HEAT

After watching my favourite crime story HEAT, for about the tenth time, my mind went back to my former boss, Cpl. Joe (God bless his soul) in comparing his style to the detective ( Al Pacino). The style used by Joe and in one case one of the phrases used in the script was almost eerie.

Cpl..Joe was from the old school, he was hard drinking and his methods were unique. He did not go too high in the ranks because of his human weakness towards alcohol but his superiors could not deny that he was a good investigator and his track record for solving crime could not be ignored.

One day my supervisor advised me that I was moving into the plain clothes section " Detective " Needless to say I was ecstatic considering that I did not ask for this change in duties. My new boss was to be Joe, and having heard about his reputation I was not deterred as I wanted to learn from this man regardless of his human weakness.

I was the driver on most occasions and I listened to everything that Joe had to say which sometimes drifted off to various subjects. Joe was a great guy for his own sayings and he liked to read books on police stories based on true cases. I will always remember him saying to me when we were having a beer in the pub while working, " never trust a man who wont have a drink with you ". There were some days that our tour of duty started out in a pub before noon.

Joe was smooth, he and I would sit with known criminals in the pub and after a number of beers, information of criminal activities would slip out of their mouths after joe's smooth talking and generous offers of beer. After having our conversations and on the way home, we would go over the information given to us for future reference which often paid off.

Getting back to HEAT, the style of sitting face to face with your adversary was shown when Pacino (detective) DeNiro (criminal) had coffee together and had a conversation where it was shown that they had an understanding and a certain respect for each other. That reminded me of Joe's style of talking over a table full of beer with a known criminal.

The other conversation that blew me away was when DeNiro ( criminal) was talking to his big time criminal partner ( Jon Voight.) Voight said to him
about the detective " remember this guy can shoot and miss but you can't miss
once " What blew me away was another saying Joe had which he often said to criminals face to face, " we can make a dozen mistakes but you can only make one". If you compare the two sayings, you can see that they have the same message.

As said before, Joe liked to read true crime stories. This lead directly to solving a high profile extortion case. To make a long story short, letters were being received by a lady complainant,demanding money to be delivered to a certain address. The letters were unusual in their phrasing and when Joe went over them something seemed to bother him and he couldn't quite figure out why.

I was assigned to pose as the delivery man and upon making the delivery to an adult female, I made the signal to let Joe know that the delivery had been made. After identifying ourselves, the lady had a cover story which was to the effect that she was told by another male who lived in the house that the parcel was ok to receive and that she had no knowledge of its contents.

While Joe and I were glancing around in the room, Joe noticed a soft covered book with the crime story " Crime of the Century" The Leopold and Loeb Case.
It turns out that Joe had read this book and after glancing through it he figured out why the wording of the letters bothered him. The Leopold and Loeb case also involved letters being written and in similar wording as was used in the letters in this case. In Joe's usual smooth manner, he had the lady admit that the book was hers and that she had been reading it. After a few minutes, she broke down crying, and gave a full confession.

The motive for the extortion was the result of receiving a botched abortion by the victim of the extortion. In those years there was no protection for persons needing this service. The lady had lost her child and almost died from infection. This case opened up another major case dealing with the person who performed the procedure which is another long story with amazing results.

This was a long way in explaining how HEAT, gave me a flashback of the days with an amazing man. I did move up through the ranks and I believe that working with Joe, had much to do with my career. I only wish that I would have in his style had a beer with him to thank him.