Everyone else on the shuttle from our dispatch center is in uniform, but that doesn't mean they look at me funny. OK, they look at me funny. I know half of them, and they harass me the whole seven minutes it takes to travel to the terminal. I tell them that I dropped my phone, I think it was in the terminal, and I'm going to the LAPD office to look at the phones they found. Every accepts that, particularly when I tell them I was a dumbass.
Inside our terminal, across from the kiosks selling toys for the kids, is the LAPD office for this section of the airport. There's always someone sitting there, drinking coffee, and one assumes, directing the other officers out on patrol. In the window of that office is a poster, it's been there forever as far as I know, advertising the reserve officer program. "Learn what police do!," it says, "Learn more about the law and law enforcement," it yells, "Do something good for your community."
I knock on the door and let myself in without waiting for a response. There is a uniformed officer sitting at a cluttered desk, surrounded by stacks of paperwork. He's got a bunch of stripes on his nicely starched blue sleeve, which I guess means he's a sergeant or some similar title. I point to the sign in the window.
"Tell me." He does. For 25 minutes he tries to talk me out of joining, that nobody understands what hard work it is, that it doesn't pay, that no one on the force takes the reserve officers seriously. I spend 10 minutes trying to convince him that the force is with me. Finally, he hands me a packet of information, points out the application, says I'll need to go through a background check, and attend a bunch of training classes. Most of the training, he says, is actually on the job. And, oh yeah, I'll need to pass a physical. Then he escorts me to the door, and goes back to whatever he was avoiding doing before I got there.
I go out and wander down the terminal to a gate with no passengers. There's an aluminum bird sitting right outside the picture windows, shining in the morning sun, oddly comforting to me. I read the documentation, then wander further down toward the last gates to eat tacos at the stand there and fill out the forms. There's an essay to write, and a psych exam to take. Do I prefer trees or shrubs? Favorite color? Would I rather be stuck on a desert island with my girlfriend or my mom? Do I ever dream of flying? I consider writing in, no, but I fly, with and without a plane.
Turns out that much of the training is on line, but I'll need to go through two weekend sessions of live work, and possibly some live classroom during the week if I score low. Conveniently, the next class sequence appears to match my flight schedule perfectly. Free superhero training from the Los Angeles police department, what more could I ask for?
The form can be mailed in or returned to a police station. I decide that I do not want to drop mine off with the officer on station, and it will probably get action quicker if I mail it. I pop into the bookstore that sells everything else as well, buy a couple stamps, stick them on my envelope and drop it in the outgoing mail.
The next day, 35,000 feet over the Pacific, I tell Captain Amos what I did. He smiles, tells me he thinks it's great, gives me an hour lecture on the importance of teamwork, and retells me the stories about the importance of a life with meaning. It relaxes me more than I can tell him. Me and the light works, maybe me and the law will too.
Chapter 9
Two weeks. It's been two fucking weeks and I haven't heard a fucking thing. That's what I tell Captain Amos as we hit balls at Waikaloa. We had planned on golfing, but the combination of a mechanical problem and an air traffic delay made us far too late for that. We compromise by grabbing a couple buckets of balls, and letting off steam by hitting for distance.
It's actually not quite, since I mailed it on a Thursday, told him on a Friday, and today is only the second Monday after, but it feels like two months. I slam another ball a couple hundred yards, with a wicked hook. He sails a perfect straight drive, not as far, but far more effective, toward the ocean. He looks at me, leaning on the driver like a staff. The image bothers me a little.
"Patience, grasshopper," is his response, which catches me by surprise. Hopefully he hasn't been stealing his earthy wisdom from old television shows. "You in a hurry?"
I am actually, but I can't tell him I'm at 980 days to live. I can't tell him that two rednecks who are waiting for my fist in their faces are still out there doing God knows what. I can't tell him that all the fun has gone out of flying (airplane-less flying, that is) and I'm pacing a hole in the carpet at home waiting for something to do.
So I tell a partial lie. "There is a training cycle starting the 15th. If I miss is it, the next one is in December. I'd like to get going." It's October, that's two months. That's ten percent of my entire fucking life. OK, 7 percent, but who's good at math? Well, me, but ignore that.
"So why don't you call them?" The Captain asks the obvious, for which I have no answer other than to grab my phone (real phone, not the untraceable phone on the bottom of the sea) and dial. Ten minutes later I am scheduled for an interview, psych exam, and physical on Wednesday. Showing interest in something is actually helpful. Who knew?
I go visit the island of Midway tonight, amazingly small for something so historic, try briefly, but unsuccessfully, to find the USS Yorktown, which must be out of my range. Seemed clear in LA that my super senses are good for a couple hundred feet and no more, so I didn't really think I'd get a buzz on an aircraft carrier three miles down, but it was worth the try. Go supersonic flying both directions, reveling in the freedom, brain turned off. Occurs to me that I am navigating pretty well without my GPS, which may mean I should rethink my previous comment about a couple hundred feet. I'm going to come back out with a flashlight that will survive the pressure 18,000 feet down (if I can find one), and take another look for the hero of World War II.
Get back to the hotel in time to read about reserve police programs on the Internet, watch the sunrise, run, breakfast, shower, and head out to Keahole for the flight home. Jen meets me at dispatch, tell her I'm going for my interview, and spend the drive to my place listening for the 10th time in nine days to a lecture on how stupid this is. Eventually, she has something else in her mouth besides complaints, and I drift away to sleep thinking that it might be time for her to ride the salami.
Blue, blue, the fog is blue. Then there's a French line in the song I don't remember. It's blue, swirling, happy fog. The boulders are back, and the Fog Dude is sitting on his, still dressed in black, and covered in his hood. Is the blue a hint about my joining the police?
"You need to stop trying to do this on your own." He's stern, cross, still annoyed I'm sure for our lack of conversations the past months.
"I screwed up, I know," I respond, "but I'm going to fix it."
"Let me help you."
"I..." don't actually remember what I was going to say to him, before the ball hit my face and I was interrupted. I kiss Halloween's little brown head, she mews in return, and it's up and at ‘em to make breakfast.
We watch the news together, though she seems less interested in it than she used to be in SportsCenter. Me too actually, except that the news chicks are hotter than the sports chicks, except for the one blonde sideline reporter, what's her name. Tall, blonde, smart, 30s? Her. She's not on SportsCenter often, only if something interesting happened in a game she was doing the night before. I promise we'll start watching sports again as I pick up the bowls, though it's football season, and having no team in LA takes much of the fun out of it.
I go running, shower, change into a blue Mountain Pacific Air polo and khaki slacks. They told me to be casual. I hop in Starbuck, head down the 710 to the 60, and into downtown. The LAPD building is just off the 101, three stories, glass and concrete with an imposing ten foot fence all the way around. There's a parking garage across one street and a mortuary across the other. Hopefully, there's no message in that.
The receptionist sends me to a conference room on the third floor, big wood table surrounded by six big brown leather office chairs, and a credenza with bottles of water on it. About as quick as I can sit down, I stand up again as two men and a woman come in from the other side. All three are in uniform. The first one is a black man with specs of grey in his closely cropped hair, and lots of silver on his uniform, trim, strong, looks like he could still be on patrol. The second is an older white male, late 50s, maybe, slight paunch, more silver in the hair than on the uniform, and the third is a younger woman, slender, brunette, big wedding ring.
Turns out the first one is Captain Armstrong, the head of the program, second is an actual reserve officer, Mills Logan, and the third is Sergeant Peterson, the psychologist who will be spending time with me alone later. We spend an hour getting to know each other, them explaining that I will most likely end up helping with paperwork for the detectives at a precinct, and working special events, and me explaining that I feel the urgent need to help my community.
Then they tell me I have to take a polygraph. Fuck me, I'm fucked. They take me down the hall where a middle aged dude who does not introduce himself, and Sergeant Peterson hook me up to a machine. Electrodes, or whatever you call them, on my head, chest, and groinal muscles.
Things hum, and then they ask a couple basic questions about my name, address, occupation, age, and other stuff I don't have to lie about. Then the fun starts.
"Have you ever stolen more than $100 from work?"
"No." Easy. What would I steal? Blank flight plans? A jumbo jet?
"Have you ever committed a felony?" Other than breaking into a meth lab, assaulting two rednecks, and burning their house to the ground? No.
"No." Good thing I'm not playing poker. No response at all from the examiners.
"Have you ever gone by another name?" What would they do if I said I needed one, I just hadn't picked it yet?
"No."
"Why do you want to join?" Truth maybe here?
"I'd been thinking about ways I can help the community, but I hadn't done anything. Then I saw a police report about two drug chemists getting shot, and decided I needed to try something different, and maybe make a difference."
Half hour and a bunch of "no's" later, they are done, and I assume I am as well. Only they take me down the hall for a physical. The doctor complains that my flight physicals should cover me since they are much more thorough, but he does a cursory exam anyway, and turns me loose after less than 10 minutes. His last words are, "If anyone asks you how the treadmill test was, tell them it went well."
Then I'm having lunch with Officer Logan, who tells me of his adventures in crowd control on New Year's Eve. Tells me he's applied to go work Vegas this year on a loan program.
Sergeant Peterson rescues me for my psych evaluation. We head down the hall to her office where my essay is sitting on a coffee table, with a couple documents next to it. She motions for me to sit on the couch, and she takes the comfy chair across from it.
"This is your essay, the results of the test you submitted, and the results of the polygraph. Nothing here that on the surface would call anything into question. There are a couple things, though, that I'd like to ask you about. Why don't you lie back and close your eyes."
We talk about my childhood, my life, my dreams. Finally, she tells me to sit up.
"In some ways," she says looking at a pad in her hand, "you are a perfect candidate. You take lives in your hands every day and, according to your performance evaluations, you are quite good at your job. Your work and your responses suggest you are relatively fearless, and something of a risk taker. Which isn't normally a problem, unless you are standing opposite a criminal pointing a firearm at you or someone else."
"You also don't have what I would consider to me a normal amount of dreams for your future. But, given your age and the breadth of your life, I suspect you'll develop those, and while you are certainly a risk taker, I don't think you would knowingly endanger anyone else. Perhaps your pilot training has built that into your subconscious. I am clearing you to begin training. We'll do a follow up in a couple months."
And with that, I am taken to a clerk, who gives me a stack of paperwork that makes me think I'm buying a house. I agree to never sue the LAPD, even if they make me shoot my mother, or accidently shoot my dog. I sign up for workman's comp. I list my next of kin, and their next of kins. I get a password into the training system. Then they tell me the rest is to take home as part of my training. They tell me it will take a couple months at least. They don't know that I don't have to sleep. I figure 10 to 12 days.
Dinner and dancing with Jen, who makes me go through all the details of my day before settling in for the night at my place. It remains a mystery why we haven't been to her apartment in months, but I still have no interest in asking about it, since it works out perfectly for me. She's got to work late tomorrow and doing girls night out on Saturday, which also works out perfectly for me.
There are four interactive courses, each of which is designed to take 36 hours, followed by an exam. After my run and shower, I have 22 hours before I'm due back at work. I'm halfway done with the first course (Concepts of Criminal Law) by the time I leave. I'm done by Sunday morning, and score a 96 on the test before lunch. Had to surrender investigating the Yorktown, but somehow I don't think I'll find a flashlight that's going to survive the trip anyway.
