Fall from Grace (23 page)

The air in the room was stale, as if it hadn’t been used in years. But it was tidy. There was a small desk tucked into a corner, with an old wooden office chair in front of it. The desk was flanked by two three-drawer filing cabinets and the top was clear except for a can full of pens and pencils, a short stack of legal pads, a clock radio with the correct time, and a black rotary phone. It looked like Gardiner had furnished his room with items absconded from the set of that old TV cop show
Barney Miller.
There was no other chair in the room, no other place for anybody else to sit, so it seemed that no one else in Gardiner’s family ever came down here.

And while the living room upstairs was filled with family memorabilia, this room looked to be a shrine to his career in the Police Service. The walls were filled with photos, everything from his academy class shot to grip and grins with various dignitaries, and candid shots from the job and social events, showing a young Gardiner with other people who were probably fellow cops. It was not surprising that all the people in the photos were men; even now female cops are still a minority in the service but in Gardiner’s time they were probably rarer than a passenger pigeon.

Along with the photos were citations, medals, framed thank-you letters on letterhead from schools and small businesses, everything that a good cop collects in a solid twenty-five-year career. There was even a pressed uniform hanging in dry-cleaner plastic and I bet if I looked in the bottom drawer of the desk, I’d find his old service weapon. The ammunition would be here as well, still in its boxes, but shoved behind a stack of files in the back of one of the locked cabinets. It was obvious that Gardiner was one hell of a pack rat and I didn’t envy this collection the way I envied his collection of family photos upstairs.

Gardiner grabbed a handful of pens and pencils out of the can and then dumped the rest of the contents on the desk. Along with a few coins and lenses from old sunglasses was a set of keys. He picked them up, sat down in the chair, and unlocked the filing cabinet on the right. He bent over to open the bottom drawer and flipped all the way to the end to get what he was looking for. Without turning, he reached around and held the file out to me.

“This is what I told you about,” he said as he closed the cabinet, locked the file, and then dropped the keys back into the can with the pens and pencils. The chair squeaked as he turned to face me.

“Case number 1349–987,” he said as I read the number on the file. I also noticed that the folder wasn’t something that he’d bought at a stationery store; it was the original Police Service file folder. I slowly opened the file and saw that none of the papers inside were copies; these were the original reports, complete with notes and several black-and-white eight-by-ten photos, long-angle surveillance shots, each one showing a typical john-and-hooker shot: a vehicle stopped on the darkened street, the girl bent over to peer through the passenger window. In a couple of shots, the vehicle in question was a police cruiser.

“Yeah, that is the original file you have there,” he said, answering my unasked question. “You won’t find anything like this in the archives, I can tell you that. This is something that nobody would miss, anyway, so when I took it, I didn’t think I would get in trouble. Showing you is another story, but go ahead, read it and let me know what you think.”

I slowly flipped through the pages, noting that Gardiner may have been relaxed in his demeanor as a cop but he was ruthless in his paperwork. It was a typical indictment report, a series of statements, records, and notes that a cop files with the Crown Prosecutor office when he believes charges should be filed.

Everything in the file was organized by time, with the first reports of a minor assault against prostitutes at the beginning followed by roughly scrawled statements and interview notes indicating that some of these assaults may have involved members of the police service, or at the very least, young men in plainclothes carrying badges and holstered weapons, and the further interview notes and statements saying that some of these police officers were using these prostitutes as informants, gathering information on their pimps and drug deals they may have known about.

So far, that was nothing unusual; prostitutes are regularly used as informants. But the next few pages showed the relationships went deeper. And darker. Two statements stated that the informant relationship was only the beginning and these so-called cops were threatening communication for the intent of prostitution (the typical charge because officially prostitution isn’t illegal in Canada. It’s a typically Canadian quirk. You are allowed to pay or charge someone to have sex with you, however, if you actually verbalize the offering of and asking for sexual services in exchange for money, then you have broken the law) and other criminal charges in exchange for sexual favors, for themselves, for friends, and also for extortion purposes. If any of the prostitutes refused these offers, then charges were filed against them or, sometimes, they were assaulted, sexually and/or otherwise.

Those statements painted a bleak picture of police corruption and brutality, but the cynic in me believed that the statements from the prostitutes were false and designed to be a means of getting back against the cops who were only doing their duty to make the city streets safe and free of things like prostitution. It all came down to who are you going to believe, the woman who sells her body on the street, usually to get money for her drug habit, or the guy who rides in the cruiser risking his life for making our city a better and safer place? Most everyone would believe the cop.

But one of the statements was highly detailed, listing incidents, threats of charges, assaults, parties, blackmail attempts, along with dates, times, locations, and the badge numbers and cruiser numbers of the members involved. This statement was further backed up by Gardiner’s work.

His investigative skills seemed to be pretty solid and he had a plethora of information to back up the prostitute’s statement; duty schedules matching the dates of some of the incidents with the badge numbers, motor pool request matching the cruiser numbers listed, arrest reports connected to threats, a sidebar report about a member of the Police Commission, who was critical of the police service, being caught in the backseat of the car with one of the prostitutes in question, plus a couple of invitations to stag parties, offering special entertainment, that coincided with some of the parties the prostitute had listed. Gardiner even had what he had termed “an undercover report” in which he attended one of these parties and cataloged events and possible charges.

The guy sitting in the chair in his basement was one of two things: a hell of a cop, or a rat, depending on which side one landed on, who believed the prostitutes and then backed up their allegations with a solid case, including photos.

When I turned to the page that listed the recommended charges and the names of the cops he recommended should be charged, my heart stopped. I read it a second time, this time much slower, making note of each name on the list. A couple of them almost knocked me on the floor. I looked up at Gardiner, shocked at what was either incredible bravery or stupidity. “Were you serious with this?”

He nodded, giving me a long, slow blink. “Very serious. I never recommended charges without a solid case and this was one of the most solid cases I ever made. As you may or may not know, some cops in the service are idiots, they think they are immune to the real world and can play by their own rules.”

“I don’t know many of these names, but these two, I think everybody knows who these guys are. They aren’t your basic cop.”

“Not anymore, yeah, but back then, these guys were a bunch of gung ho constables, fresh out of the academy and being trained by old school cops who had learned from even more old school cops that this is the way things are and how one does the job. Whoever they are now is immaterial. Back then they were just stupid constables, and from the look on your face, I know you know the type.”

I knew the type and had come across cops like the ones named in the file, but they were a minority. I also knew there were police like Gardiner or Whitford or the thousands of others who did their jobs with honor and respect. Police officers who took seriously their oaths about protecting the public and the city they lived. But the other truth of the matter was that there were countless times when good cops let the behavior of the bad ones slide because to call them to task or complain about them was to be labeled a rat. So in the end they were all tarred with the same brush when the bad or stupid ones transgressed.

But Gardiner’s list was something else: something worse. Gardiner’s list of “gung ho constables” fresh out of the academy included not only the recently resigned chief of police but the now-serving chief. This was a hell of a story that would blow through the city like a nasty winter blizzard, grinding it to a halt and creating a backlash that would reverberate for months, maybe years.

But I was not at all sure I wanted to be the one to write it. The reputation of every cop, even the good ones, would be tarnished by this. And every cop, even the good ones, would hate me for writing it. I wanted to take this file to Gardiner’s fireplace, toss it in, and roast a couple of marshmallows in its flame.

“You can keep that if you want. Nobody wanted it when I wrote it up,” Gardiner said, which was probably the understatement of the year. “Not even the Crown Prosecutor. I thought that fucker would have a heart attack when I showed him my report. Actually, the look on your face matches his, although he stopped breathing for so long I thought I would have to give a bit of mouth-to-mouth.”

“You actually filed this with the Crown?”

Gardiner gave a dismissive grunt. “This was one of the best cases I ever made in my career, so of course I filed it with the Crown. Nine months of work, poking into every cranny, buddying up with guys who made me puke, who made me feel ashamed to call myself a fellow member, and backing up all statements with a solid case and then recommending charges to the Crown. That’s what cops are supposed to do, isn’t it?”

No wonder he missed several rounds of promotions; this was the biggest fuck-off you could give a superior. But Gardiner’s words told me he was the bravest and the dumbest cop I had ever met. He had found fellow members involved in criminal activity, and instead of turning his back on it, filing it under “boys will be boys” or redrawing the thin blue line, he came forward with it. He didn’t care if the people being abused by the system were criminals themselves or living an unsavory lifestyle. He didn’t care if they would call him a rat, didn’t care about his chances for advancement or about being ostracized by every single cop in the country, he just did his job.

“But since I was not an official member of Internal Affairs and therefore not officially sanctioned or approved to conduct such an investigation, and since I didn’t go through official police channels, the Crown said they couldn’t file charges. The defense, they said, could get it all thrown out of court, but I knew that was a load of bull. They were just afraid; no doubt somebody in their office was involved in some way or had attended one of those special parties and they would look bad.”

“So why give this to me?”

His eyes took on a faraway look and it was several seconds before he answered. “You know, there are three basic rules of being a good cop,” he said, technically to me but the distant tone in his voice told me that someone else was supposed to be the recipient, a younger cop, his dead son, himself, his God, I didn’t know. “Rule Number One is that bad things happen.”

I nodded ’cause I had heard that before. Journalism has a similar rule: Bad things happen and that makes good news.

“Rule Number Two,” Gardiner continued, “is that you can’t change Rule Number One.”

He drifted away again and after a few more seconds, I nudged him with a clearing of my throat. He came back, as if his soul had visited faraway friends and then transported back into his body. “Huh? Yeah, right, Rule Number Three is that you still gotta try. Even though bad things happen and you can’t change that, you still gotta try. Every cop knows that, every good cop, I mean, with all the shit they see every day, with all the anger, violence, stupidity, and senseless waste of human life, you still gotta try.”

“What about bad cops?” I asked.

“Bad cops,” he said, tapping his finger against the file, “always forget about Rule Number Three. They forget they gotta keep trying.”

Reluctantly, I tucked the file under my arm, wondering if I should just toss the fucker the first chance I got. Gardiner seemed lighter as he stood up, his back a bit straighter as he saw me to the door. We shook hands at the front door, me trying my best to ignore the file in my hand. “Uh, thanks for your help,” I said, but I was lying.

Gardiner knew it. “Yeah, and fuck you, too,” he said with a laugh. “Don’t worry about it too much, Leo. I also gave this to you because I liked how you said, Fuck you, to the department when you wrote the story on whether there might be a serial killer. I liked the way you showed them that they weren’t doing their job, that a cheap-ass reporter could do a better job than them. And even though I was a cop, I liked that. You weren’t afraid to step into the shit and I hope you aren’t afraid to step in this shit. But I won’t be bothered if you don’t. You look like you got enough baggage already, so like I said downstairs, you can do what you want with the file, toss it, burn it, whatever. I don’t really care.”

He was telling the truth but only part of it. There was a part of him that wanted me to do something, to take over his case and ensure that justice was done, whatever justice a “cheap-ass reporter” could deliver. But I couldn’t help but wonder if it was worth it for me to try. Sure, it would make a fantastic story, but would it do me any good?