The sonofabitch produced a wallet stuffed with large-denomination bills to demonstrate his willingness to go along with this solution to the problem.
“Give it all to her,” Officer Crater ordered.
“I got to keep out a few bucks, for Christ’s sake!”
“Give it all to her, you sonofabitch!” Officer Crater ordered angrily, and watched as the building contractor gave the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service all the money in his wallet. Then he turned to the hotel security officer. “You’ll see that she gets out of here and home all right, right?”
“Absolutely.”
Officer Crater then turned and left the room.
The lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service went home and telephoned Mrs. Osadchy to report what had happened.
“How much did he give you, Marianne?”
“Six hundred bucks.”
“You keep it, and I promise you, this will never happen again.”
Mrs. Osadchy also reported the incident to Mr. Cassandro, who considered the situation a moment and then said, “I think, since the cop was so nice, that we ought to show our appreciation. Give the broad a couple of hundred and tell her to give it to the cop.”
“I already told Marianne she could keep the dough she got from the john.”
“Then you give her the money for the cop, Harriet. Consider it an investment. Trust me. Do it.”
Two days later, while Officer Crater was walking his beat, the lady from the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society who moonlighted at the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service approached him.
“I want to thank you for the other night,” she said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Aaaaaah,” Officer Crater said, somewhat embarrassed.
“No, I really mean it,” she said. “I really appreciate what you did for me.”
“Forget it,” Officer Crater said.
The lady handed him what looked like a greeting card.
“What’s this?” Officer Crater asked.
“It’s a thank-you card. I got it at Hallmark.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Officer Crater said. “All I was trying to do was make the best of a bad situation.”
“You’re sweet,” the lady said. “What did you say your name was?”
“Crater.”
“I mean your first name.”
“Charley,” Officer Crater replied.
“Mine’s Marianne,” she said. “Thanks again, Charley.” She kissed Officer Crater on the cheek and walked away.
Officer Crater stuffed the Hallmark thank-you card in his pocket and resumed walking his beat. When he got home, he took another look at it. Inside the card were four crisp fifty-dollar bills.
“Jesus Christ!” Officer Crater said. He went to the bathroom and tore the thank-you card in little pieces and flushed the pieces down the toilet. His wife, he knew, would never understand. The two hundred he folded up and put in the little pocket in his wallet which, before he got married, he had used to hold a condom.
The next time he saw her, he told himself, he would give the money back to her. There was no point in making a big deal of the money; telling his sergeant about it would mean having to tell him what he had done in the first place.
A week after that, before he saw the lady again, he had a couple of drinks too many after work in Dave’s Bar, at Third Street and Fairmount Avenue, with Officer William C. Palmerston, whom he had worked with in the Sixth District before Palmerston had been transferred to Vice.
He told him, out of school, about the thank-you card with the two hundred bucks in it, and that he intended to return it to the hooker the next time he saw her.
“Don’t be a goddamned fool,” Palmerston said. “Keep it.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“It’s not like she bribed you, is it? All you did was what you thought was the right thing to do in that situation, right? I mean, you didn’t catch her doing something wrong, right? You didn’t say, ‘For two hundred bucks, I’ll let you go,’ did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“You did her a favor, she appreciated it. Keep the money.”
“You’d keep it?”
Officer Palmerston, in reply, extended his hand, palm upward, to Officer Crater.
“Try me.”
“All right, goddamn you, Bill, I will,” Officer Crater said, and took two of the fifties from the condom pocket in his wallet and laid them in Officer Palmerston’s palm. Officer Palmerston stuffed the bills in his shirt pocket, then called for another round.
“I’ll pay,” Officer Palmerston said, and laid one of the fifties on the bar.
The next time, several days later, Officer Crater saw the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service he could not, of course, give her the two hundred back, since he’d given half of it to Officer Palmerston.
She came up to him right after he started walking his beat, where he was standing on the corner of Ninth and Chestnut streets.
“Hi, Charley,” she said. “How are you?”
“Hi,” he replied, thinking again that Marianne didn’t really look like a hooker.
“You ever get a break?” she asked. “For a cup of coffee or something?”
“Sure.”
“I was about to have a cup of coffee. I’ll buy,” the lady said.
He seemed hesitant, and she saw this.
“Charley, all I’m offering is a cup of coffee,” she said. “Come on.”
Why not? Officer Crater reasoned. I mean, what the hell is wrong with drinking a cup of coffee with her?
They had coffee and a couple of doughnuts in a luncheonette. He never could remember afterward what they had talked about until Marianne suddenly looked at her watch and said she had to go. And offered her hand for him to shake, and he took it, and there was something in her hand.
“The lady I work for says thank you, too,” Marianne said, and was gone before he could say anything else, or even look at what she had left in his hand.
When he finally looked, it was a neatly folded, crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.
“Jesus Christ!” he said aloud, before quickly putting the bill in his trousers pocket.
When he got off work that night, he went to Dave’s Bar before going home, in the hope that he would run into Bill Palmerston.
Palmerston was already in Dave’s Bar when he got there, and when he bought Palmerston a drink, he paid for it with the hundred-dollar bill.
Palmerston looked at the bill and then at Crater.
“Where’d you get that?”
“The same place I got the fifties,” Crater said.
“Lucky you.”
Palmerston watched as the bartender made change, and when he had gone, looked at Crater and asked, “Don’t tell me your conscience is bothering you again?”
“A little,” Officer Crater confessed.
Officer Palmerston reached toward the stack of bills on the bar and carefully pulled two twenties and a ten from it.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Jesus, Bill, I don’t like this.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” Palmerston said. “It’s not like you’re doing something wrong.” Then Palmerston
