by Ed Lacy
Belly-boy on the couch broke things up by mumbling, “Who's on the gate?” between snores and then we started to play cards.
Mary and I were playing against Don and Grace Tills. He turned out to be one of these psychic bidders, bidding on what he thinks his partner should have. He opened with a diamond bid and I was holding five diamonds, ace, queen high. His wife must have had a few, she gave him a boost. He then bid spades and she took him to game in diamonds and Don went down four.
We got good cards and Mary made three no trump and two hands later we took the rubber. Don and his wife kept making tracks to the bar and were getting juiced. Even Mary was sailing a little and she can handle a bottle. Everybody must have been lapping it up waiting for me.
We were on the second rubber when a fellow at the other table stood up and took off his coat, saying, “Does anybody mind? Getting rather warm in here.”
“You ass,” Don said, “you mean you stood on convention here? Hell, anybody feels warm, strip. And that goes for the ladies too.” He took off his snappy dark-grained sport coat and opened his yellow waistcoat.
Grace said something about waiting for a buy on a couple of air-conditioning units and when I was dummy I peeled off my coat. As I sat down there was a sudden silence in the room, except for light snores of the lush on the couch. There wasn't even the small noises of the cards. It was sort of a shocked silence. Mary was staring at me, her mouth angry-hard. In fact everybody was looking at me, including the four people at the other table.
I casually glanced down at my pants, at my shirt and tie-nothing was open or dirty. Mary was really burning, her face flushed. Glancing around I asked brightly, “I make a funny noise or something?”
Don pointed a slender finger at my shoulder holster and gun. “Guess this is the first time any of us have seen a setup like that—off a TV screen. I assume that's a real gun?”
“Sure is. I'm a detective.”
“Wow—a real private eye!” one of the girls at the other table said with what might have been a giggle.
Mary looked as if she wanted to disappear. “Nope, I'm a cop. Detective third grade, attached to the 201st Squad,” I said.
An idiotic grin spread over Don's lean face as he dropped his cards, told Mary, “Why didn't you tell me your husband was a real detective?”
Somebody at the other table said, “This is positively delightful,” as one of the girls left the table and asked me, “May I look at your badge?”
“Sure,” I said, wondering if I was being kidded. I showed her the buzzer. She touched it as if it was a big jewel. “Just a hunk of tin,” I added.
They all crowded around me. I was the center of attraction for everybody except the sleeping drunk and Mary. Grace Tills pointed toward my gun, asked, “Mr.... Dave, why are you wearing that? Expecting some trouble here?”
“A cop is supposed to be armed at all times, off duty and on.”
“Certainly the last thing you look like is a policeman,” a man said, looking me over like a queer. “Have you made many arrests?”
“Whenever I have to. Like asking do you write much copy. It's my job.”
Don said, “This is a novelty, talking to a real cop—on a friendly basis.” He gave out a silly little laugh, as if he was nervous. “Wake up, Harold.”
Grace said, “Let him sleep, he's so coy when he's loaded.” She turned to Mary. “You should have brought Dave over long before this. He's terribly interesting.”
Mary's face was back to normal color but her mouth was still a tight line. Then she said, “Dave is the youngest detective on the force. He made a very important arrest a few months ago—you remember that psychopath who had killed several women with a piece of pipe? Dave arrested him and was made a detective.” Her voice wasn't shrill, she probably felt better now that I was the center of things.
One of the men said, “I followed that case, I get a morbid kick out of reading... That's right, I do recall now, a rookie cop named Wintino. Never connected that—him—with you, Mary. But I should have, odd name.”
The girl who had wanted to see my badge asked, “Tell us the truth, is there really much third-degreeing?”
I dropped my cards and shrugged. “I've seen very little of it. But then I haven't been on the force long. There's over twenty thousand men on the force. I suppose there must be more than a few knuckle-happy cops. And sometimes it can't be helped.”
“Surely you don't condone such methods?”
“Well,” I said slowly, patting my hair—I always get “condone” and “condemn” mixed up in my mind—“it's like this: we have a lot of laws, many of them stupid and far outdated, but they're still on the books. The more laws, the more lawbreakers, the more work for us. And we're always running short on time. Now most crooks are cowards, at least that's what the older cops tell me. These crooks because they are cowards deal in violence and sometimes that same violence, or the threat of it, is the fastest way of making them talk. From my own experience I'd say there's little rough stuff, mostly because it isn't necessary.”
“Now look here, Dave,” Don said, freshening his drink, “we all know there's police brutality—you might as well admit it.”
“There probably are cops who think with their night sticks,” I said, “but as I said, from my own experience, I've seen some impatient cops, but that's all. I wouldn't call it brutality.”
“Who's on the gate?” the clown on the couch asked but now nobody laughed, they were paying attention only to me.
“How about corruption?” another guy asked me.
I smiled. “Come off it.”
“I'm serious. I've read the reports of the Seabury investigation some twenty years ago and that definitely showed—”
“That was long before my time. I can assure you I'm not the captain's bagman, nor have I ever seen such a collector. Sure, there's small cushion some guys go for—a free meal, a few bucks at Christmas, maybe a new tie or hat. And for all I know there may be big payoffs from the rackets, but I've never seen it. A retired cop was shot yesterday while working as a part-time messenger. Does that sound like a guy with a hand in the cracker barrel?”
“Now we all read about traffic ticket scandals, the business with Harry Gross,” the guy said.
I tried not to get sore. “You want me to give you newspaper stories or what I know? Let me put it this way: in the short time I've been a working police officer, I haven't even been offered a free sandwich. And if I had I wouldn't have taken it. Hell, there must be some people in the advertising office who are always looking for free theater tickets or a bottle. That doesn't make the whole agency corrupt. Most of the cops I know have a job to do, protecting society, and they try to do it best they can.”
Mary was giving me the eye—maybe to shut up. “Are you really protecting society?” Don asked. “Nobody can solve social problems, deep and complex, merely by passing a law. Crime is only the reflection of the sick state of our society and at best a policeman is only a salve when an operation is needed.”
I said, “A salve is better than nothing. Take this afternoon when I collared a man trying to—”
“Dave, nobody is interested in such details,” Mary said, her voice a shade on the shrill side.
“Oh, but indeed we are,” Grace Tills said with a big smile for me. “This is all so wonderful. What happened this afternoon?”
I winked at her. “Is this so wonderful? This afternoon I picked up a jerk in the process of busting into a parked car, trying to lift a coat. The fellow hasn't a record, he's out of work. The car was a Jaguar and the owner could probably afford to lose the coat and the damage to his window. But I can't worry about the social angles. A cop can't be judge and jury, that's when he goes in for rough stuff. It's only a job to me. Maybe this punk was hungry enough to justify robbery but that isn't for me to decide.”
“Come now, Dave,” the girl who liked my badge said, studying me with what she must have thought were big eyes, “you can't separate yourself from society
by saying 'It's my job,' or 'my duty.'”
“It's more than a job in the sense that I'm doing good by preventing other crimes. I mean if there weren't any cops, well, you know. But it's also strictly for pork chops with me, and with you. Suppose you're pushing some towel ads. You never ask whether the cotton was picked by underpaid migrant workers, made in a sweatshop mill, when you sit in your comfortable office and lay out a slick ad,” I said, knowing I wasn't saying what I wanted to or making much sense.
“A philosophical cop,” one of the men said. “Wonder of wonders.”
“No, it isn't a wonder or philosophical or a damn thing but a job with long hours and—”
“Little pay,” Mary cut in bitterly.
“And big risks,” I said. “If your boss suddenly told you to get out and clean the office windows you'd refuse because you'd be risking your life. Yet for less salary than you're making I'm expected to face guns, knives and fists every day. But even if the pay was good it wouldn't make it a good job because secretly most people hate cops.”
“Exactly,” the girl with the big eyes said. “Because you do society's dirty work. This man you arrested this afternoon, his resentment isn't against the economic insecurity that made him seek robbery but against you. We need economic equality not night sticks or—”
“Easy, Janice,” Grace Tills cut in, “or you'll fall off your soapbox.”
“No, no,” Janice said eagerly, “I'm only trying to show him the reality of the situation is that police aren't the answer but—”
“The reality of the situation is,” I cut in, “that there's a homicide every forty minutes in the U.S.A., a rape every half-hour, an assault every six minutes, and some form of larceny every twenty-six seconds, and when you're the victim you'll be yelling for the police!”
“Lord,” Don said, “are those facts?”
“Of course they are,” I told him.
“Sounds fantastic,” this Janice began, “but that only proves what I—”
Grace Tills put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. She could whistle real good. She held up her hands. “I think it's time we took Dave off the witness stand. Cards, anybody?”
“Almost eleven,” a girl who hadn't said anything before said. “Let's stick to drinking. We have to be home by midnight or our Cinderella baby-sitter will sack us. Put the TV on again, there's a soap jingle due on which I hear is sensational.”
They all trooped to the bar except me—I just don't like the taste of beer. Janice hurried back with a drink in her right hand and pointed her left at my holster as she said, “It's like being near a snake, same morbid attraction.”
“Not good to get too near guns or snakes,” I kidded her, watching Mary down a quickie at the bar.
“You and I should talk this out,” she said but the soap jingle came, on and everybody started chattering about the sales pitch jammed into the thirty-second jingle. The news followed and the commentator suffered from the occupational disease of his calling—self-importance, as though he was making the news instead of parroting it.
I was the only one trying to hear him: I wanted to know who'd won the fight. The TV screen was filled with film shots of the day's news—another conference in Europe, a factory fire, the President playing golf, then a picture of a small room and uniformed cops carrying out a body. I caught one word over the noises in the room. I shouted, “Shut up!... please.”
The smooth voice of the commentator was saying, ”... and in this dingy room his landlady found Wales' body when he failed to answer her repeated knocks. Police say the retired detective was killed around noon although the landlady didn't discover the body until late this afternoon. One puzzling aspect of the case was a large amount of cash in the dead man's money belt which was untouched. Now, after a word from my sponsor, I'll have the late sport results and the weather for...”
As I put on my coat I told Mary, “I have to get back to the precinct house. Want me to take you home first?”
“Don't worry about me! I'll go home when I'm ready!” she snapped.
“Babes, I have to—”
Don said, “Aren't you being rather melodramatic, Dave old man? Hear about a murder on TV and go dashing out into the night. You really have to go?”
“Melodramatic?” I repeated. “This isn't any play. Wales' partner was killed yesterday and I was on the case. Good night everybody.”
Mary ran after me to the door. I asked, “Got cab fare, Babes?”
“I was never so embarrassed in my life!” she whispered. “You had to show off that lousy gun to startle my friends!”
“I wasn't showing off. How was I to know you hadn't told your boon buddies I was a cop. Way you hid it, you'd think I was in the rackets.”
“I know you, you did it on purpose, grandstanding!”
“Stop it,” I said, opening the door. “Thought you'd like the idea of me being the big attraction tonight—unless you count the juicehound on the couch.”
“Attraction? You fool, they were making fun of you! Now you cap it all by rushing off like a child hearing a fire alarm. You're off duty, they can't get in touch with you here, why the—”
“Damn it, Mary, another ex-cop has been gunned. I'm not only on the case but if I'd followed my hunches, Wales might be alive now. Do you need cab fare?”
“We can't even have a decent evening out,” Mary said. She was on the verge of crying but held it in. “Just leave me alone!” She turned back toward the others and I walked out. I listened for a moment outside the door—there wasn't any laughter. Mary was all wrong.
I walked around the corner and found myself at a subway entrance. Riding up to the station house I didn't think much about Mary being sore—all lovey-dovey at 6 p.m. and a hot pistol by II p.m. Hell with that-Al Wales was dead! That made a monkey out of the robbery theory in Owens' murder, and murder was what it was. My hunch was the correct one-somebody was out to get both men and that could only mean a collar they'd made. Perhaps the killer did a long stretch and just got out. How else could ex-cops make enemies? Instead of horsing around with the Henderson case or writing up a report, if Reed had let me talk to Wales when I asked, the old guy would still be alive now, probably helping me solve the Owens killing.
I reached the precinct house at twenty to twelve. The midnight tour was in the muster room, studying the post condition board and shooting the breeze. The desk lieutenant was a fat slob who'd never heard about the invention of the comb. As I walked in he cracked, “Hey, sonny, where you going? Oh... it's you, Wintino.”
The sonofabitch went through this corny routine every time he saw me, which fortunately wasn't often and the patrolmen in the muster room gave it a big yak-yak.
“I came back to get a Popsicle I didn't finish this afternoon, Lieutenant,” I said to show the joker I could go along with a gag, even a cornball one.
There were only two men in the detective squad room, a guy built like a football tackle—named Wilson—and a sum, dapper (if you go for herringbone weaves) gray-haired man who was the senior detective on the squad and in charge when Reed wasn't around. He was Tom Landon, the quiet type who always looks bored and never gets excited. He asked, “Got your tours mixed, Dave? What you doing here?”
“Heard on TV about Al Wales being killed.”
“Yeah, quite a thing. Eleven thousand bucks in a money belt wrapped around his gut. Shame a man has to kick the bucket with that kind of dough unspent.”
“Where's everybody? Where's Lieutenant Reed?”
Landon leaned back in his chair and ran dental floss through his phony teeth—he was always playing with those false choppers. “Home, I guess. Why? Something go wrong in Night Court?”
“No. I thought with this Wales shooting, I mean it proves Owens wasn't in any stick-up, he was deliberately gunned... figured we'd all be working tonight.”
“Sure does throw a different light on the Owens thing,” Landon said, starting to work on his uppers. “But Wales wasn't killed in this precinct and anyway, Cen
tral Office is handling both killings now. I got my paper work to write up before midnight so... Wintino, you actually came here because...? If we wanted you we would have phoned. Beat it.”
“We should be working. These two are former cops!”
Landon held the dental floss up toward the light for inspection, dropped it in the waste basket. “Cops die too, like everybody else. Tell me, what were you doing when you heard about Wales?”
“I was at a card party with my wife.”
I heard Wilson snicker behind my back as Landon said, “And you dropped everything and came a-running. Dave, why don't you grow up and stop playing cops and robbers?”
“But I had a hunch on Owens all along and if I'd seen Wales today, as I wanted to...”