Paul Bacon (6 page)

Bill dropped his sandwich on the table and stared at it in shock, as though it had grown a pair of eyes and winked at him.
His look of surprise was quickly replaced by terror. “They probably spit in it,” he said, his face turning pale. A second
later, he covered his mouth and sprinted out of the cafeteria toward the latrines.

“Pfff,” said Gustavo. “He’s lucky if they
only
spit in it.”

CHAPTER 9

B
ILL WAS OUT SICK for the next two nights, complaining of stomach cramps, nausea, headaches, and—most impressive—double vision.
Returning to the outdoor range on the third night, he reported to the administrative office and learned that he’d missed his
only chance to qualify on his service weapon while he was gone. Because of the facility’s packed schedule, he was now at the
end of a long standby list to graduate from the police academy. It didn’t look as though they could squeeze him in before
December, which meant he’d have to retake the entire recruit semester—or so he was told. It sounded very grave the way Bill
described it secondhand, and I wondered if the cops in the admin office hadn’t been pulling his leg a little. It was this
type of unnecessary cruelty that he brought out in everyone.

Bill took the news like a terminal diagnosis. During our dinner break, he split off from the main group and wandered into
the darkening recesses of the compound. I watched his slow, robotic steps across the unlit parking lot and wondered where
he was going. I half expected him to return carrying the disembodied head of a state prisoner.

Live ammunition training was now complete for everyone else in Company 02, and we wouldn’t see our pistols again until the
day before graduation. Before I closed the dark-blue case on my gleaming silver hand cannon, I took a long, admiring look
at it, then gazed around at my classmates to make sure no one was watching. I raised the gun with my right hand, then wrapped
my left hand over the muzzle and racked the slide one last time.
Shick-shick
, the gun said back: “I’ll miss you, too.”

I walked to a classroom across the peninsula and waited for firearms simulator training to begin. Just moments before class
was supposed to start, I noticed that everyone in my company was in their seats except Bill, Clarabel, and Moran. I had my
respective suspicions about what was keeping them out in the woods.

Clarabel and Moran arrived only seconds apart and went unnoticed by all but me as they slid furtively into empty desks near
the door. They both wore deadpan expressions. Moran was impeccable, but I noticed a small twig stuck in Clarabel’s ponytail.
Bill arrived a few minutes after them, looking forlorn. I knew all my classmates would show up eventually. This was something
no one wanted to miss.

The NYPD’s Firearms Simulator and Training System (known, inevitably, as FATS) was billed as the most effective means ever
devised for sharpening a cop’s deadly reflexes. The heart of FATS was its immense video library of pretaped, live-action crime
scenarios, each with a variety of alternate endings. The actors in the fictional scenarios were projected on a large screen,
and we participated either by speaking to them or shooting at them, as appropriate. A range instructor chose from the possible
outcomes based on our performance. If we interacted with the scenario in a firm but reasoned manner, the instructor might
cue up an outcome in which the suspect was either compliant or not a criminal after all. On the other hand, if we were timid
or reckless, he might turn the very same person into a violent psychopath wielding a deadly weapon.

In the hands of a determined instructor, FATS was unbeatable. Someone you thought was innocent would turn out to be a perp,
or an apparent suspect would end up being a victim and you wouldn’t find out until after you’d shot them. It was like a test
where the questions would change after you’d filled in your answers, and in this way, perhaps it did teach us a little about
our future careers.

Above all, FATS was an exercise in reverse psychology, as Officer Kurtz, our range instructor, demonstrated from the start.
When he asked for volunteers to go first, he waited to see who didn’t raise their hands, and then he drafted a guinea pig
from the lot. First up was Haldon, the shiest and oldest member of our company. With sunken cheeks, stooped shoulders, and
a soft voice, Haldon bewildered everyone just by showing up. If we’d had an academy yearbook, this thirty-eight-year-old recruit
would have been voted most likely to die in the line of duty.

Haldon rose to his feet amid howling gales of laughter. He took it in stride, chuckling back at us, as if he were in on his
own joke. Stepping up to the screen, Haldon grabbed the mock gun off the table and holstered it on his gun belt with some
difficulty. He then turned to the instructor and gave a hearty thumbs-up.

Officer Kurtz nodded at Haldon and switched off the overhead lights without bothering to quiet us down. We hushed ourselves
when the six-by-ten-foot projection screen lit up with a haunting image: a garbage-strewn back alley, with no people in sight.
Before the action began, a prerecorded male voice came over the booming speakers advising Haldon of the situation:

911 receives a call from a woman who states that a dangerous man has kidnapped her infant child. She states the man is currently
located in an alley outside her apartment. Officer is requested to check and advise.

A few seconds later, a man appeared from around the corner carrying a children’s car safety seat. If this weren’t enough for
a positive ID, he was also absurdly dangerous looking: shirtless and bearded, with a big nose, frizzy brown hair, and a sun-baked
junkie physique. Part Frank Zappa, part crocodile, the bare-chested man stumbled across the alleyway like he was drunk. The
car seat in his hand was draped in blankets, making it impossible to tell whether or not an infant was inside.

Arriving at center screen, the two-dimensional suspect looked up and, with startling realism, immediately laughed in Haldon’s
face. “
Whatcha gonna do, pig?
” he taunted. “
You gonna shoot a man with a
baby
?”

Haldon, a devoted father of two toddlers himself, beseeched the suspect, “Sir, I think that you may be intoxicated. Before
we go any further, please put the car seat on the ground slowly.”

The bare-chested man reached into the car seat with his free hand and pulled out a foot-long silver machete. Haldon finally
sprung into action, grabbing for his mock gun. He pulled at the grip, but it wouldn’t come loose. He tugged and twisted until
he finally gave up and wielded the only weapon he could find: his right hand. He made a gun shape with his thumb and forefinger
and shouted at the perp, “Stop right there!”

Mercifully, the instructor gave a silent command, and Zappa dropped the car seat and began charging at Haldon with the machete
raised over his head.

“Blam, blam, blam!” Haldon shouted, curling his finger as if squeezing a trigger.

By Haldon’s third
blam
, the perp’s face filled the entire screen, his gaping, shockingly unhygienic mouth wider than Haldon’s shoulders. The image
loomed above us all for a moment, then was replaced by the words SCENARIO COMPLETE.

Laughter broke out across the room, leading to a round of foot-stamping that shook the flimsy metal walls of our trailer-turned-classroom.
The instructor brought the revelry to an end by turning on the overhead room lights. My classmates moaned and pawed at their
eyes as if they’d just been maced.

Officer Kurtz took off his reading glasses and asked Haldon, “What were you hoping to accomplish with your finger?”

“I had to do
something
,” Haldon replied.

“O-kay,” said the instructor. “Well, we have no shots to review, so we’ll just skip the playback. Hmm. Who should be next?”

Bill Peters had been skulking in the shadows, so naturally the instructor called on him. Bill stood up, accepted the simulated
gun from Haldon, and then quietly took his place in front of the video screen. Normally, he would have already made some kind
of self-deprecating remark by now to guard against embarrassment. He said nothing, however, making me think that his holdover
status had driven him to new depths of insecurity.

The instructor switched off the room lights, and the back alley image reappeared on the screen. “I’m gonna start you with
the same scenario,” the instructor told Bill. “But keep in mind that things are not always as they appear to be. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Bill. His voice was surprisingly firm for a man teetering on depression. To say nothing of the double vision.

“Okay,” said the instructor, and the scenario began again: the alley, Zappa, baby carrier. But when the suspect challenged
Bill to shoot him, the scenario took a different turn. It must have been the meatball hoagie talking, because Bill exploded
in front of our eyes.

“PUT DOWN THE FUCKING BABY, YOU DISEASE-CARRY ING PIECE OF SHIT!” he screamed, silencing the room with his sudden, awesome
rage. Our normally boisterous group sat perfectly still, eyes peeled open and mouths shut.

The perp on the screen seemed transformed as well. Rather than grabbing a machete with his free hand, he reached for the sky
in apparent submission. “
Whoa, whoa! I was just kidding, officer! Let me show
you something
,” the suspect said, then turned his body away to reach into his back pocket.

Bill whipped out the fake gun and fanned a half-dozen simulated bullets in the blink of an eye. Just as quickly, the SCENARIO
COMPLETE message reappeared, and the instructor brought up the lights again.

This time around, only half the room was overcome with hysterical laughter. The other half was applauding and screaming Bill’s
name. Bill grinned, soaking up the unusual display of peer approval.

Officer Kurtz stopped us short. “Before you get too cocky,” he said to Bill, “let me show the outcome I’d picked for you,
the one you would’ve seen if you hadn’t blasted the guy back to the nineteen seventies.”

The misunderstood Mr. Zappa, as it turned out, was reaching not for a weapon but for an official court document proving his
custody of the reportedly kidnapped infant. The camera even zoomed in on the document to show a raised government seal at
the bottom, verifying its authenticity. Like the brutal, contorted face of Haldon’s attacker, the image of the official seal
lingered on the screen just long enough to add insult to injury.

“As I said,” the instructor told Bill, “things are not always as they appear.”

Bill dropped his head under a chorus of insults from the same people who just seconds earlier had been chanting his name.

“Quiet, everyone! Listen up!” the instructor had to shout to be heard. “We’re dealing with more than one aspect of police
work here. Officer Peters may have misread the situation, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone end a scenario so fast.
Let’s look at the playback.”

We reviewed each of Bill’s shots in slow motion. His first two bullets struck the suspect’s lower thigh and hip, shown as
yellow dots, meaning nonlethal hits. The next four were red—kill shots to the man’s stomach, heart, chin, and forehead. In
other words, Bill had painted a straight line of fire from the man’s kneecap to his brain. This hardly seemed like the work
of someone about to flunk out of target shooting. And it proved something I’d been thinking for a while now: All Bill needed
to shake him out of his doldrums was a little confidence. Short of that, his newfound hatred for criminals seemed to have
done the trick.

“Top notch,” said the instructor. “Too bad he wasn’t actually a perp.”

“At least I didn’t shoot the baby,” Bill said, then cackled at himself for the first time in three days.

“How long do you think it took you to squeeze off six rounds?” the instructor asked him.

“I don’t know,” said Bill. “Four or five seconds maybe?”

“Try point-nine seconds,” said the instructor. Another huge round of applause for Bill.

CHAPTER 10

W
E RETURNED TO THE ACADEMY at the end of our two-week range cycle, but we never quite settled back into our old routine. After
shooting live ammunition and practicing real-life scenarios, it was easy to think of ourselves as full-fledged cops, and a
restless energy infested our entire company. Tardiness became a major issue, as did shouting and pushing matches, vendettas,
and pranks.

During musters, people could not be convinced to stop talking in formation. This offense carried a penalty of twenty-five
to a hundred push-ups, depending on the mood of the instructor. And no matter how many people were chattering, all thirty
of us had to get down on the floor and pay as a group. Despite this, people would talk in formation every day, and we would
get busted for it every day.

It was in this devolving environment, six weeks before graduation, that I was pulled out of law class by Officer Sheronda
Wynn, our Official Company Instructor, a kind of homeroom adviser. Like Moran, Officer Wynn was laid-back to the point of
being almost completely in effective at her job. A plump and slow-moving former transit cop, she also demonstrated that special
brand of officers’ efficiency, which was to say she wouldn’t waste a single step if she could avoid it.

Officer Wynn appeared at our classroom door, angrily waving me out into the hallway as though I was making her late for a
flight. When I met her outside, she told me, “Your company sergeant’s been demoted. Since you’ve got the highest grades in
your company, you’re next in line to take his place. So, do you want it?”

“Demoted?” I said. “What happened?”

“What’s it matter?” she said. “He fucked up.”

“But how?” I said, trying to picture Moran making a mistake. He was a shirker, but he wasn’t sloppy. I couldn’t imagine what
he’d done to lose his stripes.

“Look,” said Officer Wynn, “I only got ten minutes left in my meal and a whole baked potato to eat. Do you want it or not?”

“I’m not sure. It’s kind of a bad time to take over.”

“At the very end? Don’t you want your choice of command?”

“Yeah, I know. Can I think about it over the weekend?”

“No!”

“What’s the rush?”

“I was supposed to replace Moran before y’all went to the range, but I forgot. If the CO sees him wearing sergeant’s collar
brass again, it’ll be
my
ass that’s demoted.”

She was annoying, but she was right. While everyone else would receive their assignments by virtual lottery, company sergeants
got their first pick. It was nearly impossible to change precincts after orders went out, and unlike the military, the NYPD
had no rotation system for relieving members pressed into hardship duty. Wherever I wound up after graduation was where I’d
be stuck until I retired or got promoted. The department could put me anywhere: the crime-infested South Bronx, which was
more than I thought I could handle, or the snooty Upper East Side, which just seemed boring.

I was aiming for the First Precinct in the Financial District, former home of the Twin Towers. It was close to where I lived,
and, more important, it had been the site of two terrorist attacks in the last decade. Protecting it from another attack seemed
like an honor and an important thing to do. With two thousand recruits in my class and more than seventy commands in the city,
the chances of getting my pick seemed very small, so I made up my mind immediately. A month and a half of daily humiliation
would be worth it.

Moran was nonchalant when Officer Wynn pulled him out of class and broke the news about losing his position. When he and I
met in the men’s room later to trade collar brass in private, he actually looked relieved.

Handing me his gold-colored sergeant’s chevrons with an ironic smile, he said, “Don’t let ’em fuck with you,” and then he
swanned his way back out the door. Officer Wynn had different advice: “Don’t be flexin’,” she said, her way of warning me
not to be too dictatorial in my new role. I gave their suggestions only a moment of thought before deciding I would just be
myself and see how that worked.