by Bad Cop: New York's Least Likely Police Officer Tells All
The instant we made landfall, the boy jumped to his feet. He stormed across the beach and into the dive shack. Some of the surfers pointed at him and laughed. I looked down the shore for Max, and I saw him trying to catch an incoming wave. Was he crazy? The waves were too steep. If he tried to stand up, he’d be toast. But Max didn’t try to stand. He stayed on his belly and clung to the board, and the wave crashed around him. After disappearing into the whitewater, he shot out of it like a rocket. He glided just inches above the reef, until he hit the sandy beach and tumbled off his board.
Seeing that Max was fine, I thought about the boy and felt like I was ten feet tall, if not a little long in the tooth. Seven years had passed since I’d started working in the danger business, and I’d finally rescued someone other than myself. I proudly marched between the half-naked girls lying on beach blankets, then walked by the Hawaiian surf instructors, who gave me every possible handshake-fist-bump combination.
“Nice save, brah,” said one. “I never seen no one fotta rip loddat.” Don’t ask me what that meant.
Walking into the dive shack, I almost tripped over a soggy wet suit on the floor. I sat down on a bench and started taking off my scuba gear. The boy quietly emerged from the dressing room in his Vanilla Ice ensemble, then left without looking me in the eye. If he’d been my prisoner instead of my diver, our time together would’ve just been starting. But he’d gotten in and out of my hair in less than an hour. I smiled as he walked away. I guessed a tip was out of the question.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Paul Bacon served as an NYPD patrolman from 2002 to 2005, working primarily in Harlem’s 28th and 32nd precincts. His true police stories have appeared on This American Life and the Moth Mainstage. As a writer and cartoonist he has contributed to Cosmopolitan, The Dictionary of American History, Inside.com, McSweeney’s, Mother Jones, PBS.org, Salon, the San Francisco Examiner, and Wired.