Constable Quam’s first night in his new position has proved a revelation, though not necessarily a pleasant one.
Complicated as his time with DS Hook seemed, with the Dry Squad life has become even more so, albeit in a different way.
Quam was brought up to view complication as the business of “experts”—parsing this and that, examining things in little pieces. It was not a part of his upbringing. As his father would say: “Son, you need to know the time, not how to fix a watch.”
Father would be proud of his acceptance into an elite unit. During his morning of instruction and grounding he was told that he had been selected for his “even disposition,” together with a willingness to disregard “the unpleasantness attached to the work.” He also learned that the unit has a high turnover rate; that many officers transfer out within weeks, men who find the “unpleasantness” too much and night work a strain.
Quam feels he is up to the challenge. Frontline police work is not for men who get squeamish at the sight of blood. Nor is it the end of the world for police to set aside regulations that, followed to the letter, would allow criminals to sneer at the law and murderers to run scot-free.
Thanks to recent legislation, the Dry Squad has freed its officers to deal with suspects as they see fit.
The team he has been assigned to is one of the most seasoned on all fronts. Sergeant Rocco has on more than one occasion shot a fleeing suspect in both thighs at fifty feet. Constable Simpson, an ex-carpenter, can spot a trap door or a false wall easily and swings an axe like a faller. Constable McNamara’s sawed-off shotgun (also called a riot gun, depending on the circumstances) speaks for itself: last year it blew off the hand of a Maltese seaman who gestured with a stiletto in a threatening way. The wharves have had less trouble with foreign sailors since then.
Quam recognizes his colleagues as tougher, more experienced officers from whom he has much to learn.
For one thing, he would like to know how his fellow plainclothes officers manage to dress so well on a clothing allowance that provided him with one serge suit from Woodward’s whose jacket pulls at his armpits, plus a shirt that makes him sweat, and two collars. Yet here stands Sergeant Rocco in three-piece hunting tweeds and a paisley tie. Combined with his shaved head, two signet rings on the left hand and two sets of visibly callused knuckles, the outfit befits a hunter of more urban creatures.
Similarly, Quam admires Constable Simpson for his expensive hobnail boots, custom-fitted with iron toe pieces that can smash a door—or a tibia.
Quam’s first raid was a classic of its kind, carried out with military precision and the brutality of invading Goths.
The target was a small chicken farm at the end of Prior Street, with a barn and a modest but cozy dwelling with latticework on the verandah and a freshly whitewashed front walk. The squad had received a tip from an anonymous source (a rival probably) to the effect that a local farm was operating a covert delivery business by telephone using the code “Two dozen eggs and a redbreast chicken.” From here, gathering evidence was a simple process of tracing the telephone and making the call.
Having gathered on the verandah, at a signal from Rocco, McNamara shot out the living room window (known as a wake-up call) while Simpson demolished the front door with an axe. Quam stood by with a sledgehammer, ready to follow the other three into the house and smash the furniture to bits.
In the front hall, after McNamara fired another blast into the ceiling, the homeowner appeared at the top of the staircase, a look of weary fatalism on his face as he watched Simpson’s axe splinter the walls in a search for disguised doors. Quam, meanwhile, undertook a search for concealed compartments that made shards of the fireplace and kindling of the mantle.
Upstairs, above the crash of smashing wood, Quam could faintly hear the terrified wails of children.
Having experienced a close-up view of McNamara’s shotgun, the farmer (whose name was Culbert) reluctantly showed them to a hidden door at the back of a closet; it led to a cavernous, windowless addition behind the kitchen containing all the equipment necessary for the manufacture of whisky, including a fifty-gallon mash barrel, a copper wash boiler, a copper dome, a copper gooseneck and coiled tubing.
Simpson set to work with his axe, punching holes in the fifty-gallon barrel so that the cellar would be flooded, while Quam made use of his sledgehammer to reduce the distilling equipment to lumps of copper.
Always with a nose for a stash, Rocco suspected that there was more to be found, and after a period of persuasion, Mr Culbert led them to the chicken barn behind the house, to a room that could only be reached by ladder (the body heat from below made it a good location for aging liquor). The barrels stacked against the wall were quickly dealt with by Simpson, producing torrents of amber liquid and eliciting an outraged chorus of squawks and shrieks from below.
Destroying property is strenuous work. By the time Culbert was safely locked in a cell (somewhat the worse for wear), it was good thinking on McNamara’s part to have put by several bottles of Red Chicken as a pick-me-up.
Constable Quam quickly became used to routine procedure: break down the door, smash the windows, terrorize everyone in the house, destroy everything breakable and throw the man of the house in gaol.
One target was a blind pig whose owner had failed to maintain good relations with competitors and the VPD, and whom Quam rather admired for his ingenuity—a spot in an alleyway where one could throw an amount of money into a cellar well and in moments a hand would appear with a bottle. It was one of the cleanest arrests Quam had ever seen—when the hand appeared, Simpson clapped a cuff on it.
It was common knowledge in the force that the owner had got himself in the bad graces of Joe Celona, whose administration oversees trade in illegal liquor. From the first day, Rocco made it clear that Celona himself was not a target the Dry Squad should pursue, the stated reason being his value as an informer on smaller bootleggers. The arrest statistics made the compromise worthwhile—why nail one lawbreaker when you can raid dozens?
As well, it does not escape Quam’s notice that, in enforcing the liquor laws, his team rarely ventures beyond Union Street, Hogan’s Alley, Hawks Street and the Fairview shacks, with one foray into Little Italy to destroy the homemade wine operation of a family from Naples, after a call to Rocco from a helpful neighbour.
What does trouble Quam from time to time is the growing suspicion that, in some instances, raids are taking place for purposes other than upholding the liquor laws. This came to mind with regard to the comely war widow with two children who conducted an “open house” on Dunlevy, and seemed to feel, to judge by her language, that she had been singled out by Simpson because of a previous personal relation that proved unsatisfactory.
When Constable Quam entered the Dry Squad and was told about “unpleasantness attached to the work,” the picture that came to mind was of body fluids, broken bones and bloody noses, not moral confusion.
From time to time he feels the urge to talk to a knowledgeable outsider, to ask, Is this the normal thing? He knows instinctively that it would be unwise to voice such thoughts to Rocco, Simpson and McNamara, who go about their work as cheerfully as your neighbourhood butcher.
And, of course, police duties have a positive side. For one thing, members of the Dry Squad enjoy an ample supply of free product and are spared the overpriced, diluted hooch available from the LCB stores.
On the other hand, something about the work keeps him awake at night. And he needs his sleep.
He once brought up this complicated matter for discussion with DS Hook, who seems to enjoy thinking so much. Hook’s only response was that he found the constable’s observations “interesting.”
The Fine Points of Liquor Enforcement
Selectivity Is Key
Ed McCurdy
Staff Writer
The Evening Star
While the Liquor Licensing Act is
Enforced with clubs and axes
Drys are appeased
The brewers are pleased
And the Liberals hoover the taxes.
“No one expects you to live on a policeman’s salary.”
This may sound like a joke of the same ilk as, “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman.” But both aphorisms carry the weight of hard-earned experience, whether applied to a drunk waking up in gaol without his watch or a constable supporting a family on $2,250 per year.
According to a member of the force who must remain nameless, to have a viable career in policing one must take, shall we say, a nuanced view of law enforcement procedure and to whom it should apply, and be willing to follow custom in accepting small rewards from the public for a job well done.
Our mayor himself has set the tone, having been elected while a fugitive from charges of embezzlement in Chicago. Meanwhile, on what is supposedly the other side of town, Joe Celona, the mayor’s friend and fellow horse-racing enthusiast, presides over two of the most popular hotels in the city, the Maple and the Balmoral, where entire floors of rooms remain fully booked for months on end, even during the off-season.
To establish a close relationship with the business community, aldermen with stellar reputations eagerly join the mayor in accepting invitations to the Belmont Cabaret or on a yacht cruise, with Mr Celona furnishing “live entertainment.”
Nor, as an example to youth, should one gainsay the entrepreneurial spirit of “Blondie” Wallace, a Celona associate who has managed, on a boxing teacher’s salary, to acquire a fleet of moving and storage trucks for, one has to presume, purposes other than moving and storage.
For their part, committed as they are to the maintenance of public order, members of the Dry Squad eschew Point Grey and the West End, whose residents content themselves with an orderly glass of sherry in the privacy of their living rooms.
For effective enforcement (and acceptable arrest statistics), better to concentrate on the kitchen bars and Greek grocery stores in the East End, where crimes result more from need than greed.
It is an unspoken edict that the frontline soldier in the provincial “war against bootlegging” must combine selectivity with deterrence. Selectivity—because in the case of the well-heeled, the cause of justice is so easily thwarted by their devilishly clever lawyers. Deterrence—because prosecution is more efficient when the suspect can’t afford a lawyer to press a lawsuit.
For example, in one case, after ransacking a house on Union Street and turning the furniture into toothpicks, officers found a single bottle of whisky in a room large enough to hold several cases. Officers were not pleased by the smug look of innocence on the offender’s face.
The offender became less smug when he woke up lying in a ditch outside Haney with two black eyes and a fractured arm (shortly after that, he moved to Calgary without filing a complaint).
In the same vein, a remarkable number of small-time bootleggers seem to have had the audacity to “violently resist arrest” and arrive at the station with bruises and broken ribs, unexplained incontinence and difficulty swallowing.
Asked about this element of violence in enforcement, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s office replied: “A critical disease calls for strong medicine. British Columbians jolly well understand that.”
For the men on the front lines of the war against bootlegging, it appears that law enforcement officers have found that there is more than one way to skin a cat.