When I was a rookie in 52 Division I was often partnered up with him and while we walked the beat or shared a squad car together he never stopped talking about how much he detested what he was doing and how he longed to be back home in England.
He was a strange guy, a man in his mid thirties, a little taller than me but not overly large for a policeman. He was slim but solid looking, scruffy, with black hair, swarthy hawk- like facial features topped with a badly executed brush cut. His uniform was littered with cigarette ashes, looking like the dog had slept on it. He had a general unwashed look about him and didn’t seem to care. Even after several cautions from the Duty Sergeant he would turn up day after day flaunting a batted old issue hat that he continued to wear even though he knew was against regulations.
While we were out on our first patrol together he told me about the job he had left in the old country and how much he regretted his decision to immigrate. He said he had worked in the props department at Pinewood Movie Studios and went on to describe some of the films he had helped create sets for. He talked proudly of how he had learned how to make sheets of plywood and a few wooden dowels appear to be the riveted iron plates on the bridge of a battle ship for a film about the naval battles in WW2 and other theatrical tricks he had learned. I recognized a couple of the films he referred to and if he was putting me on he was doing a good job of it. Most of my conversations with him centered on that part of his life and I found it hard to believe the rumors I had heard about him.
Word was that he was very tough little scrapper who had grown up in the slums of London- quick with his fists and not afraid of anyone. Most of the guys on the job depended on their brawn for self-defense but Bob was one of the few who had taken up martial arts. He was always at me to join him at his Judo classes but I never did. I adhered to my father’s theory that it was a poor set of legs that let your nose get in trouble.
I got my first glimpse of the dark side of his personality one night when we were called to break up a bar fight at a local tavern. On our way into the place a big aggressive looking fellow waving a knife confronted us. While I was deciding whether to grab my nightstick or my gun Bob casually reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade then flicked the blade open inches from the man’s nose. There was an evil glint in my partner’s eyes as he stood staring the man down and the effect was immediate. The man dropped his knife and stood transfixed while, after a nod from Bob, I cuffed him.
Bob’s desire to be doing something other than police work had turned him into a rogue of sorts. He didn’t care about the job anymore and was always up to the kind of stuff that could get most guys fired. I was spending a lot of time with him and although I liked the man I was always worried that some of the things he dragged me into would result in both of us getting the boot. Small stuff like hiding from the patrol sergeant when he came to check on us, and then pelting him with snowballs. He smoked in the scout cars, cadged free coffee from the restaurants, slept on the night shift, took the odd nip and never paid retail to any of the local merchants. These infractions were not that uncommon but there were some other pretty serious breaches of conduct.
Thinking back, I suppose he was always purposely trying to get the ax and for some reason wasn’t very successful at it. His close relationship with some of the local hookers and bootleggers raised eyebrows but even these transgressions didn’t lead to his demise.
When I asked Maloney, another cop I was often partnered up with, why the department put up with Bob’s shenanigans he shook his head and said, “The man was born with a horseshoe up his arse. He keeps pushing his luck with his dirty tricks but before they catch up with him he usually comes up with a brilliant piece of police work that wipes his slate clean.” In the few weeks I had been working with Bob in 1964 he had pissed off so many of his superior officers and broken so many rules that I figured, despite what Maloney had said, it would be impossible for him ever to redeem himself. I was wrong.
There had been a spate of bank robberies in the city. Montreal thugs were dropping in droves to loot Toronto the Good. The hold-up squad decided to call on the other ranks so they would have sufficient numbers to put plain-clothes officers posing as bank clerks in all the juicy targets like the banks on Yonge St. and Bob and I drew the short straw. It was bound to be a boring job. The only saving grace was that we didn’t each need to spend a full shift at our assigned bank the CIBC at 199 Yonge St. I would do the first half of the day and if Bob chose to show up on time, as he seldom did, he would handle the second.
We spent days at it walking around behind the counters sweating in the tweed jackets we needed to wear to conceal our shoulder holsters. Bob was not one to hide his displeasure at being stuck in the bank and when he wasn’t complaining to the duty sergeant he was moaning to the bank manager. I figured it was just a question of time ‘til his bad attitude got him off the detail and hopefully me too.
It didn’t happen immediately but one day near the end of a long boring stretch Bob came in to relieve me looking happy as hell giving me the news that this was to be our last day in the banking business. He was in such a good mood that he had uncharacteristically arrived an hour and a half before he needed to and didn’t insist that I go and bring him back some coffee and doughnuts- a ritual on every other day. I thanked him and told him that I was going to go directly to the station and arrange to use some of the time I had accumulated to have an afternoon off.
I was half way home in my Volkswagen Beetle when I heard the news. There had been an attempted robbery at our bank and an officer was wounded. The rest of the story I got from the newspapers and directly from Bob once he was out of the hospital. It seems that shortly after I left him Bob had retired to a secluded corner of the bank and lit up a smoke. He was wondering what the Department might have in store for him now that he’d nagged his way out of this assignment when he noticed something strange happening at one of the wickets.
Now this is when this story takes a turn that most people will be hesitant to believe and if I hadn’t recently found the pictures from the bank’s security cameras to substantiate it, I would be hesitant to trust my own recollections: a burly looking goon in a trench coat and a fedora was confronting the lady teller behind the counter and she wasn’t looking at all happy. Bob reached inside his jacket and felt for his clumsy old issue Webbley and then flew into action. The man didn’t see him approaching and Bob didn’t see a weapon so he decided to avail himself of some the techniques he had leaned in his Judo classes and tried to wrestle the man down. It turned out that the bullnecked goon was more monster than man and he flung his two hundred and fifty pounds around, tossing Bob off like a fly. He landed in a heap and that’s when he saw the guy’s gun. He reached for his own revolver but it was too late- the man fired and the shot hit Bob in the lower abdomen driving him to floor and sending his own gun skittering across the marble floor.
Seeing Bob writhing on the floor the thug gathered up the cash he had stolen and, sneering in my fallen partner’s direction, headed for the door, gun in hand. Seeing the bandit escaping, Bob rolled over and reached down to his ankle where, against all regulations, he had hidden a Beretta automatic pistol. He drew it and emptied its magazine into the guy’s back. He died from his wounds but, believe it or not, Bob was spared because the bullet he took hit him in his belt buckle.
If things had gone on schedule I would have been the guy in the bank when it was being robbed and the headlines might have read quite differently. “ COP COWERS IN WASHROOM WHILE BANK IS ROBBED” or God forbid “ ROOKIE POLICEMAN SHOT & KILLED”
Bob became an instant hero, receiving commendations and being lauded in the press; you would assume that he would finally be content with his lot in life. Not so. After he got out of the hospital he was given a promotion of sorts and was working with the detectives but I heard through the grapevine that he was up to his old tricks again and had just about used up all the brownie points acquired for his exploits at the bank.
He was at another low ebb when history repeated itself. Bob and another detective answered a call to a robbery in progress at a liquor store on Davenport Rd. As usual Bob was the first man through the door and was confronted with a man with a gun. His own revolver was still holstered so as he went for it he tried to bluff it out telling the man to drop his weapon or he would shoot him. “With what?” the man sneered, taking the opportunity to shoot Bob, driving him back against the door. The robber then tried to dash past him but Bob, in spite of his wound, got his gun out and another crook bit the dust. And so began another cycle. I don’t know what became of him after he recovered from his second gunshot wound; I left the job shortly after and lost track. Years later when I went to see the movie “Dirty Harry” the people around me were seeing Clint Eastwood but I was seeing my old friend Bob.
I have recently learned that he was belatedly awarded the Order of The British Empire BEM in 1968 If he is still alive he would be in his eighties by now but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he was still around, he was a hard bugger to kill.
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