The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop

by Steve Osborne

  He was still staring at the floor trying to stop the shaking, and without looking up he just nodded his head in agreement. He knew I was right. This little episode seems like it really taught him a life lesson. It was a real learning experience for him.

  I continued, my voice a little firmer this time, “Now, I want you to go home and call this girl. You got to tell her you can’t see her anymore. This is no good for her. It’s no good for Vinnie and it’s definitely no good for you. You seem like a nice guy, and I don’t want to hear you caught two in the back of the head and ended up in the weeds out in Staten Island.”

  I only knew this guy for about five minutes, but for some strange reason I was starting to like him and I didn’t want to see anything happen to him. He seemed like a nice guy who got himself into some deep shit over some big-breasted tight-assed Italian broad. And who hasn’t done that once or twice in their life?

  I was probably never going to see him again, so this was my last chance to drive the point home. So I got real serious and said, “Look at me!”

  He looked up at me, still kind of dazed and shaken up. He looked like a guy with a lot of thinking to do and a lot on his mind. I continued, “Now promise me you’re never going to see her again.”

  He looked at me, nodded in agreement, and said, “Okay, I promise.”

  He paused for a moment, thinking about what just happened. He was shaking his head and said, “I can’t go through this shit again.”

  It was time to part company, so we shook hands, no hard feelings. I felt bad about scaring him the way we did, but if he went home and did what I told him maybe we saved his life. Or at least his kneecaps.

  As he wobbled off down the block, George and I started to head back to our car. We had real criminals to catch. When we turned to leave, Tony and his sidekick asked if they could have the poster so they could keep an eye out for our armed robber. Police work must have seemed like fun to them. I laughed and told them thanks but no thanks.

  As we walked back to the car, George and I couldn’t take it anymore. Finally we both burst out laughing. I said what we both were thinking, “You can’t make this shit up.”

  I could not believe this guy’s bad luck. He looked just like the armed robber we were looking for, and we looked just like the two hit men he imagined Vinnie was gonna send to whack him. What were the odds?

  5.

  Hot Dogs

  It was my day off, and I was back in the precinct again. Actually, I was sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, which was in the confines of my command, the Sixth Precinct, Greenwich Village. I was enjoying a nice sunny afternoon, reading the paper, drinking coffee, and watching the world go by while I waited for my girlfriend to finish up with her dentist’s appointment right across the street. (No, it wasn’t the same guy.)

  She had called me up yesterday and asked if I could take her, and of course I said yes. We had only been going out for a few months, but I could already tell things were getting a little serious—she had me hooked from day one. She was smart, very pretty, and to me there was something exotic about her. She was from Spain, and had just moved back to New York after living in the Canary Islands for a while, so she had a nice tan to go along with those full, pouting lips that purred when she said her Rs. Most of the girls I had been going out with so far in my life had been from the exotic Island of Staten, where I lived, or maybe some far-off place like Brooklyn or New Jersey. So the Spain thing was making me a little nuts.

  Her plan for the day was a quick dentist visit, then off to my apartment, cook dinner for me, and maybe a movie. My plan was to order out and try to get lucky—then maybe a movie. I was trying to keep her out of my kitchen as much as possible because her last adventure there didn’t go so good. Having a boyfriend with his own apartment had her domestic juices flowing, and she wanted to learn how to cook. The last meal she made for me was “Cinnamon Stuffed Shells.” That’s right, she put cinnamon in stuffed shells. She wanted to try her hand at Italian and found this recipe on the back of some box that she thought looked easy enough. My mother is Italian, and a great cook, so she wanted to make a home-cooked meal just like Mom would make.

  The recipe called for some kind of brown powder, what it was I do not know, and the only thing she could find in my sparsely equipped bachelor’s kitchen was cinnamon—so she figured that was close enough. I was always working and hardly ever home, so the only condiments I kept around were ketchup, mustard, salt, and pepper. Where she found the cinnamon is a mystery to me. It was probably left over from the previous tenant.

  To add to my culinary experience she dimmed the lights and served it in the romantic glow of candlelight. I was glad the lights were low because it helped hide the look on my face when I took that first indescribable bite. And because things between us were getting serious, she made about ten pounds of the stuff. She was worried about me not eating right and wanted me to have enough vitamins, minerals, and general Italian goodness to last a week.

  Several times during that week I stood over the garbage can looking down, tray of shells in hand, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. She had tried so hard and the thought of dumping it made me feel bad. At first, when she tried it, even she admitted, “It tastes kind of funny.” But I protested, “Oh no, this stuff is great.” So during the course of an entire week I ate the whole frigging thing! After a few Rolaids and a lot of small bites, I finished every last bit of it, and came to the same conclusion as she did—things between us were getting serious. When my mother asked about her cooking skills, I replied, “She’s really pretty.”

  Like most cops I met my girl while I was working: she lived right around the block from the station house, which made things convenient for me. But it also meant I was spending seven days a week in the neighborhood where I worked. Normally most cops don’t like hanging around where you work because if you’re active, meaning you make a lot of arrests, guys get out of jail and don’t necessarily have fond memories of you. You don’t want to have to deal with them when you’re off duty, especially when you’re with someone you care about, like a girlfriend. It’s not that you’re afraid of these guys, it’s just you have better things to do with your free time than getting in an off-duty confrontation.

  One evening after work I was sitting in a gin mill having a beer, when all of a sudden the bartender comes over, slides another beer down in front of me—one that I didn’t order. That’s when he points to a guy sitting across from me and says, “That’s from your friend.” When I looked over, it wasn’t any friend of mine but rather a guy I had locked up for a robbery about a year earlier.

  Whenever I arrest somebody I give them my usual speech: “You act like a gentleman, and I’ll treat you like a gentleman. You act like an asshole, and that’s the way I’m going to treat you, and I guarantee you’re not going to like it.” When I saw this guy’s face I remembered him right away. He had acted like a gentleman and that’s the way I treated him. Besides, his was a ground-ball case, and he knew it. I just happened to be driving by the street corner while he was banging some dude’s head on the sidewalk—what we call giving him a concrete facial—and taking his money. So there was no bitching and moaning like some guys do. “This is all a big misunderstanding” or “You got the wrong guy.”

  Looking back I can honestly say I was really careful about who I locked up. Everybody I put cuffs on, I felt, deserved to go to jail. If I didn’t have a good case on you, I’d rather let you go than lock you up. If you’re a real bad guy, you’ll be out doing some stupidness again tomorrow and, I always figured, I’ll get you next time. But jails are filled with innocent guys, or at least that’s what they like to tell you, and they prefer to blame their fucked-up lives on you instead of themselves.

  So I sat on the park bench drinking my coffee and reading the paper and waited for my girlfriend. It was a nice, sunny day so there were a lot of normal people hanging out, but there were also the regular drug-dealing shitheads, some of whom knew me. I was only h
alf looking at the paper because I had to keep one eye on everything that was going on around me. I didn’t want somebody sneaking up behind me and cutting my throat while I was reading the sports page.

  If you’re a people watcher like me the park is a great place to hang out and pass a little time. It helps if you have a newspaper and sunglasses so you don’t look like you’re staring too much, and today the park was jumping with plenty to watch. Not too far away was the fountain, the centerpiece of the park, which street performers of all kinds use as a stage and then pass the hat around trying to make a few bucks. There were break-dancers, magicians, jugglers, kids doing tricks on bikes and skateboards, you name it, it was here. Today there was a guy with a tinfoil crown on his head, a gold cape, and silver hot pants who ran back and forth, flipping pots and pans in the air in a clumsy attempt at juggling. He sucked, he kept dropping the frying pan on his head, but people were clapping and laughing anyway. I think it was the gold cape that had them amused.

  Scattered around on the grass were the NYU students doing their homework and contemplating their future. Then there were the freewheeling hippies, sneaking a joint, playing the bongo drums, and contemplating the universe. And in the middle of all this, mingling in the crowd, were the drug dealers, looking for buyers and watching what the cops were up to. Some I knew and some I didn’t, but you can always tell who they are if you look closely enough. They’re always walking, constantly moving, but they never seem to go anywhere, and they watch everything and everybody—just like cops do.

  The thing about being a cop is after a while you become one inside and out. The way you walk down a street, the way you talk, even when ordering a coffee, it all says cop. It’s the way your eyes scan a crowd, sizing everybody up, constantly looking for bad guys or anything that might be a threat. And the loose-fitting, fashion-deprived shirts and jackets we wear aren’t bought because we like the way they look, we need them to cover up the steel bulge we’re always trying to hide.

  Everything about you says cop, but more than anything it’s that cold, confident aura that surrounds you and follows you everywhere you go. I could be standing in the middle of a crowded Grand Central Terminal, and I could pick out another cop on the other side of the big room just by their look—and bad guys can do the same. The same way I can ride down a busy street and pick out the shitheads, they can do the same with us. It’s self-preservation, and it becomes a way of life for both of us.

  I was halfway through reading my paper and drinking my coffee when all of a sudden a real salty-looking dude comes walking by, slows down, and gives me a long hard look. I didn’t recognize him, but I can tell he smells cop. I smell drug dealer. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, and I can feel his annoying presence just a few feet away, but I don’t look up. I keep looking at my paper and refuse to give him the benefit of a reaction because that’s what he wants. Right now he’s not sure who I am or what I’m doing, but I’ve shot his bad-guy antenna up, so he’s staring at me, pushing it, trying to feel me out.

  Cops do the same thing to see if you get nervous and make that involuntary movement toward the gun in your waistband, or maybe even start running. Bad guys do it to see if you get scared and look away. If you do they smell victim, but if you give them a hard stare back, they smell cop.

  My head is down, and I’m looking at the paper, but I’m also watching Salty’s feet, making sure he doesn’t get any closer. Right now we’re both playing poker and Salty is starting to annoy me. What I would like to do is grab him, turn him upside down, and dump him into a nearby garbage can headfirst. But then he would win the staring contest. So I keep reading my paper, playing poker, and after a little while he saunters away.

  I look at my watch, hoping my girlfriend will be done with her appointment before anything else happens, but no such luck. A few minutes later two more hard-core-looking assholes emerge from the crowd and come walking by, eyeballing me hard. These guys are a little older and better dressed than the other dealers in the park, so I figure they must be the managers. Salty must have told them I was here, and they came over to check me out. They slow down right in front of me and give me their best well-rehearsed, jailhouse tough-guy look. Narcotics is always sneaking around trying to catch these guys, it’s a cat and mouse game. They obviously want me to know that they made me. It makes the mouse feel like he won something.

  Finally enough is enough, everybody knows who everybody else is, so I close up my newspaper, look them right in the face, and give them my best well-rehearsed “go fuck yourself” look. I made sure nothing got lost in the translation, and they got the message loud and clear, so after a few seconds they started walking. But they kept looking over their shoulders, walking that slow, shuffling bad-guy walk—feeling like they won something. And I keep giving them my slow, shuffling “fuck you” look.

  I glanced around to see if anybody else noticed our little nonverbal sparring match, but nobody seemed to notice or care. Even the guy sitting right next to me wearing the “I’m with Schizo” T-shirt, with the arrow pointing up to himself, didn’t notice. They seemed to be floating around in their own little universe.

  I hardly ever go anywhere without a gun, because in a cop’s life you’re never really off duty, so under my jacket, tucked into a little shoulder holster, is a five-shot .38 revolver. I press my arm up against my side and give it a slight squeeze just to make sure it’s there. I know it’s there, because it’s always there, but it’s comforting to feel the steel bulge hanging under my arm just in case I need it. I have friends, also, five of them.

  I go back to reading my paper and drinking my coffee, feeling relatively inconspicuous to most of the park goers, when all of a sudden a black dude walking by stops right in front of me. He takes one look at me and I can tell, without even looking up, that he’s flipping out, his eyes are popping out of his head. From a few feet away he just stands there and stares at me with this really astonished look on his face, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. His head is moving left and right, and forward and backward, like he’s trying to focus his eyes and get a better look. He looked like he spotted Bigfoot out in the woods when he least expected it.

  Now I’m starting to get a little pissed off, all I want is to be left alone so I can read my paper like a normal person, but a cop’s life is anything but normal.

  Finally I look up, wondering what the hell does this guy want? We weren’t friends, buddies, or cousins and we didn’t go to school together, but from the look on his face he obviously recognizes me from somewhere. After a few seconds of staring and getting his eyes focused, he puts his two hands out in front of himself like a traffic cop trying to stop a speeding car and says really loud, “Stay right there, don’t move.” That’s when he takes off running across the park as fast as he can.

  I looked around to see if anybody saw what just happened, but again, nobody seemed to notice or care. The hippies were still sitting on the grass banging their bongos, contemplating the universe, and the NYU students were still doing their homework. And when I looked over at schizo sitting next to me, he—or they—didn’t seem to notice either.

  The guy obviously recognized me and didn’t want me to go anywhere, but why? I didn’t recognize him, but that doesn’t mean anything. Every day I go to work and deal with countless people, and most of them don’t leave a lasting impression. I kept thinking maybe I locked him up, or maybe I just threw him out of the park for doing something stupid. That happens all the time. But why did he want me to stay here, was he going to get a gun and come back and shoot me, or get a couple of his drug-dealing buddies and try to tune me up? I didn’t think so, that would be a ballsy move, especially in a crowded park, but why was he so adamant about me staying here?

  Was he with the guys I had the staring match with earlier? I didn’t know, but all I could think about was that this couldn’t be good. I thought about getting up and leaving, but I didn’t want the drug dealers to win. But the last thing I wanted to do was get into a
confrontation with some shitheads while I was off duty. It’s an unhealthy situation that the police department really frowns on, but I didn’t want them to think they scared me out of the park. My girlfriend was going to be finished with the dentist soon, and my plans for the day did not include getting shot or shooting somebody else. So I sat there for a moment and debated what I should do.

  I must have been debating this a little longer than I realized, because all of a sudden the guy came back. I could see him on the other side of the fountain running toward me as fast as he could, but this time he wasn’t alone. This time he had some girl with him. I was a little relieved it was a girl and not some crazed-out crackheads, but I was still wound up and ready for a fight, if that’s what he wanted.

  He was dragging the girl by the hand, and she was running as fast as she could trying to keep up with him. As they got closer, he was pointing at me, and I could hear him say, “That’s him! That’s the guy! That’s the guy I told you about!”

  I kept looking at his face, but as hard as I tried I couldn’t place him. I wanted to remember him because then I might have a better idea where this was going. I didn’t know him, but this nut job seemed positive that he knew me, so I guess I must be the guy. As I watched him get closer I got ready for a fight, or at least some kind of confrontation, but what was throwing me off was that he was smiling from ear to ear. He didn’t seem like a guy who wanted to fight, he seemed like a guy who was very happy about something. Now I was really confused, so out of habit I squeezed my arm against my side again, just to feel that the steel bulge was still where I needed it.

  They ran right up to me and skidded to a stop, both of them panting and out of breath. When I looked at the girl, she seemed nice. She was dressed conservatively in a plain blouse, a pleated skirt to the knee, and sensible flat shoes. She didn’t seem like the type who would be interested in helping somebody slit a cop’s throat. And just like him, she was smiling also. She had this big dopey grin on her face and seemed just as glad to see me as he was.