City Of Rain

         In the old days life was simple.  I wanted a job at the Sheriff’s office so I worked a precinct for the elections. The big draws at the sheriff’s were guns and badges.  A month after I started my boss says,

         “You want to carry a gun?”
         “Sure.”

         After one week of gun school I was legally authorized to carry a gun as a duly authorized deputy sheriff.  I even got a low numbered gold star because I was an office supervisor.

         Chicago was always a rough and tumble town and a sheriff’s badge gave you a feeling of being part of the scene, someone who was “In on things”.  A lot of our guys had sidelines that were actually more important than their jobs.  In fact, many of them had sheriff jobs just to make their sidelines easier.  I was always getting calls from people offering me “hang around” jobs.  A hang around job is simply hanging around the store looking nasty and letting people see your gun bulge.

         The other big sideline was collecting bad debts.  We weren’t supposed to do this but these were the type of debts that deadbeats expected guys with guns to collect.  I never did this.  I was too lazy.  The sheriff’s was a good place to work if you were lazy, which was why clout was of great assistance to get a job.  The world is filled with lazy people, especially when it comes to work so jobs like this were at a premium.  The thinking was “I got badge and gun.  I big man.  I got clout.  I do nothing.”

         Many people wanted these jobs.  My plum was in the jobs department.  We gave a written test to applicants.  It was an idiot test, but we had a lot of morons come in, especially a lot of the ones with clout.  We only required 42 correct out of 80 questions, just over 50 percent, which was way under school level.  Half our applicants flunked.

         But they all liked guns.

         My second boss would call me in and say to “reschedule” a flunker for another test.
         “Make sure you give him the directions clearly.  Touch all the bases with him.”  This was his way of telling me to pass the flunker.  Didn’t help.  Usually they scored lower on the second go-around.

         The next step was bribery.          C--, an investigator, got fired for selling jobs.  He had one guy, a landscaper, do his yard.  Others paid money and desirable services to him.  Being C-- of course he didn’t deliver the jobs.  Maybe someone in an office subplot flunked his guys for who knows what obscure political reason.  He was a jerk and I didn’t like working with him either.  I could never figure out if he got fired for selling jobs or selling jobs and not delivering.  It was all hushed up.  In Chicago hushing up was a way of life.

         People believed that grease worked in Chicago.  The city motto is “The city that works”.  They like believing it.  It’s a matter of image.

                   Two guys come in and ask about their applications.
         “No record.”
         “Well we talked to this guy who said he works here.”
         “Never heard of him.”  They frown, look at each other then look at me.  I take their story.

         Some guy sets himself up with free applications from different government agencies.  Charge a few dollars to give them out.  As he gives them out he talks to the people.  With most he simply tells them where to file the application and what goes with it.  But as he talks, he looks for very special-type persons.  He looks for dummies.  When he hits on a dummy he starts hinting about clout and politics and “I got friends…” and to a Chicagoan it sounds perfectly normal, even if you’re not a dummy.  The dummy starts paying the guy big money.

         This guy made one mistake.  He stayed in the same spot for too long.  His dummies wised up and decided to check.  We moved fast.  Some of our real police type deputies set up a deal on him and took him down in just two days.  A very Chicago type of crime complete with a moral: The police don’t tolerate outsiders messing on their turf.

         If someone finally was hired his first assignment would be as a warrant deputy.  A warrant deputy’s job was to go into the office and pick up the day’s warrants.  Take your own car and serve the warrants.  Do car paperwork to get reimbursed for mileage.  Turn in paper work.  Be done by lunch.  They didn’t care how quick you did it.  Just do it.  Serve your papers, and you’re through for the day.  Then you could take care of your real job, like spending the rest of the day at the track.

         There were a few variations.  Having your cousin from the old country do it for ten dollars was one.  “Sewer service” was another.  This entailed driving by the address and flipping the warrant out the window.

         Nobody at the Sheriff’s knew gambling was illegal.  Or if they did they didn’t let that interfere.  Every department had its pools.  Many employees were avid gamblers.  Even I myself liked to gamble.  But these guys were pros.  Not just friendly on-the-big game bets week in week out call-and-get-the line bettors.  The horses were favorites also.  The warrant districts with the racetracks were always choice assignments.
This system was designed to be subverted.  Actually it we designed to get political donations.  Entrepreneurs would make contributions to get these jobs.  You basically worked part time and got paid full time.  You could carry your gun at your regular business.  You could annoy people and they couldn’t do squat about it.  You were a respected member of the community.  Well, if not respected then feared, which was just as good and even better in Chicago.

         My first boss was a smoothie.  He could really butter on the bilge.  I had his number in a week, but he was great to work for.  He let you do anything as long as you let him do anything and kept your mouth shut.  Keeping your mouth shut was a great asset in Chicago.  Live and let live.

         He had worked in private industry and left suddenly when they took a close look at his books.  He was a son of wealth and had never done any heavy lifting.  A relative with clout then got him a job with the Sheriff’s office.  He’d been well paid at his other job and had trouble living within his county salary.  He was a high roller which seems to go with being a smoothie.  His act in private industry was manipulating expense accounts and taking kickbacks in his position as a buyer.

         He had a couple of reporter friends and he’d put down that he took them out to lunch on behalf of good public relations for the Sheriff.  Usually at a cost of  $100 a lunch, just enough to make the weekly juice with his bad debts.  O f course he never did, take them out to lunch that is.  Well maybe once for coffee, and then the reporter got stuck with the tab because my boss was tossing him “inside” dope.

         After several months of fake $100 lunches with reporters nobody liked the county comptroller’s office called foul.  They had me down and asked,
         “What the hell?”  I blandly replied that it was all BS, that he knew those guys but never took them to lunch.  He just used it as a way to get money.  They had a fit.  I shrugged.  C’est le vie.  They said I had to tell him no more fake lunches.  I got the impression they weren’t really upset about the money, just that it was too easy to catch.  Using reporter’s names just wasn’t smart.  If word got out it would be too easy for reporters to ask themselves if a county employee had taken them out for a $100 lunch.  Maybe a TV reporter wouldn’t remember but a print reporter would certainly remember not being taken out for a $100 lunch.  So I told my boss no more reporter lunches.  This slowed him down for about ten minutes.

         He cracked up his own car drunk one night and needed new wheels.  He got the sheriff’s police department to issue him a car from the impound lot.  Impounded cars are confiscated from criminals.  Most are auctioned but some are held back for county use.  He was able to get this car because our office dealt in jobs.  Everybody did favors for people at the jobs office.  The guys from impound gave him the car simply because they knew that one day they’d have a relative of girlfriend or somebody to get a job for.  My boss took the impound car and gave it to his family to replace the cracked up car.  That worked for a while but gas was a problem.  He had to get gas for both cars.  He could take the impound car to the gas dump and filler up forever.  But he had to get gas for the rental.  The impound was a junker and the rental was a luxury car.  You know which car he never drove.  He solved it by telling a clerk in the comptroller’s office that the impound was a pool car for our investigators and he needed the rental for his duties.  Getting the comptroller’s clerk’s cousin a job sealed the deal.
      As an office type I did not have a car issued to me.  When I needed one I called the motor pool.  This was okay except when they stuck you with a marked car.  Driving a marked car is a heavy burden.  Especially if you’re wearing a $600 suit and fine Italian leather shoes.  So I’d play roof inspector when I was driving a marked car.  That way I would not see some old lady in a house dress come running out screaming,
         “Officer, officer, you gotta help me.”
         “Whatsamatter lady?”
         “You gotta help me!  My husband’s upstairs.  He’s been drinking.  He’s got a gun.  He says he won’t come down!  I want him out!”
         “How long’s he been up there lady?”
         “He’s been doing it for twenty years.”

         Along with the cars came parking tickets.  Parking tickets in the city have nothing to do with no parking.  They have everything to do with revenue.  If they really didn’t want you to park there they’d give the parking aide a load of bricks and she’d heave them through the windshields.  That would stop illegal parking real quick.  But no, the city needs the money.

         If you used your own car on duty and got a parking ticket you could turn it in with a duty form and it would be non-suited by the court.  This was perfectly legitimate and legal.  The problem was with your off duty tickets and the tickets from friends and relatives.  It’s hard to say no, especially when you have an image to maintain; what good is clout if you can’t use it.  This problem led to a solution called “rainy day tickets.”

         The non-suit ticket system at the court was based on the preprinted ticket numbers only.  But a clerk at the Sheriff’s main office first cross checked the time and license plate number before sending the tickets to court.  They had to coincide with your own car and duty time.  When you had a Saturday night ticket or one from a friend you just dumped it in water and wiped it with a sponge.  This would erase all the pertinent data except the preprinted ticket number.  The ticket looked like it had been out in the weather on the windshield.  A few weeks later you turned in that month’s batch.  If the clerk asked, you would just say it was raining that day.  No one would remember what day it rained.  And anyway, who cared?  It always rains in Chicago.