Paul Bacon (10 page)

“That’s right,” said Captain Danders. “So I’ll just let you know that the crime that was happening on your tour has been shifting
to the midnight tour, and anyone that doesn’t want to shift with it better bring up their numbers. That’s all I’m gonna say,”
he concluded, giving himself another clap.

After return roll call, I walked up to the precinct desk and slid my summons into a wooden box with a narrow opening at the
top. Valentine’s Day was tomorrow, and I noticed that next to the greedy little slot, someone had carved something into the
wood: DANDY’S BOX OF LOVE.

Up in the locker room, I ran into Bill, who was sitting on a bench counting his summonses with an intense look on his face.
When he heard me coming, he looked up and said, “Ha! Enjoy the midnights, you pansy.”

“It’s no big deal,” I said. “I’ll just write a bunch of tickets.”

“Uh-huh,” said Bill. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

CHAPTER 15

T
HE NEXT NIGHT, Bill insisted on walking my beat with me to make sure I wrote summonses. Pairing up was against the rules
for rookies in the Three-two: we were supposed to have one cop on every block—no more, no less. But Bill was on a mission
to convert me to the dark side. And as much as I preferred working alone, I had to allow that I had new priorities.

A big storm had just moved through the area, leaving three inches of snow over everything. The blanket of white powder made
the otherwise depressing neighborhood look like a winter wonderland and turned our search for violations into a halfway-amusing
game. Brushing off little patches of fluff from the windshields to reveal the stickers was like scratching a three-thousand-pound
lottery ticket.

My first winner was a nice, juicy one: a brand-new Lincoln Navigator with expired temporary tags. If I disliked writing tickets
in general, I lived for the chance to penalize SUV owners for their bad ecology and monstrous taste. I happily wrote up the
summons, whistling the whole time. When I was done, I slipped the orange envelope under the snow on the windshield so the
driver wouldn’t see my handiwork until it was staring him in the face. This was penalty as per formance art. For once, I wished
I could be around when somebody found one of my tickets.

Moving down the line of cars, I found a tag with yesterday’s date. Bill was canvassing the other side of the street, so I
shouted over to him, “What’s the grace period on emission stickers?”

“Grace period?” he shouted back. “There’s no such thing.”

I looked down at the sticker again, tapped my pen on my chin for a moment, then walked to next vehicle.

“Wait!” said Bill. “Was it expired?”

“Yeah, but only by a day,” I said.

“And he had
all year
to get it renewed.”

“But that seems so fussy.”

“It’s an emissions sticker, right? Well, Mr. Environment, time to do your part for Planet Earth.”

I thought about it for a second. “Yeah,” I said. “Screw this guy.”

After taking some easy ones from the side streets, it was time to hunt for bigger game on Lenox Avenue. Lenox was the backbone
of our precinct, a main route for traffic between Manhattan and the Bronx. It was also lined with fast-food joints and liquor
stores, so it was always clogged with double-parked vehicles.

The moment we reached Lenox, we spotted two violations in one. A beat-up old Ford Escort was parked in the flow of traffic
while also blocking a bus stop.

“There you go. Hurry up. I’ll watch for air mail,” Bill said, waving me toward the vehicle. “And no mercy because it’s Valentine’s
Day, you hear me?”

Taking my first long look at the Escort, I got cold feet. Whoever owned a vehicle this ragged would be ruined by one ticket,
much less two. I shook my head and started walking again. “Forget it,” I told Bill. “Let’s keep looking.”

Bill caught my arm and said, “What are your numbers this month?”

“Let’s see,” I said, “I’ve got three parkers, and, well, that’s it.”

“So you need twenty-seven more by next week. Remember, February is a short month!”

“All right!” I said, finally prepared to battle my conscience. I walked back to the pathetic little car with a stiff upper
lip, but the closer I got, the more I felt my resolve melting away. The front bumper was about to fall off, one of the headlights
was missing, and there weren’t even any windshield wipers to leave a ticket under.

“What are you waiting for?” Bill barked at me.

“It’s hard to read the sticker,” I said, stalling for time. “It’s . . . dirty.”

“Then fucking
wipe it
—” he said, cutting himself off when something behind me caught his eye.

I turned around and saw Captain Danders’s unmarked Impala turning a corner and heading our way. The XO’s car was approaching
very slowly, which usually meant he was “breakin’ shoes,” as he called it—patrolling the area for goof-off cops and two-man
posts. I started putting space between myself and Bill. “Meet you later,” I said, and began jogging down a side street away
from Lenox.

“Run away! Run away!” Bill said. “You won’t have me to worry about on the midnights!”

That was all it took. I turned around and started walking back to the Escort. Before Bill jogged around the corner, he shook
his finger at me and said, “And you better have two tickets written when I come back!”

I made it to Lenox just in time. I ran around the Escort’s front bumper, pulled out my summons book, and perched above the
registration sticker on the windshield with a scrutinizing frown. A few seconds later, Captain Danders drove by, flashing
me a congratulatory thumbs-up.

When the captain was gone, I stared down at my summons book in shame. The two violations I was about to write were $115 each—probably
more than the car itself was worth. I usually dealt with double-parking situations by stopping into the nearest establishment
to find the vehicle’s own er first, a gesture that earned me thanks and blown kisses. But the only place still open was A
Touch of Dee, a hole-in-the-wall bar for the fifty-and-over set. It was currently hosting a Valentine’s Day party and packed
beyond capacity. Smiling se n-ior citizens stood outside the bar in loud suits and fancy hats of red and pink. The rest of
the businesses on the street were boarded up, burned out, or shuttered behind graffiti-covered metal gates. Going into a bar
in uniform was forbidden, and with the shoe breaker out tonight, I decided I had no choice but to penalize.

I flipped open the cover of my summons binder, and just as my pen hit paper, I heard someone screaming, “Wait, wait! That’s
my car!”

I turned around and saw a woman in her sixties trying to escape A Touch of Dee. The woman, who was rather overweight, was
having a hard time reaching the sidewalk. People stood back-to-back in the entranceway, blocking her exit and sending her
into a fit. “No! Please, no!” she kept shrieking, like I was holding a gun to someone’s head.

Her hands were full of personal items, making it even harder to press her way out. When she finally broke through the wall
of bodies, she popped out of the doorway like a jack-in-the-box. Her purse exploded onto the sidewalk, leaving behind a trail
of cosmetics and sweetener packets as she ran.

I started waving her down out of fear of being trampled. Before she got within striking distance, I slipped to the side and
watched her come to a screeching halt just short of the vehicle.

“Oh, Lordy, Lordy! Please don’t give me a ticket!” she wailed, then doubled over and began panting. I was glad I hadn’t started
writing her ticket yet. Anyone who could shout “Lordy, Lordy” with a straight face deserved a break in my book.

The short sprint from the bar had left her completely winded, so I recommended she lean against her car before she collapsed.
She thanked me, then handed me a small box that she’d been clutching even after she’d thrown her purse to the side. Whatever
was in the box must have been important, I thought, so I looked down and read the label. FLIRTY BABY DOLL STRETCH MESH TEDDY,
it said. The word
flirty
was written in little red hearts, and the box featured a picture of a much younger and much sleeker woman modeling the item
within. I tried to imagine this woman in the same revealing underwear, then quickly wished I hadn’t.

When the driver mustered the strength to stand back up, she said, “Thank you, officer. I’ll move the car right now.”

“Take your time,” I said, wondering if she was drunk but too embarrassed to ask. She looked old enough to be my grandmother,
and I’d been raised to treat people her age with unquestioning respect. When she got behind the wheel, she pulled a key ring
from her jacket pocket and selected the ignition key without even looking, which seemed like a good sign.

She fired up the tiny, whirring engine, and I walked over to the driver’s-side door to return her box.

“Uh, ma’am,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable. “Your . . .
teddy
.” “Oh, yes,” she said, accepting the package without a hint of embarrassment. She set it on the dashboard and said, “Thank
you again, officer. You’re one of the good ones. Have a safe night.”

“You too, and happy Valentine’s Day,” I said.

Maybe I was cut out for this job. My deeply ingrained sense of fairness was a gift to the community. I knew Bill would return
shortly and rub my nose in it, but until then I wanted to enjoy my good deed. I took a breath of cold, invigorating air and
watched the nice woman pull away from the curb $230 richer than she might have been at the hands of a lesser officer.

Then, for some reason, the nice woman drove right through the next traffic light. The light happened to be red at the time.
Perhaps she was drunk after all. I also noticed later that she’d left her purse and all its contents on the sidewalk, an act
that didn’t exactly scream, “Sobriety!” She barreled through the stoplight and nearly got cut in half by an oncoming vehicle,
which had to come to a noisy, skidding stop to avoid hitting her. Seeing the other car, she swerved hard in the other direction.

She plunged into the crosswalk a few feet ahead of Bill, who had just come out of hiding. He jumped back in time to save his
own life, then started swearing loudly enough for me to hear a block away. When the old woman floored the gas and disappeared
down the street, he turned back to me and shouted, “What the fuck?”

I threw my hands up in the air, feigning ignorance. He pulled his police radio off his belt and I did the same, expecting
to speak with him, but he was raising our dispatcher instead.

“
Three-two Impact Post Seventeen to Central
,” Bill said.

“
Proceed, Post Seventeen
,” said a female voice.

“
Be advised, Central
,” said Bill. “
We got a reckless driver, possible DWI,
proceeding southbound on Lenox Avenue, One Hundred Fortieth Street on
the cross. It’s an early-model Ford Escort, white in color
.”

“
You got a plate, Post Seventeen?
” the dispatcher asked.

I clenched my teeth. This was not going to turn out well.

“
Stand by, Central
,” Bill said. Putting his radio down, he shouted to me, “Bacon! Tell Central the plate!”

I screamed back, “I didn’t see it!”

“Look on your
summonses
!”

“I didn’t write any!”

Bill dropped his head in resignation. A moment later, he picked up his radio again and mumbled as he spoke. “
No plate, Central,
” Bill said with a wince. “
Disregard
.”

“Disregard the DWI?
” Central said in disbelief. No cop in his right mind would broadcast such an order. Bill slapped his face while our dispatcher
continued to raise him: “
Three-two Impact Post Seventeen,
repeat your message. Did you say disregard the DWI?
”

Even from a distance, I could see Bill was ready to lose it. I’d just made him look very stupid, and I wanted to apologize
before he blew his stack. I started jogging in his direction, but when he saw me coming down the block, he put up his hand
and shouted, “Oh, no! From now on, you stay the hell away from me!”

A few days later at roll call, Captain Danders appeared at our door and waved Sergeant Langdon out into the hallway. Whispers
and muffled laughter broke out in our ranks to ward off the sense of impending doom. We figured the captain was telling her
who was shifting to the midnight squad for low summons activity. With our numbers so low as a group, I think nearly everyone
expected their names to come up. The sergeant came back a couple minutes later, pursing her lips. My eyes followed her across
the room, locked on her expression, weighing her every step. The sergeant looked bitter and disappointed—a bad sign. It was
going to be a bloodbath.

Then she opened her mouth and surprised us all. “Summonses are up, the captain’s happy, so the new flavor of the week is collars.”

The sudden change of subject from tickets to arrests struck me as odd. Our numbers hadn’t gotten any better, so I wondered
if the captain had been serious about shifting us to the late tour, or if he was just trying to make us work harder.

The sergeant continued by taking a quick poll, asking us who had gotten an arrest so far. When nearly every one of thirty
rookies in the room put up a hand, she rephrased the question.

“Okay, okay,” she said, “who
hasn’t
gotten a collar?”

Five of us sheepishly raised our hands, causing a lot of rubbernecking and snickers.

The sergeant seemed to take pity after singling us out. “Mind yer business!” she shouted at the hecklers. This only prompted
more cruel laughter. I felt about three feet tall. I was standing in the last row of the formation, so only a few people noticed
me raise my hand, and I was spared most of the indignity. But there turned out to be more than my pride at stake.

“Listen up!” the sergeant said. “The borough’s putting together a new rookie unit. It’s some kind of mobile outfit, which
may sound cool, but rumor is they’ll only write summonses. They want ten bodies from our command, and since the flavor of
the week is now collars, that’s how we’re making the cut. So, those with no collars, you better start humpin’. Any questions?”

I wanted to ask if I could excuse myself to turn in my gun and shield. A more reasonable question came from a man named Raymond
Gerard, one of the other under-performers. “Yeah, boss,” he said in a downtrodden voice. “How are we supposed to make collars
when we we’re out there alone on foot?”

“Like everyone else,” Sergeant Langdon shot back. “You stop some mope for pissin’ on a Dumpster, you run his name through
Central, he pops a warrant, and you lock him up.”

Wisely, Gerard said nothing. I looked over to see his expression and I saw my own disappointment written on his face. Watching
the Twin Towers crumble had prepared me for some kind of duty, and it wasn’t looking for mopes peeing behind Dumpsters. This
was a surefire way to make an arrest, however, since most New Yorkers were scofflaws on some level. So many tickets went out,
and so few were answered, that popping a warrant was like pulling jury duty. Sooner or later it happened to everyone. The
collars were out there for the taking; we just had to be motivated.