Dead End Page 5

  When I told her to shut up, that the watch was still working fine, she repeated her favorite four-letter word half a dozen times—as if proving something.

  Whatever we needed for the house had to be bought on time, so we were always in debt, really strapped. Elma's beef about money was legit, but what sent me straight up was this dumb idea she had that there was all sorts of graft for a beat cop to put his hands on. She would nag that I was a dummy who wasn't trying. I'd keep telling her the old days of a patrolman even taking apples on the cuff were gone. I didn't doubt but that there was cushion money around, but only for the brass. Like I knew damn well there was a book working in the rear of a meat store on my post. I also knew—also damn well—it couldn't operate without the knowledge of the precinct captain and downtown. This joint had been taking bets for years. So I began dropping into the store, pretending I was asking the counterman about the best kind of meat for my sick wife. We both knew my presence wasn't helping “business,” and if they wanted to they could have called downtown and maybe have me sent to another precinct. But the counterman (and he was a real butcher, too—they did a good meat business) would tell me to stop by when I was off and give me a steak, or a ham. It was understood I could stop by once a week.

  It was so petty it made me feel lousy. Ollie told me, “Why bother with that stuff? You get a few bucks' worth of meat for free—big deal.”

  But Ollie could talk; his wife was a schoolteacher. When they bought a new car and I made the mistake of mentioning it to Elma, she blew her stack. “And we haven't even got decent furniture, a rug, a vacuum cleaner, much less a car! I'm ashamed to ask my folks up here.”

  “If they ever should decide to come, tell 'em to take a bath first. Honey, Ollie makes it because his wife has this good job. Why don't you try for some part-time work? Not for the dough so much, but it would be good for you.”

  After sputtering her favorite word, she said, “You know I'm not strong, that I nearly died. What you trying to do, get rid of me?”

  “Stop it. The operation was almost a year ago. If you got out of the house more, you wouldn't be so sickly.”

  You see, I tried as best I could. For a time I had a job as a bouncer in a small cafe, but that only lasted a few weeks. My change of tours killed it, and then the sergeant called me in for another session, warning me it was against some civil service law for a cop to have an outside job.

  Elma seemed to think I was holding out, rolling in dough. She began sopping up a lot of beer during the afternoons—or as much as we could afford—and reading these fact-crime magazines. When I'd come home Elma would give me a beer-breath full of, “I was reading about this cop who they found had a ten-thousand-dollar boat, a Caddy, and owned a small apartment house. And he was a hick cop, making less than three grand a year.”

  “What jail is he in now?”

  “Don't you be so damn smart with me, Bucky. Smarten up on the job if you got to be a wise guy. Yeah, he was caught, but think of all the cops with their hands out who don't get nabbed. How about that traffic-cop ring in New York selling protection cards for fifty bucks a shot?”

  “Aw Elma, stop clawing at me. If there was any graft around I'd get it but—”

  “But all you get is a few pounds of leftover meat now and then.”

  “Lay off me. I'm trying to get something going for myself. My best bet is to make a good collar, be made a detective third grade. It would mean an immediate raise of a few hundred dollars, then almost a thousand more a year soon. And in plain clothes, a guy could find a lot of gravy. Look, instead of beefing all the time, at least clean up the house. It's a pigpen.”

  “That's me, Mrs. Pig Penn,” she said, well knowing any cracks about my name made me get up steam.

  I slapped her moon face. She broke into tears and I said, “I'm fed up with all your self-pity. You remind me of my old man and his—”

  “Nate wasn't your old man.”

  I backhanded her and she fell to the floor. I stared down at her, remembering how she had stood by me in my trouble with Nate, the rest of the block. And I hate hitting women. I pulled her up—which was hard work—held her as I said, “Okay, Hon, I'm sorry. You think I like scrimping? I'm trying my best to get my hands on more dough. But you have to try too. Stop bloating yourself with beer. Watch your diet, get out of the house every day. You're still young, no sense in looking... so big.”

  “You don't even love me any more,” Elma whined.

  “Sure I do. It's merely my change of tours, and you being so sickly that... Come on, let's go to bed.”

  But her soft bulk, along with the knowledge that she didn't get the slightest kick out of it any more, made it impossible for me to have relations with her, and she began sneering at me for that, too. I didn't worry. I never was much of a lover-boy; sex was rarely on my mind. I started staying out of the house as much as possible. After my tour of duty I would take a few drinks and roam the streets. It wasn't just keeping out of Elma's way; I liked being a cop, hunting crooks. I told myself that by walking around I might luck up on a good collar, make detective. It wasn't only for Elma; I wanted to be able to buy a tie or pack of butts without a debate with myself as to whether I could afford it.

  I'd often read in the papers about some off-duty cop coming on a stick-up, or something. When I was on the four-to-midnight shift I loved roaming the dark streets in the early morning hours, looking for trouble. I found it once—a squad car in a downtown precinct stopped me early one morning, thinking I was a suspicious character.

  Another time I collared a drunk stealing a car. I got a pat on the back from the desk lieutenant and a sarcastic request to keep to my own precinct. I really tried, even paid out eating money to bone up on the sergeant's exam at some school. But I didn't pass high enough to make it count.

  Things work out funny. The thing I thought would make me a dick was a silly deal that happened on my own beat. I was on an eight-to-four tour and at 3:15 p.m. there's a loony kid perched on the roof of a tenement. He was a skinny, nervous boy of about eighteen, upset because the Army had rejected him, of all dumb things. I went up to the roof and there's his bawling mother and a couple other old women. We couldn't get close—he threatened to jump. I had to race down six flights of stairs to put in a call for the emergency squad and then back up to the roof again. Somebody had called a priest and he was up there, trying to talk the kid out of it.

  I had a deal cooking for 4:30 p.m. Some babe was having trouble with her boy friend and wanted to move her things out of his room without getting her head handed to her. She had a trunk and a TV to move, so she had set up a date with a moving van. When I told her I'd be off duty then, she said it would be worth a five spot for me to be around, in case her guy talked out of turn with his mitts. The emergency squad sergeant had a net below and there was several of his men around, but when I told him I was due to go off at four, he said for me to stick around.

  It's getting near 4 p.m. and now they got a rabbi and the priest talking to this dumb kid, and he still wanted to jump. The two ministers were putting their heads together for a conference and I was mad as hell. If I didn't show, all the babe had to do was call the beat cop and I'd be out my five bucks. All because of a nutty jerk.

  At five to four I walked across the roof toward him, and he wailed, “I'll jump if you come a step nearer!”

  I said, in a loud whisper, “Go ahead and jump, you dumb sonofabitch! Go on, get it over with!”

  The ministers heard me and while they were giving me the big eyes, damn if this jerk doesn't leave the edge of the roof, walk toward me. I tackled him and that was that.

  I made the moving job but figured the ministers would have me up the creek. So that night I find myself on the front pages, being praised for having used the “correct psychology”! It wasn't a big story, but my name was there and it was in the radio and TV news. Even my platoon sergeant gave me a snow job the next day and I figured this was it, I'd be made a detective. But nothing came of it. The kid's f
olks gave me a big speech of thanks, but that was all.

  Nothing worked for me.

  One morning a few months later as the platoon lined up a few minutes before eight, we were given parking tickets, told that alternate side of the street parking, to help in cleaning the streets, was now in effect, and to start giving out tickets to any car parked on the wrong side. I told myself this should be good for some cushion, but as it turned out, most times the guy who owned the car wasn't around. Now and then I got a few bucks for not writing out a ticket, but it was too open and risky.

  The storekeepers, who usually parked their cars in front of their shops, were kicking like the devil about this alternate deal. I kept working on them, got to know most of their cars. I would go in and warn them to move their heaps. Most times all I got was a fast “Thanks,” or a promise that they would remember me at Christmas.

  It got so I hardly bothered handing out tickets, but in the end it paid off—unexpectedly. I met Shep Harris.

  The no-parking limit was from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Harris was an optometrist who had just opened an office over a shoe store. One morning at about a quarter to eleven I saw this smart red MG parked on the wrong side of the street. It wasn't a new car, but still I figured anybody with a foreign heap might be glad to pay a few bucks to avoid a ticket. When I asked the clerk in the shoe store if he knew who owned the car, he told me, “That's Harris's car, the guy that moved in upstairs. Usually he doesn't get here before noon. Some job, hey? Bet it does a hundred with ease. Now me, I say if you have a car, what good is a two-seater? I'd want to take the family...”

  I walked up to his offices. A bell rang as soon as I opened the door, and the office was nicely furnished, everything new—meaning ready money. A runt wearing a white silk jacket, thick glasses making him look owlish and nervous, his narrow shoulders all bones, came in from the other room. He gave me a selling smile as he said, “What can I do for you, officer? Need glasses?”

  I took him for a little older than myself, maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight. “That your MG downstairs?”

  “Oh Lord, did somebody crash into it?” he asked, racing for the window. Then he turned, asked me, “What's wrong with it?”

  “This is Wednesday, no parking on this side of the street until eleven.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Perhaps you do need glasses.” He held up his wrist so I could see it was exactly eleven.

  “Okay, mister. I went out of my way to be nice to you. The next time I'll slap a ticket on the car, talk to you later.” I started for the door, angry.

  “Now, officer, I was merely joking. I have too many tickets against my record now. I appreciate what you've done. Do you drink?”

  “Not on duty.”

  “Of course. Here.” He handed me five bucks. “As a personal favor to me, buy yourself a pint on your way home. A little token of my appreciation. Drop by any time.”

  From then on, whenever I was on the morning tour, I kept a sharp lookout for his MG. I only managed to nick him a couple of times, but I kept kids off his car and we became sort of friendly. Harris never seemed very busy and I would drop in to use his can, shoot the breeze. He kept a bottle handy, seemed to want company. Either because he was a half-pint, or because he was such a weakling, he liked to touch me. Or maybe it was because I was a cop. You often find guys that way—not queers—who can't keep their mitts off a cop's shoulders when they talk to him. Shep was always poking me in the arm, slapping my back. Liquor never did much for me and sometimes I'd take a nip with him. Most times we'd just bull. I even sent a couple of the boys to him for glasses and he gave them reduced rates. I didn't mind Shep. I guess he was mostly lonely, wanted somebody to talk to.

  In time I found out he'd always wanted to be a doctor but his folks ran out of money so he had to settle for being an eyeglass grinder—although an optometrist is more than that, I guess. The ironical part was he had married a rich babe but felt it was too late to go to med school—he claimed he was thirty-three. I used to tell him he was silly not to try it, as long as his wife didn't complain.

  Elma was reading so many of these crummy magazines her eyes hurt, but I never took her to Shep. I was ashamed for him to see what I had married. Like an altered cat, Elma seemed to get bigger every day.

  I'd been a regular cop for over a year and I felt I was going stale. Somehow the badge didn't have much of a kick any longer. Maybe I was bored with walking my arches flat, giving out tickets, breaking up family fights, shoving drunks and smart-aleck lads around. The high point of my day seemed to be dropping into Shep's for a drink. Along with Elma's nagging I wanted a little action. I was getting restless again.

  I found myself doing funny things. I'd do roadwork, as if I was still a pug—and as if my legs didn't get enough exercise. Or, suddenly I began spending time out at Daisy's grave, planting flowers, fixing it up. The third time I was out there some old clown who worked around the cemetery said it was his job to take care of the graves, against the rules to plant your own flowers. I didn't have any extra bucks. I told him I was her son but he kept running his mouth until I belted him. The clown must have found a phone; as I reached the subway station a radio car stopped me. I didn't want to tell them I was a cop—on all police records I hadn't put down anything about Laspiza, of course. I gave the car cops the pitch about a son had the right to plant flowers on his own mother's grave. Then they asked for identification, wanted to know how come if my name was Penn I was fooling with a grave marked Laspiza? I was ready to blow my lid, had to fight from socking them, especially when one cop spots the outline of my hip holster, throws a gun on me—to the delight of a small crowd of curious jerks. I had to show them my badge, lie that Daisy wasn't my real mother but merely a woman who had brought me up. They let me go, but it was a hell of a thing for me to deny my own mother.

  You see, the big trouble was I had nobody to talk to about a thing like that. I was barely talking to Elma, and what the devil would she understand? I nearly phoned Nate long-distance. I got his home address from the local office, but didn't have the nerve or the money to call him. I guess I could have reversed the charges, but the more I thought about him the more I hated his phony pride. If he hadn't been so stubborn about not adopting me, I wouldn't be in this mess, wouldn't have married Elma.

  That was another thing that made me restless: No matter how much I hated Nate, I couldn't forget him. I thought of him every time I saw a fight or ball game on TV, passed a fancy restaurant. He even spoiled the few times I was able to go surf casting.

  The truth is I didn't know what to do with myself. I got my first full vacation in November, after Election Day. Elma was nagging because we didn't have money to go away. Besides, where can you go in November except south, and that costs. (But less than a year later I was flying down to Miami at the height of the season, staying with Judy in the best hotel, in a suite that cost fifty bucks per day.)

  My “vacation” was a horror. It was impossible to hang around the house, and I couldn't even tramp the streets—it turned raw and snowed. I spent the first week in and out of cheap movies. One day I stopped at Shep's office, to get warm, and when he got rid of a customer, he said, excitement in his voice, “I've been looking for you, Bucky!”

  “I'm on vacation—it says in fine print. I—”

  “Listen, I'm positive I've seen Batty Johnson!”

  For a few seconds the name didn't mean a thing to me.

  “Batty Johnson!” Shep repeated.

  Then I got it. Johnson was at the top of the F.B.I. wanted list. I vaguely knew he was a rough thug with a long yellow sheet for murder, assault, and armed robbery. When he started out he was called Bat because he was always saying, “I'll bat you around.” He was said to be very handy with his mitts. Later the nickname became Batty because he was considered to be nuts. All of this I hadn't learned from the post condition board in the station house, but from the crime mags Elma stuffed herself with. I grinned at little Shep, asked, “Since when did you become a crime b
ug?”

  “Bucky, I'm serious. Here, take a look at this. It came in the mail a few days ago.” He fumbled in a drawer, handed me an F.B.I. wanted flyer with Johnson's hard puss staring out at us. Shep also got out his bottle, poured a couple of drinks.