Never Trust A Cop As Far As You Could Throw One-With Otto Preminger’s Where The Sidewalk Ends In Mind

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

“You know my grandfather told me when I was just a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen years old when you start to think about getting in trouble one way or another and when things that are said by older people still stick, never to trust a cop. They are not our friends no matter about all that stuff about protecting us and helping little old ladies across the street, they work the other side of the street and will cut you down just as soon as look at you. And Grandpa Eaton was a guy who knew the story from both sides, knew it as an official of the boilermakers’ union when they went on strike more than once down at the Fore River shipyards looking for more money and better conditions and the company let the “bulls,” that what they called them back them, run rampart on the picket lines. Bad blood all the way around, not forgotten blood not by Grandpa and his buddies which was in any case partially revenged one night when they has a copper yelling “uncle” although Grandpa wouldn’t get more specific since you never know when the statute of limitations runs out on something like that, with cops anyway.

Knew about cops as well, up close and personal since his drunken sot of a father, who died a few years before I was born so I never knew him, just off the boat from Ireland but because he had been connected someway, at least he told everybody he was,  to the Fenian Brotherhood had gotten himself on the force, had been a beat cop, which didn’t keep him from beating his wife, my great- grandmother and his kids, including my grandfather, when he was in a drunken frenzy and when they complained to the coppers the guys at the station said they didn’t handle domestic disputes. That settled it for Grandpa. A couple of Grandpa’s brothers too, learning nothing from their father’s brutal ways when they in their turn hit their women and kids when they were in a drunken frenzy. And the ghost of his father’s cronies were at play too since when those women complained at the station they got the same stonewall. Probably would today too, no, make that would today too. Later, after he told me this wisdom about cops, a couple of my uncles, his sons, wound up on the Carver force and he would barely speak with them since he had given the same wisdom to them that he gave to me and my brothers.”

“Yeah, Grandpa Eaton had it down pat, said that other than grabbing coffee and crullers those guys were worthless to do anything good, would cut you as soon as look at you,” harangued, there was no other word for it, Sam Lowell to his old friend from Troy, New York met long ago on the political protest trail Ralph Morris.

Ralph nodded his head not so much in agreement with Sam’s sentiments with which indeed he was in solidarity with having had his own fair share of run-ins with the coppers every time he and his anti-war veteran protestor buddies out in Troy or in Albany got uppity and challenged the government’s authority to wage war in their names as he was in agreement at the part about the coffee and crullers. He could just picture the “beat” cops all huddled on the stools at Jimmy Miller’s Donut Shoppe on Ferry Street, the one donut shop in Troy that he knew about from visits to Ralph there oblivious to anything going on outside the steam fogged windows. Could have been murder and mayhem but there they would be sipping coffee regulars and honey-dipped donuts.

Strangely the reason for Sam’s harangue had not been as a result of being recently personally bullied by some flatfoot or being shaken down in his printing business by some cop looking for more than coffee and crullers but having just watched a film, a black and white film from the 1940s starring Dana Andrews and the fetching Gene Tierney, Where The Sidewalk Ends, where said Andrews, something of a front line matinee idol around that time, played a cop, a cop turned rogue cop, or maybe Sam said he should say he had been all along.      

Over the past several years Sam had via the beauties of Netflix been ordering all the old film noir-type black and white DVDs that he could get his hands on even those that he had seen back in the day at the old Strand Theater on River Street in Carver where he would while away a Saturday afternoon watching double feature re-run classic features and munching on popcorn like the film he was talking about before he would go to that matinee with some teen girl he was steamed up about and spent time in the balcony not watching the movie. Most of the time he would just watch the DVD and then move on but the theme of this film got under his skin and when Ralph came to Boston for one of his periodic trips to gab about old times with Sam and a few other guys from the old anti-war political days, days when they had more of cops than they could shake a stick at on their asses for one thing or another mainly just blocking stuff, buildings, traffic, sidewalks, so he decided he would tell him the plot, and ask what Ralph thought about what he had to say about it. See if Ralph still agreed after all these years filled mostly without too much strife about a cop being a bastard and best handled with no respect, or like a snake, very carefully.     

In the film plainclothes detective Steve Blair (Andrews’ part) started out from frame number one roughing up guys, bad guys from what he said to the police commander when he has to go on the carpet for his rough behavior. Of course dressing down an underling about this rough behavior business is just the higher-ups responding to the local crime padrones’ complaints about Blair since they had paid said higher-ups very handsomely not to be roughed up by some gung-ho cop who had his own graft going. See Blair was working off an old-time grudge. Blair’s father was nothing but a three-time loser who wound up taking the big step-off for some rinky-dink murder which he had committed when he was in the gangs the shame of which sent his mother to an early grave and made Blair a hard-assed copper and nothing but a scourge against hard-boiled criminals. Here is the funny duel standard though Blair had no problem shaking down every businessman in town and every independent drug dealer and second-story artist as well for his graft. So Blair was put on notice-no rough stuff or he would wind up on cheap street just another beat cop hustling for coffee and cakes and nickel and dime graft hassling highs school kids and drunsk.         

Cops make enemies though like the rest of us, although maybe rougher and tougher, and Blair’s enemigo numbero uno was Silky Tommy, the kingpin craps guys in all of New Jack City who was so well-connected both with the guys who talked funny through their noses and with the brass downtown that he was not going to take any fall guy play from Blair. Not even take any gaff for the night when Joe Bates, yeah that Joe Bates who got a fistful of medals in the war that everybody had heard about in Jack Gannon’s by-line for the Times, World War II to keep the wars straight, steered this Texas oil guy with plenty of dough into one of Silky’s hotel room crap shoots using his wife Laura (played by fetching Gene Tierney or did I already say the fetching part, no, I see I didn’t so fetching), Christ his wife like some kind of high class whore, as the hook, as catnip.

See since the war Joe had been on a downward spiral first with Father Whiskey and then with cousin cocaine and so to keep his nose good and clogged Joe worked for Silky whenever he needed to “get well. Dragging Laura down with him. Nobody ever heard that he had her turning tricks but you never know with a junkie, they are hard on their women war heroes or not. Problem was that the night in question the Texas oil man was hot with the dice, took Silky for fifty thousand and then wanted to walk away before the house percentages took him down that night. Bad idea though, always a bad idea, for anybody to walk out on Silky Tommy with that much of his dough so one of Tommy’s heavies, Eddie the Knife, bonked the poor oilman. Bonked him too hard and he passed on to wherever Texas oilmen pass. Silky Tommy called the coppers, claimed it was an accident and that Joe was the guy who brought him up and it was Joe who put the bonk on him. An easy pick-up and off to the slammer for Joe to go cold turkey or whatever was going to happen to him without his nose candy. Trouble for Tommy, trouble for Joe too was that the detective on duty that night was Steve Blair. Blair said he smelled a rat and when Tommy said he didn’t give a rat’s ass what Blair thought Blair roughed him up, roughed him up good. Of course he would be before the Precinct Captain in the morning bright and early but worse than roughing up Silky was that Blair bought the story, bought the Joe did have some part in doing the deed in the big story and so he went over to Joe’s place and roughed him up trying to get a confession about what happened or if did do the killing tag him for it and get the heat off from downtown.  Roughed Joe up too much and wound up killing him accidently. Killing him so bad that he knew he would take the fall if he tried to tell the story like it really happened so he disposed of Joe’s body just like any other guy would, dumped him in the East River to sleep with the fishes.         

Except he came up a couple of days later a lot worse for wear. Now most coppers aren’t bright although Blair was brighter than most so he knew he needed a fall guy, or fall gal if it came to that. So he went over to Laura’s place to see who had reason to knock Joe off after news got out that he had surfaced in the East River. Bingo. Easy tag. Joe in one of his stupors, drugs or whiskey it was not clear, had beaten Laura up, and that had not been the first time. Her father, Timmy Taylor, the cab driver well-known around town and to the beat cops told everybody who would listen that if Joe hit Laura again he was a dead man. Beautiful, like finding money on the ground. Between Timmy’s own bravado and Blair’s machinations of the evidence pointing it all in old Timmy direction he was set-up for the big step off, especially after he was taken down the in the bright lights of the dungeon and a confession was sweated out of him.

Here’s the best part though Blair a good-looking guy with a decent line around the ladies started hitting on the fetching Laura with the idea that he could get the old man free, said he would work night and day to save him from the gallows. All of this cop doing his duty stuff did get him into Laura’s bed, no problem since she had her needs and Joe, well, remember Joe had been wedded to his dope. Got him under the sheets more than once when he conned her with information that would seem to have cleared her father and place the blame on enemigo numbero uno Silky Tommy. Blair, along the way, did take Tommy down, took him down hard, took him about three slugs in the head down to finally settle old scores. But there was nothing that Silky had which would exonerate Timmy, help the old man. That was all cop bull. Still Blair spend his  plying Laura with all kinds of false hope, all kinds stuff about moving heaven and earth to get the old man cleared and getting to her bed on a steady basis. Bull, Blair was sitting on his hands like any smart guy who had bloody hands and had gotten rid of a nasty gangster in the bargain, wound up getting himself promoted to Captain of Detectives for taking Silky Tommy down. Got married to Laura too, thought nothing of it even though her father was then on death row. You know love got in the way, maybe better to say sex. As for Timmy he went to the gallows proclaiming his innocence but they all do, they all really do.  Case closed.         

The story told Sam couldn’t resist saying once again the cautionary tale “don’t trust a copper they are on the other side, they are poison.” Ralph just nodded his head in agreement.