Paul Bacon Read online

  Boarding the bus was only slightly less grueling. A crowded city bus could be a veritable china shop of kneecaps, and moving down the aisle required a Balanchine-like level of grace I did not possess. One day when Clarabel and I rode the bus together, my baton nearly impaled three different passengers as we pulled away from the curb. Like a pendulum, I swung forward, then backward, and then forward again, causing everyone around me to either gird their loins or shout at me in protest.

  While struggling to regain my balance, I stumbled toward a young man listening to headphones with his eyes closed, completely oblivious to it all. I desperately tried to right myself before I poked him with my baton, more out of fear for my safety than for his. The man was large enough to straddle two seats on the bus without anyone giving him a hard time about it. He also seemed to be in a fighting mood. “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me! ” he was singing along with his iPod, which was clipped to his belt in reach of my approaching nightstick. I got my footing in time to keep from crushing his kneecap, but the tip of my baton grazed his music player controls and shut it off.

  When the music stopped, his eyes flew open. All the people who were shouting and staring at me must have given him a shock, because he looked like he’d woken up in the middle of an avalanche. He jumped to his feet in a move for higher ground and fell backward against the window. With nowhere else to go, he began baring his teeth like a cornered animal.

  In seven years of riding New York City public transit, I’d seen a lot of defensive behavior, but never the baring of teeth. Even if he did seem not entirely human, I felt bad about startling him, and I decided I should say something. I knew Clarabel would not approve, so I cast a quick look around to make sure she wasn’t watching.

  “Sorry. This thing’s kind of heavy,” I said, pointing to my academy bag.

  The man’s ears were still plugged with headphones, so I wasn’t sure if he understood what I said. “What?” he said five times louder than necessary. “Is it illegal to listen to Rage Against the Machine now?”

  Rage Against the Machine was a fiercely antiauthoritarian rock group, hated by cops and government figures everywhere. I had several of their albums. I thought I could disarm the situation by pointing out how we shared a common taste in music, so I began telling him, “Not at all. As a matter of fact . . .”

  Before I could finish, Clarabel elbowed her way through the crowd and cut me off. “What’s illegal,” she said, pointing at the man, “is taking up two seats on the bus.”

  I just wanted to ride home in peace, so I tried to stifle my classmate with a stern look. She ignored me.

  The young man flared his nostrils at Clarabel and said, “My ass it is.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Clarabel shot back, “your ass is taking up two seats.”

  When the man wouldn’t budge, Clarabel threatened to write him a summons for disorderly conduct. He called her bluff by rightly pointing out that she had no authority to do so as a recruit. Undeterred, Clarabel took a practice summons out of her duffel bag and a pen from her breast pocket. This was serious. Even though it was a practice summons, she was using it like the real thing, which could get her fired, thrown in jail, and possibly sued. I imagined her going to court. Then I imagined myself going to court to testify against her. I quickly turned away so as not to be a witness. I knew better than to try to stop her, so I just kept an eye on the man and hoped I didn’t have to restrain him.

  Clarabel asked the man for his identification, and he seemed very pleased to tell her, “I didn’t bring my ID today, all right? That’s not a crime either, in case they haven’t taught you that yet.”

  Clarabel replied by mimicking our latest Police Science lesson. “But a summons is issued in lieu of arrest,” she said, “and I can’t write you a summons without an ID. You know what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, I do. I know what you’re saying. And I think you’re full of shit, lady.” He stretched both arms toward Clarabel and presented his wrists, ready to be cuffed. “Go ahead, lock me up. I dare you.”

  I looked over, expecting to see Clarabel flinch at last. No such luck. Instead, she was fishing a pair of handcuffs from her front pants pocket, where they had no business being in the first place. Everyone in the bus gasped, including me. It was a provocative move, even by her standards. What was she thinking? What if this guy didn’t go quietly? Where would we take him if he did? We had no authority to arrest anyone, much less for taking up two seats on the bus.

  While Clarabel was still holding the cuffs at her side, the man grudgingly pulled his hands back and said, “All right, all right. I’ll fucking move.” He slid as close to the window as his girth would allow, leaving an open seat, or most of one, beside him.

  “Thank you, sir,” Clarabel said in a crisp, businesslike tone and put her handcuffs back into her pocket. Then she sat down on the newly vacated seat and made herself comfortable.

  I continued gawking at Clarabel. She’d just risked everything for a seat on the bus next to a possible lunatic. More important to our romantic future, she’d emerged the victor in a battle of wills, proving beyond any doubt that she was as tough as she made herself out to be.

  When she noticed me staring at her, she said, “What? I’m not standing all the way home.”

  CHAPTER 7

  DAYS AT THE ACADEMY began with “morning muster,” our routine dose of inspection and humiliation. During muster, we stood in our company formations on the gymnasium roof, which was laid out like a miniature parade ground, while academy instructors went from one recruit to the next, berating our appearance. The really tough ones would scream about any imperfection they could find, from unshined shoes and ragged creases to droopy eyes and excessive nose hair. Most days, this ritual took place in direct sunlight, which in the muggy month of August felt oppressive even at seven thirty A.M. I could sweat through an entire undershirt before muster was over. On days when I forgot to bring a spare, I’d have to wring it out in a bathroom sink.

  One person who never seemed to break a sweat was a cocky recruit named Neil Moran. A reformed hooligan from the South Bronx, Moran was a notorious lady-killer with a pencil-line mustache and a reputation for “getting mad ass.” He also happened to be my company sergeant. This wasn’t as impressive as it sounds: Moran was still a plebe like the rest of us, only with more responsibilities, like taking daily head counts and dealing with all of our paperwork. He also had to march us around the muster deck like little soldiers, and he had to keep us quiet in formation. For all their thankless busywork, company sergeants enjoyed one exclusive privilege, their choice of precinct at the end of the semester.

  The academy appointed Moran to this position based on his army experience—and apparently nothing else. He was or ganized but aloof, smart but intellectually lazy, approachable but never around to be approached. He acted as if he was giving us a break by not being a disciplinarian like the other company sergeants, but his leniency earned him no fans. He was quickly written off as an opportunist and a fraud.

  Plus, Moran used his ostensible workload as an excuse to be late to everything. Muster to him was like a brunch appointment—if you showed up after the first Bloody Mary, nobody really cared enough to notice. One morning, when he was particularly late, an instructor approached our company looking for him.

  “Where’s your company sergeant?” said Officer Dilonzio, our fidgety law teacher, a kind-hearted senior staffer who doted on our group because we were so frequently left without supervision.

  Stony silence from Company 02. Where’s Moran? Where’s Jimmy Hoffa? Where’s Waldo?

  Officer Dilonzio nodded as though he realized it was a stupid question. He wrung his hands and looked nervously around the muster deck, where five other companies were standing with their group leaders waiting for the detail to begin. Other instructors were lining up by the door, ready to pounce.

  Dilonzio turned back to our group. “One of youze gotta be in charge here, or there’ll be hell to pay.
Who else is former military?”

  Two recruits put up their hands, but both claimed they couldn’t remember how to open and close ranks for inspection—a series of verbal commands which, if not perfectly executed, could turn us all into bowling pins.

  Dilonzio started looking around at different faces, searching for someone. When his eyes locked on mine, he said, “Bacon, fall out.”

  “I don’t even know . . .”

  “Hurry up,” he said. “It’s almost time.”

  I squeezed through two ranks of my classmates and met Officer Dilonzio in front of the formation. “Why me?” I asked him.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and whispered into my ear, “You’re a quick learner.”

  “But I have poor short-term memory,” I whispered back.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said.

  “Seriously, sir. I’m not up to this. Request permission to nominate someone else.”

  “Too late,” he said. “Just listen. Start with everyone at attention, then it’s secure your gear. Then it’s dress-right-dress, and then stow your gear, and then it’s . . .” Two dozen commands later, he brought it home. “. . . And after that, it’s just fourth rank, right face, and then company, march. Can you do that?”

  I wanted to say, “What comes after attention?” but I knew I wasn’t going to retain anything under this kind of pressure. Officer Dilonzio’s hovering was making me more nervous, so I said, “Yeah, no problem,” to make him go away.

  “Good man,” he said, patting my back. With his mission accomplished, he walked confidently toward the other instructors waiting for our platoon commander’s imminent arrival.

  Before I turned to my troops, I took a long breath through my nose while staring at the cement under my feet. I barely made it through most inspections just keeping my own act together. How was I going to guide twenty-eight half-trained recruits through a series of footwork that would stump the Alvin Ailey dancers? One thing at a time: I focused on finding the little piece of tape on the ground where I’d seen Moran line up his toes at the beginning of each muster. I faced the formation. Twenty-eight pairs of eyes stared back at me. I knew everyone in my company by this point, but seeing them from Moran’s shoes for the first time, I didn’t recognize any of them. And even though they were standing in straight lines, I felt as though they were swarming around me from all sides, like bystanders at a car accident.

  In the middle of this anxiety-induced hallucination, a familiar face broke through the clutter. It was Bill Peters, whom I’d first met at equipment day. Shaking his bald head at me, he spoke in a low, gravelly voice, as if in super-slow motion: “You are so screwed.”

  Just then, I heard our platoon commander crowing behind me like a two-hundred-pound rooster, “De-TAAAAAIL! AH-ten-HUNH!”

  I snapped back into the moment. I straightened my arms, threw out my chest, and stared through the person standing in front of me, as if they weren’t even there.

  “No,” said Bill. “You bring the company to attention first, then you . . .”

  “Right, right,” I said, and took in a deep lungful of air. It was time to rise to the occasion. As nervous as I felt, I’d wanted to shout “Attention!” at a large group of people and watch them click into place. It looked like so much fun when Moran did it.

  “Compa-NAYYYYYYY!” I began, pleasantly surprised at how convincing I sounded. “AH-ten . . .”

  I felt a tap on my right shoulder and leapt five feet to the left in shock.

  It was Moran, materializing out of thin air. “Thanks, bro,” he said. “I got it from here.”

  I might have been relieved to see his little mustache five seconds earlier, but his sudden arrival sent my pulse into overdrive. I hustled around to the back of the formation to catch my breath before being scrutinized.

  Seconds after Moran had taken over, an instructor walked up to him without the slightest look of suspicion on his face. Moran gave the requisite salute, then opened our ranks for inspection. His verbal orders were crisp and accurate and perfectly timed. Under his command, our otherwise clumsy group of fresh recruits looked like they were ready to graduate from West Point.

  While the instructor faced down each of my classmates one by one, Moran walked two steps behind him in silence as part of the routine. In this passive role, Moran had only to answer for irregularities, not point them out. But for some reason he picked on Clarabel after an instructor had already looked her over.

  “What’s that on your face, Suarez?” he barked at her out of the blue. We were all stunned. He’d never dressed down anyone in our company, and he’d never shown concern for appearances other than his own.

  The instructor seemed just as perplexed. He turned back from the next person in line to shout at Moran, “What are you trying to prove, company sergeant? I’ve already inspected this recruit.”

  I could only see the back of Clarabel’s head, so I didn’t know how she reacted, other than to keep her mouth shut. I admired her restraint. It must have been tough not to laugh.

  “Sir, the recruit is wearing purple eye shadow,” Moran reported.

  “So she is,” said the instructor, taking a longer look at Clarabel. “Purple and sparkling.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Moran.

  “She’s your charge,” said the instructor. “I’m either taking a deportment card from her or from you. It’s your call.”

  Deportment cards were our currency of punishment. As recruits, we surrendered them to instructors for minor infractions like talking in the hallways or forgetting to do homework. We had to keep two of them on our person at all times—except in gym class, where discipline took the form of endless push-ups. Get enough cards taken, and we faced administrative review, or, in chronic cases, expulsion from the academy. Clarabel was still carrying her original two cards, a fact Moran would have known as our group leader.

  “Respectfully, sir . . .” said Moran. “Recruit Suarez has been advised many times on the importance of a proper uniform, so I request the card be taken from her.”

  Afterward, Moran ordered us to fall out, and I watched for Clarabel’s expression as she marched past me. She looked angrier than I’d expected. Giving up a single deportment card was no big deal, especially since some of the instructors just tore them up later, leaving them out of our files. Yet Clarabel’s nose was wrinkled and her lips were twitching with unspeakable oaths. Moran must have really struck a nerve.

  Clarabel removed her eye shadow in the women’s room, then sulked for most of the day, lingering in corners and staring at the floor. She seemed devastated about the deportment card, which didn’t make any sense. She wasn’t herself until later that afternoon, when Moran strolled in late to Behavioral Science with a crooked tie clip.

  “Look at Moran,” she said. It was loud enough for the entire room to hear. “He thinks he’s gangsta, but he’s just ghetto.”

  Clarabel nearly got a standing ovation from the rest of the class. Everyone laughed, and our company sergeant’s face turned redder than a traffic light. It was such a low blow that it spared Moran a deportment card for his tardiness, because our instructor said he’d already been punished enough.

  It was only then I realized that I had a rival. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to see it. They were both single, attractive young adults, and they were both masters of the mind game. Was I really going to lose Clarabel to this pencil-lined punk? No, I told myself. It wouldn’t last. I’d seen it happen before. They’d have a bit of fun, but they’d wind up hating each other in the end, and I would be the one she trusted all along.

  I would rather have courted her openly, but this approach had never seemed to work for me. Something about my smoldering sex appeal was difficult to convey. Perhaps I was overly in touch with my feminine side. Or not swarthy enough. What ever the reason, I was twenty-six years old before I had my first one-night stand. I’m not proud of this, or ashamed, either; it’s just telling in light of the number of attempts I’d made before then:
around ten thousand since puberty, according to a rough calculation. Given enough time—I mean months or years—I could win a woman’s heart. But in the short run, I think I was just too bland for extreme dating. If sex was a catered party, I was the bowl of fresh fruit that went untouched until the cheese tray was devoured. Moran was the cheesiest rival I’d ever had, so I’d just have to wait him out.

  CHAPTER 8

  TWO MONTHS INTO OUR recruit semester, we left the academy in downtown Manhattan for ten nights at the NYPD Outdoor Firearms and Tactics Range in the East Bronx. The place where we would learn our most controversial skill was a low-slung compound built on a forested peninsula in Long Island Sound, as far from prying eyes as one could get in the five boroughs. The entrance to the range stood at the end of an unmarked and unlit road bordered by thick woodlands. Visiting the place at night gave me a sense of being swallowed up. Out on the peninsula, nearly twenty thousand rounds of live ammunition were fired every night, hammering out for hours at a time. It was hardly what I called a pleasant learning environment.

  That was before I fell in love. My change of heart took place in the range’s two-hundred-seat main classroom, a one-story metal building in the center of the camp that looked like a giant toolshed. Inside, it looked just like the academy: cement floor, long rows of metal school desks, and safety propaganda covering every flat surface. This was real NYPD chic. In the movies, police facilities were decorated with mug shots of desperate-looking criminals, but in my experience, the most common sight was the large, department-approved safety message.