Ed Lacy - Lead With Your Left

“Who's on the gate?” the clown on the couch asked but now nobody laughed, they were paying attention only to me.

“How about corruption?” another guy asked me.

I smiled. “Come off it.”

“I'm serious. I've read the reports of the Seabury investigation some twenty years ago and that definitely showed—”

“That was long before my time. I can assure you I'm not the captain's bagman, nor have I ever seen such a collector. Sure, there's small cushion some guys go for—a free meal, a few bucks at Christmas, maybe a new tie or hat. And for all I know there may be big payoffs from the rackets, but I've never seen it. A retired cop was shot yesterday while working as a part-time messenger. Does that sound like a guy with a hand in the cracker barrel?”

“Now we all read about traffic ticket scandals, the business with Harry Gross,” the guy said.

I tried not to get sore. “You want me to give you newspaper stories or what I know? Let me put it this way: in the short time I've been a working police officer, I haven't even been offered a free sandwich. And if I had I wouldn't have taken it. Hell, there must be some people in the advertising office who are always looking for free theater tickets or a bottle. That doesn't make the whole agency corrupt. Most of the cops I know have a job to do, protecting society, and they try to do it best they can.”

Mary was giving me the eye—maybe to shut up. “Are you really protecting society?” Don asked. “Nobody can solve social problems, deep and complex, merely by passing a law. Crime is only the reflection of the sick state of our society and at best a policeman is only a salve when an operation is needed.”

I said, “A salve is better than nothing. Take this afternoon when I collared a man trying to—”

“Dave, nobody is interested in such details,” Mary said, her voice a shade on the shrill side.

“Oh, but indeed we are,” Grace Tills said with a big smile for me. “This is all so wonderful. What happened this afternoon?”

I winked at her. “Is this so wonderful? This afternoon I picked up a jerk in the process of busting into a parked car, trying to lift a coat. The fellow hasn't a record, he's out of work. The car was a Jaguar and the owner could probably afford to lose the coat and the damage to his window. But I can't worry about the social angles. A cop can't be judge and jury, that's when he goes in for rough stuff. It's only a job to me. Maybe this punk was hungry enough to justify robbery but that isn't for me to decide.”

“Come now, Dave,” the girl who liked my badge said, studying me with what she must have thought were big eyes, “you can't separate yourself from society by saying 'It's my job,' or 'my duty.'”

“It's more than a job in the sense that I'm doing good by preventing other crimes. I mean if there weren't any cops, well, you know. But it's also strictly for pork chops with me, and with you. Suppose you're pushing some towel ads. You never ask whether the cotton was picked by underpaid migrant workers, made in a sweatshop mill, when you sit in your comfortable office and lay out a slick ad,” I said, knowing I wasn't saying what I wanted to or making much sense.

“A philosophical cop,” one of the men said. “Wonder of wonders.”

“No, it isn't a wonder or philosophical or a damn thing but a job with long hours and—”

“Little pay,” Mary cut in bitterly.

“And big risks,” I said. “If your boss suddenly told you to get out and clean the office windows you'd refuse because you'd be risking your life. Yet for less salary than you're making I'm expected to face guns, knives and fists every day. But even if the pay was good it wouldn't make it a good job because secretly most people hate cops.”

“Exactly,” the girl with the big eyes said. “Because you do society's dirty work. This man you arrested this afternoon, his resentment isn't against the economic insecurity that made him seek robbery but against you. We need economic equality not night sticks or—”

“Easy, Janice,” Grace Tills cut in, “or you'll fall off your soapbox.”

“No, no,” Janice said eagerly, “I'm only trying to show him the reality of the situation is that police aren't the answer but—”

“The reality of the situation is,” I cut in, “that there's a homicide every forty minutes in the U.S.A., a rape every half-hour, an assault every six minutes, and some form of larceny every twenty-six seconds, and when you're the victim you'll be yelling for the police!”

“Lord,” Don said, “are those facts?”

“Of course they are,” I told him.

“Sounds fantastic,” this Janice began, “but that only proves what I—”

Grace Tills put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. She could whistle real good. She held up her hands. “I think it's time we took Dave off the witness stand. Cards, anybody?”

“Almost eleven,” a girl who hadn't said anything before said. “Let's stick to drinking. We have to be home by midnight or our Cinderella baby-sitter will sack us. Put the TV on again, there's a soap jingle due on which I hear is sensational.”

They all trooped to the bar except me—I just don't like the taste of beer. Janice hurried back with a drink in her right hand and pointed her left at my holster as she said, “It's like being near a snake, same morbid attraction.”

“Not good to get too near guns or snakes,” I kidded her, watching Mary down a quickie at the bar.

“You and I should talk this out,” she said but the soap jingle came, on and everybody started chattering about the sales pitch jammed into the thirty-second jingle. The news followed and the commentator suffered from the occupational disease of his calling—self-importance, as though he was making the news instead of parroting it.

I was the only one trying to hear him: I wanted to know who'd won the fight. The TV screen was filled with film shots of the day's news—another conference in Europe, a factory fire, the President playing golf, then a picture of a small room and uniformed cops carrying out a body. I caught one word over the noises in the room. I shouted, “Shut up!... please.”

The smooth voice of the commentator was saying, ”... and in this dingy room his landlady found Wales' body when he failed to answer her repeated knocks. Police say the retired detective was killed around noon although the landlady didn't discover the body until late this afternoon. One puzzling aspect of the case was a large amount of cash in the dead man's money belt which was untouched. Now, after a word from my sponsor, I'll have the late sport results and the weather for...”

As I put on my coat I told Mary, “I have to get back to the precinct house. Want me to take you home first?”

“Don't worry about me! I'll go home when I'm ready!” she snapped.

“Babes, I have to—”

Don said, “Aren't you being rather melodramatic, Dave old man? Hear about a murder on TV and go dashing out into the night. You really have to go?”

“Melodramatic?” I repeated. “This isn't any play. Wales' partner was killed yesterday and I was on the case. Good night everybody.”

Mary ran after me to the door. I asked, “Got cab fare, Babes?”

“I was never so embarrassed in my life!” she whispered. “You had to show off that lousy gun to startle my friends!”

“I wasn't showing off. How was I to know you hadn't told your boon buddies I was a cop. Way you hid it, you'd think I was in the rackets.”

“I know you, you did it on purpose, grandstanding!”

“Stop it,” I said, opening the door. “Thought you'd like the idea of me being the big attraction tonight—unless you count the juicehound on the couch.”

“Attraction? You fool, they were making fun of you! Now you cap it all by rushing off like a child hearing a fire alarm. You're off duty, they can't get in touch with you here, why the—”