Paul Bacon

by Bad Cop: New York's Least Likely Police Officer Tells All

  She nicked into the woods without turning on her flashlight, so I got up and pulled out my own, throwing a beam in front of her path for safety.

  “Ahh! Turn it off!” she yelled. “You’re ruining my night vision!”

  I switched off my light, but I kept it in hand while hustling toward the sound of Clarabel’s footsteps. Passing by the restaurant, I heard Ah-noldisms spilling out the windows, each met with hearty laughter and applause. I lost track of my partner entirely, until she let out a terrified shriek from the darkness. I flicked my light back on and raced up the dirt path. When I reached Clarabel, she was standing in front of two men who were both very frantically pulling up their pants.

  The man who got his trousers up first found himself stuck between a tree and a large rock. He knocked my partner off her feet as he fled the scene. She came tumbling into my arms, batting my flashlight away and bringing us both to the ground.

  The second man was laughing so hard at us that he couldn’t get his button-fly jeans together. He eventually gave up, darting after his friend with his pants still open, giggling as he ran around us.

  Clarabel’s gun holster was poking me in the ribs, so I pushed her off my chest. She flopped over on her back and began laughing, too.

  “I thought you grew up in Manhattan,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.

  “Don’t you know what happens in the park at night?”

  “No,” she said, snickering. “But I guess someone does. Maybe those rumors back at the academy were true.”

  “What rumors?” I said.

  “That you’re gay,” she said.

  I knew a challenge when I heard one. I rolled over onto my chest and propped myself up on my elbows. I loomed above her, with our faces just inches apart. She didn’t seem to mind.

  “Well?” she purred. “What happens in the park at night?”

  “This,” I said, planting my lips on hers.

  I leaned back and waited for Clarabel to open her eyes.

  “Wow,” she said softly. “I thought you’d be a really bad kisser.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. Then, from behind us, came the sound of approaching footsteps in the forest.

  “Who is this now?” Clarabel said, pushing herself up, just as a flashlight beam cut across her face.

  “Ah, it’s you two,” said Sergeant Ramirez, a soothing voice behind a curtain of light.

  I put my hand up to shield my eyes while I struggled for something to say. “Uh, hey, sarge. Is something wrong?”

  “No, no, no,” the sergeant said, trying not to laugh. She shut off her light and said, “We got reports of some kind of hanky-panky goin’ on in the woods. I wasn’t figuring it’d be cops.”

  Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appearance turned out to be disappointingly short, and he was already mobbed with handlers by the time we got out of the woods. After the governor left, our detail fell in for muster in the parking lot, and the captain gave us a preliminary report on the Midtown melee. A thousand arrests had been announced so far, and more were in progress. Cops were short on handcuffs, and the city was running out of places to put all the prisoners. “But the good news,” said the captain, “is that the job didn’t bud get enough overtime for tonight, which means everyone here is going home.” Cheers all around.

  I waited by Clarabel’s car while she visited the Boat house ladies’ room. When she came out ten minutes later, she wearing a white summer blouse, blue jeans, and heels. With her hair down she looked like a civilian, save for her overstuffed bag of riot gear, which she was having a hard time carrying. I offered to help, but she declined. She dragged the duffel across the parking lot by herself.

  She heaved it into the hatchback and walked to her driver’s-side door. Seeing me waiting on the passenger side, she said, “Oh, can you get a ride back to the Two-eight with Sergeant Ramirez? I’m going downtown.”

  I laughed, “They’re still making collars. You won’t get past Midtown without a patrol car.”

  “I know people,” she said, unlocking her door.

  “Where are you going? Aren’t you tired?”

  “I’m going to see my mom,” she said, and ducked into the Civic.

  “At midnight?”

  “She’s Dominican. We stay up late on weekends. See you Monday,” Clarabel said before she drove away.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE TWO-EIGHT HAD BEEN PROMISED fresh recruits from MSU immediately after the convention, but when Sergeant Ramirez called us into ranks the next week, there was no new blood to be found.

  “Looks like we’re still half a squad,” the sergeant said.

  “If that,” said Carlyle.

  “For how much longer?” asked Clarabel.

  The sergeant said, “Depends on how long the borough’s new flavor of the week lasts.”

  “What flavor is it now?” I said.

  “Operation Pedestrian Safety,” she said.

  “Jaywalking tickets,” said Carlyle. “Fantastic community-relations tool. Don’t forget your pepper spray.”

  “Not here,” said the sergeant. “Only MSU is doing it. That’s why they’re holding on to them, or at least that’s their latest excuse.”

  Out on patrol, things were awkward between me and Clarabel. We had kissed. There was no denying it. But while we were in uniform, which was all the time when we were together, there was no acknowledging it, either. It was thrilling and scary and entirely confusing. As the Black Israelites would have said, it took a child to lead us.

  The child in question was a six-year-old boy. While we were driving around our sector, the child and his mother were waiting to cross the street, and I happened to pull up alongside them while stopping at a red light.

  The boy’s mother pointed into our car and said, “Look, honey, it’s a man-and-lady policeman team.”

  “Hi po-leeth,” the little boy said through a missing front tooth. “Are you mar-ried?”

  “What’d you thay? I can’t under-thtand you,” Clarabel sniped, then rolled up her window. “The light’s green, Bacon. Let’s go.”

  I shifted the car into park, switched on the roof lights to divert traffic around us, and told Clarabel to apologize.

  “For what?” she said.

  “You just made that little kid think he can’t talk. If you don’t provide some kind of closure, he’s going to grow up with a dysfluency.”

  Clarabel rolled her window back down. “Excuse me, little boy? Yes, we’re married, and we live in a big house with a big pool, and my husband drowns in it all the time.”

  The boy, transfixed by our flashing roof lights, didn’t hear a word she said. I turned off the light show and pulled through the intersection.

  I said to my partner, “Not a huge fan of kids, are you?”

  “Nothing against kids,” she said. “I just think we shouldn’t make any more of them.”

  “We? ” I said.

  “The world,” she said with a smoldering gaze. “It’s overpopulated. Don’t you agree?”

  “I think segregation is a much bigger problem. Intermarriage should be encouraged, especially between Latinas and Caucasian men.”

  Clarabel narrowed her eyes at me just as her cell phone began to ring. When she pulled the phone out of her breast pocket, I took one hand off the wheel and snatched it from her.

  “Hey!” she said.

  I looked at the caller ID and saw the name “NEIL” on the screen.

  “Neil?” I said. “As in Neil Moran? Is that who you’ve been talking to all this time?”

  “None of your business,” she said, grabbing the phone back and sliding it into her pocket.

  Central saved Clarabel from a grueling line of questions about her apparently secret love life. “Two-eight Adam, on the air? ” said the dispatcher.

  Clarabel picked up her radio and said, “Two-eight Adam, Central.”

  “No units responding to a security holding at 309 West 125. Are you available? ”

&n
bsp; A “security holding” job usually meant a shoplifter, the most time-consuming type of perp to deal with. And this one was in Sector Eddie, which was Carlyle’s post tonight.

  “Do not,” I commanded my partner, “pick up that job.”

  Clarabel pretended she didn’t hear me. “Ten-four, Central. Show us going over there.”

  The call could not have been better timed for Clarabel, and she had to know this. I’d be incapable of grilling her, because I’d be distracted with getting our perp lodged at Central Booking before the end of the night. Many shoplifters were chronic recidivists, experts in milking the system. Rather than spend their prearraignment period at Central Booking—a crowded, smelly, and hostile environment—they opted to “go sick” on us, claiming bogus medical or psychiatric conditions that forced us to take them to the hospital. If a night in the emergency room doesn’t sound appealing, either, consider our most frequent customers: prostitutes and panhandlers who stole toiletries from Rite Aid to sell for crack. They weren’t Son of Sam or even Fifty Cent; they were just random broken people, a few misfiring synapses in the great brain of the city. Most didn’t have health insurance, so getting locked up was actually a bonus situation for them. At the hospital, they’d get free food and meds, lots of attention, and a clean bed in which to ride out their hangovers. Waiting for a doctor took between four and twelve hours, and we couldn’t leave them alone at any point, so the one thing they didn’t get was what we desperately wished for them, a shower.

  Our shoplifter that night was named Loqueeshah Stiyles, or so she said. We weren’t sure who she was because she had no identification. When we ran her fingerprints through the Albany database, they came back to 117 different aliases. Many of her pseudonyms were phonetic variations of each other, making her either a very cunning criminal or a very bad speller. All we knew was that she’d been locked up at least 117 times, and that was just in New York State.

  Not surprisingly, Loqueeshah knew how to get the most out of her time at the hospital. She got seven hours of sleep before we finally saw the doctor, and the rest seemed to have done her a world of good. She’d been a blabbering mess back at the precinct, but now she was sharp and alert; meanwhile Clarabel and I were nearly spent. No one had fed us, and we were up past our bedtimes. We were also getting on each other’s nerves, with me nagging my partner to keep things moving along, and her nagging me to relax. To keep from arguing in front of our prisoner, we began ignoring each other, and then we began ignoring the prisoner.

  Loqueeshah asked us for her fifth bathroom visit just as we were leaving the hospital. Clarabel and I pretended not to hear her. When the woman began screaming in my ear, I suggested she talk to my partner, as I was prohibited by law from escorting a female prisoner to the toilet.

  Clarabel made that annoying flat-tire sound between her teeth in response, then hustled Loqueeshah to the private restroom. She waved the prisoner inside, shut the door, and began staring at her own feet. With darkening eyes, a crooked tie clip, and a ponytail that was beginning to bulge out from the knot, Clarabel looked exhausted. I knew it was a bad time to bring this up, but I couldn’t help myself. My partner was getting a little breezy with the tactics, and we needed to do everything right.

  I walked up to her and said, “Is there some reason that you didn’t do a full visual inspection of the bathroom before letting her inside?”

  “I checked it ten times already,” Clarabel snapped. “What’s she gonna do in there that I should worry about?”

  “Who knows? That’s why they’re called suspects,” I said. “I just don’t want to get turned away at Central Booking, all right?”

  Clarabel shook her head at me, then moved a few feet away as though I was making a scene—my cue that I was no longer allowed to speak. She leaned back against the wall, hooked her thumbs under her gun belt, and continued her stone-faced inspection of the floor.

  The long, hot march through Central Booking was an old routine, and we crossed all but the final ring of hell without saying anything to each other or to the perp. I did notice Loqueeshah acting a bit smug, which made me nervous. As we passed the series of bored guards at the outer perimeter—those watching portable DVD players and reading day-old copies of the Post—she seemed to be reading their weaknesses. It was like she had an escape plan and was just waiting for us to turn our backs. But when I caught her shaking her butt at an appreciative male guard, I thought maybe she was just a freak, and I was being paranoid. Still, I didn’t like having a prisoner in such a good mood. I didn’t want them cranky per se, but I didn’t want them chipper, either. I needed them to be exactly as miserable as I was, so they’d be just as eager to part ways.

  Approaching our hopefully final destination, the female cell block on the second floor, we found it strangely quiet. We would usually hit a noisy bottleneck at this point, since the female corrections officers were notoriously stingy with their cells. The female COs (no relation to commanding officers, also known as COs) knew the average cop’s work ethic as well as they knew the average criminal’s ability to secrete weapons in their buttocks. The slightest doubt about whether we were handing over a clean perp would force the guards to do a full body-cavity search themselves. Having to grope between the bare thighs of another stranger would infuriate them, but, working in such a high-profile job, they’d never show it. The skillful COs would protect themselves and teach us a lesson at the same time by simply refusing to lodge our prisoners.

  This morning, we didn’t even find a guard on post—just a locked gate and an unattended log book. I could think of only one explanation, so I pressed my ear between the bars and listened. Perhaps there were simply no prisoners on the floor to guard.

  “C’elp you?” said a stout, moon-faced woman in uniform who appeared suddenly from within and scared me away from the bars.

  I said to the CO, “Uh, yes. One female to lodge.” Then, with a plastered-on smile, I waved Loqueeshah forward as though I was dropping off an incorrigible toddler at day care.

  The CO raised her hand, halting Loqueeshah in her tracks. She scowled at me and asked, “You do a proper search?”

  “Yes I did,” I mistakenly replied.

  “You did?” the CO said, her eyebrows taking flight.

  “I mean she did,” I said, backing away from the door to reveal my female partner.

  The guard sniffed at Clarabel before giving our perp an extended once-over. After studying Loqueeshah’s eyes carefully, she tilted her head in mock sympathy and said, “How you feelin’ to night, honey?”

  Loqueeshah began to smile, belying her response: “Oh, I’m not feeling good at all.”

  “Whoa, wait,” I said, beginning to panic. “We’ve just been to the hospital.”

  The guard began rattling off a list of commonly claimed ailments: Influenza? Diabetes? Meningitis? Schizo phrenia? Bipolar disorder? Suicidal feelings? She was feeding ready-made excuses to our prisoner, but Loqueeshah said “no” to everything.

  When the CO ran out of disqualifying conditions, she said to Loqueeshah, “Then what’s wrong witchoo, B?”

  “I’m pregnant,” she said proudly.

  I cursed myself under my breath: So fucking stupid. How could I forget MCB didn’t lodge pregnant perps? Only a special-care facility on the other side of town would take them. I should have neutralized the issue beforehand, but Loqueeshah wasn’t showing, and it had been months since someone had played the pregnant card on us.

  I lashed out at my partner, “I thought you were supposed to stay on top of these things.”

  Clarabel replied, “I just take ’em to the bathroom. I’m not their mommy. Besides, she’s full of shit, and the CO knows it.”

  “Uh, ex-cuse me?” the guard said in an animated show of disbelief, her head shifting right and left as though her neck was double-jointed.

  Clarabel brazenly mimicked the CO’s expression and told her, “You heard what I said.”

  I was about to step in to forestall an argument, but Lo
queeshah dropped another bomb. “Nah, nah, y’all. I can prove it,” she said, then just as fantastically reached both hands down the front of her pants.

  Completely horrified but unable to stop watching, we stood by while she pulled a greasy unrolled condom from her jeans and presented it to us. She stuck her index finger through one end of the prophylactic and wriggled it around until it popped out the other side. “You see,” she said plainly. “It’s broke.”

  The CO stared back at her slack-jawed, but after a long moment was able to pull herself back into character. “Now who’s full of shit, huh?” she said, pointing at the remnant of a recent sexual encounter as if it was an expired driver’s license. “After you take her back to the hospital, don’t forget to lodge her at the Seventh Precinct. We don’t take specials.”

  I covered my face with my hands, thinking I may begin to cry. My partner held up Loqueeshah’s wrist and looked closely at the condom. I watched her between my fingers in amazement: What could possibly warrant closer inspection of such an item?

  A few seconds later, Clarabel called out to the guard, “Hey, CO.” She pointed at a small red smear tucked inside the condom and said, “What do you call this?”

  The guard came back to the bars for a look. After glancing at the discoloration, she muttered, “Hmphh. I call it nail polish.”

  “Nail polish?” laughed Clarabel. “She’s having her period!”

  Loqueeshah jumped into the fray. “No, I’m not,” she insisted. “It’s . . . it’s ketchup!”

  “Please, don’t make it worse,” said Clarabel. “Believe me, I know what’s up. I had to flush your toilet all night, but now I’m kinda glad I did.”

  CHAPTER 27

  CLARABEL AND I HAD WORKED three tours in a row to lodge our prisoner, entitling us to a free vacation day before we had to come back to work. I slept through most of it, yet when my clock radio woke me up the following afternoon, I could hardly stand up. It seemed like a full-blown case of magnet-bed, the inexplicable malaise that had been creeping back up on me since I’d left MSU. I dragged myself into the shower and then uptown to the Two-eight, feeling weak and depleted the whole way. As soon as I put on my uniform, the usual transformation took place. No matter how tired I felt, when I donned my gun belt and patrolman’s shield, something inside of me just clicked. It wasn’t strength or courage, more like the realization that letting down my guard during the next nine hours could result in death.