Ed Lacy - The Men From the Boys

“I'm catching cold talking to you.” She started to shut the door and I stuck my foot in.

She stared at me, said evenly, “Mr. Bond, get your foot out of my door. This isn't the Grover; you ain't no kingpin up here.”

“Keep your voice down! I ...”

“You don't scare me, you lout! When you dig a grave for me—dig two—one for yourself!”

For a moment I was so frightened I couldn't talk, then I asked, “Lilly, what made you say that—dig a grave for myself? You see something on my face? Or... Tell me, Lilly, forget the dough and tell me why you said that. Dig a grave. I...”

I took my foot out of the doorway and she slammed the door shut. For a moment the house was terribly still, then I heard other doors opening slowly, whispers. I looked around. From the floor above, a dark-faced little girl was staring down at me with frightened eyes.

I turned and walked down the torn carpeted wooden steps, knowing people were watching and listening behind the closed doors. I reached the street in a hurry, started walking fast. By the time I reached Lenox Avenue I felt better, a little sore at myself for being frightened. Hell, I'd smacked more than my share of black boys and never ...

At Lenox, like a chill wind, I got this feeling again about being tailed. I almost laughed. If my shadow was following me to see who I was working for—as he probably was—this trip to Harlem would sure puzzle the hell out of whoever he reported back to.

Anyway, maybe Lilly had played the number straight, and what difference did it make to me—money wouldn't buy nothing where I was going.

I rode the subway back down to Fourteenth Street. In St. Vincent's I phoned the police station, got Bill. “What's the idea of putting a tail on me?”

“A tail? Why should ...? Marty, will you leave me alone! Downtown just chewed my end out again. I haven't even thought of you.”

“Don't bull me, I'm being followed.”

“Then maybe Dick Tracy is tailing you!” Bill snapped, as he hung up.

Stepping out of the phone booth, I wiped the sweat from my puss with a damp handkerchief and grinned. Now that I was sure Bill didn't have a man on me, it was time I started carrying my gun. The fish were biting so good even a rusty old fisherman like me could land a shark... the man-eating kind. Smith would be my sleeping pills, my...

Dig a grave. Why would a sick old woman call me a lout?

Four

Whoever said youth is the best medicine had the right dope—it was remarkable how Lawrence had recovered from the beating in less than twenty-four hours. Of course he was still in bed, but his voice was good and they'd taken off some of the bandages on his face—I could see his blackened eyes, his lips and scrawny neck. The doc told me he hadn't found any more internal injuries and it would be at least a month before Lawrence would be able to walk out of the hospital.

As I saw the sparkle in his eyes when he saw me, and as I sat beside the bed and told him what I'd done, even my ideas about Bob Smith, I felt sorry for the boy. Maybe it was that skinny neck between all the bandages of his chin and chest. I decided once and for all I'd talk the kid out of his silly box-top ideas.

The boy listened without interrupting, finally said, “I don't know, Marty. As you say, the big thing is the link, and what possible connection can there be between Lande and the top crime syndicate? Somehow, I agree with Lieutenant Ash— it doesn't make sense.”

“Sure, it don't make a bit of sense—now. But it's something big, all right. I'm being tailed. That means soon as I left Lande this morning he got on the phone, yelled—to somebody. Somebody big because hiring a tail is an expensive deal.”

The eyes nodded. “Be careful, Marty, although I know you can handle anything that comes along. I can't understand Ash's not working with you, but as you say he must be busy. Anything new on the Anderson killing?”

“Haven't had a chance to read a paper or hear the radio. Look, Lawrence, when you get out of here, I want you to promise me something—that you'll leave the auxiliary force and forget about taking the police exam.”

Now his eyes actually blazed. “Why? Because I was ambushed you must think I'm not tough enough to be a real cop!” The words came out hard, almost curt.

“Lawrence, stop talking like you're a wide-eyed twelve-year-old. Know the true definition of 'tough'? It means you're scared. The tougher the joker, the more the coward. I found that out for the first time the other night—the hard way. So let's stop talking like children about being tough or brave —that's for the birds. I want you to forget trying to be a cop because you're an intelligent boy and you'll only break your heart. I tell you to forget it just as I'd tell you to forget any other lousy job.”

“This is new—Marty the cop-hater!” he said, mocking me, his eyes sort of smiling at me above the bandages.

“I don't hate cops, it's only that we're called upon to do an impossible job. Kids rob because they're bored, thrill-happy, want a bang—but mostly because they're broke. So you stick them in jail and they come out broke, and other kids continue to be broke, and it goes on and on. What the hell real good do cops or laws do unless you change the cause of the lawbreaking?”

The cut lips parted in what passed for a smile, and his eyes became tender, like a gal's. “Marty, you astonish me— you have a social consciousness under that hard-boiled front.”

“I haven't a social anything, but I've been around, seen the facts.”

Tin glad you have a sense of social welfare,” Lawrence said. “And you're right—at best laws are only a salve for deeper social sores, but a salve is better than nothing. And until we reach an Utopian era, I'll continue to love the law, try to see it is carried out and obeyed.”

“You kidding? I told you the other night that not an hour goes by without mister average jerk citizen breaking a law—spitting on the sidewalk, sneaking a smoke in the subway, jaywalking. You can't enforce all the laws so right off the bat, because of a lack of time and men, a cop has to close his eyes to things... and a cop with his eyes shut isn't a good cop. There is no such animal.” Suddenly I didn't know why I was even talking to the silly kid. I felt tired, impatient with the dope—all bandaged up because he was a lousy tin hero and still arguing with me.

“You're wrong. You were a good cop,” he said, “a real pro. And you still could be. You've been on my... this beating... less than a day and you've already narrowed it down to a point where you're ready for the break. That's efficient police work.”

“Lawrence, kid, I'm a stumblebum. That's what I'm trying to tell you—I've been one all my life but never knew it till now. Let me give it to you straight, even if it won't be exactly pretty. I gather you think Bill Ash is what you call a 'good' cop?”

“I certainly do. I think he's capable, industrious, and steady.”

“Let me show you something else he is, has to be. When I... uh... retired I needed a job and police work was die only thing I knew,” I told him, talking slowly so he wouldn't miss a word, and because it was a little rough to put it in words. “I didn't have the connections for private jobs, the time and money to build up a clientele. I either had to be a guard in a bank, a walking gun, or luck up on something... like being a hotel dick at the Grover. You've seen the joint; most hotels that size haven't a house man. You know what I really am there? I'm a combination bouncer and pimp. Yeah, p-i-m-p.”

His eyes flashed surprise as he said, “Are you kidding? What are you telling me, Marty?”

“What is sometimes known as the truth, boy. We have from three to a dozen or more girls working there, with the money filtering up to one of the most respected real-estate outfits in town. All right, I had to take the job, as it was, or no job. Now let's get to Bill Ash. When we were partners we took our share of cushion, nothing big, a gift of a shirt or a hat here, a free supper or a bottle there—you come upon a stick-up and there's a lot of bills on the floor, you pocket a few, in a ...”

“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.”