Ed Lacy - The Men From the Boys

“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.”

“Are you done?”

“No, I want to give you the complete picture, the full dose. Turns out the spick was an artist and a ship's radio officer who'd been hurt in a wreck. When I kicked him I knocked his spine out of whack. The blonde was a buyer for a department store, a big job. She sues the city for a hundred grand. Downtown had to back me up and we started giving her the works. First she lost her good job when the store found out she was married to a brown boy. It took over a year before the case reached court and we visited her every week, pleading, threatening. We got to her lawyer, threatened her landlord with violations, and he had them move. No papers would give them any publicity except the radical rags. The net result was the case never came up because she had a breakdown and was sent to an institution.”

He opened his eyes, hard eyes. “What's the moral, Marty?” he asked bitterly. “When you see a robbery don't call the police?”

“I don't know what the moral is—I'm only telling you about one Marty Bond, the toughest cop out. The trouble with you, you think police work is like in the movies, clever, smart, and...”

“You're the movie cop, taking a short cut, belting the 'truth' out of everybody! Marty Bond's version of old lady justice, a left to the gut!” His eyes were glaring at me, angry eyes.

“Maybe my version is the right one. You know me—the most decorated cop, the hero of small boys.”

“Why don't you leave me alone?”

“I will. You see, Lawrence, I never thought of myself as a... a... bad guy, not even a nasty joker. But I suppose I was. After the DeCosta mess, Dot wouldn't have anything to do with me. Guess I wasn't her 'ideal' cop any longer. What she didn't understand is, I wasn't punch-happy—it's simply when you're going good you want to keep going at a fast clip. And most times I was right. Usually a person mixed up in a crime, no matter how, usually he's guilty. Take that Rogers-Graham case that got me bounced. I was...”

He tried to turn his head away and couldn't; his eyes filled with pain. “I don't want to hear about it.”

“I want you to hear about it. And I want to talk—makes me feel better. You see, boy, something happened to me a few days ago that set me to thinking about my life, my past.”

“But I know all about that case—you made a mistake.”

“I sure did. Only what you don't know is this: that Rogers bastard claimed I was out to get him. Well, that's the truth. You see he was one of these smart black boys. A young snot working as a delivery boy for a hardware store. Here's what you don't know about the case—about seven months before the mugging, I was called to Central Park West on a purse snatching. At ten in the morning some rich old biddy is on her way to the subway when she's knocked over by a guy in blue denim work pants—that's all she saw—and her purse is taken. She had ninety dollars in it. I got there a few minutes after it happened and there's Rogers, in blue dungarees, coming out of an apartment delivery entrance. I frisk him and he has a wad of seventy dollars on him—gave me some bull about a horse coming in for him. I curled him once and he stopped talking and I booked him. The biddy couldn't say if it was a white or colored guy who knocked her over, but she was sure of one lousy thing, the time—ten o'clock on the nose. So ...”

“Please, Marty, I don't...”

“Shut up, and listen! You always liked to hear crime cases. This snotty Rogers don't deny anything but when he's arraigned in night court he calls the wife of a big magazine publisher who swears Rogers came up with a delivery and was repairing her baby carriage from nine-thirty till ten-fifteen. She's positive about the time because she had an appointment with the baby doctor at eleven and kept telling Rogers to hurry. The wise guy couldn't tell me that, made me look like a fool. The judge bawls me out, to make an impression on the publisher, and I told Rogers I'd get him. Months later when the guy was mugged and killed in the park, I went right over to the hardware store, found Rogers was out on a delivery near the park. I worked a confession out of him before we reached the station house, and even the one witness backed me up—all colored look alike. I got a tough break when they picked up Graham a year later and he started confessing to everything—including this killing. Papers played it up big and you know the rest—the department gave me a break, retired me fast. But I still think Rogers had something to do with the...”

His eyes almost popped. “Marty, please, please—shut up!”

“I haven't even told you about some of my other cases, the...”

He yelled, or maybe it was a sort of scream. A nurse came rushing in, along with the cop on duty. Lawrence said, “Get him out of here!”

The cop grabbed my arm and I jerked it away, walked out of the room. The cop followed me, asking, “What you trying to do?”

“What are you going to do about it?” Suddenly I felt too tired to care. There was a funky taste in my mouth and I went over to the water fountain, then hit the sidewalk.

Along with a breath of cool air I got this sure feeling I was being tailed as I walked down Seventh Avenue. I stopped for a couple of hamburgers, some Java, and a slice of watermelon. The taste of the onions on the hamburgers stayed with me as I rode back to the Grover.

As I came in, Kenny the bellhop called me over, said, “Been waiting for you, Marty. Some guy in shorts and a knapsack, one of them health nuts, registered this afternoon. Two more clowns in shorts went up to visit him, walked up— that was several hours ago.”

Dewey came over. “They're in 419. Registered as a single.”

“All right, I'll go up.”

I knocked on 419 and didn't get any answer, so I used my pass key and almost stumbled over two jokers sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags.

They were all kids, under twenty, and the one on the bed, a crew-cut blond, said, “What is this? My friends are merely resting and...”

“Cut it, chum. You got this room as a single for two and a half. Your friends want to rest, let them register, or pay another two and a half each.”

The three kids were blushing and finally the one on the bed said, “Look, mister, we're hosteling, and we haven't much money. It's only one night. Can't you give us a break?”

“And if I lose my job because of this, who'll give me a break? Tell you what, pay another two and a half and you can stay here.”

“Can we get a larger room?”

. “Look, I can throw you all the hell out of here! A larger room is another five bucks. What's it going to be?”

The three clowns held a short conference, then got up two and a half. I told them, “Next time, don't try pulling any crap like this,” and opened the door.

One of the crew-cuts sitting up in his sleeping bag asked, “Do we get a receipt?”

“You want one?” I asked, giving them the growl, stepping back into the room.

Blond-boy said quickly, “No, that's okay.”

I went back down to the lobby, gave Kenny and Dewey a buck to split, went to my room and showered, even put powder between my toes—as though it made any diff if I got athlete's foot now.