“Don’t you think that’s a little over the top?” the reporter asked meekly.
“No, I do not!” the judge thundered back. “What I am telling you is that at the racetrack of justice we are betting on a lame horse and the losers are all of us …”
The judge’s rant went on with such ferocity that the reporter thought smoke was going to come out of his end of the receiver. Finally he told the judge he thought he had quite enough for a story, thank you very much. There was less than ten minutes until deadline and it would probably be impossible to get a full response out of anybody at Probation on such short notice, which of course had been the judge’s intention all along.
“Do you need a picture of me?” the judge asked.
“No, I think we have something in our files, Your Honor.”
“Don’t use that one where I’m wearing the hat again,” the judge said before he hung up. “It makes me look like Francis the Talking Mule.”
An hour after the tabloid hit the street with the headline “THEY TURNED HIM LOOSE!” and the subhead “Judge Blames Probation for Releasing Darryl King,” Steve Baum got a call at home, telling him to be in the deputy commissioner’s office first thing in the morning.
“Bring a second pair of underwear,” the guy calling said.
“Why?”
“Because they are going to rip you a new asshole.”
45
THE PROBATION DEPARTMENT’S ADMINISTRATIVE building on Leonard Street is a misconceived hunk of modern architecture that somebody left in lower Manhattan. At first it appears to be an imposing gray edifice with jutting angles—at least an octagon. But on closer inspection, it’s just a horrible mistake. Even though the building is not that old, its marble surface is crumbling and for the past few years the entrance has been surrounded by protective scaffolding to keep passersby from getting bonked on the head by the falling pieces. Somebody has scrawled the name of the anarchy group “MISSING FOUNDATION” in white spray paint across the dark scaffold boards. I guess it’s meant to be ironic, but it comes off as more of an understatement.
Upstairs, Deputy Commissioner Kenneth Dawson is waiting for me in his office. His walls are cluttered with those idiotic Probation—Be Part of the Magic stickers and pictures of him shaking hands with various assemblymen and clubhouse politicians. I remember how Big Jack told me that Dawson got this job because his father was hooked up with the Staten Island Democrats. He has a copy of the newspaper with the headline about Probation letting Darryl King go on his lap. It’s already so well thumbed that it looks like a vintage edition.
He chews his upper lip furiously and glares at me. “I want you to tell me what happened here,” he says.
The clock on his desk reads 8:08. A cup of coffee would be nice, but with the look he’s giving me I know I shouldn’t expect any small kindnesses. Deputy Dawson. For once, I don’t think of Deputy Dawg.
“You wanna know what happened with the violation hearing?”
“I didn’t call you here to congratulate you on your sharp work,” he says in a nasty, insinuating voice that would earn him a good beating from some of my clients.
I rub my eyes and try to get my thoughts in order. I should be used to getting up at this hour from being out with the Field Service Unit, but it still takes me a while to get going.
“Well,” I say slowly, “it’s not at all like the judge said. I handed in my V.O.P. papers…”
“Your what?”
V.O.P. stands for Violation of Probation. I thought everyone who worked here knew the term. But then again, this guy Dawson is mainly supposed to be in budget, so he may not be up on all the shop talk.
“I touched all the bases,” I say. “I pulled together all the papers and the evidence and the judge made his own decision. What else was I supposed to do?”
He shakes his head like he hasn’t heard a word I’ve said. “Why did you leave it up to the judge?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. It’s his decision.”
“But why did you put this guy King on probation in the first place?”
I look at him skeptically, not sure if he’s putting me on or not. Can he know that little about the way this agency works? He’s been here a year, I think.
“I didn’t put Darryl King on probation,” I explain.
He picks the newspaper off his lap and reads out loud. “The judge said the Probation Department had originally recommended King not be sent to jail …”
“First off, they’re talking about the presentence investigation, which I didn’t write. Tommy Markham wrote it and he certainly didn’t recommend probation. I read the report.”
He rocks back in his chair abruptly. “All I know,” he says, “is that so far this morning, I’ve gotten calls from City Hall, the PBA, the criminal justice coordinator, and three newspapers all wanting to know how it is that one of our officers is responsible for six cops getting shot …”
I just look at this guy a minute, with his sunburn, and his Sy Syms suit, and his little political clubhouse mementos spread across his desk. What a hack. I used to think those descriptions were unfair and two-dimensional. But this asshole can’t see beyond the doorway of his own office. Here’s a guy who doesn’t know the first thing about probation and is just serving time until another administrative job opens up at a city agency that pays better. I suddenly feel a surge of admiration for Richard Silver; he’s what this guy can only aspire to be.
“I just told you what the situation was,” I say as evenly as I can. “I went in to the judge and I gave it my best shot, and the guy got out anyway.”
“And that’s not good enough.” Dawson turns slightly red and shakes an emphatic finger at me. “The people we have to work with want to know that there’s some accountability in this department. And I’ve had to assure them that the officer responsible is going to be disciplined.”
“What’d you do, give ’em my name?”
“In some cases, that was necessary.”
“Well, you know, I’m not gonna be the fall guy for this.”
“Well, somebody’s responsible and it certainly isn’t me.”
Of course, I think. It couldn’t be. To be responsible you’d have to have some idea of what’s going on.
“So as of today we’re starting dismissal proceedings,” Dawson says matter-of-factly.
“Against who?”
“Against you. I’ve already told the people at City Hall that you’re being let go.”
It takes a couple of seconds for what he’s saying to sink in. Two years of hard work are disappearing just because the judge was in a bad mood that day. For a couple of seconds, my mind goes blank and I can’t think of anything to say in my own defense.
“We both know all about severance pay and administrative procedures,” he says. “But you’d be doing everyone in the department a great service if you’d start clearing out your desk today.”
A half hour after I storm out of his office, I’m still bouncing around the locker room downstairs in frustration. I keep smoking cigarettes and asking myself how I wound up in this mess.
Do they think they can just make me the scapegoat for the whole system? After a while, I stop and try to think about whether it could be my fault. I start going over the Darryl King case step-by-step in my mind, trying to figure out what I could’ve done differently. I know this is going to eat at me for years. Maybe if I’d been a little firmer with him the first time he came into my office, it might’ve turned out differently. It could be that Bill’s been right all along, and I have been too soft on these people. Maybe I shouldn’t have acted like such a social worker, arrogantly thinking I could persuade Darryl to change.
I haven’t even gotten to the question of what I’m going to do with the rest of my life when Jack Pirone shows up and asks me what’s the matter. Before I’m halfway through telling him about my getting fired, he’s barreling out of the locker room like a pickup truck without brakes and heading upstairs to Dawson’s office.
Dawson shifts the tension from one side of his face to the other and then back again. “I haven’t had the chance.”
“I see,” Jack says pleasantly.
I’m standing in the corner with my hands in my pockets, feeling like an outcast. On top of being fired, now I get the embarrassment of hearing people talk about it.
“So you don’t know what was actually said in the hearing?” Jack asks.
“Well, I’ve certainly read the judge’s account.”
“Then FUCK YOU, you fucking child!” Jack roars. “How fucking DARE you call Baum in here before you know what the fuck’s going on, you dumb fuck. How many times have you been across the street to see the supervision offices? Huh? When was the last time you were in a courtroom besides seeing your old man almost get indicted? What’d you ever do besides getting your name on a list? You fucking child.”
Jack’s voice is so loud that I have to look to make sure he’s still sitting in his chair, and not across the room, yelling in the deputy commissioner’s face. “Listen, Pirone …” Dawson says, trying to sound tough.
“No, you listen. You wanna get pushed around by the media, and set policy that way, I know people who work for the newspapers too …”
Dawson lowers his head and starts speaking rapidly like he’s trying to slip his words through the barrier of sound Jack’s putting up. “The fact remains that we have to have some accountability.”
“You want accountability?” Jack says. “Then you can account for eight hundred probation officers walking off the job. You fire Baum and I’ll stage a walkout that’ll shut the town down. You’ll have sixty thousand probationers walking around totally unsupervised. An invading army. How do you like that for a headline? You wouldn’t just have the tabloids with that. You’d get the Times and TV news too.”
A silence falls over the room. Dawson sits back in his chair and sighs, looking beaten. He picks up a pen and drops it right away.
“All right,” he says to Jack. “What do you want from me?”
Jack looks down at his pudgy hand and sticks out his forefinger. “Number one,” he says. “Baum gets his job back.”
Dawson pats the pale, translucent hair on his scalp and looks pained. “That’s going to be very difficult,” he says. “People are very upset about this Darryl King business and they want to know who’s to blame.”
“Blame the judge,” Jack says. “You got a very good press officer and he knows how to make phone calls. Tell everybody it was the judge’s fault and we’re still on the case.”
“I guess I can try,” Dawson mumbles. “We can have an administrative panel review the court proceedings.”
Whatever that means. From the way he says the words, it’s clear he doesn’t know either.
“What else?” Jack says.
Now he’s looking at me. I hold up my hands like I don’t know what he wants. But he keeps looking at me and asking, “What else?” as if he expects me to present a list of demands.
“He’s got his job back,” Dawson whines to Jack. “What else does he want?”
“You’ve put him under obvious duress here,” Jack says, suddenly taking the tone of a concerned family therapist. “I think Baum’s entitled to some compensation for the shabby treatment he’s received.”
I start to tell Jack to knock it off, but Dawson’s already asking me what I want to keep my mouth shut and not make a fuss. I can’t think of anything too extravagant at the moment. “It’d be nice if I could have a couple of report days back at the office next week,” I say. “With all the time I’ve been out in the field, I still have a couple of people to see and some paperwork to take care of.”
“Done,” says Jack. Dawson nods in reluctant agreement. “What else?” Jack asks me.
“No, that’s enough,” I tell him.
“Come on, you’ve been harassed by the administration. They owe you something. Take a comp day.”
“I don’t want a comp day,” I say. “I’m already behind the eight ball in my work.”
“Take the rest of the day off,” Dawson interrupts. “I could use it too, with the headache I got.”
46
RICHARD SILVER PUT DOWN the newspaper story he was reading about Darryl King and gave all his attention to the guy on the other end of the phone.
“You’re not hearing what I’m telling you,” he said.
“I guess not,” said the guy from the personnel agency. He sounded like a kid, probably filling in for somebody regular at the firm. “You asked for a secretary who could type fifty-five words a minute, and so we sent you a secretary who could do that. I don’t understand what the problem is.”
Richard Silver leaned back in the chair behind his desk and peered out the doorway. His new secretary, Patricia, a matronly looking black woman in her fifties, was still out getting coffee.
“The problem is I asked for a front office type, and you sent me somebody who belongs in a back office,” he explained.
“I’m not sure I catch your drift,” the kid said.
“Oyshh,” Richard Silver sighed, pulling out a desk drawer and putting his feet in it.
He looked down on his desk and saw the Chicago phone number written on a pink message slip. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Every time he thought about making that call, he wanted to reach for a Di-Gel. There were days when the whole thing made him proud of his ingenuity, and there were days when it made him feel cheap and ashamed. Today it was just getting on his nerves. The number on his desk was like an embarrassing stain on his clothes.
Meanwhile, the kid from the personnel agency was still sounding perplexed. “I don’t get it,” he was asking. “What’s the difference between a front office type and somebody in a back office.”
“The problem,” Richard Silver told him, “is the tone.”
“Tone?”
“Yeah, the tone of the person you sent me.”
The kid from the agency was flabbergasted. “Was she rude?”
“Rude? No. Not at all. She’s like Aunt Jemima. I’m just looking for somebody a little more Manhattan, and a little less Bronx.”
“Huh?”
“Somebody with more of a front office demeanor.”
The kid still didn’t get it. Richard Silver looked up at the ceiling and calculated the chances that the kid on the phone might be black himself. Knowing this particular personnel agency, he decided the odds against it were about a million to one.
“Look,” he told the kid finally. “Let me put it to you this way. I’m looking for someone who’s a little bit more like you and me. You know what I mean?”
A few seconds passed. “Ohhh, I got it,” the kid from the personnel agency said finally. “Whyn’t you say so before?”
“Because that’s not the way nice people do things,” Richard Silver said. “So you send me somebody else next week.”
“Somebody with the right tone.”
“Yeah, this is a modern office I’m starting here,” Richard Silver said before hanging up.
He took his feet out of the desk drawer and picked up the newspaper again. By the time he was done reading, Patricia was back with her coffee. He stood up and buttoned his suit jacket.
“I’m going to lunch,” he told her. “And I’ll probably be gone the rest of the afternoon. I’ll call in later for messages.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Silver.”
Just as he turned to go, he realized the Chicago phone number was still sitting on his desk. He picked it up almost daintily, folded it over once, and put it in his breast pocket.
“Patricia?” he said, stepping around the desk and heading out for the elevators.
“Yes, s
ir?”
“You have a nice day.”
47
YOU’D THINK THAT ONCE Dawson gives me my job back and lets me take the rest of the day off, I’d get in a much better mood. But I don’t. All the way back uptown to my house, it keeps bothering me; people are going to think I wasn’t doing my job.
It’s more than just telling everybody what actually happened in Bernstein’s courtroom. I have to convince myself that I did everything I could to stop Darryl from getting out. And in the back of my mind, this other crazy thought keeps coming back to me: That maybe there was something I should’ve done to turn Darryl around.
For the moment I’m feeling too mixed-up to figure that one out, so I try to use the free time I have to pull myself together, instead of doing paperwork. I put on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd and start working out, like I’m trying to get in shape for a fight with Darryl. I do one hundred push-ups and one hundred sit-ups and then I pump a twenty-pound weight seventy-five times behind my head and seventy-five times in front of my stomach. My muscles start to ache and I tell myself I’m never going to see Darryl again anyway. But I have to keep doing it.
After I repeat that whole routine a couple of times, I just sit by the window, drinking coffee and watching life go by for a couple of hours. This is kind of interesting at first, because I’m not usually home at this hour. I decide that the city has a secret daytime life. There’s a discrete army of people out there who you never see out at night. As a group they tend to be older, slightly misshapen men and women, moving slowly and quietly down the sidewalk, dragging shopping carts behind them. Their faces are etched with a kind of gentle resignation and acceptance of life’s disappointments. After midnight, you see a completely different group around here. They’re younger, they never wear shirts, they do a lot of drugs, scream at people going by, demand money, and generally are less quietly accepting of life’s little disappointments.
Pretty quickly, I start getting bored and restless again. I don’t know what to do with myself, but this big generator is roaring away inside of me. For a few minutes, I just pace back and forth, chain-smoking and telling myself I don’t need a drink. Finally I decide to look at things as though I were one of my clients, and make out a list of goals.
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