The Sticking Place Page 18

  Avaunt! And quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;

  Thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with!

  The world stopped rotating on its axis as the gigantic duster stared transfixed at the loony cop who spouted something crazy from the center of the bloody fountain.

  Officers seized the moment and piled on, the sheer weight of their bodies driving the duster to the ground.

  More bodies flew into the air, but Luke and Shakespeare had bought enough time. Luke piled on to wrap his bicep around the duster’s neck and two officers grabbed the duster’s legs. One of them, a finally conscious Hartson, hung on doggedly while other officers flew away and back and away again like erratic yo-yos.

  Luke squeezed an enormous neck that felt like a slab of granite. He squeezed until time and space melded into a confused miasma that left him standing outside his body and watching himself in the fight. He squeezed until his arm went numb, until prying hands pulled his arms from around the duster’s throat, until he watched himself re-enter his body, until he heard a chorus of voices yelling to him to let go so other officers could handcuff the unconscious prisoner.

  35

  “I DON’T KNOW WHY I LET YOU talk me into this,” Luke said for the third time.

  Denny turned his back on Luke’s tired refrain. They were getting ready for an academy graduation dance at the police pistol range and Luke dreaded the tedium of another uncomfortable night in Denny’s disco scene. Some wizard of wisdom had actually decided to throw a disco party at the firing range! How nuts was that?

  Like always, Luke wanted to stay home and read.

  He leaned against Denny’s bedroom door frame with his arms folded, already knowing how miserable he’d be at this stupid party. He wanted Denny to know it too, and to appreciate his sacrifice.

  Denny and Tina Cleveland would monopolize the dance floor while the other women marveled at Denny’s odd mixture of graceful moves and animal magnetism, and the men would resent Denny for the way women responded to him.

  Luke would stand at one end of the room like a Corinthian column and wait for somebody to approach him. He had no idea how to mix with a crowd, so he’d fold his arms and stand there, his turned-down mustache partnering with an uncomfortable frown to make him about as approachable as a reincarnated Rasputin.

  He’d strike that ridiculous pose until Denny decided it was time to trade in his vertical la salsa dance for a horizontal mambo. Then he’d chauffeur Denny and Tina Cleveland home like a hired manservant where Luke would crawl into bed while Denny mamboed between the sheets at the opposite end of the apartment. Since it all amounted to a foregone conclusion, why not skip the preliminaries and stay home with his book so he and Denny would both be happy.

  “Let’s get on with it since you insist on dragging me off to this thing,” Luke said. Watching Denny hand measure the magnificence of his Afro in the mirror amounted to about all he could stand.

  “Perfection takes time, roomie,” Denny countered. “Why don’t you relax and let me do one of the things I do best?”

  “You’re right,” Luke said. “Self-admiration is one of your finest skills. But when you’re naturally gorgeous like me, getting ready doesn’t take so much work.”

  “Yeah,” Denny said. “If you’re so goddamned gorgeous, how come there’s never anybody in there besides you?” Denny tossed his perfectly coiffed head in the direction of Luke’s bedroom.

  “All right, but hurry up,” Luke said, conceding to his inevitable fate and trudging off to the living room to leave Denny to primp in peace. He found the New Yorker he’d been saving for its cover article on “Britain’s Romantic Poets” and flipped through the pages.

  Insistent thoughts crowded his mind and obliterated his concentration as he tried to read. Was it possible for two people do be more unalike than Luke Jones and Denny Durango? They were definitely two halves of a human oxymoron.

  Luke was a book learner with no practical street experience who flaunted his erudition to compensate for his ignorance of the real world. What he really needed was to learn how to get along with people without pissing them off.

  Denny, on the other hand, joked that he had carried a book to school, once. He knew the language of the streets and he knew how to manipulate people. It was a sure formula for success as a cop. Plus, he knew he’d be able to figure out how to write a decent report one of these days.

  Luke’s father was a domineering Pentecostal preacher who ruled the family like a Caribbean potentate. He preached that God’s plan called for a man and a woman to fall in love and deny their biological imperatives until a minister joined them in holy matrimony when they would “keep themselves only unto themselves” and then one of them would die.

  Luke’s mother died on his eighteenth birthday.

  The cancer that eventually killed her started when Luke was two and he remembered her as an emotionally distant woman who was almost always too sick to take care of him.

  Luke loved fine arts and he loved great books. He savored mellifluous language and the ebb and flow of experience and emotion in the hands of an expert writer.

  On the eve of Denny’s thirteenth birthday, his stepfather treated him to the neighborhood whore to celebrate his new manhood.

  Although Denny’s mother voluntarily turned a blind eye to her husband’s infidelities, she was the one who wielded the family power stick. Since Denny was the oldest male child, she doted on him like a queen raising the heir apparent to a throne.

  Denny roamed Bedford-Stuyvesant’s streets and, in his spare time, joined in an unofficial partnership with New York City’s public schools. Denny’s job was to stay out of trouble and the school system’s job was to grant a meaningless diploma.

  What should have been a signet of accomplishment actually symbolized a double failure: the school system’s unwillingness to maintain a set of minimum standards, and the Durango family’s failure to educate a prized boy-child.

  Luke’s thoughts disappeared into his latest musings about how frustrating his evening would be as Denny finally swaggered into the living room, holding his hair pick to his lips like a microphone and singing along with the lyrics of a Bee Gees song wafting in from his bedroom.

  The time had come for Luke Jones to put down his damn magazine and get with the program.

  36

  THE POLICE FIRING RANGE THRUMMED TO THE sounds of Marvin Gaye’s rendition of “Let’s Get It On” as Luke walked in and Denny made an entrance. Denny glided over to the corner where Tina Cleveland stood with a group of friends and Luke assumed his position near the end of the bar.

  For Luke, the police pistol range was about the worst place to hold a disco party, even though the only necessary preparations involved taking down folding tables and chairs, stocking the bar and pushing in a jukebox.

  The floor was ancient tan linoleum with layers of wax wearing off in various places, giving the entire room a distinctly dirty appearance. A striking stone fireplace dominated the north wall where a group of rookies huddled in animated conversation.

  Several members of the Chief’s senior staff had shown up to demonstrate the department’s interest in the new recruits. Hal Browner fumed behind the bar, glaring at Denny. Luke didn’t know Browner’s thoughts, but he could guess. Denny was an infamous womanizer who was starting to do the bump and grind with Councilman Cleveland’s daughter where the whole world could see. He’d embarrassed the department at the America’s Finest City Rally and now he was embarrassing one of the most powerful men in the city.

  Luke surreptitiously worked his way into a spot behind a concrete column that stood close to where Browner talked with Sergeant Biletnikoff.

  “Everybody knows this Durango is a marginal employee,” Browner said. “We should have fired his ass a long time ago.”

  Luke wasn’t sure if Browner knew Biletnikoff was Denny’s immediate supervisor, but he’d be willing to bet he did based on what Browner
was saying.

  “I’m told he has photographs of naked women in his locker,” Browner went on.

  Luke kept a wary eye on the dance floor as Denny crotch danced with Tina Cleveland in the middle of the crowded room. Everybody knew Denny was sleeping with her, and Denny didn’t have enough sense to consider the impact of his shenanigans on Cleveland’s feelings or the embarrassment to the department.

  “Who does he work for?” Browner asked Biletnikoff. His tone said he already knew the answer. It would certainly explain why Browner had sought Biletnikoff out behind the bar.

  “He’s on my squad,” Biletnikoff said.

  “I hear this Luke Jones kid carries him,” Browner said. “Some of my people say he helps with his reports. Is that true?”

  “I’m not sure,” Biletnikoff told him. He fidgeted from one foot to the other. “But I’ll keep my eye on it.” Luke knew Biletnikoff was shifting his feet on dangerous ground. Biletnikoff did know the truth, but obviously hadn’t seen anything wrong with it until that moment. Admitting that to Browner would be stupid.

  “This department would be better off without that piece of shit, I can tell you that much,” Browner insisted. He poured a tumbler of scotch and soda down his throat and slammed the glass on the bar.

  Browner’s comments didn’t amount to ordering Biletnikoff to fire Denny exactly. No one could accuse him of that. Termination for incompetence rested in the hands of an officer’s immediate supervisor. “When’s his probationary period over?” Browner asked as he snatched a refill from Biletnikoff’s hand.

  “He’s got a few weeks to go,” Biletnikoff said. “He’s only been with me a few months and I’ve been on vacation and at training schools part of that time.”

  “I’d take a good hard look at him before I’d let him pass probation if I were his boss,” Browner said. “Of course, I wouldn’t focus on that mess back at the America’s Finest City Rally. That’s already been handled.”

  Browner glared at Biletnikoff, seemingly waiting for a response, although there was nothing to respond to really. Browner could claim they were only having a friendly conversation if anybody ever questioned his motives.

  “He hasn’t exactly been a model employee,” Biletnikoff said. “I’ll go through his personnel jacket and see what I see.”

  The smile Luke saw on Browner’s face clearly showed the Assistant Chief thought Biletnikoff had a pretty good idea. It also told him Denny was in trouble.

  37

  SERGEANT CONSTANTIN BILETNIKOFF KICKED HIS flip-flops onto the floor of his locker, slid out of his beach shorts and pulled his uniform pants off a hanger. No doubt about it, he had to face the blunder he’d committed by letting Luke Jones and Denny Durango stay on the same squad. It had allowed Luke to carry Durango. Denny’s inadequacies would have stood out like a Doberman in a Chihuahua kennel if Luke hadn’t helped him all the time. Fortunately, it wasn’t too late. He could fire a probationary officer easily enough. None of the brass would care. They’d have no interest in keeping a marginal employee who’d already embarrassed the department.

  He knew one thing for certain. Deputy Chief Hal Browner, the ultimate reviewer of discipline for Central Division, certainly wouldn’t second guess him when it came time to review the termination package.

  Biletnikoff’s decision to go after Denny wasn’t influenced by the looming Lieutenant’s exam or the fact that Browner could push his promotion. Nothing he intended doing was for self-serving reasons. Terminating an incompetent employee might be the most important thing a sergeant ever did.

  Biletnikoff finished dressing, strolled into the lineup room and took his place at the podium to give out assignments and cover crimes from the night before. “Durango,” Biletnikoff said once he’d covered the preliminaries. “I need you and Shimmer to handle security on a movie set over at Sixth and B Streets.”

  Biletnikoff parked a block away and pulled his binoculars from the glove compartment.

  Several motor officers from Traffic Division had already cordoned off the six hundred block of B Street before Denny and Shimmer arrived. The motorcycle cops’ job was to control traffic around the set and the patrol officers were there to keep the groupies and lookie-loos away.

  The motor officers had parked their Kawasakis parallel to a catering truck that bisected three horizontal parking spaces. Shimmer followed their example and Denny parked next to him, completing a line of illegally parked police vehicles.

  The filming of Scavenger Hunt was about to begin and the newspaper articles had said the low-budget comedy involved a cast of aging television actors competing in a high-stakes treasure hunt.

  Biletnikoff had been right. Denny’s behavior was ridiculous. He actually asked Scatman Crothers to pose with him for a photograph.

  Biletnikoff could tell the Scatman was annoyed. Sure, he took the trouble to clasp Denny’s hands and grinned about as wide as the Joker in the Batman comics when the bulb flashed. But that didn’t matter. It was Denny’s job to keep people from annoying the actors, not to annoy them himself. That wasn’t the half of it. He made a pig of himself when the crew offered up the catered spread filling several tables near the set.

  Sure, all the other officers had a plate of food, but they were veterans who had enough sense to know when to quit.

  Biletnikoff had attached the zoom lens and gotten the pictures he needed. He snapped Denny posing with the Scatman and he caught Denny wolfing down the catered food. He clicked repeatedly as Denny had the gall to talk to other actors on the set. Denny definitely didn’t stay out of the way and Biletnikoff had the proof on film.

  When the movie cameras rolled and all eyes were riveted on the action, Biletnikoff unlocked the trunk to Denny’s patrol car and pulled out his equipment bag. He rifled through it, found the envelope that contained the photographs of women in various states of undress he’d been told about, and pulled out the three depicting Tina Cleveland wearing a smile and a crimson bow in her hair.

  Biletnikoff correctly predicted that Denny would hang around the set too long after the filming wrapped. Once Shimmer and the motor cops had secured the scene and the catering truck was gone, Biletnikoff took a few pictures of Denny’s car as it sat alone on a downtown street blatantly taking up two normal parking spaces.

  More than mere pictures, Biletnikoff’s photographs were quite literally the pictures that supported a thousand words. Those words, as written in Biletnikoff’s report, said Denny had interrupted the day’s filming. Not only that, he’d blatantly ignored the California Vehicle Code with his illegal parking. It was a clear case of a probationary officer using poor judgment and behaving in a manner that could only be construed as “Conduct Unbecoming an Officer.”

  Biletnikoff was clobbering Denny with the dreaded CUBO offense and supporting everything he wrote with photographs. He’d constructed his house-of-cards termination on a foundation of half-truths and downright lies. But no one who’d care could possibly know it.

  He called Denny into his office the next day to deliver the news. “Officer Durango, I’m sorry to have to inform you, I’m recommending your termination as a San Diego Police Officer.”

  Denny wobbled like a dazed boxer enduring a mandatory eight count. He couldn’t believe Biletnikoff’s words. His reports had continued to get better. He’d made several arrests recently that only somebody with his street savvy could make. What had he done? Why single him out?

  Biletnikoff showed Denny the termination package. His presentation started with copies of Shimmer’s field training evaluations that recommended his termination way back in the first training phase.

  Denny’s thoughts started to spin.

  Sure, Shimmer had written that Denny wasn’t a salvageable employee back then. But that was months ago and Denny’d done nothing but improve since then.

  Biletnikoff showed Denny the Scatman photographs and the pictures of the illegally parked police car along with his narrative report. It said that Denny had been such a nuisance he’d
ruined the entire day’s shoot, at an enormous cost to the production company.

  This was flabbergasting. Those guys at the set had loved him. The Scatman had put his arms around him. None of this rang true.

  “This is all extremely serious,” Biletnikoff assured him. “You do have the right to representation and to a Skelly hearing.”

  “A Skelly hearing?”

  “An appeal to the Commanding Officer,” Biletnikoff said. “I have to tell you though, you’re still on probation and there’s no way you’ll prevail in this thing. If you ever hope for another job in law enforcement, you should resign before you get fired.

  “I’ll take you over to personnel right now if you want,” Biletnikoff said. “Or I can hold on to this package for a few days if you want a little time to think it over.”

  What should Denny do? Luke had warned him something bad was coming. He’d know what to do, but he’d flown up to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for a few days.

  “I’d like a little time to think about it,” Denny said.

  38

  LUKE HAD LOVED HIS TIME AT THE Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He went to plays, took long walks along Ashland Creek in Lithia Park and actually played pool with Romeo and Juliet in a bar right after their show. He’d also spent some time thinking about how tough it was to be a rookie.

  Luke knew Biletnikoff was gunning for Denny and the note Denny left him on the kitchen table had confirmed that something happened while he was gone. He’d talk to Denny about it as soon as he could.

  There was also a message waiting on his machine from Andee Bradford. She wanted to talk to Luke about what she’d told him on the Plaza a few weeks ago. She kept getting hit on by senior officers with veiled threats to get her fired if she didn’t cooperate with their advances. Luke had seen how guys treated her and he believed everything she’d told him. She wanted her job as much as Denny wanted his, but was threatening to quit if the harassment didn’t stop.