Joe McNamara was a philosopher-policeman.
The Wall Street Journal
MUSIC: DRAGNET THEME
V.O.: Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to hear is true.
MUSIC: DRUM ROLL UNDER
V.O. You’re a detective sergeant. You’re assigned to Burglary Division. You get a call that an important piece of dogma has been stolen from a pagan religion. There’s no lead to its whereabouts. Your job . . . find it.
HAL GIBNEY: Dragnet, the documented drama of an actual crime. For the next thirty minutes, in cooperation with the University of California, Los Angeles Philosophy Department, you will travel step by step on the side of the law through an actual case from official files. From beginning to end . . . from crime to punishment . . . Dragnet is the story of your philosopher-police force in action.
MUSIC: FADE OUT ON SUSTAINED CHORD
JOE friday: It was Wednesday, December 24th. It was cold in Los Angeles. We were working the Day Watch out of Burglary Division. My partner’s Frank Smith. The boss is Captain Barnard. My name’s Friday. I’d gone across the street to buy stamps for some Christmas cards I was sending out. It was 9:15 A.M, when I got back to Room 45 . . . (SOUND: DOOR OPEN) . . . Burglary.
Friday walks into the room. The door closes behind him. He takes a couple of steps in.
JOE: I sat down at a table in the squad room and started to address the cards when Frank walked in carrying a stack of Christmas boxes.
Door opens and Frank walks in.
FRANK: Hi, Joe.
JOE: Hi.
FRANK: Christmas cards, huh? Little late, aren’t you?
JOE: I was gonna send ’em out Monday but we had that stake-out.
FRANK: You oughta get married, Joe.
JOE: Marriages contracted for love have error for their father and need for their mother.
FRANK: Schopenhauer?
JOE: Nietzsche.
FRANK: Faye does all that stuff for me. Laundry. Depressing German philosophers. Signs and mails the cards. It’s the only system.
JOE: Did Nietzsche develop his thought into a system?
FRANK: No. Might have helped him.
JOE: How so?
FRANK: Maybe he would’ve stayed out the cathouses, wouldn’t have died of syphilis.
JOE: That’s a base canard.
FRANK: Is there any other kind?
JOE: There’s duck l’orange. That’s not too base. He died of brain cancer.
FRANK: (pause) You got a big stack there.
JOE: I oughta cut down the list. Look at this here. Seminary Co-operative Bookstore in Chicago.
FRANK: South Side?
JOE: Yeah. They send me a card every year. I never get any Duns Scotus.
FRANK: How about William of Ockham?
JOE: Don’t need his razor anymore — I bought an electric.
FRANK: (pause) I brought in your present. Want to open it now?
JOE: No, I’ll wait.
Sound: The telephone rings. Joe punches a button, picks up receiver.
JOE: Burglary–Friday. (pause) Yes, you have the right department. (longer pause) All right, Father, we’ll be right down. No, you can tell us about it when we get there. Goodbye.
Joe hangs up the receiver.
JOE: The Old Mission Church. They’ve had a theft.
FRANK: Collection money?
JOE: Worse. An item of dogma that’s central to their belief system.
Music, then in voice over:
JOE: 10:05 A.M. Frank and I checked out of the office and rode over to the church at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Main. The Old Mission Plaza Church, founded 1781, the year the Dodgers moved to L.A. Typical early Spanish design, complete with mission arches. It was made of adobe and painted white. They called it the Queen of the Angels. It looked real — it could have passed for a Taco Bell.
A young priest crossed the courtyard to meet us. He’d been sitting on a stone bench pretending to read his morning prayers as priests had done here for a hundred and seventy-two years. I could see he was hiding the Daily Racing Form in his breviary. We asked for Father Xavier Rojas, who had communicated with us. We were told he was inside.
Music changes to organ:
JOE: We entered a side door. The church glowed with hundreds of votive candles flickering on both sides of the altar and at the shrines throughout the church. It was empty except for a few people praying. Surrounding the main altar were several old oil paintings in gold frames. The air was heavy with the scent of Advent flowers. We found Father Rojas up near the sanctuary, looking at the Nativity scene.
JOE: He told us what was missing. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation; the notion that the bread and wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist become the body and blood of Christ, and aren’t just symbols. It’s what separates mackerel snappers from weak-kneed Christians, the kind who tolerate divorce and say you don’t have to go to church during the summer. As Flannery O’Connor put it, “If it’s just a symbol, I say to hell with it.”
Mormon Tabernacle Choir leaves to go have a Sprite, the refreshing, uncaffeinated lemon-lime soft drink. Door opens, sound of footsteps.
ROJAS: I’m sorry to bother you men.
FRANK: It’s all right, Father.
ROJAS: Especially now–the holiday season.
JOE: We cash our checks, Father. You wanna tell us what happened?
FRANK: Or what you think happened?
ROJAS: I discovered the dogma was missing right after six o’clock mass.
FRANK: Did you say the six?
ROJAS: Yes. I started over to the rectory and stopped by the altar.
JOE: Did you genuflect?
ROJAS: Of course I did — what kind of heathen do you think I am?
FRANK: Just the facts, padre. How late is the church open?
ROJAS: All night.
JOE: You leave it wide open so any thief can walk in?
ROJAS: Particularly thieves, Sergeant.
Joe and Frank exchange looks of philosophical skepticism.
JOE: You say it was there last night, Father. How late?
ROJAS: Ten or eleven o’clock. We had confessions.
FRANK: No one saw it after that?
ROJAS: One of the altar boys, he says it may have been there.
JOE: Did he see it?
ROJAS: It’s not something visible to the naked eye, it’s a feeling deep in your soul . . .
FRANK: Says you were half — now you’re whole?
JOE: It’s a pretty big doctrine. (pause) Without it you’re nothing but a bunch of Episcopalians. Might as well start having boy-girl-boy-girl sock hops in the church basement.
FRANK: Fund-raising car washes with sudsy, soapy cheerleaders and their perky little nippers pressing up against wet t-shirts.
ROJAS: Please — you are causing me to think impure thoughts.
JOE: Just doing our job, Father. Did you see anybody . . . suspicious last night?
ROJAS: Well, now that you mention it . . .
FRANK: Go on . . .
ROJAS: An androgynous guy in a mask.
Joe and Frank exchange knowing looks.
JOE: A mask?
ROJAS: Yeah, dressed like a woman.
FRANK: Long robe, ivy, fawn-skin shawl?
ROJAS: Yeah.
JOE: Did he seem like he’d been drinking?
ROJAS: I’ll say. Brought plenty of wine.
JOE: Do you want to file a police report?
ROJAS: Well, sure. I mean, I need to if I want to collect insurance, right?
FRANK: I don’t think your insurance company will mail a check to you . . . in jail.
ROJAS: What?
JOE: father, you can only collect an insurance payout on property that was yours in the first place.
ROJAS: Transubstantiation is ours — we thought it up!
FRANK: Not likely. The Greeks came up with first.
JOE: Fifth century . . . B.C.
FRANK: At least. Insurance fraud is a serious crime in California, padre.
Rojas begins to perspire visibly. Previously, his perspiration was confined to his armpits.
ROJAS: You got nothin’ on me, coppers!
FRANK: Oh yeah? How about this: Dionysus’ dad was a god, just like Jesus.
JOE: His mother was a mortal — just like Jesus.
ROJAS: Coincidence.
FRANK: There’s more. Both of them are gods — both of them are killed.
ROJAS: It could happen to anybody.
JOE: Both are resurrected.
ROJAS: There’s a lot of that going around.
JOE: what about the bread and wine?
ROJAS: What about it?
JOE: Where’d you come up with that combo?
ROJAS: Makes sense. Olive Garden, Bertucci’s, a lot of your “fast casual” restaurants too.
FRANK: You’re forgetting something.
ROJAS: What?
FRANK: “Fast casual” restaurants don’t serve liquor.
ROJAS: Maybe I got a little ahead of myself there.
JOE: I think maybe you did. Tiresias said mankind had two supreme blessings — bread and wine.
ROJAS: Just like I was sayin’ . . .
FRANK: Dionysus is the guy who always brings the wine.
ROJAS: (shrugs shoulders) Somebody’s gotta do it.
JOE: So he brings the wine, everybody has some, pretty soon the party’s underway.
ROJAS: Nothin’ wrong with that.
FRANK: It’s what happens afterwards.
Rojas gulps audibly.
ROJAS: Look, I want a lawyer.
JOE: Sorry, we’re in the 1950s. Miranda vs. Arizona won’t be decided until 1966.
FRANK: We could beat you with one of those missals in the racks on the backs of the pews if we wanted to.
ROJAS: I don’t know nothin’ about what happens next.
JOE: Then maybe I should tell you. A living creature is torn apart — sparagmos.
ROJAS: That sounds like an entrée from Olive Garden.
FRANK: Then the devotees devour the flesh of the creature — ômophagia–which is an incarnation of the god. The only thing missing is the wine.
Rojas gulps again.
FRANK: You’re not swallowing evidence, are you?
ROJAS: On national TV? I don’t think so.
JOE: I’ll tell ya where the wine comes in. After the solid food is eaten, the host mixes wine with water. It’s blood of the earth, the same color as human blood. When you drink it, it mixes with your blood.
Rojas begins to shake uncontrollably.
ROJAS: All right, all right — I confess. We stole the whole shebang, lock stock and barrel from the Greeks.
Frank gives Joe a look of smug satisfaction. Joe examines it a moment, and gives it back to him.
JOE: I think you’d better come with us.
Rojas walks slowly out the church doors, Joe Friday and Frank Smith follow.
MUSIC: FADE OUT ON SUSTAINED CHORD
Back in Room 45, Burglary.
ROJAS: (tearfully) Vendrá el Diablo para llevar a Paquito?
JOE: What did he say?
FRANK: He’d like a pair of snow tires on his rear wheels.
JOE: You don’t fool me.
FRANK: He wants to know if the devil will come and take him to hell.
JOE: (quietly) That’s not my department, Father. (to guard) Take him to the holding pen.
Guard leads Rojas away.
(SOUND: CELL DOOR CLANGING SHUT)
FRANK: You want that present now?
JOE: Sure.
Frank hands Joe a present. Joe struggles with the ribbon, then opens it.
JOE: What is it?
FRANK: A panini maker. Everybody’s got one nowadays.
JOE: Well I don’t — thanks.
FRANK: I figured since you’re not married, you need to cook for yourself.
Joe and Frank exchange wry smiles. Joe puts two slices of wry in the appliance.
MUSIC: BUILDS SLOWLY TO A BIG SACRED FINISH . . . BELLS, CHOIR, EVERYTHING–THEN OUT.
GEORGE FENNIMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, the story you have just heard is true. The names of the deities were changed to protect your innocence.