A woman of valor, p.24
A Woman of Valor, page 24
Gibson motioned to his office, mimed hanging up the phone, and turned away. Val stood and held out her hand, imploring Gibson to stay. “Sorry, Mr. Parks, but urgent police business requires that I—What’s that?...No, I hope not sir. Thank you, Mr. Parks. Yes, you’re welcome. Goodbye.” She hung up the phone with a loud sigh. “Lieutenant?” she called after him, but he’d disappeared into his office. She hustled to his open door and peered in, finding him already engrossed in work at his desk. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
“Having fun on the phones?” Gibson said with a smirk and pointed to a chair.
“Loads.” She slouched into a seat. “If it were up to Mr. Parks, I’d be filing use-of-weapon reports daily, just to combat the litter epidemic.”
“You’re a natural,” Gibson said, enjoying himself a little too much. “Maybe I ought to transfer you to Dispatch.”
“I’ll quit!” Val blurted without thinking, then blushed. “I mean, whatever you think is best, sir.”
Gibson laughed. “Lucky for you, Cyrus’s evaluation has come in.”
“And?” She sat up in her seat, almost on the edge, her back straight.
“The report says you’re not completely crazy.” Gibson grinned, glancing at a document on his desk. “Just crazy enough to do police work.”
She sighed in relief. “So, what does that mean?”
“Normally, in cases like this,” he said, “I’d insist you go through more psych tests, the whole nine yards. But I’m short too many men—er, officers—so I can’t afford it. So, I’m putting you back on patrol. Same beat, new partner.”
She leaned forward. “Thank you, sir. But, who?”
“Alex Papadopoulos.”
Her breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t imagine a worse fit than the creepy, condescending Pops—except answering phones. “Isn’t he on guard duty at the moment?” she asked.
“He’ll rotate off tomorrow. Pops is too experienced, and expensive, to play kindergarten cop at the hospital. Besides, you need to see a different style than Gil’s. Pops is a little more low-key, but you two will work well together.”
“Sure.” She could think of only one trait they shared: the color of their uniforms.
Gibson grimaced. “You don’t sound convinced.”
Val took a breath, exhaled. “He’s a little, um, old school.”
Gibson nodded. “Yup. You have a lot to learn from each other.” He held her gaze for a moment. “I mean that, too, Dawes. Each other. Naturally I expect you to take notes on what a more experienced officer can teach you. But he hasn’t exactly kept up with the times, as you say. So, I want you to teach him a few things, too.”
She grinned and stood. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
“I mean it, Dawes. Get him off his ass. He needs to get with the program—walk a beat, not drive it, and get familiar with people out on the street. The whole community policing package. There’s nobody better to teach him that than you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Give it a few weeks, then we’ll talk.”
Val left Gibson’s office with a skip in her step. Back on patrol! And with a vote of confidence from the boss—a request to shake Pops out of his old school ways. It’d be a challenge, but one she embraced. Anything to push the good-old-boy mentality out the door and into the dustbin worked for her.
And now she could get back to the job she relished: getting crazy, violent trash like Harkins off the streets. For good, she hoped.
***
Val arrived at the hospital the next day as Brenda Petroni and Shannon O’Reilly exited through its double glass doors.
“He’s all drugged up again,” Brenda said. “They needed to run some sort of test that would put him in a lot of pain.”
“Doc says he’ll be out until tomorrow morning,” Shannon added. “I must be bad luck. I have yet to get here when he’s conscious.”
“Stay the hell away, then,” Val said, then covered her mouth. Shannon’s shocked, sad expression told her that her joke landed on a sore spot. “I’m sorry,” Val said. “That was in poor taste.”
“Make it up to me with a spiced latte,” Shannon said. “I’ve wanted to catch up with you anyway.”
The three women met at Friendly’s and sat in a back corner booth, sipping sweet, hot coffees while Christmas music chimed over scratchy loudspeakers. The smell of French fries permeated everything, from the duct-taped vinyl bench seats to the sticky plastic covering the faded menus crammed behind 50s-style metal napkin holders. A framed poster on the wall boasted of an “upcoming” concert at Tanglewood—from 1993.
“Word is you’re getting a new partner,” Shannon said after taking a long hit on her drink. “Lucky you.”
“How do you feel about it?” Brenda asked. “I understand you and Pops have butted heads a few times already.”
“I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from Alex,” Val said without conviction.
Brenda and Shannon laughed. “Good thing you’re not trying to sell me a car,” Brenda said. “But I can’t say I blame you.” She exchanged wary glances with Shannon, who pretended to read the Christmas message on the side of her drink’s paper cup.
“I’ve never had a good poker face,” Val said. “So, help me out here. What’s the best thing about working with Alex?”
“Going home after your shift is over,” Shannon muttered. Brenda snort-laughed with a mouthful of coffee and made a mess of the table.
“You have personal experience?” Val asked.
Shannon grimaced and checked with Brenda before answering. She sighed when Petroni nodded and waved as if to say, “After you.”
“We were partners for a year,” Shannon said. “If you leave aside how many times he propositioned me, put his hand on my leg in the car, told jokes, and took credit for my collars, it was an outstanding educational experience.”
“Yeah,” Brenda said. “She learned what an asshole he is.”
“And how much the department will back up a sexist jerk when it’s his word against hers,” Shannon said, heat rising in her voice. “The first time he touched my leg, I let it slide, like an idiot. The second time, I complained. You know what they said? ‘If you’re so upset, why didn’t you complain the first time?’ And they said—get this—‘Next time, grab his balls. That’ll stop him.’ As if I’d want to touch that sleazy pig, for any reason!”
Val shivered, and not from the cold. She’d been nervous around Gil, who’d acted like a perfect gentleman. Now they’d confirmed her worst fears about Pops.
They sipped their coffees in silence for a few minutes. Then Brenda smiled and patted Val’s hand. “In a way, it’ll be good for you. A new partner will expose you to a different style of policing, different approaches and attitudes. Not everyone’s a prince like Gil Kryzinski.”
“This is good, how?” Val said in a sour voice.
“You’ll appreciate the good ones more,” Shannon said.
Brenda squeezed Val’s arm. “Be careful,” she said. “Pops also has a reputation as a bad-mouther.”
Shannon blew air between her lips. “To say the least. I got my worst evals ever when I worked with him. Remember, anything that goes wrong is your fault.”
“Jeez,” Val said. “Does he have a good side? I mean, he’s not going to side with the crooks and child molesters, is he?” She imagined him making excuses for Harkins, not wanting to keep up an aggressive pursuit, and shuddered.
“No, no,” Shannon said. “He’s square, as far as that goes. Never went on the take, anything like that. Although I wondered at times if—no, forget it.” Her eyes drooped and focused on something miles away to Val’s left. Brenda looked away as well.
“What?” Val said. “You guys know something? What did you wonder about? Come on, tell me!”
“Sh!” Brenda patted the air with her hands. “Keep your voice down.”
“Tell me what I’m getting into, here,” Val said, lowering her voice. “Please.”
Brenda and Shannon exchanged glances. Shannon cleared her throat. “A few times, Pops arrested some street kids, and I thought, What’s he up to here? The kids weren’t doing anything wrong. But sure enough, he searches them, and turns up some contraband or a weapon in the kid’s pocket. You know what I mean?”
“He planted it?” Val asked in a squeaky whisper.
“That’s what the kids always said,” Shannon said, hiding behind her coffee cup. “But that’s what perps do, right?”
“Pops wouldn’t be the first cop to do it, nor the last,” Brenda said with a shrug.
Val sat back in her chair, stunned. Of course she knew that bad cops existed. She had a harder time understanding how casually Brenda and Shannon accepted it. Business as usual.
“Again, we have no proof,” Shannon said. “Be on the lookout for it, though.”
“But we were talking about Alex’s good side,” Brenda said. “I will say this: he’s not likely to put you—or himself—in harm’s way. You’ll always have plenty of backup around before you rush onto any crime scene.”
“That sounds more like a criticism of Gil than praise for Pops,” Val said, her eyes stinging. How could Brenda be so indelicate?
“Sorry,” Brenda said. “I don’t mean it that way. All I’m saying is, you might need to get used to a more cautious approach with Pops than you had with Gil.”
Val nodded. She understood Brenda’s point too well. If she wanted to pursue Richard Harkins, she couldn’t expect much help from Alex Papadopoulos.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Val squirmed in the passenger seat, putting as much distance as possible between herself and her new partner, Alex “Pops” Papadopoulos, driving the squad car down Broadway Avenue. His long but rotund frame took up half of the bench seat of their new Crown Victoria, which, he’d reminded her, she had dented on her second day on the job. He hadn’t yet brought up the incident at the firing range. But he’d have a hard time spinning that story in a way favorable to him.
“So, Alex, tell me about yourself,” she said, trying not to breathe in through her nose. Anything to minimize the aroma of garlic and stinky cheese that seemed to comprise half of his diet—the half not consisting of coffee and rich pastries. That reinforced her urge to sit as far away from him on the seat as she could, still mindful of Shannon’s warnings about his wandering hands.
“Not much to tell.” Val hadn’t noticed this before, but when he wasn’t insulting somebody, Pops plodded through words so that even a short sentence droned on. “Been on the force half my life, since the day after my twenty-fourth birthday. Most of it downtown and South End. Grew up in Granby. Married nineteen years, and Betty and I are still as much in love as the day we tied the knot. I guess that’s sort of special, huh?”
“That’s sweet.” Val smiled. “Any kids?”
“Two,” Pops said, scratching his teeth while waiting at a red light. “Alex Junior is twelve, Hannah is fifteen, almost sixteen. Already dating boys. Can you believe that? I never dated until I was a senior in high school. Even that was a blind date, to my senior prom. But things sure are different these days.”
“That‘s for sure.” Val gazed out the passenger side window. “Does your wife have a job?”
“Full-time homemaker. And she does a great job. A super job. Betty sacrificed a lot to stay at home and raise the kids. Heck, we both did, living on just my salary. But neither of us would trade it for anything.” He stared ahead into the night and scratched a fingernail on his front teeth again. After a bit he shrugged. “Otherwise,” he said, “pretty much what you see is what you get.”
Which wasn’t much. Brenda Petroni had used generous terms to describe him: “deliberate” in nature, and “somewhat out of shape.” She’d use the term “roly-poly.” Pops wore a thin crown of short black hair around the bald top of his head and kept black horn-rimmed reading glasses stuffed in the front pocket of his uniform. Val suspected he might benefit from bifocals, judging by the way he squinted to read passing street signs.
“Sounds like the all-American life you’ve got there.” Val put on a rueful smile. “Pretty different from mine.”
“You can say that again.” He sniggered and slowed to a stop at a yellow light.
She turned toward him, warming under the collar. “Excuse me?”
He said nothing, just hummed something resembling a Christmas carol.
“Alex? Would you care to explain that remark?” Val kept her breathing steady, through her mouth to avoid the onslaught of his recent gastronomic exploits.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just agreeing with you, sport. Oh and call me Pops. Everybody does.”
She waited for the return interrogation, got none. He drove well under the speed limit, deep in thought, and stopped at all yellow lights. She wondered if his teeth-scratching habit was a nervous tic or an economy measure to save on dentist bills. He slowed down whenever they passed young men on the street, particularly dark-skinned men, something she’d never notice Gil do. After he’d done it a few times, she asked him about it.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “Not consciously, anyway.”
“It seems like you do. Just wondered if you had a particular reason.” She wondered why Brenda and Shannon never mentioned his racial profiling. Maybe that’s what they meant by “old-school.”
“Just to get familiar with the faces. This being a new beat for me, and all.”
Ah! Opportunity. “That would be easier if we got out and walked,” she said.
Pops shot her an irritated glance. “We will,” he said. “But I want to get a feel for the neighborhood first.”
“Okay, that’s fine.” She tried to strike a more placating tone. “Why don’t we find our local crime watch group and say hello—”
The crackle of the radio reported that the owner of a nearby store wanted a group of loitering youths removed from his premises. “That’s close by,” she said. “I’ll call it in.”
“Is that a black area?” he asked after she notified dispatch.
She frowned. “Half of Liberty Heights is African American. Why?”
“I just want to know what we’re up against.” He pressed the switch to turn on the blue-and-white lights, but kept the siren off.
“Their skin color tells you that?”
He grimaced at her. “Maybe that upsets your liberal sensitivities, but too bad. I call ’em as I see ’em, and in my experience, skin color is useful information.” He sped through an intersection, beeping the siren despite the green light facing them.
“Okay.” Val took a deep breath and tried a more conciliatory tone, the way she imagined Gil doing. “So what do you know about the situation we didn’t know before?”
Pops gave her a knowing look. “That they don’t trust two white cops?”
She snorted. “I know that without knowing what color they are.”
He laughed. “You’re funny, Dawes.” A few minutes later he pulled into the store’s tiny parking lot and turned off the engine. “Okay, here we are. Normally, as the senior partner, I’d take the lead, but you know these people a little better. So why don’t you take the lead this time?”
“Sure.” Val suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at the way he said “these people,” opting to remain as positive as she could. She approached the dim light of the building, Pops following. At least one of the fluorescent bulbs lighting the doorway had burned out. Three black youths loitered outside the store’s all-glass front and at least two more moved around inside. She ignored her partner’s “ahems” and addressed the teens standing in front of the store.
“Night, guys.”
“Hey.” They glanced over their shoulders into the store.
She focused on the tallest one, who had two gold loop earrings in his right ear. She recognized him as a Disciple, and one with a little authority. “Trap, isn’t it?”
“Yo, Copette.” Trap waved and looked away. His buddies laughed.
“Got plans tonight, Trap?”
“Not a lot.” More laughter.
“You all been hanging out here a while tonight?”
“Yeah. S’nice here. S’got a nice am-biance.”
“Ambiance!” his buddies repeated between guffaws. “Good one.”
“Yeah, well, Mr. Tanner would rather you move along.”
“Who’s Mr. Tanner?” Trap asked.
“The store’s owner, who has the right to ask you to move along, if you’re not shopping.”
“I already done my shopping. We just waiting on Gunner and Pip. They inside.”
“Okay, look. I’m going in for coffee,” she said. “When I come out, I want you guys to have made a choice as to where you’re going next.”
“Hey, we gotta wait for our homies,” one of the other boys complained. “They inside getting some smokes.”
“They’ll be out in a moment.” Val turned to Pops. “How do you like your coffee?”
“Black, three sugars.”
“I’ll be right back.” She turned to the boys. “I’m serious. I want you on your way.”
“Isn’t this a school night?” Pops asked. “Don’t you boys have homework to do?”
“Homework?” they screeched amid peals of laughter. “Oh, man. That’s a good one.”
Val sighed and made her way into the store. Sure enough, two black youths stood at the check-out counter, pointing at their favorite brand of cigarettes. The shorter, husky boy with a scraggly beard and a single gold loop earring she recognized as Gunner. The second youth, though taller, looked younger, perhaps about fourteen, with no earring. Must be Pip. A new recruit.
She headed straight to the coffee counter, but kept an eye on the group outside. Pops had struck up a conversation with them. She winced, imagining him uttering a racist remark to rile them, giving him an excuse to arrest them all.
“Five dollars? For one pack?” Gunner shook his head. “Man, that’s a rip-off. Last week they was four dollars.”
