by Mark Johnson
There’s a comforting thought, I remember thinking, as I had downed another shot of Beam and chased it with a pull of Bud.
When she returned to Hampton, Virginia, a letter was waiting for her, from that same barracks buddy of Tom’s who had told her of Tom’s orders to Korea. He was writing, sadly, to inform her that Tom had been killed in action on one of the many frozen, barren, unnamed pork chop hills of this forsaken hellhole. Before Tom had shipped out, the guy wrote, “Tom made me promise that if anything happened to keep him from coming home, I would let you know. Tom was a brave warrior, a patriot, he gave his life for his country, for our freedom, blah, blah, blah,” Judy recited with a sneer, twin flumes of blue smoke streaming from her nostrils.
I was a little put off by her cynical telling of Tom’s story, and saddened by the news, despite his less-than-honorable exit from their shared predicament.
“Weren’t you devastated?”
“What? ‘Devastated’? Oh, Hayelllll no!” she scoffed. “I thought, good riddance, you cowardly son of a bitch!” Evidently, some long-buried resentment still stirred. Judy took another gulp of Beam and a drag from her Marlboro. “I mean, the way he treated me? To hell with him! He got what was coming to him, courtesy of the corps and the commies!”
There was a long pause, and my throat constricted. “So, that’s it for him then, huh Judy? Adiós, muchacho? I guess it’s sorta the end of a road for me, too, in a way. Do you know . . . is he buried in Arlington?”
“Ohhh, honey, I’m sorry,” Judy said, suddenly tender. “I did it again, didn’t I? Oh, you’re so sensitive. I knew you would be . . . I just assumed . . . I guess I thought . . . I guess I didn’t think, did I? But since you found out everything about me, I guess I just thought you knew all about him, too. But of course, you couldn’t. You didn’t even know his name until you found me. Oh, I’m so sorry. And no, I don’t have any idea where he’s buried.”
“Didn’t you get some kind of official telegram or something from the Defense Department, or the Marines? A letter of condolence, at least?”
“Why would I? I wasn’t next of kin. We were never married. They don’t send that stuff to old girlfriends. I’m sure the Marines don’t even know I exist.”
No, of course not. A guy like Tom Whitaker probably had lots of girlfriends. No way the Corps could or would bother with any of them. No official communication for Judy Culkin or any of the countless other grieving jilted girlfriends left behind to deal with Tom’s liberally scattered seed. How sad, how tragic, really, but (it struck me, out of nowhere) how very convenient for him.
15
Deception for Detection
“You want answers?”
“I want the truth!”
“You can’t handle the truth!”
—Aaron Sorkin, A Few Good Men
So, yeah, it had been more than twenty-five years since I’d tracked down Judy Culkin, missing person. But that was enough for me to believe I have a knack for detective work, or at least a head start on becoming a detective. After all, it could not be said that I was a total rookie, like right out of the academy, that I didn’t know from investigating. It’s not like I had to learn from scratch how to dig and scour and pound the pavement to chase down the facts, how a little deception can aid detection. In addition to the lessons learned in the (dumb-luck-laden) search for Judy and Tom, my six years on the streets of beat 12 had given me the rudiments of interrogation, fact checking, and forensics.
And seeking “the facts, just the facts, ma’am” was something I had fancied since boyhood. Steeped as I am in Dragnet drama and the big-screen adventures of Dirty Harry Callahan, to become a detective is really the more perfect fulfillment of puerile fantasy than being a uniformed cop had been. Truth be told, I was now, finally, really, living the dream.
For in some primal way, it feels like I was made for this job. It fits like my favorite jeans. The fundamental paradox at the heart of detective work, the fact that an essential tool of the trade is the masterly use of deception in the dogged pursuit of “truth,” is quite literally and specifically second (or first?) nature to me.
This is not to say that I don’t miss uniformed patrol work. I do, intensely at times. I could have been happy riding a beat for many more years, if only I had started earlier. In just a quick half-dozen years on the job, I was already seeing my sunset on the horizon. The pulled muscles from fence-hopping foot chases and the cuts and bruises from cuffing “one resisting” hurt more and longer with the passing years. And despite my ability to outdistance most cops half my age, a good cop needs speed more than endurance. Thugs don’t usually have endurance, anyway. (Most of them are chain smokers, after all.) But if you lose visual contact because of the gap they put behind them in the first sixty seconds, it doesn’t matter how long or how far you can run—you won’t find them. They’ve turned, doubled back, laid down somewhere. If you don’t catch them quick, they’re gone. Even in my youth, I had never been a sprinter.
Instinct—the lightning-fast ability to read and react—is even more crucial than physical conditioning to survival on the streets. It was becoming apparent to me that no amount of training or practice would quicken my ability to read the signs. I had lived too long in another world. My suburban, prep-school youth and nonprofit boardroom career taught me to take the measure of a man by the firmness of his handshake, the steadiness of his gaze, the cut of his suit, the shine of his shoes.
In a street cop’s world, you don’t shake hands, you watch them. Eyes don’t tell you much, but hands can kill you; don’t let anybody get within the six-foot zone of safety. The layers of FUBU jerseys and sagging Coogi jeans aren’t studied for “cut” or fabric, but for the lumps and bulges that might conceal a firearm. The shine on the Air Jordans doesn’t matter, it’s the knives, cuff keys, and nickel bags inside them that do. Tats, do-rags, colors, and haircuts indicate ever-changing ’hoods, affiliations, and occupations: dope slinger, thief, street soldier, each with varying degrees of risk and threat, depending on location, time of day or night, and circumstances of police contact.
Hell, I need an interpreter sometimes, so foreign to me is the street dialect of the beat cop’s milieu. It’s not just a barrier of slang or racial dialect (y’feel me, brah?), it’s a generational ignorance that keeps me at a disadvantage (and therefore a danger to myself and my partners). In my mid-fifties, I’m just too slow for the streets, too slow to pick up on who’s who and what’s what.
A detective needs instincts and street smarts, too, but in most investigative circumstances the consequences of an overlooked detail, or the missed tell, are not as dire, and certainly not as immediate. The pre-frisked suspects (usually cuffed to an eyehook bolted to the interrogation table), the often plodding pace, the dogged slog through the detail of investigation, and the bullshit of interrogation are much better suited to one my age than is patrol.
Patience, deliberation, and deception are essential for a detective; speed, strength, agility, not so much. I used to hate it when, as a uniform, I’d bring a suspect to headquarters for questioning, and it seemed like the damn detective was somnambulant, moving in slo-mo, just deliberately taking as long as possible to deal with the miscreant. I was eager to dump the guy at Metro and get back out on the streets. I figured the detective was either lazy or avaricious, deliberately stretching out the double-time hourly pay he was earning for after-hours callout. I later learned that while both descriptors may be accurate, it’s also a fact (and therefore a tactic) that the longer the perpetrator sits isolated in custody, the more likely he is to confess. It’s been measured, documented.
And the deception thing: a good detective is a creative master when it comes to lying to get to the truth. The basics are “I got three eyewitnesses who picked your mug out of a photo spread, put you at the scene,” or “Your prints are all over the broken glass from that window you busted to get in,” or “The neighbor’s security cameras picked you up clear as day.” Of course you have to be reasonably s
ure it’s believable that witnesses might have been around, or that your perp wasn’t wearing latex gloves, or that remote security video is plausible. But most perps are blessedly stupid, unless they’re career types who’ve heard it all before and spent some time comparing notes at the crime academies we call the Department of Corrections.
Such seasoned criminals require advanced detective tactics, which in turn require deployment of advanced deceptive tactics. I got my first inkling of this when, as a uniform, I’d brought a robbery suspect to headquarters one night. The storekeeper who’d been robbed had not gotten a look at the robber’s head or face, which had been covered by a hoodie and a bandana. The thug had fired a round into the shop’s ceiling to show how serious he was, and the terrified victim had lain on the floor, eyes closed, and now couldn’t even recall height, weight, age, or anything beyond the usual “black male, black sweatshirt, black baggy jeans, black sneakers.” I had snatched this poor suspect up a block away because he matched the description—as did virtually everybody in a five-block radius—but he was sweating profusely when I stopped him, as if he’d been running. We didn’t even know if the robber had been running, or had simply gotten into a car and driven away. And he wasn’t carrying a gun when I frisked him. So I really had nothing on him, but he was all we had.
The detective had me put my suspect in an interview room. I asked the suspect which hand he wrote with, then cuffed his left, non-writing hand to an eye-bolt in the center of the table. While doing this, the detective entered, took a seat at the table, introduced himself to my guy, told him he appreciated his cooperation and that this shouldn’t take too long, and then began chatting with him about family, high school, work, and Alabama–Auburn football—like a couple guys in a tavern might start a conversation over beers. I left to hit the men’s room and get a cup of coffee.
When I came back I entered the little, darkened audio-visual booth between the two interview rooms and looked through the two-way mirror. The suspect was sitting in there alone. I took a seat in the hall outside the interview booths and sipped at my vending machine coffee.
When my coffee was all gone, I re-entered the little observation booth in time to see the detective rip open a wet-nap packet and gingerly wipe down the suspect’s trigger finger and thumb, drop the wipe into a plastic bag, gather up his papers, then exit the room, saying he’d be right back.
He didn’t come right back. I observed the suspect for a while as he sat cuffed to the table and fidgeted, gazing at the ceiling, shaking his head, his lips moving though no sound came out. Eventually I went back out into the hall to the more comfortable seat, switched my radio back on, and listened to my squad’s chatter to find out what I was missing outside.
After what seemed like nearly an hour, the detective finally returned, carrying several sheets of official-looking forms on which information had been typed, along with the used wet-wipe in the plastic baggie, which I noticed now bore an “EVIDENCE” label, with the case number, the detective’s name, and the suspect’s name. I turned off my radio and slipped back into the observation booth.
“Sorry for the delay,” the detective said as he settled in across from the suspect. “The guys in the lab took their time getting here, and then it took awhile to get the results.”
The prisoner’s eyes got slightly wider. “Huh? Whatcha mean, ‘the lab’? What ‘results’ you be talkin’ ’bout?”
The detective deadpanned, “The crime lab guys. Remember when I asked you about the gun, and you said—” He paused, flipping through his notes.
“Here it is, you said, and I quote,” he cleared his throat, then, in his flattest hard-boiled white guy voice read, “‘Gun? What I be needin’a muhfuckin’ gun fuh? It ain’t a reason in the worl’ fuh me to be havin’ no gun!’ Did I get it right?”
The suspect nodded, utterly confounded about where this was going.
The detective then read from the two typed forms in front of him.
“Forensic testing indicates conclusively that residue captured from the swabbing of suspect’s right index finger and thumb is consistent with gunpowder and gases from a firearm discharge no more than two to three hours prior to recovery of the sample.”
Suspect’s face dropped. Minutes later, he confessed.
The detective exited the interrogation room. “He’s all yours. Take ’im to Metro. Robbery First.”
“Wait! What ‘crime lab’? There’s nobody here tonight but me and you and the overnight property clerk.”
He crumpled up the evidence baggie and forensics report and tossed them in a waste basket, smiling a broad, triumphant grin.
“I know that, and you know that. But numbnuts in there?” He nodded toward the interrogation room. “Muhfucka’s clueless! All he knows is what he sees on CSI.”
First thing I did was buy a two-hundred-dollar shoulder holster rig. Just like detectives Jeff Spencer and Stuart Bailey had for carrying their snub-nosed .38s on 77 Sunset Strip. It looked so cool.
But a sixteen-round Glock is bigger and heavier than a six-shot .38. In a shoulder holster, which is tedious to put on every day and a little tricky to draw from, the .40-caliber semiauto is uncomfortable and just doesn’t feel secure dangling from a strap against your ribs.
I realized I had seen only a couple of detectives in the department ever wearing one. One of them had been my old FTO, Portly Porter, shortly after he had become a detective. I ran into him at headquarters one day and remarked on his fancy rig.
“Cool, man! You look just like Double Oh Seven—except for the cheap suit, the crooked teeth, and thirty-pound beer gut.”
“I can change my suit, fix my teeth, and lose weight, Pawpaw,” he smiled. “But you can’t ever get any younger.”
Three weeks later I ran into him again and noticed he had gone back to the hip holster. I thought my teasing had shamed him into returning to the conventional hip carry. Now I realized Porter had simply learned what I had just discovered. The next day I took my shoulder harness back to the store for a refund.
Then I went to my locksmith, the guy who’d always cut a copy key for me at no charge whenever I was assigned a different squad car. (Ever since that time I locked myself out of my idling squad car with a cuffed prisoner in the backseat, I carry a spare key.) I inquired about the purchase of a small, discreet kit of lock picks—the kind that always gets the gumshoe through the door, any door, in seconds.
“Hollywood!” he harrumphed. I felt about as stupid as the robber who had fallen for the forensic gunpowder-on-trigger-finger “evidence.” (If pick kits exist, my locksmith ain’t sellin’ ’em, even to a guy with business cards and a badge that say “Detective.”)
Okay, a couple small missteps. Maybe real-life detectives, like real-life patrol cops, don’t much resemble the Hollywood versions.
16
The New Squad
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
—William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell,” from the poem “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
Welcome to First Precinct Investigations,” he says, pushing his chair back from his desk and spinning a half turn to face me. He’s wearing blue jeans. Not just any blue jeans, but frayed, ripped blue jeans, with stains that might be motor oil or ketchup. Dark blotches that have been there awhile and are set in the faded fabric. The jeans are complemented by a short-sleeved bowling shirt with the tails out and the name Earl stitched above the pocket. The kind of shirt the pampered one-percenters in my prep school used to wear with “irony.” But something tells me this guy’s idea of irony is something his mama used to do to his daddy’s Sunday shirt.
He’s probably thirty, and about that many pounds overweight. He has about an eighth-inch buzz haircut, and the day-old stubble on his unshaven cheeks is about the same length as the stubble on his head.
He smiles with his eyes as much as his mouth, and with a sweeping gesture like Vanna White displaying the lavish she
lf space of a brand-new Frigidaire declares, “This is where the magic happens! That desk’ll be yours. Earl Slocumb.”
His thick paw envelops mine in a firm grip with a vigorous, pumping handshake.
I survey the quarters. The windowless ten-by-ten space, roughly the size of a two-man cell at Metro, has two desks pushed up against opposite walls, their wheeled chairs bumping back to back. Through-traffic with both chairs occupied would require an audible “Excuse me” to get the detectives to snug their chairs all the way up to their desks to allow a scrunched-up, sideways passage.
My new desk, a scarred and dented battleship gray with a faux-wood laminate top, is flanked by two four-drawer metal file cabinets that don’t match each other, or the desk: one is a standard office beige, the other a bilious green. Slocumb’s desk is equally battered but wooden and slightly larger, big enough to support a forty-inch monitor screen (“a seizure,” Earl explains when he sees me comparing my standard-size monitor to his jumbo model) and a six-pack-size refrigerator. The walls above and behind Earl’s monitor and dormitory fridge are decorated with an Alabama Department of Conservation calendar illustrated with tidal charts and fish, a snapshot of Slocumb holding up a string of fat red snappers, another of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl in a softball uniform and her nine- or ten-year-old kid brother wearing big sis’s team cap, and a framed certificate proclaiming Detective Earl Slocumb Officer of the Year, 2010. Stuck in the corner of the frame is a snapshot of Earl accepting the certificate and a handshake from the chief. I’ve never worked with or even heard of Slocumb before, which surprises me, given this distinction.
