Falling Back to One

by Randy Mason

  This was not the first of Sergeant Kelly’s “experiments” Miss Gutierrez had participated in. There had been three children prior to this, and, in each placement, she’d played an integral role. All had been boys a few years younger than Micki, and each had finished all or most of his time before going to live with a solid, double-parent family: a cop and his wife who were eager to have the child. Of course, trying to place Micki in such a home would’ve been difficult. Compared to those boys, she’d been much more violent and had racked up a hefty rap sheet in an incredibly short period of time. In addition, her behavior in juvi attested to more than the usual difficulty with authority figures.

  But Sergeant Kelly was adamant Micki could be straightened out, and, in some ways, Miss Gutierrez could understand why. For she’d read the assessments provided by the psychiatrists—the very assessments used to sway the judge to reconsider the disposition of Micki’s case. Yet, compelling as they were, Miss Gutierrez had initially refused to get involved because of the duplicity required; namely, hiding from Baker that Micki was a girl. It wasn’t until Sergeant Kelly had fully revealed the complicating circumstances—the jeopardy Micki was in at Heyden—that Miss Gutierrez had finally acquiesced. Nonetheless, the arguments against doing so had weighed heavily on her for days, leaving her feeling guilty as though she were conspiring to commit a crime. But when all was said and done, it had seemed the lesser of two evils.

  In hindsight, she regretted not having talked to Micki while she was still incarcerated in Heyden. But taking the lengthy trip upstate had seemed like a waste of time when she’d have had no input anyway—especially when other, more-pressing cases had been demanding her attention. But now, after meeting the girl, the unorthodoxy of the arrangement was especially troubling. She considered it highly inappropriate for Micki to be living on her own. The teen had hardly begun serving the time to which she’d been sentenced when here she was with too much independence and not nearly enough supervision. And no love.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  THEY WALKED AROUND THE neighborhood so Micki could orient herself. Right on the corner was a subway station, and Miss Gutierrez pointed out the supermarket and drugstore across from each other on Twenty-First Street. West on Forty-Fourth Drive, one long block down, was a Laundromat. Through an open doorway, the scent of bleach and detergent flowed out on a steady stream of superheated air.

  They returned to Twenty-First Street and went north, into the bank where Micki’s accounts would be. Since all of the prerequisite paperwork had been taken care of, the only thing needed was Micki’s signature. To get her started, five dollars had been deposited into both checking and savings; the first month’s rent had been paid in full. When Miss Gutierrez gave her twenty dollars in cash for groceries and other immediate necessities, Micki folded the two ten-dollar bills, then rubbed them between her fingers. And began to sweat. Until now, the only time she’d ever had any real money on hand was when she’d been about to score a fix. Overcome with nausea, she slipped the bills into her pocket and gripped the new bankbooks tightly. Then shuddered.

  “Are you okay?” Miss Gutierrez asked.

  “Yeah, fine,” Micki said. “Just cold. Y’know, the air conditioning.”

  The bank manager, rambling on as if neither Micki nor the social worker had said a word, was warning about bounced checks, account fees, and the proper way to use a transaction register. With an anxious little smile, she said, “Well, that’s about it. Any questions?”

  Back outside, the clouds had totally disappeared, and the sun was beating down as if it were already noon. Micki wanted to return to her apartment and lie down for a while. Instead, they went back to Fourty-Fourth Drive and headed east to Bel Canto, where Micki would be employed as a dishwasher, the same job she’d had at Heyden. Located in the shadow of the elevated IRT tracks, the small Italian eatery was tucked away in what seemed a most unlikely place, its scalloped awning the sole projection over the sidewalk. When Miss Gutierrez had first called upon the owner, Mr. Antonelli, about hiring Micki in some capacity, he’d declined, saying he’d worked hard to create a respectable establishment. Only after it was agreed he could pay her considerably less than minimum wage did he relent. He was the only businessman in the area who’d even considered giving her a job.

  The number 7 train thundered overhead as they approached, leaving a trembling silence in its wake. The door was locked, and, when they knocked, Mr. Antonelli himself came to answer. A short, round man with jet-black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, he was wearing a chef’s apron—stained with splotches of red sauce—over a sweaty white undershirt and black suit trousers. Looking frazzled, his voice sounded small and distant as he yelled through the heavy glass door in an extremely thick Italian accent, “We-a closed-a! Eleven-thirty you come-a back-a for lunch-a.”

  Before he could turn away, Miss Gutierrez—shouting—explained who they were. His entire face lit up. He immediately unlocked the door, and a wave of cool air washed over them, bringing with it an incredible aroma of marinara sauce and baking dough. As he welcomed them inside, Micki’s mouth watered and her stomach grumbled.

  The little man took Miss Gutierrez’s hand in both of his. “Now-a I remember who-a you are-a! Oh, you don’t-a know how happy I am-a to see you! Tyrone supposed to work-a today—the double shift, his-a last day-a. But he call and-a say he no come in-a. And-a Juan-a, the other dish-a-washer, he no answer his-a phone-a. So I wash-a the dishes myself-a. Oh, is-a good to see you. Very good-a!”

  Micki realized he meant to put her to work right away. It wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind, but the little man could barely contain himself. She looked at the social worker—doing this would probably make a good impression on Miss Gutierrez. And it would definitely help take her own mind off the money in her pocket. Clean for only two months—all of it spent on the inside—she was no longer so sure she could handle her freedom.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  THE ICE CUBES CLINKED lightly as Baker swirled the nearly empty, oversized rocks glass, the newly opened bottle of whiskey waiting to be unburdened for the fifth time. After but a moment’s hesitation, he freshened his drink, then slumped back into the upright recliner, low on his spine, long legs out before him.

  The only light in the room came from the TV; the only sounds, the hum of the fan and the late-night traffic on the streets below. Eyes glazed, he stared at the changing, silent images on the screen: NBC’s version of the eleven o’clock news. Even with the sound off, it was depressing. He took a long drink, then glanced down over his shoulder at Micki’s folder on the floor, the papers lying inside it in a sloppy pile. What a fucking mess he’d gotten himself into.

  When he’d refused to voluntarily see the department shrink, they’d forced him to go, but he’d been so completely uncooperative, the weasel-faced jerk had finally admitted defeat and canceled his sessions—but not without getting the last laugh. For it was the shrink who’d spotted Sergeant Kelly’s flyer and suggested to Captain Malone that this might work as a form of “interactive therapy” for Baker. Dr. Tillim insisted this was a valid—though experimental—therapeutic approach, insisted he was sincerely concerned for Baker’s well-being. But Baker believed Tillim was simply trying to justify his paycheck. The man probably had nothing better to do than sit around his office all day, reading books and cooking up ridiculous schemes like this one.

  Though department policy encouraged cops to seek help if they felt depressed or like their lives were out of control, if you actually did, you were branded with a stigma that forever tainted what was left of your career. So no one went to a shrink of their own free will. Instead, they merely coped however best they could. Every now and then, some poor schmuck ate his gun.

  And while Baker was well aware that he’d become more physically aggressive on the job, he found nothing wrong with it. At least not now. When he’d first started on the force, he would’ve looked at things a l
ot differently. Back then he’d done everything by the book, had believed in the system. He’d also believed he could really make a difference on the streets. It was hard not to laugh at how idealistic he’d been: James Baker, Lone Ranger of the NYPD. But that had been twelve and a half years ago—1962. Kennedy had been president and man had yet to set foot on the moon. A lifetime ago.

  Christ! Some truck driver wouldn’t stop leaning on his horn. Baker got up and slammed the window shut. Then he finished his drink and poured another.

  Settled in the recliner again, he drew a heavy sigh. Those early years on the job may have been the best years of his life. Sharp and eager to please, his career had gotten off to an impressive start, and it wasn’t long till he’d made detective. When he’d chosen to take the test, a cordial rapport with the brass and an excellent record had just as quickly made him a sergeant. And, in due course, he earned a promotion to detective second grade. But with the city falling on harder times, the crime rate was steadily rising, and he’d grown tired of all the corruption around him. His tolerance for departmental politics waned while his sense of being impotent to effect any real change grew. Legal technicalities, plea bargains, and minimal sentencing due to prison overcrowding meant most of the garbage he busted was back on the street in what seemed like no time at all. And they laughed in his face when he brought them in again. The worst were the juveniles, processed through an outdated system that provided no more than a slap on the wrist for even the most violent of crimes.

  Eventually he was dishing out some punishment on his own. An unconscious decision at first, he’d started small. But as time went on, things escalated. After a while, he was doing whatever he could get away with, especially when there were no witnesses around. His partner never participated, yet rarely intervened, lips loyally sealed. But accusations were made. And though all of the Civilian Complaint Review Board’s rulings were in Baker’s favor—either exonerating him or finding the grievances unfounded or unsubstantiated—IAD started noticing a pattern. By the time Baker had broken that punk’s jaw, he’d already been the subject of a preliminary investigation. Which turned that one little episode into a big mistake—a really big mistake.

  Daryl Cole, a twenty-year-old junkie, had aroused Baker’s suspicions because he ran when he saw Baker coming down the street. Arrested twice before by Baker—once for narcotics possession and once for armed robbery—Cole had walked on the first arrest because of a technicality and pleaded down to third-degree weapons possession on the second. In the end, he’d spent a grand total of nineteen months behind bars.

  When Baker searched him on this occasion, he found jewelry, not drugs, in the boy’s pockets—jewelry the boy claimed his mother had given him to sell. But Baker knew Mrs. Cole to be a deeply religious woman. Distraught over her son’s drug habit, she would never have given him anything to support it. Baker and his partner took Cole into custody, then went to his mother’s apartment to check out his story. There they found the large black woman lying dead in a pool of blood, three stab wounds to the back.

  Though they tried to get a confession, Cole, after waiving his rights, would admit to nothing. Instead he laughed and said, “Who the fuck cares? The stupid bitch deserved to die.” Baker then lifted him out of his chair and slammed him into the wall with such force that his head snapped back hard against it. After which Cole called Baker a pig and spit in his face. This animal that had killed his own mother for drug money had spit in his face. Baker’s fist connected solidly with Cole’s jaw before his partner pulled him off, the two of them immediately concocting a story. And though Internal Affairs knew they were both full of it, they couldn’t prove anything.

  The public defender eventually made an appearance to smugly pronounce that “Mr. Cole’s” rights had been severely violated; charges of assault and unlawful arrest would be filed against Baker. The pompous little ass virtually waxed poetic as he went into detail regarding the travesties of justice perpetrated against his client at the hands of the police. He planned to file a motion throwing out the murder charge on grounds that the initial search had lacked probable cause, had been purely the result of a personal vendetta. There would then be no remaining evidence to link Cole to his mother’s murder: the weapon had never been recovered; the jewelry would be excluded as “fruit of the poisonous tree.”

  The assistant DA struck a deal: if charges against Baker were dropped, Cole could plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter with a sentence of five to fifteen years. It was unlikely Cole would serve much more than four.

  Placed on restricted duty, Baker’s drinking increased and his rage grew darker. But Captain Malone—calling in some heavy markers—short-circuited the Internal Affairs investigation and managed to get Baker’s full-duty status restored. The commissioner made it explicitly clear, however, that this was in name only: before returning to his squad, Baker would have to successfully complete Dr. Tillim’s “treatment.” When Baker had started to object, Malone had shot him a lethal look while the commissioner—his tone noticeably colder—had stated the terms were non-negotiable.

  Baker drained his glass and poured another. He should’ve just stayed in law school. A summa cum laude graduate of an Ivy League university, he’d gone on to study law without giving it much thought. Fighting for justice had always appealed to him. And despite the low pay, he’d wanted to work in the district attorney’s office, going after criminals and putting them away. But law school had involved a brutal amount of reading, paper writing, and exams. And having had his fill of academia by then, he’d been restless. When he’d stopped to consider the excruciatingly slow process of the criminal courts—and a system that appeared to bend over backward protecting the rights of criminals—he’d decided to cut his losses, leave school, and pursue something more immediately gratifying: he became a cop.

  Being on the front lines with the power to arrest someone—stand up for the victim, right then and there—was an incredible rush. And yet some of the very same issues that had caused him to leave a career in law behind had led to much of his frustration and disillusionment with police work. Maybe what he really should’ve done was follow his dream and become a writer. But he hadn’t written anything in years. Hadn’t even tried.

  He got up and turned on a light, then shut off the TV and pictured the guys hanging out in the squad room. He missed the job and working the streets, missed working with his partner—or rather, ex-partner by now. Instead, he was stuck heading security inside a large public high school that was overcrowded and difficult to fully monitor. With a student enrollment of nearly thirty-five hundred, the school was on a split but overlapping session. Yet he had a staff of only ten: six men and four women. Three of them—Bill Warner, Denny Marino, and Jack Jamison—served as his assistants.

  Warner, who’d be working the early shift with him, seemed like a solid enough, straight-up guy. A former competitive weight lifter, he was taking night classes to finish his Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Marino, however, was another matter. After being rejected for the police academy two years earlier, he’d signed on for this. Always quick with a lewd comment or gesture, he tried to make everything into a joke. If Baker had had his way, one of the women—Angela Love—would’ve been chosen in his place. And though Marino seemed to annoy Jamison the most, Jamison had yet to object to working second shift with him. Then again, Jamison wasn’t much of a talker. In all the time they’d been working together to ready the school for opening, the tall, rangy black man—an honors graduate of Kings College—had said nothing more personal than, “I never read the newspaper in the morning,” this big declaration in response to the copy of the New York Post Marino had offered him.

  Baker went back to the recliner, downed the rest of his drink and set the sweating glass of melting ice cubes on top of Micki’s folder, creating a fresh wet ring to join the others already there. Full of material from both the NYPD and the Department of Corrections, the file had t
aken quite a while to get through, but what had interested him most was the report relating to the homicide. The victim, Andrew “Speed” Davis, had been a six-foot-two, 258-pound Caucasian male, age twenty-six. He’d served time twice for dealing drugs, and the autopsy had shown traces of cocaine and alcohol in his system. According to Micki’s statement, she’d used his own switchblade knife against him after he’d attacked her with it. His alleged motive? That he blamed her when Tim—his childhood friend and her “big brother”—had gotten shot. But Baker thought the report was thin and the self-defense scenario suspect despite the evidence to support it—namely, the victim’s own fingerprints on the knife. As far as Baker was concerned, Micki was guilty. Because he wanted her to be guilty.

  As for the other charges leveled against her, Micki had, in fact, pleaded guilty to all of them. That, and a remorseful attitude, had gone a long way in the state’s acceptance of her explanation of Davis’ death—the critical factor in the decision to process her as a juvenile. When the doctors who’d treated her in the hospital could only guess at her age—somewhere between sixteen and eighteen—the state had settled on seventeen so she could be placed in Heyden Reformatory for Girls and remain in the custody of the Division for Youth. After a year, she would then be reevaluated to determine if—or for how long—she’d be sentenced to an adult institution.