by Robert Cea
“Who are you?” he asked coolly.
“We’re in sector Charlie, right around the corner, and…”
Now the Jamaican cat was staring at us. He was definitely sucking on some of that serious Jamaican ganja we’d heard so much about. The Jamaican pulled back on it and smiled before he let out a monster smoke ring. “Is a Philly’s blunt, mon,” he laughed. It bothered me that the man was being overly disrespectful by smoking the weed right in front of us, four uniforms, but I instinctively realized that the Jamaican and Conroy must have had some sort of street giveand-take; they obviously knew each other. I could see that Billy didn’t like being mocked, and then Conroy and his partner laughed as well. I felt as though we, the two rookies, were being tested. I began to feel the encounter going south very quickly. I decided to try and salvage what little pride we had left.
“We met you in O’Lary’s class. He told us that when we ran into you to say hello.” I thought I saw a glimmer of a smile.
“Couple a new guys huh?”
This was encouraging. “Yeah, this is our first midnight. You know, every time O’Lary gave us some wild scenario in class, your name came up.”
He was sizing me up in much the way O’Lary had on the way to Wanda Has Wings, I thought. He then nodded his head, not looking at his partner, the Jamaican cat, or Billy, just me. He figured he’s got the schmuck, why not use it to his advantage?
“Name came up in O’Lary’s class?” he asked.
“Yeah, all good shit though. I mean, c’mon, two combat crosses, the medal of valor, yeah, your name came up a lot, right, Billy?” I turned to see that Billy was completely embarrassed by the encounter. Maybe I was gushing just a little too much, but I thought the guy deserved big ups. After all, he was the rightful owner of those awards and respect was the very least he should get. I was not going to be embarrassed about admiring him. Still, I am from the streets of Brooklyn and I know when a game is going to be played on me. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then it did…
“Tell you what, guys…we’re into our meal right now. Thought there was no units available, so as long as you fellows are here, why not let two of your older brothers get our KFC on? What’s say you guys pick this job up for us, we owe you one. I mean, goddamn, we don’t watch each other’s backs, who’s gonna watch it for us?” This made perfect sense to me. Before we could answer, he picked up the radio, put himself out to meal, and informed central that we were picking up the job. We heard a lot of units laughing over the radio. This was of course the worst job you could have, a likely DOA, and to give it away was like a dream come true, like hitting the patrolman’s lottery.
I felt like a real schmuck as we entered the building. The heat was blasting from the radiators in the hallway; the cracked front window on the metal door was completely steamed over. It felt like it was a hundred degrees in there, like I’d just entered the gates of hell. I opened up my uniform coat, and already felt the sweat beading up on my forehead. I did not want to think about what lay ahead. Billy and I made our way up the stairs of the nasty apartment building with its stink of steam, burnt curry, and stale nicotine. When we reached the third floor of the building, it hit us, that putrid odor you never forget: the smell of death. Billy was pissed, to say the least. This was the last place he wanted to be, and I had placed him squarely in the middle of it.
“Why didn’t you just pull down his pants and give him a blow job? I mean, are you fucking nuts?”
I covered my nose, though I didn’t want Billy to see this. I kept walking up the stairs. “C’mon, Billy, guy wanted to go on meal. We didn’t help him out, it would be all over the precinct that we scumbagged them. Then we’d be in worse shape. Besides, we did him a solid. Maybe he’ll return the favor…hey, he’s a good guy to have on our side out here.”
He didn’t say anything as the odor attacked us hard. I felt my throat starting to close; I stopped and gagged before I got to the landing.
“Billy, man, please… you go in. I’m no good at this.” This of course went over like a lead balloon.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You got us involved in this bullshit. I’m no good at it either. What do you think, I’m the friggin’ medical examiner?”
As we reached the door, I pulled out my nightstick and banged hard. I was praying that it was just some guy who wasn’t very clean and maybe needed to take out the garbage. There was no answer. Billy pushed my shoulder. I turned the doorknob to find it unlocked, so I moved into the dark, quiet apartment. The smell was indescribable.
I whispered, “Fuck, Billy. Fuck.”
When Billy clicked on his flashlight, I could see he didn’t seem as repulsed as I was. For the life of me, I could not figure out how he could stomach the smell. He yelled out, “Police, anyone here?” I had to turn on him; my sarcastic look made the point.
“Hey, I have to check. There could be someone here.” I would have laughed at his comment, but the shit I was wading in was knee deep. The apartment, through the thin beam of Billy’s Maglite, looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in thirty years. There were pizza boxes with green moldy crust being eaten by an army of roaches, newspapers, overflowing ashtrays, feces. Maybe it’s a dead dog, let it be a dead dog, please, I begged to the patrolman’s God. The odor was too powerful though, all the markings of one very ripe dead person.
“Billy, this is way fuckin’ foul, man,” I said. Then I moved slowly into the back room. I pulled my Maglite out at this point; I guess I needed something to hold on to as I didn’t think Billy would’ve appreciated me holding on to his arm. We shined the narrow beams around the room, and there it was, on the bed. I gagged, “Shit, Billy, shit!”
In the pale light, it didn’t look real, which made it all the more horrific. He was a naked man, although it very well could’ve been a woman. The body was so distended, the only one who was going to solve that mystery was the medical examiner himself. A thick blue tongue was protruding from its mouth. The eyes were a dull yellow, and were so bulbous they hung out of their sockets. I never knew that an eyeball could hang down four inches out of its orbital. I tried not to fixate on any one thing. Garbage in, garbage, fucking out, Rob, I thought. My legs were so weak; I could not get another step closer. We noticed movement along its grayand-black-splotched skin. What in the fuck is moving, I wondered. I inched closer though my legs at this point certainly had a mind of their own. I shined my light on one particular movement.
“Fucking maggots!” I yelled. Hundreds of them. Billy nudged his nightstick into one of the carcass’s many folds. We heard a slight tearing noise and what sounded like a water balloon opening on impact. Billy shot back and screamed, “Fuckin’ thing is exploding!” As I felt the room start to yaw, I charged out. The heat, the added ripe odors, and the fact that we were alone in this tomb of death forced everything to come up on me. Garbage out.
My first DOA was the defining moment in my very young career, and most definitely in my life. It taught me two very important lessons. One, this is what it really boils down to, this is where we are all going to end up, fodder for maggots. Doesn’t matter what we did in life, no matter how great or miserable a life it was, we all end up as hatching pods for maggots. Whether it’s in a temperature-maintained mausoleum, the basement of a prestigious hospital, or the comfort of your own bed, it’s just a matter of time before you become a part of the unstoppable cycle of life and death, the transmigration from human to a viscous form of larvae. Within minutes I was stripped of any illusions I had of an idyllic afterlife awaiting me. This incident brought the simple brutality and inevitability of nature into focus. This thing in front of me stood out like a black dot on a white canvas. BOOM, end of story, last stop on the train; no matter what we do we will never beat the end. Finality at its fuck-you best.
Second lesson, I had to man-up on this weakness. Death would have to become a part of the rush for me, part of the jones that I needed to survive on these mean Brooklyn streets.
So a couple nights l
ater, I went to discipline myself on the fine art of dealing with death.
On the way to my lesson, I bought a bottle of Jameson’s to wet my old Brooklyn buddy Mickey Farrell’s beak. I pulled onto First Avenue, threw my police-parking permit on the dashboard, and made my way to the side entrance, where I was met by a hospital security guard. He led me down the dreary halls to the medical examiner’s office. Mickey was there waiting for me, just as we’d discussed when I had called him a day earlier. He smiled briefly, then his gaze quickly moved to the bag I was carrying. I hadn’t seen him in over five years, yet that first encounter with him at the ME’s office—when he seemed to thoroughly enjoy my spewing—told me he had developed a taste for the joy juice. His pasty face was starting to sag and crease, making him look like he was in his mid-thirties though he was probably younger than me. I immediately pulled the bottle of whiskey out and he actually licked his lips. He didn’t look at me, didn’t shake my hand, just took the bottle from me and turned away, saying “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, Jameson’s. Yeah, gonna be a good night, Cea. Follow me…By the way, meat wagon’s on a run in the Bronx.” He looked over his shoulder with a creepy smile as he walked. “They’re bringin’ in a nice decapitation. You wanna hang for that one?”
Job’s perfect for him, a ghoul who likes to drink, I thought. I smiled back. “No, bro, just want to peek around for a half hour at the most. Thanks though, you’re the king.”
“Whatever,” he said, fumbling with some keys. Then I saw a door open to a stairway that went one way, down. How appropriate. I went very fucking slowly.
He clicked a switch and the fluorescents jumped to life. I had to cover my eyes from the shock of white light, then kept them closed longer than I needed to. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. The room was clean, white. White linoleum tiles, white walls, and a whole wall of gray metal, a grid of four-foot-square doors in rows of eight stacked three high.
His voice jolted me as it echoed through the room. “Take your pick, Cea. These are just the ones who were finished in the last twenty-four hours. There’s way more next door, really fuckin’ good ones…” I held up my hand to stop him from talking.
“You think I could get a few minutes alone?”
He smiled very broadly, as if he’d just figured out a math problem, then he snickered, “Yo, C, you ain’t lookin’ to tap any a these dead booties. I mean, you get caught fuckin’ down here, that’s the end a my career!” I had to blink a few times at the accusation. Later I could laugh about it, but at twenty-one the last thing I wanted to be thought of was a necrophiliac.
“No, no, man, it’s got nothing to do with that, Mickey. I just wanna prep myself for when I run into this in the street. I mean, you saw what happened to me last time I was here.”
He curled his lip and puckered up his face, “Oh shit yeah, C, I remember. Yeah, yeah, I’m digging it, Cea, do what ya gotta do, pal. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes; that enough time?” He walked back up the stairs, and before he reached the top landing, he yelled back down, “There’s condoms in the top-right desk drawer.” His sinister laugh trailed off as he slammed the door closed. I heard him lock me in. No way out, good.
I pulled the first, then the second, third, an entire row of eight drawers. Each body was covered in a plain white hospital sheet. No frills; none could be expected. The atmosphere seemed a little less horrific than the last time I’d been in this building, though I felt my throat closing up. I didn’t know what was underneath those sheets. Fuck it. I pulled each sheet off, one by one, careful not to look at what was underneath. I stepped back, staring up at the fluorescent lights, bit down hard on my back teeth, and looked down and studied the death in front of me. A black woman lay on the cold metal. Half her head was missing. I heard my pulse throb and felt the blood rushing through my ears. I avoided closing my eyes, forcing myself to take it all in. Next was a man with six tiny wounds in his lower extremities. I fought off the gag reflex, felt the tiny beads of sweat sweeping down my neck. Men, women, an infant, all naked, in various and strange forms of postmortem. The last drawer was a good one, a boy, no more than ten years old, white. He could’ve been me. He had baseball stitching running up his entire torso. What must it be like to lose this gift so young? I moved closer to the body, holding on, forcing myself to beat this. I extended my hand and finally laid it down on this kid’s chest. I closed my eyes, felt the pinch of the thick thread that held him together. Moving my hand down the cold flesh, I felt his tiny ribs protruding through the skin. By the time my hand rested where his stomach had been, I opened my eyes. There was no more gagging. The sweat seemed to evaporate. I felt the waves of nausea leave my body.
I breathed in deeply, then out. I’d done it. This simple confrontation had exorcised the weakness within me. Dead bodies were now just that, dead bodies. Pieces of meat, much like what I’d seen a day earlier. I walk into a DOA now, or gnarly crime scene, fuck it. It’ll be like walking into any butcher shop to pick out the best cut of sirloin, I thought. What I didn’t realize at the time was the profound effect this would have on how I saw the living as well—that they were merely potential pieces of meat. Anyone, and most definitely everyone, was going to end up on these tables, or tables just like them, no doubt. From this day forward, anyone I met, talked to, ate with, or made love to, for that matter, was a slab of meat on those tables.
3
“Test-i-Lie”
It’s hard to tell who’s strapped. They all got fuckin’ coats on, Rob.” I wasn’t really listening to Billy. I was ready to jump out of my skin with excitement. The moment we sat in the RMP, I told Billy I wanted a gun collar. I wanted to get in the game. I kept my hands tight on the steering wheel to keep from fidgeting. I did not want Billy to think I had some nervous condition or quite possibly a cocaine jones, but that’s what I felt like. We’d been at the precinct a week already and I’d seen Conroy and his men bringing in gun after gun. I’d sit quietly pretending to read my patrol guide while I listened to every word they were saying about the collar they’d just brought in. I knew there was a way of seeing the perp carrying a gun. The slight twitch when he sees a cop, a stutter step, a shift of posture. It was subtle, but it was there. And I was sure I would see it.
There were so many Rastafarians out on the street, I felt like I was in a turkey shoot. They had really long dreads, and some wore jiffy-pop hats to hold in those “antennae’s to Jah.” I knew most of them were carrying, because this is where Conroy does his best work. I also knew they’d not seen Billy or me out here before, so we must be “puppies out the cage.” They were right. I felt like I was losing the battle before it had even started. As I drove by them, they’d smile, taunting with their gold teeth and dark shades. Billy and I were fish in a large bowl and I did not like it, I wanted to turn the tables, bring the battle to them, see how they dug it. I really didn’t know what to do, how to approach and which one to approach. Then I saw a group huddled around a storefront on Ninety-fifth Street and Rutland Road. It was in the middle of the block, so I figured if someone was carrying he could only run two ways, east or west. South would put him into the closed storefronts, north was where we were. I rolled up slowly, about thirty feet from the crowd of men, and all of them seemed to tighten up, meaning they either stood more erect or they got back on their haunches to see what we were going to do. I felt something strange vibrating through my body, the realization that there must be a runner here. Someone strapped who was going to take off like his dick was on fire. How do I do this?
Fuck it, gonna wing it. As I sped up the car, Billy slammed back into his seat. He was looking the other way, unaware of my intended prey. He held on to the door strap, screaming, “Rob, fuck are you doing, man?” He raised his knees up instinctively to cover his chest and keep it from banging into the dashboard as I jumped the curb. Sure as shit three very large men took off, two west, one east. Why is he going east, my car is facing east holy shit, this is going to be really fucking scary! I was so G’d up a
bout this first chase, I leaped out of the car without placing it in park. Technically I should have just gone after him with the RMP, but my mind only saw this dread moving like a deer and I needed to run as well. I heard the car skid to a stop as Billy jerked the gearbox, slamming it into park.
I’m sure he was screaming at me though, truthfully, I heard nothing. I saw this dread dart north on Ninety-fifth Street. Two blocks and he hits Lincoln Terrace Park, I thought. At the station house, I’d overheard Conroy say that once a runner made it into that park, whatever he was carrying was going to grow legs and he was going to lose his colorful hat and jacket, becoming just another dread in the park looking for some pay pussy. I hit Ninety-fifth Street, my legs feeling incredibly strong. I saw him jerk his head at me to see how far away I was. I realized that my gun wasn’t out. Rookie move, I thought. I ripped it from my holster, and went into police-science mode, balling my right hand into a fist and placing it approximately where my heart would be. If he takes a shot at me and it’s placed perfectly center mass, in that kill zone, the bullet just might ricochet off one of the many bones in my hand and miss the sweet spot, saving my life. Did it ever work? Don’t know.
I was gaining on him. Fifteen feet away, I shouted, “Police… Stop.” A car screeched up the block from behind, but I wanted to get to him before Billy did, so I pushed harder. By the time I was three feet from him, his hat had flown off and his long dreadlocks were whipping in the wind. Instinct took over as I dove forward and grabbed one of his dreadlocks. He screamed as it tore from his scalp, and he hit the ground hard, with me on top of him. I wrapped my right arm around his chest, pinning his arms so he could not move. It took a few seconds to get my gun into that soft spot just under his earlobe, but he certainly got the message.
“Yah, Officer, every-ting irie. Don’t fuckin’ wet me up, every-ting cool running.” This he screamed so there would be no miscommunication between him, my trey-8, or Billy. I suddenly saw the blur of Billy’s blue knee come crashing down onto the dread’s neck, immediately rendering him helpless. I heard a bone or two crack under the enormous pressure. I knew at this point that Billy was going to be fabulous backup. “Neutralize first: ask questions later,” he’d say. As a crowd started to build, Billy helped me cuff him and I rolled him over, dug around his waistband, and felt a thin piece of metal. For a second I became very aware of my ass puckering, because I thought this very hurt individual was almost killed because of a slim jim or some other burglary tool. This would not be a good first collar. I frantically dug farther and felt the barrel of a gun. I pulled up his sweater and there it was: a stainless-steel .380 automatic. The weight of it, the smell of the metal, gave me an incredible rush, one that comes with absolute victory. The thin piece of metal was a cut-down coat hanger shaped like an S, with one end that hooked onto his elastic pants while the other end held the barrel in place. A Badlands holster for sweatpants.