Yesterday's News

bad people and then see them released before they’ve wiped the fingerprint ink from their hands. Later, even the case you can make slips away because a judge can’t see jailing a ‘victimless’ gambling kingpin when the cell blocks couldn’t accommodate another violent offender with a shoehorn. So you get your meat eaters and your grass eaters.”
    “Translation?”
    “I first heard the terms when I was in New York . Knapp Commission, the Serpico matter and all. A meat eater is a cop who asks for a bribe, another license granter the bad guy has to pay on the front end. A grass eater is a cop who basically becomes the bad guy’s business partner for a piece of the take, on the back end.”
    “Don’t most departments rotate their personnel every couple of years to minimize that?”
    “Yes, and it does, but at the cost of reassigning your most experienced cops in a given area, geographic or specialty, outside the area in which they’ve become expert.”
    “So you trade effectiveness off against the fear they’ve become tainted.”
    “Quite well put, my lad. However, there is no such fear of that here. At some point before my arrival, the locals divided things up in such a way that rotation was off the negotiating table.”
    “So the plainclothes guys are the foxes watching the chickens.”
    “Instead of the uniforms being the foxes watching the chickens, or at least switching off from time to time so that everybody’s equally exposed to, and presumably resistant to, temptation.”
    I said, “What can you tell me about Hagan versus Hogueira?”
    “Ah, the Wimbledon of a police buff. Who will succeed the King? In this case, however, I’m afraid it’s rather like Ivan Lendl serving to Lou Costello.”
    “Hagan’s a lock?”
    “I think so. Thanks to former partner Schonstein.”
    “The retired cop?”
    “Correct. Two of the current city councilors are beholden to the former hero. The paperwork on the drug bust of one’s firstborn was conveniently lost; the drunk driving of a second steered miraculously clear of a Breathalyzer test. And not all Schonsy’s influence is by way of the fix, either. I nearly cried myself when I covered him doing magic tricks at a party for kids in the local hospital. No, I doubt that Hogueira can convince the others that a second Porto chief in a row constitutes a moral, ethnic, or political imperative.”
    “Sounds like that special statute you told me about is backfiring.”
    “Not really. Without the special statute, the current chief would be rattling doorknobs on the midnight shift, Christmas Eve. And with civil service, Hagan would be a shoo-in.”
    “I don’t see that. I’ve listened to both of them talk. Hagan sounds more like a street cop, Hogueira like an Oxford don.”
    Peete said, “All form, no substance. Hagan finished college before he started here, then took a master’s in police science at Northeastern. Hogueira earned a high school equivalency diploma at night, probably by mail. Resumewise and testwise, Hagan would trounce him. No contest.”
    “You a Hagan rooter?”
    “No. And yes, I suppose. All cop buffs wonder what would happen if the right man—or woman, I suppose, to be fair as opposed to realistic in this town. In any case, we all wonder what would happen if the right person were put in charge somehow, whether he or she could really make the difference, transform the enforcement of authority into something to be admired rather than abused.”
    “And you see Hagan as the right man?”
    “I see Hogueira as the heir to the old way, the who-you-know way. Don’t misunderstand me: the old way is how Hagan will get to sit in the chief’s chair. I just think he could be a part of the new way. Or at least I’d like to find out.”
    “Is Schonsy Junior a part of the new way, too?” Peete laughed. “Oh no. No, I’m afraid Mark is a pale imitation of his father. I saw Schonsy only at the tail end of his career, but he was the best of the old way, my friend. A Jewish John Wayne who tamed this town for eight hours a day, five days a week. He was the real thing. Mangled his legs coming down the stairs of a burning tenement, carrying a baby out from the flames. Knees at any age are fragile structures, but at sixty, rehabilitation to a patrolman’s required agility was out of the question, so he drew a disability.”
    “Schonsy Senior was only a patrolman when he retired?”
    “Yes. And you can just refer to him as Schonsy. I can’t