Everyone laughed. Tierney rapped the podium and spoke into an attached mike. “Enough horseshit. This is the felony summary for the week ending November 14, 1946. Pay close attention, it’s a doozy.
“First off, three liquor store stickups, on the nights of 11/10, 11/12 and 11/13, all within ten blocks on Jefferson in University Division. Two teenaged Caucasians with sawed-offs and the heebie-jeebies, obviously hopheads. The University dicks have got no leads, and the squad boss there wants a Robbery team on it full-time. Lieutenant Ruley, see me at 0900 on this, and all you men put out the word to your snitches–hophead-heister is a bad MO.
“Moving east, we’ve got freelance prosties working the restaurant bars in Chinatown. They’re servicing their johns in parked cars, lowballing the girls Mickey Cohen’s been running there. Misdemeanor stuff so far, but Mickey C. doesn’t like it and the Chinks don’t like it because Mickey’s girls use the hot sheet flops on Alameda–all Chink owned. Sooner or later we’re looking at grief, so I want the restaurant owners pacified and forty-eight-hour detentions on every Chinatown whore we can grab. Captain Harwell’s detaching a dozen nightwatch blues for a sweep later in the week, and I want the Ad Vice whore files gone through and mug shots and rap sheets pulled for every independent hooker known to work Central. I want two men from Central dicks in on this, with Ad Vice supervising. Lieutenant Pringle, see me at 0915.”
Tierney paused and stretched; I looked around the room and saw that most of the officers were writing in notebooks. I was cursing myself for not bringing one when the captain slammed the lectern with two flattened palms. “Here’s a collar that would please old Captain Jack no end. I’m talking about the Bunker Hill house burglaries Sergeants Vogel and Koenig have been working on. Fritzie, Bill, have you read the SID memo on it?”
Two men sitting side by side a few rows up from me called out, “No, Cap” and “Nossir.” I got a good profile look at the older of them–the spitting image of Fat Johnny Vogel, only fatter.
Tierney said, “I suggest you read it immediately after this briefing. For the benefit of you men not directly involved in the investigation, the print boys found a set of latents at the last break-in, right near the silverware cupboard. They belonged to a white male named Coleman Walter Maynard, age 31, two sodomy priors. A surefire degenerate baby raper.
“County Parole’s got no line on him. He was living at a transient hotel on 14th and Bonnie Brae, but he hotfooted around the time the burglaries started. Highland Park’s got four sodomy unsolveds, all little boys around eight years old. Maybe it’s Maynard and maybe it isn’t, but between them and the B&Es we could fix him up with a nice one-way to Q. Fritzie, Bill, what else are you working on?”
Bill Koenig hunched over his notebook; Fritz Vogel cleared his throat and said, “We’ve been working the downtown hotels. We collared a couple of key thieves and rousted some pickpockets.”
Tierney tapped the podium with one heavy knuckle. “Fritzie, were the key thieves Jerry Katzenbach and Mike Purdy?”
Vogel squirmed in his chair. “Yessir.”
“Fritzie, did they snitch each other off?”
“Ah . . . yessir.”
Tierney rolled his eyes up to heaven. “Let me enlighten those of you not familiar with Jerry and Mike. They’re homos, and they live with Jerry’s mother in a cozy little love nest in Eagle Rock. They’ve been bedmates since God was a pup, but every once in a while they have spats and get the urge to chase jailhouse chicken, and one rats the other off. Then the other reciprocates and they both draw a county jolt. They stool on the gangs while they’re in stir, pork nancy boys and get sentence reductions for their snitch duty. This has been going on since Mae West was a virgin. Fritzie, what else have you been working on?”
There was a rumble of laughter throughout the room. Bill Koenig started to get up, twisting his head to see who the laughers were. Fritz Vogel pulled him back down by his coat sleeve, then said, “Sir, we’ve also been doing some work for Mr. Loew. Bringing in witnesses for him.”