by Mike Markel
That was how I sorted it through a few weeks later. Sitting there on the plastic bench at the range that morning, hearing how I had wanted to kill myself and now Warren Endriss was dead, I heard myself sobbing. I was crying, way out of control, head in hands, tears and snot all over my face. I kept crying, like an idiot, not thinking clearly enough to consider what he was saying. Talk about your silly girls. A guy explains how you wanted to kill yourself so you killed someone else, and you get all emotional. Doesn’t sound to me like a potentially excellent detective. No, it sure doesn’t.
After a couple of minutes (I’m estimating here) I had a pack of tissues out of my big leather shoulder bag on the table, and I’d wiped the top layers of makeup and shit off my face. I actually had a compact mirror somewhere in that bag, but no way I was going to pull that thing out.
“This isn’t gonna work, Chief,” I said as I stood up and shoved my snotty tissue in my bag. “I appreciate how you laid this out for me, and you’ve given me a lot to think about, but as you can see …” I pointed to my face and started crying again.
“I don’t see anything, Detective, except a cop who’s trying to get through a painful episode. Did you make a mistake that day—”
“Which day you talking about, Chief?”
“That’s a good point. Two days. The one when you got in the car drunk, and the one when you arrested Endriss.”
“I just don’t think I’ve got it together enough.”
“Why don’t you let me make that call? I told you: do the Fitness for Duty exam tomorrow, and I’ll take it from there. I’m not shy. If you fail the test, I’ll tell you that.”
No, shyness didn’t seem to be a problem area for Chief Robert Murtaugh. Him thinking I might be able to do this gave me a little boost—even though I knew he was wrong.
“Can I ask you a question, Chief?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you attend AA meetings yourself?”
“That’s not your concern, Detective. What you need to focus on is taking the FFD tomorrow.”
“Will there be anything else, Chief?”
“No, Detective.” He took a slip of paper out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. It was the name and address of the psychiatrist.
“Thank you, Chief,” I said, my voice weak.
“Ready to head back?”
I nodded.
Chapter 4
“Good morning, Detective Seagate,” he said.
“Morning” I’d give him, but “good” hadn’t started for me at 7:58 in many years. “Good morning,” I said. “You’re Dr. Palchik? Did I say that right?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” he said with a weary smile, waving me into his office. It was really just a room, maybe fifteen by twenty. Desk and office chair, two soft chairs and a coffee table, a computer on a tiny desk in the corner. Lots of bookshelves, a few diplomas and other framed paper on the phony wood-paneled walls. The office was on the second floor of a hideous 1960s-era bank covered in some kind of white cement with stones stuck in it. The second floor was home to the shrink and a few other apparently underachieving professionals—a lawyer, an architect, and an independent insurance agent—who probably shared sad stories of life’s injustices as they stood shaking their dicks over the urinals in the men’s room down the hall.
“The sign in the parking lot said I’d be towed. Am I okay?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “They don’t want you parking there overnight, but you’re fine now.” He gestured to one of the soft chairs and sat in the other. “Okay, Detective, shall we begin?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
He looked at the clipboard he had picked up off the coffee table. “Okay, this is a Fitness for Duty examination authorized by Chief Robert Murtaugh. As you know, an FFD is conducted at the request of the Chief of Police when he or she has reason to question an officer’s qualifications to perform his or her duties effectively—”
“Let me jump in here a second, Doctor, if you don’t mind.” He lowered his head, looking out over his reading glasses. “I don’t have any duties. I don’t work there anymore.”
He looked at his clipboard. He had a full beard, mostly gray, which made him look older than his fifty or so years, but it gave him the professor look I guess he was going for. “According to the paperwork—I have it right here—Chief Murtaugh indicated that you are a Detective Second Grade, Rawlings Police Department, now on unpaid leave.” He looked at me. “No?”
“Well, the unpaid part is true, but I’m pretty sure I was canned.”
He sighed. “That’s something I think you need to work out with the chief, but I have authorization to carry out the FFD exam, and you’re here. How about we just proceed?”
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you say.” No reason for us both to be unpaid.
“Okay. I’ve reviewed your records, as well as a report from Chief Murtaugh. For this FFD exam, I’m going to first ask you to go over to the computer and respond to a number of questions. Then, when you’re done—it should take about twenty minutes—we’ll talk. Okay?”
I nodded and we walked over to the desk. He clicked on the mouse, bringing up something called the California Psychological Inventory, which was a barn full of questions where I had to choose how much I agreed with a statement about me. Some of the statements didn’t seem to be getting at anything useful. Like “I enjoy reading books of fiction.” What the hell difference does that make? Now, if it said “I think I’m living in a book of fiction,” that might tell you something worth talking about.
And what am I supposed to do with “I enjoy long weekends”? Are they trying to figure out whether I’m lazy or hate coming in to work? Why not just say “Don’t count on seeing me in the office on your typical Monday or Friday”? That would be clear. But let’s say I’m a normal professional type of person. And July 4 comes on a Monday, and I’ve got the day off, so we’re not talking about whether I’m a shitty employee. So, do I enjoy long weekends? Doesn’t it kind of depend on—let me just go out on a limb here—doesn’t it depend on whether I’m a human? If I am, the only sane answer is “Well, yeah, sometimes. Not all the time.”
The test was stupid. “I consider myself more of a doer than a thinker.” Shit, on a good day, I try to do a little doin’ and a little thinkin’. On a really good day, I do my thinkin’ first—to figure out what I should be doin’—then I do the doin’. Although, to be completely honest, lots of times I do the doin’ first, without having done the necessary thinkin’. Like last week, can’t remember the night, I ended up doin’ some guy who roughed me up, then wondering, What was I thinkin’? My point: clicking on “More agree than disagree” isn’t really doing justice to the richness, the complexity, the whole fucked-if-you-do, fucked-if-you-don’t quality of life.
But, with about ten-thousand questions and only fifteen minutes to go, I decided to put the clicks right in the middle, making me pretty much a neutral person, at least when it comes to taking bullshit computer tests. I tried to avoid the obvious traps, such as the one that said “I like to set goals before beginning a project.” Absolutely. You bet. Like, the next time I arrest a guy, I’m going to think hard about whether my goal is to bring him in or let him jump off a cliff and kill himself.
Yes, in the future I’m going to think much more about the goals of the project. For now, though, I thought as I looked over my answers and hit “Submit,” my goal was to finish this dumb test. Twenty minutes loitering on the corner of Mumbo and Jumbo was long enough.
“Okay, Detective,” the shrink said after I returned to the chair. “Let me explain the function of the next part of the FFD and how the process will proceed.”
I nodded.
“We’re going to talk for a while here, as a way for me to work up a psychosocial diagnosis. What that means, in lay terms, is that we’re going to discuss your job performance and the factors that impinge upon it, in order for me to be able to write a brief report to Chief Murtaugh. On the basis of that rep
ort, the chief can put you back on active duty, terminate you, set down conditions for your continued employment, or anything else he deems appropriate.
“Although part of the dynamic is the question of what is in your best interest, the primary factor is what is in the best interest of the Rawlings Police Department. Even though there might be several compelling reasons to reinstate you as a means of assisting you personally, the nature of the work you do—and the enormous effect that your mental state could have on your ability to do that work professionally—compel me, as a psychiatrist, and Chief Murtaugh, as head of the police department, to put the interest of your fellow officers and the public first. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“Yes, Doctor.” I understood. The elaborate set-up was meant to prepare me for a one-paragraph letter from Murtaugh in about a week.
“All right, Detective, as I study the report from Chief Murtaugh, the main concerns he wishes me to consider with you today have to do with conflicts with supervisors, poor work performance, poor judgment, and working while intoxicated or hung over.”
Maybe that letter will have only one sentence.
“You have never worked directly under Chief Murtaugh, as he assumed his position after your leave began, but the evaluations from his predecessor, Chief Arnold, are quite negative.” He flipped through the papers. “He uses phrases such as insubordination, abusive attitude toward colleagues and superiors, failure to carry out legitimate directives issued by a supervisor, inappropriate personal relationships with fellow officers, and frequently hung over.” He stopped reading and raised his eyes, looking out over his reading glasses.
“Am I supposed to comment on that?”
“Yes,” he said. “You are.”
“Well, I kinda agree with everything he said.”
Dr. Palchik looked at me, stroking his beard at each corner of his mouth. “You understand, Detective, what I said about the process. My job is to write up a report for Chief Murtaugh. If you agree with Chief Arnold’s characterization of your performance, my only option is to state that you agree with his assessment that you are unfit for duty. And that will be the end of it.”
“I see where you’re going, and I appreciate you giving me another chance to defend myself. But I gotta tell you, he’s pretty much right.”
He paused and sighed. “Could you tell me a little about your relationship with Chief Arnold?”
The HVAC system turned on with a distant rumble, sending a little draft across the back of my neck. “I thought Chief Arnold was a total asshole. A bad cop, through and through.”
“For example?”
“All right. My partner and I were working the Arlen Hagerty case—that was my last case, when the Soul Savers guy was murdered right here in town, last November—and the chief wanted us to spend our time on the James Weston murder. You know, Dolores Weston’s husband, the guy who died in the parasailing accident. That was wrong.”
“Tell me about that.”
“Weston was killed in Maui, and we didn’t have any evidence to link the murder to our jurisdiction. But the chief knew it was gonna be a higher profile case than the Arlen Hagerty murder. The Maui police had been here in town and couldn’t tie the Weston murder to this kid from Rawlings who was working on Weston’s boat in Maui, but the chief was being real hardass about how we were to spend our time trying to figure out a link. Meanwhile, the chief wanted us to let the Hagerty case slide.”
“So what did you do about that?”
“I explained to him my point of view—that our job is to work the murder that took place right here in Rawlings, and if there’s any evidence the Rawlings kid conspired to kill James Weston from here, we open that case.”
“And how did the chief respond?”
“He ordered me to shift over to the Weston case. I told him … actually, I don’t remember what I told him, but I was insubordinate. I definitely was. I just kept working the Hagerty case. And I was abusive, too. I probably called him a shithead or something like that. So that’s really what I’m saying about my relationship with Chief Arnold. I think he was a crappy cop, and my performance reflected that. So I don’t want to lie about that. You should write in your report that I was insubordinate and all that other stuff, so if Chief Murtaugh thinks that disqualifies me, I can understand that. If he’s the kind of chief who thinks insubordination is wrong, no matter who you’re being insubordinate to or what the circumstances are, well, I shouldn’t be a cop for Murtaugh, either.”
He spent a little while writing this down, probably including the money quote: “I shouldn’t be a cop.” He was actually pretty good at getting me to tell my story. I hadn’t said this much to anyone in a long time.
He looked up. “Let’s address the charge of an inappropriate personal relationship with a fellow officer.”
“That one’s totally true, too. I had a one-night stand with one of the uniforms. That was inappropriate. I’m not gonna defend that.”
“Why was that relationship inappropriate?”
“The official answer is if a colleague has a relationship with another colleague, it can lead to favoritism or something that could jeopardize their judgment or decision-making or whatever. So, even though there’s about eight or ten inappropriate relationships going on at any given time in the department, it’s still inappropriate.”
“You say that’s the official answer. What’s the unofficial answer to why that was inappropriate?”
“The unofficial answer is that it was a shitty relationship. I slept with him—once—because … because I think I was feeling lonely and, you know, old. And he slept with me because he’s a horn dog. And probably so he could brag how he nailed a detective. He’s a uniform, so it’s a status thing. That’s how it was really inappropriate.”
“And about the charges that you were intoxicated or hung over while on duty?”
“I’m sure it’s in the reports there. I was driving impaired, got in an accident, hurt a kid badly. All that’s true. I was off duty. But I never drank or was drunk on duty, although I know sometimes I was hung over on duty.”
“Chief Murtaugh has indicated that you are to attend AA meetings every day for ninety days. Did he make that clear to you?”
“He said that works sometimes. Yeah, he said I should do that.”
“And are you doing that?”
“I am.”
“One final question, Detective.” He paused. “Do you have a drinking problem?”
“Yes, Doctor, I think I do.”
He looked at me, holding my gaze. I started to feel my face getting all hot and flushed.
“Yes, I’m an alcoholic.”
He did some more writing.
* * * *
Wayne had just refilled me and this guy when “Special Report” came up on the screen. The five o’clock news cutie, Bridget Moyers, was sitting there, looking all serious as she glanced down at her laptop and back up at the camera.
“The Rawlings Police Department has reported that the body of State Senator Dolores Weston was recovered earlier this afternoon, and that they have concluded it was a homicide. We go now, live, to Chief of Police Robert Murtaugh, who is about to make a statement.”
The guy next to me stood and took his wallet out. He put a twenty on the bar and said to me, “You ready?”
“Gimme a second.” The TV cameras were having a hard time with the glare coming off the dozen shiny silver globes, each more than a foot across, anchored to the concrete in a semicircle in front of headquarters. Most people thought they were just half-assed decorations, but we’d put them there to keep losers from driving into the building to bust other losers out of a holding cell. If you weren’t a cop, you probably wouldn’t believe anyone would be dumb enough to think that was a solid plan, but we installed them because it had happened at other departments our size. So there were the reporters, trying not to trip over the big silver balls as they strained to hold their microphones up close to the podium.
Out
of the corner of my eye I saw the guy next to me looking at his watch impatiently like I was holding him up. Like he had earned the right to fuck me and be done in time for dinner at seven with the other microchip douchebags.
The five o’clock crowd at Callahan’s was the noisiest because it was the youngest. A lot of young white collars letting off steam after work, and therefore a lot of women laughing way too loud at the lame shit the guys were saying. So I was having trouble hearing the TV. I gestured for Wayne. “Would you mind muting the TV so the subtitles come on?”
Wayne did it. He’s a great bartender.
It was about five-thirty. I’d been here only a little while. I was spending my days trying to do some exercise, walking around my neighborhood, eating food, watching TV. And going to my meetings at three o’clock. I was late for one, and the guy didn’t sign my card, so I had to do another one later that day. The drunks there were starting to acknowledge me when I entered the room, but I stood off to the side before the meetings, and they respected my space, which I appreciated.
I was getting better at getting through the meetings. I’d passed out a few days ago right before it was my turn to tell a story about how alcohol made me betray the trust of someone important in my life. I hadn’t prepared anything to say, but you’d think with about a hundred stories to choose from I would’ve nailed it. Apparently, I thought passing out and conking my head on the floor would be more entertaining. After I came to, the guy running the meeting told me I could just sit there without participating. All I had to do was say I didn’t want to say anything, he explained, as if that was supposed to make me feel less like an idiot.
By the next day, I was doing better. I didn’t pass out or throw up or piss myself or anything. I just sat there, studying my hands or looking through whoever was talking. I didn’t listen to what anyone was saying. Why should I? I wasn’t trolling for drinking buddies. Plus, I didn’t want to hear about the drinking life, since I already knew all I needed to know about it.