“Might not, but if you do...”
Looking around the run-down room, Kent felt an odd sense of being at home.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think this’ll be just fine.”
He knew it then. He felt it in his veins. He had been inducted into a private club, a frat of sorts, only more so. Sure, he knew he might not get along with everyone there, but that was normal for family. And that's really what he’d just found, family.
Sunday
June 17, 2012
First Week
New York weather. It was getting chilly as night slowly dipped into early morning. Not many stores were left open for Kent to hide out in anymore. He figured it was time to make his presence known in public anyway. He stepped out of the shadows in search of a parking summons or two. First, he’d do his rounds on the parallel twin platforms for the Staten Island Railroad and make sure nothing was amiss.
As he reached the bottom of the steps, he saw her. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, a skinny girl with long hair so blonde it looked albino white in the glare of the overhead lighting. She had a square head that was just a little too big for her gentle features. One of her quiet, pastel blue eyes was obscured behind a puffy circle of mean black and purple.
He didn’t know what to say. He was a cop now, though. He had to say something. He stared at the tracks below him as he thought through his words, ran them over in his head a few times. He looked directly at the girl, asked if she was okay. Simple, but effective. She knew what he was referring to, and looked down quickly to hide the bruise from Kent’s field of vision. Of course she said she was okay, but he knew she was lying. Kent figured maybe her black eye had come from a boyfriend, but more than likely, the teen’s own father. She wasn’t going to open up about it to any baby-faced new cop still awkward in his too-crisp blues. She didn’t want any part of what he had to offer, said she was okay and then walked off. Kent watched her go; she didn’t look back.
Anger fired within him. Flames licked the shadows of men who got away with beating the women in their care, bastard degenerates taking their sick rage out on defenseless girls. Defenseless victims being abused by the ones to whom they go first, asking for help, learning not to bother asking that question anymore. For some reason, all this prompted Kent to think about God and humanity.
And you wonder why I don't go to you anymore, he thought to himself as he turned back around. He went upstairs and looked for parkers. Maybe one day soon he’d make a difference. Maybe one day soon, God would answer Kent’s prayers.
Thursday
July 19, 2012
Second Month
She fell to her knees and tears poured down her plump brown cheeks. Her teeth chattered and she let out a wail. It was a bit over the top, melodramatic to say the least, or her baby-daddy sure thought so. She was far too weary to stand anymore as he continued the pretext of exchanging words with her. It was, by far, an uneven exchange. Berating and cursing from him, some whimpering and weeping from her in return, not even a remotely equitable exchange. She fell to her knees, pleading with him, still behaving just a bit too over the top for the man to accept. At the moment, in fact, it seemed to Kent that the enraged man was now beyond the point of even tolerating her presence.
Kent stood there, a slick band of sweat forming along the inner rim of his hat. He watched with little comprehension of what to do next. Woods stood next to him in a similar stupor, perspiration dripping, running down his brow and into his eyes. The apartment was hotter than Hades, not a working AC in sight.
Kent was torn, not because he didn’t know what he should do, but because he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. What he wanted to do was look over at the other obviously-a-rookie-cop in the room, motion let’s go and give the disrespectful little shit in front of them a tune up. But that wasn’t going to happen. They stood there, hands on their expandable batons, just in case, but deep down knowing they wouldn’t get to pull them. The belligerent bastard in front of them hadn’t broken any laws yet, and it was his house, so all Kent could do was repeat his questions for the third time.
Kent asked the man to talk to them instead of the woman. The hulking mass of dark brown flesh bound in a tiny rectangle of white cotton ignored the cop’s third repetition of the request. Of all the things that Kent had learned on The Job in the past few weeks, the first was that not all of the power in the room belonged to him. Kent thought about how his only real option at that moment was to offer a domestic incident report to the woman. Maybe add a complaint report next. But neither option ever materialized into reality.
Eventually, the woman told the rookies that she was fine. She had gotten it out of her system; the neighbors shouldn’t have even called, should just mind their own business. She walked into the bedroom; her man’s gaze then locked onto Kent’s, letting both him and Woods know that it was time for them to go. Now. Like sheep, Kent thought, Woods led the way back out onto the street and Kent followed.
“This isn’t what I signed up for,” Kent said, hands tightening on his gun belt. The short, husky cop next to him shrugged in response, threw up his hands and went to his cell phone to recommence texting. Evidently, the random girls he was sexting with were more important than the mundane tasks of the police work Woods should be doing. Kent felt like slapping the damned phone smack out of the guy’s right hand. He put over the final on the radio instead, then softly wondered some more just when, and even if, he was ever going to be able to make a difference that mattered. He intended to show God, and he’d be damned if he was going to wait a helluva a lot much longer.
Thursday
August 2, 2012
Dripping
By Kent’s eighth week on the street, it was really hot, even at dusk. The place was a bustle, cops and EMS going in and out, seeming to the rookie who’d never before seen such a sight as if pure mayhem had come loose of its imperfect chains. He opened the thin door; it smacked shut quickly behind him, clipping the exposed cuffs on the rear of his belt. The change in temperature was immediate. The sweat lining the inside of his vest turned chill. It hit him even in his bones as he walked down a set of cement steps and through a cold, concrete corridor between the garage and the basement of the house. At its end, on the left, was a doorway. A cop with two hash-marks on his wrist, at least ten years on, leaned up against the door’s concrete frame. His radio roared and squawked; sound bounced off the slate grey walls. The veteran cop didn’t look up from his memo book, even as Kent reached him. His name tag read CAPULLO. Although Kent had seen him in the precinct before, he’d never gotten his name until then.
“DOA’s inside. Self-inflicted GSW to the face. Gawk it out now before the Detectives and everyone else get here. Duty Captain’s been and went, so you’re good for a few. But make it quick, kid; you’re taking over the sixty-one and I’m going sixty-three.” Capullo said it all in rapid fire, not even offering the rookie the decency of eye contact. He’d kept on scribbling as he talked.
“And don't touch the fucking gun.”
Kent grunted, stepped into the room. It was even colder than the hallway. That layer of sweat against his chest felt like a sheet of ice now. He turned his radio volume all the way down.
“Spell your name, rook!” Capullo yelled from the hall.
Kent spelled it.
“Shield?”
“Five nine, two six,” Kent yelled and went back to his investigation.
No one else was in the room, just the corpse in the corner, a hefty white male in a badly stained tank top and a pair of Hawaiian print boxers with black ankle socks and no footwear. Kent took in every detail. The victim sat on a dull, battleship grey, metal folding chair. His left hand rested across his lap, his right hung towards the floor; a snub nose .38 had fallen from his dangling fingers. The head was tilted far back. From where Kent was standing, not much could be seen beyond the bottom of the guy’s bloody chin, what was left of it anyway.
He heard it before he saw it. As soon as he’d lowered the radio
, he’d heard it, a steady drip that he would never forget, not ever.
Kent shifted to his left, walked a bit farther, unsure why he was going in so he could, he hoped, see better. He was a cop now; he figured he sort of had to do it. It’s what a cop would do. Plenty of them had their own private picture collections. The cop-parties, fuck. They’d get drunk, show the rookies, and make jokes. It was the way they dealt with this shit. You either laughed at the death and horror, or it consumed you. He’d seen it happen, so Kent stepped into a better viewing position, taking stock of the bloody eyesore before him.
The man’s face was gruff, hadn’t shaved in a few days maybe, maybe hadn’t washed his badly cut, too-short black hair in just as long. It was matted with sweat grease, plastered to his skull. Kent couldn’t see the color of his eyes; they’d rolled so far back that only the white showed now. But the most prominent facial feature was that new hole. The victim had put it there himself, right under what little was left of his chin, of his bloody mouth, gaping open. Put it there with one screaming little rocket of lead. Victim by his own hand.
“What the hell could make a man… shit.”
The sound of his own voice stood Kent’s arm hairs on end.
“What are you sayin’, rook!?” Capullo shouted.
“Nothin’.”
“Good. Wrap it the fuck up. And don't touch the fuckin’ gun.”
“Heard ya the first time. Fuckin’ asshole,” he whispered.
Kent looked more intently, realized the man had added two holes, the second at the base of his cranium where the bullet had exited. He couldn’t see the hole itself, but he could see the hideous blood-spatter splashed across the wall. He saw the blood dripping, too. The fucking blood he’d heard before he could see it. Fuck. It went on, dripping at its own rhythm, growing neither faster nor slower, just dripping on and on and on, its rhythmic pace unrelenting.
He’d hear that dripping for the rest of his life. Anytime he wanted, on and on. Shit. He’d be able to recall this for forever; things like this didn’t just vanish. It’s forever; it changes things, changes everything, makes all the TV shows and family stories seem far more than they’d once been. Stories would never be just stories anymore. The dripping made everything real.
And for the first time, James Kent thought that maybe God hadn’t just abandoned him, but had likewise abandoned the entire world.
Sunday
August 26, 2012
Partner
The evening was hot and humid, even as the sun set on Staten Island. The white Ford rolled down the side street at just under twenty miles per hour, with NYPD plastered across its side in bold blue letters. From within, two sets of eyes scanned the desolate block. The weathered cop in the passenger seat gave back the disposition from their last job and rested the police radio on his lap. Kent picked up the conversation with his partner as if there had been no interruption at all.
Working patrol meant learning, doing multiple things at once. He had to listen to the radio, waiting to hear his jobs, as the car stereo pumped out tunes and the cop next to him yammered on about life, who he'd fucked, how big the bills were, on and on about his spouse, too, if he was married. And mostly, they were.
Kent didn’t want anything to do with the marriage scam. There’d only been one girl with whom he would have even begun to consider having any of that with, and she was long gone. James was perfectly content banging the badge bunny of the week. No strings attached.
Kent didn’t like working with women, either. He thought they were all, each and every motherfucking one of them, hell-bent on having their very own damned soap boxes, always pushing, and always trying to say something. Trying, yes, but not a damned one of them equipped with enough brains to ever prove their points. Just like in the church, they should keep themselves quiet and let the men impose the laws.
He was still fresh meat, but Kent already thought he was a gift, the best gift the city of New York might ever have. Although the newbie hadn’t finished college, he could already fill out the paperwork consistently and adequately enough that early on, his bosses didn’t need to triple check it. He grinned inwardly, knowing he was already ten steps ahead of most of the cops he worked with. That, coupled with the hooks and cranes his father still had with The Job, meant the newly minted Officer Kent got put on day tours. Meanwhile, his fellow rookies were sent out to dwell with, and to deal with, the midnight zombies and their ilk. No one really got anywhere in the Department without a hook, either that, or sleeping with the right person, which constituted yet another reason why Kent despised women on the job; he figured they’d gotten whatever it was that they’d wanted just by laying down and spreading their legs. That, or bending over a desk, while it was the men like him who had to stand up and really work for it.
Kent coped with some of the women here and there on his first days of patrol, but once the bosses saw he knew how to handle himself with his hands as well as his pen, he got hooked up with a regular partner, a good one.
Enter Officer Maxwell Locke. Five and a half years the veteran on The Job, nearly as much time in the Army with an honorable discharge. The first thing Kent noticed was how downright intimidating Locke was. Even sitting, the guy looked like an old tank. Old, seriously old, in that he’d been-through-hell, but could still dish out a beating, kind of way. Frankly, he looked to be further on in his thirties than he actually was, but shit, what he’d been through would age anyone. His cheekbones and jaw were hard-lined, his wide, muddy green eyes framed an average nose, minus the obvious fact that it had been broken – more than once, too. A clean-lined strip of cropped dirty blonde hair ran across the full length of his head.
Being the veteran meant that Locke called the shots. But the shots were good, so it settled fine with his new partner. Locke didn’t talk much, hadn’t opened up too much to anybody in the entire command, save for his previous partner. The Deuce’s Duo, people had called the two of them. They were infamously close, even after Officer Steve Watson got promoted. “Sector Adam-Boy lost its better half,” Locke had said at the time.
The fact that Locke had finally agreed to a new partner was a big step for him. Kent felt somewhat honored, in fact, albeit ever so slightly.
“I’m just saying if they’re gonna keep turning them back out the next day, why bother arresting them at all?”
“You’ve made more arrests than the rest of the newbies you came in here with combined. You gonna be that active, you’re bound to see the shit side of things more often, too, James.”
“It’s still fucked,” Kent said, gripping the wheel tightly with his right hand.
Max peered out into the Eltingville neighborhood, squinted up a side street as they passed a teenager walking, his Yankees baseball cap yanked on backwards. Locke nodded to show Kent he was listening, but kept surveying the blocks as they rolled by in the lingering August heat.
“Can’t believe they have us covering all four sectors like this.”
“Is what it is. So what’s your solution?”
“Deny vaca days when we’re short-handed?”
“I meant the crime shit. You gonna stop making collars?”
“No.” Kent’s hand gripped tighter. “But some of these losers … Man, I wish we could just wipe them away - permanently. They’re a fucking detriment to this city, to society.”
“True, but that’s not the answer,” Locke said, his voice gravelly. Whenever Max spoke, Kent observed, he managed to sound both gruff and yet somehow resplendent.
“This isn’t the Middle East, Kent. And even if it was...” Locke spoke from experience. He’d done a tour in Iraq, another in Afghanistan. “We’re all still human beings, no matter where we come from or where we go.” He took a hard look at his driver. “You are a Christian, aren’t you? All that Imago Dei bullshit should give you a better perspective,” he’d added, his words hard. Kent rolled his eyes.
They rode on with nothing but the car stereo for a bit while an un-phenomenal new pop hit played soft
ly, neither of them really listening. Max’s hands rested on the memo book on his lap, as though the two cops were driving out to the shore for the weekend. His left hand occasionally came up to hover above the toothpick he held clenched between his teeth, but it never actually made contact. Kent just pedaled the gas slightly and stared down the road ahead, unable to let go of his notion of justice.
The squeaky RMP pulled up to a red light and stopped a half foot over the crosswalk. A flabby man in an open brown jacket and a white t-shirt much too small for him huffed by, led resolutely by a pug on a purple leash. The man showed crooked teeth when he smiled and nodded towards the cops. They nodded back, no smiles.
Kent pushed back a bit, “So haven’t you ever thought of just popping one of those mooks?”
Locke laughed. “Mooks? Did you really just say that? What is this, the seventies?”
“My father was a cop in the seventies, man. He had to deal with shit like this.”
“Yeah, James. They might’ve been beating the perps in the streets, but those same perps were pulling cops out of their patrol cars and shooting them in the head. Don’t tell me that’s how you think things should be?” What little had been left of Locke’s cheery attitude when he’d started the shift vaporized at that moment.
Kent shook his head, “No. Hell, no. I mean, of course not,” he said, backing out of the argument. He felt no need to push the subject further, but he certainly wasn’t convinced.
Locke motioned towards the deli up ahead. It was a slow Sunday afternoon. Get the paper and a bagel, hide out for a bit. That was the idea.
The light turned green, Kent’s foot came off the brake, but a split second later, he had to slam on the brakes fast. Fast like the red sedan that blew the light on their right, then screeched to a dead stop two car lengths ahead, right in the middle of the intersection.
D.O.A. Page 4