Tasteful Nudes: ...and Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation (24 page)

At the door, we were met by a man of about sixty who wore glasses and a plaid hunting jacket. He shook with the kind of nervousness one tends to get after having just become a victim of a B and E.

“Thanks for getting here so fast,” he said.

“Not a problem. I’m Officer Mitchell, this is Officer Kozlowski,” Travis said, nodding toward Jim. “And this is Officer Hill.”

Nice. In the span of about forty feet I’d morphed from lunch date to full-fledged police officer. And given that I was wearing a down ski jacket and a pair of jeans, I was apparently working undercover, too, which was great for me.

“So what happened?” Travis nonchalantly asked the older man while I began sniffing around for clues.

“I’ll show you,” the man said, leading us to the kitchen.

There we were met by his wife, also about sixty and also shaking. As we all filed into the cramped kitchen in the back of the house, the man hit
PLAY
on a VCR sitting on top of an old refrigerator.

“I got a surveillance camera trained on my backyard,” he explained while pointing at a small black-and-white television hanging from the ceiling. “Some kids came along and tried to steal some car parts I had sitting back there and then they took off over that fence.”

“Did they take anything?” Jim asked in a way that seemed to imply something more along the lines of “Goddammit, we came here for nothing!”

“Yeah, they took my gun,” the man exclaimed. Things suddenly got a lot more interesting for Officer Hill.

“What gun?” Travis pressed, not nearly as excited as I was.

“Yeah, what gun?” I chimed in.

“I’ll handle this, Officer Hill,” Travis said firmly.

What with him being a veteran, I understood his thinking, but even so it was hard to contain myself. Just a few minutes earlier, the most exciting thing in my immediate future had been a chicken Parmesan sandwich or maybe some spaghetti, and now here I was, investigating the case of a missing gun. I felt tingly all over.

“When I saw them up on the monitor there, I ran out after them with my gun,” the man said.

“And then what happened?” Travis smirked in that way that cops do when they’re pretty sure a story is about to get really good.

“I went around to the back of the house and the two kids were rooting through my stuff.”

“Yeah?”

“They saw me and my gun and came at me.”

“And then?”

“Then they tried to take my gun from me and the damn thing went off.”

“Holy fucking shit—someone got shot!” I thought while spinning around the room looking for a body.

Travis and Jim remained composed, though, probably because this seemed like the part of town where people having and even shooting guns is business as usual.

“Did anyone get hurt?” Travis asked, as if there might be a dead body somewhere that the guy had for whatever reason forgot to mention.

“My finger got cut while they were wrestling me for the gun,” the man explained, holding up his left hand. I felt bad for him—it must have stung a little.

“What happened after that?” Jim pressed.

“Yeah—what happened after that?” I followed excitedly, prompting sidelong glances from both Travis and Jim that suggested my talking privileges were in serious danger of being officially revoked.

“Watch the tape,” the man said, gesturing back to the television. “It’s all on there. They took my gun, hopped over the fence, and then ran into the house right behind mine over there.”

“Officer Hill, take notes,” Travis told me. “I want to know exactly when you see the perpetrators on the screen.”

I realized he was just throwing me a bone, but even so I struggled not to appear too giddy as I rifled through my pockets for a pen and paper. My pen poised, we all stood in silence watching the monitor for a minute or so before two boys who seemed to be in their late teens appeared on the tiny screen.

“There they are! It’s the perpetrators! It’s the perpetrators!” I squealed, doing my best to act like I’d seen this sort of thing a million times before.

After another few seconds, the man with the bloody finger appeared on screen waving a pistol around like he was in a Spaghetti Western.

“And there you are,” I screamed. “And there’s your gun that those perpetrators are totally about to take from you like candy from a goddamn baby!”

To their credit, Travis, Jim, and even the man all acted like they really needed me to give the play-by-play to understand what was happening on the screen. As a rookie, I appreciated the gesture.

Once the video finished, Travis and Jim did some paperwork and the man gave them the tape to take back to the station for further review. Meanwhile, I gave one last “Goddamn if this doesn’t get any easier!” kind of look around the man’s living room—always a good cop move.

Back in the driveway, Jim agreed to head back to the station with the videotape while Travis and I went to check out the house the two kids had supposedly run into.

“Things just keep getting better and better,” I thought.

But as excited as I was to finally fight some crime at the professional level, I was also starting to get a bit nervous about the possibility of getting shot.

“Are we still gonna get lunch?” I asked Travis as we climbed back into the squad car, in hopes of distracting myself from the prospect of death.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “But you gotta remember I’m at work right now, and I gotta take care of shit, so just chill out for a second!”

“Sorry!” I responded in a manner that suggested I wasn’t going to put up with Travis turning his tough cop talk on me for much longer. Just because I was a rookie didn’t mean I didn’t deserve to be treated with dignity.

A minute later we pulled into the driveway of the modest two-storey house behind the house of the man with the bloody finger. As we hopped out of the car, it began to rain, which served as just another reminder of the fact that police work is never easy. Then Travis began to make his way up the driveway, slowly removing his pistol from his belt holster as he walked. Despite my taste for action, I was starting to get officially scared. I figured a cop doesn’t take his gun out unless he thinks he might have to use it.

“What should I do now?” I whispered nervously as the rain slowly made a mess of my hair.

Travis said nothing and instead just waved with his gun for me to follow him toward the back of the house, hopefully because he wanted the backup, but maybe just because he wanted to make sure I stayed out of trouble. I tried to keep it together but suddenly felt in way over my head. Not only did it seem like someone might very well get shot, but I was also totally starving. I could feel my blood sugar dropping and everything. It was really unpleasant.

As I followed Travis back behind the house, he waved at me again with his pistol, this time in a way that seemed to say, “You gotta stay back now because this is the part where someone might answer the door with a gun and try to shoot us.” I crept slowly back to the side of the house while giving Travis an “Oopsie!” gesture—palms up, arms bent, face adorable yet confused.

“If one of us actually ends up getting shot, this will definitely go down as just about the worst lunch date of all time,” I whispered. Travis just looked at me.

As I stood there anxiously, I saw a woman in her early twenties walk up the driveway then quickly turn around and head back down the street.

“There is a woman in her early twenties who just walked up the driveway then quickly turned around and headed back down the street,” I whispered to Travis in an effort to settle back into my police work.

“Stop her!” Travis whispered sternly. “Ask her what the hell she’s doing.”

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at the woman as I shuffled down the driveway. I didn’t even let my voice crack, not even a little. It felt good, empowering even, to be so manly like that. Even so, the woman just kept walking. She didn’t even look over her shoulder. Not only was it kind of rude, but it also hurt my feelings.

“Pure balls on that one,” I thought.

Then I yelled, “You, in the pink jacket,” which totally stopped her in her tracks. Then she turned and looked right at me, Officer Dave Hill, a young rookie thrown into the goddamn mess of these city streets for the very first fucking time in his career.

“What … the hell … are you doing?” I asked through clenched teeth.
3

“I was just gonna see if my friend was home, but I don’t think she is ’cause her car’s not in the driveway,” she told me.

Suddenly she was singing like a goddamn canary.

“And now what are you doing?” I asked her, not even close to fucking satisfied.

“I was just gonna go home, I guess.”

“Good!” I said, doing my best to stare a hole right through her. “You can just get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back as far as I’m concerned.”

She had already turned away by the time I said that last part, but I’m pretty sure she heard every word of it. And as she faded out of sight, I headed back up to the side of the house where Travis was still standing at the back door with his gun drawn. A total pro, Travis seemed to sense my presence without even looking at me.

“What did she say?” he whispered.

“She said she had just come to see if her friend was home but she didn’t think she was because her car’s not in the driveway,” I whispered back.

“Where is she now?”

“She left because I told her she could just get the hell out of here and never come back as far as I was concerned.”

Travis just looked at me after that, before finally lowering his weapon.

“I don’t think anyone is home, either.” Travis sighed. “Let’s get some lunch.”

Just in case Travis and the lady in the pink jacket were wrong, though, we headed back toward the squad car with one eye on the house at all times. I felt like a kid in a water balloon fight, quickly retreating from the opposition while looking over his shoulder, only instead of being afraid of getting hit by a water balloon I was afraid someone might pull out a gun and shoot me in the face, which is different. The odds of that happening probably weren’t very good at all, but—again—given our original plan (sandwiches), all the non-sandwich-related action seemed extra intense.

“Are you sure it’s okay for us to just leave like that?” I asked.

“You want me to just break down the door and barge right in?”

“Yeah!”

You probably saw this coming, but Travis just looked at me after that, too. It was honestly getting kind of annoying.

As we drove away, Travis suggested we go to a diner around the corner.

“What happened to Italian?” I asked.

“They’re closed by now.” Travis sighed in a manner that suggested that I better get used to making sacrifices pretty darn quickly if I ever hoped to make anything of myself on the force.

Adding insult to injury, we didn’t make it ten more feet before a voice came on Travis’s police radio again. It was Jim. He wanted Travis (and me, I took it) to get back to the station and pronto. Apparently he had watched the videotape again, this time with the sound on, and the old man’s story didn’t exactly wash.

“Well, there goes lunch,” Travis said.

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “I’m about to faint from starvation!”

“Sorry, Dave, duty calls,” Travis said before rerouting.

I couldn’t argue with him. Besides, it was more his loss anyway because little did Travis know that I’d planned on picking up the tab at lunch in a bold act of self-imposed rookie hazing.

“I’m gonna have to take you with me to the station first because the parking lot we left your parents’ car in is in the other direction,” Travis told me. Whatever. I still say it was because he wanted me to finish the case I’d helped crack wide fucking open.

A few minutes later, we were back at the precinct where we were greeted by Jim and another cop who looked just like him: same mustache, same dark world view, everything.

“Pete, this is my friend Dave,” Travis told him. “He’s visiting from New York City.”

“New York City, eh?” Pete said in a manner that suggested he hoped I spent most of my time running from a bunch of street gangs just like in that
Warriors
movie but realized I probably didn’t.

Before we got down to business, Travis, Pete, and Jim all lit up cigarettes. I decided to bum one from Travis as long I was standing there. Up until that point in my life, I’d kept a strict rule to only smoke when really, really drunk, but I decided to make an exception in the name of crime-fighting solidarity. Plus, as any decent cop movie will tell you, it’s never a bad idea to take a big drag of a cigarette and exhale slowly right before bringing the fucking hammer down.

“So what’s the story?” Travis asked Jim as a thick haze of smoke began to fill the air.

“Well, it seems the old man’s gun went off long before he made it around to the back of his house,” Tom explained between drags. “Here, have a look for yourself.”

Jim hit
PLAY
on a nearby VCR and we watched the surveillance video again, this time with the sound on. Sure enough, we heard a gun go off about ten seconds before the man with the bloody finger ever showed up behind the house, which, of course, suggested to us crime-solving types that maybe the old coot was a bit more trigger-happy than he had originally led us to believe. Jim, Pete, and Travis all smirked at one another as the tape finished and the monitor went back to playing static. I smirked, too, though I wasn’t exactly sure why.

“Looks like someone’s gonna have to talk to the old man about getting his story straight.” Travis groaned.

“Yep,” Jim said.

“Yep,” I agreed.

All three of them looked at me after that; I guess it was just a cop thing. Then we all snuffed out our smokes and headed out back to where the squad cars were parked. As Travis and I took to the streets again, I began to wonder if I’d get to do the questioning once we got back to the old man’s house. I was surprised, however, when, just a few minutes later, Travis drove into the parking lot where I’d left my parents’ car instead.

“What are we doing here?” I asked. “What about the man with the bloody finger? What about the goddamn B and E? What about
us
?”