Chapter 3

Dinner was over. Mike Kramer got up from the table as his wife, Lisa, began clearing off the dishes. The news would be on in a few minutes, and Mike never missed a minute of the evening news. It was all part of being a cop, he told himself, keeping up with what was going on, not only in Los Angeles, but in the rest of the world as well: a good cop kept himself informed, current. Mike Kramer prided himself on being a good cop.

As Mike sat down to watch the news, Lisa passed through the living room on her way upstairs. Mike watched her, still admiring, after all these years, the grace of her walk, the firmness of her body. She had been and still was a very beautiful woman, a fine wife. They were just as much in love now as they had been when they first were married, over ten years ago, but now their love had matured, ripened, become firmer and more substantial.

Yes, Mike thought, she's a good wife. She kept an immaculate house, cooked food that was better than anything you could get in even the most expensive restaurants, always looked after his needs. She was constantly in good spirits, had a keen sense of humor, and was always ready to give her full attention to Mike's problems, listening with enthusiasm even though she never quite understood the real dangers of his job, never quite believed in its terrors.

In fact, their only point of disagreement had to do with Mike's job: Mike was a lieutenant, assigned to the vice squad, and he was perfectly content with his position--as a lieutenant he had enough authority to take part in decisions of policy and approach, yet he was not removed by rank from the real heart of any cop's job, the streets. The pay was good, and although the work was always difficult and sometimes dangerous, Mike enjoyed every minute of it. He would not have traded places with anyone.

Lisa thought that Mike should be interested in trading places, with one of the captains, for instance, or even an assistant chief. In the beginning of their marriage she had kept quiet while Mike had struggled up through the ranks, from patrolman to sergeant, and finally to lieutenant. It was only after Mike had been a lieutenant for five years that she had begun to ask why he didn't seem interested in promotion. Even at that, she asked only rarely, she didn't want to annoy him, because she knew that would only make him more stubborn.

"... and the well-known night-club owner, Jay Snyder," said the newsman, interrupting Mike's reverie. He sat forward to watch, all attention now. Jay Snyder was the object of Mike's personal crusade--he knew that Snyder controlled almost all the prostitution and illicit white slavery traffic in Los Angeles, and even if no one else believed him, he was going to put Snyder behind bars, put him behind bars or die trying.

Lisa came downstairs, saw Mike leaning forward in his chair, a look of intense concentration on his face. "Snyder again?" she said. Lisa thought Mike's crusade against Snyder a little ridiculous. How could Jay Snyder be a crook? She saw his name in the newspaper nearly every week, and always associated with some charity or other, or with the names of the wealthiest and most respected citizens of Los Angeles. Jay Snyder a criminal? Hardly.

"Yeah," said Mike, "Snyder again. I'm going to get that bastard one of these days."

"Mike," she said, "I know you know a lot more about this than I do, and I know you're sure you're right, but..."

"But what?" snapped her husband. He knew what was coming next; they had talked about it several times before. Lisa was simply too naive to believe that anyone who seemed so respectable could be involved in crime, particularly in prostitution.

"Well," she said, "are you really sure?"

"Yes, dearest," he said sarcastically, "I'm really sure." The only thing he disliked about his wife, the only fault he could find with her, was her naivete--she had grown up in a middleclass dream world, isolated and sheltered by her parents from the harder, meaner world of the streets, and he knew, although he tried to educate her, that she would never be capable of understanding the way organized crime worked. She simply refused to look at the facts.

It wouldn't be so bad, he thought, if she'd just keep her nose out of it, keep her head in the clouds where it seemed to want to stay and stop needling him about Jay Snyder. If she couldn't face the facts, then she should just forget it and leave him alone to do his job. But then again, she was his wife, and she bad a right to her opinions, even if they were naive and based on illusion instead of reality. When you got right down to it, Mike was secretly glad that she was at least concerned about him, about his work. Sometimes, though...

She kept at it. "I just can't see," she said, "how Jay Snyder could be involved in anything like prostitution. I mean, he doesn't even need the money, not with all those night clubs he owns. His clubs are famous, Mike. People come from all over the world to see his shows."