The New Centurions Part 16

"I'm not selling my baby, Roy! When the h.e.l.l are you going to grow up?"

"I'll move back with Mom and Dad. Mom could take care of Becky while I work. I've already talked to Mom. Please, Dorothy, you don't know how I love her. I love her so much more than you do."

The line was dead for a moment and Roy was coldly afraid she had hung up, then she said, "Maybe you do, Roy. Maybe in your own way you do. But I don't think you love her for herself. It's something else you see in her. But it doesn't matter who loves her more. The point is that a child, especially a little girl, needs a mother."

"There's my my mother . . . mother . . .

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit Roy, will you shut up and stop thinking about yourself for just once in your life? I'm trying to tell you Becky needs a mother, a real mother, and I happen to be that mother. Now my lawyer's told you and I've told you that you can have more than adequate visitation rights. You can have whatever is reasonable. I'll be very liberal in that regard. I don't think I've been unfair in my child support demands. And surely, the dollar a year alimony isn't too difficult to manage."

Roy heaved three deep breaths and the sting of his humiliation swept over him. He was thankful he had finally decided to make his final plea by telephone because he feared this might happen. He had been so distraught through the divorce that he could hardly control simple emotions anymore.

"You're very generous, Dorothy," he said, finally.

"I wish you everything good, so help me G.o.d I do."

"Thank you."

"Can I give you some advice, Roy? I think I know you better than anyone."

"Why not? I'm vulnerable to anything right now. Tell me to drop dead, I'll probably do it."

"No you won't Roy. You'll be all right. Listen, get on course and go somewhere. You studied criminology after switching your major two or three times. You said you'd only be a policeman for a year or so and it's already more than two years and you're nowhere near your degree. But that's okay if being a policeman is what you want. But I don't think it is. You've never really liked it."

"It's better than working for a living."

"Please don't joke now, Roy. This is the last free advice I'll ever be giving you. Get on course. Even if it's going back to your dad's store. You could do a lot worse. I don't think you'll be a successful policeman. You always seemed unhappy with some aspect of the job or other."

"Maybe I'd be miserable at anything."

"Maybe so, Roy. Maybe so. Anyway, do what you think is best, and I'm sure I'll be seeing you often when you come to get Becky."

"You can bet on that."

"Good-bye, Roy."

Roy sat at the cluttered table in the vice office and smoked, even though he had a severe case of indigestion and suspected an incipient ulcer. He finished the first cigarette and used the smoldering coal to light another. He knew the fire in his stomach would worsen and that was alright too. He thought for an instant about the new untested Smith & Wesson two-inch which rested lightly on his hip and had made him so acutely aware that for the first time in his police career he was working a plainclothes a.s.signment. For the first time he realized how badly he wanted that a.s.signment, and how, when the watch commander had asked him if he would care for a loan to the vice squad for thirty days, he had jumped at it. He began feeling a little better and decided it was foolish and melodramatic to think of the Smith & Wesson as he had for that moment. Things were not that bad yet. He still had hope.

The lock turned and the door swung open in one motion and Roy did not recognize the balding loudly dressed man who came in with a gun belt slung over his shoulder and a paper sack in his hand.

"h.e.l.lo," said Roy, standing up and hoping the evidence of tears was no longer in his face.

"Hi," said the man, extending his hand. "You must be a new man."

"I'm Roy Fehler. I'm on loan to vice for the month. This is only my third night here."

"Oh? I'm Frank Gant. I been on days off since Monday. I heard we were borrowing someone from patrol." He had a ma.s.sive hand and shook hands violently. "I didn't think anyone was here. Usually the first night watch guy that arrives unlocks the door."

"Sorry," said Roy. "I'll unlock the door next time."

"Oh that's okay. You met the rest of the crew?"

"Yeah. You were the only one I didn't meet."

"Saved the best till last," Gant smiled, putting the paper sack on top of a metal file cabinet.

"My lunch," he said, pointing to the sack. "You brown bagging it?"

"No, I've bought my lunch the last two nights."

"Might as well brown bag it," said Gant. "You'll find there are lots of disadvantages to working vice. When you take off that blue suit you lose your eating spots. We have to pay for our meals or else brown bag it. I brown bag it. Working vice is expensive enough."

"Guess I'll do the same. I can't stand to spend too much money these days."

"You'll be expected to spend some," said Gant, sitting down at the table and opening the log to make the entry for August third. "They give us a few bucks a week to operate on, and we usually blow that the first night. From then on, you use your own dough if you want to operate. Me, I try not to spend too much. I got five kids."

"I'm with you," said Roy.

"They give you any money yet?"

"We operated a bar last night for liquor law violations," said Roy. "I chitted for two dollars, but really I spent five. I lost three on the deal."

"That's the way vice is," Gant sighed. "It's a d.a.m.n good job and if you like to work you'll love it here, but the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds won't give us enough money to work on."

"I'd like to work vice as a regular a.s.signment. Maybe this is a good chance to show what I can do."

"It is," said Gant, opening a bulging manila folder and removing some forms which Roy had already come to recognize as vice complaints. "How long you been in Central, Roy? I don't believe I ever saw you before."

"Just a few months. I came from Newton."

"Down in the jungle, huh? Bet you're glad to get away from there."

"I wanted a change."

"Any change is for the better when you get away from there. I used to work Newton, but that was before the Civil Rights push. Now that they been promised n.i.g.g.e.r heaven it's not the same working down there. I'll never go back."

"It's a very complicated problem," said Roy, lighting another cigarette as he rubbed his burning stomach and blew a gray plume of smoke through his nose.

"We got some splibs in Central too, but not too many. Just over on the east side and in the projects mostly, and a few others scattered around. Too much business and industry in the downtown area for them to swarm in."

"I'd like to help you with the paper work," said Roy, becoming irritated and uncomfortable as he always did when anyone talked about Negroes like this.

"No, that's okay. These are old vice complaints that there's a follow-up due on. You wouldn't know what to write. Why don't you look through the wh.o.r.e book. It's good to get to know the regulars. Or read over some of the arrest reports to see how vice pinches are made. You made a wh.o.r.e pinch yet?"

"No, we tailed a couple last night but we lost them. We've been mostly operating the bars. We got a bartender for serving a drunk, but that's the only pinch we made in two nights."

"Well Gant's back so we'll go to work now."

"You're not a sergeant are you?" asked Roy, realizing that he still wasn't sure who all were working vice officers and who were supervisors. The whole atmosphere was very informal and different from patrol.

"h.e.l.l no," Gant laughed. "I should be, but I can't pa.s.s the d.a.m.ned exam. Been failing that son of a b.i.t.c.h for fourteen years. I'm just a policeman like you."

"Not too sure of the chain of command around here," Roy smiled.

"How much time you got on?"

"Almost three years," said Roy and then was afraid Gant would pin him down to months because two years and three months was certainly not "almost three years."

"Different on vice, isn't it? Calling your sergeant by his first name and all that. Far cry from patrol, huh? This is a close group. Vice work has to be. It's intimate work. You'll be in close and up tight with all kinds of people. You'll see every kind of depravity you ever imagined and some you can't even imagine when you see it. They only let a guy work eighteen months of this s.h.i.t. Too G.o.dd.a.m.ned sordid, that and the kind of life you lead. Hanging around in bars all night, boozing and playing around with broads. You married?"

"No," said Roy, and was struck with a spasm of indigestion that made him rub his stomach again.

"The wh.o.r.es don't tempt n.o.body, at least they shouldn't after you been around them awhile and get to know them. But there's a lot of pretty s.e.xy toadies that hang around in some of these bars, lonely broads on the make, you know, just amateurs, freebies, and we're always hanging around too. It gets kind of tempting. Only thing Sergeant Jacovitch demands of us troops is that we don't play around on company time. If we meet something nice, we should make a date for our night off. Jake says if he catches us fooling around in some gin mill with a babe, she better be a professional wh.o.r.e or he'll bounce us off the squad."

"I'm going through a divorce right now. I'm not really thinking too much about women." Roy said it, and hoped Gant would ask him when the divorce was final or make some other comment about Roy's problem because he had a sudden urge to talk to someone, anyone, about it, and perhaps Gant had also been through it. So many policemen had.

"You know the division pretty well, Roy?" asked Gant, disappointing him.

"Pretty well."

"Well, you can study that pin map on the wall," said Gant, waving aimlessly at the wall as he made an entry on a work sheet which Roy knew would later be typed onto the vice complaint.

"What will we work tonight, wh.o.r.es?"

"Wh.o.r.es, yeah. We got to get some pinches. Haven't been doing too much lately. Maybe some fruits. We work fruits when we need some bookings. They're the easiest."

Roy heard voices and Phillips, a swarthy young man with unruly hair and a bristling moustache, walked through the door.

"h.e.l.lo everybody," he announced, throwing a binocular case on the table, and carrying a set of walkie-talkies under his arm.

"What're the CC units for?" asked Gant. "Some kind of big deal tonight?"

"Maybe," said Phillips nodding to Roy. "Just before we went home last night we got a call from Ziggy's bull dagger informant that The Cave was going to have some lewd movies going tonight. We might try to operate the place."

"h.e.l.l, Mickey the bartender knows every G.o.dd.a.m.n one of us. How we going to operate it? I made so d.a.m.n many pinches in there, they'd know me if I came in a gorilla suit."

"A gorilla suit would be normal dress in that ding-a-ling joint," said Phillips.

"You know The Cave?" asked Gant to Roy.

"That fruit joint on Main?" asked Roy, remembering a fight call he had received there on his first night in Central Division.

"Yeah, but it's not just fruits. There's lesbians, s.a.d.i.s.ts, m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts, hypes, wh.o.r.es, flim flammers, paddy hustlers, hugger muggers, ex-cons of all descriptions, and anybody else with a kink of some kind or other. Who in the h.e.l.l's going to operate for us, Phillips?"

"Guess?" said Phillips, grinning at Roy.

"Oh yeah," said Gant. "n.o.body around the streets knows you yet."

"I was there in uniform once," said Roy, not relishing the idea of going alone into The Cave.

"In uniform you're just a faceless blue man," said Gant. "n.o.body will recognize you now that you're in plainclothes. You know, Phillips, I think old Roy here will do alright in there."

"Yeah, those fruits'll go for that blond hair," said Phillips with a chuckle.

The other night watch team came in. Simeone and Ranatti were neighbors as well as partners and drove to work together. Sergeant Jacovitch came in last and Roy, still an outsider not accustomed to the vice squad routine, read arrest reports while the others sat around the long table in the cluttered office doing their paper work. They were all young men, not much older than himself except for Gant and Sergeant Jacovitch, who were approaching middle age. They all dressed nearly alike with bright-colored cotton shirts hanging outside their pants, and comfortable cotton trousers which it didn't matter if they soiled or tore while climbing a tree or crawling along a darkened hedge as Roy had done the night before when they had followed a wh.o.r.e and a trick to the trick pad, but had lost them when they entered the dingy apartment house because they were spotted by a tall Negro with processed hair who was undoubtedly a lookout. Roy noticed they all wore soft-soled shoes, crepe or ripple soles, so they could creep and peek and pry and Roy was not completely certain that he would like to receive an eighteen-month a.s.signment to vice because he respected the privacy of others. He believed that this undercover surveillance smacked of fascism and he believed that people, d.a.m.n it, were trustworthy and there were very few bad ones despite what cynical policemen said. Then he remembered Dorothy's admonition that he had never really liked this job, but what the h.e.l.l, he thought, vice work should be fascinating. At least for a month.

"Bring your arrest reports in here, Roy," called Jacovitch, who slid his chair to the side. "Might as well sit in here and listen to all the bulls.h.i.t while you're reading the lies on those arrest reports."

"What lies?" asked Ranatti, a handsome, liquid-eyed young man who wore an upside-down shoulder holster over a T-shirt. His outer shirt, a long-sleeved navy blue cotton was hung carefully over the back of his chair and he checked it often to make sure the tail was not dragging the floor.

"The Sarge thinks we exaggerate sometimes on our arrest reports," said Simeone to Roy. He was younger looking than Ranatti, rosy cheeked, and had slightly protruding ears.

"I wouldn't say that," said Jacovitch. "But I've tried a dozen operators on Ruby Shannon and you guys are the only ones ever did any good."

"What're you beefing about Jake, we got a case on her didn't we?" Ranatti beamed.

"Yeah," said Jacovitch, with a wary glance first at Ranatti, then at Simeone. "But she told me you zoomed her. You know the lieutenant doesn't want any hummer pinches."

"Aw, it was no hummer, Jake," said Simeone, "she just went for old Rosso here." He jerked a finger toward the grinning Ranatti.

"Sure seems funny," said Jacovitch. "She can usually smell a cop a block away, and Ranatti fooled her. s.h.i.t, he looks like he's fresh off the beat."

"No, look, Jake," said Ranatti. "We really hooked her legal, honest we did. I operated her in my own inimitable style. You know, played a slick young pool room dago, and she went for it. Never dreamt I was the heat."

"Another thing, it's unusual for Ruby to go on a six-forty-seven A," said Jacovitch. "She groped you, huh, Rosso?"

"Honest to G.o.d, she honked my horn," said Ranatti, raising a rather stubby right hand heavenward. "Gave it two toots with a thumb and forefinger before I laid the iron on her wrists."

"I don't trust either of you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," said Jacovitch to the grinning young men. "Lieutenant Francis and me were cruising the wh.o.r.e spots last week and we stopped and talked to Ruby at Fifth and Stanford. She mentioned the cute little Eye-talian cop that booked her on a hummer. She claims she laid a hand on your knee and you pinched her for lewd conduct right then."

"Look, boss, I'm lewd from the knee on up. Don't you believe those Latin lover stories?"

They all chuckled and Jacovitch turned to Roy. "What I'm trying to tell these guys is to lay off the hummers. We got a lieutenant that's very explicit about nice legal pinches. If the wh.o.r.e doesn't say the right words to you for a violation or if she doesn't grope you lewdly, there's no basis for a legal bust."

"What if she shakes you down for a gun, Jake?" asked Simeone, lighting a fat cigar that looked comical in the puffy young lips. "If she does that, I say she ought to get busted for lewd conduct. You can embellish your report a bit."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n, Sim, no embellishment. That's what I'm trying to get through to you. Look, I'm not the whole show, I'm just one of the clowns. The boss says we do police work straight arrow."

"Okay, Jake, but vice is a different kind of police work," said Gant, joining in the conversation for the first time.

"Look," said Jacovitch in exasperation. "Do you really want to roust these wh.o.r.es? If you do, you got to make what amounts to a false arrest report and then perjure yourself to convict her. It's not worth it. There'll always be wh.o.r.es. Why risk your job for a lousy misdemeanor? And while I'm on the subject, the boss is a little hinky about some of these tails you been pulling where you tail the wh.o.r.e to the trick pad and hear her offer the guy a French for ten bucks."

"So?" said Simeone, not smiling now. "We made one like that last week. Something wrong with it?"

"The lieutenant told me he drove by one of the apartment houses where a team made a bust like that. He didn't say it was you, Sim, but he did say that the G.o.dd.a.m.n place had a windowless concrete wall on the side where the offer was supposed to be heard by the officers."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it," said Gant, standing up suddenly, and striding across the room to his lunch sack, where he removed another cigar. "What does that f.u.c.king boy-lieutenant think this is, a college debating cla.s.s with all the f.u.c.king rules laid down. I never b.i.t.c.hed about him before, Jake, but do you know one night he asked me if I'd been drinking? Can you beat it? Ask a vice officer if he's been drinking. I said f.u.c.k, yes, Lieutenant, what the h.e.l.l do you think I should do when I'm operating a bar. Then he asked me if we always pay for our booze and whether we accept sandwiches from bar owners who know we're heat. He wants a bunch of goody goody teetotalers with their lunch money pinned to their underwear. I'm quitting the squad if this p.r.i.c.k gets any worse."

"Take it easy. Jesus," said Jacovitch, looking fearfully toward the door. "He's our boss. We got to have a little loyalty."