The Right Wrong Thing

by Ellen Kirschman

  “Are you and Tom engaged now? Congratulations.” I wonder if they have solved their problems or if Tom has simply given in to inertia. MaryAnne flashes a satisfied smile and takes a seat with three other women. It doesn’t take long before she is showing them her ring and they are responding with the obligatory oohs and aaahs. I wonder how many regret the choice they made to marry into this profession because, when it comes to law enforcement, you don’t just marry the man, you marry the job as well.

  If I married Frank, it would be different. Contractors have problems—dissatisfied clients, clients who won’t pay their bills, subcontractors who don’t show up—but they don’t live life in a fishbowl. Neighbors don’t bang on their doors asking them to threaten unruly children with jail time if they don’t behave. Realtors don’t sell houses with the promise that the neighborhood is really safe because a contractor lives next door.

  The chief stands and there is an instant hush. “I salute you,” she says raising her hand to her head. “You are the backbone of this organization. Without you to hold down the fort while your loved ones are working, we would not be able to provide the community with the service it deserves. Your efforts, your fears, your sacrifices, and your children’s sacrifices are invisible to the public. But let me reassure you, they are not invisible to me.”

  Someone sniffles. Several others have tears in their eyes. This kind of acknowledgement is rare.

  “Our department has been through the worst thing that can happen, the death of one of our own. Healing will take time. Coming here tonight to share your grief and your fears is part of that healing. So please, take advantage of this evening. Talk openly with each other about your concerns. Don’t hold back. Feel free to say whatever’s on your minds. I have just a few remarks to make and then I’ll leave you in Dr. Meyerhoff’s hands.”

  She’s not just being polite, she’s acknowledging without saying so that most of the women present have likely been warned by their mates to be quiet and not ask any stupid questions, especially in front of the chief. She gestures to Fran and her two friends. “These three women are all seasoned veteran wives who have graciously volunteered their time to share their experiences, good and bad, with you. I want to thank them and you for coming tonight, in the rain and in the dark. I know that many of you have jobs of your own, many of you have childcare issues, and some of you have both. I want this meeting to mean something for the future. Your futures and the department’s future. So please, speak openly. Get to know each other, if you don’t already. Law enforcement families need each other because, as you know from recent experience, when bad things happen, your loved ones will be called into work. This is why it is so important that you have extended social support.” She puts her hands together in a gesture of gratitude. “Thank you for your attention. Have a good evening.” She leaves, followed by a soft round of applause.

  I’m up next, mostly to introduce our panel of veteran wives. I look at the women’s faces in front of me. If Rich Spelling were here, he would have been the only man in the room. There is a noise behind me. A tall, slender, blond woman in a winter-white wool suit and high heels stands at the door, as though she just stepped off the cover of Vogue. The rest of us are dressed in jeans or casual slacks. Fran is wearing a new sweatshirt.

  “Excuse me, am I in the right place? I was looking for the family meeting.”

  Her question is disingenuous. Women make up less than ten percent of law enforcement. It would be hard to mistake this group of women for anything else.

  She steps forward. “I’m Jean Pence, Jay Pence’s wife.”

  What is it with these alliterative names? Mark, Melinda, and Milo, my ex and his new little family, Rich and Randy, now Jean and Jay. Who invited her anyway? I sent invitations to the line level only. No one in management is likely to die in the line of duty unless they’re murdered by a homicidal subordinate, which would accurately describe my current state of mind. That rat fink Pence has sent his wife to spy on me.

  “Fran, why don’t you get the women to introduce themselves and then start the panel? I’ll be back in a minute,” I say over my shoulder as I muster a welcoming smile and walk toward Jean Pence.

  She’s like a snow queen, blond and glittery, with a sparkling smile faker than mine. She holds out her hand. The diamond in her wedding band is the size of an ice cube. I wonder if it’s as phony as she appears to be.

  “I am so sorry,” I say, extending my hand. “I’m Dr. Dot Meyerhoff, department psychologist and the organizer of tonight’s event. There must have been a misunderstanding. This meeting is for the families of line-level officers only. If we had the families of superior officers present, it would inhibit the conversation. I’m sure you understand.”

  She smiles even more broadly. “Actually, I don’t understand. For one thing, Jay thought it would be a good idea for me to come. Managers have feelings, too, and so do their wives. For another, I thought, being married to him for so long, I could help. After all, Jay is under stress too. Officer Spelling’s death has been terrible for him. All that responsibility.”

  She’s exaggerating or Jay Pence is one of two things: a two-faced liar or the kind of man who puts on a good front at work and then collapses into a heap at home.

  “I appreciate your concern and I don’t mean to indicate that managers are immune to stress. They are anything but. Still, the fact remains that the young women who came here tonight would be intimidated by your presence. They would be fearful that anything they said would reflect badly on their husbands. Think back to the early days of your marriage. How do you think you would have felt if Jay, Captain Pence, was having frightening nightmares, and you wanted to talk about them, but you were sitting next to the wife of the man who sits on his promotional board or writes his performance evaluations?”

  She contemplates my question. “But I can promise you and the other women that whatever they say is our secret. Zippo lippo.” She draws a long, silvered fingernail across her mouth.

  “I’m sure you can be trusted.” I’m lying through my teeth and I hope it doesn’t show. “But, sadly, I doubt anyone would take the chance. You know how it is, they’ve all been warned by their husbands not to talk about personal things. It’s an act of courage that they’ve shown up tonight. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize their fragile trust. You do understand, don’t you?”

  She gives this some thought.

  “I appreciate that you took the time to come here,” I say. Not to mention whatever it cost her to get her hair and nails done for the occasion.

  “I could help. I am a veteran wife, like those other women.”

  “Why don’t we think about that? Perhaps sometime in the future. Maybe I could convene a gathering of management families.”

  She lights up like a Christmas tree. “I could have everyone over to my house. For cocktails and a buffet.” This woman is either unclear on the concept of a debriefing—we provide food, but it’s not a party—or desperate to do something with her life besides waxing, tanning, and working out at the gym. “I like that idea. Let’s you and I get together soon and make a plan. We could have lunch.” Whatever it is that floats her boat, this exchange is apparently enough to send her out the door on a face-saving mission.

  * * *

  By the time I get back in the room, the discussion is underway. Fran flashes me a thumbs up. Several women are dabbing at their faces with Kleenex while others are patting their teary friends on the back. Not the high fiving, back slapping that men do to connect with each other. More like mothers instinctively reaching out to comfort an unhappy child. These women share a lot with each other. Tonight would be a big success if they can recognize that they don’t have to suffer in silence. Isolation is what damages police families.

  “I have a question for the doctor,” MaryAnne Forester raises her hand, the one with the ring on it, and leaves it in the air just a second or two longer than need be. “One of the things that worries me is when Tom has to work with so
mebody he doesn’t trust, because that person doesn’t know what to do in an emergency and can’t be counted on. I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but that’s what happened when he worked with Randy Spelling and I’m worried it will happen again.”

  There’s a low buzz in the room. I don’t know where she’s going with this and apparently no one else does either.

  “Does anyone else feel this way?” She looks around. Most of the women have become deeply interested in their coffee cups.

  “Well, I’m going to say it, if no one else will.”

  I think back to the time I visited her and Tom at their home after the incident at the creek. How she took it upon herself to tell me what Tom himself didn’t want to admit—that he was having nightmares and was afraid to work with Randy Spelling. Whistle blowing seems to be MaryAnn’s calling.

  “Randy Spelling was not a fit officer. She got Tom hurt and got herself killed. It could happen again. What’s the guarantee that it won’t? Everybody knew she was a bad officer and no one did anything about it. I appreciate that the chief came here tonight, but she’s part of the problem.”

  “How?” I say.

  “She’s going to hire more women. She said so. In the newspaper.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say. Fran and her friends are looking panicked. “What is your point?” I don’t like MaryAnne Forester. I didn’t like her when I first met her and I don’t like her now.

  “Women shouldn’t be police officers. Dispatchers, okay, but not police officers. Randy was way too emotional. Even her husband said she’d be a wreck after every shift.”

  “Rich Spelling talked to you about Randy?”

  “He tried to do more than talk. And not just with me. I don’t think they were getting along. Everybody knew it.” She turns to the group for confirmation. Most avert their eyes.

  I don’t know exactly what MaryAnne’s agenda is, but I doubt she’s as worried about officer safety as she is about the tenuous hold she has on Tom Rutgers. If I don’t get in front of her, she will have hijacked this entire evening, turned it into the gossip session that the association president, Jay Pence, and three-quarters of KPD are expecting.

  “MaryAnne,” I say. “This isn’t appropriate. Let’s talk privately later.”

  “No,” she says. “We need to talk about this now. Everybody’s worried about the same thing, even if they won’t say so.”

  “This is malicious gossip. I don’t know what you’re doing or why, but if you don’t stop, I will have to ask you to leave.” There’s an audible gasp in the room. She’s forced my hand. Maneuvered me into a fight. I look like an idiot. First I sponsor a meeting for family members and then I throw two of them out.

  “I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking,” she says. “No one else has the nerve.” And she sits down, hard, and crosses her arms over her chest, ring finger facing outward. She’s going to be the kind of wife who wants to run the department from her living room, giving statements to the newspaper, writing nasty notes to the city council. Embarrassing her husband with her incessant public histrionics.

  Fran jumps in: “Any other questions? Perhaps on another topic?”

  * * *

  We’re exhausted by the time everyone leaves. Eddie arrives to help us clean up. He senses our mood and asks what happened.

  “Not a complete disaster,” Fran says, “but it came close. What do you think, Doc? You look a little down in the mouth.”

  I tell Eddie about MaryAnne Forester and her allegations. How I don’t give an ounce of credence to her mean-spirited insinuations. And how tempted I was to ask the other women in the room if Rich Spelling ever made a pass at any of them. Restraint is not my strong suit, so I was pleased to have at least one thing to boast about.

  Eddie drops the box of leftover food he’s hefting back on the counter. “Whiskey, tango, foxtrot.” He shakes his head. Fran explains what this means to Irma and Lillian who know it already because they are married to cops. “You didn’t ask if Spelling put a move on anyone in the room? Don’t quit your day job, Doc. You’d stink as a cop.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We got a murder investigation on our hands, no time to be polite.” It’s so automatic for him to say “we” even though he’s still on leave and not even remotely involved in the search for Randy’s murderer.

  “First of all, I don’t trust MaryAnne Forester. Second of all, it’s not my job to investigate Randy’s murder, even if I thought her allegations had some bearing on it.”

  “If Spelling was a skirt chaser, that sheds a whole new light on the situation, don’t you think?” We look at each other and say nothing. He picks up the box again. “Up to you, but if you really want to be helpful, here’s what you should do. Tell Rutgers to get his fucking balls out of Forester’s pocketbook and run while he still can.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  By the time I get to work the next morning there are eight messages on my voice mail. The first three are from wives thanking me for the family meeting. The fourth is from Dr. Bernstein asking me if I would be willing to test her two grandsons to see if they have the potential to murder anyone. She’s convinced that psychometric testing would be mitigating evidence if her grandsons are ever formally charged with Randy’s murder. I want to tell her that psychometric testing alone isn’t a reliable predictor of violence. She’s still desperately looking for a way to protect her grandsons from something that hasn’t yet happened and may never. The chief wants to know how last night went and asks me to give a short report at Monday’s staff meeting and Frank wants to know if I remember him. “I’m the tall horny guy with blue eyes, grayish hair, and a beard.”

  The only call I return is to Frank. “Got any plans for the weekend?” I ask. “Want to go to a concert?”

  * * *

  “This is not what I expected, exactly. You do take me to the most interesting places.” Frank and I have just wormed our way inside the Boom Room, a rundown dance club in an equally rundown part of East Kenilworth. It’s small, cramped, and smells like stale beer and the need for larger bathrooms. I’m here because one, I’m curious. Two, it can’t hurt to be friendly to 1704T. It’s not like I’m developing informants, but who knows, someday, I just might need their help. And three, I want to get another glimpse of Darnell Taylor. He seems a cipher, a lost boy with no home, no obvious family, and no job. As far as I can tell, the only things he does have are a lousy reputation and the tattoo of a dead girl on his chest.

  Frank is looking around, his eyes wider than usual.

  “You were expecting maybe Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven?”

  I grab his hand and we squeeze through the crowd, trying to get closer to the stage. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to explain this to the chief at Monday’s staff meeting. I can hardly explain to myself why I’m disregarding her instructions to stay out of the way. I rationalize that 1704T is only the opening act and as soon as they finish, we’ll leave. If we can. There must be three hundred people jammed in a club designed for 150. All of them looking at us. No chairs, no tables, no fire exits that I can see. Just a multicolored sea of teenagers taking pictures of each other with their cell phones. We’re not the only white people in the room, but we sure are the oldest.

  “When is this thing going to start?” Frank yells in my ear over the noise. “I need a beer.”

  “There must be a bar in here somewhere. I can smell it.”

  “Nobody here looks old enough to drink. But I bet we could score a little pot without a problem. Maybe even something stronger.”

  Suddenly, we are standing in the dark. Light beams flash across the ceiling. There is a blast of sound like the beating of a rusty metal drum as 1704T bursts onto the stage as though they’re being chased from behind. They’re wearing oversized football jerseys, baggy pants, baseball caps turned to the back or the side, and those enormous sneakers. Their thick gold chains and pendants bounce and flash on their chests as they skip, or something
that looks like skipping on bad knees, and scatter across the stage. The tallest boy yells into his microphone, “We 1704T,” and the crowd roars back. Colored lights sweep over us. If there are undercover cops in the room, and I have no doubt there are, I don’t know how they could spot Darnell in this crowd.

  There is something compelling about the group’s relentless pounding of words. Something about it connects to our earliest experiences of primitive human rhythms; it is like a pulse, a heartbeat, an endless exchange of breath in and out of our lungs. The crowd moves in sync, mouthing every word of what sounds like an endless rant, although neither Frank nor I can understand anything but the word “fuck” which accents every beat. The group alternates between rapping and rhythmically twisting their bodies in ways that defy belief, spinning on their heads without regard for their young spinal cords. I flash on a rehab center where I once interned in grad school. The spinal cord patients strapped into wheelchairs, their heads and limbs flopping uselessly.

  The tall boy jumps from the stage onto the dance floor, followed by the rest of the group. They push through the crowd, leading their cheering fans forward in a raucous conga line. This is Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year, and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade rolled into one. The leader spots me, raises his eyebrows in surprise and flashes a thumbs up before pushing Frank and me in front of him right into the moving spotlight.

  * * *

  “That was fun. I think.” Frank says as we settle in his living room with a glass of wine. “So, what was it this time?”

  “I told you. I thought it would be a hoot. Something different.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “That’s all, just something different? I don’t think so.” He eyes me again. “Out with it.”