The Patrolman - 6

 

 

6.

 

 

 

It was late, almost noon. June Hartsfield was pulling on her stockings, getting ready for work when the phone rang.

‘I’ll be there in 10,’ said the voice on the other end.

‘Can you make it--’

But the line went dead.   

She had spent the morning by the pool, flipping through her book and the papers. Breakfast was two raw eggs in hot milk, whipped with a fork, and chased with a multivitamin pill. Her 'working girl in a hurry’ breakfast, she called it.

Hartsfield left her house dressed to the nines. A low-cut shirt, high-waisted golf slacks, and black-and-white spats. She dressed the way Brenda taught her to. Brenda always said, 'If you can't be good, at least be memorable.' She had made that her motto.

Standing by the car with his hands in his pockets, the voice on the phone, Brenda’s boyfriend, Elmer V. Jackson.

The ears on him stuck out like Hoagy Carmichael’s. He was tall and thin like a stick insect. He looked like a gentleman until you got close enough to see the wolf in his eyes. ‘You look mighty nice today, June,’ he said. His drawl was slow and sticky, like molasses on a hot day. Not an Okie, not like the rest of Los Angeles. He was a Cracker, pure and simple. He held the car door open.

She watched her place grow smaller as they drove away. A perfect house on a perfect street, a half-hour’s ride to Santa Monica Pier. Last night’s rain and the morning sun made her lawn glisten. A narrow path bisected the lawn, leading up to her castle. A house in the Colonial-Spanish style. Whitewashed walls, red roof tiles, and a turret stuffed with her books. Her own little slice of paradise, but paradise didn't come cheap.

It won’t be long now, she thought. The kids’ll love it.

‘I gotta make a collection,’ Jackson said.

‘Where?’

‘It’s on the way. You mind?’

‘Knock yourself out,’ she said, leaning back in the seat.

 

They stopped at The Ravenswood Apartments in Hancock Park. Mae West's haunt. Hartsfield had read somewhere that Clark Gable kept a pad there too. Brenda paid her girls $50 a week. That wasn't chump change, but it sure wasn't Ravenswood money. How much extra was this girl raking in on the side?

‘20 minutes, tops,’ Jackson said, disappearing inside.

She cracked the window and smoked. Pushing her sunglasses to the top of her nose. Brenda said it the night they met, ‘For this, you gotta look the part. People need to believe there’s nothing funny about big money in your hand.’ Image was everything. You had to look the part when you made your collections. That way, nobody’d think twice about crossing you.

It had only been a year since Brenda took June under her wing, but it felt like a lifetime. A year ago, she’d been a working stiff. There’s no nobility in poverty, she'd learned that the hard way. She’d choose to be a rich woman over a poor one any day. Hartsfield had worked at a bank as a “part-time” filing clerk working six days a week. The bank manager had been a creep. She had been a wife, paying a mortgage, and raising two kids. One morning she got up, washed the breakfast dishes, and packed her bags. She didn't even bother with a note. June Hartsfield walked out of her Echo Park house and didn’t look back.

But she still dreamed of her children. They were the last thing she thought of at night, the first in the morning. Now their relationship with her consisted of five-minute telephone conversations. That’s all her husband would allow. If he’d been drinking, he’d grab the phone, slurring accusations about where she was and who she was with.

Money had been her answer. A bag of it had been her escape. But it didn't solve everything.

Knock-knock.

June Hartsfield blinked, drawn back to the present. She found herself waiting on a collection in a part of town she’d have never set foot in when she was a nobody.

An old geezer, sleeves rolled up and pants held up by braces, stood by the driver’s side window.

‘Can I do something for you?’

‘Move your car,’ he said. ‘You’re blocking a hydrant.’

She glanced in the mirror and saw it plain as day.

‘Sorry, sir. I don’t have the keys.’

His face was a roadmap of sunburn. A lifetime of working out in the heat had turned his face a color somewhere between red and brown. The geezer wore large rectangular glasses that took up most of his face. He seemed pleasant enough, well-meaning, but he didn’t like her answer.

‘Move it, lady. Before I get the police to come take it away.’

Hartsfield looked at the purse between her knees.

‘No need, old timer,’ came a voice behind him.

The geezer turned to find Jackson at his elbow, his jacket pushed back enough to show the gold badge on his belt.

“SERGEANT”, it read, below “LOS ANGELES POLICE”.

‘You should know better,’ the geezer said. ‘What if there was a fire?’

‘Per capita,’ Jackson said, his voice slow and cold. ‘Police protection costs you less than four cents a day in Los Angeles. So show some respect and scram.’

The geezer muttered something under his breath but backed off.

Jackson got in the car and started the engine. Hartsfield opened the glove box, and he slipped a thick envelope inside. She snapped it shut, quick as a mousetrap.

‘I didn’t get your badge number, Sergeant,’ the geezer called after them.

Jackson laughed a mean laugh. ‘Here’s my badge number,’ he said, flashing his jacket wide open.

The old timer froze, like a deer caught in headlights.

Jackson shifted into gear and floored it, the car leaping forward. He was in fourth before they hit the end of Rossmore Avenue.

She leaned back in her seat, the smell of gun oil had escaped from his jacket and was now filling the car.

Jackson was a cop, all right. But there were more crooked cops than him.

June Hartsfield knew from experience.

 

© J. A. Stapleton 2025 - Image Source: Wikimedia Commons