For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.
2 Timothy 1:12 KJV

The contrast has the power to inspire.

Science teaches us that all this grandeur was caused by severe stress under the earth, contrary forces far beneath the surface. That on some day of reckoning it was all pushed forward, upward, till all tensions were stilled. The same could be said of me, I suppose. There were certain pressures at work in me as well. Things came undone that could not be put together again, at least not without divine intervention, the same God that put tranquility in the river, that gave the mountain its majesty. This book is a result of my gratitude.

Chattanooga today, this little Eden I have described, isn’t the same Chattanooga it was in the forties up into the mid-eighties. Her overseers cared nothing for her beauty any more than they cared for the purity of her soul. To them, all she offered was opportunity to feed their ambitions and line their pockets. She represented nothing but enterprise, and illegal commerce, a means to some end. Expedience only. Her overlords were corrupt and insatiable men, men without scruples, who created and maintained a corrupt system of government, the system I eventually immersed myself in as a young man, making my crimes as ugly as theirs. Like them, I didn’t seem to care too much for the town itself, as long as it took care of me, as long as I could feed and get as plump as everyone else. It was the only way to rise in the system, the only way to insure your own upward mobility. And everybody was in on it. We all took her for granted. Everybody had their hands in her pockets.

The real power sat on Lookout Mountain, a height above the rest of us. There was no Moses up there either, no commandments written on stone, no law except those that could be broken, bent, or ignored. There were no officials that weren’t corrupted somehow. Even the ones I liked, such as my first commissioner, H. P. Dunlap, who I considered, above all things, a gentleman, though he refused to feed from the city’s coffers himself, he gave his consent to those who did, fattening themselves and others on a well-organized system of graft and ballot mischief that would stand up with the best that American history had to offer. Right here, in this little Tennessee river town, "Little Chicago," as some of them named it.

Chattanooga, poised as she is in the heart of the South, with all her beauty and natural gifts, could have been numbered among the greats. Instead, she followed the will of her masters who made nothing less than a harlot of her. I too chose something else, something less, that is, until my own day of reckoning. I gave new meaning to the term good cop, bad cop. It is this duality, this very contrast that gives the book its title, as well as the metaphor that drives it.

But I don’t want to give too much away too soon and spoil your read. In this one book you have biography, you have suspense, you have madness, deceit, treachery, and underworld intrigue. You have murder, you have attempts at murder, you have innocence accused, and guilt unpunished. You have white lightning and whiskey runners. You have luxury, power, and privilege with their hands on all the strings. You have the most colorful whores, a great barroom brawl, and gunfights with such playbills as Cowboy Bob and the Shootout at The Fuzzy Duck. You have a small history of corruption, of bosses with their hidden doors, their secret chambers, and a maze of secret alliances. Kickbacks and bagmen. Supper money, "splo", and hooch.

In this one volume you have all the stuff of fiction, without the burden of a lie. You have all the benefit of great theatre, without having to leave your favorite chair. And the best part of it is, it’s all true. Down to the five o’clock shadow on the policemen dressed like prostitutes.

Above all other things it might be, this is a redemptive tale. A coming of age story, a struggle for liberation and identification. Of one man and one city.

One last word. I’m not a historian, nor am I an academic. I’m not even that good of a writer. But this book doesn’t come by way of scholarship, it comes by way of real life. Other than a few newspaper clippings, photographs, personal and official documentation, a book or magazine quote, and the odd comment from the few left who were there, who lived during those times, my strongest resource is memory. And though I’ve tried to be as faithful to the truth as I possibly can, and though I’ve tried to keep my judgments within the lines, to report what I experienced, still, life happens the way life happens. It comes to us as it comes, and it never seems to ask for our consent or our opinion. It is unpredictable, mysterious at best. That’s what makes it great, and worth the risk.

Bob Martin, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2006




Chapter 1


A Rite Of Passage


THERE ARE CERTAIN EVENTS in life we tend to look back on and remember as milestones. Maybe there is a moment that defines you, that sets you apart from the person you had been when you woke up that morning. The following was such an event for me, the day I crossed over. It was then I knew I was a cop.

It was 1962. A rookie cop, untried, untested, green and eager. Walking a beat, 11 and 12 beat to be exact, and with a noticeable bounce in my stride. I was at Zeke and Margaret’s, a restaurant and bar on Main Street. A man was sitting at the bar. His name was Sam Underwood. Sam had just been released from Federal Prison in Atlanta. Sam wasn’t a major felon. I mean he wasn’t a murderer, a rapist or anything quite as notorious as that. His were mostly federal charges, income tax evasion, fraud, etc. Any of these offenses, while not the mark of exemplary citizenship, still, it wasn’t enough to cause any unusual need for alarm. Most felons are not that eager to return to prison once they’ve been released. They usually behave. For a while.

This particular night Sam was drunk. Not only was he drunk, he was carrying a knife, a combination that could be cause for concern. Sam was an unlucky man. A professional criminal, he had spent most of his life behind bars (not the one he was sitting at presently, but the less forgiving ones, the ones made of steel). He was being loud and obnoxious, which, again, is not that bad. Drink does that. It makes idiots out of most of us and it makes bigger idiots out of, well, idiots. The knife wasn’t even the real problem, nor his liberal and almost experimental use of it in the past. The problem was Sam.

Then I walked in.

Maybe it was too much for old Sam. His bold and besotted self against the stripling cop. I think he saw, in a flash of his swollen eyes, an opportunity to wreak havoc on the system that had so unfairly stolen his life from him, a chance to take vengeance on the city that wouldn’t allow him to live the lifestyle he had fashioned for himself. Just ask him.

I alone became the immediate object of his alcohol induced scorn. To Sam, I’m sure it looked as if justice was on his side. As well as advantage. The law that betrayed him, that made a "victim" of poor Sam, was now standing a few feet from him. That would be me. The law never stood too tall in his eyes anyway, but I’m sure my abbreviated stature didn’t help. With what assessment his beer-heavy brain was capable of making, the threat seemed nonexistent. And who knows, maybe I could feel it. Maybe I began to feel a bit scrappy myself, in my mind looking for that moment that would define me among my peers and among those who trafficked that night world, my moment of validation, when I would no longer be the novice. I was looking for graduation day. The moment was charged with potential.

On my rounds I had checked the bar earlier and told Zeke not to sell Underwood anymore beer. I also told Sam to be gone before I got back in thirty minutes. I told him to leave the premises, that he’d had enough to drink, and that I wouldn’t ask a second time. He made no immediate response. He was rather unmoved. After the warning, I left to continue covering my beat, with the intention of returning shortly to Zeke’s to make sure Sam complied. He didn’t. And I really didn’t expect him to. I’m not sure why I bothered, but I asked him why he didn’t leave. I think Sam thought of me more in terms of suggestion than command. I could smell it on him.

"You can’t tell me what to do."

His voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even that hostile. But the tone was familiar. A calm defiant tone. He turned his head back around to the bar, dismissing me altogether. Though I don’t record them here, Sam used a colorful stream of southern expletive, just under my hearing, strong envenomed street vernacular, which I’m pretty sure were aimed at me, at my size, at the color of my uniform, at the threat I didn’t seem to have in me, and that part of my male anatomy he was sure I didn’t possess.

He didn’t see it coming.

I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t negotiate. And I was already a few moves ahead of him. I was deliberate. I would not talk him down. There was only one way, and by some instinct I knew it. Words were little more than useless. My young judgment was sure of that. I kicked his stool out from under him, and when he hit the floor, it woke the devil in him.

What happened next was classic barroom brawl. This was pure king-of-the-mountain, male imperative, territorial stuff, with music even playing in the background. There should have been cameras rolling. Or an ambulance close by. People were screaming. Nobody moved, except out of our way. Tables turned over. We knocked over the juke box, and as comic as it is now to think about, Hank Williams had been playing at the time, Your Cheating Heart. Though it had provided a unique ambience against the loud riot he and I were making, with an abrupt crash and the screech of a needle, the music stopped.

We turned over the cigarette machine. We broke the glass on the pinball machine. We broke the pinball machine. Steel balls rolled casually on the floor around us as the outrage continued. Glass was breaking everywhere in our path, beer and other drink flying everywhere. This was the best entertainment they had all night at Zeke’s.

Though it sounds redundant or unnecessary maybe to even mention, he was taller and bigger than me. He was an experienced brawler. Actually, I think it was more than that. He lived for it. Maybe it offered some strange meaning to his life. I mean, some people paint. Some people visit a shrink. Some people knit, or write poetry. Sam Underwood liked to beat people senseless, to subjugate, to totally dominate others with force. He was just plain mean. He liked to slash when he could, leave scars, little reminders. That’s how he justified his life. He felt it elevated him, empowered him somehow. It wasn’t just a hobby or some cathartic pastime. He enjoyed his whole prison bad-boy persona, his contempt for the law. It was the food he fed upon.

Not this time.

It took more out of me than at other times, more wind, more blood, more heart, more continued aggression and teeth-grinding tenacity. But I was healthy. I was young and I was in good physical condition. I was also quick, and unafraid. He was older and maybe even stronger, but he was slower, and dumber. The quantity of beer he had consumed assured me of that. He was also very mad. Mad sometimes helps in a fight, but sometimes, most of the time actually, you can easily lose your focus. Cool is better. What little focus he had was long squandered with drink. Mad and drunk is not the best way to conduct battle. Or life. He didn’t even see me. I was slippery and I was fast. It was a great fight! Even greater, because I won.

No one messed with me after that. I gained a quick reputation for being fair but firm, and that I would not back down in a fight. I felt something glow inside my chest. I had respect for myself. These were good first lessons.





Chapter 2


Both Sides of the Fence


MY NAME IS BOB. I’ve been called other names. You don’t live as long as I have and do the kind of work I’ve done and not pick up a few choice handles. Some were even worth remembering. Of course, some were not. I’d have to say most of the names I was called were fairly colorful. There’s a certain poetry you find in the South that you just can’t find anywhere else, a lyricism that only the elect can appreciate, the initiated, those loyal to the codes and the dialects of the street.

See, most of my working life I have moved among this "colorful" humanity—drunks, felons, petty offenders, all levels of malcontents, red-light sleaze, mob toughs, and good-old boys. I was even bodyguard once for Jimmy Hoffa. I’ve also moved among the politically connected, those higher up the food chain, who raised a respectable front, only to hide something criminal in the heart.

I spent decades of my professional life on the streets, where a different social order exists, a Darwinian world where shadows live and move softly about, as in water, leaving no trails. I had to come to understand these shadows. I even discovered them in myself, and in my fellow law enforcement officers. At some point I became a part of this strange world. I had to learn the language, a way of perceiving that was foreign to me. I understood so little at first. But seasoning makes all the difference. If you survive, you learn the more subtle trade of the streets, where cunning is always better, a slippery world with quieter steps than you might think, more the stiletto than the club.

A cop has to be part priest, part parent, part angel, part devil, one part warm, another part ice. To be a good cop, you protect and serve not just the community you’ve been assigned to, but you protect and serve the truth itself. That’s what got me in trouble. I was actually told by one police chief, Ralph Cothran, the first African-American to serve in that position, a man who liked me and tried to help me, "Martin, you’re too honest." How was I to know that to be honest could be a bad thing.

There is a fence, and like any fence, there are two sides. The border, the dividing line, is supposed to be recognizable and maybe even high enough to make clear distinction between the two. In my profession you know both sides intimately and you have to function on both sides. You carry out your daily routine and your workload on both sides, and you do so while claiming an allegiance to only one. That’s what they teach at the academy. The textbook explanation. But such explanations are too often insufficient. Too many times it just doesn’t last. It can’t last. It’s too much to ask of most men. The soul isn’t equipped with the proper stuff for such a divided existence. At least not without long-term contamination. You lose sight of your true allegiance. Like everything else, your allegiance begins to decay, to lose its earlier strength, and something a bit more selfish takes its place. Time is the enemy here. It slips by, with stealth, like a thief, and you don’t notice that something changed, that you’ve changed, that the margins aren’t as clear as they once were, that the rules are more supple, have more elasticity in them than you first suspected, that some of them are brittle and are easily broken, ignored, or reinterpreted. You hardly notice that the badge you wear has begun to tarnish, that it doesn’t have the shine it did in the beginning.

At first, the line is distinct. It’s solid. It’s black and it’s bold. You know how to tell the good guys from the bad guys. But in time, it turns shades of gray. Almost unnoticeable at first, it deteriorates and fades, one degree to the next, downward. Distinctions all but disappear, till nothing much is left.

That is the situation I found myself in, at least. The lines got confused and one day I had to make a choice. Like my daddy before me, who, of all the things that could be said about him, was first, an honest man. Against strong forces against him he remained true to his own convictions, true to his own heart. Maybe he and I weren’t that close. Maybe he arranged his life the way he felt he had to in those severe times, but I took from his spirit nonetheless, as sons will do. Chief Cothran, the one who said I was too honest, didn’t necessarily mean what he said as a compliment, but it was the highest tribute paid to me professionally.

Like my father, I made my choice and I’ve lived long enough to tell about it. I chose to be an honest man, to be true to what was in my heart. But by making the choices I made, I lost my place among the players, the ones who could offer me things I couldn’t get for myself, those who could make me a place in the world, a bigger place, a more elevated place, those officials who could take my place away, who could erase my name from the roster altogether. I lost popularity. There came a time when it seemed like I belonged to neither world.

There are certain associations we make with certain colors. White, for instance. We might think of purity, of virginity, chastity, even innocence. Then there’s gray, with all its middle tones, its compromise, its lack of conviction. My uniform was neither white nor gray. It was blue, dark blue, like the night itself, distinguished by a single badge, by a number on that badge, by an authority granted me by the state of Tennessee, and a code of conduct that separated me from the other forms of life that populated those streets. That, and a pistol at my hip.

I was called Will, Little Man, Bobby, Shorty, and Runt. One officer called me Stinky. I forgot the officer’s name. I think I wanted to forget that one altogether. My father made my name a lot less work and simply called me Bud. I liked it when he called me Bud. There was something intimate about it, like nicknames can be. It was the first name I remember that was different than my real name, Robert Ellis Martin. It was like Bob, but it wasn’t. It almost sounded the same. There was just a small variation of air and movement of the lips to differentiate the two words. Still, it wasn’t Bob. It never was Bob. The sad thing is, that whatever it was that disrupted my whole mental health was bound in that name. I can’t remember my father ever calling me by the name I was born with. I’m sure he knew it. He gave it to me. Nonetheless, he always called me Bud. They are both nouns, Bob, Bud, and they are both verbs. They both do something, and they both stand alone, separate entities, one from the other. I didn’t know it then, but there was a growing antagonism between the two that eventually took professional treatment and an act of God to reconcile.

Bud was intimate, or at least my father thought so. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to say my real name. Maybe that was too much to ask of a man like him in the nineteen-thirties, when the whole world was confused by The Great Depression. As much as their might have been camaraderie and filial connection by the use of such a name, it kept him at a distance. It made his detachment easier. If my father related to me at all, it was always as Bud, not Bob. As if Bud had to be somebody different than Bob. There was always some partition between me and my father. Some part of me was aware of this, even if I was too young to say what it was. There was no real medicine in the name.

I began, at some regrettable point, to split into two, like the times themselves, when you either had something, or you had nothing. I’m not sure who first used the word "Great" when referring to the Depression. I can’t remember anything "great" about it. But we were happy enough. We weren’t vagrants. We weren’t poor. We didn’t complain. We lived simply. And I would say happy. I was. If we were poor, I didn’t know it.

My father was in the grocery business. An independent man and a man of deliberate action, he started his business with only five hundred dollars. It grew large for the standards of those days. His work kept him from us. To succeed in one part of his life, he had to sacrifice another. He was kind, particularly to those who needed kindness, and during that particular span of history, there were many who needed kindnesses, however simple.

I remember one black lady, Corrine Pittner. She had no husband, but she had thirteen kids. At the end of the week, when the store closed down every Saturday night, my father would gather the remaining produce together in boxes, vegetables, fruits, even some breads and have them delivered to her house. No charge. When I was old enough, the task of delivery went to me. I was able to feel a pride in that act, a pride that redeemed those scrambling times.

My mother, Evelyn Dixon Martin, called me Robert. Just Robert. Always Robert. Except when she might have called me Howard, the name of her younger brother. There was very little variation with my mother at all. No nonsense, very little play at all. If there was stability in our home, it was her. My father worked and like too many men, felt that work was caring, that work was nurture enough for his son. I’m not sure I was as convinced as he was about that. He was safe with Bud. He discovered Bud, or maybe he called him out, announced him to the world, liberated him.

As I said, there was a divide between Bob and Bud. I’m not sure where the rift originated or why. I’ve only got stories. Anyway, we’re not quite ready for that yet. Neither was I, but be patient, for at least a chapter or so. We’ll meet Bud soon enough. He’s no longer around, but my story is just as much Bud’s story. He was my twin existence, some inner coping strategy, I suppose. I owe him that. We were inseparable. Then years later I was diagnosed as schizophrenic (paranoid type). That wasn’t good. It was one of the few names I didn’t like being called.