GiardelloI know everybody is on you to do right by Steve. To make sure it doesn't come out a suicide.
That what you're asking, Lieutenant? To make it a murder? A murder with no murderers? A murder that can't be solved? If you want me to do it; I'll do it. Hell, my clearance rate is so low these days, one more open case isn't gonna make any difference. Everybody says 'do it for Steve'. And I keep thinking, I mean, if he chose to commit suicide, what right do I have, what right does any of us have, to make that go away? I don't agree with what he did, but if that's his final statement, should I wipe that clear, just for our peace of mind? I mean, nobody wants to admit it, but everybody knows what really happened.
You want me to come back? Why? Because we're friends? That's not true.
Giardello
You're right. I've never been to your house, I've never met your wife. We are not friends. It ticks me off because you say what you think and you don't give a damn what I think about what you think. But there's one thing I know for certain, you change red names to black. And for that reason, and that reason alone, I want you back.
Giardello
Pembleton, Bayliss, Lewis- get over to Madison and St. Paul.
Giardello
We've got detectives down.
Giardello
Bolander, Felton, and Howard.
Giardello
I'm on my way to Shock Trauma. They've been shot. Frank,you're the primary.
Giardello
Feeling a little freaked?
Giardello
Scared?
Giardello
Guilty?
No. That's Bayliss. Not me.
Giardello
Oh, I get it. You don't feel anything at all. You're the type of guy that two weeks from now, you'll be stopped at a traffic light and all this will hit you and when it hits, it'll hit hard. It'll hit you so hard that your heart will burst into a hundred pieces.
Giardello
Maybe you can tell me about the Battisto case.
Well, we're moving along slowly but surely, we're trudging through it. Uncky Frank is on top of things.
You know, it might help if I had a partner who didn't whine so much, but hey, let's not get caught up in the details.
Giardello
We reach a certain age where we realize we know less about life than we did when we were seventeen. When I was seventeen, I remember…I believed in life. I trusted life. I believed there were answers to questions. I had…hope. Right now, I'm gonna tell you: I hate myself. I don't have any friends to speak of. All I have is this…job. And it disgusts me. You like garlic greens and cornbread?
Giardello
That's because you never tasted my wife's. That's all it would take, no matter how bad of a day it was. She had that touch. I remember how she used to touch me, you know, so gently on the cheek. And when she was dying, I remember how she touched me… She said, "Remember…how much I love you." I'll never forget that. I don't wanna be alone anymore. I find myself folding in. I think this is what Crosetti found out, and I refuse to recognize it in him because I wouldn't recognize it in myself.
[sighs] I understand. I understand completely.
Giardello
There are no real masterminds out there. Mostly we're dealing with people who think they are. If they think at all. Problem is, there's so many of them.
Giardello
You don't hafta get it. You'll sleep better if you don't know. Give me the where, the what, the when - the why - is a thing we can live without. Homicide is the elite of the police force. There is no higher calling.
Does the name Poulson ring a bell with you, Jimmy Poulson?
Giardello
Yeah. Poulson was a policeman in the Northwest around '73, '74. During that time a cop named Reinman was k*lled during a traffic stop and every cop in the city was hunting the shooter.
Giardello
And the rule was then if you ran into him on the street, you k*lled him. No questions asked.
Giardello
Poulson was a good cop, but he had the misfortune of cornering the Reinman shooter in a Pimlico alley.
Giardello
And he let him surrender. I was working Tactical during the time, and I was in the district station house when Poulson brought the shooter in.
Giardello
Turned him over to the desk sergeant, and a number of Reinman's friends grabbed the sh**t, dragged him out of the lock-up, took him back into the cell block and beat him bloody. Ever since that day not one cop, not one cop spoke a word to Poulson.
Man! Here's to the good old days.
Giardello
Yeah. I don't agree with a lot of those things that happened back then, but back in the '70's, '60's, if you even dreamed of killing a cop or one of the cop's relatives, you woke up and you apologised.
Jimmy Poulson and Jake Rodzinski, both of them born at the wrong time.
Giardello
it would be back in the Northwest, and standing in the parking lot, and listening to those cops beat that prisoner in his cell and hearing him scream for justice, just screaming for justice. And I remember this... the sergeant laughing and saying, "There ain't no justice here. It's just us."
Giardello
But nowadays, thinking about this Kenny Damon case, it makes me wonder about... us.
I didn't avenge Adena Watson's death. Now I never will. Never gonna know who killed her. I let her down, Gee.
Giardello
You're gonna hafta make your peace with that.
Let me ask you something, Gee. How do you know when to stop caring?
Giardello
I've been a cop a long time. I can tell you how to sweet talk a confession out of a stone cold killer, sidestep the politics of me and the bosses. I can tell you how to work a case until there's nothing left to be done but to file the paperwork. But the one thing I can't tell you, is when to stop caring.
I am good Murder Police aren't I, Gee?
Giardello
Yes, of course.
I'm standing here thinkin' about Frank, about everything I've learned from him, the past four years.
Giardello
His technique in the box?
Yeah, but it's more than that. You know, I've finally got to a place where I understand how he thinks. See, when I find a suspect, I like to get in their brain, and figure out why they would wanna take another person's life. Why? But Frank, well, Frank, all he sees is a dead body. Doesn't matter to him who they were, what they did. He strips away their personality, he makes them all equal in death, because if they have been murdered, they must be avenged. Forward, without any hesitation, without any moral dilemma, his mind's so clear on that Gee, his mind. I just don't know if I'm gonna be as good a detective as I am without Frank.
Homicide: Life on the Street · 413 quotes
