because he was a man who had once loved freedom so hotly that he had become guilty in the pores of his being by dreaming illicitly of freedom, and his becoming a policeman had been a manner in which he had escaped being cast into an ocean of guilty emotion. He had eased the burden of guilt he carried by seeing and trapping it in others; he had earned the right to live with himself by being able to handle the guilt that seethed in him in an objective manner in the lives of others. Now he was being called upon to check and put down that freedom in others that he had once yearned to have. Did he at heart merely regard the poor and weak as being guilty—as being guilty because they were poor and weak? And did he really feel an admiration for the strong because they could be free with impunity? The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the quiet room and beads of sweat, tiny and glistening, oozed out upon Ruddy’s bronzed brow.
“Don’t worry, Ruddy,” Bill said, moving nervously about. “It’s not my aim to give you time to reflect.”
They grinned at each other. What would Tommy think? And Agnes? Their lives would be different now. And the pledge that he had given them that he would have plenty of time for them after his retirement would have to be withdrawn. Never would he be so busy as he would be now. He would be facing the supreme test of his life, and he would give a strict account of himself, of his office, of his duties, of his zeal. But those rich whites? How would he face them? Would they, too, try to get next to him? And he a black man? He smiled wryly. If they wanted to continue to carry on their mischief, they would certainly try to do that. Yes, that was why Bill was pushing him into this job. His smile grew.
“You see what I’m doing?” Bill asked.
“I see it all,” Ruddy murmured.
“A good idea, hunh?”
“I must say it is, Bill. It’s just like you.”
“Depend on me to fuck ’em good, Ruddy,” Bill snarled.
Ruddy felt a flash of power surge through him as he recalled that he had been thinking all along in terms of his facing them as one individual. No—he would have a staff.
“Bill?”
“Yeah. Speak wha
t’s on your mind. In a few moments it’ll be too late.”
“I have some police administration experience,” Ruddy spoke slowly.
“I know it.”
“The responsible work of a staff of policemen is done by a small hard-driving nucleus,” Ruddy spelled it out.
“Right.”
“I want the right to name the men directly under me.”
“You’re cooking with gas. Name ’em and they’re yours. I’ll list them right now,” Bill said, lifting an ornate ink pen and poising it over a clean sheet of paper.
“Jock Weidman.”
“One of the soundest officers on the force. He knows the work from A to Z, despite the fact that his personal life is a mess,” Bill murmured, writing. “Who else?”
“Ed Seigel.”
“A good man,” Bill murmured. “An all-round man. A little cracked on ideas, maybe. But you might find him useful out there among all those rich eggheads. Okay. Who else?”
“Captain Drake, for protocol and general work,” Ruddy said.
“Damn good. Go on.”
“Wade Williams, as my bulldog,” Ruddy said.
“He’s as stubborn as black paint,” Bill sang as he wrote. “Go on.”
“You’re going to object,” Ruddy warned.
“No.”
“Mary Jane Woodford, as the boss of the office,” Ruddy boomed fearlessly.
Bill lifted his head and stared at Ruddy. He bit his lips then.
“That’s all I need as a core of a team,” Ruddy stated.
“Okay, boy. You can have ’em. Sorry to part with Mary Jane. She knows more about police work than I do,” Bill said with a sigh. “You’ve just picked the cream of our police force.”
“That’s what I’ll need.” Ruddy was definite.
“When the mayor sees who’s helping you, it will help him to defend what I’m doing,” Bill said with a grin.
“I know what you mean,” Ruddy sympathized warmly.
“I’m not scared,” Bill let out.
“Nobody ever said that Bill Joseph King was a scared man,” Ruddy stated with calm judgment.
The buzzer sounded. Bill picked up the receiver of the intercom: “Yes?”
“They’re here,” Mary Jane said.
“Send ’em in. What’re you waiting on? And you come in too, Mary Jane,” Bill instructed.
“Me?”
“Yes. I’m changing your life, too, tonight,” Bill said, then slammed the receiver on the hook. He rose, opened a drawer and took out a big black Bible, and laid it upon his desk just as the door opened.
Watkins entered first, grinning, his arms stretched wide.
“I’m presuming that everything’s working,” he said, pausing, glancing at the commissioner, who nodded, and then embracing Ruddy.
“Something big’s happening to you tonight,” Watkins sang.
“Thanks, Mr. Watkins,” Ruddy said with a choked voice and eyes clouded with emotion.
“I’m Hymie Jacobs.” A short, plump man with white hair introduced himself to Ruddy, extending his hand. “I’ll congratulate you after I’ve sworn you in.”
Two other men, both of whom Ruddy knew by sight and name, followed into the room. Mary Jane, her eyes baffled, came in last.
“Ruddy, you know Johnny Welch.” Bill made the presentations perfunctorily. “And Dick Donovan. Johnny’s been my assistant for well-nigh ten years. And Dick’s the head of the plainclothes squad and is our liaison with the DA’s office.” Bill took Ruddy’s left hand and placed it on the Bible and then turned to Hymie Jacobs, lifting his eyebrows.
“Will you raise your right hand?” Hymie Jacobs asked Ruddy.
Ruddy complied silently, his temples throbbing.
“Rudolph Turner, do you solemnly swear that you will discharge the duties of the office of Chief of Police of Brentwood, Illinois, and that you will defend and protect the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and that you will, without mental evasions or reservations, defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, against all enemies, both foreign and domestic, to the best of your ability, so help you God?”
Ruddy took a deep breath and said, “I do.”
A sigh went around the room. Bill came forward with his right fist clenched, then extended it and clapped into Ruddy’s right hand a golden star.
“Good luck, Chief,” Bill said.
“I owe you a debt that I feel I can never pay,” Ruddy sighed.
“Forget it,” Bill said.
“Congratulations,” Jacobs said, shaking Ruddy’s hand again.
There were congratulations all around, including those of Mary Jane, whose eyes were round and moist.
“Mary Jane,” Bill began, “from tonight on, you are the chief clerk in the office of the Chief of Police of Brentwood.”
Mary Jane’s blue eyes widened. “Oh,” she exclaimed, staring at Ruddy.
“And here’s the list of Ruddy’s private staff, who will flank him all the way,” Bill said.
“Jesus, everything happens,” Mary Jane murmured. “I don’t deserve this promotion.”
“It’s no promotion,” Ruddy said. “You’re just hired. And you’ll work until your tail drags.”
“I’ll work for you,” Mary Jane declared fervently. She stared around the room with open lips.
“I don’t want to be rude,” Bill said. “But now that the formalities are over, Ruddy and I have a lot to talk about in a short space of time.”
There was an aimless milling around, more congratulations, and then the swearing-in personnel, including Mary Jane, retreated, leaving Bill and Ruddy alone once more.
“Sit down,” Bill said. “I want to show you something.”
“Sure,” Ruddy said.
Bill extracted from a drawer a large dossier, then sat beside Ruddy again.
“I want to show you some of the horrors of Brentwood,” Bill said in a faraway voice.
CHAPTER 4
Ever since its incorporation as an independent municipality, Brentwood Park has been in trouble. It was conceived in corruption; the aim was to avoid and evade city taxes. Had the men who had this idea in mind not been rich, the charter would not have been granted. But our state legislature could not refuse the requests of bankers, brokers, and industrialists. Though the rich sheltered and protected Brentwood, the first house that was erected there turned out to be a hideout for Blacksnake McClusky, the famous bank robber. How he wriggled that, we never learned. The real estate men who sold him the plot swore that they did not know his identity, and it is useless now to probe into that. We got Blacksnake McClusky—shot ’im down in Dallas…but he was the first rotten apple in the Brentwood Park barrel.
“You might wonder why the lawbreakers permitted a crook like that to live next to them. Well, Ruddy, it was gambling. And where there’s gambling, as you well know, there’s always easy money. And then there was Prohibition. Illicit liquor and gambling formed the basis of entertainment life for the rich men who worked all day in the Chicago offices.
“Add to this the ideas of rich boys and girls who spend their time in university classrooms, commuting to and fro in high-powered sports cars. Of course, there was swimming, tennis, dancing, and all-night parties. That was natural. At first all of this took place in restricted clubs, but as time went on, everybody in the whole area, regardless of age or sex, was welcomed. It was then that trouble started. That was in the twenties. Then you had all kinds of wild ideas in the air. Sexual experimentation. Communism. Ether parties. Booze. ‘Advanced ideas’—whatever that is. And all kinds of foreign notions about life’s not being worth anything unless you could wring your share of experience out of it.
“The first semi-criminal death occurred among a group of students. You recall the Kennedy case? Three students decided to commit the perfect crime. One actually offered himself as the guinea pig and helped plan his own murder so that the police would never find out.”
“Yeah. I remember that case,” Ru
ddy drawled.
“Now, the odd part of that was this: Charles Kennedy, the murderee—if you’ll permit my calling him that, for he did offer himself as a victim—thought that he would somehow be alive after they had killed him and would enjoy the bafflement of the police in trying to solve their perfect crime. We proved that John Davis and Harris Potts, the murderers, had no such beliefs and that they knew that Kennedy was mentally off, so they took him and killed him in a manner that did actually baffle us for a while. It was only because Davis and Potts seemed too anxious to help the police that we finally suspected that they had a hand in it. The moment we touched ’em, they confessed.
“How did you try a case like that? Nobody could make head or tail of it. The defense contended that there had been no murder, for the murdered man aided in his own death! Had actually asked that he be killed! But the state and the court ruled that he had been murdered, even if he had asked to be murdered, and the men who had carried out Kennedy’s crazy instructions were murderers. But when the defense got through describing the mental and emotional state of those boys, the jury declared them guilty of manslaughter. The judge sentenced them ten years each; they were transferred to insane asylums for treatment. Five years later they were declared sane and now they are out—in Europe.
“The Kennedy case set the frame for the style of crime in Brentwood Park for the next two decades. As I told you before, housebreaking, forgery, stickups, etc., were never very prominent there. The crimes committed had a ‘family’ air about them. Get what I mean, Ruddy?”
“You sound a bit like old Ed now,” Ruddy chided Bill.
“And that was why I so heartily approved your selection of Ed to your staff,” Bill went on. “Truth to tell, maybe Ed could give you a better rundown on all this than I can. If there was ever a locale where emotional factors rather than pure greed figured in crime, it is in Brentwood Park. There are no poor folks in Brentwood, and therefore no so-called class struggle. The divorce rate is high, yet they have a lot of children. One wiseacre said that married couples in Brentwood were swapping husbands and wives about. Well, he forgot the children; what he should have said was that they were swapping the children about, and that makes for emotional troubles—or so the social workers tell us.
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