THE LATEST . . . PART 5

GIRDLES and FAT LADIES

The internal affairs investigator came out to the waiting area and brought me back to his desk. He was short and heavyset, almost dumpy looking. He had a gut that was so huge he would have to take someone else's word for it to see if shoes were tied. I guess that was why he wore penny loafers. His plaid jacket was probably in style when he wore it for his first holy communion. His necktie only reached halfway down his shirt. I wasn't sure if that was because his gut was so big or he liked wearing ties the way we did in Catholic school. If his collar wasn't unbuttoned and his tie loosened, I would have bet it was a clip on. He smelled like a combination of stale cigarettes and B.O. He sat down carefully at his desk. He wedged his massive carcass into his chair, squeezing himself between the arms of the chair like a fat lady squeezing herself into an old girdle. His desk was an extension of himself, slovenly and piled high with papers and files. As if it was part of a running gag, a jelly doughnut sat leaking a red glob of an unknown flavor onto a paper napkin.

"Listen", he said leaning forward. "This should be pretty simple." He picked up the doughnut and licked the filling. It was a disgusting sight that would be burned into my retinas for a long time. A small bit of filling fell onto his tie. He wiped it off with his thumb, which he promptly licked to ensure that he didn't miss any. A closer examination of his tie revealed that I could probably identify the last four meals that he ate while wearing it.

He had me tell him everything that happened. It was fairly straightforward. I didn’t really see what happened. I rushed in I heard Rob yell and spun around as he fired his gun. I had all the details minus the real details. That was always a question. What if your partner got in a questionable shooting? Do you lie to help him out? Do you tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may? Well, it didn’t really matter. This was a pretty clean shooting as those things go. An almost murderer with a rap sheet as long as your arm, drugs and a stolen gun in his apartment. Back in the day you would have described his Roscoe as a “Saturday night special”. Now it’s just another gat used by the average shit stick. Department policy and politics would result in us being off the streets for several weeks. Rob longer than I because he actually fired the shot that killed Ali. Luckily politics would not be overplayed in this case. As is often the case a clean shoot can become a nightmare when factors beyond your control, beyond the events actually surrounding the shooting come into play. People with agendas and prejudices sticking their two cents in, attempting to capitalize on something they have no business with or understanding about, that can ruin lives and careers.

PART 4

MICHAEL THE POLOCK

I sat and thought about everything. About me, Michael Abromowicz. The Polock cop. Probably destined to be a cop having been named after the Patron Saint of police officers, Michael the Archangel. My mother, Helena (God rest her soul) wanted to name me after Saint Stanislas, the famous Jesuit and patron of Poland. But my father always loved the story of Michael and the good angels in the battle fought in heaven against Satan. He always said since he was a boy he could picture Michael fighting Satan and throwing him out of heaven. As a kid I got the nickname "Z". It started out with my last name. Some kids at St Elizabeth's School used to call me Mike alphabet. "A to Z" they would say. Eventually they shortened it to "Z" and it stuck.

I was raised in a working class polish neighborhood in Baltimore with a staunch Catholic upbringing. Altarboy with a stay at home mom. That was the norm. Dad was a dock worker loading freighters in the harbor. He worked a couple of jobs to keep me, my brother and three sisters clothed and fed. Mom was always sweeping the four feet of front steps we had. She was the Mayor of Howard Street. She knew everyone and everyone's business. I was the oldest of her five kids. She was a deeply religious woman who not so secretly wished that I would become a priest.

I never became a priest. I did enter religious life for a short time right after high-school. I was a novice at a Trappist Abbey in South Carolina. It didn't take me long to decide that the strict silence bothered me more than I thought it would. Although I enjoyed the structured life, the daily work and the time with God, I decided that I could not live without female companionship. My life of service eventually took another direction and I traded in one uniform for another.

My oldest sister is a Sister. A Claire. A Franciscan nun. Another sister is an ER nurse and my baby sister is an unhappy stay at home mom with an abusive drunk for a husband. My brother is a Baltimore City firefighter. Our parents were always proud of their children.

My partner was a another story altogether. He was raised above the Mason Dixon line in Philadelphia. His parents were of a different breed. He was an only child. His father was an editor of a suburban newspaper and his mother was a secretary for a law firm. He had been a "latch key kid". They had expected him to become a lawyer or a doctor. He joined the US Navy right out of high-school and became a corpsman. He wound up being assigned to the Marines. He was in Beirut in 1983 when a suicide bomber drove his truck and blew up the Marine barracks. Little did he know back then that was the was the start of many terrorist attacks. Rob had not been brought up in a religious family. He said that after what he saw in Beirut he couldn't understand how anyone could believe in God. He asked me one day "What kind of God would allow that to happen?" It was the kind of question that you weren't expected to answer. He would ask that rhetorical question out loud more than once. He went to college under the GI bill and decided after getting a degree that he wanted to become a cop. His parents had temporarily held out hope that he would "make something of himself" after getting a degree. His mother was glad that he was successful and happy at what he did for a living. His father was disappointed that he did not exceed his own expectations. He was secretly proud of what his son did and stood for.

I found that cops generally fell into one of two categories. They were either very religious or strong atheists. All the evil and carnage that humans are capable of doing to each other made you lean in one direction or another. I carried a pocket rosary with me everyday, Rob carried a shark shaped keychain bottle opener. "I'm a fuckin' drinker and I'm a predator for predators..."

So here I sit waiting to tell my story. I stared at my shoes. Well worn but comfortable. I noticed that they had blood spatter across the toes. I hadn't noticed that before now.