Compassion and Cops. ***by Frank Hickey*** Should good cops feel compassion for everyone? Johnny Cordes whelps up in the New York streets, stealing laundry from rooftop clotheslines and then peddling same. Some of his boyhood pals burn real crispy in the 'Old Sparky' electric chair. "The line between me and them was very thin," he says in his crackly city accent. "A little bad luck, one way or another, and I mighta winded up like them did." A bored and unruly student, he quits school to bankroll his family. On a bet, he goes on the cops and shows himself as a whiz-bang detective, without carrying a gun. Wise bosses ignore this since Cordes produces extraordinary cases. One night, he lumbers into a cigar store, three blocks from where I lived as a kid. He senses something wrong. Robbers grip the owner. Cordes tries leaving. He's streetwise. So he puts his hand over his heart, to slow down any bullets. One robber shoots Cordes right in that spot on his chest, trying to make him exceptionally deceased. Cordes drops, wounded but still feisty. Another robber leans over to finish Cordes off. A street athlete, Cordes grapples, disarms and shoots him in the belly button. The first robber blasts Cordes with three more slugs. Cordes staggers onto the sidewalk. A drunken off-duty sergeant, fresh from entertaining a bowling widow, mistakes Cordes for a gunman and shoots him in the face. For the rest of his life, this shot makes Cordes' ear just a conversation piece. He cannot hear. Everyone survives. Years later, after prison, the robber who gunned Cordes struggles to get some work on the city's docks. Nobody hires this ex-con. Cordes asks a ship's captain to throw the robber a chance. In the sparkling idiom of the quarter-deck, the captain refuses. Cordes replies in language no less exhilarating, here dry-cleaned somewhat. "There's a kid," Cordes says, "kicked around his whole life. Old man took it on the arches, Mom swims inna whiskey bottle, kid gets no break. Does his prison time, tries ta go straight. "So what if he shot me?" Cordes rants."Game over. I forgive him. Can't you?" "Not if he shot me," the captain says."Not in a million years. Sit down and eat some breakfast." "I don't want no breakfast, not from a sac sucker like you," Cordes snaps. "And it was me he shot. Not you. So, go suck rope, pal." The good captain objects. "Aw, ya sister's ass," Cordes says. "Ya want more crime onna docks or less crime? Here's your chance, jerk. And you're the kind of holy good Bible-thumping citizen always whining and cryin' for more cop protection." Cordes scores as the only detective to win two NYPD Medals of Honor. ***Frank Hickey If today looks a bit grim and you need to laugh, why not view frankhickeystories.blogspot.com? n (The question mark is optional.) *** Frank was a cop. Somehow. He writes the Dancing Max Royster crime novels about the world's only ballroom dancing detective.