by Bad Cop: New York's Least Likely Police Officer Tells All
I asked Clarabel if she’d seen inside the apartment. She alternately nodded and shook her head, as though she wasn’t sure if she had or not. She stared past me with twitching eyebrows and shaking hands, as though her brain were malfunctioning. If she’d been a laptop, I would have rebooted her.
Based on everyone’s reactions, I could assume that a dead human being was on the other side of the door. Just to be sure, I asked Clarabel if I should raise Central to start the usual process of notifications for a DOA. My question bounced around inside her head for a few seconds, and she finally said, “Yes.” Without saying another word, she crossed the hallway and headed down the stairs.
One of us still needed to go inside the apartment to gather basic pedigree information for Mr. Thompson’s DOA report, but I let Clarabel go. If she meant to punish me for being rude to the firefighters, I felt like I deserved it, so I steeled myself to plunge inside. I expected the apartment to smell worse than the hallway, so I took a deep breath and held it as I slowly pushed open the door.
Peering in, I could barely comprehend what I saw: a bloated bag of flesh on the floor that seemed to be bubbling its way out of the apartment. I turned on my flashlight to make sense of it. The only things I recognized were two eyes that were wide open and staring right back at me. Above them, a glistening, fleshy object the size of a football was coming out of his forehead. It looked like his skull had been fractured, and his brain was leaking out. I kept my flashlight pointed at the shape a few seconds longer and realized that it was not his brain but his tongue. He was laying on his back, not on his stomach. His tongue had swollen out of his mouth and was almost as large as his head.
I pulled the door closed and shut my eyes tight, concentrating all my mental energy on blocking the image before it became lodged in my memory. I quickly raised Central on my radio to distract myself.
After a very short conversation with our dispatcher, I holstered my radio on my belt, wishing I’d had more to say. There was nothing left to do now but go inside the apartment and start looking for documentation, a driver’s license, a welfare card, something with Mr. Thompson’s full name and date of birth.
I pushed open the door again and took a longer look. Mr. Thompson’s corpse was slumped across the entrance to his apartment. The hall was about shoulder-width, so I either had to leap over his entire body—from his head to his toes—or I would have to step gingerly around him. Whichever option I picked, I’d have to contend with every contour of his decaying form, so I reluctantly turned on my flashlight again for a full inspection.
I saw that both of his arms were extended upward in an open embrace, like he’d died in the middle of a dream about hugging someone. I also noticed, to my chagrin, that he was completely naked, not a stitch of clothing on him. His bare belly was grossly inflated, its dark-brown flesh peeling away along the edges to reveal another layer beneath that was pale and shiny.
Seeing this horror, I withdrew into the hallway yet again and reconsidered the options. It wasn’t my job to remove Mr. Thompson from the scene. I could wait for the morgue wagon to take him away before I went inside. The problem was that only one wagon served all of Manhattan. Waiting for its arrival could keep me up way past my bedtime, possibly requiring a second body bag for my own remains. I thought about the smell inside the apartment, how it was only mildly offensive. I couldn’t imagine why, but this was at least a little encouraging. Once I got past the entranceway, I’d be able to move around the room without vomiting every ten seconds.
I pushed open the door and shined my light inside. Just beyond his stiffened arms, which stood straight up like a pair of goal posts, there was a good twelve inches on either side of his torso to place my feet. The next move would be trickier, as his knees were bent and his legs were splayed at forty-five-degree angles. I’d have to leap between his legs and hope for the best, because the rest of his room was cordoned off by a large bedsheet that hung down across the entryway. I couldn’t see anything past the sheet, which made me worry about the possible footing on the other side. Mr. Thompson’s face-up position on the floor suggested he’d taken a fall that I might repeat if I wasn’t careful.
My first two steps landed squarely in place alongside his body, allowing me to quickly shift my momentum down the length of his torso, then plant two feet between his knees. This would have been an impressive dismount, except that I happened to land on a wide and wobbly flat object. My momentum sent me past Mr. Thompson’s body and tumbling deeper into the room.
I flailed, groping for anything to break my fall, and just managed to grab the hanging bedsheet. The sheet, hung by nails, supported my weight just long enough for me to regain my balance before it gave way and fell down around me, settling on top like a little kid’s ghost costume. I was reliving an episode of Scooby Doo. Thankfully, there was nobody there but Mr. Thompson to see me. I flailed my arms beneath the sheet until I finally got free.
With the sheet off and the hallway behind me, I could look around. His window blinds were closed, casting the room in street light too muted to show much. I turned my flashlight back on, spotting at first a half-eaten carton of Chinese takeout swarming with cockroaches. Panning the floor around my feet, I saw neatly stacked piles of seemingly useless stuff: old newspapers, broken sheets of plywood, grocery-store receipts, bent nails, belts with no buckles, and headphones with no earpieces.
Finding something as specific as his date of birth in this mess seemed impossible. Then, a stroke of luck: The mantel over his bricked-up fireplace was lined with small, important things like his mail, his keys, and his wallet. I picked up the leather wallet and opened it to find a welfare card—just what I was looking for. I put the wallet in my cargo-pants pocket and started heading back out.
Before I reached the entranceway, a bright blue light caught the corner of my eye. I stepped into his kitchen alcove and saw that one burner on his hot plate had been left on high. I turned the stove dial to Off, then had a pang of concern. If his stove was as old as it looked, it might be leaking gas. I looked for a main valve to turn off, but I couldn’t find one. A buildup of gas could be dangerous for the rest of the people who would be showing up over the next few hours to process the DOA. Pleased with my foresight, I walked across the room, pulled up the blinds, and opened the window all the way.
A minute later, I was standing on the stoop of Mr. Thompson’s brownstone looking up and down the street for Clarabel. I didn’t see her or our patrol car, so I picked up my radio and said, “Two-eight Eddie on the air?”
I repeated my transmission twice, and my cell phone started to ring. I picked it up and saw that Clarabel was calling.
“Where are you?” I said.
“I’m in Sector Charlie now, with Samuels,” she said. “The lieu pulled me off. Didn’t you hear him raising us?”
“I was kind of busy,” I told her. “When are you coming back?”
“I’m not,” she said. “We’re the only sector in the rundown.”
I was out of paperwork, so I asked Clarabel, “You have any blank sixty-ones?”
“We have some in the car,” she said.
“Can you swing by?” I said.
“We’re out on a job now. We’ll come as soon as we can,” she said, and hung up.
Ninety minutes later, Clarabel and Samuels had still not arrived with the paperwork. I tried calling her on my cell phone and got her voice mail. So far, no one had showed up at my location, so I called the Two-eight desk to talk to a supervisor. Maybe no one else knew I was even here.
The person who answered the phone said, “Captain Carlyle.”
“Captain Carlyle?” I said; he was just a cop.
“Oh, Bacon,” Carlyle said flatly. “Sorry, precinct’s closed. Call back on the day tour.”
“No, I’m on a DOA, and nobody’s coming!” I shouted.
“Whoa, bro. Take a pill,” said Carlyle.
“Is Sector Charlie still out on a job?”
“How would I know?”
<
br /> “You’re at the desk, look on the computer,” I said.
“We have computers?” said Carlyle.
Clarabel and Samuels showed up about a half hour later, looking as if they were having a great time together. Samuels was usually in an upbeat mood, but I was surprised to see Clarabel smiling and laughing in uniform. She always seemed so morose when she worked with me.
Samuels drove their patrol car up to the brownstone and parked next to a fire hydrant. Rolling down his window, he waved me toward the backseat and said, “Hop in. You must be freezing.”
I opened the back door and took a seat in the part of the car where normally only perps got to sit. I found it surprisingly spacious, with much more room than the front compartment. There was no transmission hump or MDT between the seats, so I leaned over on the wide cushion until I was totally horizontal.
“Gross!” Clarabel said from the passenger seat.
“Ah, man,” said Samuels. “You don’t know who’s been back there.”
“You don’t know what I’ve just seen,” I replied. Compared to Mr. Thompson’s apartment, this was the Plaza Hotel.
“Was he a decomp?” said Samuels.
“With a capital D,” I said.
Clarabel asked me, “What was the rest of his apartment like?”
“Nothing worse than you saw, but his stove had been on all this time. I turned it off and opened the windows in case there were any gas leaks.”
Clarabel laughed. “That’s the worst thing to do.”
I pushed myself upright. “Why is that the worst thing to do?” I said, talking through the tiny holes in the Plexiglas partition.
Samuels said, “You let in more air, you let in more oxygen.”
I said, “But isn’t a room full of oxygen less flammable than a room full of gas?”
“Did you smell gas?”
“I didn’t.”
“There you go,” said Samuels. “If you’re worried about a possible fire, the only reason you open a window is to jump out of it.”
“And the decomp,” Clarabel said, pinching her nose.
“Right. Fresh air speeds up the smell big-time,” said Samuels. “How long since you opened that window?”
“A couple hours,” I said. Not so long.
“Oh, boy,” said Samuels. “Whoever sees him next is going to need multiple barf bags.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “I was only trying to help.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Samuels. “At least you don’t have to go back. You did get all the information, didn’t you?”
“You bet,” I said, pulling out Mr. Thompson’s wallet and proudly holding his welfare card up to the partition. “See? Full name and date of birth.”
Samuels said, “What else you got?”
“What else is there?” I said.
“A next of kin,” said Samuels.
I fell back on the seat and said, “Shhhhit.”
“You forgot to find a next of kin?” said Clarabel.
“Wait,” I said, sitting up straight again. “That girl said he doesn’t have any next of kin.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Samuels. “Without a next of kin, you have to do a missing-person report, in case someone comes looking for him.”
“No!” I cried. “That will take forever!”
“It’s just a missing,” said Samuels. “I’m sure you don’t want to go back up in there.”
I looked at my watch: nine thirty P.M., two hours left until end of tour. I tapped my upper lip. “So how does one establish next of kin? What am I looking for?”
“You’re not looking for anything,” said Samuels. “You could go through all of his stuff and still not find what you need. You’re gonna wait outside for everyone, then you’re going to go back to the house and do the missing.”
I reached for the inside door handle and pulled it to get out. The door didn’t budge. This, I realized, was because I was in the back of a rolling jail cell. I asked Samuels, “Can you unlock my door?”
Samuels hesitated, until Clarabel said to him, “Just let him go. This is what I’m talking about.”
I was about to call her out for that little jab, but I heard my inside door lock click open, and I leapt at the chance to escape.
Inside the building, the rancid smell had reached the first floor and was at least twice as bad as before. It got progressively worse as I climbed the stairs; by the time I reached Mr. Thompson’s apartment, I was on my knees with the dry heaves. After I got used to the stench in the hallway, I stood up and opened the apartment door. The smell of the freshly oxygenated corpse broke over my head like a twenty-foot wave, sending me back to the floor. I eventually got up again and bounded over Mr. Thompson’s decaying body, heading straight for the mantel. In a second flat, I was shoving envelopes and letters and everything I could into my pockets.
Back outside, I saw that Sector Charlie was gone, but they’d left me a blank report under a brick at the top of the stoop. I sat down on the steps and emptied my pockets, then pored over everything for a possible next of kin. After only a few minutes, I found it: a cosigner on the deceased’s bank account named James Thompson. He might have been a son or a brother, but all I needed was a name.
I could still sign out on time if everyone else in the process showed up very soon. This seemed unlikely with our staff stretched so thin, but the lack of personnel turned out to be a blessing. From the Two-eight, I needed a patrol sergeant, a platoon leader, and a detective. With none of the usual people available, a lieutenant from the detective squad was dispatched to my job and served as three supervisors in one. Then, with an hour left to go, EMS, the coroner, and the morgue wagon came almost simultaneously. I just waited downstairs while they finished the job, then took my half of the toe tag as they wheeled Mr. Thompson’s body bag out the door.
The paramedics gave me a ride back to the station house, where I met Clarabel by the sign-out sheet in the lobby. After she signed her name, I asked to borrow her pen. She froze with her hand still in the air and said, “You can’t be done already.”
“Impressed?” I said, plucking the pen out of her fingers and signing myself out on time.
“No,” she said. “You’re gonna kill yourself.”
CHAPTER 29
I WOKE UP THE NEXT DAY in the grips of magnet-bed, just as bad as ever. It seemed that overtime was not my biggest enemy on the job. Thinking back to the lengths I’d gone to wrap things up before end of tour, I wondered if the culprit was just plain old stress. This may have been an obvious conclusion for some, but not for me. In my family of workaholics, if you didn’t feel as though you were being pulled in ten directions at once, you weren’t applying yourself. I’d come of age in the 1980s as well, when job-related stress was just another accessory in the yuppie lifestyle.
After the DOA, I was probably as low as I could go. I showed up at work the next afternoon feeling miserable, and when I put on my uniform, I did not get my usual rush of energy. It was my turn to drive, so after roll call I begged Clarabel to let me take shotgun, and she grudgingly obliged.
Halfway through our tour, a security holding job at the Old Navy clothing store came over when our frequency was quiet. I picked it up right away—our patrol sergeant might have been listening—and told Central we were two minutes out from the location. In fact, we were at least a half hour away; this was how we punished the store security guards for calling us in the first place. Since chronic shoplifters tended to steal things they would later sell for drugs, arresting them only amplified their withdrawal symptoms. They could be rather unpleasant people to have handcuffed to a chair in your office for any period of time, so our thinking was: The longer the security guards at Old Navy had to spend with the perp, the more likely they’d just cut him loose, as they often did.
But they had quotas, too, just like we did, and even if our stalling tactics hadn’t made any difference, we’d still take at least a half hour to get there, because, with a lo
ng night of infuriating work ahead, we’d always stop first to get food, then park on a side street and take our time eating. It was a matter of professional dignity to never let a nonemergency come ahead of one’s personal comfort. Nine times out of ten we’d get away with murder, so to speak. That tenth time, though, it could get ugly.
The Old Navy security guard started things on a sour note, describing the suspect in subhuman terms as he led us toward the back of the store. “He, she, what ever. It seems more appropriate.”
As we continued through the busy retail outlet, walking around clothing displays and weaving through customers, Clarabel asked the guard, “What’d he try to take?”
“A couple sweaters as usual,” the man said. “He-she’s done this a half dozen times before.”
“Has he ever been locked up?” said Clarabel.
“Nah,” the guard said. “Usually I don’t waste my time with you guys.”
“We appreciate that,” Clarabel said curtly.
“No offense or anything,” the guard added. “I mean, I was on the job myself, so I know how it works.”
Hearing this, I sized up the man anew, noticing his bad posture and sizable paunch. Lots of people claimed to have been “on the job” because they’d worn some kind of uniform in the past. I liked to put these types on the spot now and again, so I asked the man, “You were a police officer somewhere?”
“Somewhere?” he said. “I was a cop in the Two-eight. I retired in 2001.”
I must have gone pale, because the man laughed at me and said, “Yep, this is what you got to look forward to.”
Moving on to more pressing concerns, I asked him, “So why’d you call us to night?”
“ ’Cuz he went totally apeshit tonight, and I can’t get him out of the security office. He’s been getting worse by the minute, so you probably should’ve shown up earlier.”
“What’s he on?” I said.