What I Didn't Know. ***by Frank Hickey*** "Police!" I shout. "Don't move!" I yank Joey T. out of his car. "Police officer," he grunts. "What?" I ask. He mumbles again. "HUH?" I shout. "Retired," he mutters. "You aren't retired," I say. "They fired you for fraud." Around us, US postal inspectors,state troopers and District Attorney's investigators like me grip pistols and shotguns. "Why ya bustin' my chops?" Joey gripes. Standing about 50, with a necklace of chins under a playboy moustache, he spits on the sidewalk. "Criminal impersonation," I say. "Using the mails to defraud, RICO statute and violation of the Sanitary Code for spittin' on the sidewalk." Like an overactive raw detective, I believe in charging every possible crime and more. Looking back, I was a young fool. All over New York, other teams arrest75 criminals in surprise raids. For 12 years, these fake detectives and ex-cops scammed millions from the public. They posed as cops collecting for their departments' welfare funds. They pull in about $600,000 per year, or $1,500,000 in today's money. Back at my office, with my boss Joe, I interview another arrested fraudster. He is an aging black man named Clark Simmons, a former detective for eight years. "Place of birth?" I ask. "Cameron, Louisiana," he answers. That surprises me. "I worked in Cameron," I say. Simmons looks shocked. "Doing what?" he asks. "Private eye, working out of New Orleans for two years," I say. Joe, my boss, rolls his blue eyes and walks away, laughing. "Cameron had maybe a thousand people when I left," he says. "Now, about 300. Hurricaines always tore us up." Much later, I see Clark Simmons' name in the Internet. Clark's father had died young so he joined the Navy to help his family. On December 7, 1941, he was a mess attendant on the USS Utah in Pearl Harbor. Mess attendant was the only job that a black man could get in the Navy. They serviced the white officers' laundry, bedding, food and shoes. Japanese planes bombed the Utah. Down below, Clark saw the ocean rushing in to sink his ship in eight minutes. He dove through a porthole and swam. Bullets tore into his leg, shoulder and head. Throughout the war, he served at the Battle of Midway and rose to Chief Petty Officer rank. Street cops always find crooks born in 1967 who claim that they fought in Vietnam. They lie. They would be eight year-old soldiers at that time. Clark never breathed a word to me about his war. ***Frank Hickey at frankhickey.net ***Frank was a cop. Somehow. He writes the Dancing Max Royster crime novels about the world's only ballroom detective.