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“Give it all to her, you sonofabitch!” Officer Crater ordered angrily, and watched as the building contractor gave the lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service all the money in his wallet. Then he turned to the hotel security officer. “You’ll see that she gets out of here and home all right, right?”
“Absolutely.”
Officer Crater then turned and left the room.
The lady from the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service went home and telephoned Mrs. Osadchy to report what had happened.
“How much did he give you, Marianne?”
“Six hundred bucks.”
“You keep it, and I promise you, this will never happen again.”
Mrs. Osadchy also reported the incident to Mr. Cassandro, who considered the situation a moment and then said, “I think, since the cop was so nice, that we ought to show our appreciation. Give the broad a couple of hundred and tell her to give it to the cop.”
“I already told Marianne she could keep the dough she got from the john.”
“Then you give her the money for the cop, Harriet. Consider it an investment. Trust me. Do it.”
Two days later, while Officer Crater was walking his beat, the lady from the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society who moonlighted at the Eastern Pennsylvania Executive Escort Service approached him.
“I want to thank you for the other night,” she said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Aaaaaah,” Officer Crater said, somewhat embarrassed.
“No, I really mean it,” she said. “I really appreciate what you did for me.”
“Forget it,” Officer Crater said.
The lady handed him what looked like a greeting card.
“What’s this?” Officer Crater asked.
“It’s a thank-you card. I got it at Hallmark.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Officer Crater said. “All I was trying to do was make the best of a bad situation.”
“You’re sweet,” the lady said. “What did you say your name was?”
“Crater.”
“I mean your first name.”
“Charley,” Officer Crater replied.
“Mine’s Marianne,” she said. “Thanks again, Charley.” She kissed Officer Crater on the cheek and walked away.
Officer Crater stuffed the Hallmark thank-you card in his pocket and resumed walking his beat. When he got home, he took another look at it. Inside the card were four crisp fifty-dollar bills.
“Jesus Christ!” Officer Crater said. He went to the bathroom and tore the thank-you card in little pieces and flushed the pieces down the toilet. His wife, he knew, would never understand. The two hundred he folded up and put in the little pocket in his wallet which, before he got married, he had used to hold a condom.
The next time he saw her, he told himself, he would give the money back to her. There was no point in making a big deal of the money; telling his sergeant about it would mean having to tell him what he had done in the first place.
A week after that, before he saw the lady again, he had a couple of drinks too many after work in Dave’s Bar, at Third Street and Fairmount Avenue, with Officer William C. Palmerston, whom he had worked with in the Sixth District before Palmerston had been transferred to Vice.
He told him, out of school, about the thank-you card with the two hundred bucks in it, and that he intended to return it to the hooker the next time he saw her.
“Don’t be a goddamned fool,” Palmerston said. “Keep it.”
