Ed Lacy - Lead With Your Left

“What kind of a belt would you like, Dave, rye, scotch, gin, vodka, or tequila?” Don asked me.

I was going to say I didn't drink but didn't want to sound like a square so I said, “Too warm for hard stuff. Got a beer handy?”

Grace, Don's wife, who really filled her black and gold slacks, gave me a can of beer and a kind of bottomless cup that fitted over the top of the can. She said, “Now you won't need a glass.”

I smiled. “I wouldn't have needed a glass anyway. Thank you.”

“This way the flavor of the beer isn't lost by pouring it out of the can,” Don told me. Seemed like they'd given a lot of thought to something as simple as beer drinking. Then he told everybody, “Fellow I went to Yale with and who works for a Chicago agency, wrote me one of their clients is working on a paper beer container. Has some kind of keg lining to improve the flavor, I believe.”

Everybody except me started talking about this: I was waiting to play bridge. Half the time I didn't even know what they were talking about. They had pet words they all liked to mouth: “the cost-level,” or something was “sales-wise,” or had a “built-in selling point.” Even Mary got into the act, saying, “There's something substantial about a can, gives you a feeling of getting your money's worth that a milk container, for example, doesn't have. Consumer-wise I think it would be a mistake to lose that.”

Still they all looked like nice bright people and I sipped my beer, which only made me sweat more, and glanced at myself in a wall mirror to see if my shirt looked wilted, and listened. About a half-hour later they finally got the cards out but at nine-forty-five somebody insisted the TV be turned on to one of our programs. Most boorish bilge you ever heard. We wrote several very clever programs but the client, a real corn-ball, chose this tripe.

The “program” was so short it wasn't worth all the talk—a one-minute commercial in which an uncomfortable-looking big league pitcher stumbled through a couple of lines about how he loved to use this brand of paint when he was puttering around his house. When it was over they shut off the set and everybody chattered away, arguing about the damn thing. I kept nursing my beer and keeping my trap shut.

Belly-boy on the couch broke things up by mumbling, “Who's on the gate?” between snores and then we started to play cards.

Mary and I were playing against Don and Grace Tills. He turned out to be one of these psychic bidders, bidding on what he thinks his partner should have. He opened with a diamond bid and I was holding five diamonds, ace, queen high. His wife must have had a few, she gave him a boost. He then bid spades and she took him to game in diamonds and Don went down four.

We got good cards and Mary made three no trump and two hands later we took the rubber. Don and his wife kept making tracks to the bar and were getting juiced. Even Mary was sailing a little and she can handle a bottle. Everybody must have been lapping it up waiting for me.

We were on the second rubber when a fellow at the other table stood up and took off his coat, saying, “Does anybody mind? Getting rather warm in here.”

“You ass,” Don said, “you mean you stood on convention here? Hell, anybody feels warm, strip. And that goes for the ladies too.” He took off his snappy dark-grained sport coat and opened his yellow waistcoat.

Grace said something about waiting for a buy on a couple of air-conditioning units and when I was dummy I peeled off my coat. As I sat down there was a sudden silence in the room, except for light snores of the lush on the couch. There wasn't even the small noises of the cards. It was sort of a shocked silence. Mary was staring at me, her mouth angry-hard. In fact everybody was looking at me, including the four people at the other table.

I casually glanced down at my pants, at my shirt and tie-nothing was open or dirty. Mary was really burning, her face flushed. Glancing around I asked brightly, “I make a funny noise or something?”

Don pointed a slender finger at my shoulder holster and gun. “Guess this is the first time any of us have seen a setup like that—off a TV screen. I assume that's a real gun?”

“Sure is. I'm a detective.”

“Wow—a real private eye!” one of the girls at the other table said with what might have been a giggle.

Mary looked as if she wanted to disappear. “Nope, I'm a cop. Detective third grade, attached to the 201st Squad,” I said.

An idiotic grin spread over Don's lean face as he dropped his cards, told Mary, “Why didn't you tell me your husband was a real detective?”

Somebody at the other table said, “This is positively delightful,” as one of the girls left the table and asked me, “May I look at your badge?”

“Sure,” I said, wondering if I was being kidded. I showed her the buzzer. She touched it as if it was a big jewel. “Just a hunk of tin,” I added.

They all crowded around me. I was the center of attraction for everybody except the sleeping drunk and Mary. Grace Tills pointed toward my gun, asked, “Mr.... Dave, why are you wearing that? Expecting some trouble here?”

“A cop is supposed to be armed at all times, off duty and on.”

“Certainly the last thing you look like is a policeman,” a man said, looking me over like a queer. “Have you made many arrests?”

“Whenever I have to. Like asking do you write much copy. It's my job.”

Don said, “This is a novelty, talking to a real cop—on a friendly basis.” He gave out a silly little laugh, as if he was nervous. “Wake up, Harold.”

Grace said, “Let him sleep, he's so coy when he's loaded.” She turned to Mary. “You should have brought Dave over long before this. He's terribly interesting.”

Mary's face was back to normal color but her mouth was still a tight line. Then she said, “Dave is the youngest detective on the force. He made a very important arrest a few months ago—you remember that psychopath who had killed several women with a piece of pipe? Dave arrested him and was made a detective.” Her voice wasn't shrill, she probably felt better now that I was the center of things.

One of the men said, “I followed that case, I get a morbid kick out of reading... That's right, I do recall now, a rookie cop named Wintino. Never connected that—him—with you, Mary. But I should have, odd name.”

The girl who had wanted to see my badge asked, “Tell us the truth, is there really much third-degreeing?”

I dropped my cards and shrugged. “I've seen very little of it. But then I haven't been on the force long. There's over twenty thousand men on the force. I suppose there must be more than a few knuckle-happy cops. And sometimes it can't be helped.”

“Surely you don't condone such methods?”

“Well,” I said slowly, patting my hair—I always get “condone” and “condemn” mixed up in my mind—“it's like this: we have a lot of laws, many of them stupid and far outdated, but they're still on the books. The more laws, the more lawbreakers, the more work for us. And we're always running short on time. Now most crooks are cowards, at least that's what the older cops tell me. These crooks because they are cowards deal in violence and sometimes that same violence, or the threat of it, is the fastest way of making them talk. From my own experience I'd say there's little rough stuff, mostly because it isn't necessary.”

“Now look here, Dave,” Don said, freshening his drink, “we all know there's police brutality—you might as well admit it.”

“There probably are cops who think with their night sticks,” I said, “but as I said, from my own experience, I've seen some impatient cops, but that's all. I wouldn't call it brutality.”