At Their Own Game (5 page)

Once his wife left him, and me, I figured we were quits. I tried to forget Helen, and hard as it was, I moved on.
 

He didn’t.
 

FIVE
 

After six years on the job, I was just starting to get past the rookie mentality. I realized I wasn’t going to catch every crook out there, and that even if I did, the judges wouldn’t sentence them to any meaningful time. There wasn’t jail space for them all, anyway.
 

I still believed in all the other bullshit, though. All the do-gooder, make a difference, help people pile of noble, patriotic propaganda that society sold us on. Or maybe I sold myself on it. Either way, I believed, and that kept me from becoming a burnout, which I was already starting to see in some of my academy mates.
 

Maybe it helped that I wasn’t squeaky clean walking in. The fact that in high school, I shoplifted, got into fights, cut school, and even took a couple cars for a joyride gave me experience on that side of the line that many other cops never had. I had to think like a criminal for a while, even if I was a low grade, punk criminal at the time, not hardcore at all. Still, perspective helps, and it ultimately made me a better cop. And I didn’t have as far to fall with disillusionment.
 

Of course, one of the mantras of the street is to mind your own business. I should have taken that lesson into law enforcement with me, even though that philosophy was completely at odds with being a cop.
 

I was off duty one day in late spring. It was warmer than usual, so I decided to walk to the grocery store. As I rounded the corner, I saw a fight in the parking lot. Cop instincts kicked in. I ran toward the two men that were struggling, yelling for them to knock it off.
 

They ignored me. Why would they listen? I was just some guy in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, not a police officer in full uniform.
 

When I reached the two of them, I stepped in between, pushing outward at them both. One guy, the smaller of the two, cast me a quick look and paused. The other guy lunged forward at him, brushing me aside.
 

I grabbed his wrist as he slid past and slammed it into a wrist lock.
 

He yelped in pained surprise.
 

The smaller man stared at us both for a moment, then bolted.
 

The bigger guy jerked his hand downward and out of my grasp. “You dumb shit!” he growled and took a swing at me.
 

I side-stepped the punch and countered with a blow to his mid-section. He grunted but threw an elbow without breaking stride. The point of his elbow caught me in the temple and sent me reeling back several steps. Stars danced on a black field in front of my eyes.
 

He plowed into me and we went to the ground. After we rolled over once or twice, I started to get my bearings back. I threw a couple of short punches while we were clinched, and landed one on something soft.
 

He cursed and pushed me away. I rolled backward and then stood up.
 

He slowly pushed himself to his feet, blood coursing out his nose, drenching the front of his shirt.
 

“You fucking broke my nose!”
 

I didn’t answer. I just stood and waited to see if he was finished.
 

Tires chirped, and I turned to see a police car pull into the parking lot, its overhead lights flashing.
 

I almost smiled.
 

I turned back to him, and he was smiling, too. “You’re gonna get yours now, motherfucker,” he said.
 

It took me a second to put it all together, and by then it was all too late. It was all over. The fight, my career, everything.
 

Turned out the small guy had just committed a shoplifting. The big guy was security, with a limited police commission. He grabbed the thief out in the parking lot and that’s the struggle I saw.
 

Not a fight.
 

An arrest.
 

The cops that arrived were hesitant to act. They listened to my story and to his, and then because no one wanted to decide what to do, they called a sergeant.
 

The sergeant was brand new, promoted just a few weeks ago, and nervous as a cat. He talked to each of the cops, then re-interviewed me and the security guy. The way he seemed to be struggling with a decision, I thought for a wild second that he might actually arrest me.
 

He didn’t, but that ended up not being such a wild or crazy thought.
 

Security Man and I were both sent on our way, and the sergeant ordered the officers to write detailed reports.
 

That was a Wednesday. Thursday, I got a call from Internal Affairs, telling me that I was being investigated, and the chief was putting me on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
 

“Investigated for what? Assault?” That was crazy. There was no way I could have known –
 

“Robbery,” the IA Lieutenant told me.
 

And, of course, that made sense. I’d used force to aid or abet the taking of property. Technically, that was robbery, but…
 

“How can there be a robbery without any intent?” I asked.
 

“I can’t talk about the case,” he said. “Get in touch with your union delegate.”
 

I did.
 

As a union delegate, Butch always seemed like a sharp enough guy.
 

Then again, I never had any real union problems.
 

One time about a year before, I got beefed on a demeanor. It was a pretty righteous complaint insofar as I did call the guy a piece of shit. I guess it didn’t matter that he was a prolific thief with a record dating back to diapers, which he also probably stole. I called him a piece of shit because he was stealing money from his own grandmother. The last person in the world who seemed to think he had some good left in him. But what I found out was that it didn’t really matter to the chief of police whether or not calling the guy a piece of shit was true or not. It only mattered that it was rude and unprofessional and the piece of shit in question decided to complain about it.
 

Problem was, my demeanor complaint happened during a period of time in which one shit storm after another hit the department. Half a dozen officers were being investigated for excessive force in one case, sexual misconduct in another and racial profiling in a third. Major cases, with lots of media play. Most of the cases turned out to be complete bullshit, but they still ate up tons of investigative resources. My little demeanor slip up barely registered, so by the time Internal Affairs got to it, went through the mandatory interviews and sent it to the Chief’s office for disposition, the process took too long.
 

Butch came in with a copy of the contract, said he’d grieve the finding if the Chief went through with a founded complaint, regardless of how light the sanction was. It didn’t matter, he said. “They gotta play by the rules,” he told me, pointing at the contract. “Everyone agreed.”
 

The Chief clenched his jaw and glared, but in the end, the whole thing was dropped.
 

In hindsight, the timeline thing seemed less like a stroke of brilliance and more like an Easter egg, but at the time, it gave me some hope to have Butch on my side for this so-called robbery beef I was facing now.
 

We met at a quiet coffee shop that I’d never been to before. When I mentioned that, he nodded and smiled. “Yeah, cops never come here. Don’t have to worry about running into the brass, either. No one can overhear what we talk about. It’s a good place. I call it my office.”
 

The coffee was shitty, but I suppose that was the price you paid for having a brass-free hideaway. I sipped the brackish brew while Butch went through my file with me.
 

“See, here’s the thing,” he said. “There’s no intent.”
 

“That’s what I told the IA Lieutenant.”
 

He scowled. “Like he’ll listen. That fucker is too busy running his side business from his office. You don’t have to worry about him. What you gotta worry about is whoever they assign the case to in Major Crimes for criminal investigation. The IA dick will just piggyback off that, anyway.”
 

“Who’s that?”
 

“Kyle Falkner.”
 

I stared at him.
 

“What?”
 

“You’re kidding me.”
 

“No. Falkner was up. He caught the case.”
 

“Shit. Can you change it?”
 

He frowned at me. “You’re asking me if a union delegate can ask the Major Crimes sergeant to reassign a robbery case? No, wait…an
Internal Affairs
robbery case?  Is that a real question?”
 

“Yeah, it’s a real fucking question. Can you?”
 

He shook his head. “Dude, I can’t even
ask
something like that without some compelling reason. And even then, they don’t have to do it. It’s an operational call.”
 

I leaned back in my chair. “Fuck.”
 

“What’s the problem with Falkner? Besides him being kind of an asshole, I mean?”
 

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”
 

“It could. You got a personal issue with him?”
 

“Yeah,” I said. “You could say that.”
 

“What is it? Could I argue that he’d be biased?”
 

“No,” I said. “Not biased. But motivated.”
 

“What is it?” Butch repeated. He was looking at me more like someone interested in what I had to say for gossip value than how much it might help my case.
 

“Old shit,” I finally said. “Not worth talking about.”
 

Butch shrugged. “Okay. We’ll just have to look at his case work close, then. Make sure no bias shows up.”
 

Detective Falkner was plenty biased, but not the kind I was in a position to complain about. His bias translated into hard, thorough work. He interviewed everyone he could that had seen any part of the altercation. He ended up with seventeen different witnesses who saw some piece of it or another.
 

He asked the witnesses simple, direct questions, and all of their answers resulted in a clear picture of me being the aggressor.
 

He asked questions that planted seeds, too. Did the witness have any knowledge of my relationship with the shoplifter? Did the witness know if we were acting in league with each other or not? Even when the answers to questions like this are all “no”, if you read the question enough times in a report, it starts to make you wonder. And no one knew who the little thief was, either, which would have cleared things up a lot.
 

When I received a summons for an interview with Falkner, I contacted Butch right away. I knew they could make me come to the Internal Affairs interview and order me to answer questions, sure. That’s straight out of
Garrity v. New Jersey
. I’d be under the pain of firing if I refused, but nothing I said in that interview could be used against me criminally. But usually that IA interview came later, after the criminal investigation was completed. As far as the criminal investigation was concerned, I still had all of the same rights as every other American. And there’s a little thing called the Fifth Amendment that I planned to make use of.
 

I decided I wasn’t going to the interview.
 

“Ya gotta come for the interview,” Butch said. We were back at his ‘office’ again, drinking more coffee that tasted like it was brewed in an old oil can.
 

“I don’t have anything to say.”
 

“That’s up to you,” Butch said. “But you’ve been ordered to come to the interview.”
 

“They can’t do that unless they give me Garrity.”
 

“Yeah, they can. They can order you to attend the interview. They just can’t order you to answer questions.”
 

“That sounds like bullshit to me.”
 

“It’s the way it is.”
 

“Will the union attorney be there?”
 

“She’ll be on the phone.”
 

I gave Butch a hard stare. “On the
phone
?”
 

He nodded.
 

“How much do we pay this lawyer, Butch? How much have I paid in dues over the last six years? And for that, I get her on the
phone
?”
 

“It’s a common practice,” he said, a little stiffly.
 

“It’s a bullshit practice,” I told him, but there was nothing I could do about it.
 

Butch shrugged at that. “All that being said, I’ve got a question for you.”
 

“Shoot.”
 

“Why not just explain what happened to Falkner? Maybe they’ll understand and drop the charges.”
 

I stared at him. “Do you really believe that?”
 

“Sure.”
 

“Then let me ask
you
a question. If this were a situation where me just explaining what happened would solve things, don’t you think that conversation would have happened a lot earlier in the process?”
 

Butch squirmed a little in his seat. “Yeah, I guess so.”
 

“You…
guess
?”