Harry Morgan: Officer Bill Gannon

The Big Ad

Officer Bill Gannon

Friday: [Friday, Gannon and Steve Deal are in Deal's apartment waiting for the phone to ring; people answering the re-placed ad. The phone rings] Hello?... Yes, that's right. I placed the ad. Same as last week. Oh?
[to Steve Deal]
Friday: Did you get a letter from a girl named Beverly?
[Deal makes a "forget it!" gesture]
Friday: Yes, I did, I got it. Well, no, no, that wouldn't work out. No, I wouldn't be interested. Yes, I am married. No, I wouldn't be interested, Lady. Yes, Ma'a'm.
[hangs up]
Officer Bill Gannon: What's the matter, Joe? You're not married, and a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks!
Friday: Well, you ARE married. Suppose somebody offered you a thousand bucks to get a divorce - would you take it?
Officer Bill Gannon: Joe, that's a terrible question to ask any married man!

Officer Bill Gannon: [Referring to the underground/alternative newspaper Deal placed the ad in] The LA Happening, what's that?
Steve Deal: One of those way-out hippie newspapers, you know, comes out once a week, full of weird ads, and against everything--especially cops.
[This was clearly patterned after the famous/infamous LA Free Press]

Officer Bill Gannon: Joe, you'd better hold it up.
Friday: What's going on?
Officer Bill Gannon: Forrester isn't out trying to establish an alibi. He's inside that house right now. You can figure the rest.
Friday: I kill the wife. He kills me.
Officer Bill Gannon: Looks that way, doesn't it?
Friday: Yeah, and the only trouble is, it doesn't change anything. We still don't have anything admissible against him.
Officer Bill Gannon: Well Joe, maybe the woman's already dead. What's to stop him from killing you the minute you open the door?
Friday: He's afraid to kill his wife. If he wasn't, she'd have been dead before this. No, I think he has to have somebody else do the job for him.
Officer Bill Gannon: Who are you trying to convince, me or you?

Officer Bill Gannon: Relax. Don't let it get to you.
Friday: Someplace out in this city there's a man making up his mind whether or not to use me to murder his wife, and I don't like it.
Officer Bill Gannon: Well, there's nothing we can do until he calls again.
Friday: I don't know. Maybe I just should have pulled him in last night.
Officer Bill Gannon: You'd have blown the case.
Friday: Yeah, but maybe it might have scared him off.

Officer Bill Gannon: You think he's leveling?
Friday: He wants his wife dead, Bill. Now he's either going to have me do it, or he's going to get somebody else to do it.
Officer Bill Gannon: Yeah.
Friday: Or he might even do it himself.