more the coward. I found that out for the first time the other night—the hard way. So let's stop talking like children about being tough or brave —that's for the birds. I want you to forget trying to be a cop because you're an intelligent boy and you'll only break your heart. I tell you to forget it just as I'd tell you to forget any other lousy job.”
“This is new—Marty the cop-hater!” he said, mocking me, his eyes sort of smiling at me above the bandages.
“I don't hate cops, it's only that we're called upon to do an impossible job. Kids rob because they're bored, thrill-happy, want a bang—but mostly because they're broke. So you stick them in jail and they come out broke, and other kids continue to be broke, and it goes on and on. What the hell real good do cops or laws do unless you change the cause of the lawbreaking?”
The cut lips parted in what passed for a smile, and his eyes became tender, like a gal's. “Marty, you astonish me— you have a social consciousness under that hard-boiled front.”
“I haven't a social anything, but I've been around, seen the facts.”
Tin glad you have a sense of social welfare,” Lawrence said. “And you're right—at best laws are only a salve for deeper social sores, but a salve is better than nothing. And until we reach an Utopian era, I'll continue to love the law, try to see it is carried out and obeyed.”
“You kidding? I told you the other night that not an hour goes by without mister average jerk citizen breaking a law—spitting on the sidewalk, sneaking a smoke in the subway, jaywalking. You can't enforce all the laws so right off the bat, because of a lack of time and men, a cop has to close his eyes to things... and a cop with his eyes shut isn't a good cop. There is no such animal.” Suddenly I didn't know why I was even talking to the silly kid. I felt tired, impatient with the dope—all bandaged up because he was a lousy tin hero and still arguing with me.
“You're wrong. You were a good cop,” he said, “a real pro. And you still could be. You've been on my... this beating... less than a day and you've already narrowed it down to a point where you're ready for the break. That's efficient police work.”
“Lawrence, kid, I'm a stumblebum. That's what I'm trying to tell you—I've been one all my life but never knew it till now. Let me give it to you straight, even if it won't be exactly pretty. I gather you think Bill Ash is what you call a 'good' cop?”
“I certainly do. I think he's capable, industrious, and steady.”
“Let me show you something else he is, has to be. When I... uh... retired I needed a job and police work was die only thing I knew,” I told him, talking slowly so he wouldn't miss a word, and because it was a little rough to put it in words. “I didn't have the connections for private jobs, the time and money to build up a clientele. I either had to be a guard in a bank, a walking gun, or luck up on something... like being a hotel dick at the Grover. You've seen the joint; most hotels that size haven't a house man. You know what I really am there? I'm a combination bouncer and pimp. Yeah, p-i-m-p.”
His eyes flashed surprise as he said, “Are you kidding? What are you telling me, Marty?”
“What is sometimes known as the truth, boy. We have from three to a dozen or more girls working there, with the money filtering up to one of the most respected real-estate outfits in town. All right, I had to take the job, as it was, or no job. Now let's get to Bill Ash. When we were partners we took our share of cushion, nothing big, a gift of a shirt or a hat here, a free supper or a bottle there—you come upon a stick-up and there's a lot of bills on the floor, you pocket a few, in a ...”
“Marty, I know cops are humans, and wear badges not halos.”
“Kid, I'm trying to show you what a trap a cop's job is. The Grover is in Bill's precinct and was paying off the cops before he ever took over. Bill keeps a little hunk of the graft, the rest goes higher up. Here's your capable and decent Bill Ash—and he really is—who gets himself a fat promotion after twenty years of hard work. He knows the Grover is running a house—if he cracks down, the real-estate bigwigs with connections will have him booted out to the sticks before he can reach for his hat. Suppose Bill doesn't take the pay-off, merely shuts his eyes to things? All right, maybe he isn't being your 'good cop' then, but neither is he in the pimp business. But he can't even do that because the pimps would be jittery, never knowing when he would crack down. Of course he could bust the whole thing wide open, expose everybody from the police brass to the real- estate tycoons. In that case, I'd give odds that Bill would be framed, maybe even murdered.”
The scorn in the boy's eyes almost cut me. He said, “My God, Marty, you're sick, crazy sick!”
“Not the way you think. I merely want to show you what you're getting into. Everybody hates a cop, the crooks and the so-called honest citizens. We all have some larceny in us, so at heart we're all anti-law. You're hated and pressured and overworked and underpaid, and no matter how honest you think you are, especially the big brass, you have to play politics in one form or another to keep the job—the graft machine is too well oiled to be stopped by a single cog.”
He didn't say anything; his eyes searched the ceiling as if he didn't know I was there. Then he said, “How can you be so cynical, Marty? It sounds cheap coming from you, if you'll excuse my saying it. You, the most decorated cop on the force. I remember the time you rushed into a room with two gunmen waiting, and disarmed them. It gave me a kick to read the stories in the paper to the kids, tell them that was my dad. Tell me, why did you risk your life so often if what you say is true?”
I grinned, to hide a belch, my mouth filling with the lousy taste. “Lawrence, I did it partly because I was a fool, fell for the phony glory, my name in the paper, the jerks slapping me on the back. Maybe I was stupid-brave and maybe I wasn't such a brave joker—all the cards were marked in my favor. The average punk will rarely shoot a cop. In most cases it's when they don't know the...”
“You forget my... my father—shot down in uniform!”
I shook my head. “I said they rarely shoot, not that they never shoot. A rat will fight when he's cornered. Kid, in my book your dad was a fool. They had a gun in his back when he went for his own gun. Shooting him was almost a reflex action on the part of the hood. And according to regulations, your dad had to go for his gun. They expect you to risk your life when the odds are way against you—on what other job would you take that kind of crap? Jobs where you risk your life, normal risks, sandhog, steeplejack, high construction work, at least they pay you for the risk—here they reward you by letting you pay for your own bullets!”
“Marty, I wish you hadn't come here. I have to say this: you're old, slipping. No matter what you say, you put in many years, the best part of your life, in useful work as a cop. What's happened to you now, I don't know.”
“Lawrence, care to hear about some of the 'useful' work I did as a cop?”
He shut his eyes. “No.”
“Maybe it's what you need. Dot says I'm your ideal. Let me tell you about a few cases 'ideal' had. There's ...”
“I don't want to hear them.”
“Lawrence, remember how interested you always were in any crime case? You'll like these. There's Mrs. DeCosta. I've...”
“I'm not interested.”
“Yes, you are,” I said. “I've been dreaming about Mrs. De-Costa lately—nightmares. I don't know why. One night, at eleven-twenty, we get a call that three men are robbing a grocery store. Bill and I are due to go off duty at midnight, but we have to go over to the store. It hadn't been entered but the door is partly jimmied. We go across the street to this Mrs. DeCosta who phoned in. She was living in the basement of a private house. One of these stocky, healthy-looking blondes, about thirty-five. She was wearing a bathrobe and I remember all the nice creamy white skin of her shoulders.
“She says as she was getting ready for bed she glanced across the street, saw three young guys trying to force the door of the store. Says they ran as soon as our car turned into the block. All right, by now it's almost midnight and I'm stuck on this lousy case. So I'm pretty sore, in a rush. Dot was playing bridge, expected me to call for her at ten after midnight—we didn't like to leave you alone much. One of the troubles of being a cop, never sure when you'll be off, can't make even ordinary plans.”
The kid still had his eyes closed and I wondered if he was sleeping. Then he ran his tongue over his dry lips and I knew he was listening. I told him, “I run out and scout the block. On the corner I come on three wops, although one of them turned out to be a Jew. All a little juiced. In this business one rule you can go by is that nine times out of ten the guy nearest the crime did it. That's common sense. I flashed my badge, took the kids back to the DeCosta apartment for her to identify them. She says it was too dark to make out anybody's face and she doesn't think it's these three because two of the three she saw only had shirts on while all of these guys are wearing jackets. Of course she has to blab this out in front of them and they start smiling.
“By now it's near one and I'm getting no place. The three ginzos of course deny everything, even though one of them has a big screwdriver in his pocket that could be used as a jimmy. Bill even pulls the roper line about he's a witness, not a dick, keeps saying, 'That's them, all right. I'm positive,' but the lice don't admit a thing. All right, three kids tried busting into a store, three kids are found within a block of the place. I bang them in the gut a couple of times—to scare them—when this DeCosta dame gets hysterical and shouts, 'What are you beating them for? I told you I can't identify them!'
“She's making a racket and from a curtained bedroom off the living room I'll be damned if a skinny colored guy in pajamas don't come limping into the living room, walking with canes. It turned out the guy was a spick, but to me they're all black, all dinges. He asks what's going on and the blonde says he's her husband. All right, maybe to your way of thinking it was none of my business, but I was tired and sore, and she had all that nice white bosom.... You see the way things add up, work out? I ain't got time to sit down, work by the book, question these monkeys. I belted one of the ginzos in the gut, flattened him. When the
