Policewoman

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  I went to the mirror to fix my hair and stared at myself. My face was filthy and my mouth was bloody. That was the salty taste, blood from a cut inside my mouth, it was all over my chin and the back of my hand and had gotten smeared into my hair. There was a tenderness on my cheek, and I could see a soft blue swelling. Damn them, watching me, damn them. I whirled around, primed, furious, and they dropped their eyes and the sergeant had my arm again.

  He grinned at me fondly. “Hey, you’re a little terror, all right. Go into the ladies room and wash your face. And for God’s sake,” he said sternly, “put on your shoes. Seems we’re in some kind of holy sanctuary here, and there you stand in your runny stockings!” He said it loudly in his booming street voice, and I loved that sergeant for bringing forth those shocked expressions at his boisterous irreverence.

  “I hate shoes,” I said. “I think they’re for the birds!”

  It was my judgment of them, and I was finished brooding about their weighing of me. To hell with them, all of them. I walked stiffly out of the room, staring them down. After I had washed up in the ladies room, I came back to the office, still carrying my shoes. Somehow, I could not put them back on—not yet.

  The sergeant was arguing loudly with Mr. Mac, shouting him down. “I don’t give a damn if you can’t spare her, she’s the complainant and she’s gonna sign the complaint.”

  An icicle of a girl in a navy blue knit dress with white pearls studied the sergeant’s florid face with interest. To her, it was a strange, upsetting visage. Mr. Mac waved his arm at the sergeant, who caught it mid-air. “Don’t wave your hands at me, mister. Miss, is this the ring the guy took? Is it yours? Did you leave it on that desk?”

  The girl nodded silently, once to each question, then waited for Mr. Mac to give further answer. “But you got him, and that’s it as far as we’re concerned. No court for my girl, and that’s it, that’s it. Final. Finished. She’s needed here and that’s that. My attorney will get the ring back at the precinct, so don’t threaten to withhold it on me.”

  And no matter what the sergeant said, or how he said it, we were to have no complainant. It was our case, and they were out of it. I put on my shoes finally and got my coat and noticed that Hank, sitting wordless on the couch, was drawn with pain and that he was rising carefully and stiffly. I was beginning to hurt, too: my legs and my face and my mouth and my hands. We made less than a triumphant exit, but I turned and glared at them at the door, knowing they would all be looking at us. I put as much contempt and scorn and distaste as I could summon into my look, but I could feel my mouth swelling and I must have looked pretty grotesque. My hand went to touch my owl: he was gone. Somewhere in the scuffle, my little gold owl had gotten lost and I felt a deep, panicky sense of loss. He would never be found.

  The sergeant had a patrol car waiting at the curb and directed that we be driven to the nearest hospital; the prisoner was at the precinct waiting to be booked. A crisp, dark-skinned Indian intern told me to take off my stockings: they were ripped to shreds and my legs were scraped and dirty. I hadn’t noticed the cut across my right ankle. He cleaned me off with some clear lotion spilled on pieces of sterile cotton, and my eyes filled with tears at the sting. Then he stained me with some red medication. They took Hank off in another direction, and I had noticed he was bending over, leaning toward his right side.

  The intern had a clear, smooth face—alert, unsurprised, thoroughly professional. “You are a policelady, yes? Very interesting. Do you hurt anywhere else? Any parts of your body? Did you fall, land on your back? H’mm, very interesting.” His accents were carefully British and polite, but distant and cold.

  He gave me some bitter medicinal lotion to swash around in my mouth and spit into the small round steel sink.

  “Have you ever had a TAT?” Then he explained evenly, “Tetanus anti-tetanus injection?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I will give you three injections, you understand? A divided dosage. We will then wait thirty minutes between injections; if you have an allergy to this, there will be a red swelling the size of a ... ah ... quarter, yes, and we will not give you any more. So.” He jabbed the first dose into my right arm, on the inside just below the elbow. Then he disappeared, making soft little sounds with his mouth. A nurse came and took down the facts they needed for their records and gave me a paper to sign—a release of some kind. I asked about Hank: she didn’t know. I stretched out on the hard examining table. The intern came back exactly thirty minutes later, looked at my arm and gave me a second injection. An older doctor came, a funny-looking man with long gray hair and a clean white coat. He looked at my arm, at my bruised legs, smiled at me vacantly, murmured, then became busy at a desk. I asked him about my partner.

  “He’s having some X-rays; has some pain in his back and shoulder. He’s in good hands.” He smiled contentedly, a wide, yellow-toothed look.

  The nurse came back and smiled at me. “Well, you’d better pretty up. There are some reporters out there, and they want to take your picture,” she chirped.

  Two men came in, one carrying a camera, and they were directing the doctor to pose with me. The one with the notebook was asking me how to spell my name, how old I was, my partner’s name, the prisoner’s name. I realized, with some shock, that I didn’t even know the prisoner’s name, but the reporter said they’d check at the precinct. He asked a few quick questions and then was satisfied with my answers. Then the photographer began placing us for the picture. The old doctor got a grip under my chin and pushed my head back so that all I could see was the ceiling! The photographer kept hiking up my skirt and I kept pulling it down. Straining my eyes, I could see the toothy yellow grin of the doctor. The photographer told him to lower my face a little—all he could see was my neck. And my knees. The doctor jerked my head an inch or two lower, but his grip was so strong I couldn’t see the photographer, just the flashes of light which left circles of blue before my eyes. Then the reporters took off.

  The old doctor disappeared with the reporters and I didn’t see him again. I didn’t want to call Tony at his office; I’d wait until I knew he was home. My arm started to feel a little peculiar. There was a round circle of bright red on my inner arm. It was very hot and tender and itchy, and the circle was raised almost a quarter of an inch. Great. The Indian intern wasn’t in the hallway but he was due back in about ten minutes. On the dot, he arrived, his needle pointing at me. The red circle had disappeared by this time.

  “Doctor, there was a bright red circle there a few minutes ago,” I told him, pulling my arm from his hand.

  He studied me with his liquid brown eyes. “Ah, very interesting. Now, when you say ‘bright red,’ ah, what exactly do you mean?”

  I clenched my teeth. “Bright. Red.”

  “So. And how large was the, ah, circle, please?”

  I made a circle with my thumb and index finger. “And it was very hot, very red and very hot.”

  He shrugged, a graceful gesture. “What you say is bright red, very hot, ah, might not be what I say is, ah, bright red and very hot, you see? Did the nurse examine it?”

  I wanted to get out of there: to go home. “Nobody saw it. I saw it. It was red and hot, just like you said to watch for.”

  “Ah, but I must see this for myself,” he said, calmly ignoring my testimony. “You cannot judge this thing,” he said with maddening superiority. “I will give you the last portion of the TAT.” And he did so before I could protest and then he left, having completed his job.

  I could feel the fluid that had been forced into me against my will, and I was overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness and self-pity. They had knocked me downstairs, pushed me from their lousy candystand, shoved me away, stared and pointed at me, accused me of brutality, dismissed my best dress and stolen my only really good gold pin. Their scornful eyes had looked right through me, and now they were pumping me full of some kind of poison!

  I started to cry, a wet noiseless mixture of anger, frustration, hurt, pain
and heavy body-aching weariness. I washed my face in the sink and looked at myself in the antiseptic steel-framed mirror. Only my eyes were familiar—still grayish-blue, but the whites were red veined. My nose was shiny, there was an irregular greenish-yellow lump on my cheek, my lower lip was swollen like a petulant child’s, my hair was streaked with the dirt of the stairway and blood from my own wounds and the prisoner’s. I was a mess, and to top everything off, they had taken my picture for the newspapers looking like some beaten contender.

  You feel, sitting in an examining room of a busy hospital, with people coming in and out of the room, racing about the halls, pushing their important trays of medicines and needles and equipment, that you are completely alone, forgotten, without identity beyond the extent of your wounds. It is their world, the doctors and nurses and attendants and admittance clerks, and they don’t answer your questions and they don’t do anything beyond tending the immediate, physical evidence of your needs. Finally, I called Tony from a phone booth in the hall. He had just received a call from my sister who had heard a news report on the radio giving a brief run-down of the arrest, in which my name had been mispronounced, of course.

  My words were careful and calm; my voice was flat and without emotion. I told him where I was and that I was all right, just a little tired. Yes, I was sure. We’d talk about it later. Oh, and I was a little bruised. It was okay, really it was, I was mostly very tired. I didn’t know when I’d be home. It was after six, and I still had to book the prisoner and write up reports and God knows what else. I would keep in touch by phone.

  They did some X-rays of my skull. I hadn’t known they were going to, but found out when a bustling white starchy nurse pushed a wheelchair at me, ignored my indignation, planted me in it and propelled me down the hall and into an elevator. The wheelchair was pushed down another hall, then came to a halt alongside a mobile table. Hank was stretched out on his stomach, his head resting on his arms, his eyes closed. His long, weather-beaten face was gray, his mouth drawn down in pain.

  “Hey, Hank,” I called softly, not sure if he was sleeping. He opened his eyes dully. “You okay?”

  “They gave me something,” he said dreamily. “Something to ease it up. Boy, my back is still killing me. And damn it,” he moaned, “my good suit. My jacket is ripped. Not the seam—a big hole right in the center of the back—isn’t that a killer?” He shook his head dreamily and seemed to be trying to remember something. “Oh hey, Dot, listen, will you call my wife? You have my home number. Listen, just tell her I’m all right. Don’t tell her about the X-rays, just say they’re going to keep me overnight. The station will call her, but maybe if you just talk to her—you know.” Then, blinking his eyes wide open, “Hey, Dot—how are you? You okay? What did they do for you?”

  I told him I was fine, but that they had probably poisoned me with those divided injections. It was nice to be able to tell somebody.

  “Hey,” he said, his eyes closed, “you were swell. Really, kid, you were right in there.”

  It made me feel a little better. It was the kind of praise usually grudgingly given—they feel a girl is deadweight in a rough arrest.

  “You know, Hank, in the tussle I think I might have kicked you once or twice—all those arms and legs.”

  He was silent a moment. Then he lifted his face, smiling, and chuckled. “Wow, you sure told them off, didn’t you?”

  I felt my face burn. I had forgotten, and the angry words which I had shouted at the crowd flooded back. “Well, please don’t quote me, Hank. I was pretty upset. I don’t even remember exactly what I said. Besides, I didn’t think you were in any condition to hear me.”

  “I heard you, all right, and believe me, you used all the right words. Perfect.”

  Then he seemed to doze; the medication was taking effect. I was wheeled into the X-ray room, and when they pushed me out, he was gone. Back downstairs, they released me and I called his wife. Her voice was small, quiet, frightened in my ear. She asked me over and over again, “But he’s all right, isn’t he?”

  “He’s more worried about his good suit than anything else, Mrs. Ludlow. You come by and see him tomorrow morning and bring a needle and thread, and then he’ll be great.”

  Hank Ludlow spent two months in the hospital with two broken vertebrae and a dislocated shoulder. I was luckier: nothing broken.

  When I reported, back to the precinct, I learned our prisoner had gone berserk when they attempted to fingerprint him in the detectives’ room. He had smashed ink bottles all over the place, turned over a heavy desk, smashed a chair before they got him handcuffed to a radiator and called for the psychos. By the time they arrived with a straitjacket, he had battered his knuckles against the radiator until they bled, then started on his head, splitting gashes across the forehead. The squad commander wouldn’t let anyone near him: let him make his own bruises. It took four men quite a time to get him secured into the straitjacket, and he took to snapping his teeth at the interns when they tried to wrap up his bleeding head. A check of his record at the Bureau of Criminal Identification showed two previous arrests for felonious assault. I typed up my report and filled out my arrest cards, then called Tony to tell him that I was on my way. He wanted to come for me in the car, but I wanted to get going right away; he could meet me at the subway station. I kept my face down, hiding my bruises, watching the people—the subway riders, the citizens—staring blandly at each other, at their newspapers filled with violence and blood and crime, flipping the pages, wetting fingers for continuations of stories. A small colored boy danced through the train selling morning papers at twice the newsstand price. I bought a Daily News, and there was a picture of the doctor and me on page four and a brief run-down on the arrest. I looked at other people reading the story, taking it all in, all of it in one quick glance, knowing the whole story, and then passing on to something else.

  I checked at the precinct the next morning and was surprised to learn that the prisoner was able to be arraigned. They had called the hospital prison ward, and I was to meet a detective within an hour and escort the prisoner for mug shots and to court.

  He was silent when I saw him, his bandaged face pressed to his chest. His hands were encased in bandages and were handcuffed on his lap. He looked up when I entered the hospital room, blinked his swollen eyes in some confusion, then smiled.

  “You’re the lady cop, huh?” There was a peculiar admiration in his voice. I didn’t answer him. “Boy, what a battler. Hey, who was that other guy—that one who bashed me in the face? That little old guy. Jeez, I didn’t do nuthin’ to him!”

  And there we were, having a conversation just like normal, sane people do, and I even found myself asking him how he felt. He moaned. He was feeling the pain now, as I was. The full extent of all his batterings, from us, from himself, had descended on his body now, and he said he ached all over. Then he asked how I felt. I said okay.

  “You the one split my head open? Whatd’ya hit me with?” He was curious, respectfully curious.

  The detective made a slight sound—a warning. “With my hand, mister. I’m a karate expert.” The prisoner whistled softly and didn’t talk any more during all the processing.

  At court, when the case was called, the detective got him from detention, and there was a stir in the courtroom when he appeared, looking like the movie invisible man, only the bandages giving him form. A slim, well-dressed man bobbed up from somewhere to represent him. He waved to Sessions, and the prisoner, quiet now, quiescent, was taken away.

  I saw the attorney talking with a faded blonde woman who kept staring at me while listening to him in the corridor outside the courtroom. As I walked past them, the attorney caught my arm, smiling.

  “Officer Uhank, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly.

  I corrected him and he apologized, then introduced me to the woman. “This is Mrs. Schmidt—Ralph’s wife.” We regarded each other warily. “Listen, Policewoman Uhnak, I want to talk to you a minute, get a run-down on this thing. You k
now how the newspapers louse things up, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to Ralphie yet. Boy, you people sure clobbered the daylights out of him, didn’t you?” he asked with a sly laugh.

  I pulled back from him, feeling nasty and bruised and belligerent. “Talk to your client, counselor. I have nothing to say to you. You heard the affidavit.”

  He ran after me, leaving Mrs. Schmidt in the middle of the hallway. “Hey now, young lady, don’t get me wrong. I know that old Ralphie is a little—well, rough. That poor woman puts up with a lot. But you know, he didn’t used to be that way.”

  “I saw his record,” I replied coldly.

  The attorney brushed the record aside with a wave of his hand, and spoke in that infuriatingly confidential tone they use to dazzle their befuddled clients: only to you do I reveal these things; only you would understand. “They had a big tragedy, you see. Five years ago, they had this kid, and the boy wasn’t right, you know.” He touched his head. “You know, you know. Well, they spent a fortune on that kid—doctors, phonies, diets, tests, prayer-phonies, the whole thing—and the kid died when he was two years old. Ralphie went off the deep end, became a wild man. He hasn’t been right since. Believe me, I know this guy—known him for years. He’s a good, hard-working stiff and every how and then,” he said matter-of-factly, “he goes off.”

  “Like copping things from desks and fighting the whole world?”

  The attorney’s bright eyes winked. “Now, officer, you haven’t got a grand larceny and you know it. We’ll cop out to petit—you haven’t even got a complainant.”