Back at my apartment, he spooned some powder onto the kitchen counter and used a credit card to form the lines.
“You were great,” he said. “I don’t know what all Raynor has told you, but I think you’ll do just fine.”
“What he’s told me,” I said, “is be anything you have to be to make the case and keep your ass from getting shot.”
He ran his eyes over me and pointed at the rails.
“Yeah,” he said, “we damn sure don’t want that.”
“I was quoting him.”
“I’m sure you were,” he said, smiling and handing me the C-note. “I’m certain that was a direct quote.”
I rolled the bill until it was tight and then leaned over toward the cocaine on the counter. I’d never felt anything like it. Ever. The Immaculate Conception in powder form. And I was doing it because someone had to. I was making this personal sacrifice. I was rationalizing my ass off.
“You see,” Rob said, cutting out more rails, “it’s like this. We’re out here risking our lives to keep the fucksticks off the streets. But the job has a few fringe bennies.”
2
Deep nights on patrol, I struggled to stay awake and tried not to scrape too much rubber off the squad car tires. The investigation was finished, the arrests made. I’d been to the academy, and now I was learning what ordinary patrol meant. It was impossible, some nights, not to nod behind the wheel.
Cruising down some quiet nighttime residential street, I would feel the bite of my tie clip in my neck and then, from the other side of dream, hear the tires scudding gently against the curb. The slow, scraping sound usually woke me before I actually bumped onto the sidewalk, and I would stop the car, get out, walk around it three or four times, shaking my head and squeezing my eyes rapidly, trying to get conscious.
Deep nights is the shift when the law-abiders are tucked safely in their beds, abandoning the streets to those who move in shadow with burglary tools or weapons in their pockets. It was a thing felt, like a change in air pressure, a busy hum of activity beneath the black morning hours trailing quietly after midnight.
It took almost a week to adjust to the night-time workday, and shifts rotated, from deep nights to days to evenings, every four weeks. The first three days after a change were a lesson in disorientation; my body didn’t know if it wanted eggs for dinner or pizza for breakfast. Whenever I patrolled a district close to my apartment, I took my meals there rather than at restaurants. I found the stares of civilians disconcerting.
In the months since the department had rounded up the defendants on the dope buys Rob and I had made, I’d seen Jim only in the hallways at the station. He had called once, the night before my academy graduation, to say he would attend. I spent an hour that night polishing my shoes, and the next day went through the ceremony with twenty-nine men, searching the small crowd of spectators for Jim’s face. He never showed.
Whenever I chanced to meet him at the station, he always said hello, courteously, but as though he were acting in an official capacity or something. I took it to mean that those nights in my apartment had been, for him, a matter of opportunity seized. It left me aching and confused, but I kept quiet, I gave him no clue that I was feeling abandoned. He was a captain in CID, and I was now a lowly patrolman, unwilling to risk humiliation in the pursuit of what I had hoped was a relationship. I felt sometimes as though he were testing me, waiting to see if I would stay straight after spending the first three months of my employment smoking dope and snorting coke. That wasn’t really a problem. I kept it in perspective, looked on it as having been part of my job. I really didn’t miss the drugs. But I missed working dope. I missed being with Jim.
If we passed in the hall he would wince a brief sort of half wink at me and say, “Keep your head up, Officer.” I would give attention to some aspect of my uniform, shift my Sam Browne or straighten my tie, and nod politely. “Always,” I would say, and then he would be gone, talking in low tones to a lesser detective at his side.
* * *
I had rotated back to deep nights when the first of our drug cases went to trial. The D.A.’s office had spent months trying to plea bargain with Hayden Smith’s attorneys. I was no longer part of it. Most of the other twenty or so defendants had taken probation deals, but Hayden wanted his day in court.
I finished my shift at seven, went home to shower and dress and sit on the couch, waiting for Jim and Rob to pick me up. I should have been exhausted, but the idea of actually going to trial had my eyes wide open.
On the way to the Harris County Courthouse, I sat in the back seat listening to Jim and Rob talk about some deal or other. I envied them. Patrol, I’d discovered, was boring, mind-bendingly pedestrian.
Jim stopped talking suddenly and turned to pass Rob’s case reports back to me. “You might want to take a look at these,” he said. I took them and began reading. They were clean, very clean, with no mention of mirrors or rolled up C-notes or cops with the sniffles.
We waited in the state’s witness room, a closet-size place empty but for five light green chairs and huge floor-stand ashtray. The air smelled of dried sweat and wet cigars. Rob was pacing back and forth while Jim sat next to me, tapping his fingers lightly on a wooden chair arm. I concentrated on the reports, memorizing dates and times.
“Relax, girl,” Jim finally said. “The D.A. will ask you exactly the same things he talked about this morning.”
“And the defense attorney?”
Rob kicked a chair.
“Fuck him,” he said. “He’s trying to keep a damn dope dealer out of jail. He’s as much a scum as the dopers themselves. Ought to put them all in Huntsville.” He adjusted his tie and sat down.
A few minutes later an ancient bailiff rapped on the door and poked his face into the room.
“Agent Johnson,” he said, “you’re up.”
Rob tucked a few loose hairs behind his ears. His ponytail trailed halfway down the back of his navy pinstripe jacket.
“Time to put old Hayden in the joint,” he said, and gave us a vague salute as he ducked out.
“Too bad you can’t be in there,” Jim said. “You want to see someone knows how to testify.”
“I’ll be happy just to get through it.”
“Hey,” he said, “take it easy. The dude sold to you. He’s the one on trial. You get up there and answer the questions and then you walk out.”
“But what about, you know, doing the stuff? Does that come under lawful discharge of duty or something?” I wasn’t sure why I was asking. I knew the answer; that much I had learned, but still I wanted to hear it said. Perhaps I needed to be relieved of responsibility.
He stood up and propped a foot on the chair. “Look,” he said, “everybody knows what goes down. All the way up to the judge, they know how it works. But nobody wants to hear about it. You walked Johnson in, this guy Smith sold you the dope, you paid for it and walked out. You’ll have everything right in front of you, and if it’s not in the paperwork, you just say you don’t recall.”
“I’m concerned a little,” I said. “Perjury.”
“Baby,” he said, “let me tell you something here, and by the time you come out of there you’ll know what I’m talking about.” He rubbed a hand across his forehead, pinched his eyebrows tiredly. “They’re going to ask you some questions. The D.A. will be all polite and courteous and everything. The defense attorney may be the same. Or he may be a real asshole and come with a full frontal attack. Either way, you sit there, you answer professionally, and you don’t lose your cool.”
“Somehow I feel like I just did six lines of pink Peruvian.”
“Talk about get-down testimony.” He patted his suit pockets. “Hey, you’ll handle it. Everybody in there lies. They’ve all got something to hide. The goddamn attorneys lie, just by the way they ask the questions. We’re here to put this boy in the joint. You go in there, and you answer. And no, it isn’t the whole fucking truth so help you God, but it takes the dealers off the streets
.”
He lit a cigarette and sat down again and things got quiet. An airplane passed somewhere overhead, droning in the winter afternoon. I felt sweat curling down my sides.
I would walk into the courtroom and sit down in the chair and lie. Not about the deal, but about taking drugs with Hayden. We’d bought the dope; he had sold it. I’d seen twelve-year-olds coming out of his apartment, tucking things into their pockets. I would lie because it was necessary. I concentrated on the reports.
When I looked up, Jim had his elbows on his knees, his chin resting on one fist, and he was watching me.
“How’s patrol,” he asked. “You liking it okay?”
“It’s been five months of dull.”
“Yeah, well, you got spoiled. Anything’s dull after narcotics. You’ll be in Criminal before you know it. But you got to do your time in the harness.”
“I’m taking courses again. Only part time, six credits this term. Criminal Justice and French.”
“French?” He shifted in his chair. “Who you planning to parlez vous with?”
“Nobody in particular.”
“Hell, girl, you ought to try for law school. Some of the D.A.s I’ve seen, you’d put them to shame.” He started to light another cigarette, but changed his mind and slipped the pack back into his coat pocket. “So. You’re staying busy?”
“I work, I sleep, I go to school.”
“No romance? Come on.”
“I miss working narcotics, if you know what I mean. I have lunch with Rob every once in awhile.”
“I thought so,” he said. He took out a cigarette. “I had a feeling he might be hanging around.”
“Nobody else is. They guys on my shift act like I’m some sort of pariah. Like they’re scared of me.”
“Well what’d you expect? You made more felonies in your first three months than they have in their entire careers. They’re jealous.”
“They’re okay about it,” I said. “Most of them, anyway. But I am not one of the gang. Not sure I want to be.” I realized that I had rolled my copies of the reports into a cylinder and began trying to flatten them back out.
“What the hell,” Jim said. “Rob’s wife knows all about him. Couldn’t care less. Nothing wrong with an occasional lunch.”
I got up and walked to the windows. The January sky was cold blue and crowded with the glass and steel of downtown Houston. Ant-people below, winding along sidewalks. I turned to Jim. “Pardon me, Captain,” I said, “but sometimes you can be a real bastard.”
“Yeah,” he said, “you got that right. Sometimes I really can.” He leaned back in his chair and let his arms fall over the sides. “What the hell. It keeps life interesting.”
“What was that about?” I asked. “What we had going there for awhile, was that just, I don’t know, what was it?”
“I’ve got three big cases working right now. Things have been busy. And I’m catching heat from the Chief.” He slid down and kicked his legs out in front of him.
“What kind of heat?”
“You know Sergeant Quill?”
“He’s been at a briefing or two.”
“Yeah, well, he ‘suggested’ to the Chief that I’m dipping into evidence. Claims he’s seen me high. The asshole. Never made a decent case in his life. Hell, he couldn’t track a damn bleeding elephant across a flat acre of fresh-fallen snow. But he wants to be a captain, he wants to run CID.”
“That has nothing to do with what I’m asking you,” I said. “Do you even have a clue what it’s been like?”
He stood up and draped his arms over my shoulders and backed me toward the corner of the room, next to the door.
“I know exactly what it’s been like.” He lifted his arms and put his hands against the wall on either side of me, and then he leaned down and kissed me. “It’s been like not having enough air,” he said quietly. “It’s been like choking.” He kissed me again and then I felt his finger pressing something into my palm “You just swallow this,” he said, “and you’ll do fine up there on the stand.”
The door opened and he stepped away abruptly and walked toward the windows, leaving me standing there in the corner, like a child hiding. I forced the Valium down as Rob walked in, kicking the door shut behind him.
“Man,” he said, “the dude calls himself a district attorney. He’s worthless. Screwed the evidence up completely.” He was hopped up, rolling on the balls of his feet and swinging his arms front to back. “Couldn’t keep the cases straight, had the dates all confused, it was pathetic.” He walked over and slapped Jim on the back. “Be glad you’re not testifying on this one,” he said. “The man is incompetent.” Jim glanced at me and turned to stare hard at Rob.
“What the hell does it matter, Johnson, as long as you’re taking good care of my trooper here.”
“Hey,” Rob said, “how about a little slack?” He took a step back and jammed his hands into his pockets. “It’s not like you’ve been around or anything.”
I was saved by the bailiff, who leaned into the room just then and said, “Cates. Officer Cates.”
I followed him down the hall and through the heavy courtroom doors. I hoped that I looked composed. I hoped that the Valium would kick in quickly.
Jim was asleep when I returned, folded into the chair with his chin on his chest. Rob stood at the window, drawing miniature suns into the corner of each pane, using his fingertip to carve short, jagged rays in the grime.
“We’re excused,” I said.
Jim pulled his head up slowly and rubbed his face, blinking. He stood and stretched, saw me, dropped his arms. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he said.
Rob began wiping his finger on a chair back.
“Nothing,” I said. “You were right.”
“About what? Rob asked. “What happened? That piss-poor excuse for a prosecutor lose it for us?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”
“So why the face,” Rob asked.
“Unbelievable,” I said. “Hayden’s attorney got up and accused me of—are you ready for this?—being a temptress. He said I lured Hayden to a dope party and did a striptease so he’d sell me drugs.”
Jim glanced at Rob and then put an arm around my shoulders.
“You survive it otherwise?”
“Did he try to say you’d slept with the dude?” Rob asked.
“No,” I said. “Just used the temptress bit. I didn’t know people still thought that way.”
Jim was smiling as he walked me to the door. “Sounds to me,” he said, “like you got off light.”
At my apartment, I called the evening dispatcher and asked her to phone me at ten to make sure I was awake for my shift. I set my alarm for nine-thirty and buried myself beneath the sheets, trying for a few hours sleep before I had to go out again.
When the phone rang, I was in the middle of a dream featuring a jazz band in the jury box, and there I was, up on the defense table, dancing and peeling off my uniform while the lawyers and judge applauded and Hayden Smith sat staring at the handcuffs on his wrists. Jim was toward the back of the courtroom, trying to climb over the benches, but was stuck there somewhere, calling out to the judge, “Objection, Your Honor, objection. I have an objection here.”
I took two cups of coffee into the briefing room and sat drinking them numbly while the sergeant read out assignments. When he’d finished with instructions, he said he had a special announcement.
“The first of those drug cases made by our very own Officer Kristen Cates went to trial today,” he said. “I got word this evening that the defendant, Hayden Smith, was found guilty of V.S.C.S.A.—that’s Violation of the State Controlled Substances Act for those of you who don’t know your penal code. The jury gave him a total of fifty-seven years.”
There were applause and whistles, and the sergeant raised his coffee cup to me. “Congratulations, Cates,” he said, “hell of a job.”
I thanked him and drained my cup. I nodded quietly to the men aroun
d me, but inside of me, inside I felt something shift, something slip off center. A man. What man, a guy my own age, was in prison looking at fifty-seven years for being a minor-league dealer, selling a few grams of powder. And I had helped put him there. Our lives had collided, and I had knocked him into a world of dirt and grinning ignorance, a place of gleaming metallic violence and night-screams. I could not fathom what he must have been feeling toward me. But it was there and it was real. Sitting in the briefing room being applauded, I could feel his hatred seep into my body like disease, become part of me. And the fold in my brain that was bent on emotional survival knew that the only way to defend against a rage that strong was to return it in kind.
* * *
Deep nights became days, days became evenings, evenings became deep nights. What was I doing in Pasadena, Texas. Every twenty-eight days we rotated shifts. Month after month. In the women’s locker room, we referred to the change as the period from hell. There were three of us, one for each shift. We didn’t know each other; we passed in the doorways at seven, three, or eleven.
I worked enough overtime to be able to take a few hours off to go to classes in Houston when I needed to. In the Criminal Investigation course, a detective from the Dallas Police Department visited and told war stories about the Kennedy assassination.
“The crime scene was a bust from the start,” he said. “Cops were running all over the Depository, stuffing things in their pockets, trying to grab souvenirs.”
I drove home after class remembering fourth grade and how the nuns had herded us all into church to get on our knees and count rosary beads while we prayed for a dying president. Monsignor O’Brien stood on the altar and told us how at that very moment High Mass was being said all over the world, no matter the hour, and I pressed the beads into my fingers and prayed as hard as I could, and thought maybe God would pay special attention because every Catholic in the world was asking for the same thing at the same time: asking him to save one of their own.
Rush Page 3