by Fred Galvin
Two things are unique to the working days (and often nights) of a detective: The job is ninety percent boredom and ten percent adrenaline-fueled excitement and terror and the boredom may turn to the excitement and terror very quickly and unexpectedly. No other working relationship has to cope with these two stress generators, which is why the bond between the individuals can be so strong and enduring.
Watch enough TV and movies and you’ll think that detectives always work in pairs. That’s because it’s less compelling to watch a single person investigate a crime, interview witnesses, look for evidence, and nab the bad guys. Having a second detective allows the two TV or movie characters to have dialogue and play off of each other. The viewers can get an insight into what these professionals are thinking. Also, it establishes conflict between the smart one and the dumb one, the coarse cop and the genteel cop, the veteran and the rookie, the good cop and the bad cop.
Some favorite examples of detective partnerships come to mind. These include Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson from Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson from Elementary, and Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder from The Killing.
Those old enough to remember Joe Friday and Frank Smith from Dragnet will recall “My name’s Friday. I carry a badge. It was a hot Wednesday. My partner Frank and I were working the day shift in Homicide Division when the call came in from south LA … ”
And my personal favorites, Maddie Hayes and David Addison from Moonlighting. The Anselmo Case was never solved and remains a mystery to this day.
I digress, sorry.
Ronnie Deveaux was my partner for twelve years. Most people picture cop partners as riding together in a squad car and having each other’s backs in difficult situations. True enough, but that barely scratches the surface, especially when it comes to detective partners, especially homicide detective partners.
In reality, many departments deploy detectives singly, while just as many utilize pairs. In those that do, most notably the LAPD and the NYPD, there has to be considerable trust and confidence between partners if they’re going to be effective over the long term. They rely on one another for protection and assistance. If one of them messes up in a major way, that partner needs to come clean to the other in order to maintain that trust and confidence. Almost from the start of our time together, Ronnie and I had that total trust. It seemed automatic.
We also had an understanding that neither one of us would ever hesitate to question or disagree with the other’s theories or opinions about which way an investigation was heading, whether to enlightenment or down a rabbit hole. That was critical to our success.
We called one of our methods “forest and trees.” As you can probably imagine, if either of us called “forest and trees” it meant the other was too close to the case and couldn’t see the forest because all the trees were getting in the way. In other words, take a few steps back, detach, and view the case from a more distant perspective.
For example, if Ronnie felt that perhaps I was becoming biased in my casework, maybe because of a level of personal involvement to some degree, she would suggest we go for a drink or a quick bite to eat in some environment where we could disengage from the case. This was common among detective teams. Sometimes you just had to fall back a bit and shake your shoulders loose of the knots that form due to stress. Ronnie and I would clink our beer bottle necks and nod a silent toast. In her Haitian/Dominican/Jamaican/whatever accent she would say, “Dan,” (when she called me Dan rather than DD I knew something serious was coming), “I’ve been thinking and I have to call ‘forest and trees’ on this one, mon.” Our rule was that when “forest and trees” was called on you, you had to be patient, not overreact, not become instantly defensive, and listen.
So I would sit back and smile because I knew inside that whatever she was about to say was probably right, as it almost always was, and let my body language say, “Okay, bring it on. Let’s talk about it. I’m ready.”
~~~
After twelve years together, I certainly knew Ronnie better than anyone else in the precinct house. The other officers, detectives, and senior-ranked personnel all wondered about this Caribbean beauty who had a reputation for breaking down perps and suspects during interrogations and for her uncanny abilities to crack difficult cases—with her partner’s help, of course.
She wasn’t married and, as far as I knew, did not have a love interest. Some in the house believed she was gay but I never did. I’m not sure why or how I knew; it was just a vibe she gave off. She could be very sultry one minute and very dominant the next. She made plenty of offhand comments with sexual innuendos, as we all did, and all of hers were of the straight variety. She could hold her own with the best.
Once we were doing the good cop/bad cop thing (I was bad cop) with a suspect who was young, handsome, blond, well built, and had icy blue eyes. I was bad cop and I finished my part of the interrogation in his face with, “You know Josef,” (pronouncing his name “Yosef” to mock his German accent), “you just know you’re going down for this, right asshole? Your prints are on the murder weapon and your alibi doesn’t pass the stink test.”
Ronnie theatrically put her hand on my forearm as if to restrain me from coming across the table, and said in her quiet Caribbean-accented way, “It’s okay, Dan, I think he gets it. You do get it, don’t you Mr. Weiss?” She urged me back and moved in to take my place. “Dan, why don’t you take a break.” Our script then called for me to make a reluctant exit while breathing heavily and slamming the interrogation room door as I left. She then turned her attention—and her huge brown eyes—to the perp with a heavy sigh. “Don’t mind him, Mr. Weiss. He sometimes gets a little too emotional. Now, let’s talk this through and see if we can’t help each other out.” Her eyebrows went up. “Maybe we can come to some kind of understanding, yeah?” By the time the interview ended, she had a confession in return for a promise that she will “talk to the judge.” It seemed Mr. Weiss had decided to talk without a lawyer present and he implicated not only himself, but a couple of his cronies as well. He believed this would get him off the hook, which, of course, Ronnie had merely implied but never promised. Idiot.
Now back to my point about her sexual orientation. When she came out of the interrogation room she was fanning herself with her hand as women do after an encounter with a particularly sexy man. I grinned at her. “Well good cop, how’d it go? Do you have a dinner date?”
She just breezed past me saying, exaggerating her accent, “I got the confession easy enough mon, sure, but I tell you mon, I wouldn’t have minded having to squeeeeeze it out of him. Know what I mean, mon?” Definitely not gay. But I have to say that as far as I could tell, she never had any serious love interests. She played her personal life very close to the vest.
If I asked her what she had planned for the weekend she maybe would hint that she may have something going on but never got specific. Usually her response was something like, “Oh, I’ll find some way to keep myself occupied.” Occasionally I’d mention that Jen and I would be broiling steaks and would love to have her over. I’d always leave it open that she could “bring along a friend” but on those occasions that she accepted the invitation she always came alone. If she socialized, I didn’t know where or with whom.
Ronnie was strong willed and hardworking, which showed in her case results. Yes, we were partners and worked cases as a team but she did more than just carry her weight. She had an uncanny ability to cut through the ancillary bullshit and focus on key evidence, identifying what was or was not important, and often speculate on a likely outcome very early in an investigation. However, she never drew biased conclusions. She followed the evidence logically for sure. Her gift was knowing which evidence was key and which could be put aside and then investigate accordingly.
I knew that some men in the precinct referred to her as “Dickless Tracy” but they knew better than to say it in my presence. Some believed, tongue in cheek, that she was able to crack difficult cases through the us
e of voodoo and I dare say, she did nothing to discourage that perception. If she did use voodoo I was all for it. Sometimes when we were close to breaking a case and needed a push to get us over the line I’d whisper to her conspiratorially, “Ronnie, it’s time for yoo too doo that voodoo that yoo doo so well.”
I followed her lead on many occasions. My major contributions to our casework were my methodical approach and my ability to pick up small details, either at crime scenes or during interrogations, and meld them into the overall picture of what had occurred. Between the two of us we missed nothing and seldom went down dead ends.
From a personality standpoint, she was sultry, strong willed, and had a brilliant command of sarcasm, sometimes to the point of the recipient not really being sure it was sarcasm. I consider myself a fairly decent purveyor of the sarcastic jab but I wasn’t in her league. Mine was quite direct. If one of our detectives came into work with a really bad shirt and tie combination, bad enough for even me to notice, I’d give him, “Jeez, Wayne, that looks like the dog’s lunch.” Or, “You must have dressed in the dark this morning.”
Ronnie would listen to someone offer some lame comment that made zero sense, wait the perfect couple of beats, shake her head, and offer with a gentle pat on the shoulder. “George, that’s brilliant. I never would have gone down that path.” Then a pause long enough for us to wait for the zinger. “Now you just keep taking those little tablets. You’ll be fine.” Then came a subtle eye roll only the rest of us could see. George was left to wonder something like, “Tablets? I don’t take any tablets. What’s she talking about?” Or, better yet, “How the hell does she know about my tablets?”
Neither Ronnie nor I smoked. It was very rare to team up a smoker and nonsmoker. However, I was a Royal Crown Cola chain-drinker. I had started drinking a couple of RCs every morning before my classes as an NYU undergrad and continued throughout each day such that I had a steady daily habit of eight to ten cans. Of course, the caffeine jolt was a requirement and I just liked the taste of a cold RC. Ronnie simply preferred water and plenty of it. She always seemed to have a water bottle nearby and she could certainly hold it. After drinking my second bottle or can of RC, I’d have to find a place to get rid of it but Ronnie must have had a significant holding tank in there somewhere.
“Jeez Ronnie, you’ve had two bottles of water in the last forty-five minutes. Don’t you ever have to pee?”
She’d turn to me with those eyes and that killer smile of perfect white teeth against her cocoa-brown face, “Why DD, how nice of you to keep count and to care. Thank you for your concern but I’m fine. But if you have to unload some of that vile soda you insist on ingesting then you go right ahead. You can use that empty RC bottle. I won’t watch.” I usually would rip an epic carbonated belch in response. You know the kind, one that would that come from deep down and come out your mouth and tickle your nose. Such rippers always made her laugh. “Good one!”
Ronnie said she became a cop because her father was a police officer “back home.” Whenever I asked where “back home” was all she said was “down in the islands.” When I asked her which islands, she replied with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, certainly not Long Island or Staten Island.” I knew better than to press further.
I have to mention one more thing about Ronika Deveaux. She was an insufferable Boston Red Sox fan. For the uninitiated, being a Red Sox fan in New York City, and especially in the NYPD, was a form of blasphemy—and an ugly form at that. Having a partner who rooted for the enemy during the baseball season was like having Darth Vader sitting next to me and rooting for the Empire to strike back. Now, putting Darth into an interrogation room as the bad cop could certainly have its benefits. Just imagine the perp’s eyes bugging out wide as the door opened and a seven-foot-tall black-caped Darth Vader entered the room with that loud breathing and a lightsaber in his hands saying in his James Earl Jones voice, “So, Tony. I understand you are denying planting Slick Rico’s feet in cement and escorting him to the East River. Would you care to reconsider your story?” as the lightsaber whooshed close to Tony’s nose.
Of course, I was Yankees through and through like most of the 7th. Sure, there were some Mets fans but even they hated the Red Sox. While I suspected Ronnie had gone over to the Dark Side just to push my buttons and those of most of the rest of the precinct, she did understand baseball in general and the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry in particular. She took pleasure in frequently mentioning how the Red Sox had come back from a three-games-to-none deficit to the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. They swept four straight games to get to the World Series and swept four more to beat the St. Louis Cardinals and break the dreaded Curse of the Bambino. Again, for the uninitiated, The Curse, as it was known in Bean Town, originated when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in during the 1919–1920 off-season. After the sale, the previously successful Red Sox failed to win a World Series title from 1919 to 2004, while the hated Yankees became one of the most successful franchises in sports history. I personally believe, along with most Yankees fans, that the Red Sox 2004 ALCS sweep was the lowest point in Yankees history. I still shudder when I think back on it.
Anyway, I digress.
Even given all of the above, I really didn’t know too much about her. As close as we were as partners, I was never able to really get close to her.
Sure, during downtimes when working cases (and remember I said detective work was ninety percent boredom so there were plenty of downtime opportunities) we would talk spontaneously to fill the voids. But whenever I looked back on those chats over our twelve years together, it seemed I did the majority of the talking. Don’t get me wrong, Ronnie wasn’t standoffish by any means. She did contribute to our discussions but she never got very far below the surface to any extent. She always managed to deflect or redirect our conversations away from her and usually toward me.
One such discussion occurred on a twenty-eight-degree December night while we were staking out an apartment building in the Baruch Houses complex. The Baruch is a series of seventeen apartment buildings of varying numbers of stories, in the shadows of the Williamsburg Bridge ramp on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The project was completed in 1959. It contained over 2,000 apartments on just twenty-seven acres and housed an astounding 5,400 people (quick math says that’s almost 200 people per acre, a typical New York statistic).
It was 9:45 p.m. Ronnie and I were parked on Baruch Drive on a corner at the head of a line of five cars across from the entrance to Building IX. We were waiting for the arrival or departure of one Alonzo Williams. He was our prime suspect in the murder of his girlfriend’s brother a week prior. We had received a tip that Alonzo was crashing at the Baruch with a fellow lowlife named Goldie Smithson to avoid Five-0, which is street speak for “the cops” (that would be us). We would have no trouble identifying Alonzo as he was six feet seven inches tall and tipped the scales at 190. He was lanky, lean, and mean and he always wore a Yankees ski hat.
We figured we could be there quite a while in my department Crown Vic. I had a small cooler with four cans of RC Cola. I had included a couple of cold packs and Ronnie had three bottles of water. I reached into the back seat, extracted an RC, and offered it to Ronnie knowing full well what her reaction would be.
“Now DD, you know I consider my body a temple and would no sooner put that tainted toilet water in it than I would battery acid.”
I feigned hurt and assumed my best hangdog posture. “Toilet water? Tainted, even? Ronnie, you cut me deeply. RC Cola is a New York staple.”
“Exactly! Made with the finest recycled Hudson River water. I shudder to imagine what your kidneys must think when they realize what’s heading their way.” Looking over her shoulder, “Do you have a portable dialysis machine back there next to your cooler?”
I conceded that was a good one and smiled. “Do you sit up at night to think of fresh insults for me, your loyal partner of so many years?”
She returned my smile and di
aled up the accent. “Oh, no, love. They just come upon me naturally. You’re such an easy target, mon.” I was hard-pressed to disagree. My dear Jen, who was in the Sarcasm Hall of Fame, frequently told me the same thing.
We sat quietly for a while, keeping eyes on the entrance to Building IX and the street. The usual foot traffic made its way in and out but with no sign of Alonzo’s Yankees ski hat. Ronnie could sit in silence indefinitely. So, as usual, I found it necessary to delve into some topic of discussion designed to find out a bit more about my enigmatic partner.
After three minutes I yawned and asked, “So, living alone I imagine you must watch a few movies or binge-watch Netflix, eh? Jen and I have over thirty shows in our Netflix queue. How about you?”
In typical fashion, my pitch was swung on and lined right back to me. “Really? Thirty? What are some of them?”
As usual, I stepped right in her trap. “Well, Jen loves Lily Tomlin’s character in Grace and Frankie, and we also watch Mindhunter, which is a good one about the start of the FBI’s profiling division. There’s Stranger Things, Black Mirror, several British shows that are usually murder mystery series, and—wait a minute. I asked you. Come on, spill. What’s in your queue?”
