Inside Job

by Levinson, Len

  He saw a sensible looking white man leaning against a wall, reading the Daily News.

  “Hey buddy,” Brody said, “I’ve never been here before and I don’t know where to go.”

  The guy pointed to one of the lines. “Over there.”

  The line had about twenty people in it. Brody got in back and waited, shuffling his feet around. The line didn’t seem to be moving. When he was in the Army he grew to hate lines, and here he was in one again. What a fucking drag. A young black man got in line behind him.

  “This the line you go to when you first come in here?” the black man asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess we’re gonna be here all day.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You get fired?”

  “I got laid off.”

  “I got fired. I was working as a dishwasher and the fucking restaurant went out of business.”

  Brody didn’t reply.

  “What did you do?” the black man said.

  “I was a cop.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “A city cop?”

  “Yeah.”

  The black man smiled. “Well, now you’re going to find out how the other half lives.”

  “Who needs to know?”

  “Maybe you do.”

  Brody turned away. When you’re down, everybody likes to give you the needle. If only the city didn’t go bankrupt. If only the politicians could have done their jobs right. They fucked up and put five thousand people on the street. An attractive white girl got in line and the black guy started talking to her. Bordy felt himself getting bugged. Finally he came to the front of the line. Behind the counter was a white man with a stony face and thick eyeglasses.

  “What can I do for you?” the man said.

  “I got laid off on Friday.”

  “Fill out this form and put it in the basket over there. Then sit down and wait for your name to be called.”

  Brody took the form and sat in one of the chairs that had a writing surface attached to the right arm. He took out a pen and read the questions. He hated to fill out forms. He should be in the East Bronx right now helping Shannon track down a burglar, or in the police lab downtown checking out fingerprints. He should be anywhere but here with all the losers.

  He wrote down his name, address, place of employment, length of employment, and all that jive. He hoped he wouldn’t have any trouble getting unemployment compensation because he only had a few thousand dollars in the bank and that wouldn’t go too far. When he finished the form he took it to the basket, dropped it in, and turned to go back to his chair, but somebody else had taken it. He spotted another empty chair, went to it, and sat down. He was between an old man who was sleeping and a Puerto Rican girl.

  The unemployed sat on wooden chairs in three-quarters of the room, and the bureaucrats sat behind desks in the other one-quarter. The bureaucrats joked with each other and seemed to be having a good time. Brody thought they were moving around too slowly. They’d didn’t give a shit how long they made people wait.

  “Got a light?” asked the Puerto Rican girl.

  Brody looked at her. She was pretty, with short black hair and a little too much weight. Cute though. “Sure.” He took out a book of matches from the Firehouse and lit her up.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.” She looked like she wanted to talk. She had beautiful brown eyes.

  “What did you used to do?” he asked.

  “I was a clerk in an office. How about you?”

  “I was a cop.”

  “A city cop?”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “Private cops.”

  “No, I was with the city. How come you lost your job?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m just making an excuse.”

  “No I won’t.”

  “I got fired because I wouldn’t come across for my boss.”

  “You could get him in a lot of trouble for that.”

  “Who’d believe me? There were no witnesses. He made sure of that. If I made any trouble he’s say I just invented the story because he fired me.”

  “Think it’ll be hard for you to get another job?”

  “I’m going to take typing and steno. If you know that you can get a job anywhere.”

  “I wish it’d be that easy for me.”

  She nodded sympathetically. “Yes, what can cops do except be cops?”

  “Not much.”

  “Maybe you can be a cop in another town, like in New Jersey.”

  “I’m going to check that out.”

  “You got a family?”

  “A wife and two kids.”

  “I guess it’s harder for a person like you. I still live at home. Don’t give up, though. You’ll get something.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Don’t think that way, because once you think you’re licked, you are. You’re a good-looking man, and you’ve got a nice way of talking. You won’t have any trouble.”

  There was something sincere and caring about her that made her very appealing to him. “What’s your name?”

  “Mary Velez. You?”

  “Mike Brody.”

  “An Irish cop, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I read in the paper that you old-time Irish cops aren’t happy with all the black and Puerto Rican cops they’ve got now.”

  “I guess we’re not. It’s not that we’re prejudiced or anything like that. We just don’t think they’re qualified. They’re getting the jobs just because they’re blacks.”

  “If you think that way, I guess I can’t say anything to change your mind.”

  “I guess you think I’m some kind of racist.”

  “You are, but that’s okay. I’m used to stuff like that. The point is that guys like you think other people are inferior to you, right?”

  “I don’t know what’s right anymore.”

  “Do you think you’re smarter than me?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You cops think we Puerto Ricans are all bums, but let me tell you that my parents are stricter than American parents. I have to be home by eleven o’clock every night except Saturday, and then it’s one in the morning.”

  He grinned. “A person can do a lot of fooling around before eleven o’clock.”

  She smiled back. “I know.”

  “Why don’t you and me get together and go to a movie sometime?”

  “I thought you said you’re married.”

  “My wife and I don’t even speak to each other anymore.”

  “She doesn’t understand you, right?” There was a mocking tone in her voice.

  “Right.”

  “I don’t go out with married men.”

  “Why are you so prejudiced against married men? We’re people too.”

  “ You’re married people.”

  He suddenly felt very sad. “I’m very lonely,” he said.

  She looked at him closely. “Are you?”

  “I really am.”

  She looked skeptical. “You must have a lot of friends.”

  “I’ve got guys who buy me drinks, and girls I can sleep with, but there’s nobody I’m really close to. You feel like shit when you’re out of work and there’s no place you can turn.”

  She thought for a few moments. “Okay, you can talk to me sometimes if you want, but no funny business.” He reached into her purse, took out paper and pencil, wrote down her phone number, and gave it to him.

  He looked at it and put it in his pocket.

  “Velez!”

  “That’s me,” she said to Brody as she stood up. “Well, good luck.”

  “You too.”

  She walked toward the desks, and he felt a rise of lust. If the guys at the Nineteenth Precinct saw him looking at a Puerto Rican girl that way, they’d never let him live it down. Although every one of them would probably want to get her alone in the sack
too. He saw her sit at a desk and be interviewed by a guy who looked like an owl. She was a good kid. When she left, she waved goodbye to him.

  Finally his name was called by a heavyset black woman with glasses. She was somewhere in the high fifties. He sat beside her desk and she looked over his form.

  “A New York policeman, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s really terrible what’s been happening to city employees.”

  “It’s always the working guy who gets it in the neck.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” She took another form and wrote on it. “How much was your salary?”

  “Fifteen thousand, six hundred dollars a year.”

  “And you’re married, huh?”

  “Yuh.”

  She wrote some more on the form, tore off its bottom, and gave it to him along with a little booklet. “It’ll take a few weeks before you get your first check, but come here every Monday at three-thirty in the afternoon to sign in. You’re supposed to be looking for work, so be prepared to tell where you’ve been and what happened. If you’re offered a job, you’re supposed to take it even though it might not be what you want. They’re very fussy about that.” She smiled. “That’s all. Good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  He arose and walked out of the unemployment office. On the sidewalk, he wondered if he ever could be happy with a job that wasn’t in the N.Y.P.D. He became aware that he was shuffling with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched over, just like all the losers in the unemployment office. He straightened up and started walking like a soldier. I’m not in the garbage can yet, he told himself, trying to bolster his courage. I’ll get a job somewhere.

  Chapter Eight

  Brody rode out to Oakville, Long Island on the noisy clanking Long Island Railroad. He wore a blue suit, shirt, and tie under a black topcoat. He had shaved carefully and trimmed his fingernails. Shannon had called to say he’d heard about an opening in the Oakville Police Department. Brody was going to apply for the job. He even got a haircut.

  The train stopped at the train station and Brody stepped off into a world much different from New York City. There were no tall buildings and you could actually see the sky. The worst thing that probably happened in a town like this was some guy getting drunk on Saturday night. Being a cop in a town like this would be duck soup for a New York cop. He could handle the job with his eyes shut.

  He took a cab to the police station (the town only had one), and went inside. There was an old sergeant at the desk and a bunch of uniformed cops hanging around. They didn’t look too sharp to Brody. It was like the fucking boy scouts except that some of the cops were very old. He would hate to have one of these guys as his partner in a shoot-out situation. He walked up to the desk sergeant.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m Michael Brody and I have an appointment to see Chief Wainwright.”

  “Have a seat.”

  Brody sat on one of the benches near the wall, feeling like an alien, and it wasn’t a good feeling. He liked to be one of the boys, but that little pleasure had been taken from him along with his job. He knew what these cops thought when they looked at him: What does this fucking clown want?

  “Brody?” said the desk sergeant.

  “Yes?” He stood up.

  “Chief Wainwright will see you now. He’s at the end of that corridor there.”

  Brody walked down the wood-paneled corridor that smelled of cigar smoke. At the end was a door and a sign that said: CHIEF OF POLICE. He knocked on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Brody entered an office that was eight times larger than Inspector Levinson’s. Behind the desk was a stout man wearing a vest. He looked like he belonged on a barstool. They exchanged greetings, shook hands, and Brody sat down.

  “Maybe I should tell you right off,” Wainwright said, “that I’ve had a hundred and fifty applicants for the job already, all of them from New York cops who just got laid off. You’re up against a lot of competition. You got a resume with you?”

  “Yes sir.” Brody took it out of the inner pocket of his suit. He’d typed it, using the hunt and peck system, on a typewriter belonging to the wife of one of his friends.

  Wainwright looked it over, nodding his head.” Looks good,” he said. “Looks damn good. And you were in Vietnam, too. What branch?”

  “Infantry.”

  “See any action?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any decorations?”

  “Two silver stars and one Purple Heart.”

  “You should’ve put that on your resume. It makes a difference.”

  “I guess so.”

  Wainwright dropped the resume and leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’ll be honest with you. I’m seeing you because Shannon asked me to, but I’m afraid I can’t give you very much encouragement. You see, not only have a hundred and forty-nine other New York cops applied for the job, but the people out here don’t seem to want New York cops in their police department. They don’t trust New York cops. They think you’re all taking graft and are as crooked as the ace of spades. They think we ought to hire local boys, even though the locals don’t have much of an idea of what it is to be a cop, and a guy like you could run circles around them. I don’t want to discourage you, but you ought to know the truth. Most small town police departments are the same way. They don’t trust New York cops, and that’s all there is to it. If you moved to this town and lived here a few years, it’d be different, but I can’t really encourage you to do that. I mean, you might be able to find something in New York a lot easier. Did you ever think of working for one of those private agencies in New York?”

  “Yeah, but only as a last resort.”

  Wainwright smiled. “Beggars can’t be choosers, Brody.”

  Brody smiled back, but in his heart he thought, I’m not a beggar, you cocksucker.

  Chapter Nine

  The offices of the Tucker Protection Agency were located in a modern new office building on 57th Street just east of Fifth Avenue. Brody stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the vast expanse of curving glass that was considered an architectural marvel by some, and an eyesore by others. He thought it looked pretty good. Pedestrians passed him on the sidewalk, the men carrying attaché cases and dressed in suits and topcoats, the women sleek as foxes and dressed in high fashion uptown style. Brody felt like he didn’t belong here, like he was an intruder, and felt jealous of these people, many of whom had jobs in the neighborhood. It’s funny how you feel when you have a job. You think that everybody else has a job too, and those that don’t are bums who aren’t trying hard enough. But Brody had been interviewed at a dozen police departments from New Jersey to Westchester County to Long Island, and had come up with zilch. Now he was trying his first private agency, and dreaded doing it, because he and other regular cops considered them jokes.

  A N.Y.P.D. patrol car passed by on 57th Street, and Brody felt a deep longing to be with the cops inside, shooting the shit and appraising the women on the sidewalk. The N. Y.P.D. had been a wonderful club that he belonged to, as well as his livelihood, but that was history now. He was just another scumbag on the street; the special glow that once had been his was gone.

  He entered the building and got on the elevator with executives and secretaries, or at least that’s what they all looked like to Brody. If he’d had his badge he would have felt better than any of them, but now he felt insecure, a sitting duck, and man without buddies to back him up if the shit hit the fan.

  He got off the elevator and walked down the hall to the big double door that said TUCKER PROTECTION AGENCY. Inside, he found a carpeted waiting room with a pretty blonde receptionist behind a desk, and two fortyish black guys in Tucker uniforms sitting on the chairs. The Tucker uniforms resembled those worn by the N.Y.P.D. except they were cheap, had phony ridiculous badges. Tucker cops were too fat or too skinny or too tall or too short. Most of them were old and none of them had much smarts, to judge from his experienc
e with them. They were just warm bodies who scared away a certain type of street criminal.

  He walked up to the desk, and the receptionist looked at him with sultry blue eyes. He wondered what big shot executive was fucking her after hours. “Hello, my name is Michael Brody and I have an appointment with Mister Farelli at two-thirty.”

  “Have a seat, please.”

  Brody sat and looked at her as she dialed a number and spoke to somebody. Brody couldn’t hear her because receptionists cultivate the ability to speak on the phone without letting anyone nearby hear what they’re saying. That was they can say whatever they want and get away with it, like, “An ugly creep named Brody is here to see Mister Farelli.” This is what Brody thought she said, because Brody was very paranoid now that he had been unemployed for a month. But she actually said, “ A Mister Brody is here to see Mister Farelli. He says he has an appointment.”

  The receptionist hung up her phone and looked at Brody. “Could you wait a few minutes, Mister Brody.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She smiled and went back to some typing. Brody crossed his legs and looked at the two black guys in Tucker uniforms. The N.Y.P.D. wouldn’t let guys like that clean out toilets. He felt sick to think that he was interviewing for a job in an organization that hired people like that. He realized once again how far he’d fallen. Well, maybe he could get a job as a private detective here. They’d probably be overjoyed to get a guy who’d been a detective with the N.Y.P.D.

  An attractive middle-aged woman entered the reception area from the offices in back. “Mister Brody?”

  Brody got up. “That’s me.”

  “Follow me, please.”

  Brody followed her down brightly lit spotless corridors that made him think of science-fiction movies. Secretaries looked up from the typewriters to appraise him as he passed. He hoped he passed muster. The woman stopped at an empty secretary’s desk beside a door. “Mister Farelli is in there. You may go right in.”