Paul Bacon (7 page)

CHAPTER 11

J
UST BEING MYSELF TURNED OUT to be not such a great idea. Rather than myself, I should have been a different person entirely,
someone with much thicker skin. And maybe a cattle prod. For the next six weeks, I tried everything I could think of to keep
my bunch in line. I gave them reasoned arguments about the benefits of remaining quiet in formation. They kept talking. I
told them I had the power as company sergeant to take their deportment cards. They kept talking. They were so stubbornly loud
that I dreamed of inventing an aerosol product called Shoosh! that I could just spray over their heads before inspection.

On the last day of the semester, I arrived at our homeroom a few minutes late to find that all hell had broken loose. While
half the class watched and cheered, a group of five recruits were attempting to turn our audiovisual cart into an amusement
park ride. Three members were hanging off the back of the twenty-four-inch television, and two more were trying to squeeze
their butts onto the VCR shelf. By now I knew not to ask them nicely to behave like adults. I shouted at them to “Cut it out!”
but they only laughed at me. I didn’t have any cards left to play, so I just closed the door to prevent any passing instructors
from seeing inside.

According to tradition, company sergeants were supposed to receive gifts from their troops on the last day. The company members
typically pitched in to raise a few hundred dollars that their sergeants would use to buy a dress uniform or a backup gun.
It was generally thought that company sergeants worked harder than anyone at the academy, and their success as leaders was
reflected in how much money they received. As such, I wasn’t surprised to find that all I was getting for my efforts was a
headache.

Before I could take stock of all the other disasters in the making, Bill Peters came in and grabbed me by the arm. He led
me to a desk across the room, ordered me to sit down, and started grilling me.

“I didn’t think it was possible,” he said, “but you’re worse than Moran.”

I said, “It’s the last day. Besides, Moran was lazy. I’m just . . .”

“Spineless?”

“I was going to say ‘laissez-faire.’ I’m into quiet leadership. You know, leading by example. I’m not comfortable always telling
people what to do.”

“You better get comfortable real quick, bucko, or people will walk all over you,” Bill said with a sweeping gesture around
our classroom. “As you can see.”

“But I don’t have any real authority here,” I said. “I’m just another recruit.”

“If you think things will be any easier for you on the street, you’re in for a big surprise. You gotta bust heads!”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“How
do
you see it? Because I’m dying to know.”

“I think we should be peacemakers more than head busters.”

“Peacemakers? Are you serious?” Bill said, looking deep into my eyes. “Holy shit, you are serious. Man, I feel sorry for your
future partner,
if
you can find someone crazy enough to work with you.”

“Hey, Bacon,” said Clarabel, rescuing me from Bill. I eagerly turned around and began soaking her in. After six months in
our ugly gray recruit shirts, this was the first day in our service-issue midnight blues. The darker motif made Clarabel look
more intimidating and sexy.

“What’s up?” I said, quickly moving in front of Bill to hide him with my body. He and Clarabel hated each other.

“I knew these assholes wouldn’t get you anything,” Clarabel said, holding out her hand, “so I brought you this.”

Bill peered around me and said, “What is it, Witchy-poo? A magic wand?”

“It’s a replica of your dick, all right?”

“It’s a pen!” I said with all the joy I could summon, hoping to drown out their pissing match, as well as mask my disappointment.
It wasn’t a really nice pen at all, though it was kind of fat and heavy like it was supposed to be nice.

“This is awesome! I love it,” I said, sliding it into the breast pocket of my new blue shirt. “I’ll use it to write my first
ticket.”

Ten minutes before the end of class, Officer Wynn arrived and the room fell silent. It wasn’t a last-minute surge of discipline;
we knew she’d been picking up our precinct assignment list, the single printed page that would determine the course of our
lives for the next twenty years.

“That’s right. Mm-hmm. I got it,” she said, fanning herself with a freshly copied list. She knew the wait was killing us,
and she loved it. She crossed the room slower than the Mendenhall glacier, then, aeons later, sat down in her chair and proceeded
to make herself cozy—wiggling around in her seat, clearing her throat, fogging and wiping her glasses, clearing her throat
again.

I felt my pulse quickening. All the crap I’d put up with, the toil and humiliation and push-ups, would be forgotten if I made
it into the First Precinct. After only another four or five hours, Officer Wynn began calling out our assignments in alphabetical
order.

“Alvino,” she began, “Four-four Precinct. A dump. Stock up on skell gel.

“Anderson, the Seventeenth. Very posh. Welcome to early retirement.

“Bacon . . .” she said, and I stopped breathing.

“The Three-two. Nice knowin’ ya.

“Cabrera . . .”

The
Three-two
? I didn’t even know where it was. I pulled out a precinct map. Starting in the single digits at the southern tip of Manhattan,
I followed my finger up the length of the island. The teens started in Midtown, the twenties wrapped around Central Park,
and every command in the thirties was on the north side of 110th Street—also known as Harlem, USA. Seeing this, I let out
my breath so pitifully that Bill gave me a pat on the back.

I’d never seen myself working in Harlem. While many other places in America had a street named after Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., a civil rights activist who tried to blur racial lines, Harlem had an avenue named for Malcolm X, who redrew the lines
over and over with a broad-tip Sharpie.

After the assignments had all been read, I checked the list to see if Officer Wynn had made some kind of mistake. She hadn’t.
I was officially slated for the Thirty-second Precinct. Interestingly, Moran had gotten Midtown North, the most coveted assignment
in the city. Most male recruits wanted to go there because it covered Broadway and Times Square, where a carousing cop had
a multitude of impressionable female tourists to choose from. This could only mean one thing: I’d been sold a bill of goods.
I must have taken Moran’s spot after the company sergeant picks had been put into the system.

I was peeved, and I wanted to complain to Officer Wynn, but she was already heading out the door, making her unceremonious
departure from our lives. Typical, I thought, then turned to look across the room at Moran, that snake. This had to be his
doing. Only he could have pulled off this sleight of hand. I felt like congratulating him and punching him in the stomach
at the same time. My only consolation was that he and Clarabel hardly talked anymore, their little fling appearing to have
remained just that—a little fling.

Moran was sitting alone at his desk waiting out the remainder of the hour, so I walked over to have a little chat. I made
sure not to sound angry, since our former company sergeant was very tight-lipped, and I needed him off his guard.

“So,” I said, “you’re going to Midtown North.”

He nodded.

“That’s great. Was it your pick?” I asked, knowing full well it was. Moran nodded again, then let a grin creep across his
face, which was starting to turn red.

“Seriously,” I said, pretending to be a good sport. “I’m not pissed or anything, but really, what happened? Why did I become
company sergeant?”

He looked at the ceiling for a moment, considering his response, then told me flat out: “I winked at the CO.”

This was not such a weird thing, since the commanding officer of the academy was a woman. Still, Moran was too self-conscious
to do something that stupid by accident. There could be only one explanation.

“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” I said. “You were sick of being in charge, and you just said to hell with it.”

He nodded again.

I asked him, “But how’d you know when the assignments had been made?”

“I know people,” he said with a shrug.

CHAPTER 12

I
DID ENJOY ONE PRIVILEGE as second-string sergeant: I got to choose where we held our company’s pre-graduation party. I picked
the Red Light Bistro at Fourteenth Street and Ninth Avenue, the intersection of three popular nightspots—the West Village,
Chelsea, and the Meatpacking District. The dimly lit bar and grill was furnished with mismatched antique couches and chaise
longues. Poster-size wine and beer ads from the 1960s hung on the walls, all of them in French. The usual crowd was mixed—local
hipsters, drunks, and drag queens. I wouldn’t normally have brought a bunch of cops here, but it was less than a block from
my apartment.

Around eight o’clock, Bill Peters was the first person to arrive. We ordered cheeseburgers and beers, then sat together on
a couch in front of a large window facing Ninth Avenue. Outside, young barhoppers in heavy winter clothing walked by in small,
chatty groups. At one point, a transvestite in a short leather skirt stopped on the sidewalk and looked in our direction.
She primped her hair and puckered her lips.

Bill shouted at her from the other side of the glass, “Not interested!”

“I think she’s just checking herself out in the window,” I said.

Bill waved her away, complaining, “She’s blocking my view of the real females.”

The drag queen squinted for a moment, then gave Bill the finger before walking off.

Bill looked at me and said, “You live in a pretty gay neighborhood. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

Our waitress arrived with food and drinks, and I reached for my wallet.

“Put it away,” said Bill, handing her a fifty-dollar bill.

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s generous.”

“Don’t get used to it,” he warned me, then said to our waitress, “I want change.”

Bill and I were heading for the same precinct, so I raised my beer glass and said, “Shall we drink to the Three-two?”

Bill picked up his cheeseburger instead. “I’m trying to eat here. Don’t remind me I’m spending the next twenty years in Harlem
with you.”

Other company members started showing up an hour later. Men I’d seen only in frumpy recruit uniforms were wearing faded jeans,
open-collared shirts, and earrings. Women sported gobs of makeup, elaborate hairdos, and low-cut dresses. Six months of bad
fashion were being exorcised in one night.

Clarabel arrived at around eleven thirty and asked our hulking classmate Bobby Franks to help her off with her coat. A captive
audience of men waiting to order drinks at the bar looked on. I could practically hear the tongues wagging as Franks slid
off Clarabel’s ankle-length down jacket, revealing her skimpy red cocktail dress and the dangerous curves it hugged like a
Maserati.

Bill and I were standing across the room in view of Clarabel’s unfurling.

“Quite a show,” said Bill. “Too bad she’s early.”

“Three and a half hours isn’t fashionably late enough?” I said.

“That was all for Moran’s benefit. And he’s not here yet.”

“No, you got it wrong,” I told Bill. “They already did the deed. She’s over him now.”

“Over Moran?” said Bill. “Are you sure there’s not something you want to tell me?”

“
What
are you talking about?”

“You don’t seem to know much about women.”

My parents arrived in New York the next day—on different flights. My mother and father hadn’t seen each other since I’d graduated
from college twelve years earlier. Their reunion took place in my apartment and started off reasonably well. With their ill-fated
marriage long behind them, they at least acted like old friends.

My father, Paul Sr., looked like a retired lumberjack now. He stood six foot two with graying temples, broad shoulders, and
forearms as big as my thighs. My dad had given me his full name but none of his impressive genes. All we had in common physically
was a receding hairline. Bodywise, I was the male version of my petite mother, Wells. I was taller and more muscular than
she was, but not much.

Previously, my mother had expressed doubts about me becoming a cop. She didn’t want me doing such a dangerous job, but when
she took one look at my fully laden gun belt, she reached for it with both hands. “Can I wear it?” she said greedily, after
she’d already lifted it up off my dresser.

She put on my belt and my brand-new patrolman’s cap. She studied herself in my mirror, making stern and uncompromising faces.
Then she reached for my holstered gun.

“Whoa, Mom,” I said. “It’s loaded.”

“Oops,” my mom said, pulling her hand away.

My father, sitting on the futon, laughed at her.

“Where are your handcuffs?” my mom asked while opening different pouches on the belt. When she found the cuffs, she shook
them in my dad’s face and said, “All right, bub, on your feet. You’re under arrest.”

My father looked incredulous, but only for a second. He seemed to realize this was an important bonding moment, a show of
long-forgotten trust. He stood up with a wicked smile, looming nine inches above my mom, then put out his hands to be bound.

My mother looked at me and asked, “Do I have to read him his rights?”

“That only happens on TV,” I said. “In real life, detectives read Miranda back at the precinct.”

“There’s nothing more to say? That’s not very dramatic.”

As my mom reached out to shackle my dad, I put my hand between them. I couldn’t resist; he’d grounded me for a month when
I was a teenager, and it was time for my revenge. I told my mom, “Actually, you’re supposed to say, ‘Turn around and put your
hands behind your back.’ ”

My mother instructed my father to assume the position. He slowly turned his back to her while giving me a worried look. I
waved down his concern, hiding my joy.

When my mom had slipped the cuffs over both his wrists, she asked me to take a picture.

“Oh, okay,” I said, quickly grabbing my digital camera and lining up my parents in the preview screen before the Kodak moment
turned into a brawl.

“You
do
have the key, don’t you?” my dad said to me just as I clicked the shutter.

I lowered the camera and said, “Shit, the key.”

“Don’t joke around,” my dad said. “And watch your language.”

I stepped around my mother and knelt behind her to open the handcuff pouch on the back of my belt. I pulled up the flap and
tried to find the key.

“What’s taking so long?” said my dad.

“Nothing. The key’s just very small.”

“How small can it be?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” I said, and shoved my finger behind a tiny leather flap inside the pouch. “Whew. Here it is,” I
said, pulling out the key, the size of a microchip. “See what I mean?”

While I was freeing my father, he said to my mother, “If I’d had handcuffs when we were married, you might not have been a
runaway housewife.”

“Fat chance,” said my mom.

The next morning, I donned my full dress uniform, a three-quarter-length blue blouse with two rows of gold buttons down the
front. Then I reached into my closet for my gun locker. I tapped in my secret code without looking, the locker beeped in response,
and the front flap sprang open. Inside were my gun, which was nearly new, and my patrolman’s shield, which was decidedly used.

My shield—a nickel-plated New York State seal embossed with the number 1627—had once belonged to another cop. How many people
had worn the shield before me was a mystery. So were the circumstances leading up to this moment, when I first pinned their
numbers to my chest. The previous officer 1627 might have turned in the shield willingly or unwillingly. The last place he
or she’d worn it might have been the back of an ambulance, or a morgue. One thing was certain: My shield had seen some kind
of action. I didn’t see any bullet holes, but if I held it sideways and turned it, I could tell it had been bent out of and
back into shape more than once. Wondering what kind of forces the shield had withstood in the past, I tried to bend it with
my hands, unsuccessfully.

After fixing the emblem to my blouse, I pulled my pistol out of the locker and slid it into an off-duty holster under my arm,
where it would remain out of sight. Ideally, I wouldn’t be enforcing any laws on graduation day, so I probably wouldn’t need
my gun. But the shield and the gun were a matched set; I’d been told to never carry one without the other.

Four hours later, I was standing on a cement ramp leading into Madison Square Garden. A crooked line of dark-blue uniforms
stretched from the street behind me, up the ramp, and around a wide bend. We were 2,108 recruits in all—with no supervision.
Most of the things we’d been prohibited from doing at the academy were now being done with reckless abandon. Cops-to-be were
talking on their cell phones and playing cards, smoking cigarettes and passing around flasks. Everywhere I looked, someone
had a hat on backward, or handcuffs spinning on the end of a pen.

We’d already been marched in and out of the main facility three times. With each rehearsal, we’d gotten further from achieving
our goal, which was to fill in every seat on the Garden floor before the end of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” The
official NYPD graduation song ran a little over three minutes, which, on our final try, was about five minutes too short.

The long periods after the song ended had been awkward and tense. Walking past empty bleachers, all I’d heard was the aimless
patter of unsynchronized footsteps. That, and the ranting of our graduation choreographer, Officer Skinhead. The man who’d
tormented me at orientation in Brooklyn six months ago was back. Like before, he stood on a stage and shouted absurdities.
Only now, he spoke through a sound system designed to overpower eighteen thousand screaming hockey fans. He seemed to think
he could speed us up by micromanaging our every step and turn. “Not so wide! Pivot!” I heard him tell someone. “Shave off
that corner, recruit! This ain’t no barbershop!”

Our fourth run-through was the real deal. When the familiar
Ba-ba
bada-da
started to play, I heard the crowd screaming like Ol’ Blue Eyes himself was waiting in the wings. Our line started moving
up the ramp with newfound vigor. I reached the Garden floor halfway through the song and stared around in wonder. There wasn’t
an empty seat in the place. It was 360 degrees of pure joy: flashbulbs, waving hands, and people jumping up and down in the
aisles. When the music ended, no one in the audience seemed to care. They kept cheering as the white-gloved recruits marched
to their seats, faces glowing with pride and relief. I tried to hold back the first few tears that welled up in my eyes. The
next fifty or sixty, I didn’t bother.