Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“How long have you been head of the vice squad?”

“Twelve years.”

“Now that’s a long time, isn’t it?”

“I like it.”

“I’m sure you do,” Necessary said, “but didn’t you ever get just a little sick of all those whores and the pimps and the fags and the rest of the lot?”

“It’s my job,” Henderson said. “I never thought about getting sick of it.”

“Well, maybe you’re a little sick of it, but just don’t know it.”

“You got a complaint?”

“I don’t know if you’d call it a complaint or not,” Necessary said and turned to me. “You got those figures, Mr. Dye?”

“Right here, Chief Necessary,” I said, the way an up-and-coming special assistant should say it.

“Read off some of the highlights for Captain Henderson. These are statistics, Captain, that tell how our crime rate’s going. They only deal with the past month. Go ahead, Mr. Dye.”

“Armed robbery, up seventeen percent,” I read. “Auto theft, up twenty-one percent; homicide, up sixteen percent; assault, up twenty-seven percent; extortion, up nine percent, and what’s generally called vice, down four percent. These are only percentages as compared with the previous month’s figures.”

“Vice down four percent,” Necessary said. “And everything else up. You seem to be keeping on top of things, Captain.”

“I do my job,” he said.

“Now I’ve had talks with just about every ranking officer in headquarters except you and they’ve all agreed to cooperate one-hundred percent and I think these figures reflect that cooperation. Our crime rate’s up about fourteen percent and I call that progress, don’t you?”

“No.”

“That a fact?” Necessary said. “Well, I thought that everybody thought that getting at the truth was progress and that’s just what these figures are, Captain Henderson. The truth. All except yours.”

“You calling me a liar?” Henderson demanded, his tone thick and phlegmy.

“That’s right, I am. You’ve been lying about the number of vice violations and if you want me to prove it, I will. That’s why the crime rate’s gone up. The rest of the squads have quit lying, all except yours. They’re reporting actual figures — or near actual. I expect they’re still fudging a little, but that’s to be expected. But Jesus Christ, mister, you’re giving yours six coats of whitewash.”

“I report the figures as they’re given to me,” Henderson said.

“Sure you do. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I’ve got some more figures down pretty good. A fag can buy himself off for fifty bucks. A whore, ten. Gambling’s fifteen for each player and a hundred for the house. A pimp’s not good for much more’n fifty and a disorderly house will bring a hundred. I can go on.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Henderson said.

“You’re surprised?”

“Yes.”

“Shocked?”

“Sure.”

“You’ve heard of the Sarber Hotel?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“You know it’s a wide-open whorehouse?”

“No.”

“Did you know that a police private, Benjamin A. Dassinger, badge number two-four-nine-eight is regularly on duty there from seven P.M. till three A.M. to keep order and to make sure the customers pay up? You know that?”

“No,” Henderson said, “I didn’t know that.”

“For a vice cop you don’t know a hell of a lot, do you, Captain?”

“I do my job.”

“Well, if you do, maybe you know that the Sarber Hotel is owned by one Mary Helen Henderson and this Mary Helen Henderson is the wife of Warren Gamaliel Henderson who happens to be a captain in the Swankerton Police Department. Now, goddamn it, tell me you didn’t know that?”

Henderson said nothing and sucked on the insides of his cheeks.

“There’s a crap game that’s been running in this town for seven years. It used to float, but it doesn’t anymore. It’s the oldest crap game in town and it’s open every night from nine till two on the second floor of a bakery at two-forty-nine North Ninth Street. You know about that?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s funny, since the guy that runs it says he pays you five hundred a week to let him alone and, God knows, that’s cheap because it’s a hell of a big game and it draws the high rollers from as far away as Hot Springs and Memphis, but you wouldn’t know about that either, would you?”

“No,” Henderson said and sucked on his cheeks some more.

“The last count I got was that there are thirteen regular table-stakes poker games going on in town with an off-duty patrolman playing doorkeeper at each one. That’s on this side of the tracks. God knows what goes on in Niggertown, but you don’t know anything about those thirteen games or about the three hundred dollars-a-week payoff that each of them makes, do you?”

“No.”

“You ever heard of John Frazee, Milton Sournaugh, Joseph Minitelli, Kelly Farmer, or Jules Goreaux?”

“No,” Henderson said.

“Well, they say they all know you and that they’ve been shaking down fags and pimps and whores for you, some of them for as long as three years. They work on a percentage, they tell me; they get twenty-five and you get seventy-five. What you got to say about that?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you kick back to Lynch? I hear it’s up around two-thirds now.”

“I don’t know anything about kick backs.” Henderson said. “I just do my job.”

Necessary leaned back in his chair and stretched and yawned. “How long would it take to draw up charges against Captain Henderson here, Mr. Dye?”

“A few hours,” I said.

“What do you think?”

“Perhaps you might take into consideration his claim that he was only doing his job.”

“That’s a thought,” Necessary said. He leaned over his desk toward Henderson and nodded in a confidential, you-can-tell-me manner. “How much you really knocking down a year, Henderson? Sixty? Seventy-five?”

“I don’t knock down anything,” Henderson said.

“You think I should bring you up on charges?”

“That’s up to you, Chief Necessary.”

“It sure is, isn’t it? Probably get your wife, too, for running a whorehouse, come to think of it. Be a real mess, but you could probably get off with — oh, say — five years, maybe ten.”

Henderson cracked then. Not much, really; just enough. He looked down at his shoes. That was all. “What do you want?” he said dully.

“A list,” Necessary said. “Break it all down, where it comes from, who gets it, and how much. And I want your name at the bottom of it. I want it on my desk by five o’clock tonight.”

“All right,” Henderson said.

“I want your resignation, too.”

Henderson looked up quickly and his mouth opened, but no words came out. “Undated,” Necessary said, and Henderson closed his mouth.

“What do you think, Mr. Dye?”

“Well, he can’t stay in vice. As you said, he seems a little sick of it.”

Necessary nodded judiciously. “He sure does, doesn’t he. You got any suggestions?”

“There’s always the Missing Persons’ Bureau,” I said.

Henderson looked at me, and if he was afraid of Necessary, he wasn’t of me. The snarl came back to his mouth. “There ain’t any Missing Persons’ Bureau.”

Necessary smiled. “There’ll be one tomorrow and you’ll be in charge of it. How much help you think he needs, Mr. Dye?”

“At least one man,” I said.

“Maybe a rookie?” Necessary said.

“A rookie could learn a lot from Captain Henderson.”

Henderson rose slowly from his chair and half-turned toward the door. “Sit down, Henderson,” Necessary snapped. “I’ll tell you when you’re dismissed.” Henderson sat down again.