at least. And worth another ten for the work she'll have to do,” I added.
He waved a fistful of bills at me. Nothing like a wallop in the gut to take the starch out of a rough stud. I reached over—carefully— picked up two tens. As I opened the door I told them, “Now go to bed or poppa will have to spank again.”
“We'll never come here again!” big boy gasped. “You do, I'll throw you out the front door. Go to a flop joint where you belong.” I shut and locked the door, waited in the hallway for a moment. The clowns weren't marked —if they yelled they couldn't prove a thing. They were stupid drunk and fighting when I came in.
I was sweating a lot and stopped in at my bathroom, washed up, and it was a lucky move, for I got a sudden cramp. When I was ready I took a mint and called Dewey. “Room 703 is okay. Now send that jerky cop into my office.” In my office I took out my wallet and left it open on the desk so my card in the Policeman's Benevolent Association showed—to let the punk know who he was talking to.
He was a young cop, slight, with a skinny chicken neck, and the face looked a little familiar. He sure looked like a real cop, except for the patch on his shoulder, and the badge was smaller and the cap looked cheap. He had a gun belt on with bullets but no gun. Just a night stick and something in his back pocket that could be a sap.
He stood in the doorway, a silly grin on his narrow face, held out his arms like he was modeling the stingy uniform, asked, “Like it, Marty?”
For a moment I didn't recognize him. Hell, the last time I'd seen the kid was during the war, and he wasn't more than a dozen years old then. The grin on his face faded as he asked, “Marty, don't you remember me?”
The sort of plea in his voice did it. I jumped up and shook his small hand. “Lawrence, boy! Where do you come off with that not-remembering line? I was merely dazzled by the blue. Come on, put it down. When did you get the badge?” He always was a frail kid and now he looked compact, but like a weak welterweight. On his collar he had a gold A.P.—auxiliary police.
He sat down opposite me, pleased with himself. “Well, I'm not exactly a real cop. I'm with Civil Defense and we put in a few hours a week doing patrol duty—sort of practice for us, in case there ever should be an emergency, a bombing and all that. But I'm going to take the police physical next fall. I've been building myself up for it, go to the college gym every day.”
“How's your mother?” The kid had always been muscle-happy and cop-crazy. Maybe because he was always so delicate and sickly.
“Just fine. Guess you know she married again?”
“Yeah, I heard. Right after the war, and to some duck working in the aircraft factory with her. Hope she's happy. I gave Dot a rough time.”
“Mom never understood you,” Lawrence said. He had a good voice, deep and relaxed, and when you looked at his eyes for a while, you knew he was no longer a kid but a man. “Marty, I didn't mean to barge in on you so late, but I was just assigned to this precinct, and... uh... I thought you'd still be up.”
“I never hit the sack before three or four in the morning. Lately I've had some bum food and my stomach won't let me sleep anyway. You say you're going to college?”
He nodded. “Law school. I wanted to work and go nights, but Dot has been simply wonderful—insisted upon putting me through day school.”
“What's the idea of this tin-badge deal?”
He flushed. “Actually, I thought it would help me, give me a working idea of the force, so when I pass the physical and become a real...”
“You're studying to be a shyster—why you want to be a cop?”
He smiled as if I'd said something clever. “With the name Bond, what else could I be? Some of the men at the station, the regular police, asked me if I was related to you.”
“Down in this precinct—they remember me?”
“Every cop remembers you.”
“Are you... uh... defense cops under the precinct captain?”
“No, we have our own setup. Before this I was assigned to a station house up in the Bronx. But I mingle with the real cops.”
“They giving you a hard time because of me?”
He opened his collar, pushed his cap back, said flatly, “No one gives me a hard time, not the son of Marty Bond, the toughest cop on the force.” He sounded pretty hard. The kid could be more rugged than he looked—or nuts.
“That what they still call me?”
He turned his palms up, waved them. “Oh, a few said something about the... uh... Graham case, that you gave the force a black eye. But I told them off, reminded them you were the most cited man in the history of the New York City police force.”
“Graham—that lousy black bastard!”
“How's the hotel business?”
“Dull. Forget being a cop, Lawrence. It's a no-good job, everybody hates your heart.”
“I wouldn't say that. Laws are vital, living things to me that need protection, proper enforcement.” He lowered his voice. “After all, I not only have your name but my father died in harness. I belong on the force. And if I can only put on a little more muscle, I'll make a good cop.”
I was about to tell him there wasn't any such animal as a “good” cop, there couldn't be, but it was too warm to argue. So I said, “Hear there's a lot of college boys on the force.”
He grinned again and if it wasn't for his skinny neck he'd look okay. “Who isn't a college grad these days with the G.I. Bill? Did you know I put in two years in the army?”
“Get overseas?”
“No such luck, I never even got out of Fort Dix.” He looked around my office which seemed even crummier in the nighttime. “All this—hotel business— must be rather tame for you, isn't it, Marty?”
“Bounce a drunk now and then, catch a character running out with all his clothes on. That's about it.”
“Ever try your own agency?”
“That's strictly movie stuff.” There was a moment of silence till I kicked the drawer of my desk, asked, “Want a shot?”
“No, thanks. Are you still married to that dancer, Marty?”
“She wasn't much of a dancer. No, we busted up after a year or so. You married?”
“Not yet, but I will be soon as I get on the force.” His eyes studied my face. “Somehow you look... lonely... Dad.”
“Been a lot of years since you called me that.” The silly kid was always calling me Dad or Daddy.
“I always liked calling you Dad. Made me feel proud.”
“Yeah? So you think I'm lonely. I work and I sleep and the days go by. Except for this bad food I must have eaten last week, I get along okay. Suppose you've met Lieutenant Ash at the station house?”
“Indeed I did. Funny, I didn't recall ever seeing him, but he stopped me, asked if I wasn't Lawrence Bond, knew all about me. He looks like a square shooter, competent. How long were you partners?”
“Never added it up—maybe fifteen years. We were a good team. Used to say I was the brawn and he was the brains. Yeah, Bill Ash knows his business... I guess.”
There was another silence and the more I stared at the kid the more he looked like his father, except the senior Lawrence had been beefy. I never knew him—he'd walked into a stick-up and with a gun in his back had gone for his own revolver. I was pounding a beat then, and when the boys passed the hat for the widow, I was elected to bring the money to her. I often thought of Dot, the four years our marriage held up. She was a sweet girl, a real homebody. And Lawrence had been a quiet stringbean who thought I was the greatest thing ever.
I must have been daydreaming for quite a time, for suddenly he said, “Look, Marty, I've wanted to see you for a long time. But it was only when I talked to Lieutenant Ash that I even knew where you were. However I've also come to you for advice. A queer... uh... incident happened on my post a couple of hours ago and nobody at the precinct house is interested.”
I laughed. “I know how it is, your first collar always seems the greatest crime.... Wait a minute, can you volunteer cops make an arrest?”
“Yes, while we're on duty. Technically we're peace officers while in uniform. It's true this is the first... case... or trouble I've had, but I don't think that's a factor,” Lawrence said seriously.
I could hardly keep from smiling. Maybe he was twenty-one or twenty-two, but he still acted like a kid with a box-top badge. “What was the arrest?”
“There wasn't any arrest. You see, we do patrol duty in pairs and I was walking along Barren Street with my partner, an older man named John Breet. Well, the truth is he stopped at a bar to see if he could get a drink on the cuff. I don't go for that nonsense so I was standing outside the bar. A few doors down there's a small wholesale butcher, the Lande Meat Company. Not much, a double store with the windows painted black. The fact is, Wilhelm Lande, the owner, has had the place closed for the past several weeks. Willie, that's what they call Mr. Lande, says he had a stroke and his doctor advised him to take it easy. He's rather a nervous type.”
“What did he want you to do, steady his hand?” I corn-balled, thinking how batty a joker has to be to do police work for free.
“Marty, this isn't any joking matter. I have a feeling there's something seriously wrong here.”
“All right, you haven't even told me what the beef is.”
“Well, you see, they have to give us night tours, but they try to keep them during the light hours as much as possible. It was a little after 7 p.m. when a kid ran up and told me somebody had just broken the window of the butcher shop—from the inside. I didn't wait for Breet. I ran over to the shop and the door wasn't locked, and inside there's Lande the butcher tied up. He'd been robbed and trussed up around 6 p.m. according to his first statement, had finally managed to get ahold of a stapling machine, threw it at the window. I should say he was hysterical, almost in a state of shock as I untied him. He yelled he had been robbed of fifty
