“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 blonde opens her yap I told her to shut up. This crippled guy starts with, 'See here, you can't talk to...'
“He moved one of his canes and I thought he was going to slug me and... Oh, hell that's a crock—I was damn sore at him for laying this fine white stuff so I slapped him. When he fell he did swing at me with a cane and I kicked him in the side. The blonde came at me and I let her have it across the face—what she deserved. The...”
“Marty Bond, cop, judge, brute, and little god!” Lawrence said suddenly, his voice so cold and sharp it made me jump.
“Somebody beat you to the punch tonight, called me a lout. And I only asked for money due me but... All right, kid, I'm not saying aye nor nay at the moment, only telling you what the 'useful' years were like. This DeCosta babe screams at me, 'You thug with a badge!' Told you, been dreaming about that, hearing the words lately, first time in years. To cut this short, the wops get scared and try making a run for it and for a second I'm belting everybody. We never had a chance to pin a thing on them, not even resisting arrest.”