Shards (10 page)

Becoming a cop wasn't a wise decision for me. Addiction is so prevalent among cops because we're trained to suppress whatever anger or emotion we have and stay calm. Where do those emotions go? They go into beating your wife, or they go into exercise, or they go into steroids, or workaholism or alcohol or drugs. Since I had entered recruit school exactly three years earlier, I had put everything into work.

Now it was the drug.

There was no way for me to get ice on Maui. Too many of the dealers knew me; I would be busted instantly. If I wanted to pick up, I would have to go to another island.

I was familiar with Honolulu because I had done some training there in my rookie days. I knew where to find the prostitutes and crackheads, and they would lead me to dope.

That Friday night, I took the 10:50 p.m. flight to Honolulu, rented a car, and drove to Hotel Street, where the prostitutes work. Most of the Chinatown prostitutes are beautiful, but I spotted one who looked like she really needed some work. I drove up next to her and opened my window.

“Hey,” I called. “Want to get in?”

She turned toward me. Thin as a rail with skin as wrinkled and leathery as a Florida grandmother's, she was probably thirty-five but looked past fifty. A crackerjack, easy to spot.

She didn't hesitate before getting into my car. As soon as she was sitting in the passenger seat, she said, “What you got in mind?”

She didn't look at me while she spoke. She had a huge bag with her, almost like a homeless person's bag.

“Looking for ice,” I said.

She nodded. “What you gonna pay?”

“You use?”

She nodded. “Rock.”

“Fine.” We agreed that she would buy ice for me if I would buy her some crack. I gave her a hundred bucks and dropped her off near a gated doorway on River Street.

“I'll leave my bag,” she said, “so you know I'm coming back.” A cop car was parked directly in front of me. They were all over Hotel Street and Chinatown, but they're mostly there to keep the peace
and collect “taxes,” not to arrest anybody. I sat listening to Tool on my iPod while she went inside.

She came out a few minutes later with my ice, and we drove to another location to get her crack. After that, I drove her back to Hotel Street.

“Can I look for you again?” I asked her.

“Almost always here,” she said. “If you don't see me, ask for Angel. Everybody knows Angel.”

After dropping Angel off, I drove to Waikiki Beach and parked at the Honolulu Zoo. No one was around, and I walked across the street to Queen's Beach, sat on my jacket in the sand, and smoked ice. I smoked all night until it was time to drive to the airport.

I caught the 5:50 a.m. flight back to Maui and was back home by 8 a.m. No one in Maui even knew I was gone.

When I walked into work Monday morning, I saw Dina and another female officer, Erin, talking quietly. They stopped when I came up to them and turned bright, fake smiles on me. I could tell they had been talking about me. My meth paranoia was already kicking in, and I was sure they had somehow figured out what I had just done. Still, I tried to make light of the situation.

“You talking stink about me?” I asked them.

“Choke.” Erin laughed. The Hawaiian expression for
a lot
. All three of us were
haoles
, but we had embraced the Hawaiian language. Erin's eyes darted around the station. “Let's go outside for a sec.”

We stepped out into the bright Maui sunshine. This is it, I thought. They were about to tell me that they knew about my using. I quickly formulated my strategy. I would tell them that yes, I was using, that I had tried ice once to get closer to one of my dealers and hadn't been able to stop. I would plead with them to keep it a
secret. I didn't know much about Erin, but I knew Dina wouldn't judge me. She was my friend. She knew what went with the territory.

“We're worried about you,” Dina began.

Her words brought me a little relief. I couldn't stop on my own, that much was clear, but they would help me. I could wipe the drug out of my life, like it had never existed.

“We've noticed you're getting really thin,” Erin was saying.

I knew I was losing weight, but this was the first time anyone had mentioned it. You don't eat when you're using meth, and even if you do eat, your metabolism is running so fast you can't keep weight on. I had even had to buy new uniform pants.

Dina said, “You told us you were anorexic when you were a teenager. We're worried you might be going down that road again.”

I searched their faces, trying to figure out if they were really trying to get at something else. They looked sincere. And concerned.

“I know I'm getting thin,” I said. “I've just been so stressed. With work and everything.”

“You're a ripper,” Erin said, “and everybody knows it, but there's limits, girl.”

“You have to start taking better care of yourself,” Dina said.

“I know,” I said. I was touched by how caring they were. How they really wanted to help me. MPD takes care of its own. For maybe ten seconds, I considered telling them the truth—one of many times I thought about coming clean to somebody. But of course I didn't.

“Come out with us after work tonight,” Erin said. “Have a burger and a milkshake.”

“We'll fatten you up,” Dina said.

“Sure!” I said, enthusiastically. “I'd love to come. Thanks, guys.” That was my usual tactic—agreeing to attend a social event and
then not showing up. Or dropping by for a few minutes at most—just long enough for people to know I had been there.

True to form, after work I texted Dina that I would try to stop by, but instead I worked late at the station and then went home for a couple of hours. I needed to fit in a hit before meeting Keawe.

After Erin's and Dina's comments, I tried to gain some weight by eating as much as I could and drinking a lot of protein shakes, but Keawe mentioned my weight loss too, a week or two later.

“Have you been talking to Erin and Dina?” I asked him.

“Nah, but you're losing your curves, babe. Your
okole
is getting bony,” he said, slapping my ass. I was surprised that he would notice. Generally, he liked me thin. His wife was thin, and it made me happy to be thinner than she was.

I started making the trip to Honolulu with some regularity. I carried the ice in my jeans pocket when I was flying back and forth, oblivious to what would happen if it was discovered. I didn't worry about getting searched by security. I had my badge, but also, when you're using you feel like you're untouchable anyway. I never got caught. Once I left my ice packet in the rental car and when I went back for it, two guys were already cleaning the car.

“I think I forgot something in my car,” I said.

“No,” one of them said, and snickered. “We didn't find anything.” Both of them started laughing, and I knew they would be smoking my ice as soon as they got off work.
Assholes.

Every time I flew to Honolulu, it was the last time. Every time I got a packet of ice, I told myself it was the last packet. In reality, I was using more and more. At first I'd go to see Angel once a month, and then it became every three weeks. Seven months into using, I was making the trip every two weeks.

My drug use was progressing, but my work was progressing also. Because I wasn't sleeping, I was working all the time. I dug deep
into the narcotics network; people began to trust me and I was building up a CI base.

I was getting lots of praise at work, and letters of commendation from the chief about my cases. I needed three years on patrol before they could promote me, and I had only six more months to go. With all my narcotics work, I was a shoo-in for vice.

My birthday fell on a
Saturday that March. I knew Keawe had the day off so I scheduled a day off for myself too. As the week went on, I kept waiting for him to say something about it. He knew the date, and though we hadn't done much for my birthday the previous year, this year I was fixated on it. Keawe and I had been together for eighteen months now, and I expected more from him.

My friends at work bought me a little cake on Friday and sang to me. I told everybody I had plans for Saturday and sat home alone, waiting for Keawe to call. My mom called. My sister called. My aunt and Mimi and a couple of my cousins called, and I told all of them that I was celebrating later with a bunch of friends. A lie: I had no friends, except my fellow cops. What girl in her twenties doesn't have friends? All I had was work. And meth. And work. And more meth.

And, I thought, Keawe.

By evening, when I still hadn't heard from him, I knew I wouldn't. My meth paranoia had started to kick in, and I decided that he was punishing me, that he had found out about my ice use and wanted to make me pay for it. I had been smoking meth all day and now smoked even more. I paced around my apartment, wanting to throw things, wanting to jump off the lanai. I couldn't stop thinking about Keawe, and about another man who wouldn't be calling on my birthday. My father, Ian.

I was twenty-seven years old and hadn't seen him in almost eight years.

After my father moved out of our house when I was in high school, he hid from our family, keeping his new address and phone number a secret from us. He didn't want my mom knowing where he lived; he wanted to keep as much distance between them as possible. All I had was his work number, which his secretary answered, so in order to see my father I had to make an appointment with the woman he left my mother for.

It was horrible. I was a teenage girl who wanted her father to love her, and he had no time for me. I refused to have that kind of relationship, so when I was nineteen, on Father's Day, I found out where he and his secretary/girlfriend, Claire, were living and I showed up at the house. It was a beautiful walled home in the Albuquerque country club area. I was furious to see him living there while my mom was struggling to pay the mortgage each month.

The house had a little stream running through the front yard. A fucking
stream
. To reach the front door, I had to go through a gate and walk over the bridge that crossed the stream.

I was all dressed up in nice suit pants and a black sweater. I rang the doorbell and of course
she
answered.

“Oh, hello,” she said.

“I want to talk to my father,” I said. I held a Father's Day card for him in my left hand.

He came down and we all stood awkwardly in the foyer.

“Happy Father's Day, Dad,” I said, and handed him the card.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I need to talk to you.” I glanced at the secretary. “Can we talk alone?”

“I have no secrets from Claire,” he said.

“Please,” I said. “It's really important.”

“Alli,” he said. “What is it? I don't have a lot of time.”

But we were so close!
I wanted to shout at him.
I was a daddy's girl!

“Let's go sit down in the library,” Claire said.

We walked down the hall and through a kitchen that seemed to be made all of copper—copper sink, copper island, copper pots hanging down from a rack on the ceiling. In the library, there were hundreds of books on the built-in shelves, but they didn't look like books anyone would read. They almost looked color-coordinated, chosen for their covers and not what was inside.

“Sit down,” Claire said. She and my father sat side by side on a plush loveseat and I sat across from them on an uncomfortable upright chair. A ridiculous-looking cat jumped on Claire's lap and she sat there petting it while they both stared at me.

“Well,” I said nervously. “It's just about our, our relationship. I need it to be different.”

My father didn't say anything. I glanced over his shoulder and saw a picture of me on the mantel.
You fake fuck
, I thought.
How dare you have a picture of me in your house when you wouldn't even tell me where you live?

“I miss you, Dad. I want to see you more. I want to be able to call you directly instead of making an appointment,” I said. “I want
you to call me and ask me out to lunch.” I poured my heart out to him in a way that I hadn't done before. I had always kept my thoughts to myself. All the while Claire glared at me, and my father sat there like he was obligated to do so.

Glancing around the room, I saw pieces of furniture that had been in my grandfather's house. My grandfather—my father's father—had been a wonderful man, and I had loved him, but as he got older, my father had frozen him out of the family business. When he became unable to take care of himself, my father left him in a caretaker's house across town. He died alone, and my mother, sister, and I hadn't been welcome at his funeral.

What right do you have to his furniture, you fuck?

My father stared at me, giving no reaction. When I finished talking, he said, “It sounds like I can't give you the kind of relationship you want.”

“What, Dad? Why?” Tears welled up in my eyes.

“I just can't give that to you. There's no room for that in my life.”

“There's no room for
me
in your life?”

“I guess that's all I have to say,” my father said.

“I better go.” I got up and walked to the door, fighting tears.

As I left, my father tried to hug me. When I was little, he had been very affectionate with my sister and me. He had given great hugs. But now, I thought,
Hug me? After you told me you didn't want me?

I crossed over the stream and back to my car.

Sobbing, I drove back to my mom's house. I cried and cried in her arms all night and never talked about it again. My mom would ask me about it now and then and I would completely close down. I detached from that day, from
him
, but I always felt so hurt by what he had said to me.