Chapter 2
There were cops and there were cops in the big cities. Once upon a time it wasn't as tough to become a policeman. If you had a hard head and good feet for walking, you were in. And there weren't too many annoying rules to memorize. A beat cop made many of his own rules.
Most policemen were just ordinary men doing a job. They tried not to take it home with them at night, but that was difficult, perhaps more then than now. It was a hard job and not overpaid.
Always there are a few who get publicity. Bad cops always draw publicity when they are discovered. The public remembers the lurid newspaper stories and tends to forget the honest day to day service of most.
In the day of the mobs, one of the honest cops was Otto Sunderland. The mob gave up trying to buy or frame him. He was pounding a beat when he met Luis Scalici for the first time:
OTTO SUNDERLAND:
"I guess I had seen Boodle Scalici around for weeks before I learned his name. I had just got the beat. They didn't call him Boodle then, just Kid. He was a skinny, undernourished punk living in a smelly brownstone-like a thousand others.
Frankly, I wouldn't have bet a dime that he'd get far in the mob. He didn't seem to have the moxie. But you never can tell how a guy will turn out.
It was a pretty tough neighborhood. I learned the beat over the years. Most of my problems were small ones, fights, robberies, an occasional rape, family quarrels, and various troubles with the youth gangs. We didn't call them juvenile delinquents then, just no-good tough kids.
Boodles Scalici wasn't tough. He never pretended to be a hard guy. He was slick. As a matter-of-fact, even though we knew what he was doing, he stayed out of our hands for quite a while.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
You asked me about prostitutes. I had 'em on my beat, of course, but nothing big. Only one house, with five girls, but nothing like the district. I didn't bust the girls unless they asked for it, you know, got rambunctious. I knew all of them, they'd tell me their troubles, and I straightened out a few boyfriends here and there. But I found out that the whores sometimes kept the fights down. Not always, but sometimes.
I'd look the other way when one of my partners wanted to chop out a piece. You had to look the other way for lots of things. Some of them whores were good looking girls. Like Veda Scalici, for instance. She could have made it good if she hadn't taken up the whore trade.
"G'wan, cop," she'd say when I suggested it.
"Listen, Veda," I'd say, "you get a job in an office and you'll be marryin' the boss in a year."
She wouldn't believe me.
I remember only about a half dozen young girls who were selling it. Veda was one, of course. They hung out at Bunker's store, a candy emporium that sold everything Dunker thought would move. More like a dime store, with stuff piled in counters and on shelves. In the back he had a couple of counters where the kids hung out and drank sodas and whatever.
Old Dunker was a shit. You couldn't get a thing on him, but he was a real son of a bitch. A slimy little guy. His wife was a fat frau who knew what was going on and it never fazed her. Dunker was putting them kids up to it, I know.
The girls met guys there, and Dunker made it easy for them to use the storeroom. He even had a couch in there. When I asked him about it one day:
"Holy God, Otto, I got to lay down once in a while, ain't I?"
You couldn't pin anything on him. It was his joint and he could have a couch in there if he wanted to. I never caught anybody using it. It was too easy for them to signal, and the back door was right there. But it was one of the things you KNOW, and can't prove legal.
I would take an oath that Dunker got a cut of what the girls made in that storeroom. If not in cash, then in trade. Over a period of time I talked to a lot of girls who said Dunker had screwed them on that couch. But they wouldn't say it in court.
So I rolled with the punch. No use molesting the set-up when it wouldn't pan out in court. I just hoped I'd get the goods on Dunker one day. I was sure he was encouraging the younger boys to shoplift too.
The other broads walked the streets or hung out in bars. I knew them all. There were plenty of part time hustlers too, but generally I didn't bother them. Who can prove what goes on in a locked room? And that just led to more trouble, family trouble. The part time workers, I looked the other way.
I bet I knew more than most husbands what went on in my neighborhood-after they went to work. I had a partner one time who was laying five or six housewives on the beat. I had to get rid of him-and that wasn't easy.
It's a hell of a bad thing when a cop owes favors.
Now and then a citizen got rolled and we had to investigate. But generally I knew all about it damn soon after it happened. A beat cop gets a lot of info because HE does a lot of favors.
I would probably surprise you what info came to me. I knew every time Murphy beat his wife, and practically every time he put her on the bed. I knew who was conning who, or packing up to leave, or failing school, or who had bought a new dress.
I also knew all the husbands who were patronizing the whores and which ones, and how much they paid. And all the other Johns too. They paid from fifty cents to five dollars each pop. Five dollars was a lot of dough for it then; there were only a few, like Veda Scalici, who could dig it out of a john. Veda could dig it out of a statue in the park.
I knew a lot of the young kids who were giving it away, because the boys talked too much. I knew they would drift into it full time-or some of them would. I was sorry as hell to see Veda drifting into it.
I met her about the time she was beginning to give it away, and sell it for peanuts. I knew all the family. When old Joe Scalici was killed at the stone yard I tried to keep a special eye on the family, because I had a special interest in Veda. There was a difference in our ages, but I could have let go for her. Naturally I never said so. I never really got the chance.
You can't lecture a girl and ask to take her to the movies at the same time.
I went overboard talking to Veda, I know, but I couldn't help myself. About all I did was annoy her. My uniform repelled her. I was concerned too because I'd heard rumors that she and Luis, her brother, were selling stuff they'd lifted in the big stores. I didn't want her to get sent up for it. She wouldn't listen to a thing I said.
Veda was a hell of a good looking girl. She was meeting guys at Dunker's store and taking them into the storeroom, and I knew it and couldn't do a thing about it. I tried especially hard to get something on old man Dunker, but he was a real wriggle worm. More about that later.
Again, I had to look the other way. I couldn't get solid evidence, and I didn't really want to. Veda's old lady was having it hard enough, and I certainly didn't want to pile trouble on her-or seem to by arresting Veda.
The newspapers called me a tough cop, later on, but I doubt if I was. A good cop only fights human nature so far. You got to know where to draw the line and look the other way. Otherwise you kick the respect for law in the ass. When you do that, you're in real trouble.
After I realized that Veda was not for me, I began to hope that she'd meet someone and get married. She had looks and personality. It was a vain hope.
I guess that one of the most average types was Katy. Average whores, I mean. Katy had looks too, but not Veda's personality. Katy was dark, and when you met her in a dimly lighted saloon you'd swear she was meant for the choir in a church. She had that madonna look. That's right, lots of looks-and no conscience at all.
Katy was a street whore, a few years older than Veda, and she had a pimp. A slimy little guy named Miff.
"Lemme fix you up," Miff said to me one night. "It's all on the house, pal. I'll send Katy out back, huh?"
"No thanks," I said.
"Get smart," he said, shuffling up close and blowing cigarette smoke in my face. "Katy fucks like a goddam mink."
I wanted to plant my fist in his face. I don't know how I kept from it.
"Listen, you scratch my back," he said, "I scratch yours. Katy wants t'do it. She likes you."
"Beat it."
"No sense getting riled up, Otto-"
"Don't call me Otto."
"Lissen, pal, you're turning down the best goddam screw this side of-"
I turned away. Otherwise I would have hit him. Maybe I should have. I've always regretted I didn't.
I don't know how many times I've seen Katy in a doorway with a John. It wasn't our policy right then to call the wagon for hustling. Policies change, you know. Katy knew the policy as well as I did. She'd have her legs wide open with this guy pumping her when I come along. She'd just smile at me, over his shoulder.
But Katy and Miff were the kinds who rolled guys. Robbed them. When they got a drunk, he went home to the missis minus his dough.
Even after Miff had talked to me, Katy still batted her eyes at me. I guess they figured it didn't hurt to give her a chance at me.
"Hi, Otto," she said one night. My partner was half a block away, and I met her-maybe by chance, but I doubt it. We paused in the shadows of a wood fence.
"I dunno why you don't like me," she said with the voice she probably saved for the best Johns.
"I got nothing against you," I told her. "Except your trade."
"A girl's got to eat."
"Yeh, but she can work. Working girls eat."
She gave me that tinkly laugh. She had enough perfume on to smell up a ball park. "Oh come on, Otto, we ought to be friends-"
She came very close and I had to pull her hands off me. It wasn't easy.
"I've got something you'd like," she said.
"What?" I knew what, but I was curious.
She giggled. She bumped it up against my leg, and rubbed it. "This, honey. We could be real friendly, y'know. You can have it for free-"
"How come you want to give it to me?"
"Honey, I'll give you all you want." She was rubbing it on my leg and not subtle. "You give me somethin', and I'll give you something, is it a deal?"
I was very curious. "What do you want?"
"The park, honey." She came very close and bumped her snatch on me. She had me against the fence. I knew she was an expert at screwing in a standing position. It made me nervous.
I got the strength to hold her off. "What about the park?" I usually walked through the park a few times every night. It wasn't a big park, only a little triangle of shrubbery and a couple of trees.
"Stay out of it tonight, honey," she whispered. "And I'll fuck your socks off."
That's the kind of thing I had to put up with.