The Peeping Tom Patrol

Mundy cut the lights and the patrol car glided down silently through the trees onto the beach. The moon was high and full; they saw the car parked back under the trees just about the same time the people in the car saw them. Mundy swore and jumped out, grabbing for his flashlight. Redmond came out the other side, feeling ridiculous.

Mundy lunged heavily through the sand up to the parked car, blazed the powerful flashlight beam through the window. The boy and girl were both up, both clothed, blinking in the light. The boy had taken his arms away from the girl, but the girl was startled and was hanging on to him tightly.

"All right, son," Mundy grunted. "You have to get out of here." Redmond could hear his disappointment and grinned cheerfully into the dark.

"This ain't no public beach," Mundy said, "you kids go do that stuff somewhere else. You never know what can happen out here."

"Yes sir," the boy said instantly. He was about 18.

"Never can tell. Lots of queer characters hang out around places like this. One of them jump out on you one of these nights, be hell to pay."

"Yes sir," the boy said. He started the car.

"So get on home."

The boy nodded. the girl still hanging on to him, and drove off. Mundy watched them go, kicking fretfully at the sand.

"Crap," he said. "They must of seen us coming."

Redmond said nothing. Mundy was senior man. Mundy made all the decisions. But Redmond felt very good. They went back to the cruiser.

"Well," Mundy said after a while, his optimism coming back, "I know lots more spots. We'll see who else is diddling who."

He ran down the beach, then up a dirt road through the woods. He followed the road for a long while, occasionally slowing to a crawl and cutting his lights. He found absolutely nothing. After a while Redmond said:

"Shouldn't we better get back downtown? What happens if we get a call?"

Mundy shrugged. "Don't worry about it. This is Wednesday. Nothing happens Wednesday. And if we get a call and we're too far away, they call somebody else."

They turned down another short road leading to the sea. They flushed another couple but did not catch them in the act. When they came out and headed for still another spot Mundy knew, Redmond was irritated.

"Listen," he said, "we going to do this all night?"

Mundy chuckled. "You got a better idea?"

"Well, what the hell, this is no way ----"

"Relax."

"But it's none of our business. These people aren't hurting anybody."

Mundy swung the car down another lonely road.

"You never can tell," he said cheerfully. "Couple times I found suicides this way, sneakin' up on parked cars. One guy in there been dead a week. Hell of a note, a guy lays out here dead all that while and somebody else finds him. Makes the cops look bad. We got to investigate. How do you know what's goin' on in them cars? People could be murderin' people."

"Sure," Redmond said.

Mundy went on whistling absently. After a while he said without concern:

"You'll learn, after you been around awhile. How long you been on the force?"

"Three months."

"Where they put you?"

"North Traffic Cruiser. Accident car. Last month they had me walking Ninth and Central."

Mundy chuckled. "Man, that Ninth and Central. That's the beat, hah? More quiff down there than a man could use in a hundred years. Bet you went for that stuff, hah?"

Mundy waited for him to say something, but he didn't.

"Best damn beat in town," Mundy reaffirmed fondly, remembering. "All the girls in them stores, the bank. Man, when I walked that beat I was busy all day. I had coffee with five hundred different women on the city's time. And then on my time ----" He laughed fatly, then went on to tell some highly unlikely sexual adventures.

Bored, Redmond let his mind wander. But it was true what Mundy said about the downtown beat. There were women all over the place, and most of them happy to talk to you. He wondered why. The uniform, yes, but it was more. The gun. Authority. He stared thoughtfully up at the moon. He remembered vague tales some of the men told about the way women acted around the gun. How one of them had even wanted the man to wear it to bed. The gun, yes. And all the power it represented. Authority. The Law.

He glanced at Mundy. The Law, he thought. This is the Law.

Mundy was sighing reflectively. "But that was a good beat. Yes sir. Few good months of that could kill a man." He chortled, then broke it off. "Crap," he said with feeling. "I could sure use a little of that. They ain't had me on that beat in three years."

"Wonder why," Redmond said wryly.

"Ah, they don't know what they're doin'." Mundy brooded. He said some very brutal things about the brass upstairs. He told Redmond to stick with him, that he would learn something.

"Too bad you only ride with me one night a week," he said. "You'd learn fast, boy. But ridin' relief is all right. Who else you ride with?"

"I only ride two nights a week. Other nights I walk, four to midnight."

"Walk? Ninth and Central?"

"Yep. I walk that tomorrow."

"Jesus," Mundy breathed heavily and wagged his head. "You must know somebody."

They rode on for a while in silence, Mundy brooding about the injustice of it, Redmond hoping there weren't many more cops like this. Mundy took it out on the next couple they flushed.

The girl was badly flustered. She had buttoned her blouse before they got there but she had done it too quickly and when Mundy's light shone in, her two middle buttons had come back open. Mundy gave the two kids a vicious lecture. Redmond turned away from it and went back to the cruiser.

"Listen," he said, when Mundy was done," "you keep at this long enough, and one of these days you're gonna run across somebody you know."

"Nah," Mundy said, grinning. "Only the kids come out here. Only the amateurs. The smart money finds a motel or stays home. The old pros got their own places. All you get out here is the ones that don't know their way around. Sometimes you get old couples. Jesus. And I got a doctor once, him I knew. He and his nurse, goin' at it hot and heavy. And him married with four kids. You should've heard the way I give it to him."

Mundy glowed with satisfaction. Redmond looked away from him.

"There's one more good spot up ahead," Mundy said. "I've been savin' it 'til it got late. We check that out and then we go home. Best place I've got. Always get somebody there."

He turned off down another dirt road. He cut the lights again and when he could see the ocean gleaming beyond the trees he stopped the car. He grinned excitedly at Redmond.

"From here we walk. Take no chances this time. Keep damned quiet."

"I'll stay here," Redmond said.

"The hell you will." Mundy's voice was quietly ugly. "Suppose that son of a bitch decides to get rough? You're my partner, boy. Where I go, you go."

"All right," Redmond said. He got out of the car.

"Keep good and goddam quiet," Mundy whispered.

They walked off down the road. Redmond breathed deeply in the cool night air. "Watch your senior man," he thought. He remembered the captain saying it: "Watch your senior man, boys, learn from him! Watch him in action!" Redmond grunted in disgust. Mundy in action!

He looked up ahead and watched Mundy in action. The older man was stepping lightly down the ruts in the road, lightly and ridiculously, walking on eggs. Redmond could not bring himself to be careful. He couldn't help it. He told himself that Mundy up there was the Law, old John Law, and he giggled aloud. A twig snapped. He saw Mundy's angry turn. He grinned back, knowing his face couldn't be seen. Then he saw the car.

It was parked out in the open, on the beach. Real amateurs, Redmond thought. It was facing the ocean and Mundy was going in on it from behind. The moonlight was very strong and Redmond could see straight through the car and see the ocean through the windshield, but he could see nobody in it.

Mundy went in very close, beginning to crouch. Redmond walked more silently without realizing it. He watched Mundy go up to the car. He knew this one was it, that Mundy had them this time, cleanly and without hope, and a shiver went through him. He thought of shouting. He didn't. He walked in close and waited.

He saw Mundy waving him down. Obediently, he knelt. He waited for Mundy to shine the light, but the older man didn't; he rose slowly and looked in the rear window. Redmond could not see his face. But he was in close enough now and he could hear the car moving, hear the people moving inside it. Jesus, he thought, chilled. He did not go up to look. He waited by the rear of the shaking car.

After a very long while Mundy exploded the light. It blasted into the car and the couple inside jumped frantically. Redmond felt his face grow hot; he had to look down at the ground with shame. He heard Mundy begin to speak.

"All right now," Mundy was saying happily, "come on out of there. Now." (continued on page 36)Peeping Tom Patrol(continued from page 30) He pulled the door open wide. "I said now. Or do you want me to run you in?"

The commotion inside the car stopped. A man got out the front door. He had his pants on but nothing else. Redmond felt himself irresistibly drawn around to the other side of the car.

He watched the girl get out in the glare of Mundy's light. She was clutching her clothes desperately to the front of her, her face an agony of shock. She was completely nude.

"All right, sister," Mundy said, "you can put your dress on now."

The girl turned to face the car. They all watched, all three men. She dropped all her clothes, her fingers horribly nervous, and bent to separate her dress from the rest. She raised her arms and put the dress on over her head and for an instant her whole body was gleaming and bare in the light of Mundy's flash. Nobody said anything while she put the dress on. When she was done she turned and the light fell again on her face, and Redmond realized dumbly that he knew her.

Mundy let the man put his shirt on, beginning to question him. When the man told who he was and who the girl was and showed his driver's license, Mundy asked him for one good reason why he shouldn't run him in. The man asked for a break. Redmond watched the girl.

She worked in the insurance office on the corner of Ninth and Central. She was about 20 years old and so pretty she made him shy. He had seen her every day when he was walking the downtown beat, seen her coming to work and going home and stepping out now and then for coffee, but he had never spoken to her. He knew all the girls in her office, he had had coffee dates with most of them and dated some of them, but never her. She was too pretty. He remembered that the other girls had not liked her for it, but they had never said anything against her. She was too remote. Cold and remote, and beautiful. He continued to stare at her, unable to move.

Once she had her dress on, Mundy took the light away from her. She had her head down, she did not see him. The dress was still open at the neck; she began to button it slowly, fumbling with the buttons. Her hair was wild and hung down in black streaks across her face. Without shoes she looked smaller than he remembered her. He wanted suddenly very much to help her. But he did not move.

He went on watching her, looked down once at the soft white pile of underclothes around her bare feet. He could feel his heart beat violently under his badge. She knelt in the sand and began to gather her clothes, lifting one hand to brush the black hair from her eyes, and then looked up and saw him.

She recognized him. She froze with her hand in her hair, on her knees, staring at him. It was the first time in his life Redmond had ever seen anyone look at him with terror.

He turned his eyes away. He heard the man trying painfully to be friendly with Mundy, asking him please to be a regular guy. Redmond began to want badly to kill Mundy. After a while Mundy turned toward him.

"Well," he said slowly, drawing it out, sucking it, feeding on it, "well, Red, what do you think? Should we give 'em a break? Hah?"

You son of a bitch, Redmond thought, oh, you lousy son of a dirty bitch. Because Mundy knew already he would let them go--he always let them go. Because then afterward, when he thought back on it and saw the girl naked and in agony and felt the thrill of it, he could still be virtuous, still be clean, because he had been a good joe, he had let them go. And I ought to take you, Redmond thought, I ought to open you up right here and now, you son of a bitch. But there was a kind of sick paralysis in his belly, and he could not move. He had to stand looking at the girl and he said finally, huskily, "Yes, let them go."

He listened while Mundy turned back to the man and told him how rough it would be if he got pulled in on a charge like this. He might lose his job. And how about the girl's reputation? He ought to think before he did a thing like this again. The man waited, smiled sickly, sweating. Redmond looked again at the girl's face.

She was standing now, her underclothes held crumpled in her hands, against her breast. He could not see her face clearly, but her eyes were wide and dark in the moonlight, and he understood. She thought he would talk about it. She thought he would tell it all over Ninth and Central. The paralysis was going away, he began to feel ugly. He thought this business better end quickly. She waited in front of him, unbearably tense, the white silk shining in her hands, like an offering. Something broke in him and he turned to Mundy.

"All right," he said. "That's enough." He spun and walked away, his feet thick and heavy in the sand.

Mundy was left alone. He did not like it but he had to break off. He told them both to get the hell out of there and came stalking back down the road. Redmond watched him come and behind him watched the soft light flowing down the girl's body.

"Now just what the hell----"

"You," Redmond said. "You. Listen. Nothing, you son of a bitch, nothing. Don't say anything. I'm telling you, I'm telling you this one time, don't say anything. Not a word. Not a goddam other word."

There was this thing in his voice, this cold and enormous thing, that Mundy had heard before. He was an old cop and patient and not a fool. He said nothing. They checked off duty and Redmond went home and thought about the girl standing with her underwear in her hands.

• • •

The next day was his day at Ninth and Central. He checked on at four and went over to the corner by the bank and waited. He had thought about it all day and the more he thought the worse it got. Because no matter which way you looked at it, it had been sexy. It was a damn dirty thing to do but he had felt the thrill and it shook him to admit it. Now it was necessary for him to make it right. He had to talk to her, to apologize, to make her see that he would never tell anybody.

She came out of the bank. She looked up to the corner and saw him and stopped, staring at him.

She was neat and small and shockingly pretty. She wore a light pink dress which swirled around her legs as she moved. She looked toward him for a long moment and he could see no expression on her face, no expression at all. She came and walked straight to him and stopped.

"Got time for a cup of coffee?" he said.

She gazed at him blankly, her eyes cold and clear. After a moment she nodded. They went silently across the street into Sam's and sat down in a booth. He had trouble beginning it. She was older than he had thought, more woman than girl, and it startled him to see that she was more composed than he was.

"I just wanted to tell you," he began, "about last night..."

She watched him calmly, still without expression, lighting a cigarette as he talked. A cool customer, he thought admiringly, a cool, cool customer. He saw her eyes go down to his badge and then back up to his face and an odd, thoughtful look came into her eyes. He became suddenly and joltingly aware of her body. He could not help thinking of how she had looked last night.

But he went on with it. When he was done he told her he would feel a (concluded on page 70)Peeping Tom Patrol (continued from page 36) damn sight better if she would say something. A slight smile came over her face, along with the odd look still in her wide, dark eyes. She said simply that she believed him.

He relaxed and was able to grin. The coffee came and they sat making conversation and it was gradually and surprisingly very pleasant. She chatted briefly about nothing, but her voice was low and warm and her smile delightful and he began to wonder just what in hell was behind that puzzling look in her eyes. The vision of her in the night kept coming back. He passed through one of those moments when it was absolutely necessary to reach out and touch her. But he didn't move. And you can't ask her out, he thought. How the hell could he ask her? She'd think it was blackmail.

"It must be very interesting," she was saying, "being a cop."

"Yep," Redmond said. He started to rise. "Well, I better get back to the beat."

She made no move to go. She sat looking up at him, smiling, something rare and delightful dancing in her eyes.

"I feel very peculiar about you," she said. "You know all about me."

"Not all," Redmond said.

"You know what I mean. I ... don't have to hide anything from you. We're not trying to ... well, kid each other. You see? It's odd."

He didn't quite understand. His eyes went automatically down the front of her dress and she leaned back suddenly and moved her arms away from in front of her and smiled at him softly, lazily.

"I know what you're thinking," she said.

"I'll bet you do."

"Why don't you ask?"

"You know damn well why."

"Why?"

"You'd think it was only -- --"

"And it wouldn't be?"

Redmond took a deep breath.

"So you won't even ask?" the girl said. She was still smiling but her eyes had closed slightly and there was no mistaking the look in her face, and it came to him in that moment with an enormous shock how little he knew about women.

"All right," she said softly, "if you won't ask. When you get off duty tonight, Mr. Policeman, why don't you come on by and pick me up?"