Happy Family (32 page)

“He was dressed all in black like he was going to a bridge-and-tunnel club. He said, ‘Get dressed,' and I knew it was something serious. He followed me into the bathroom. I was wearing a white tank top, stretched out to the tips of my knees, brushing my teeth. My mouth was full of toothpaste and I didn't even have time to spit,” she says.

“It's always the little things that stick in your memory,” Sonny says. The little things, the cards Eddie laid on the table: coiled wire, a yard of heavy chain link, a switchblade, twelve-inch hunting knife, assault rifle, nightstick, stun gun.

“He pulled them out of his boot, from underneath his coat. There were no questions asked or answered. We'd all heard that a cop was killed during a buy-and-bust; the perp shot him in the head. The cop was an old friend of Eddie's, guy named Tobin. We'd hung out with him and his girlfriend, a nurse, a few times. It was a different world back then, before Rodney King, before Louima and the plunger. Crack was new to the city and hit the projects like a Mack truck. We were in the middle of a war zone. The mentality was good guys versus bad guys. We were the good guys and were going to win. There was always collateral damage,” she says and looks at Sonny. “Sounds like you've seen some of that.”

“Indeed I have,” he says.

“Someone's kid, an innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if a cop was killed? One of us? That was personal. We handled that on our own. The sergeant let us off in shifts, fixed things so the people who needed to be out looking could do it quietly.”

Sonny listened. He smoked three, maybe four cigarettes all the way down to the filter, each time waiting until she paused before he lit up the next one.

Eddie Norris invited her to cross the threshold that night, to become part of the pack, the tribe of men. The others were waiting for them in the street below her apartment.

“It was two or three a.m. The four of them had been at it for twenty-four hours without sleep; they were hopped up on caffeine, maybe a little blow off the back of a hand. Johnson was the youngest, not too far out of high school. He was shifting from foot to foot trying not to let on that he was nervous. McTieg and Rayner were veterans; they weren't expecting me and weren't happy about it, but they couldn't say anything because of Eddie. They all had a mantra: Someone's going to pay for this, that scumbag who did it is going to pay.” Stalking Alphabet City like hungry wolves, going to crack houses, drug corners, whores and jacked-up cars and a boom box thumping. It was an indigo night, that quality of darkness that's more blue than black lit occasionally by the street lamps in the projects blinking on and off; broken glass, bullet holes in the windows. They'd done walkabouts like this a thousand times, moving from outside refuse to inside refuse. The reek of piss in the hallways, vomit and spilled malt liquor, needles and vials crunching underfoot. “We went to a couple of places, looking for our usual informants, following a lead Eddie had. The shooter was a twenty-one-year-old Puerto Rican male, spider tattoo on his neck, wearing a red hoodie—we were going off a witness ID. Nothing was turning up.” Frustration spread through their systems; they strode through the derelict tent city of Tompkins Square Park with tight mouths and loud fists. McTieg slammed his foot into a cardboard tent, causing it to collapse and sending cockroaches that could use a leash skittling out. “What you doing, man,” and then deep moans from underneath the debris while he kept kicking. “Fuck, fuck you, motherfucker.”

“The tension ratcheted to a point where nobody said anything. Underneath the anger there was a deep sense of helplessness; if we couldn't get a cop killer, what was the point of the job? Any one of us could have been Tobin. We got a tip that Red Hood's girlfriend was in a crack den by the river. Crack spots weren't hard to find—people lined up outside of them like they were handing out welfare cheese. Anyway, she turned up in the first one. Rayner grabs her by the throat, saying, ‘I'm going to choke the life out of you if you don't tell me where he is.' She didn't have to because he was stupid enough to show up there. Someone spotted him as he was pushing his way through junkies. But he started running in the other direction as soon as he saw us.

“We chase after him. He ducks into the vacant lots by Tenth Street. It was this maze of junkyards with half-demolished buildings, rotting-out appliances—it looked like a bomb had gone off; streetlights had been shot or burned out. It was dark, lots of places to hide, so we split into pairs. I'm with Rayner, Eddie's with Johnson, McTieg's on his own. We've got our flashlights out and guns drawn when Eddie's voice comes over the walkie-talkie; they've sighted him and are close behind.

“When Rayner and I get there, Red Hood's climbing a chain-link fence. Eddie grabs his leg hard, pulls his shoe off. They get him down. He's saying he didn't do nothing, ‘I don't know about shooting no cop, man.'” Was it then that McTieg smashed him in the face with his bully stick so hard he split him open like a Marlboro box, or had it taken a few minutes? She can't remember time, only images: the topography of hate on Rayner's face, his mouth as he shouted, “Fucking spic, eat shit, you PR motherfucker.” Saying it for all the times people had called him nigger, paying it forward to the next minority in line.

“The perp was bleeding from his mouth and nose, but his eyes were blank. He was spitting blood but kept saying, ‘You got it all wrong, it wasn't me.' They all say that. You can catch them red-handed and like children they say, ‘It wasn't me.' Eddie Norris was taunting him. ‘You feel like a big man, killing a cop,' he screamed, spit flying out of his mouth, ‘you feel like a big man
now?
' McTieg put his gun to Red Hood's head and said no more bullshit. Eddie told me to cuff him, which I did, and then search him. He wasn't armed and just as I found a joint, a dipper—meaning it was laced with PCP—Red Hood surged to his feet with the kind of crazy adrenaline you get from PCP and charged like a linebacker right at McTieg. He was cuffed. I don't know where he thought he was going to go. He was like a bull. And that was it.” They were on him; fists and chains, grunts and curses.

“It was primal, like animals in a pack smelling blood. They fed off one another's anger and righteousness. I felt the adrenaline, that rush of being on high alert and in fight mode. I was right there with them as they jostled and pushed to get at him, have their turn to kick the shit out of him. But then McTieg moved over and blocked me out. And in that moment I thought:
What are we doing?
The collective rage had everyone blind. They were in a circle. I was outside, watching, realizing just how fucked up it was.” Even now, she can smell the sweat of men in violent release, hear them wheezing and groaning in anger. She remembers McTieg putting his cigarette out on Red Hood's arm, saying, “That's for Tobin.”

Cheri glances at the fire in the fireplace; it's burned down. The rain drums on the roof. Sonny hasn't looked away from her the whole time. His elbows are on the table; he leans toward her and asks what she knew was coming.

“So what did you do?”

“Nothing,” she says heavily. “I did nothing.” She can see Red Hood's fingers twitching. Then falling open, motionless.

“And he—” Sonny starts, but she cuts him off.

“Yes. He did.”

Sonny is still staring at her. His expression is unreadable.

“Afterward, everyone was shaking from the high. Johnson was high-fiving, but Eddie Norris took charge. We had to tell the same story and everyone had to calm down. He laid the whole thing out. The perp was high on PCP and resisted arrest, attacked officers with deadly intent. As long as you could explain it on paper, you could pretty much do anything you wanted.

“I had to do the report because I had the lowest rank. And something was bothering me. Eddie was all, Just get this done, quick and easy. But I went back and checked Red Hood's mug shot. His tattoo was on the right side of his neck. The witnesses all said the shooter had a tattoo on the left side. The closer I looked, the more I could tell we'd got the wrong guy. Red Hood was a criminal and a scumbag, but he wasn't the guy who killed Tobin.”

“And you told Eddie.”

“I showed him. It was really clear. And he said, ‘Forget you saw this. We got the shooter, end of story.' He took the file. I'm sure he destroyed it. And for him, that was the end of that. He went on like nothing had happened, started talking about where we'd go for a beer after work.”

“He rationalized it and you didn't…”

“It was more than that. The thing is, I saw something in Eddie that night. I knew, deep down, that it was over then. I just didn't want to admit it.” She hasn't been able to admit what she saw that night, she realizes, until right now. “He was exactly like the rest of them, but in a way, he was worse. They were in the fog of rage, like what happens in war—all you care about is getting the enemy and you forget the enemy is a living, breathing person. You don't know what someone is capable of in an extreme situation. We were trained to understand that. I couldn't know how I'd react until I was there. But I saw something in his eyes that night. After I left the circle, Eddie looked back at me. And for a split second, I saw a glint of recognition. Like he saw what I saw. I'd like to think he was going to stop it. But when he looked at me again, his eyes were empty. The man I knew wasn't in there. And then he turned around and hit Red Hood in the ribs with his nightstick.” Her throat constricts for a moment; she looks down. Sonny waits for her to continue. “I'd grown up convincing myself that I could be one of the guys. If I just proved myself, worked hard enough. Being a cop, I thought I'd found my people, my tribe. But that night showed me that I could never be one of them. And it made me question if I even wanted to be. I wasn't built like that. I loved that job. But my ideas of justice—all of the right reasons I became a cop—were capsized. So I quit.”

“Without saying anything? Didn't you give a reason why? Did you explain it to Eddie?”

“I just turned in my gun and badge and that was it. I wasn't one for explaining myself.”

“He didn't come looking for you?”

“I went to a place I thought he'd never find me: my parents' apartment on the Upper East Side. Eddie Norris didn't know who my parents were; nobody at the NYPD did. I probably hoped he
would
find me and say he couldn't live without me. I guess I was still in love with him. I was also on a small speed binge and not thinking at all rationally.”

It's dark outside. The rain picks up again, and the house rattles a bit from the wind. The last time she saw Eddie Norris was in a downpour.

“I saw him one last time. I met him at this coffee shop we used to go to, and he slid into the booth next to me, ordered coffee, and when the waiter was gone he said: ‘You fucking disappear and don't say a word to me, it looks bad, very fucking bad.' He said people were worried. People who didn't know me like he knew me. ‘Do I still know you?' he asked.

“I knew what he was intimating. I told him he wasted his favors finding me. If I was going to talk, why would I have quit? I wouldn't do that to him. Frankly, I didn't think about the repercussions of quitting. I just ran. But if Eddie Norris needed to hear the words, I'd give him the words. I told him I wouldn't say anything about that night or what I'd found out to anyone. And I kept my promise. Until now. But my word wasn't enough at that point. He needed to go back with insurance. He said, ‘This is what you're going to do: you're going to write a statement that you quit because you have drug problems, you've been struggling with addiction.' He knew about my fondness for uppers. Nobody else did, and I never used on the job. Not once.

“He also said that if I didn't make this bogus statement, they'd do it for me. Plant drugs in my old locker and discredit me so if I ever
did
come forward, I'd never be able to get a job as a police officer anywhere again. Needless to say, I didn't write it. I wasn't going to add a lie about myself to all the other ones.” Cheri flashes on the other statement, the one she didn't sign for Richards. She shakes her head at the irony, the pattern in the disparate mesh of her life, where she is the common thread.

“That's quite a story.” Sonny's voice is a shared exhale. When she looks up she sees the damaged priest, the wounded healer. The rain
tip-tip-tip
s. She goes to stack the plates and Sonny reaches over and touches her fingers with his. “You know the intimacy-of-strangers code? Your secret's safe with me. Thank you.”

“For what?” she asks.

“For being real. It may be easier with someone you don't know, but it's not easy.” Was she too real? She named names. She hadn't even known how heavy this burden was until she dropped it.

“Talking to you is pretty easy,” she says. “I wish everything could be that way.”

“It can be.”

She believes him. For that moment, for an hour, maybe for the rest of the night. They wake up and have morning sex. He falls back asleep with his hand on her belly. She feels his breath come and go like the tide. They sleep like teenagers as the rain stops and the room lights up momentarily, then fades to gray. When they're up and in need of nicotine, they huddle beneath the deck awning, passing a cigarette back and forth. He says, “It's fucking cold and wet out here.”

“Californians are pussies. Try Chicago in the winter.”

“Actually, I'm going to try Seattle. Warmer but rainier.”

It takes her a moment to ask: “What's in Seattle?”

“Guess I'll find that out,” he says. “I'm moving there, which is why I've got all the boxes in my trunk. A friend of mine has a recording studio there, and a guesthouse. And we'll see. I'm leaving day after tomorrow.” Cheri nods and looks out at the ocean. It's hard to tell the demarcation between water and air, it's tone-on-tone of gray, still, blending upward into near white. When she turns back, the acoustics have changed and they both know it. Sonny goes to take a shower.