I looked around, and the tiny apartment seemed to be undisturbed. It was clean and neat, and the sun was shining in the windows. It looked like a girl who was proud of her first apartment lived here. I could see the half-open window that Jose had climbed into, but everything else, the dresser drawers, the closet, all seemed to be undisturbed. Maybe Jose wasn’t a bad guy after all.
When I looked around I saw on top of the dresser a picture of a pretty girl with long brown hair leaning up against a tree in some park on a nice day. This was obviously our victim. She seemed happy, pretty, and full of life. Somebody I would have liked to meet.
I grabbed the radio off my belt and had the dispatcher notify the sergeant and the detective squad that we had a “confirmed DOA” at our location and needed them to respond. I wanted to get them over here as soon as possible, so we could get some help with Mom, and get out of the apartment. But the next thing I heard was the sergeant’s gruff voice advising us that he would be responding “with a delay.” He told the dispatcher to put him out at the station house “administrative” for a few. I knew exactly what that meant: it was eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, and he wasn’t done having his coffee and reading the paper. The boss was a good guy, and I’m sure if he knew what I was dealing with he would have rushed over. But there was no way of explaining it to him over the radio, so we were on our own until he finished his “administrative duties.”
We had come into the apartment to stall for a while, but I couldn’t take it anymore, and by the look on my partner’s face under his hand I could tell he couldn’t either. I really didn’t want to deal with Mom again, but I had to get some air.
When Jose had told her she couldn’t come in she almost ripped his head off, but I was hoping my uniform carried a little more weight than his.
We opened the door and went back into the hallway to face Mom. I slammed the door shut and shoved the key deep in my back pocket. After witnessing what was in that apartment there was no way in hell I was going to let her in there. Even if I had to wrestle her to the floor and handcuff her, she was not going in. I figured I was going to get a civilian complaint over this but so what, I didn’t care. The last image of her only daughter was not going to be what was lying in that room.
Mom was staring straight at me, ready to charge. She wanted an answer and she wanted it now. Dad was standing behind her and he wanted help. Jose was staring at me wanting to know what was going to happen next. My partner was standing in the background watching everyone and covering my back while my mind raced, searching for just the right words.
This had the potential to get ugly real fast. My mind was racing as I tried to think of the right thing to say, but nothing was coming. I was a kid dealing with someone twice my age.
It was quite an awkward moment that seemed to last a very, very long time. I had never told a parent their child was dead. Cops do it on a regular basis, but I had never done it before. I was only about a year out of the academy and had no experience with this type of situation. At this point in my career I had very little experience with anything police-related besides making arrests and filling out the most basic paperwork.
In the academy they teach you the law and police science. You learn how to shoot a gun, drive fast, and handcuff a perp, but nothing could possibly prepare you for this. At the time I was only twenty-four, so I had very little life experience to fall back on.
Ever since the first time I stepped out on the street in uniform I had always felt a sense of pride and duty. I was proud to be a cop. I was always proud to walk down the street wearing my uniform, and I tried to do the job as best I could. But at this moment I was screwed. I was at a loss and didn’t know what to say or do. It was a very delicate situation that needed to be handled just right, and I was completely unprepared to deal with this. But I felt bad for these people, and I was determined to get this right. I put one hand on Mom’s shoulder, and with the other I motioned to the steps leading upstairs and said, “Please.”
She understood, I wanted her to take a seat. At first she hesitated, because telling someone to have a seat could mean only one thing—bad news was coming. She slowly shuffled over and sat down on the steps. She clutched her purse, holding it tight into her chest and got prepared to hear what she most certainly knew already.
Dad, the super, and my partner stood off to the side waiting to see what was going to happen next. And to see if my head was the next one she was going to try and rip off. My heart was pounding and my mind was racing as I struggled for the right words.
I got down on one knee and knelt right in front of her. We were eyeball to eyeball and only a few inches apart. I reached out and took her hand in both of mine. To anyone watching it might have looked like I was proposing marriage, but I wasn’t. I was about to tell her that her only child was dead, only a few feet away, and that she would not be allowed to see her one last time.
At that moment I was winging it. And again I was stalling. Every second seemed like an hour while my mind was going a hundred miles an hour trying to figure out what to say and hoping my sergeant or the detectives would show up just in time.
I kept trying to figure out just the right words, but nothing was coming. My mind was blank, and I knew that if I said the wrong thing this whole scene was going to explode into an ugly mess, and Mom and Dad deserved better than that. They needed me to rise to the occasion.
As I knelt there on one knee, holding a woman’s hand that I didn’t even know, a Zen-like calm came over me. I can’t really explain it, but I stopped trying so hard to find the right words and just let it happen. I stopped thinking, and started feeling.
Mom wasn’t saying anything or even holding my hand back. I could tell she was just letting it happen also. Call it divine help or wisdom or whatever you want, but my lips started moving without any thoughts from my brain.
I said to her, “Karen is gone…. She’s been gone for a few days now and I know you want to see her and say good-bye but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I was speaking in a slow but very deliberate way. I needed to sound compassionate but authoritative. I needed her to trust this baby-faced police officer kneeling in front of her who was half her age.
I continued, “You see, when a person dies the body goes through certain changes. Now it’s not a bad thing, it’s natural. And I guess that’s the way God intended it to be, but it’s not a pleasant thing to look at and I don’t want you to see her like that. I want your last memories of her to be happy ones, like that picture of her in the park I saw on the dresser. Now I know you don’t know me, we kind of just met, but I need you to trust me on this. I think it’s the best thing to do right now.”
I had Mom’s limp hand held firmly in both of mine. I wanted her to squeeze back, but nothing. I wanted some sort of acknowledgment that I was making sense to her, or that she was even listening. She just sat completely silent, clutching her purse to her chest and staring toward the floor at the same sensible shoes my middle-aged mom likes to wear.
I gave her a moment to think about what I had just said while I waited for an answer. The moment seemed to last a very long time. Without looking up I could feel Dad, the super, and my partner staring at us. We were all nervous and wanted to know what the answer was.
Finally after what seemed like an eternity I leaned in and said, “I need you to trust me on this…please.”
I watched as Mom pulled her purse to her chest even tighter, hugging the only thing she could. Any fight she had left in her seemed to be long gone, and any hopes she had for one last kiss or a face-to-face good-bye were gone as well, as the reality of the situation set in.
There was not much more for me to tell her. This baby-faced kid in uniform, kneeling down in front of her, holding her hand and begging her to listen to reason, was right.
What I had seen in that room would be difficult for anyone to look at. It would be unbearable for a parent, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. If she continued to insist, I wa
s prepared to paint a more graphic picture. I was even prepared to physically stand in that doorway and block her from going inside. I’m glad it didn’t come to that.
I finished by saying again, “Will you please trust me?”
It wasn’t easy for her to do, but finally, I felt her hand squeeze back, as she very softly said, “Okay.”
I quietly breathed a sigh of relief as everyone around us did the same. I couldn’t believe I had done it. I fully expected her to scream at me, or to try and push past me, but none of that happened. She was just a very sweet woman who needed a little help getting through what was probably the greatest tragedy of her life.
It was time to wrap this up, so I told her, “Maybe it’s a good idea to go home now. I’m sure you have some arrangements to make, and I promise you my partner and I will stay here and take care of Karen.”
She seemed to appreciate the idea that my partner and I would stay there and take care of her daughter, and that she would not be left alone in that room. I motioned with my hand for Dad to come over. He grabbed one arm and I grabbed the other, and we helped her up off the step. He put his arm around his wife’s shoulder, and as he helped her down the hall he turned toward me and mouthed, “Thank you.”
In the past year or so I had more than a few gratifying moments in my short career, graduating from the academy and making a couple of pretty good collars, but none of them made me feel more like a cop than Dad’s “thank you.”
I watched Mom continue to hug her purse as her sensible shoes shuffled down the hall. And as Dad eased her past the apartment, she paused and placed her hand on the door. It was as close to a good-bye, and touching her child, as she would be allowed, and my heart broke for her. She stood there for a moment with her fingertips on the door, almost caressing it, and whispered, “I love you.”
A few hours later when I finally walked out of that building I realized somewhere in the middle of all this my hangover had disappeared. I also realized something had changed inside of me. I wasn’t that dopey twenty-four-year-old drinking beer and doing shots, trying to pick up girls in a Jersey Shore bar anymore. I had grown up, more than just a little.
I was a young, inexperienced cop with a difficult job to do, but somehow I got the job done. Cops call it “the job,” but police work is more than that. It’s more than just going toe-to-toe with some bad guy and hauling him off to jail. Anybody with a young strong body can do that. It’s being there in people’s lives during times of crisis, and knowing what to say and what to do.
I wish I could say that the words coming out of my mouth were calculated and well thought out. They weren’t. I don’t know where they came from, but I’m grateful they did come when I needed them. Sometimes in life, and very often in police work, you are faced with a situation that forces you to grow up and to be a better, wiser person. It forces you to rise to the occasion.
When I walked into the building on that Sunday morning I had the strong body all young cops have, but when I walked out a few hours later, I was a small step closer to being the older, more mature cop I wanted to be.
4.
Dentist
I parked the car on Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue facing west, figuring this was as good a place to sit as any. There was a bank one block behind us, and two more just around the corner on Eighth Street, and all three had been hit in the last couple of weeks. The one right behind us had been hit twice.
Most people passing by had absolutely no idea we were cops. We were working anti-crime (plainclothes) and our job was to blend in—and we were good at it. My partner George’s idea of plainclothes was a Hawaiian shirt and a big fat cigar dangling under his handlebar mustache. I was a little less fashionable—a cutoff sweatshirt worked for me. Our car was a baby-blue Buick LeSabre with crushed velour seats and a couple of dents the police department was too cheap to fix.
I took the lid off my coffee cup, hit the lever under my seat to lower it a few inches, and nestled in for what might be a long night.
My partner and I were looking for a guy they dubbed the “Silver Gun Bandit.” He had been doing gunpoint ATM robberies all over Manhattan South. The guy was a maniac, a one-man crime wave—he had done over twenty of them in about eight weeks. Finally enough was enough, he was driving up the robbery stats and the big bosses were pissed. They wanted the guy caught and they wanted him now!
The heat was on, so we had to catch this guy, and we had to do it soon. For the past couple of days there had to be at least fifty of us out looking for this guy, and everybody involved wanted to be the one to drag him in, in handcuffs.
The big plan they had come up with was for the Robbery Squad and a bunch of the anti-crime teams to do surveillance. We were told to pick a bank we thought looked good and sit on it. We hoped the perp would hit one of them while we were watching, and if everything went right, he’d be in for one hell of a surprise when he tried coming out.
The perp we were looking for was a fairly nondescript guy, white male, average height, average build, and neatly dressed. His MO was simple: he would follow his victims into bank lobbies, pull a silver handgun on them, and force them to take cash out of the ATM machine.
Normally robberies in Manhattan are no big deal, but when you do over twenty you start pissing off the police department. Also when you do them in a short period of time, all of them in the same area, hit a couple of banks twice and use the same distinctive weapon and MO, you start attracting some attention to yourself.
A smart robber, and there aren’t too many of them, tries to keep a low profile. If he had done a couple in the Bronx, a few in Brooklyn, jumped around from Manhattan to Queens, nobody would have put two and two together for a long time, but he didn’t. He liked robbing people in downtown Manhattan.
Probably he was afraid to do stickups in the Bronx. You pull a gun on somebody up there and they might just point one right back at you.
Also, in the beginning he started out slow, doing them maybe once a week, but after a while he was knocking them off every other day. This dumbass was either stupid, or had balls on him like an elephant. But either way, he was just begging to be caught.
He was what we call a “pattern robber.” And once we figure out the pattern it becomes a lot easier to track and catch him. We usually get several of these a year, and this dope became Manhattan Robbery Squad pattern number twenty-three. That means starting January first of that year, twenty-two other brain surgeons just like this guy attracted undue attention to themselves.
Out of the other twenty-two individuals, twenty had been caught, due to good police work. The other two just stopped, seeming to fall off the face of the earth. That usually means they are either dead or in jail on some unrelated matter. If they just start up again, that means they were in jail for a while. If we never see or hear from them again, that usually means they’re dead. I doubt if any of them actually went to church, lit a candle, and saw the error of their ways.
Tonight my partner George and I took this spot because our guy seemed to like the area. I liked it because it was a busy corner, so it was easier for us to blend into the crowd. Plus we could keep ourselves amused watching the world go by, especially the girls.
When you see stakeouts on TV they probably seem exciting, but they’re not. They’re usually ninety-nine percent boredom, but the fun part is when the one percent excitement happens. There’s nothing better than coming face-to-face with some real bad guy that you’ve been hunting for a while.
I alternated between the faces in the crowd and the wanted poster we had rubber-banded to the visor above my head. The poster was a sketch done by a police artist based on information provided by some of the victims. As sketches go this one wasn’t too bad; it had a lot of detail.
Most times sketches are useless. The victim gets a few seconds to look at somebody who is sticking a gun or a knife in their face and threatening to kill them if they don’t do what he says. Of course the perp looks like the boogeyman, and the sketches reflect that. Usu
ally the victim can give you a good description of the weapon but not the person holding it. That’s because they can’t help but be focused on the gun pointed between their eyes.
But this dope robbed so many people, and believe it or not he was polite about it—except for the one victim he shot in the leg, ending the man’s professional dancing career—that some of the victims got a good look at him.
As I sat there sipping my coffee, watching the world go by and looking for some armed robber, I started thinking, I love this job! I mean, what could be better than this? I call this work, but to me it really isn’t. I’m hanging out with my partner, who is also one of my best friends. I’m in Manhattan, watching girls and catching bad guys. I love this shit!
George and I have been “partnered up” for about two years now. Four years ago, the first day I walked into the precinct, I saw him standing in the muster room. He had a big smile on his face and an even bigger handlebar mustache. I didn’t know him at the time but I caught good vibes off him. I thought he seemed like a cool guy and I wouldn’t mind working with him someday.
Sure enough, two years later here we are working anti-crime together. And like a lot of partners we quickly became best friends. We hang out together after work and on our days off. We even go on vacation together. The reason is, you don’t partner up with a guy unless you like each other. You spend eight hours a day together cooped up in a car. It’s like being roommates in a very, very small apartment.
But an even bigger reason is because you trust each other. And I don’t mean you trust him just to pay the rent on time or not to hit on your girlfriend. I mean you trust him with your life. You don’t do the kind of work we do unless you trust the guy sitting next to you to be there when the whole world turns to shit. So I consider myself a very lucky individual. I’m doing the job I love with one of my best friends.
The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop Page 7
