Officer Randy Parsons was miserable in his
job.
He had left Chicago a year ago, putting the
cattle yards and slaughterhouses behind him, for better prospects in Saint
Anthony.
He joined the police force; the recruiter had
convinced him that it would put him on the sure path to prosperity.
Randy was young and strong, and happy to follow
orders, so he decided to give it a try, but he had no idea what being a police
in a city like Saint Anthony would mean to him personally.
St. Anthony was a rich town, and the recruiter
didn’t lie to him; the money was good, but the work was little more than
uniformed muscle, he was a pimp with a badge, less than that…he was just the pimps’
enforcer.
Randy Parsons hated himself.
On three out of four weeks he worked the night
shift on Lake Street, walking his beat like a postman, working through rain,
sleet and snow. His time was spent keeping the street walkers busy and the brothels quiet, making sure that
the drug and alcohol trade were not disturbed.
Randy’s salary allowed him to keep a small
apartment on Dupont Avenue, a couple of blocks from the precinct house.
He took the cash that his captain doled out
from the precinct slush fund, kept full by St. Anthony’s crime lords, after
giving ten percent to the church, he stuffed most of rest in jar as if it were
some kind of savings account.
Randy thought of his tithe as a way to do
something good with the devil’s money, and he trusted the pastor at Joyce
Methodist to do what was right with it…though he was wrong about that. With the
money he stashed in his cupboard he thought he might buy one of those kit homes
from Sears and Robuck, a big one with a broad porch, and he thought about
getting a wife off the boat from Sweden.
It was raining when he clocked into the 5th
Precinct.
He passed his captain in the locker room,
grumbling in his brogue, the old Irishman harshly reminded him and the rest of
the boys to keep the hookers busy during the storm.
“There is no rest for the wicked,” Captain
Dougherty said. “We have quoted to make.”
Only the wicked got a break in Saint Anthony, Parsons thought to himself, and everybody
else was expected to suffer for them.
Randy made note of what the captain said
however, believing his work would be under scrutiny that night, and despite his
misgivings he was determined to go hard on the girls, to set an example…he was
an enforcer after all.
His partner, Sandy O’Rourke, was late as usual,
though no one ever bothered him about timeliness.
Sandy had been on the force for more than twenty
years and had been busted down from Sergeant twice over the course of his
career, but he was a personal friend of the Captain and so he could pretty much
do as he pleased.
Sandy was cheerful when he came in, whistling
and smiling, tipping back his flask.
“Its hot and wet out there,” he said as he
winked at Randy. “We’re on the beat from Nicollet to Chicago; lets head out
now.”
Randy didn’t have a say in the matter, so he
buttoned up his rain gear and followed the old man out the door.
He beat his night stick in his gloved hand as
if he were trying to beat the lurid thoughts out of his head.
Officer Parsons might have wanted to do some
good in the world, the make-believe world in which he was a pious man, that
world had nothing to do with girls at work on Lake Street.
