Paul Bacon (19 page)

“Oh, no, I’m not touchin’ this. I’ll get your little mamacita,” DuPree said, then shouted Clarabel’s name.

When my partner came to the phone, I said, “Miss McCauley is a collar. We found injuries on Marcel. I’ve got the Polaroids
and everything.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“The doctor’s working on an affidavit already,” I told her. “You want this collar, by the way?”

“No. This is a total bag of shit.”

“But we’re almost at the end.”

“Bags of shit only get deeper. You should give it to the detective squad. They’ll get involved anyway.”

“I know,” I said. “But this actually seems like the right thing to do for once.”

“I guess,” she said. “What happens to Marcel, then?”

“I’d say his chances of getting away from the dragon lady rise significantly with her arrest.”

“Don’t try to play matchmaker,” Clarabel warned me. “Just cover yourself. You understand?”

“Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat. “Speaking of, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind just putting her in the cell and getting
the online started.”

“Right,” said Clarabel.

“I’m gonna need a female to search her eventually. Why not just save the time?”

“Here’s the lieu. I’m getting out of this,” Clarabel said, and I was handed off yet again.

The lieutenant greeted me brusquely, “What is it, Bacon? I’m in a hurry.”

“I need you to authorize an arrest,” I told him.

“Christ,” he said with a sigh. “Whaddaya got?”

“It’s Marcel’s foster mom. She’s been beating him. I’ve got photo evidence and a doctor to back it up.”

“Are you prepared for me to detain her, right here and now?”

I sucked my teeth.

The lieutenant said, “I thought so. I want someone over there to check on those injuries. Your partner will do fine.”

When I was finished with my call, Marcel was back from his exam and sitting in the waiting room with Larry. I took a seat
next to Marcel and asked him if he was okay. Marcel nodded valiantly, while Larry looked on with admiration.

I asked Marcel, “How did she do that to you?”

“She hit me with a back scratcher,” he said.

“Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”

“I was afraid. Miss McCauley gets real mad. That’s why I’ve been running away from home.”

“When did you start running away?”

“About three years ago.”

“And when did Miss McCauley start hitting you?”

“About three years ago.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “That’s also when she started you on the medications.”

Marcel nodded.

“How long has it been since you took them?” I said.

“Two days,” he said.

“And how do you feel now?”

“Fine.”

I turned to Larry and asked, “Has Marcel had any problems while he was off his medicine?”

“None at all,” said Larry. “I mean, look at him. Does he look like he needs drugs?”

“No,” I said.

Larry threw up his hands and said, “Why can’t anybody else see that?”

Clarabel showed up at the hospital a half hour later, and we escorted Marcel to a private room to view his injuries. Marcel
sat on the exam bed, unbuttoned his neatly pressed blue oxford, then peeled a four-inch bandage from his shoulder.

“You mind if I look up close?” Clarabel asked, pulling her flashlight off her belt. Holding the light inches from Marcel’s
shoulder, she looked at the wound from a number of different angles. Without seeming to draw any conclusions, she put her
flashlight away and sat down in a chair next to the bed.

She crossed her legs and said, “Can you tell me what happened to-night?”

“I went home to get some of my stuff, and Miss McCauley hit me,” he said.

“How did she hit you?” Clarabel asked.

“With a back scratcher,” he said.

“From behind?”

“Well, yeah, she was chasing me. She always chases me.”

“What kind of back scratcher was it?”

“You know, one of those things with a long handle and the teeth on the end.”

“Do you remember what color it was?”

“I didn’t see it,” said Marcel. “Why?”

“Because we’ll need to find it for evidence,” said Clarabel. “Do you know where the back scratcher is now?”

“I think she threw it out,” said Marcel.

“Of course. She wouldn’t want it lying around if we came to visit again, would she?” Clarabel said, then stood up and handed
the boy his shirt. “You know, we’re going to have to arrest Miss McCauley. Are you okay with that?”

Marcel looked at the floor for a minute, then said quietly, “Yeah.”

“And she may never get another foster kid again in her life. Not that I think she deserves one or anything,” Clarabel said
with a wink, getting the boy to laugh for the first time.

“I understand what will happen,” Marcel said, buttoning up his shirt. “Lock her up.”

Clarabel opened the door for Marcel. “Do us a favor,” she said. “Go sit with Larry, okay? We’ll come talk in a second.”

When the boy was gone, Clarabel lost her smile. She turned without warning and unloaded on me, “Did you even
look
at the injury before you told me to arrest that woman?”

“I saw the picture,” I said. “I didn’t want to subject the kid to more humiliation.”

“The
picture
?” she said.

“The one the doctor took.”

“The doctor’s even blinder than you are. All he sees is someone to help, which he’s supposed to, but you’re supposed to have
all this shit figured out.”

“All what shit?”

“That wound was obviously self-inflicted. Come on, it should have been the first thing you looked for.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The scratches on his shoulder—they go up, not down.”

“Which means . . . ?”

“Marcel said the old lady hit him from behind. The scratches would go
down
.”

I looked at her blankly, still not understanding.

“Are you retarded?” she said. “ Here, make like you’re gonna scratch your shoulder.”

I reached my left hand across to my right shoulder and set my fingernails into my uniform.

“Now scratch,” she said.

“Oh. I see,” I said. “But why would he tear into his own skin? He seems too smart for that.”

“Survival instinct, I guess. What would
you
do if you lived with Miss McCauley?”

“I’d probably go the medicinal route,” I said.

An hour later, I was sitting next to Larry in the hospital waiting room. Across from us, Clarabel sat with a copy of
Vogue
open in her lap. She was flipping through colorful photo spreads with an intense look on her face, as if she was going to
be tested on the material later. At the same time, in a private room down the hall, a detective from the Two-eight named Latham
was talking to Marcel about the alleged backscratcher incident. They’d been in there for about thirty minutes when Larry asked
me, “Marcel’s not going to jail for this, is he?”

“I think he’s too young,” I said to Larry, then turned to Clarabel. “Right?”

Without looking up from her magazine, Clarabel replied, “Doesn’t matter. We never wrote anything down.”

We all stood when Detective Latham walked into the waiting room with a sheepish-looking Marcel at his side. Latham always
wore shabby, ill-fitting suits, but his perpetual frown made him seem more serious than anyone I’d met on the force. He said
to Larry, “Marcel has remembered the incident correctly, so I’m going to be taking him back to Miss McCauley’s apartment.
She doesn’t know anything about what happened tonight, and I’m not going out of my way to tell her. But I wouldn’t recommend
trying to adopt Marcel. If you do, there’ll be a discovery period, and I’ll be called to testify.”

“I understand,” said Larry. “I’m so sorry. I never imagined that Marcel would have . . .”

Latham put up his hand. “Please, sir. I’m just as disappointed in my coworkers. Thank God nothing came of it,” he said, leering
at us. “Locking up Miss McCauley would’ve caused a riot.”

CHAPTER 24

R
UNNING FROM JOB TO JOB left Clarabel and me with little downtime and few opportunities to bond on anything but a professional
level. And she spent every free moment blabbing away on her cell phone, even when she was behind the wheel. She always spoke
Spanish, so I never knew what she was saying or to whom.

One day, she was driving and talking on the phone while our dispatcher was attempting to put over a job that was going unanswered.
“
Be advised
,” said Central, “
no Two-eight units responding to a dispute
at 125 and Lenox.
”

That wasn’t our sector, but it seemed wrong to ignore the call, so I picked up my radio and started to speak.

This got Clarabel’s attention right away. “What are you doing?” she said to me.

“There’s a dispute at 125 and Lenox,” I said.

“There’s a dispute on every corner in this precinct. Let Eddie pick it up,” she said, then resumed her phone conversation.

Whoever was on the other end of the phone, I was jealous, and I wasn’t going to stand for it. Not in
my
patrol car. I keyed the microphone and said, “Two-eight Charlie, Central. Show us picking up the dispute.”

“
Ten-four, Charlie
,” said Central.

Clarabel glared at me, but she hung up the phone. I counted it a victory.

We pulled up at 125th and Lenox and saw nothing unusual. The sidewalk was as crowded as always, with hundreds of pedestrians
going about their business. Clarabel turned to me and gave me an I-told-you-so look.

Just then, a twelve-year-old boy ran up to my window and said, “Officers! There’s a fight!”

“Where?” I said.

“Over there!” he said, pointing to the other side of the busy street.

I looked past four lanes of traffic and saw a pair of twenty-year-olds engaged in a very lopsided brawl. One man was swinging
the other around by his T-shirt, throwing him up against a metal gate. He peppered his opponent’s stomach with quick punches,
then grabbed hold of the man’s shirt again and hurled him to the sidewalk.

“Thanks a lot, Bacon,” said Clarabel, turning off the ignition.

We got out of the car and made a perilous foot crossing of 125th Street, dodging cars and buses. I reached the other side
of the street first and waited for Clarabel before I started to approach the fight.

“Wait,” she said, pulling me back by the arm. “Don’t get too close.”

I said, “But that guy’s getting the crap beat out of him.”

“I seen you boxing in gym class,” she said. “End of story.”

“Don’t we have to separate them, at least?”

“We go in there, and we got two guns in the mix.”

“But aren’t we supposed to
do
something?”

“In stupid little fights like this, you just wait for the results. The loser goes to the hospital, and the winner goes to
jail.”

A Black Israelite in full dress uniform was hovering nearby. Just as I offered up a (nondenominational) prayer that he wouldn’t
see us, he turned his head and fixed his eyes on me. I swore I saw a little smile creep across his face before he pulled a
megaphone to his mouth and announced: “
Behold the agents of Satan! They stand by and do nothing!
Nothing! While a member of our flock is beaten like a dog!
”

I said to Clarabel, “This is what I’m talking about.”

“You wanna save this guy from a beat-down? One that he probably asked for?” She reached into her pants and produced a shiny
silver whistle. “Blow this,” she said.

“I’m not putting that in my mouth,” I said. “It’s been in your pocket.”

Clarabel pressed the whistle to her lips and gave a long, shrill blast, instantly ending the fight. When the aggressor looked
up and saw two cops, he disappeared into the throng of pedestrians as if by magic, leaving his opponent splayed on his back.

I looked at Clarabel. When she did nothing, I said, “I take it we’re not going to arrest the winner.”

Clarabel said, “I’m not gonna break my ankles running through a crowd.”

Later that night, we took a report from the manager of a video store on Lenox Avenue. The man said that a group of teenage
boys was ransacking his store, and when he tried to call 911, one of them pulled the cordless phone out of his hand and ran
out the door. Stealing a telephone typically qualified as petit larceny, but since the item had been taken from the owner’s
grasp, the incident was technically a robbery.

Back in the car, I began writing up the incident. I was about to sign my name at the bottom of the complaint form when Clarabel
stopped me.

“Wait,” she said, reaching her hand out for the complaint. “Let me sign it.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because the CO’s gonna be pissed when we give him another robbery.”

“So?”

“So, I’m already on his shit list.”

“For reporting crimes? Isn’t that our job?”

“It is and it isn’t. Just let me sign it.”

“Why shouldn’t
I
sign it?”

“Because I’m pretty sure the inspector doesn’t want to sleep with you.”

“And if you sign it, then what? He’s got more leverage over you?”

Clarabel rolled her eyes and said, “I can handle him.”

“I’m not sure I want you to,” I said, signing my name and shield number on the report.

The following day during roll call, our commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Avery Benesch, made his first appearance at our
muster-room door. Standing at least six and a half feet tall, Inspector Benesch was an imposing man with an odd choice of
bottled hair color. The artificial strawberry blond clashed with his pale, wrinkled skin, making him look like a zombie version
of Robert Redford. The word
creepy
didn’t begin to describe the chilling effect he had on his subordinates. Everywhere else I’d been on the job, cops berated
the bosses to each other, but few at the Two-eight would so much as utter the inspector’s name.

When Sergeant Ramirez called us to attention, the inspector said, “At ease, everyone. I just need to talk to Bacon for a minute.”

I looked over at Clarabel and saw her shaking her head. I fell out of formation to join the inspector out in the lobby.

Rather than escort me to his office, Benesch sat at a small desk in the main lobby while I continued to stand. Around us,
cops from the day tour were still milling about.

The inspector opened my complaint report on top of the desk and pointed to the narrative section. He asked, “Can you tell
me why you wrote this up as a robbery?”

I stroked my chin. “Well,” I said, “I think the complainant said that the boy took the phone out of his hand, which qualifies
as physical force, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” he said. “But do you think the boy really meant to
rob
the complainant, or was he just preventing him from calling the police?”

“I suppose he was trying to keep the guy from calling us.”

“So, do we want to call this is robbery?” he said. “Is that what really happened?”

Behind the inspector, I noticed two cops were looking at me and whispering to each other. When they saw me glance at them,
they turned and walked away.

“I guess not,” I said.

“Good,” said the inspector, handing me the report. “You should reconsider the totality of circumstances before this gets entered
into the computer system. After that, it goes on our permanent record.”

“I understand, sir. Should I just make it a petit larceny?”

“I’d say it’s more like harassment with lost property.”

“Harassment with lost property. I’ll take care of it.”

“I’m sure you will,” said the inspector, rising to his feet. He placed his enormous hand on my shoulder and asked, “You’re
Officer Suarez’s partner, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She’s one of our brightest rookies,” said the inspector. “I hope you can continue working together on the four to twelve.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you,” I said, nodding repeatedly, each time using more of my upper body until I was bowing like a Japanese
salaryman.

I sat down at the desk, pulled out a blank report from my duffel bag, and started rewriting the complaint. I categorized the
incident as the inspector had told me, which was easy enough to do. Then I reached the narrative section. Staring at the empty
space, I got writer’s block. Should I stick with the complainant’s version of events? If I did, it would sound like more than
harassment, and my report would contradict itself. I’d look pretty stupid. Then again, looking stupid was preferable to making
something up. The only thing the inspector had told me was to downgrade the charge on the report. He didn’t say how convincing
to make it.

When I was done, I walked to the complaint room and handed the report to one of our civilian administrative assistants. The
woman was sitting in front of a computer, entering complaints into the department database. I watched her review my report,
her eyes darting between the charge and the narrative. A look of skeptical disdain washed over her face, and she said, “You
better pray the CO doesn’t come lookin’ for this.”

So pray I did. My prayer seemed to have been answered, because I never heard from the inspector again, and I continued to
work with Clarabel on the four-to-twelve. I figured I’d heard the last of the video store incident, but the following week,
Detective Latham approached me to discuss my updated report.

I ran into Latham while I was standing next to the same desk in the main lobby where the inspector had given me his thinly
veiled ultimatum. The detective seemed to feel the need for more secrecy. He asked me to talk with him in the men’s room.

Detective Latham pushed open the restroom door and looked around. A cop was washing his hands in the sink, so the detective
waited until the man left. Once inside, the detective pulled my report out of the pocket of his suit jacket, pointed to my
narrative, and said, “Was this what the complainant told you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then why’d you call it harassment with lost property?”

“The CO told me to.”

The detective took a deep, noisy breath through his nose and grimaced as though he was preparing to dead-lift a four-hundred-pound
barbell. I felt a cold trickle at the base of my spine.

He asked me, “What do you think happens to complaints after they go in the system?”

“I don’t know,” I said, reflexively taking a step back, sensing that he was about to punch me.

Seeing me cringe, the detective tried to compose himself. “Okay, okay,” he said, dropping the anger in his voice. “I understand
that you’re new, but you need to know the detective squad reads every complaint, even if it’s for bullshit like this one.”

The men’s room door began to swing open, and the detective pushed it closed. “What the fuck?” said the voice on the other
side of the door.

“A minute!” the detective shouted, then he turned back to me and said quietly, “Don’t let the CO intimidate you. He does this
all the time. He just wants to keep his crime numbers down so he can get promoted and leave this shithole precinct.”

Out on patrol with Clarabel that night, I decided it was time to revisit the video store incident with her. I felt like I’d
been slapped from two different directions, and I wanted to know why.

“I tried to sign the complaint,” she said. “But you wouldn’t listen.”

“You weren’t telling me anything,” I reminded her.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

“You still think I’m in IAB, don’t you?”

“No,” she said, adding, “Well, maybe.”

“My God,” I said. “What do I have to do to prove I’m not a rat?”

“It’s not something you can prove. You’re either a rat, or you’re not.”

“If I was in IAB, don’t you think I’d have turned in the CO by now?”

“Maybe you’re biding your time, collecting more evidence. This downgrading thing is a big problem, but you didn’t hear that
from me.”

“How big a problem?”

She nodded deeply. It was big.

“But then we’re screwing ourselves,” I said. “How are we ever going to get more cops if the borough doesn’t think we need
them?”

“You’re starting to understand how things work around here,” she said. “You glad you came to the Two-eight?”

In truth, I
was
glad. I got to be with her all night, five nights a week. I didn’t dare tell her, though. It didn’t seem appropriate at the
time. Plus, I thought that mushy sentiments would only turn her off.

“No,” I said. “This place sucks. I should have stayed in MSU.”

“Too late now,” she said.