Policewoman

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  I went to see the director of policewomen the next morning. “I turned down that music show because I’m sick. My ulcer has been acting up and my doctor has put me on medication which is slowing me down. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think I can do any more of these shows.”

  “Do you want to go on sick leave?” she asked quietly.

  “No, ma’am. I just don’t want to go on any more television shows.”

  “I see. Of course you realize all these assignments were purely voluntary.” I didn’t argue. I nodded. “Let’s see now: you were on three television shows and two radio interviews, yes? Very well, Mrs. Uhnak. Report to the Bureau tomorrow morning and we’ll see about your new assignment.” She studied her long white nails for a moment. “As you may know, there is a bit of difficulty relative to your new assignment.”

  I must have looked surprised, for she continued, nodding her head. “Yes, I’m not too sure where we’re going to place you. You see,” she was studying me now, curiously looking for something in my face, “you have become rather well known. Many of the squads that use women detectives are,” she searched for a word, “‘wary,’ I guess you’d say, of someone who has been so much in the public eye.”

  “Really?” My voice was shaky and tense. “Do the squad commanders think I’m some kind of prima donna? Do they think that all this publicity was for me?”

  Her eyes glinted and her voice was harsh. “I am not questioning their motives,” and then she added, meanly, “or yours. I am merely relaying this information to you. You are a little too hot right now.”

  “A hot shot maybe?”

  “Well, that would be for you to say, wouldn’t it?” We sat watching each other, neither of us moving an inch, neither of us showing anything, revealing anything. Finally, she broke the silence with a sigh, moved her hands on her desk. “Mrs. Uhnak, I seriously suggest you take a day or two off. You have some overtime coming. Why don’t you just relax at home and let me work this out?” If there was some kindness in her voice, just some hint of concern, her face concealed it. Yet I felt there was some great burden on her; there was some strangely indefinable sympathy between us and it was not the director I should be fighting.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s been too much—all this running around. I don’t feel well and I’m tired.”

  An open bid for sympathy was the wrong tactic, and there was to be no camaraderie. Her face hardened and she nodded. “Very well, you may have the next two tours off. Fill out the o.t. sheets and I’ll sign them, and you may be excused for the rest of today as well.” And then she became busy with her own work.

  Tony and I sat that night and watched my image on a rerun of a news broadcast. There I was, smiling without much expression, speaking in that intolerably quiet, self-assured voice: the voice of the college actress, measuring out the pauses, sluffing off the dangers, speaking it all and marking it all as “routine”—underplaying it for effect, the excitement of the commentator heightened by my own offhand and calculated manner.

  I watched the girl in the picture, appearing for barely three minutes, telling it all casually and unremarkably. “It’s all so phony,” I said. It wasn’t like that—none of it was like that. Not one of them asked me what it was really like.” The words came finally, in a torrent of sound and feeling. We had both been waiting it out, both knew it had to burst so that I could be free of it. I gasped and choked over all of it and Tony sat, pressing my hands inside of his, not trying to stop me. “There was that one terrible moment: just the two of us and nothing else in the world was real, and all our lives, everything either one of us had done up to that second, counted for nothing. And we just stood there, facing each other, and everything in our futures depended on each other, like we were the only two people in the entire world and everything was right there, in that rotten, damp, flickering tunnel. In my whole life, no one was ever as important as he was then.” I stopped, seeing Tony’s face through the wet tears that streaked my eyes. “Can you understand that? Just that man and me, and both of our lives were, were encased there, by those tile walls; everything began and ended right there. I thought about it—it actually flashed through me that only he and I were there. That big dark face, sweaty and panting, and me, like I was some stranger in my own body. We were so completely alone and I can’t help wondering what he felt—I mean, I know what he is ... I know what he’s done ... all those poor women ... I’ve met them in court and spoken to them and seen them cry, and their husbands have held my hands ... but I can’t help wondering what he feels now. He was there too. He went through exactly what I went through land they’re trading on it, on the destruction of someone’s life. If I had been killed, they would have interviewed him in the police station and they’d be asking you for old snapshots of me for their stories, and it would have all been the same—all of it. Maybe even a better story!”

  I leaned against Tony’s shoulder and let the sobs shake me, not fighting it any more, forcing words out spasmodically, trying to get it all out, snuffling wetly. “And they look at me like I’m some kind of freak—they admire me and make a big fuss. They hold me up like I’m something in a glass case and keep asking me, How did you feel? At the moment when he held the gun on you, how did you feel? God, God, how do they think I felt? And that stupid girl on television, simpering and shrugging. ‘It was my job; after all, I’m a policewoman and that was my assignment.’ What do they know about it? What do any of them know about it?”

  And then, finally, I put the other part of it into words: “And that poor, miserable pregnant girl—his wife—in that filthy place and with a child going to be born and his father in prison for all his growing years. Another one for us; give him twelve or fifteen years and he’ll be right out there. And that girl, saying to me, ‘What do you care? What are we to you?’ And I didn’t answer her, I didn’t say anything, because I told myself she was right.”

  Tony pulled me back and tilted my face up to his. “And was she right?”

  I shook my head. “No. She was wrong. Or maybe I’m wrong, because I care. God Almighty, what’s wrong with me? Do I have to care about everybody and everything? Do I have to see their lives?”

  The check came the next morning and I cashed it and I counted out the money in the crisp new tens and twenties. I counted out one hundred and twenty-five dollars into two neat stacks. Then I bought an envelope and a stamp at the stationery store and put one of the stacks of money into the envelope and wrote Mrs. Anderson’s name on it and her address and nothing else, and sealed and stamped it. I put Paul’s share in my pocketbook. Then I dropped the envelope into the mail box and clinked the lid twice to make sure it fell inside.

  And I wondered, walking home, exactly what it was that I was trying to buy for one hundred and twenty-five dollars.

  10

  “Oh, read my future brightly; oh, make it all come true”

  THE POLICE DEPARTMENT DOES not persist with its heroes; there is not a gradual letting go. It is a quick thing, as quick as the event. One day your name is headlined, editorialized; your picture is on the front pages and on the television screens—and the next day you are on patrol. You are even, to some degree, suspect. Should you follow up a sensationalized arrest with another unusual incident, eyebrows are raised, voices are lowered and suspicions are voiced. On the other hand, should your arrest record hit a slump, questions are raised as to whether or not you are resting on your laurels. Publicity marks you in the Department, and you are aware of being watched and studied. Future partners regard your reaction to your celebrity. If you are too casual about it—“Who does she think she’s kidding?” If you openly enjoy and revel in it—“What a swell-headed hot shot!”

  My “public relations” role for the Department lasted some two weeks, and then I was assigned, temporarily, to the Bureau of Special Services. It is—to my mind—the “elite squad,” the dream squad. These are the men and women who draw the most interesting assignments in the Department. They guard and accompa
ny the President and his family on visits to New York, accompany visiting royalty or heads of government. Though they work fantastic hours and bear tremendous responsibility, they also have great opportunities to meet and mingle with not just “important” people, but dynamic, interesting people one does not ordinarily come to know. Chosen because of their personalities and abilities not only as police officers but as informed, competent people, many of the detectives in this squad are bilingual. Of course, working with internationally known personalities is not their major assignment. Special Services also handles undercover assignments, checks on organizations that might be subversive or questionable, keeps abreast of labor problems to keep the Department alerted to any emergency conditions. There are only four or five women assigned permanently to B.O.S.S., and I was sent to fill in for one of the women who had broken her leg in a skiing mishap upstate. I arrived dreaming of queens and kings.

  My partner was a man named Charlie Hvolka, and he told me we were to conduct an investigation involving gypsies.

  Most people associate fortune tellers’ with fairs or romantic songs, a kind of “fun thing” you go along with as part of a late summer afternoon’s pleasure. The fortune tellers are part of that mysterious tribe called “gypsies,” whose origins are lost and unknown, and therefore, to the extender of the palm, all the more exotic. When I was about sixteen, my sister and I, along with two of her giggling friends, went to a tearoom, one of those bare, slightly shoddy rooms located up a flight of stairs over a “going-out-of-business” specialty shop somehow wedged between two glossy Fifth Avenue stores. The dirtiness of the stairs and the darkness of the hallway added to our sense of excitement, though truly nothing is needed to add to the exhilaration of four teen-age girls about to have the world unfolded to them from the depths of their own hands.

  One of my sister’s friends, Miki, went first into a small area of the room cloaked off with shiny drapes of many colors. She glanced over at us as she entered the domain of the all-knowing Rahmajee. He was all-knowing because the small sign over the entry to his secret lair said so. She emerged shiny-eyed and slightly dazed ten minutes later, shaking her head at our questions, unable to speak of it. Not yet. Not yet. Waiting for my sister, I sipped the lukewarm tea, swallowing several bitter grains. The other girl, whoever she was I do not remember, told me not to disturb the cup as our fortunes and future were there, among the leaves. My turn came last (as befits the youngest), and I sat across a card table from a man of undetermined ancestry, marked “Indian” by a twist of grayish-white material wrapped around his head. His eyes were bright black, and a light from somewhere behind my head shone directly on his face, which glistened with some greasy substance. His voice was velvet-smooth and melodic, and he pressed his fingertips rhythmically on my outstretched fingers, tips on tips, slightest of pressures. He was getting the measure of my life and dreams and hopes and ambitions. Then he read my fortune, carefully choosing his words so that later, when we girls compared notes, there would be some variation, and we would know he had told each of us our true destiny. The words the dark man spoke are lost in time, but it would not be difficult to imagine what one would say to a breathless sixteen-year-old who has yet to discover the world: love, fame, misfortune, courage, eventual triumph. All there, in that marvelous hand, unlike any other hand ever created through all time, in all the universe.

  And then I carried my cup of soggy tea leaves to a corner table, where some incredibly old woman hunched over them, scattering them on a saucer before her. Without looking at me, she read them so softly and in so strange an accent that to this day I do not know what my life was to be. I leaned forward just once to catch her words, but the hot foul breath was not worth the stream of mumbled words.

  This, then, is usually the extent of our knowledge of gypsies and fortune tellers: a kind of fond, even thrilling memory of days when we were anxious and willing to accept a dream uniquely our own, and carry it around like a strange secret inside ourselves.

  But there is more to it, for any police department in any large city has its stories about gypsies, and they are neither romantic nor funny.

  Charlie Hvolka was a soft-spoken man of medium height and build, which is probably about two inches shorter than he’d like to be and about ten pounds heavier. He had a round, mild face and high broad cheek bones, small eyes and dry-looking lips; his voice was very soft and careful, because he spoke many languages and was aware of occasionally slipping into the accents of his childhood Russian. There was no telltale hardness in Charlie’s face, and if asked to guess his occupation, you’d probably have said he was a schoolteacher, professor or librarian, or one of those tiptoe-walking multitudes who wordlessly provide some service for you without intruding their features on your memory. This was one of Charlie’s strongest assets; the only part of him that was pure policeman was his mind, and that was made of hard spikes of metal that clicked quickly and missed nothing.

  “We have received information,” Charlie said, using the professional police way of saying that he was not going to tell me anything of the background of the case, “that this woman, a Madame Zoruba, is a steerer for an abortionist. She is a shrewd old witch, and we haven’t been able to get anything definite on her. She speaks Polish mostly, but she can speak and understand English. She has this place set up on the upper West Side, and it’s a kind of ‘temple’ or something, a ‘church.’ She does some fortunetelling, but her gimmick is that it’s not for money: you make a ‘contribution’ to her church.”

  Madame Zoruba was not a swindler who practiced separating middle-aged, greedy women from their newly acquired widow’s gold. This is a fairly common operation, made possible by an incredible awareness of human avarice. I had worked on some of these cases when I was in the Policewomen’s Bureau. Various switches are pulled on the victim, handkerchiefs are placed around money, chickens are strangled in paper bags, curses are declared to be present, evil money must be cleansed. And they go along with it, these middle-aged women who are more numerous and generally more intelligent than can be believed. They are in quest of wealth promised them by the swindling gypsy who, of course, is the only one to gain by the various transactions. They are patient, the gypsies, waiting sometimes for months before actually confiscating the money, during which interval the victim tells herself that it must be true, it must be real. If it were a fraud, the gypsy would have taken the money. But she held it for weeks, and the taint is still on it, and she gave it back to me. I will bring her the chicken and if the chicken dies in the bag with the money, we will know it is cursed, and she shall cleanse it for me and then it will multiply, like she said, three times! They are patient, the swindlers, but for their own reasons. The victim loses all sense of time: how many meetings, what transpired, when the money actually slipped from her possession. And when the hysterical woman appears, shamefaced and horror-stricken at the district attorney’s office, her story is garbled, inaccurate, and all she knows is that somewhere along the line her fifteen thousand dollars of insurance money disappeared. The chances of building a case against the swindler are negligible, more often than not, impossible.

  Unfortunately, too often the police know that a crime has transpired, who the criminal is and how the victim was victimized, but are powerless to do anything about it. The law is specific, and of necessity must protect the innocent. But in the course of such protection it spreads a warm blanket of immunity around many criminals. The policeman wants one thing in a case against a criminal: get him right—with enough evidence for a conviction. It’s the only way to get him: right.

  Madame Zoruba had not been gotten, though she had gotten away with many things. There was no real evidence against her: just knowledge that she was, among other things, a steerer for an abortionist. This abortionist was also known “on information.” What we wanted was an air-tight case.

  Charlie Hvolka briefed me, and we began to study our roles as intently as actors. A major part of the life of any detective, doing any kind of underco
ver work, is the ability to assume a new identity. The detective must not play-act, but he must live his new role, believe it, under whatever circumstances he finds himself.

  “You must be this girl,” Charlie explained. “You must become this girl of Polish descent, and remember that you grew up in that orphanage upstate, which is why you do not speak Polish. You look Polish with your fair hair and light eyes. You have to feel your Polish blood.”

  I didn’t know what it meant to feel Polish, but I started “thinking Polish,” watching Charlie’s face, his gestures as he walked about the small office speaking in the language to me, gesturing, surrounding me with what he called “the air of it,” giving me an understanding of the feeling, a kind of instant “Polish-ization.”

  “No one can catch you in a lie when you are being someone else, because you have no real background: you make it up as you need to, and they can’t trip you up because none of it is real, so all of it is real.”

  It sounded, at first, like double-talk, but as we worked it out, the girl started to grow, to become real, to become me, or I to become her. I started to feel a sadness, a self-pity for the bitterness and emptiness of my life as we talked. Charlie threw questions at me—not giving me the answers. Find them for yourself, it’s your life, not mine. I will believe what you tell me if you believe it is true.

  “Don’t say too much,” he cautioned. “The less you say, the less you have to remember, and the less you have to remember, the less chance you have of getting tripped up on your own words. It all comes from you—whatever they will know of you comes only from you, because you will tell it.”

  And so, after a week, I was Helen Wroblewski, twenty-three years old; salesgirl in the five-and-ten on Broadway and 45th Street; single; pregnant; wronged by Charlie who was married and twenty years older than me and was section manager in my five-and-ten. But he was kind to me trying to help me, willing to go along with me. My friend Mary Rosinski, at the cosmetic counter, told me to go see Madame Zoruba because a friend of a friend’s cousin said, “Go and see Madame Zoruba when you got that kind of trouble.”