Home Town

by Tracy Kidder

  “If there’s a body down here, I want you to take me to it.”

  The man began to weep. It turned out he was a respectable citizen from a nearby town. And no murderer. He had a dildo as large as Tommy’s PR-24 in his anus, beneath the trash bag. He came down here to masturbate, he said, still weeping. He begged Tommy not to tell his wife.

  “Tell your wife?” thought Tommy. “Jesus Christ! I’d rather do a death notification.” He’d let him go, with advice as usual: “Go home, and next time use someone else’s meadows. And get yourself some help. Because that thing’ll kill ya.”

  He decided not to tell that story to Luis. Time enough for this wholesome boy to find out about such things.

  It was almost eleven, almost the end of the shift, when, out on Mount Tom Road, they came upon a police cruiser parked behind a Northampton taxi. Tommy lifted a thumb to the cop, who lifted a thumb in reply, to say no help was needed.

  Tommy drove on, then turned around and headed back toward downtown, but as he was passing the cruiser and taxi again, his eyes went to his mirror. “Who are those jamokes?”

  He pulled over. “Luis, you better stay in the cruiser.”

  Luis watched from a distance: the two male passengers climbing out of the taxi, talking to O’Connor with animated hands. Luis couldn’t hear what O’Connor said to them, just O’Connor’s voice uttering cryptic remarks and questions over the radio. Then Peter, the drug detective, arrived, a hulking figure. Luis knew him. In a moment there was a scuffle. Then handcuffings. Then another cruiser arrived. The two men from the taxi were loaded up. They drove off, and Tommy got back into the driver’s seat. “Oh, God, am I good!”

  “What happened?” asked Luis.

  The young cop had stopped the taxi for speeding, Tommy explained. The cop had been writing up a ticket, and hadn’t thought to question the passengers. “One of them’s wanted in New York, for shooting a guy in the stomach. The other has warrants for heroin distribution.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “It just didn’t make sense, two guys in a taxi coming back from Holyoke. Why are two grown men taking a taxi back from Holyoke at ten o’clock at night?” Tommy started driving toward the station. He looked over at Luis. “Okay, this is your lesson for the night. You always look further.” Tommy went on, “I asked the guy with the topknot, ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Uh, Dunbar Martin.’ I said, ‘No. You’re Shorty Ortiz.’ I just made that up. He said, ‘No, you’re wrong.’ I said, ‘Dunbar, I have dealt with you. It’s gonna come back to me. Talk to me.’ Then he wouldn’t talk. I kept staring at him. Then it came to me. I reached over and touched his hair, the little topknot? ‘Googie!’ ”

  “Was that Googie?” said Luis. “He used to drive a Nova.”

  “Yeah, he comes from your neighborhood. We got one cuff on and he started fighting. After we were done with him, I went to work on the other guy. ‘And what’s your name?’ ‘Uh, Alex Alexander.’ ‘Ever arrested, Alex Alexander?’ ‘No.’ ‘And you hang around with this fucking clown? No one who hangs around with him is an angel.’ But Peter identified him. His real name is Angel. I told him, ‘I stand corrected. You are an angel.’ ”

  “Do you get credit for this?” Luis asked.

  “The credit is I know I did a good job.”

  Peter was standing by the side door of the station. He walked over and slapped a high five with Tommy. “Hey,” said Peter. “You can’t hide from us.”

  Luis stood there, smiling. Tommy turned to him. “See, Luis, we don’t spend all our time in the Gardens.” Tommy put on his wild-looking grin, his parody of mania. “It was fucking masterful, masterful police work.” Then he got serious. “That officer was young, Luis. And alone.”

  “So how long did it take you to become sergeant?” asked Luis. They stood at the side door.

  “Five years to get into the Detective Bureau, ten years to make sergeant, twelve years to make detective sergeant, actually eleven, but they’ve screwed around with me for a year. Well, there you go, Luis. What do you think? It’s a fun job, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah!”

  “What I want is to get you out of college and out on the street.”

  “Yeah,” said Luis. “Me, too.”

  On an afternoon in early December, Tommy walked into the Detective Bureau in plainclothes: boots, khaki pants, and a flannel shirt, his pistol and his badge attached to his civilian belt. The lieutenant of detectives rooted around in a corner of his office and found a rusty sword, an old piece of evidence. He tapped Tommy with the flat of the blade on either shoulder. “I hereby knight you Detective Sergeant.”

  Tommy gazed at his name on the bureau roster. “It feels good to be back,” he said. But this long-awaited moment had come too late. He thought, “It’s nice. Everyone thinks this is a promotion, and if I go out, I want to go out on top.”

  The doctor thought the old football injury to Tommy’s shoulder had healed well enough for federal service. The doctor didn’t seem like a person to joke around with, but Tommy couldn’t help himself. He was nervous about the rectal exam.

  “Well, I’m all yours, Doc.”

  “Good. Could you turn around, please? ”

  The doctor discarded his rubber glove. “You’re all set.”

  “Can I get your first name?” Tommy asked.

  The doctor looked at him.

  “Well, you’ve been more intimate with me than any man ever has. I just think we should be on a first-name basis.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mr. O’Connor. Go get a drink.”

  “Well, I kinda feel like I should ask you to come along.”

  Then the doctor laughed, which was encouraging, in several ways. All that remained was the background investigation. Soon an agent would arrive and start asking questions around the station, which would give away his secret. He’d have to do that job himself, and soon.

  Tommy lay in bed, awake in the dark. “Now I really may be leaving,” he thought. He made himself say it over and over in his mind. “Now I really may be leaving.”

  The chief was in his office working at his computer, with the stereo on. “I only have a couple of minutes,” he said. He had a meeting to go to.

  “I don’t know how to put this, Chief.”

  Tommy talked for a while. When he said, “Then they gave me a test and I passed it,” the chief leaned over and snapped off his stereo. “Well, that got his attention,” Tommy thought.

  Tommy said he wanted to thank the chief for all the opportunities he’d given him over the years, which was what had made this possible.

  The chief slapped himself on the forehead, as if to say he regretted making that mistake.

  “I’ve been here in this station since ninth grade, realistically,” Tommy said. “It’s not easy to pick up and leave, but on the other hand, I’ve never been anywhere.”

  The chief said, “I think it’s great.” But the FBI had frustrations, too. He should sit down and talk with some agents.

  “I have,” said Tommy.

  “Hey, I’m happy for you,” said the chief. “Gotta say I’m sad for me.”

  Tommy walked into the Ready Room. A crowd of uniformed cops sat there, the patrol shifts of both Days and Evenings. They’d been told to wait for an announcement.

  Tommy told the whole story. “And if I pass the background investigation, with a little help from my friends …”

  “Don’t worry, Tom,” said Preston Horton. He was one of the gay officers. “Our secret’s safe with me.”

  Most of the cops laughed. Tommy smiled. “But they do a lot of neat things,” he went on. “Mafia, organized crime, robbery squads. It’s all pretty much a big hit to me. I’ve been here since ninth grade. So. That’s the deal.”

  He was done. The Ready Room was very still for a moment. The broken bench on the far wall creaked under its load of officers. It was a cheerless-looking room, like a shipping room in a factory, full of ghosts for some of the people now in it, those who had been around lon
g enough for it to have acquired subjective adornments. Some of the officers looked as if they were staring into their futures and didn’t like what they saw.

  Horton’s loud voice broke the silence. “Congratulations!”

  Then one of the young men from Tommy’s shift clapped. Then they all started clapping, a swelling sound, Tommy standing before them wetting his lips and blushing, a blush on a blush.

  The Ready Room cleared out. Several of the older officers from Evenings—Carlos, Micker, Scotty—sat at one of the folding tables, each looking in a different direction, none speaking, all their faces glum. Dorothy, one of the detectives, was weeping.

  Out in the hallway Peter, who had just arrived, said, “What’s Dorothy crying about? ”

  “Because Tommy’s leaving.”

  “Hey, Tommy, come over here so I can cry over you.”

  Tommy was in the Report Room, saying to one of the secretaries, “I’ve been here since ninth grade. I would come in twice a week as an Explorer Scout. Do a shift at the desk …”

  The third week of January, Tommy got word that his background was clean. Both the Gazette and the Union-News told Northampton the news, in long articles and big headlines—local boy, local cop, makes the big time. He went to District Court, probably for the last time, for a hearing on an old case of his. As he walked down the corridor, the voices of probation and court officers, of prosecutors and some defense lawyers, kept coming at him: “Gonna miss ya.” “Hey, congratulations.” Even some defendants walked up to say good-bye: “So you never comin’ back, O’Connah?”

  The hearing was a plea. The defendant said he’d been a soldier in Vietnam, a certifiable combat hero. Tommy had caught him bringing a dozen bags of heroin back from Holyoke last summer.

  “So did Vietnam get you hooked up with drugs?” Tommy asked him, while they waited for the judge.

  “Nah. I was doin’ drugs before. Stealin’ cars, too. I can’t blame Vietnam for nothin’. I got seventy thousand for post-traumatic stress disorder. I said I didn’t have it. They told me I was in denial. What the hell? I knew I couldn’t keep the money. I knew I’d just shoot it up. So I bought a house for my daughter.”

  Tommy shook his head. “Hey, you know what? You’re the last case I’ll be doing as a Northampton cop.”

  He said good-bye to city hall. Jean came along. They sat down with Mayor Ford, a slightly odd good-bye because of the stiffness underneath. Recently, jokingly, Mayor Ford had said to Bill O’Connor that it might be just as well for her that Tommy was leaving, because if he stayed, political ambitions might blossom.

  “Is it really true. Is it official?” Mayor Ford said, smiling. “Congratulations, you son of a bitch.”

  “We’re extremely excited, but scared as hell.”

  “Well, you really deserve it, not only with what you’ve done, but with having the vision to apply. And your dad’s proud.”

  “Yeah. It’s either this or pope.”

  Mary laughed heartily.

  “And Jean kind of took care of that,” said Tommy. He went on, “The only reason I got the job was because of what I did here, and because of the chief. He let me do the drug stuff, instead of saying he didn’t want to know about any drugs here.”

  “Which is something we want to continue,” said the mayor.

  Tommy said, “You know, I’ve never been anywhere. I was born and raised here. I don’t know where I’m gonna buy lunch or get my car fixed.”

  “You’ll have to find an old dumb radio station like WHMP,” she said. “A station that carries obituaries and Engelbert Humperdinck.”

  They stood up. Mayor Ford had begun to open her arms, but Tommy made a slight sideways movement, and she stuck out her hand instead.

  There had been one moment that seemed more than just polite, a reflective moment for each of them. Mandatory retirement came at fifty-seven for FBI agents, Tommy had said.

  “You’re gonna retire back here,” Mary replied. “I probably won’t be in this office then.”

  “Hey, if the chief’s position is open,” Tommy had said. “Fifty-six isn’t that old. Is it MacArthur who said, ‘I shall return’?”

  He couldn’t walk more than a few steps downtown without someone coming up and wishing him well, and his beeper kept going off and the phone went on ringing, at work and at home. All of his informants called, even a few of the people he’d arrested. One caller said, in a shaky female voice, “This is someone who is very, very proud of you.”

  “Mrs. B!” His history teacher, who used to have him sit beside her desk, to try to curb his chattering.

  Puttering around the station, Tommy found an engraving tool. He got a ladder and engraved in the cement-block wall above the side door, “83 1997.” He stood back. It was hard to see. There was a better place, on the wall beside the rack where officers hung the keys to the cruisers. In small letters in the concrete block, he engraved, “83—1997 FBI.” Maybe officers going on duty, getting their keys, would stop there and think of him, and years from now maybe some rookie would wonder at the meaning of the inscription, and ask, “Who was Eighty-three?”

  He spent the rest of that evening cleaning out his desk. The next afternoon, his last day on duty, he retired from plainclothes. He went down to the locker room and put on his uniform, and all his medals. Tommy was under instructions not to make any arrests if he could help it, because he wouldn’t be around to testify about them. So he drove his usual patrol routes, looking for people to say good-bye to.

  Fresh snow lay on the roadside. The air was cold and there weren’t many people out. He drove slowly through the Heights. “I wish it was summertime and I was leaving. I’d convene a gathering. All right, everybody get over here. You’re free.” He pulled up beside a small group of boys. “Well, gentlemen, whuss goin’ on?”

  “FBI, yo,” said one. He read the paper, apparently. He came up to the window and shook hands.

  “Good luck to ya. Stay out of trouble.”

  At a little after five, he met Jean and his father at the Look Restaurant. He hoisted his chocolate milk. “To the last forty at the Look.”

  And it was back to the station again. A few nights ago, a couple of officers had spent a few hours checking parking lots for teenagers drinking in their cars. They had rounded up about a dozen. For tonight the lieutenant had planned a larger operation. Now he began to brief the troops. “Everybody bring extra cuffs.”

  Tommy took a pair of handcuffs off his belt. “I’ll be locking up Gotti with these.”

  “What we’re doing here is sending a message,” the lieutenant said. “So hit the streets and good luck.”

  They had borrowed a paddy wagon from the county jail to transport the arrestees to the station. Tommy rode along, a younger cop at the wheel. By a little before eleven, the van had made half a dozen trips and boys and girls lined the hallway inside the police station. The kids were being booked, then bailed out, one after another. A court clerk had arrived to manage the transactions. Tommy looked at his wristwatch. It was almost eleven. He’d almost forgotten. He took his portable radio off his belt, and broadcast into the night air of Northampton, “Eighty-three to all members of the three-to-eleven shift. Thank you very much for a very pleasurable two years. And I hope we can do it again someday. In a different capacity, of course. I’m not coming back.”

  He returned to the hallway. Several of the girls caught drinking were crying. Tommy surveyed the arrested youths. Most wore party clothes. “Just relax,” he told them. “It’s not the crime of the century.”

  Another vanload arrived. Tommy went out into the frigid night. He helped five young women and a young man out of the van. All were handcuffed. The boy looked scared. Tommy led him in. “Hey, look at it this way. How many guys at UMass can say, ‘I spent last night with five girls in handcuffs.’ ” There were a dozen standing in the hall. A few of the girls still wept. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re doing this because we don’t want people drinking in our parking lots,” said Tommy. �
�You’ll be out in half an hour and it won’t go on your records.”

  But one girl went on sobbing into her hands. He walked over to her. “Where do you go to school?”

  “Wu-Wu-Westfield State.”

  “Westfield State? So did I! You probably learned a lesson, huh?”

  “I learned a really good lesson!”

  He addressed the assembled youths again. “You seem like nice kids. You wouldn’t be reacting like this if you weren’t.”

  He stared at them, but they still seemed much too scared. So he started asking them where they went to school, then introduced them to each other. “Westfield State meet Holyoke Community College.”

  This seemed to work. In a moment one of the girls, her cheeks still streaked with tears, was giving advice to one of the boys. “If you want to pick up a girl,” she told him, “you shouldn’t be wearing those shoes with those pants.”

  It was past midnight now. Time to go home. He went into his office and began unclipping items from his belt. He laid them one by one on his desk—ammo pouches, portable radio, baton, flashlight, pouch for rubber gloves, handcuffs, pepper spray, pistol. He took off his clip-on tie and put it on top of the pile, then his round hat. He was aiming for a bigger hat, a bigger badge, and far, far better toys, but the boy had yearned to carry those things now lying on the desk, and the young man had acquired them, and now he was letting them go. He could hardly bear to look at them, sitting in a heap, abandoned.

  He opened all the drawers in his desk. All were empty, except that a box of staples lay in one. He pocketed the staples. “I already took the polygraph.” Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “Frankie!”

  Frankie had to be out of Ludlow by now, but no one had heard from him. Tommy went back to the Radio Room and ran a Bureau of Probation check. It amounted to a farewell. He was “BOPping” Frankie good-bye. When the printer finished, Tommy picked up the long sheet of paper. There were no new charges on it. “He’s disappeared,” said Tommy. He looked puzzled for a moment. Then he lifted an index finger. “But! I BOPped him under ‘Frankie Sandoval.’ No telling who he is now.”