D.O.A.

by Charlie Thomas King

  He needed to keep his ear to the ground, know if the 123rd Precinct had found Russo. No word for the first two tours. No word until too many tours later. Just another loss to Hurricane Sandy. James breathed the sigh of relief he’d been waiting a week to sigh.

  Kent had hoped the Sandy mess would mean less of a focus on his situation. No such luck. Missing during Sandy only made it worse.

  “I wasn’t AWOL, Geovanni. You gotta tell ’em. I was stuck upstate with my dad. I got back as soon as I could.”

  “I’m pulling for you, kid, but it don’t look good.”

  Two more weeks and he was still sitting at the precinct switchboard, tired and bored out of his mind. Other cops out actually making a difference weren’t warming up to the newly returned rookie. Locke was quickly becoming his only friend in the command.

  On his meal, Max brought the boss coffee, asked if Kent could get a quick meal with his old partner. Fifteen minutes in and Kent was getting frustrated with the small talk about tea.

  “Forget it, Max.”

  Kent barely touched his ham sandwich. The remainder of Locke’s Chinese food lay atop a hulking mass of garbage in the corner by the door; the pail had needed to be emptied for over a week already. The janitorial staff consisted of one guy, and he didn’t always do a very good job, especially with the overcrowding Sandy brought to the back room those first few days of recovery.

  “You’re really gonna do Conditions?”

  “Yeah, bro. Why not? I worked hard during Sandy. Miggio took notice.”

  “But what about when my stuff blows over? We’re partners.”

  Locke looked away, frowned at the pool table.

  “James… You’re gonna be doin’ your own thing for a while.”

  “My own thing?”

  Locke flipped the toothpick from between his teeth. It bounced off the trash and joined the tea bag. He took a sip of his tea, sat down across from his partner.

  “I know, I know. I don’t mean to sound callous. And if you come back, so will I.” He hoisted his tea in the air as if to toast. “It’s just something to keep me busy, bro. They had me riding with Clark, but she got knocked up, gonna be heading to Viper for a while.”

  “Don’t know how you dealt with her to begin with. You’re fuckin’ better off.”

  “Enough of that shit, man. I’ve had enough with your animus against women.”

  Kent glared.

  “You come back, so do I. 0kay? No worries. But James?”

  “What?” he said, nudged his sandwich.

  “I hate to say this.” He sucked in through his nose. “I think you might be working with Clark before you work with me again. Rumor has it they’re gonna bounce you.”

  Kent looked up and shook his head in distress, didn’t say a word. He tossed his food across the table at the mound of garbage. It hit the Chinese food container and fell to the floor amidst the tea bag, the toothpick and other assorted trash.

  Locke glanced over his shoulder. He finished his tea. Kent ran his hands through his hair and rubbed his face the whole time. Neither said anything else until another cop entered to see if Locke was ready to head back out to patrol.

  “Sure, bro. One second.”

  The cop exited. Locke stood, still staring at Kent.

  “It’ll be okay, James.”

  Not likely.

  Kent said nothing, looked back at the pile of garbage. Locke walked out.

  Before their end of tour, Locke shook hands with Miggio and accepted the invitation. Kent received his notification - he was leaving the 122.

  Tuesday

  November 20, 2012

  Conditions

  PO Locke sat with five of his peers in an old muster room as he drank milk oolong tea from his grey thermos. Sergeant Florentino stood in front of the plain clothed cops, thumbing through information on the drug prone locations of the 122 Precinct. Locke had never paid much attention to the 6x2 Conditions commander. Young guy, was a cop in the Deuce, made his way back around as a Sergeant. Seemed that from what little Locke had seen, the guy cared more about his appearance than he did about leadership. Pass a test and you could lead men who knew better than you, worked harder than you, cared more than you, he thought as he looked over the Sergeant's spiky black hair. That was the NYPD’s way; Staten Island just exacerbated it.

  Florentino straightened his six feet of well-proportioned muscle in front of a small wooden podium, still looking at the paperwork that resided atop. He cleared his throat, a deep vibration, and addressed the five men and one woman in the room.

  The brunette with the caramel colored eyes was the exception in the room. Locke slurped down more tea, listened to his new Sergeant explain their purpose and how they’d carry it out. He looked over at the female, Gracia, and thought how upset Kent would be that she was even allowed in the unit. Even wearing a loose fitting white tee shirt and her auburn hair in a messy bun, at least two guys kept getting distracted, eyes shifting back and forth to check her out. Locke knew plenty of women on The Job who definitely did justice to his former partner’s stereotypes; he hoped he wouldn’t have to add Gracia to the number. The obvious boob job wasn’t a good start. For a few fleeting seconds he thought perhaps Kent had a point.

  Florentino finished up fast, asked if anyone had any questions, then paired everyone up. Halfway through, he announced, “Locke, you and Gracia have 2666,” and tossed the unmarked RMP’s keys towards Locke like they were an award. The car was anything but. It was constantly breaking down. When it wasn’t, everything still squeaked of rust and overuse.

  Max looked around the room of muscle headed, bronze-orange skinned Guido’s, as the Sergeant finished up the roll call. He listened to them carry on about Muscle Milk after the Sergeant was done. He then reasoned Gracia might just be his best shot at a new partner in the unit after all. It wasn’t like he felt like spending his nights talking about the merits of this or that protein powder, let alone tanning techniques. What the hell did Madi see in Staten Island? He never understood it, had wanted to leave before he’d even finished unpacking his bags. But she always brought him back, no matter how many times he left.

  Locke stood up, his well fitted camouflage chinos hit the tops of his all black Nike sneakers. His faded black tee shirt fit tight, his vest pressed against the outer side. Looked like the Kevlar was molded to his chest. A thick black belt held his Glock 16 in place on his right hip, ASP and cuffs on his left. He grabbed his memo book and radio from the chair next to him, stuffed the baby blue, four by eight pad into his back right pocket, the black brick into his left. Gracia stepped up to his side.

  “The Deuce’s Devil? I thought they took that junk out of rotation. This is bullshit,” she said, sticking her hands in the back pockets of her worn out blue jeans. They bore huge holes showcasing both kneecaps and part of her left thigh. A dragon in grayscale was tattooed the full length of her left leg.

  “Yeah. But that’s The Job for you,” he said - the typical cop answer for pretty much everything bad thing that ever happened. “You wanna drive?” he asked, holding out the keys in front of him. She puckered her lips, raised one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows and smiled before she snatched the keys and headed out of the room.

  As they walked down the back steps, Gracia called out behind her, “What’s up with the hair?”

  Max rubbed the growing length of hair, the hawk line fading into the rest. “I dunno, just haven't gotten around to trimming it lately.”

  She looked at him with a crooked smile. Moonlight glinted across her deep espresso eyes.

  “I meant your face, man.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I wanted a beard, so I grew it out over the extra days off they gave me,” he said as he stroked his shadowed jaw line.

  “Geez. If that’s a weekend beard, then you belong in the backwoods cutting trees!”

  She laughed and strutted into the RMP lot. Max rolled his eyes and sighed.

  Should’ve gone with a fucking Guido.

  “Ten
-thirty-two, Clawson Street and Bryant Avenue,” the radio squawked from his pants pocket. Central ran off some more specifics, Gracia shot a decisive glance to the bearded cop behind her.

  “Let’s go! That’s right up the block!” she yelled as she broke into a sprint to the RMP.

  Locke grinned and took off after her.

  Nope, she was the right fit after all.

  Monday

  November 26, 2012

  VIPER

  Fading daylight strained between repetitive grey buildings, glaring off dirty windows. Half a loaf of molded bread and a chicken leg lay fenced off with other food waste and random garbage on the grass, a hazy ray of sunlight played across the rotted surface of the bread, highlighting the poultry’s greasy surface. The building front greenery was meant to make the public housing projects look presentable. Residents made it look anything but by adding their own décor, tossing random trash from windows and rooftops to the ground below. A meandering pit bull was sniffing and digging through scraps, coming up on a large white bag nearby, rubbish spilling from its small rips and tears. He’d find the chicken soon, Kent figured, be occupied just long enough for him to walk to the door he was heading towards without undo fear of getting mauled.

  A few children ran around a rusted jungle gym set as Kent navigated the maze of buildings, his destination in sight. A group of teenagers played basketball, two older black men watched on the sidelines. No one looked Kent’s way. They knew he was there. Just wouldn’t look his way. The cop kept his eyes open, frequently scanning upwards for air mail, trash aimed at his kind. He wasn’t wearing blue, but they knew. Clean cut white boy coming in at two fifty-five every afternoon? Wasn’t wearing blue, but they knew.

  He stepped up to the doorway to his building, punched in the four digits on the keypad, grabbed the handle after the beep, and then yanked it back in disgust. A swarm of flies immediately surrounded his face. He ducked and dodged, waved them off as he made the two steps up and went right, praying the guy on the other side of the door at the end of the hall was watching the camera. He didn’t want to be in those halls a single second longer than he had to be.

  He hopped over the three baby roaches scuttling in and out of an apartment to his right. He wanted to curse, but didn’t want to risk a fly entering his open mouth. Two steps to go when the door in front of him swung open, Kim grinning from within, welcoming him to a new week of hell. A minimum of three flies made their way into the apartment with Kent; he’d waste time trying to kill them later. Kim shut the door behind them, locked it back up.

  Kim was a short, muscular, Asian guy with a thick head of hair that outdid Kent’s. He was also the average cop in that season’s Staten Island VIPER - an RMP accident had put him there. Kent had always heard it was mostly jam ups, but since he landed in the unit all he’d seen were line of duty injuries. Kim wrecked his wrists and back, operation with steel rods and the whole nine yards. Ever since, he’d been sitting it out, waiting to see if he’d return to patrol or get the bounce from The Job with disability. Either way, he wouldn’t be around for too long. VIPER was a revolving door, people coming and going faster than Kent could keep track. He was only in his second week and the schedules already didn’t line up, two bodies sent back to their respective commands, one retired. He didn’t like it. Kent was the odd ball there, watched with hesitant eyes. Conversations stayed light. He wasn’t fitting in well.

  Kim shuffled off through the cockroach infested apartment, back into the work room. How many roaches he’d killed during his tour had become the select topic of conversation when Kent arrived to relieve Kim of his duties. That was life in VIPER, or, Video Interactive Patrol Enhancement Response, a corny anagram Kent had forgotten the meaning of within the first three hours of being there. He called it what it was, NYPD’s Rubber Room. If you were under any kind of investigation, medical review, even pregnant, you eventually got bounced from your command to this place. The pregnant chicks, like Clark, had one over on the rest; they’d spend a matter of days in VIPER before going on maternity leave. Everyone else got to spend an undetermined amount of time staring at a wall of TV’s. Monitor one of the many crime-infested areas of New York. Radio real cops if anything big happened. A bunch of the monitors didn’t even work, seemed to Kent that no one paid much attention to the ones that did unless explicitly threatened to do so by top brass.

  First week on street patrol, a smart cop learned the best ways to scam. VIPER was no different. Sure, there was stuff you had to do. But the smart ones figured out how to do it all with as little effort as possible. Even if that meant that crime happened on camera without anyone noticing. Kent refused to be that kind of shame to the shield. He’d learn the cameras, which ones to really watch and who to watch for. He’d get the faces, the locations of everything that went down. And he’d do something. He’d gotten lucky, out of the entire City’s VIPER rooms, at least he’d stayed in his home borough. He had an inside eye on all the worst of what Staten Island had to offer.

  You can try to fuck me, God; take me out of commission. But it won't work.

  He was definitely going to do something with the information before him. Just didn’t know what yet.

  Wednesday

  November 28, 2012

  Stake-out

  “Better than Sandy.”

  The rain had been on and off for all four hours of their tour when she said it.

  “Better than that nor’easter snow dump, too.”

  “That’s for sure,” she said with a nod.

  The Deuce’s Devil, as they called it - a beat up, unmarked, black Impala with black steel wheels and three out of four hubcaps missing - sat inconspicuously not far from where a row of homes used to reside. It looked more like a war-torn village in a third world country now.

  Jennifer Gracia took a drag of her Marlboro Red, breathed out through the driver’s side window at half-mast. Maxwell Locke tapped the bottom of a box of cherry licorice, a couple of which pit-stopped in his open palm before being popped into his mouth.

  Gracia took another pull and laughed to herself.

  “What’s so funny?” Max asked through a mouth full of candy.

  “Just thinking about that skinny little shit from last week. Crying in the cells like that.”

  “Apparently rich white kids make worse drug dealers than they think they do.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  The duo in 2666 had collared two such perps their first night out. Sergeant Florentino immediately locked in their union as permanent. They’d made three more arrests in the following week, petty stuff, but still more than the rest of the unit combined.

  “Weather’s no good. No one’s getting got tonight, though,” he said, chewing another mouthful of licorice.

  “Yeah.” She took her last pull, tossed the butt out the window, brought it up with a squeal. “Ugh. This fucking car. It’s like a ghost town. We’ll be lucky to grab a handful of two-fifties at most tonight.”

  “I can’t even believe they’re still telling us to get those things.” He threw back another fistful of the chews.

  “This week, yeah. Next week they’ll change their minds again.” Gracia looked out the front window, weighed the subject. She leaned back against the grungy black headrest. Three burn holes resided not far from her left ear. Max put the box down in his lap, cupped his hands over the top, looked her way. She continued, “Bunch of bureaucrats with their thumbs up their asses that run this city? They’ll never make a solid decision. It’ll always be the sway of the public, not reality.”

  “Mm, hmm. It’s sad. Most of this isn’t about crime. It’s about race.”

  “You mean you don’t only stop black people?” she said with a laugh.

  “It’s not funny though, Jen. They only look at the numbers of certain aspects, not the whole picture. What they don’t realize is they’re making a crime issue into a black and white issue. It’s getting too extreme.”

  “Hey, you’re preaching to the choir, pal. B
ut I get fucked worse than you in all this. Now they’re calling me white!”

  “Damn shame what this world’s come to.”

  “And it'll only get worse before it gets better.” Jen put her hands on the steering wheel, squeezed it for no good reason. A white sedan drove past them, never noticing the plain clothed peeping toms. She cocked her head towards her partner, puckered her lips and smiled. “Don’t let it get you down, super cop. At least we’re changing the stats.”

  Max chuckled out an agreement, took notice of a beauty mark on her left cheek that he’d never really noticed before.

  “Cause we really are super cops, ya know,” Jen mocked. “Both white and unafraid to collar our own?”

  Locke shook his head with a grin, tapped his candy box and ate some more. “I’m almost out,” he said finishing his mouthful. “Let’s hit the deli.”

  “Which one?”

  “Bagels?”

  “Sure.”

  Let’s take sixty-three out of command. Page and Amboy. Best shit on Staten Island. I’ll call Florentino.”

  She shifted into gear and sent him a salute. The RMP swept off onto Hylan Boulevard towards the south shore. Not far from the bagel store, James stood staring at Hallie’s battered old home.

  Wednesday

  November 28, 2012

  Beaten

  The spaced-out street lamps lining Brehaut Avenue spit soft streams of yellow onto James Kent’s head. It was cold, bitterly so.

  He ran his icy fingers through his hair, stared at Hallie’s home from his fixed post three houses away. Shutters hung precariously from her window. No cars but the Bug.

  Were her parents ever home?

  One lonely light on in the house. They’d only just gotten electricity back. That night it'd been lost seemed so long ago now. That night. It’d been candles in that same window.

  That night. He’d left her behind, but couldn’t stop looking back. He was always looking back.