Protect and Serve

If you crane your neck out the window of Ninth and Broad, you obtain a fair sense of both sides of the human condition. Businessmen and women walk swiftly by the homeless pretending not to see them. Their arms are long pendulums swinging briefcases and newspapers. Women wear tennis sneakers and carry their work shoes in a plastic bag that bangs rhythmically against their purse or attaché case. The homeless are pridelessly searching through trashcans at the corners of streets or being shoed out of doorways by cops walking the beat. It's a strange and diverse element that is repeated everyday on some street in every city.

Today, however, was drastically different. A cold, fine snow blew down Ninth Street causing several drifts to pile up in front of the shops that run along my side of the street. Most businesses were closed and the street was bereft of people and vehicles. The homeless, who were usually tucked away in the doorways, had been persuaded, for the most part, to find shelter in the few facilities the Red Cross opened around the city. Even Claude, a homeless man I give money to for breakfast, didn't seem too eager to tackle the elements.

The only reason I had come by the office was to sort through the bills, which had accumulated from last month. I walked over to the counter along the left wall and started a fresh pot of coffee. As I sat down to enjoy the first cup of the morning, someone knocked on the door.

I let out a heavy sigh and approached the door. The face it the peephole was grossly distorted. The only thing I could recognize was the officer's hat. I unlocked the door and slid the chain back.

"A little late to be collecting for the policeman's ball, isn't it?"

I let the officer in and he frowned at the gun that hung from my shoulder holster.

"I hope you got a permit for that?"

I closed the door. "Yeah. I got it along with my Dick Tracy secret decoder rings. It's all free with fourteen proofs of purchase. Would you like to see my certificate of authenticity?"

He brushed the snow from his uniform and removed his hat. With his hat tucked under his arm he said:

"Actually, I think I'd like to hire you."

"Me? What do you need protection from? I know. You're gaining too much weight on the beat and you need me to protect you from pushy hot dog vendors."

His face twisted and his brown eyes narrowed. The muscles in his neck tightened then relaxed. If it weren't for the fact that he needed something from me, he would burst like an over-inflated balloon.

"I guess I deserve that for coming in here and questioning you about a permit. I'm just a little edgy, I suppose. I'll start over. My name's Patrolman Harry Sanderson. I work in the Vice division down at the Fifth Precinct. I don't do the undercover stuff just the busts. We get a tip or the undercover guy does and we make the arrests. I've heard your name thrown around some downtown. Mostly from Lt. Walton in homicide. From what I gathered, you're pretty straight."

I offered him a cup of coffee, which he declined, and we made our way back to my desk. I took a seat and had a sip. There is nothing like the first taste of coffee in the morning.

"Why do you need my help?" I asked.

"I don't have time to go into the details. I'm on a break and I need to get back before someone wonders where I am. Can you meet me tonight?"

"Sure. What time?"

"How's six thirty?"

I didn't want him to think he had the upper hand. "Make it seven."

After he left, I finished paying the bills and then stood and faced the window. The plow had just finished pushing snow on the sidewalks and up to the doors of some businesses. The sun made its an advance over the horizon, even though the thick gray clouds concealed it, and the street lights went off automatically. I opened the window and for about as long as it takes for my ears to freeze, I listened to snow almost silently fall. The wind had died down but the flakes were still fine.

Jersey Joe's contrary to the name is not in New Jersey. It's a family owned bar and grill on Fifteenth and Lexington. Two large lights hang over the oval wooden bar with a rack full of glasses between them. Several men were slouched over the bar with their hands gripped around the neck of a beer bottle. I found a table in the back corner of the room and threw my jacket over the backs of one of the four chairs. The clock on the wall read six o'clock. Plenty of time to have dinner.

The waitress came over and took my order. We discussed the brutal weather and debated on whether or not the mayor should issue a limited state-of-emergency. She was a college student working on her debating techniques for class and unfortunately, since I was her only customer, I acted as her guinea pig. She promptly arrived with my dinner and eagerly pursued another topic. Gun control. I invited her to sit down and join me if she didn't mind watching me eat. She pulled out a chair and sat.

"I don't understand why people hide behind that amendment as if it is some sort of shield. I mean do we really need automatic weapons? What purpose do they serve?" She said as she laid her notepad and pencil down on the table.

"Our Constitution reserves the right-"

"Please. Spare me the recital. What people fail to realize is that the constitution further states that we can bear arms during wartime. Do you see any war?"

"Only the ones out on the street."

"Exactly. The police are less equipped than the people they are trying to defend. What kind of justice is that?"

"What's your answer?"

"Simple. We regulate the sale of guns to only those citizens who are responsible enough to handle them. We ban all assault rifles and then we drive the companies that make the bullets out of business."

"That answer is simple. And you're a simpleton for believing it. How do you regulate? And how do we know who is responsible? If we pick and choose who we allow to carry guns then we violate the Constitution. We are created equally and should be treated equally."

She didn't stay long enough for me to goad her further because a man and a woman came inside the restaurant. I finished my dinner and by eight o'clock I had lost my patience. I left a twenty on the table, put my hat and jacket on, and left to brave winter's elements.

Once I had the fire roaring in my apartment, I turned on the television. I took a seat on the couch and felt somewhere between depressed and irritated. On one hand, I could've used the case and the money that would've accompanied it. On the other hand, I didn't like being stood up. Maybe he had to work late. Maybe he had a drug bust. Maybe... To Hell with him. I reached for the remote and found the local news.

"Our top story, is a tragic one. Police found the body of Patrolman Harry Sanderson behind an abandoned building on Maple Street. He was believed to have been shot in the back of the head. Witnesses heard the shot around five thirty and called the police. Police authorities have no motive in the case-" I turned it off.

By 9:30 the next morning, I was standing in Max Turner's office. It was small and cramped. His desk was pushed back about four feet short of the back wall and with the cabinets on either side of the desk, it left about three feet on each end. Max was sitting at his desk chewing on the end of a cigar. Not a Havana, but one of those cigars whose scent would be mistaken for insect repellent. His greasy hair had flakes of dandruff on the ends and his dark eyes had even darker circles around them. His pinstriped shirt was so tight around his large stomach that if he sneezed, the buttons would shoot across the room and embed themselves in the wall. Max didn't like me and he didn't mind showing it.

"Listen. I don't have time to talk to nosy gumshoes. If you haven't heard one of my men was gunned down last night. So do me a favor and do whatever it is you do. Only don't do it here."

"Instead of throwing that twenty pound doughnut you're wearing around your waist, you could try to be cooperative."

"I don't have time to cooperate with some shamus who makes his living peeping through keyholes. Now get out before I throw you out."

"Shamus? You've been reading again, haven't you? It shows. It just so happens that Sanderson came to see me yesterday."

"So?"

"So. He wanted to hire me."

"I don't give a rat's ass if he was selling Girl Scout cookies. Now get this straight." He got up, wedged his two hundred and fifty pounds between the filing cabinet and the desk, and shut the door. He came back and faced me. "This is just between you and me. Stay away from this case. It has nothing to do with you. You said he wanted to hire you. Which means he didn't. It was my man who was killed last night. It happened in my department, and I'll catch the person or persons responsible. You got that?!"

"I."

"What?"

"Between you and I. I'd hate to see a great speech go to Hell because of bad grammar." I turned to the door, opened it, and left slamming the door behind me.

"I see you still know how to make friends."

"I try, Phil."

Using the one finger approach, Sgt. Phil Dorsey was diligently typing on a cheap word processor. He was the only guy in the precinct who boycotted the use of computers. Phil looked like he was in his sixties. His salt and pepper hair was parted to the left and the bags under his eyes could be used for grocery shopping. I sat on the edge of his desk leaving one leg fully extended and he swung around to meet me.

"What have you got on the Sanderson shooting?" I asked.

"Shh! For God's sake. You know as well as I do that we take this kind of thing seriously."

"You mean you don't take the other ones seriously?"

"You know what I mean. We're all one family. Not just the Fifth Precinct but every precinct in Law Enforcement. When one of our own gets it we shun outsiders. I've known you a long time so don't take it personally. If Turner gets wind of me telling you anything, I'll be checking meters."

"So what do you suggest?"

He sighed. "You're going to dig anyway. I'd like to know why though. Meet me at the Jersey Joe's at five thirty."

"That's what Sanderson said."

When I arrived, Dorsey had a table ready. I crossed the room and took a seat across from him. The same waitress from the night before came over but wasn't in a hurry to strike up a conversation. Every table in the place was full. One day of cabin fever and they come out of the woodwork like rats.

"What's your angle?"

"There isn't one. Sanderson came to see me yesterday. He wanted my help."

"For what?"

"I never found out. So what happened?"

"It depends on who you ask. There are two stories. One I like better than the other. The first was that he was supposed to be meeting an informant about a shipment that was due in at the end of the week, which would have placed him on the other side of the city. He radioed in for a stop in the morning and depending on which route he took, it would have taken him right by that building on Maple Street."

The waitress brought our drinks. "That doesn't account for the eight hours between the time he left my office until the time he was shot." I said.

"I said I liked the theory, I didn't say it was popular."

"What about the second?"

"You didn't get this from me. We've been getting reports of skimming in the department. Convicts are saying that the dope officially reported as confiscated is lighter than the actual dope they were carrying. Not that we would believe a convict's word over an officer's but the incidents are not few and far between. Sanderson was found with two kilos of cocaine in his trunk. It matches a discrepancy we had about two weeks ago. A convict came forward saying that he was short 2 kilos."

"A plant?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "If it was, it was a good one. Word is he was dirty"

Three days later, I was sitting in my office staring out of the window. The milder weather had melted some of the snow, which sent the city crawling back to its feet. There were still piles of snow along the road and it made parking more of a headache than usual. A young couple in a blue Pinto decided against searching for a parking place and choose to use the bumper of the car to force the snow back on the sidewalk. The woman had to climb out of the driver's side door because of the snow on the passenger's side of the car. I swiveled around in my chair and reached for the phone to make a call. Apparently someone had a similar idea because it rang just before I lifted the receiver from the cradle.

A distressing call from anyone's widow can be cause for alarm. However, if that widow is Harry Sanderson's wife, then it is more than an alarm. I made it to the suburbs in half the usual time and as Mrs. Sanderson was pulling into her driveway, I parked in front of her small Victorian home. She had called from a pay phone because she was afraid that the phone may be tapped and her news couldn't be heard by anyone except me. I met her at the front door and she ushered me into the living room. As she excused herself, I took a seat on the sofa across from a fireplace with a marble hearth. The room was right out of Architectural Digest.

Old Victorian furniture placed on natural stained hard wood floors. Floral drapes were pulled back as to allow just enough light in the room without being blinded and the pendulum of an old grandfather clock swung rhythmically back and forth.

Mrs. Sanderson emerged in a new outfit. This one more casual and her blond hair was pulled back tightly in a ponytail. Her mascara was smeared and her red eyes were puffy and swollen. She was carrying a manila envelope in her left hand and handed it to me as she took a seat in the matching chair.

"I found this between some old magazines and stuff. It wasn't there a week ago because I sorted through them throwing out the old ones."

I turned the envelope over and read her handwritten name in the top left corner. "Is this his writing?"

She nodded. "Inside is a letter to me explaining what I was to do with this. He knew I would eventually find it because I'm constantly going through them."

"Do you still have the letter?"

"Yes."

She got up and crossed the room and left through a door behind me. I opened the envelope and removed and opened the other envelope. There were several handwritten pages confirming Phil's suspicion of skimming in the department and a key to a safety deposit box. One sheet had a list of dates that corresponded to drug busts and two other columns, one titled confiscated and the other reported. The other sheets, five of them, were notes on where the busts were made and some of the officers involved. Three names, excluding Sanderson, appeared in every bust. As I placed everything back into the envelope, she returned.

"Are you cold?" She asked as she handed me the letter. "I am." As she crossed her arms and rubbed them, she walked over to the fireplace and lit it. She took her seat and waited.

The handwritten letter was dates the day before he came to me. It was three lines in length and explained how to contact me, including calling from a payphone. I re-folded the letter and handed it back to her.

"Do you know why your husband wanted to see me?" I asked.

"No. He has been under a great deal of strain lately. I had no idea he had even seen a private investigator."

She was still referring to him as though she expected him to walk through the door after a long shift. "Do you know why he was killed?"

"No. I do know that it had nothing to do with drugs. He hated them. It was one of the reasons he joined the force. When they were kids, Archie, Harry's brother, overdosed. His friends pressured him into trying marijuana but they didn't know it had been laced with something else. When the police questioned me about the possibility that he was stealing drugs, I looked Max Turner right in the eye then spat in it."

"I've often felt that way about Max. Did Harry ever give you any indication as to what was bothering him?"

"I think it had something to do with work. I asked, but he never wanted to talk about it. He was a good officer and an even better husband and father." She lowered her head into her hands.

I reached over and touched her shoulder. "I think you're right. He was a good a officer." When I saw her back and shoulders begin to spasm up and down, I got up, excused myself, and let myself out.

I made two stops on the way back to the office and since the last was only four blocks away from the office, I decided to walk. The temperature had climbed to about fifty but with the setting sun, a chilly air blew down Oak Street. Rush hour was in full bloom and as I turned the corner onto Ninth, I realized how glad I was to have walked. The blue Pinto must have been sticking out pretty far for the silver Lexus to hit the driver's side door and my reserved parking space was occupied by a tow truck whose operator was diligently hooking up cables to the front of the Pinto. I shook my head and ascended the short flight of stairs to my building. As I turned the key, I heard a familiar voice call my name.

Claude had traded in his worn brown tweed jacket for a blue one. He was still wearing two different shoes; on the left foot a sneaker and on the right a black dress shoe. His hair had been pushed up under the bright orange hat and his beard and mustache had been trimmed.

"A little late for breakfast, eh Claude?" I kidded.

"Naw, it's never too late for a good meal. But that's not why I came. I need to talk to ya."

"Come on up."

In the office, while I fixed something to drink, Claude had removed his jacket and hat and hung them on the rack. He had positioned the chair so that he could rest the elbow of his left arm on my desk. An idiosyncrasy he had always done.

I handed him a cup of coffee and asked, "Why do you always do that to my chair?"

He chuckled. "Force of habit, I guess. I wasn't always so..." His eyes rolled upwards and scanned his brain for the right word. He gave in, "Worse off. I went to college and graduated in the top third of my class. Unfortunately, Uncle Sam got to me before the job market. I did my tour in Vietnam and came home to a country split on the treatment of Vets. I went from job to job and finally just stopped going."

"So this beats work?" I pointed to the unmatched shoes.

"Hardly. But I didn't come here to justify my life and the choices I made."

"Why are you here?"

"I saw something and since I'm not much for the cops, I figured you're the only person I could trust."

"Thanks." I blew over the edge of the mug and cautiously took a sip of the coffee. "What have you got?"

"It was four days ago. When that cop was killed over on Maple. That side of the building was doing an adequate job of blocking the wind so I pulled two dumpsters together so that they made a triangle with the building and I placed some cardboard boxes on top to keep some of the snow out. Anyway, around five o'clock I see a black sedan pull up and then five minutes later, another car came up. The guy in the black sedan got out and into the back of the second car. Maybe five or ten minutes passed before I heard the shot. Then the guy got out of the back and into the black sedan and drove away."

"Did you see who he was?"

"The crack between the two dumpsters made it difficult but since the driver's side was closest, I got a pretty good look at him. I wasn't sure until three nights ago."

"Why three nights ago?"

"Because I saw you talking to him."

Phil agreed to meet me in my office at six, which left me a little under an hour. I replaced the chair Claude sat in and went to cabinet above the counter. I removed the duct tape, shut the cabinet, and retrieved my gun. I crouched down under my desk and with the duct tape, secured the gun under the desk so that the barrel pointed at the center of the chair opposite my desk. I had just put the tape back in the cabinet when Phil knocked on the door. I told him to come in and he took a seat in the chair.

"All right, so I'm here. What's so damn important that you can't wait to tell me?"

"I think I have a development in the shooting of Harry Sanderson."

"Anything would be better than what we have. Which, incidentally, is nothing."

"I know who killed him, Phil."

He took a deep breath and then let it out. "Really." He said somberly.

"An eyewitness saw you shoot him. He was hiding behind the dumpsters."

"I thought it was kind of strange the way those two dumpsters were arranged." He chuckled, "Like a triangle."

"I want to know why. You were a good cop."

"Yeah. Well when your wife dies and you have to put two girls through college being good just isn't enough."

He put his hands on his knees and stood up. I reached under the desk and found the gun. He walked over to the counter and poured a cup of coffee and sat back down. I replaced my hands on the desk.

"We started small, Max and I. Shortly after he was promoted, he came to me with the idea. My wife had just died and I guess I just didn't care. We took a little at first and as we got more comfortable and found more buyers, we took as much as needed for a buy. Max set up the officers and all I had to do was set up the buyers. Then came Sanderson. Max made the mistake of approaching him about it. He flatly refused but to keep him close, Max arranged for him to be in on some of the busts making it harder to prove that he wasn't in on the skimming and also advancing him a small portion of the money. We suspected that he was gathering evidence but never had any real proof."

I opened the top drawer of the desk, removed the safety deposit key, and placed it on the desk. "He kept all the evidence in the First National Bank of Philadelphia. After he saw me that day, he arranged for the box to include my name as one of the people allowed to legally view its contents. Inside is several thousand dollars with notes explaining their origins. Also, he wired himself and taped several conversations with you and Max. He then typed them into transcripts."

"Give me twenty four hours to clean up the mess so I-"

"It's over, Phil."

"So it is." He sighed and his shoulders slumped. "In the end, we were no better than the drug dealers that pushed that dope to kids. Actually, we were worse. We stole the drugs and then sold them to the people we were sworn to protect."

He got up again and started heading for the door but stopped three feet short. I reached down and grabbed the gun. He quickly turned around and fire two shots, however, I had already ripped the gun from under the desk, dropped to my knees, and rolled out to the left. The two shots slammed into the back of my leather chair as I fired two of my own. Phil fell heavily to the floor. As I walked over to him, the smell of gunpowder trapped itself in my nose and made me cough. I reached down and checked unnecessarily for a pulse. Phil's brown eyes stared emptily at the ceiling and I closed them.

When Mrs. Harry Sanderson walked into my office, I was reading about the investigation in the newspaper. The investigation lacked my name but had a picture of Claude standing next to the DA. Claude was wearing a dark suit with shoes that matched each other and his beard had been shaved leaving a mustache above his thin lips. I folded the paper and tossed it on the desk.

Veronica Sanderson's eyes were alert and piercing and she seemed as though she was capable of dealing with the loss of her husband. Her speech, however, was still an octave or two below what it should have been. "I just wanted to drop by and say thanks."

"Your husband was a good cop. He never touched any of the money they gave him. In fact, he used it to help build a case against them. He knew it would be hard, considering whom he was up against, which is why he never told you."

A smile crossed her face. She began to speak but her thought was miles away. "I know. I knew he would do the right thing and I'm glad the whole world will know the truth even though the rumors can hurt more." I nodded. "Well." Her eyes focused on me. "I must go. The kids are in the car and they are probably killing each other."

She realized the weight of her comment but tried not to let it show. She reached into her tan handbag, fished out a plain white envelope, and handed it to me. She crossed the room and gently closed the door on her way out. When I could no longer hear her high heels in the hallway, I opened the envelope. Inside, was a picture of Harry Sanderson on the day he graduated from the academy.