Rules of the Game

It’s a lousy way to say goodby, predicting that the city you’ve served with distinction for half a century is on its way to hell, but that’s the way old John St. John feels about L.A.

He sees it as a town totally trashed and getting worse. He sees good people moving away, and thugs and dope dealers walking tall. He sees everyone packing a gun and everyone afraid.

He envisions life imitating art, the chaotic future of “Blade Runner” coming true, with new rules to the game that mock human decency and shatter the contours of an orderly society.

“There’s no hope for the place,” he said the other day with characteristic inflexibility. “Los Angeles will destroy itself.”

Pretty pessimistic stuff. But you’ve got to realize the guy’s a cop, or was a cop, and you hardly ever see cops skipping down a sunlit street whistling “Zippity-Doo-Dah” and loving the whole human race.

Cops deal mostly with scumbags, and they get so used to dealing with scumbags that pretty soon everyone is a scumbag.

That gets to you after a while, especially if you’ve been a cop as long as St. John; 51 years with the LAPD, all but six as a homicide detective.

And even though he retired the other day to nationwide recognition of his expertise as a crime-solver, he can’t get all the horror out of his mind. Like Lady Macbeth, he’s still walking the corridors of his own nightmares, washing the blood of 1,500 murder cases off his hands.

No wonder the guy’s a pessimist.

I’ve known St. John for 20 years. I wrote a book about him and then a movie that created a television series called “Jigsaw John.” We’ve been friends and drinking buddies ever since.

When I talked to him the other day, I didn’t expect him to bubble over. I knew he wouldn’t say it’s been a wonderful life.

John is a dour old guy, and when he looks at you with his one good eye, you know he isn’t thinking it’s love that makes the world go ‘round.

Given his natural crustiness, it didn’t surprise me when he said L.A. is in the condition it is today because of the goddamn media, the goddamn politicians, the goddamn illegal aliens and a lot of other goddamn people who foster disrespect for the law.

I’ve heard him say all that before, especially the part about the goddamn media. But I was taken aback by his gloomy prediction for L.A.

I am not exactly a cockeyed optimist myself. We are a city in turmoil and not likely to get better soon, judging by the quality of the 24 blind mice running for mayor.

Children are out there killing children and guns are packed in school lunches next to peanut butter sandwiches. Fools extol everyone’s right to bear arms and apologists justify murder as a natural function of poverty.

We’re a skewed society and, as John might say, we’re getting skewier. But I’m not ready to write us off as a plan that didn’t work. Not yet.

Much of John’s attitude is rooted in the hard times every good policeman in L.A. has been enduring these days.

The beating of Rodney King and their department’s slow response to last spring’s riots continue to weigh heavily upon them.

As if that weren’t enough, a rapper sings lyrics that advocate killing cops. T-shirts abound with lettering that echoes the sentiment.

And on the streets, beyond rap and lettered shirts, a reality exists that targets policemen for murder, implementing a logo that says it’s OK to do so.

It’s a lousy time to be a cop, and St. John is reflecting both their resentment and their uneasiness.

They blame that vague, amorphous apparition known as the city for doing them in, and explain their abuse by reasoning that the whole city is therefore rolling downhill to hell.

What they, John among them, don’t realize is that we are the city: the politicians, the illegal aliens, the journalists, the dealers, the parents, the thugs, the cops and the kids.

We chart the course the city will take and clear the pathway for its progress. If we allow thugs and dealers to take the helm, they’ll take it. If we make cop killing acceptable, it’ll become more popular than ice hockey.

St. John mourns for the L.A. that existed when you could walk the streets at night, when parks were safe, when children were not in peril.

I asked how we could get there again. He shrugged. “I’m not smart enough to know that,” he said.

Neither am I. But unless we find someone who is, St. John’s prediction could come true, and we’ll all be pedaling that bicycle downhill to hell.