Read Online One Monday We Killed Them All by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online
Authors: John D. MacDonald
Tags: Mystery & Crime
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excellent job of coaching the Walker boy and his surviving friend. By the time the dead boy’s parents had arrived, it had become one of those innocent, tragic accidents: three friends sitting around having a beer, and Ronnie volunteering to adjust the set and pulling the floor lamp plug out of the wall socket instead of the television set plug. Coroner’s verdict—accidental death.
Larry Brint lectured me. “You are paid to be a cop, Hillyer, not a moralist, not a reformer. You don’t enforce the Christian ethic. You enforce the laws. It was an accidental death. What good is a morals charge going to do anybody? What good would it do if we could prove the Walker boy waited twenty minutes, God knows why, before putting the call in? How would it help that boy’s people to know how he spent the last five days of his life? This kind of a deal should make you feel sick, like it does me. Okay. If it didn’t, we’d be bad cops and worse human beings. But don’t let it carry over into what you’re being paid to do. We’re not going to change the way the world is. All we’re going to do is make Brook City a reasonably safe place to live, and give them a buck and a half of protection for every buck they budget us. You’re not a judge or a jury or a prosecutor.”
I remembered his words as I looked at Mildred in her yellow towel. She lit a cigarette. Dwight reached lazily and she gave it to him and lit another. They were both looking at me and I suddenly realized how very much alike they were. There was an inevitability about this association. It wouldn’t last long. They didn’t lead lives in which anything lasted very long. But they had to be together for a little while.
“He came to tell me to stop working for Jeff. He gets these weird ideas.”
“Jeffie is a dear man,” Mildred said. “He’s a fun sort. Sergeant, dear, we sort of run with the pack, but we’re not employees, really. I did try to be one last year. I teased him to put me on a little telephone list, just to see what it would be like, but he was horribly chicken about it, scared of Daddy, truly.”
“We don’t want to keep you from your work, Fenn,” Dwight said.
As I walked toward the elevator I could hear them laughing.
I learned Larry had made no headway with Jeff Kermer. Jeff had admitted just the casual association described by Dwight. We suffer the existence of Division Street. We need and use Jeff Kermer, and he needs and uses us. It is a realistic relationship which would horrify the reform elements if they knew how it works. In nearly all categories of major and minor crime, we run well below the FBI statistics for the national average. Nearby cities with a fatter per capita police budget run higher.
It is a power relationship, not a conspiracy. In the un-written arrangement, Kermer keeps his operations pretty well centralized in the Division Street area, and can operate the clip joints, the gambling, the call girl circuits, the unaffiliated local union rackets and small scale protection setups, as well as jukes, pinball machines and punchboards, without any serious interference. In return he puts the whole city off limits for the organized narcotics trade, pornography, professional armed robbery, safe-cracking and car theft rings. We try to keep two classes of informers inside his organization, those he knows about and those he doesn’t. We can’t expect him to stop amateur impulsive crimes of violence, but we expect him to keep professional talent out of town. If any tries to move in, and he can’t readily break it up, he sees that we get tipped off. If one of the independent operators within his sphere of influence gets too greedy, we are tipped off that Jeff wouldn’t mind a raid and some arrests. This always pleases the reform elements. Because it is a controlled town, it is a cooling off place for out of town hoodlums. In return for the arrangement that they not ply their trade in Brook City, we agree to forego the
Larry Brint lectured me. “You are paid to be a cop, Hillyer, not a moralist, not a reformer. You don’t enforce the Christian ethic. You enforce the laws. It was an accidental death. What good is a morals charge going to do anybody? What good would it do if we could prove the Walker boy waited twenty minutes, God knows why, before putting the call in? How would it help that boy’s people to know how he spent the last five days of his life? This kind of a deal should make you feel sick, like it does me. Okay. If it didn’t, we’d be bad cops and worse human beings. But don’t let it carry over into what you’re being paid to do. We’re not going to change the way the world is. All we’re going to do is make Brook City a reasonably safe place to live, and give them a buck and a half of protection for every buck they budget us. You’re not a judge or a jury or a prosecutor.”
I remembered his words as I looked at Mildred in her yellow towel. She lit a cigarette. Dwight reached lazily and she gave it to him and lit another. They were both looking at me and I suddenly realized how very much alike they were. There was an inevitability about this association. It wouldn’t last long. They didn’t lead lives in which anything lasted very long. But they had to be together for a little while.
“He came to tell me to stop working for Jeff. He gets these weird ideas.”
“Jeffie is a dear man,” Mildred said. “He’s a fun sort. Sergeant, dear, we sort of run with the pack, but we’re not employees, really. I did try to be one last year. I teased him to put me on a little telephone list, just to see what it would be like, but he was horribly chicken about it, scared of Daddy, truly.”
“We don’t want to keep you from your work, Fenn,” Dwight said.
As I walked toward the elevator I could hear them laughing.
I learned Larry had made no headway with Jeff Kermer. Jeff had admitted just the casual association described by Dwight. We suffer the existence of Division Street. We need and use Jeff Kermer, and he needs and uses us. It is a realistic relationship which would horrify the reform elements if they knew how it works. In nearly all categories of major and minor crime, we run well below the FBI statistics for the national average. Nearby cities with a fatter per capita police budget run higher.
It is a power relationship, not a conspiracy. In the un-written arrangement, Kermer keeps his operations pretty well centralized in the Division Street area, and can operate the clip joints, the gambling, the call girl circuits, the unaffiliated local union rackets and small scale protection setups, as well as jukes, pinball machines and punchboards, without any serious interference. In return he puts the whole city off limits for the organized narcotics trade, pornography, professional armed robbery, safe-cracking and car theft rings. We try to keep two classes of informers inside his organization, those he knows about and those he doesn’t. We can’t expect him to stop amateur impulsive crimes of violence, but we expect him to keep professional talent out of town. If any tries to move in, and he can’t readily break it up, he sees that we get tipped off. If one of the independent operators within his sphere of influence gets too greedy, we are tipped off that Jeff wouldn’t mind a raid and some arrests. This always pleases the reform elements. Because it is a controlled town, it is a cooling off place for out of town hoodlums. In return for the arrangement that they not ply their trade in Brook City, we agree to forego the
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