next >>

The Whip Hand

W. Franklin Sanders (Charles Willeford)

1961

Chapter 1

Bill Brown

MY reinitiation was off to a thundering start. It was my first day back in Traffic after three good years in the Auto Theft Bureau, and the day was not a pleasant one for me. Not pleasant in the smallest detail. My determination to make the best of my comedown and see it through was already running into serious trouble. Shame and disgust were banging brutal, body blows against my determination, and my hot temper was a rotten referee in the clinches.

I told myself I wasn't the first man on the force to be knocked down as an example. I had seen it happen before. It wasn't entirely a new idea. But this time it had happened to Bill Brown, and that made it seem all too new and personal. With a bit of 20-20 hindsight, the events leading up to my humiliation were not too hard to trace. In fact, the trail was quite clear.

The Auto Theft Bureau snarls the lines on a pair of raids which fills our nets, and the big ones get away. Then we overlook another lead passed to us from Homicide in routine paper work and it turns out that a prompt follow-up would have paid off big for us. A big stink is raised. A bigger investigation is ordered, and stuff bounces off the fan in every direction. A shake-up rattles through the Bureau and the whole Los Angeles Police Department.

When the charges and counter-accusations start flying back and forth it isn't amusing. Every instance of lax efficiency, questionable conduct, or carelessness is apt to be spread out and raked over, and usually is. It boils down to every man

next >>