by Fred Galvin
“Yeah, sure, I guess.” He looked out to the sea. “Man, I wonder where he came from. I mean, jeez, did he fall off some boat or somethin’?”
Wow! Our country was sure going to be in good hands with this generation in charge. I resisted the temptation to reply, “No, I believe he was part of the cross-Atlantic swimming marathon.” Fully dressed, of course.
Instead I said, “Could be. If he did, it wasn’t today. Looks like he’s been out there a while. Probably washed in by a seventh wave generated by that Tropical Storm Anne that went by.”
Dante looked at me as if I’d said a flying saucer had just hovered over Garbage Cove, opened its hatch, and dropped this dead body on the beach. “Seventh wave? You know about seventh waves? Wow, I guess you really were a surfer. How old are you, anyway? Tell me, what were the surfboards like way back then? Where they made of wood? Really heavy? Carved from trees?”
I sighed. Carved from trees! Did I look that Neanderthal? “No, Dante. We actually had fiberglass way back then in the sixties, along with fire, the wheel, electricity, sex, and indoor plumbing.” I paused, not sure if he had caught my rapier-sharp sarcasm. He confirmed my doubts by scratching his head and asking a question that caused me to scratch mine.
“Yeah, right. The sixties. That’s when we landed on the moon, right? In the sixties?”
I shook my head and sighed heavily. “Yeah, very good, 1969. That’s when we landed on the moon. The sixties were an interesting time.”
“Man, you must be really old, remembering the moon landing and all. Did they stream it live? Did you watch it on your phone?”
I paused and just stared at him. Yes, he was serious. I was hard-pressed to come up with an answer to that one. Even my sarcasm escaped me and I’m probably the most sarcastic person I know. I was beginning to wonder if he had been hit in the head by his board, tethered or not. Fortunately, he didn’t wait for my response and continued, “How are you doing? You okay? You come back to the beach often? Hey, you think you could still catch a wave?”
Nodding toward the whitewater at our feet, I said, “Well, Dante, if you hold my board for me while I try to stand up on it, I might be able to catch one of these two-foot shore breakers. Getting old isn’t for pussies, you know.”
He just nodded somberly. Again, I guessed my sarcasm flew by him, caught the offshore wind, and headed uninterrupted for South America.
I entered Dante’s contact information into my phone and gave him my card, which I immediately realized was a ridiculous gesture. He looked down at it as if to say, “What is this?” Clearly this generation just didn’t understand the use of paper. As he shoved it into the back pocket of his baggie surfer shorts, I knew there would be no way he’d ever call me, even if he could read my phone number after the card was soaked by salt water and smeared by the surfer’s wax that was surely in his pocket too.
He held up a hand. “Well, see ya, man.” He turned, threw his board down onto the surf, flopped on, and started paddling back out like he’d just seen a porpoise that had washed up on the shore rather than a deceased human being. In some strange way, I envied him.
I silently wished I didn’t know now what I didn’t know when I was his age.
I turned and looked down at my dead companion. “Well, friend, I guess we have to start working on figuring out who you are, what happened to you, and how you ended up facedown in the sand on Garbage Cove.”
Then I pulled out my phone and speed dialed Billy Smart.
Chapter 2: Retirement
Let’s rewind to a couple of years back. I had just retired from the NYPD. My Homicide Division captain had been Billy Smart. Captain Smart was the best cop I had ever worked with or for.
I worked with him for over twenty years, the last five as my partner, and I worked for him as my captain thereafter until my retirement two years ago. He was thorough, totally incorruptible, and had a knack for cutting through the ancillary bullshit that accompanied all complicated cases to get to the essential facts necessary to close the door. His mantra was “Find the evidence and follow the evidence. It will lead you to the answers. Don’t overcomplicate. Speculation is good in moderation. Keep it simple.”
He was widely respected and I learned a great deal from him. I shortened the mantra to “Find, follow, and simplify.” Whenever I found myself overthinking a case, I would bring that thought to the forefront and go from there. I guess it could be called the Occam’s Razor of crime investigating; that is, the simplest solution tends to be the right one.
Everyone on the force was issued a nickname or two at some point in his or her career. Of course, given his surname, Billy’s were “Izzy” and “Notso.” He was a good sport and never complained. In fact, his high case clearance percentage and uncanny police work insights made those nicknames quite ludicrous.
Being named Dan Deckler, my nicknames naturally were “Double-D” or “DD,” which was occasionally shortened from two syllables to one, pronounced “DEED.”
But to me he was always Billy. When he made captain, I addressed him by his rank per professional protocol. He allowed it in the precinct atmosphere and when we were with subordinate officers but when it was just us he was still Billy.
~~~
I mentioned my “retirement” and I should clarify. True enough, I indeed had officially retired from the NYPD. I got a nice sendoff including a roasting from my fellow detectives and officers and the requisite gold watch (which was not really gold). Ironically, I was anticipating my retirement as being “watchless” since time would no longer be important to me. I longed for the days I could sleep in all the way to seven (big whoop!) and do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted with my dear wife without knowing or needing to know the time.
The hours, stress, and heartache that accompanied being a homicide detective in a city the size and diversity of New York had taken a heavy toll on me. I was finding it more difficult to sleep. Over the years I had seen things I just couldn’t unsee. Many believe a hardened homicide cop has ice water for blood and just sees death as being all in a day’s work.
Not the case at all.
True, to objectively “find, follow, and simplify” you have to detach and keep case circumstances from becoming personal. But we’re human and that’s very difficult to do when cases involve kids, women beaten to death by abusive husbands and boyfriends, and people killed in brutal ways.
I was taking too many Extra Strength Tylenols to fight the constant headaches. Thankfully I didn’t smoke, but I made up for it with a steady intake of caffeine in various forms, which probably accounted for the headaches caused by caffeine withdrawal, followed by caffeine intake, followed by … you get the picture. The intake was usually in the form of black coffee, of course, chocolate of any kind (usually ice cream, peanut M&Ms, or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups), and an endless line of Royal Crown Colas. You had to be a New Yorker to appreciate RC Colas. Pepsi and Coke paled in comparison when it came to delivering a good jolt. I never could handle Red Bull or those other energy drinks. An RC would do the trick.
So retirement beckoned. I wanted to kick back and spend more time with Jen, my wife of forty-seven years. We had no children but not for the lack of trying. When we determined that I was the culprit (I was shooting blanks) Jen shrugged it off and just said it was not to be. We had each other and that was enough for her. How was I so fortunate? I knew that one of the great unsolved mysteries of all time was how I had ever convinced Jennifer Unger, the finest woman on the planet, to marry me. Once at a New Year’s Eve party, Billy draped an arm over my shoulder and said, “DD, I look at Jen, then I look at you, and I just scratch my head.” I could never disagree because I felt the same way. I had definitely married up.
Jen was not classically beautiful and certainly not stunningly sultry but she had an appeal that was impossible to ignore. There was just something about her that made me want to be around her. She had a look about her that always seemed about to turn into a smile and often did. Her warmth and beauty
as a person knew no bounds. In all our years together I cannot recall anyone that she ever encountered who did not take to her. She just had an uncanny ability to connect with people and make them feel they somehow knew her. She simply was a good person.
So, no children and no real desire to adopt, thus no grandchildren. I was an only child so I would be the end of this particular line of Decklers. Jen did have an older sister, Lucy, who lived alone in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, Lucy was crazy. Now, I don’t mean she was slightly “off bubble” and that she did and said odd things. She was actually certifiably crazy.
One freezing December night our phone rang. It was Lucy. Once a week for the previous five consecutive weeks she had been exhibiting increasingly bizarre behavior. It was nothing outrageously serious but strange enough to get our attention because each succeeding episode was a bit worse than the previous ones. They escalated from her shutting off her electricity in late November because “the weather was so nice” and then nearly freezing to death, to the latest in which she came out of her apartment screaming at the mail carrier for “wearing that Nazi uniform.” She had followed him for several blocks until he called the cops.
Week number six’s episode found her standing in the street outside our Manhattan apartment building in her nightgown, a robe, and a pair of slippers. She called saying she wanted to come in for coffee. It was 2:15 a.m., twenty degrees, and snowing lightly. Jen had known Lucy had some emotional issues but she had never done anything quite this extreme. She took her sister inside and just loved her, gently trying to figure out what she was doing. As it turned out, Lucy had no idea how she had ended up at our building that December night. The last thing she had remembered was calling a cab. “But I did remember to bring my cell phone,” she said brightly. Jen and I exchanged “Oh shit, now what?” looks.
It had occurred to me that this was the sixth consecutive situation with Lucy in as many weeks, reinforcing my longtime belief from back in my surfing days that things happen in frequencies that lead up to seven, like waves in the ocean. I wondered what episode number seven had in store for Lucy, Jen, and me. I shook my head to clear the thought—it couldn’t really be, could it? Seven again?
The next day I did some research on Kendra’s Law, a New York law that allows courts to order certain mentally ill individuals be admitted to a facility for outpatient treatment. Among the law’s criteria are that the individual is a threat to harm “self or others” and is “unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision.” It pained Jen greatly to see her sister get committed to an institution but she knew it was necessary. She went forward out of love for Lucy, knowing it was best. Lucy was diagnosed with acute bipolar disorder and it was rapidly worsening to the point that she had to be sedated, restrained, and housed in a secure unit.
Two weeks later Lucy was found nonresponsive in her room. She had simply died. The medical staff could find no real causes outside of the fact that she just stopped living. Apparently one of her emotional dives had taken her down so low that she just gave up.
Number seven.
Jen was crushed and I decided it was time for me to spend more time with her. Retirement was the answer. I was ready, or so I thought.
Chapter 3: Ronnie Deveaux
I believe I could safely say with a high degree of certainty that I was the only homicide detective on the planet with a partner named Ronika (pronounced RohNEEka, with a long o).
It’s unusual enough, but not unheard of, for a male detective to have a female partner. But to have one named Ronika? I don’t think so. Ronnie? Yeah, sure. There have been plenty of partners named Ronnie, which was how she was known to all of us. But I’d bet a quarter—and I usually only bet a dime—that all the other Ronnies were actually named Ronald. Okay, maybe a couple of Veronicas may possibly have been sprinkled in as Ronnies, but I defy anyone to find me another homicide cop named Ronika.
More than once I’ve asked her about her name’s national origin. The answer was sometimes Jamaican, sometimes Haitian, sometimes Cuban, and I can remember one time she said it was Dominican. She always had a twinkle in her eye when answering and I believed she enjoyed keeping us in the dark. I didn’t believe Cuban, and I don’t know why. I leaned toward Haitian because of the French sound of her name. Hey, I am a detective! I did know; rather, I was fairly sure I knew that she had a younger brother. She never mentioned his name or where he lived or even if he was in this country. In telling this I just realized that I never really found out any significant personal information about her at all.
Physically, she was a stunner. At six feet she was as tall or taller than half of the guys in the precinct. More than once I was asked if her legs went all the way up. I just winked knowingly in reply, not that I ever would know how high up they did go. While we were good friends, our relationship was always professional. She wasn’t exactly slim but certainly not anything near overweight. She had just enough on her bones to nicely fill out whatever she was wearing, which was usually jeans and a T-shirt with some sort of message mostly covered by a denim jacket.
Most of her T-shirt messages could be categorized as clever like I HATE BEING BIPOLAR … IT’S AWESOME! However, she could get a little mischievous. I remember once her jacket covered most of her T-shirt and all I could see of the message was a double arrow pointing left and right with HT in red next to one arrow point and LE in green next to the other, the open jacket strategically covering the rest of the message.
“Okay, Ronnie. I’ll bite. What’s your T-shirt say this morning?”
She grinned playfully and held open the jacket revealing a red RIGHT and a green LEFT at either end of a bright yellow double arrow. Of course the words were nicely distorted over the curves of her breasts. For you Seinfeld fans, I channeled my inner Seinfeld, thinking that they looked both real and spectacular. (Check out YouTube “Seinfeld real and spectacular” for clarification on this.)
“Ah, I see they have names. What about the colors?”
She laughed. “Go! Caution! Stop!”
I nodded, gave myself a mental head slap, and said stupidly, “Ah, yes.” We both had a laugh as I reluctantly averted my eyes. We were partners, after all.
Her skin was dark chocolate and her hair so deep brown it looked black. Usually it was in modest braids. Her black eyes could bore holes into a perp unfortunate to enough to be interrogated by her and then they could turn to soft caramel when she smiled.
Her accent was definitely Caribbean but I could not pin it down any further than that. I should add here that her accent, while being somewhat seductive, made her a very effective interrogator. When interviewing a suspect, the interviewee was immediately disarmed by the way the words rolled off her tongue. She could be suggesting the perp was a cold-blooded baby killer (the perp was cold blooded, not the baby) but the tone with which it came out made him feel like she was asking him if he wanted to share a joint.
For example, if during an interrogation we were using the good cop/bad cop routine in which I was bad cop and she was good cop, she might lean across the table close to the perp’s face with that disarming smile full of perfect white teeth and those huge black eyes of hers. After a pregnant pause she’d say, “Come on now, why not do us a favor and just tell us why you stuck the knife into your wife’s neck?” But what the perp might have heard in that gentle rolling island accent was, “Come on now, sweet mon, doo yourself a favor and just relax while I roll one for us, you know, just to help you ‘splain what hoppened, mon.”
Before he knew it, he was imagining he was kicking back on a white sand beach toking away on a doobie, easily spilling his guts to this brown-skinned beauty. “Yeah, the bitch had it comin’, ya know, screwing my brother behind my back. Hey, what did you say your name was? Can I have another hit?” Then she would zero in, slide the accusatory stiletto between his ribs, and he was toast.
~~~
This would be a good time to try to explain the dynamics of police partners’ relationships.
Partnerships in the police exceed any normal boundaries one would expect of a working relationship. They are based on trust, which generally blossoms into friendship. Your partner is someone in whose professional life you are involved and who is involved in yours. The relationship is utterly mutual and, unless it’s a rare instance where an experienced detective is teamed with a rookie, it is not one of leader and follower but of mutual peer respect. You are assigned your partner and that person remains your partner until one of you leaves or dies. I know that sounds like a marriage vow, and to some degree it is, but without “the benefits.” Asking to switch partners just because you don’t like him or her just is not done.
The main reason for pairing detectives is the amount of work associated with major cases. They have to share tracking down leads, speaking with a victim’s family, interviewing witnesses and suspects, making arrests, conducting photo lineups, and ultimately preparing a case for trial.
As a team, their detecting approaches cover every angle and, as a result, cases get closed more quickly and more frequently. Each partner’s investigative approaches will likely be unique. One might see something the other missed or take a line of questioning that the other did not think of. One might be more sympathetic and patient with perps and suspects while the other more direct and in your face, the classic good cop/bad cop approach.
