Grief Street

informants, as snitches are officially called: registered and unregistered. Detectives are officially required to deal only with the registered variety of CI, unless a supervisor approves an exception for some special reason, of which there are not too many. Naturally, there is a gray area the size of a small ocean.
    The most trustworthy CI is somebody in the sporting life with a specific grudge against somebody else in the life, which is to say a crook who wants to jackpot a rival crook for some personal or professional reason. Detectives should always be looking to cultivate trustworthy people of this sporting sort: a little fish with disparaging information about a big fish. Harry Darcy could appreciate this. Ideally, the little fish should have an outstanding criminal charge that can be reasonably dropped in the interest of greater social good, or else a charge that can at least be reduced. Ninety-five percent of a detective’s caseload is solved by information rather than investigation that requires actual work, mental or physical—especially physical. As I am myself notoriously unfond of physical exertion, I hold that a detective is only as good as his snitches.
    Once I have converted a little fish into a snitch—the best snitches are not volunteers—I am obliged to inform my supervisor. Supposedly, my man (sometimes woman, although sporting women are far less talky) has not committed a crime lately, although here is another gray area. The snitch is fingerprinted and photographed, and classified by criminal specialty. His CI file is then available to everybody else in the ranks.
    A crook in New York can make a handsome sideline out of snitching. It is not uncommon, for instance, for a CI specializing in narcotics to earn a thousand dollars a week, plus a percentage of the take on property confiscation.
    There is a saying in the department: a good snitch never has to do time—ever. This is the main perquisite in the total benefits package of a nonviolent career criminal. All such a careerist must do is maintain a good CI file—one with numerous “assist” citations for his information—and he presents a good picture of himself in the eyes of a judge. A crook with a productive record of snitching—and who is smart enough to pursue his trade without benefit of a gun— will usually walk. The benevolence of the real-world criminal justice system of New York City begins before the snitch goes up in front of a judge, even before he calls his lawyer; when he needs bail, a friendly cop will always come running.
    Nobody likes talking about the biggest and grayest area between registered and unregistered snitches, namely the wannabe CI—the crook who shops around for a detective who can sponsor him to registration, in return, of course, for some long money. The conflict of interest is as obvious and flagrant today as it was before the Knapp Commission back in the 1970s allegedly put an end to it once and for all. It happened then, it happens now.
    If there is one certain principle in the unprincipled world of snitching, it is this: no matter what—white, black, or gray—a detective should never trust a cop buff. Buffs tend to believe what they read in the newspapers and what they see on the tube, and otherwise dwell in fantasy land. Even worse, their agendas are unknown.
    Meaning in particular that Eddie the Ear—never mind his tipping me about Rosie Rosenbaum’s unfortunate birthday party all those years ago, never mind all the times since then he has proffered assistance in my line of duty—is definitely not a recruitable CI. Eddie loves hanging around cops the way a jock loves a locker room, which to my way of thinking is strange romance. Worse yet, Eddie loves cops-and-robbers stories in all the places they are imperfectly told: the tabloids, the crime novels, the movies, and the bar at Dinny’s Lounge, where a lot of cops have taken up boozy self-glorifications where I left off.
    So, on at least two counts, Eddie is not snitch material: he is a buff, and so far as I know he has never been a player in the sporting life. Either way, by my lights this means Eddie has no business trading in information about my business. Which is why he was next on my list of persons I had to confront.
    Baize dropped me at square one: my own unfashionable apartment house, across the way from the landmark of Edward Michael Mallow propped up in a folding chair against the brick wall of Dinny’s Lounge, wearing his