Paul Bacon (22 page)

CHAPTER 27

C
LARABEL 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.

I arrived at roll call to learn that Clarabel was not coming in. According to our supervisor, she had used one of her regular
vacation days to spend yet another day recovering from the collar. I wondered if she might have magnet-bed, too; or maybe
something else was keeping her in bed, like the slimy arms of our old company sergeant.

The normally foul mood of the four-to-twelve squad was lifted when Sergeant Ramirez announced that a cop from MSU had been
transferred to the Two-eight. A weak round of applause came from the six or seven cops in attendance.

Carlyle looked around the room. “Where’s the new kid?”

The sergeant said, “He just called the desk to say he’d be a little late. Apparently he’s lost.”

“How do you get lost in Manhattan?” said Carlyle. “The streets are all friggin’ numbered.”

“Better late than never,” said the sergeant.

I had a bad feeling about our new blood. “What’s the guy’s name?” I asked.

The sergeant looked down at her roster and said, “Haldon.”

Oh, no. Haldon. I slapped my forehead.

Carlyle saw me and said, “Jesus, Bacon. What’s wrong with him?”

“What? Oh, nothing,” I said. I didn’t want to prejudice Haldon’s coworkers against him. They’d figure it out themselves. “He
was in my academy company. Very nice guy.”

“Nice?” Carlyle said with a snarl.

“Glad you like him,” said the sergeant. “He’s your partner tonight.”

“Two liberals in the same sector, boss?” Carlyle said. “Does Inspector Benesch know about this?”

A half hour later, Haldon was perched in the passenger seat of my patrol car. With bright eyes full of civic duty, he gazed
at the passing street scene like a shepherd watching over his flock.

“I’m really glad to be out of MSU,” he said. “I hated writing summonses. They make people so mad.”

“You’ll write plenty of summonses on patrol,” I assured him. There were three violations taking place in front of our windshield
at that very moment.

“That’s okay,” he said. “As long as I can make some good collars.”

“What’s a
good
collar?”

“Like domestic violence. Doesn’t it feel good to lock up those kinds of perps?”

“If you want to lock up their victims, too, then yes, it feels amazing. Otherwise, I recommend taking complaint reports only
as needed to cover yourself and shitcanning every collar you can.”

“But what about drug dealers? And bank robbers and child pornographers? You can’t ignore them, can you?”

“Couldn’t say. I haven’t met any.”

“You haven’t met any drug dealers in the Two-eight?” he said.

“We see them all the time, but they always see us first. They’re not idiots.”

“The cells back at the house were all full, though. Somebody must be doing their jobs.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I explained. “We’re all working, but patrol collars aren’t terrorists with global reach. They’re for
street fights or shoplifting—a total waste of everyone’s time. The average perp is mentally ill, homeless, and ready to be
locked up again the next day. The only reason to arrest them is if you want the OT, or because a perp crossed some line that
can’t be ignored.”

Haldon looked disappointed.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said, staring out the windshield.

“Come on,” I said, “tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Back at the academy,” he said, “you helped us study how to do things the proper way, and now you just sound like a hairbag.”

“Is that so?” I said. “Check back with me in six months.”

“What about this fight?” he said. “Are you just going to ignore it, too?”

“What fight?” I said.

“Right there,” he said, pointing out my window.

I looked to my left and saw two young men brawling on the other side of the street.

“God
damn
it!” I said, pounding my fist on the steering wheel as the flow of traffic pulled us past the scene. When I reached a space
in the oncoming lane, I switched on the roof lights, pulled the car into a tight U-turn, and drove back to the fight.

“Should I call an eighty-five?” Haldon asked me as I pulled up to the curb.

“No! Don’t call anyone. Just stay here,” I said, slamming on the brakes and jumping out of the car.

“Don’t you want your baton?” Haldon yelled out the window.

Outside the vehicle, I got a raging case of tunnel vision, ignoring everything except my mission to end the fight before either
party suffered visible injuries, which would necessitate an arrest. They were both large young men, but by the time I hit
the sidewalk, I had such a head of steam that I easily separated them. I grabbed one of them by the jacket and tossed him
up against a chain-link fence.

The other man immediately declared himself the winner. “That’s right, bitch!” he shouted. “See what the popo thinks about
your punk-ass mouth!”

I still had the first man against the fence when I turned to the other and said, “What, you
wanna
get locked up? Get the fuck out of here!”

A small crowd of onlookers had gathered, and they complained about my language as the other man stomped away cursing just
as fluently.

“Wait, wait! It wasn’t me,” said the man in my grasp. “I just told that nigger off, and he started to fight me.”

I said nothing while waiting for the other man to turn the corner and disappear. Then I let my guy go.

He straightened out his jacket and said, “Ain’t you gonna do nuthin’?”

“I just did
sumthin’,
” I said. “I saved you from a beat-down.”

The hecklers continued to shout at me as I walked back to the car. After getting inside and shutting my door, I shifted the
transmission into drive, but before I could pull away, I felt a wave of lightheadedness. I put the car back into park, laid
my head against the seat, and rolled up the windows to cut down on the screaming.

“Are you okay?” Haldon said. “Do you want me to drive?”

I ignored him as Central’s voice came over the radio, “
Two-eight
Henry,
c
heck and advise on a dispute at One-eighteen and Douglass.
”

Another adrenaline rush kicked in like a nostril full of cocaine. I quickly gathered my wits, shifted the car out of park,
and drove to the location.

We arrived at 118th Street and Frederick Douglass Avenue a few minutes later and found no dispute taking place. I shut off
the engine and waited a few minutes on the corner to see if someone might approach us about the call. No one materialized,
so I turned the car on and drove away. As soon as we started moving, Haldon picked up his radio, keyed the mike button, and
was about to give Central a final disposition before I shouted, “Wait, for chrissake! Don’t give back the job yet!”

“. . .
for chrissake! Don’t give back the job yet!
” said my radio, an echo of my own voice on the air. I hoped no one recognized me.

“Sorry, Bacon,” said Haldon.

“
Sorry, Bacon
,” said my radio.

I whispered to Haldon, “Take your thumb off the mike button, please.”

Haldon did as I said, though he didn’t seem happy about it. He laid his radio in his lap and said, “If we don’t give the job
back, Central can’t give us another one.”

“Exactly,” I said.

I wanted to reduce our workload as much as possible because it was an unusually warm night. A sudden spike in temperature
flushed out all the apartment buildings at once, sending more people—and more criminals—out into the otherwise pleasant evening.
Robberies eased off a bit for all the extra eyes around, but calls about fighting, noise, and drug dealing were typically
off the hook.

Warmer nights also brought out the motorcycle hellions, boys in their late teens who rode around in large motorized packs
that sounded like a choir of chainsaws. In a show of pure bravado, they drove illegal off-road motocross equipment in highly
illegal ways—riding on sidewalks, drag racing, popping wheelies. Their tremendous noise and the long ribbons of toxic blue
smoke they left in their wakes disturbed the air in a way I could feel long after they were gone. I personally wished the
most horrific accidents on all of them. Unfortunately, my hands were tied; chasing the hellions only made them drive faster.
Harlem was as busy as most parts of Manhattan during rush hour, and the chances of a bystander getting hurt were even higher
if we gave pursuit. I had to comfort myself thinking how short these reckless young men’s lives were shaping up to be, because
nothing made me feel as impotent as sitting in a police car and ignoring such an obvious menace.

This feeling was particularly strong when stopped at a red light and surrounded by taxpaying citizens, as happened a few minutes
after Haldon and I left the scene of the nondispute.

“Excuse me, officer,” said a dapper man on the sidewalk. “Did you see all those kids on motorcycles?”

“I sure did,” I said.

The man seemed shocked. “Are you out of gas or something?”

“No. Thanks, though,” I said, giving him a wan smile, then glaring back at the traffic light, willing it to change.

“Wuh! Tell me your badge number, officer,” he said, patting his jacket pockets for a pen. “This is just the kind of laziness
. . .”

When the light turned green, I let my foot do the talking. I stepped on the accelerator, listening with plea sure as the man’s
shouts faded into the distant rumble of motorcycles down Lenox Avenue. I let out a satisfied, “Ahhhh,” and smiled at Haldon.

“You know, he had a point,” said my temporary partner. “If we don’t do something about them, who will?”

“Men with big machine guns, I hope.”

CHAPTER 28

A
FTER MY NIGHT WITH HALDON, I spent all weekend in bed thinking about Clarabel. If she was still in regular contact with Moran,
I concluded, they must be an item. As for our kiss, it had taken place under the most favorable circumstances—in the dark,
in the woods, during a weird, unguarded moment I couldn’t possibly replicate. Clarabel was probably spoken for, and that was
probably for the best. She and Moran were two of a kind, both of them shrewd, fearless, and maddeningly sexy. Seeing things
in these terms, I realized I never had a chance with Clarabel. I’d never wooed a woman like her in my life. If it was manliness
I’d lacked before, why would things be any different just because I was a cop? Some women might have been impressed, but Clarabel
was a cop, too.

Giving up my designs on her left me wondering what was left for me on the job. Her friendship alone wasn’t worth the trouble
of wearing a uniform every night. I needed something more than a steady paycheck and the promise of a pension after twenty
years to keep me going. Being a cop was ruining my health, sapping my energy, and making me nuts. Inertia was a big reason
why I chose to stay, but I also clung to the idea that I, as a police officer, had a special purpose. After 9/11, after the
rigors of thirty months on the job, quitting in the wake of a romantic defeat seemed childish. If I still hadn’t figured out
how I would serve the public as a cop, I thought maybe I would someday, if I just stuck it out long enough.

I went back to the Two-eight the following week with a new outlook. Patience would be my virtue, and I would make the best
of every moment until that magical something fell out of the sky to show me my true purpose. I stopped swearing in uniform,
I no longer waited to give jobs back to Central, and I even partnered up with Haldon a few times when I didn’t have to. I
greeted all my constituents with the same warmth and friendly outlook that I’d had at the start, and most of them reciprocated.

Magnet-bed did not go away, however, nor did the main reason I still succumbed to it. Overtime was my enemy, and every night
I came home late, I woke up feeling ten years older than when I’d gone to sleep. Over the next few months, magnet-bed overcame
my noblest intentions and turned me back into a hairbag; I found myself trying to shitcan every job that came over the radio.

One night in January 2005, Clarabel and I responded to a call that even the most grizzled hairbag could not squash—a DOA.
Dead people could not be ignored or talked out of their predicament. Regardless of who they were or how they may have died,
their passing required us to summon—and wait for—a host of other parties to come to the scene: EMS, our patrol supervisor,
our platoon commander, precinct detectives, the county coroner, the morgue-wagon attendants, and, if possible, a next of kin.

The job initially came over the radio as an “offensive odor” coming from an apartment near 124th Street and Lenox Avenue,
one of the most run-down blocks in the precinct. Dilapidated brownstones lined the street, many of them occupied by squatters
who lived without heat, electricity, or running water. The whole block was a giant bouquet of offensive odors, so the fact
that we’d been summoned on behalf of one particular smell meant we were probably on our way to finding a decomposed body of
some kind. It might have been a dead person or a dead animal.

Hoping it would be the latter, Clarabel and I made every attempt to spin the person who placed the initial call to 911. We
knew it wasn’t going to be easy from the outset. The young woman appeared at her door with a lit cigarette in her mouth and
an unlit cigarette in her hand. Her apartment was filled with smoke, like she’d been puffing away for hours.

“Oh, finally,” she said. “Thank you, thank you. I’m dying up here.”

“What’s wrong, ma’am?” I said.

“Can’t you smell it?” she said.

I had noticed a foul stench in the hallway, but it wasn’t any worse than the smell of the mice that sometimes died under the
floorboards of my apartment.

“That’s not normal?” I said.

“No!” she said.

Clarabel asked her, “Where’s the smell coming from?”

“Three-B,” the woman said, pointing down the hallway.

“Who lives there?” said Clarabel.

“George Thompson,” said the woman. “Or at least he used to.”

“Does Mr. Thompson have any pets?” asked Clarabel.

“Pets? No,” said the woman. “Why?”

“You’re sure?” said Clarabel. “Maybe he keeps a cat and doesn’t want the landlord to know.”

“I’m sure,” the woman said, crossing her arms.

“Any particular reason to think he’s passed away?” I asked her, hoping she would come up short.

“You mean besides that nasty-ass smell?” she said. “Well, I ain’t seen him in three days, and I usually see him all the time.”

“You don’t think he’s out of town?” I said. “He could be visiting relatives and forgot to take out the trash.”

“He ain’t got no relatives. He just a lonely old man.”

“How old is he?” Clarabel asked.

“Sixty, maybe seventy,” said the woman.

“Does he drink much?” said Clarabel.

“Oh,
hell
yeah. Like a fish,” the woman said, nodding deeply, as if this would convince us he was a goner.

I said, “Maybe he’s just passed out.”

The woman was losing her patience. “Passed out for
three days
?”

Clarabel said, “Hey, we can’t go barging into people’s homes without a good reason, all right?”

“Then follow your damn nose,” the woman said, and slammed her door in our faces.

I stared at the door for a while, speechless.

Clarabel said, “What’s your problem?”

“I can’t believe we just did that,” I said. “Someone’s dead, and we’re quibbling over pets and taking out the trash.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Clarabel pointed out. “You’re the one who’s always in a hurry to sign out on time.”

“Yeah,” I said with a heavy sigh, resigning myself to the usual rush. I looked at my watch and saw we had four and a half
hours left in our tour. If I was very lucky, we might finish this job before magnet-bed set in.

The doorknob on apartment 3B was locked. This wasn’t surprising, but it meant we had to wait for someone from the fire department
to come and bust the door open. While we waited, Lieutenant Davis raised us on the radio every twenty minutes for status reports
because as always our squad was low on manpower.

Three status reports later, a pair of firefighters came up the stairs dressed in T-shirts, suspenders, and grimy yellow wading
pants. One was carrying a crowbar.

Both of them frowned when they reached the top level and took in the stench. One of the men said, “DOA?” and we nodded.

“How long?” he said.

“Three days,” said Clarabel.

“Really?” said the fireman. “This is bad, but a three-day decomp should be much worse. You guys sure it’s a dead
person
in there?”

“Yes, thank you, we’ve already been through this,” I told him. “Could you just open the door, please?”

The fireman laughed and said, “Yes,
sir,
officer. Right away.”

As he and his partner walked past us, Clarabel looked at me in disbelief. I told her I was sorry, but it didn’t wipe the scowl
off her face.

The fireman stepped in front of Mr. Thompson’s door. I took a few steps in the other direction and turned away. This was my
second DOA, and I was dreading the next few moments of horrible discovery.

I heard a loud crack, and one of the firemen shouted, “Ho-ly shit!” “What the hell
is
that?” said the other.

I turned back around and saw them pulling Mr. Thompson’s door shut as though there was a dangerous animal behind it. “
Whew
,” one of the men gasped.

They started walking toward the stairs, and I said, “Wait. We need to get in there.”

“The lock’s busted,” said one. “Enjoy.”

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.