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

by Steve Osborne

  I explained to them the photo is police department property and we don’t give them out to the public. I could not imagine what she would want with a mug shot of her son. It was an unflattering representation of her son’s antisocial, unproductive existence. Why would she want to be reminded of what he had become? I was a little confused.

  The sister went on to tell me they had no recent photos of Hector and very few even when he was a child. When I searched the apartment earlier, I noticed in the living room a bookcase full of nicely framed family photos. There were lots of nice pictures framed in gold and silver, so it wasn’t that they were that poor and couldn’t afford a camera. More likely Hector spent most of his life running around the streets and didn’t spend much quality time with the family. He was too busy wreaking havoc on society rather than spending time with his mother during birthday parties and holidays.

  There was something about this woman that got to me. Maybe it was that she didn’t curse me like a lot of other mothers did and blame the police because their sons had to be hauled off to jail. She realized her son was a bad egg and it was no one’s fault but his own that he met a violent and tragic death so early in life.

  I told her it was against police department regulations, but she could keep the photo. She thanked me profusely, then turned to walk away. At first she wanted to place the photo on the shrine they had built between Jesus and Mary, but then thought better of it. I watch her shuffle across the tacky shag carpet and over to the bookcase with the family photos. In her slippered feet, clutching her robe closed, she tenderly placed the mug shot between Grandpa’s World War II picture of him in uniform and a graduation photo of some girl in a cap and gown.

  Years of police work can make you a heartless son of a bitch at a young age, and I was no exception. Watching people die in the streets will definitely harden your heart and make you numb to other people’s suffering, but this got to me.

  When Mom placed that photo of Hector with the numbers across his chest, sneering at the world, next to Grandpa I was stunned. My team and I silently glanced at each other with raised eyebrows and broken hearts. I couldn’t help but think that when I was having my morning coffee with snarling mug shots staring back at me, this woman would be doing the same.

  She shuffled back over to us in her slippered feet and thanked me repeatedly. I expressed my condolences again and headed for the door. I looked at my watch. It was 5:50 a.m. and I had a few more Hectors to catch this morning before it got too late.

  As we walked out of the piss-and-graffiti-filled lobby, hurrying to our next hit, somebody from my team blurted out what we all were thinking. “Do you think she’s going to frame it?”

  11.

  Last Fight

  I was sitting in my office at the Bronx Warrant Squad trying to study for the upcoming lieutenant’s exam, which was only days away. I hadn’t been studying much for the past couple of weeks because much of my time and most of my thoughts had been occupied with my father. He was dying of cancer and the end was very near.

  I had my head buried in the New York State Penal Law, trying to memorize the difference between Kidnapping and Unlawful Imprisonment, when my phone rang. It was the call I had been waiting for but didn’t want to receive. My sister’s voice was on the other end, and with a calm, almost business-like tone she said, “It’s almost time, I think you better hurry up.”

  She didn’t have to explain any further. This morning my mother and two sisters were taking him to the hospital for the last time. On this trip, instead of going to the regular patient rooms he had become accustomed to, he went to a special wing down the hall. These rooms were for hospice patients. It was quiet and without all the hustle and bustle of a normal hospital floor. This was where you went to die.

  I hung up the phone and threw the books in my desk because studying was useless. I couldn’t help but remind myself that the last lieutenant’s test was seven years ago and if I didn’t hit this one I would have to wait another seven years for the next one, and by that time my career would most likely be over. As the drawer slammed shut I thought, “Fuck it. Whatever happens, happens.”

  Promotion exams in the police department are very competitive. To even have a chance of passing you have to study for at least six months. You have to buy the books, attend the study classes, and commit at least two hours a day to memorizing a huge amount of very dry, boring material. It wasn’t easy and only a small percentage pass.

  The fact that the test was only days away bothered my father much more than it bothered me. With all the things he had going on he would call me every day and ask how the studying was going. And every day, like a good son, I would lie to him and tell him it was going great.

  He would remind me I had a “big day” coming up, and I better not let this “little thing” he was going through screw me up. I couldn’t help but think he had a “big day” coming up also, but he seemed more concerned about my test than he did about the cancer that was rapidly spreading through his lungs.

  He had retired from the police department as a lieutenant in the Detective Bureau and always felt “the job” had been good to him, and he wanted it to be good to me also. Aside from his family, the thing he was most proud of was how he rose through the ranks. To understand his sense of pride you have to realize he was a high school dropout.

  He would smile at me with that crooked-tooth grin and tell me how he jumped out the second-floor window of Lincoln High School in his sophomore year, joined the navy, and never looked back. He would tell me how he sailed around the world a couple of times and in the process got his GED. This explains the huge blowouts we had when I brought home those less-than-stellar report cards of mine.

  In some softer moments, usually with a couple of beers in him, he would tell me how lonely he was in the navy because, looking back, he was just a kid. He regretted the fact his mother signed the papers that allowed him to go into the military at such a young age. But then that crooked smile would come back at the thought of how he beat all those college boys in taking the sergeant’s and lieutenant’s exams.

  After I hung up with my sister I called my wife, told her it was time, and asked her to meet me at the hospital. I grabbed my coat and headed for the car.

  I was in the Bronx and the hospital was down the Jersey Shore, so I had a little bit of a ride ahead of me, and as I drove over the George Washington Bridge my mind started to drift away. The trip gave me some time to think and reflect on my childhood and some of the not-so-Father Knows Best memories I had of my dad.

  To say my father was a character is to put it mildly. Most people loved and respected him, but if you didn’t love him you feared him. He was equally satisfied with either reaction. My father was a fighter and took great pride in it. As much pride as attaining the rank of lieutenant. He was not a boxer or wrestler or martial arts expert. Anyone who put on gloves or silly tights or flew through the air throwing kicks was “full of shit,” as he would put it. He was a bare-knuckle barroom brawling street fighter and he was good at it.

  This was not a chosen profession but was born out of necessity. I grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, a tough blue-collar neighborhood where drinking beer and beating the crap out of each other were everyone’s favorite pastimes. The measure of a man’s masculinity was how much he could drink and how well he could use his fists. The weak were looked down upon, pitied, or even worse, picked on without mercy. Respect was not earned by how smart or successful you were, but by how tough you were. Pleasant talk, discussions, or spirited arguments meant nothing unless they could be backed up by being able to “take it outside.” And the forum for this intellectual and physical stimulation was the neighborhood bar.

  Every neighborhood had its own bar, a place where you could go at any time of the day or night and have a beer with your buddies. A place where “everybody knows your name.” The place where you could throw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and it would last most of the day or night, while you watched a ball game or pla
yed darts and discussed the problems of the world. The type of place where you could wind down after work or get out of the house for a while on the weekends. A place where fists would fly over the slightest insult. Our place was called Pete’s Tavern.

  My father was not a big guy, only about five foot ten, maybe two hundred pounds, but as tough as they come. He wasn’t the toughest guy in the bar, but that was only because of his size. He took pride in the fact that the other tough guys would think long and hard before inviting him to “take it outside.”

  When I turned eighteen I became a regular at Pete’s. Not that I wasn’t a regular before. Growing up as a kid, when my dad would invite me to watch a baseball or football game with him I knew he wasn’t taking me to Yankee or Giants Stadium. We were going to the bar and I loved it. I loved hanging out with the guys, drinking root beer and listening to their stories. Especially the cops.

  I remember having to stand on a milk crate to shoot darts or play pool because I was so young. Nowadays I think five-year-olds hanging out in bars is looked down upon by our liberal, overprotective society. But I don’t care what they say, I had a great childhood. Hanging out with the guys was where I learned to become a man, even if I did come home smelling like cigarette smoke.

  I remember my mother yelling at my dad the first time she heard me say “Fuck.” She figured I must have learned it in Pete’s and she was probably right.

  When I was about ten years old my father worked in the precinct where we lived. I loved it when he would come by the house in his police car. When he would go into the house to say hello, he would let me sit in the car so I could listen to the police radio. He would tell me what his call sign was so I could run and get him if the dispatcher called. I would ask him what all the codes meant so I could understand what they were saying. To me this was the coolest job in the world.

  Sometimes when he was the desk sergeant my mother would make dinner and wrap it up so I could take it to him. I would ride my bike to the precinct and deliver his hot meal.

  When he was working 4:00 p.m. to midnight, a week could sometimes go by before we would see each other. In the morning I would be off to school before he got up and he would have gone to work before I got home. So when I would stop by to see him at the station house, he would let me hang out for a while.

  I don’t know what people would think when they came into the precinct to tell the desk sergeant their sad story and saw some little kid sitting behind the desk with him. Cops work mostly nights and finding time to be with your kids isn’t always easy, so this was our idea of quality time!

  I was only a kid, but I loved being around cops. Guns peeked out from under their jackets and they told the most incredible stories about what happened out on patrol the night before. To me all the characters hanging out in Pete’s were tough and cool, but the cops were the ones I looked up to.

  Maybe if my father had been a doctor living in a fancy neighborhood or suburb, I might be a heart surgeon hanging out in some country club talking about my mutual funds and stock options. But it didn’t turn out that way. I was the son of a cop born in a tough neighborhood a couple of blocks from Pete’s Tavern.

  The day I turned eighteen was a proud day for me because now I could walk into Pete’s, throw my own twenty-dollar bill on the bar, and be treated as an equal. I could sit down with my father and his buddies and buy them a drink.

  This was an important time in my path to becoming a man, and my father, just as he had always done, was going to make sure I was raised right. He taught me the proper way to stand at a bar, put your money down, and order a drink. To him there was a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and ordering a drink the wrong way in a room full of tough guys was a sign of weakness. Improper bar manners had led to a lot of missing teeth and broken noses, and he was making sure I was raised right.

  To drive his point home, one day he shoved me while I was sitting on a stool and caused me to almost go flying on my ass. I grabbed the bar as the stool went tumbling to the floor beneath me. This got a chuckle out of Butch, the bartender. As I regained my balance he explained to me that I should never sit with my feet tangled around the legs of the stool because a guy could come up and sucker punch me and there was nothing I could do about it. Always have one foot on the floor for balance.

  After I became a regular at Pete’s I was able to learn firsthand just how good a fighter my dad was. Before, as a kid, I would just see him show up at the house with a busted eye or a ripped shirt and bloodied knuckles, only to hear how good he did.

  One Friday night I was sitting at the crowded bar listening to the one-man band Pete had hired for the weekends. The guy played the organ, a guitar, a harmonica, and a little drum and cymbal that he operated with his foot, all at the same time. The guy sucked! He played for a few bucks and all the beer he could drink, but Pete thought having some entertainment on the weekends added a little class to the place.

  It was late and the joint was jumping. The bar was packed three deep and the one-man band was cranking. Butch, his brother Richie, and an old guy we called Uncle Joe were scrambling behind the bar trying to keep everybody’s glass full, when all of a sudden I hear a loud boom behind me. It was so loud I thought my mother’s prayers had been answered and lightning had struck the place. My father had slammed the side door with his fist, causing it to fly open, and at the same time he was pointing at Dusty Campbell and yelling, “Outside!”

  Dusty was a scary-looking dude. He had this mean face that came from years of working construction and too much booze. He was a ditch digger for some construction company and he spent all day shoveling dirt and lifting boulders. The old man had warned me always to stay clear of him. I didn’t like looking at him because he scared me and most everybody else.

  My father stormed out the door and onto the sidewalk with Dusty following. I went next, with half the crowd right behind me, all wanting to see the excitement. I admit I was scared. Dusty had muscles on top of muscles from moving tons of earth every day for a living, and my dad never worked out a day in his life.

  I later learned that Dusty and my father had a little bit of a history. They had gone at it in the past and it was ugly. They both had gotten hurt, and much to my surprise the fights were pretty even.

  This time Dad was in a rage and ready to go. His fists were balled up and he was crouching at the knees in a boxer’s stance, taunting Dusty, “Come on, let’s go.” I made a token effort to step in between them because everybody else was too afraid to get in the middle of this. Dad made a sweeping motion with his right arm and brushed me aside, sending me flying while still taunting Dusty, “Come on, put ’em up.”

  This was crazy! As much as Dusty scared me, this time Dad was even scarier. This was about to get real ugly. There were apparently some long-standing doubts about who was tougher, and this was about to be settled right here and right now for everybody to see.

  Just as all hell was ready to break loose, I looked over at Dusty and saw this scared and confused look on his face. His hands were down by his sides—he was not accepting the challenge to “put ’em up.” His voice sounded almost pleading, as he said, “Tommy, what did I do?” My father shot right back at him, “You insulted me in front of my son!”

  Now, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about because I didn’t see or hear any insults over the noise of the one-man band, but Dusty had done something to piss Dad off and you never ever insult a man in front of his son. And much to everyone’s surprise, Dusty put his hands out in front of him in the surrender position and said, “I’m sorry, Tommy, lighten up. Okay, I’m sorry.”

  Apparently Dusty knew what he did was wrong. I had no idea what the insult was and when I asked my father what happened, all he would say was “He insulted me in front of my son.” I never found out what the insult was, but Dusty realized that as tough as he was, he couldn’t beat a guy fighting for his honor in front of his son.

  The years weren’t kind to Dad. He lived a hard life and h
e paid for it. By the time he was thirty-nine he had his first heart attack, and three more would follow before he would ultimately need a heart transplant. His body was failing. He looked old before his time and felt even older. But he was as tough as ever. He would always tell me he had one or two more good fights in him and I wasn’t immune to getting one myself if I didn’t stay on the “straight and narrow.”

  He wasn’t kidding about having one or two more fights in him. One Sunday afternoon I walked into Pete’s to have a beer and watch a football game, when I noticed the cigarette machine had the front glass broken and there was a little blood inside. I sat at the bar in our family’s regular spot and ordered a beer just as I had been taught. When Butch brought my beer over I casually asked what happened to the cigarette machine. Butchie shook his head, smiling, and just said, “Your father again.” The old man seemed to amuse Butch as much as he amused me.

  Butch went on to tell me that the night before, Dad was hanging out having a couple of beers. Now I’m shaking my head because he shouldn’t be drinking in the first place. The doctor told him to lay off because of all the heart medication he was on, but he wasn’t a good listener. Anyway some young guy about twenty-five years old comes in and sits down next to him. Nobody knew the guy. He wasn’t a regular. Probably just some construction worker who popped in for a beer after work.

  The guy pulls out a pack of cigarettes and asks Dad for a light. My father replies he doesn’t have a light because he doesn’t smoke. He had quit years earlier, the only healthy thing he had ever done in his life. To this the guy replies, “What are you, a fag?”

  Now this was uncalled for. To call an old guy sitting at the bar, just minding his own business, names and insult him is just not right. As you have read earlier, Dad had a short temper when it comes to things like insults. Plus he was feeling sorry for himself because his youth and health were slipping away. So he dealt with this the only way he knew how: he got up and decked the guy. One punch and he puts him on his ass.