by Bill Bernico
“Yes, sir,” Eddie said. “Where are we going tonight? I mean do you have a regular beat you have to cover or can you go anywhere?”
Without taking his eyes off the road, Blair answered Eddie’s question. “Our beat covers everything south of Franklin Avenue from Highland Avenue on the west to Western Avenue on the east and as far south as Fountain Avenue. We cover an area of approximately a hundred and ten square blocks. You mainly keep your eyes and ears open and watch for anything out of the ordinary.”
As Blair turned onto Hollywood Boulevard, he briefly turned to Eddie and said, “This is the one street where you’re most likely to make arrests for prostitution and pandering. This whole stretch is full of hookers and the Johns who pay them.”
“Is that a high priority for the police?” Eddie said, eager to learn.
“It is a crime,” Blair said. “Granted it’s not as serious as murder and robbery, but we have to follow the letter of the law when it comes to these people.”
“But if it’s a crime,” Eddie said, “Then who’s the victim? I mean, what’s the harm?”
“The victims,” Blair said, “Are the taxpayers who pay our salaries to keep this kind of activity from invading their neighborhoods. The act itself doesn’t seem to harm any of the participants, but keep in mind, where you find prostitutes, you’ll find pimps and where you find pimps, you’ll find some guy beating up on his women from time to time. That’s assault and battery. And studies have proven that where you find prostitutes, you’ll find drugs. Hell, some of these girls turn tricks just to feed their habits.”
Even as the words were leaving Blair’s lips, Eddie looked out his window and saw a car pull up to the curb. He saw one of the girls wiggle up to the window, lean over and talk to the driver. They were coming from the opposite direction and Sergeant Blair had to turn on his red lights and make a U-Turn in the middle of the block. That gave the guy in the car time enough to speed away and around the closest corner. He was gone in seconds.
“Aren’t we going after him?” Eddie said.
Blair shook his head. “We’d never find him,” he said. “Besides, we have the girl. She’s not going anywhere.
Blair got out of the patrol car and Eddie followed close behind him as he approached the young hooker. Blair walked up to the hooker and suddenly his face showed signs of recognition.
“You know this woman?” I said.
“Sure,” Blair said. “Everybody knows Carol.” He turned to the hooker. “Don’t they, Carol?”
The woman smiled a sheepish smile and turned her head away. Blair grabber her chin and turned her head back toward him. She had the most beautiful black eye that Eddie had ever seen. The two cops talked to her about her husband and she said that they had had a fight and he took off. She didn’t know where he was and she didn’t care.
Eddie looked at the blackened eye and said to her, “You better get a steak and put it on the black eye.”
Without missing a beat, Carol said, “Hell, if I had a steak, I’d eat it.”
Eddie chuckled to himself and looked away while Sergeant Blair let Carol off with a verbal warning. “Go on home, Carol,” he said. “The street is no place for you.”
She agreed she would and the two cops got back into their patrol car and drove off. It wasn’t even an hour later when their rounds took them past one of the seedier bars on Sunset Boulevard. There, coming out the front door of the bar they spotted Carol again, with a man following close behind her.
Blair pulled up to the curb and Eddie rolled his window down. As she walked by, Eddie said, “Hi, Carol, how are you?”
Quick as a wink she hikes a thumb over her shoulder and says, “Ask this guy behind me, he just had me.”
Blair dropped his head to his chest and shook it in disbelief. There was just no getting through to some people no matter what approach you used. Blair pulled away from the curb and continued on his beat.
“Now I’m really confused,” Eddie said. “Why didn’t you arrest her this time? You gave her a warning earlier and she obviously disregarded it. Should we have taken her in?”
Blair pulled into the parking lot of a coffee shop on Sunset, killed the engine and got out. Eddie followed close behind. “Time for our coffee break,” Blair said. “Come on, let’s go sit down and I’ll explain how this whole system works.”
“Prostitutes and cab drivers,” Blair explained, “Can be your best source of information if you treat them right. You have to win them over and gain their confidence and pretty soon you’ve got yourself one hell of a snitch. They’re on the streets all the time, out late and odd hours, when crimes most usually occur and they’ve seen a lot of things, they talk to a lot of people, and they know what the hell is going on in town. If you keep them confidential, they’ll give you an awful lot of information and help you clear up a lot of crimes. You can’t buy that kind of help anywhere.”
“I see,” Eddie said. “The partner you don’t have to pay. You just wash each other’s hands, so to speak.”
“See,” Blair said, “You’re learning already.”
“Sergeant Blair,” Eddie said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Only if you agree to call me Tim,” Blair said. “And how about if I just call you Eddie?”
This caught Eddie by surprise. He had figured Blair to be more of a by-the-book kind of no nonsense guy. “Sure,” Eddie said. “So, how long have you been a cop, Tim?”
“Eight years,” Tim said. “Going on nine come January. Why do you ask?”
“Well,” Eddie said, “I figure the best way to learn is to talk to the guys who’ve been out in the field and experienced police work. Would you tell me about some of your old cases? I’m sure I could pick up a few pointers just by listening to you tell me about them.”
“You’re about as absorbent as a sponge, aren’t you?” Tim said.
Eddie shrugged. “Just my nature, I guess,” he said.
“Okay,” Tim said. “Here’s one that comes to mind. There was this fellow that had a wife and a grown daughter and he had become impotent. His wife was very beautiful and this bothered him quite a bit. Anyway, one day his wife and daughter left the house together to go shopping. This guy had evidently been planning for some time to commit suicide while his wife and daughter were gone.
“Who does that?” Eddie said. “I mean plan ahead for something like that? Don’t they usually do it on the spur of the moment?”
“Not always,” Tim said. “I personally never knew someone who committed suicide, but I’ve had other people tell me that they had noticed changes in people they knew just before they killed themselves. Almost like a calm came over them once they decided to end it all.”
“That’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?” Eddie said.
“But it’s all hindsight,” Tim said. “People don’t think anything about those changes as they’re happening. It’s only after the suicide that they realize how differently the person was acting and by then it’s too late.”
“So what happened to the guy from your case?” Eddie said.
“All right,” Tim said, “where was I?”
“The wife and daughter had just gone shopping,” Eddie said.
“Right,” Tim said. “Anyway, this guy gathered up his bank books and insurance policies, all the important papers he had, and arranged them all on the coffee table so everything would be in order for his wife after he was gone. He got a couple of wooden cooking spoons and brought them down from the living room down to one of the bedrooms. There were some cupboards on one wall and high up near the ceiling, the cupboard doors had two half-moon handles on them. He shoved the wooden spoons through the two cupboard door handles and then he tied one end of the rope around the spoons and the other around his neck. Then he just stepped off the chair and hung there.”
Eddie grabbed his own throat and rubbed it. “Oh gees,” he said. “There has to be easier, less painful ways to go than hanging.”
“I guess he didn’t give it enoug
h thought ahead of time,” Tim said. “At the end of the day, his wife and daughter came home from shopping and entered the house. They called out to him and of course, he didn’t answer. As they walked through the living room they saw all the documents laid out on the coffee table. They both walked into the hallway and when they went into the bedroom they found themselves face to face with him hanging on the wall in a very grotesque position. When my partner and I got there, these women were in an extreme state of shock. This was just a very bizarre type of suicide and a terrible way for his loved ones to find him.
“To say the least,” Eddie said. “Did you have to cut him down?”
“No,” Tim said. “We had to leave everything like we found it until the coroner got there. Evidently, the man had been writhing around on the wall and he died with one leg bent at the knee sticking out. His arms were extended and his face was frozen in a grotesque pose and that’s the position he died in. Rigor mortis had set in and he was rigid hanging there on the wall.”
“I hope I never have to walk in on a scene like that,” Eddie said.
“If you intend to make police work your career, “Tim said, “You’d better get used to it or find some other line of work. You’re bound to come across some pretty nasty things over the years. It may sound callous to say, but if you stick it out, those things will become easier to take as time goes by.”
“I probably should have asked for a non-violent, humorous story to start out with,” Eddie said. “Do you have one to lighten the mood a little?”
“Let me think,” Tim said. After a moment Tim smiled. “I’ve got one for you. We had this shoplifting case a few years back that, now that I think of it, was pretty funny. It was an interesting example of the various methods used by professional shoplifters to steal things. One woman would wear extra large bloomers that went from her waist to just above their knees. They had like elastic bands around the knees so it was a pretty tight fit all around.”
“Wait a minute,” Eddie said, laughing. “How would you know about a woman’s bloomers?”
“I’m getting to that,” Tim said. “Just listen. She would shoplift things and slip them underneath her skirt and into these bloomers. You’d be surprised how many things they could get into these bloomers giant underpants. Of course she’d also wear an oversized skirt to cover up the bulges underneath.”
“You’re kidding,” Eddie said.
“Nope,” Tim said. “You can’t make this stuff up. Another method they used was a cardboard box that had the bottom cut out of it, but the rest of the box was wrapped all up like a present, as if it had been wrapped in the store. They would walk into the store with this box under their arm. Of course, nobody knew the bottom was open. They might see a toaster sitting there on the counter that they wanted and they would just place the box down over the top of the toaster, covering it up. Then they would grab the box and the toaster together and just walk out of the store with it.”
“Pretty slick,” Eddie said. “Unless they forgot to wrap up the cord and walked out with it dangling out of the bottom of the box.”
“That’s happened,” Tim said. “Some of them wore a surgical jacket like they use in operating rooms. They wore that under their coat and on the chest area of the surgical jacket they had little hooks and they would grab things and slip them under their coat and hook it on to these hooks.”
“If those people would just expend as much energy in finding a real job, they wouldn’t have to shoplift,” Eddie said.
“It wasn’t always a case of shoplifting something they needed,” Tim said. “Or something they could sell later for cash. Some of these shoplifters just did it for the thrill of seeing if they could get away with it.”
“Did you ever figure out the percentage of thieves who never got caught versus the ones you did catch?” Eddie said.
“That’s someone else’s job,” Tim said. “Our job was just to catch them and bring them in.
“Sounds like most of these shoplifters were women,” Eddie said.
“Most of them were,” Tim explained. “Another method women would use was they’d have a large purse and on one end of the purse they would cut the stitching open and put two corset stays in and that would hold the purse upright and rigid and hold the edges on the end of the purse together. If they pushed down on it, those metal corset stays would bend and open it up. Then they would shove things into the end of this purse and when they released the pressure, the purse would close up and you couldn’t tell if there was anything there. Then if you opened the purse and looked inside, the item they stole was hiding between the lining of the purse and the leather. It looked like there was nothing in there.”
“It would have to be small items,” Eddie said.
“It usually was,” Tim said. “Jewelry, watches, pens, greeting cards. If it was small enough and lying out loose, it was up for grabs as far as these people were concerned.”
“I heard a similar story last year but I thought the guy was full of crap when he told me,” Eddie said.
“What did you hear?” Tim said.
“You may have heard of this,” Eddie said. There are apparently shoplifters that can steal things and place them between their legs and walk out of the store that way.”
“That’s not so far-fetched,” Tim said. “I actually arrested one woman who used that method to steal big items.”
“How big?” Eddie said.
“Typewriters,” Tim said, laughing. “She was very adept at it, too. We have a local typewriter store over on Fairfax. Some woman came in the store, looked around for a few minutes and left again. The clerks noticed a typewriter was missing and chased after the woman. They caught up with her and held her while the employees called the police. My partner and I got there and questioned the shoplifter. We couldn’t very well frisk her so we called the station and had them send a female police office to the store. She took the woman into the dressing room and sure enough the thief actually had the typewriter wedged up between her thighs. She walked out of the store that way and the clerks told us that the way she walked, you’d never be able to tell that she had anything up there.”
“Fact is stranger than fiction,” Eddie said. “The story I was told was about a similar kind of woman shoplifter who walked out of a grocery store with a large ham between her thighs.”
“There’s one place I wouldn’t want to be invited for dinner,” Tim said.
Eddie had to laugh at that one. He decided he was going to like being Tim’s partner.
The shift ended with nothing much happening that Eddie would call memorable. He went home that night feeling like he had made somewhat of a difference in the city. He and Tim Blair rode together for the next few months and Eddie felt like he was really getting a firsthand lesson in the streets.
Early into the fourth month Eddie and Tim were on foot patrol on Sunset Boulevard. They had the duty of checking business doors on the block. Eddie checked the front doors while Tim checked the doors that opened onto the alley behind. Eddie had checked half a dozen or more door knobs and found them all locked. However, after he had determined that the front door to Larry’s Pool Hall was locked, something made him take a closer look in through the front windows. He thought he saw movement inside and stepped away from the window for a moment. When he took a second look Eddie had confirmed that there was someone moving around inside the pool hall.
Eddie hurried around to the alley entrance. Tim was just finishing checking the doors that preceded Larry’s Pool Hall. He and Eddie got to the back door of Larry’s at the same time.
“I thought you were checking the front doors,” Tim said.
“I was,” Eddie told him. “I saw someone moving around inside this place.” He hiked a thumb at Larry’s back door.
Time tried the knob and it turned freely. He pulled the door open slightly and listened. He could hear the sounds of someone walking around in the place. Tim held one finger up to his lips and pulled his service revolver. He motioned for
Eddie to quietly follow him. The two policemen eased themselves into the back room of the pool hall and waited. They both heard the noise this time. Tim motioned for Eddie to sneak around the left side while he went around the right.
As Tim stepped into the main pool hall, the burglar turned and saw him. In a split second the man ran full out toward the front door, which had a large glass panel surrounded by a wooden frame. He raced for the front door and just broke through the glass just as Tim took one shot at him and hit him in the back of the head. The bullet blew the burglar’s forehead out and he dropped dead there on the sidewalk.
Tim and I went up to the burglar to get a closer look at him. They were surprised to find that it was a sixteen-year-old boy, but he had a gun stuck in his belt waistband. Tim called in to the station and requested a supervisor meet him on the scene. Afterwards, they brought Tim and me down to the station to fill out a report on what happened. Tim held it together pretty well, considering, but when he started to give his statement to the stenographer, he broke down and cried like a baby. He had tears streaming down his face because he felt so bad that he had shot this young boy. His supervisor assured him that if Tim had not shot the suspect that Tim might be the one in the morgue.
On this night, Eddie learned a very important lesson. Police officers feel very, very bad when they have to shoot anybody and most certainly, if it’s a kid like that. He also learned that self-preservation took top priority. Eddie had to remind himself that the kid could not only have killed Tim, but he could have killed Eddie as well.
Tim took a week off after that incident, giving Eddie the chance to experience what it’s like to walk a beat alone during his probation period. If anyone at the station wanted to get in contact with Eddie or any other patrol officer, they had to call any one of several call boxes that were installed on various corners. The call boxes had a long pole with a blue light on the top and they would press the number for the call box downtown and the blue light would flash and the bell would ring and Eddie had to get to the nearest call box and call back to the station and find out what they wanted.