Paul Bacon (25 page)

I was also hoping to spend a little more time with Clarabel. Our disparate lives could only have intersected in this strange
workplace, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever see her again. I waited around at the Two-eight until she came in for meal, caught up
to her, and suggested we go have a drink sometime. No, she said; she didn’t do charity. (I had pretty well figured this out
by now.) So I offered to take her out to lunch; no. A cup of coffee? No. Anything that sounded remotely like a date: No. As
hard as that was for me to take, it was probably kinder than leading me on.

Clarabel’s way of saying good-bye was to take me home in her patrol car. With less than an hour to make the round trip between
Harlem and West Fourteenth Street, she drove across the island going lights and sirens, one last hurrah before I returned
to the world of the nominally law-abiding. But on the West Side Highway on our way downtown, we got stuck in bumper-to-bumper
traffic. Inching along the Hudson River gave us a lot of time to talk, and we laughed about some of the things we’d been through
together. She apologized again for the pepper spray, but she said that my cooping caper was just what I deserved. Though she
didn’t say so, I think she was relieved to not have to go out on patrol with me again.

I did get her to open up a little bit about Moran in our final conversation. She admitted to dating him exclusively since
they’d met in the academy. She said they still saw each other often, but she had no idea where their relationship was heading,
if anywhere. After nearly three years, Moran still kept her guessing while he got “mad ass” on the side.

When we reached my apartment building, Clarabel surprised me by parking in a bus stop and turning off the car. We were all
talked out, so unless I was mistaken, she wanted to prolong our good-bye. I looked out the windshield, feeling my pulse begin
to race. I thought I’d earned at least a farewell pity kiss. Flashing back to the scene of our first kiss in Central Park,
my cheeks grew warm with anticipation. I quietly licked my lips and swallowed, waiting for the courage to do it.

Without looking at me, Clarabel said, “I can hear you blushing.”

“It’s your imagination,” I said.

“Hey,” she said softly, and I turned to see her finger beckoning me across the transmission hump.

Leaning in close, I pressed my lips against hers and closed my eyes, inhaling deeply. When we pulled apart a few seconds later,
I said, “I’m . . . never . . . gonna . . . let go . . . of this breath.”

She faked an elbow to my stomach, then punched my arm with her bony fist after I flinched.

I grabbed my stinging triceps and said, “Okay, so I won’t miss everything about you.”

“Get out!” she ordered me.

Walking past her front bumper on my way to the curb, I realized there was one last thing I wanted to tell her. I stepped around
to the driver’s side, laid my hands along the top of her door, and said, “Just so you know, I’d marry you in a second.”

“That’s sweet,” she replied, patting my hand, “but the only reason I’d marry you back is for the life insurance, ’cuz you’re
not long for this world.”

EPILOGUE

T
HREE YEARS LATER, I still wear a lot of heavy equipment to work. My job is dangerous, and I’m under extraordinary pressure.
Every day, I see grown men and women walking around in their underwear, drinking in public, and neglecting their children.
This all happens in Maui; but I’m not a cop anymore, I’m a scuba instructor.

Breaking out of the police department was the best decision I’d ever made, curing everything that had ailed me: chronic fatigue,
hypertension, intolerance, love handles, you name it. I miss the friends I made on the force, but I don’t miss the feeling
that I was making enemies everywhere else. I was no good as a bad cop and not bad enough to be good cop. I’m lucky I made
it out alive. And I’m glad I didn’t have to shoot anyone; I never once drew my gun.

Now, instead of taking people to jail, I take them on fun-filled adventures. And while I’m not cleaning up the streets anymore,
I feel like I’m making the world a better place, because at the end of the day, most of my customers tip me in cash and tell
me I’ve changed their lives.

If my divers aren’t satisfied, I don’t take it personally, since it’s usually Mother Nature’s fault. One day, the waves suddenly
doubled in size while I was underwater with a teenage diver from Orange County. I didn’t notice their effects until the boy
and I surfaced at the end of the dive and found ourselves stuck in a longshore rip current—the muscle-bound, cracked-out perp
of the sea.

After five minutes of strenuous kicking brought us no closer to the beach, the skinny sixteen-year-old went into passive panic.
The look of anguish on his sunburned face disappeared as he rolled over on his back, stared into the sky, and went limp. He
started floating in the direction of Kaho’olawe, a small, uninhabited island twenty-five miles away across a channel infested
with tiger sharks. If I’d followed my police training, I would have just let him go. The NYPD’s position on water safety was
that one person drowning was better than two. But this wasn’t the East River, so I turned around and chased my diver. I grabbed
him by his tank valve and battled the current again, towing an extra body and an extra set of scuba gear.

Meanwhile, a couple dozen tourists were lying out on the beach about fifty yards away. Just behind them were my coworkers
at the hotel water-sports center. There were dive instructors and surf instructors, sunglass salesmen and timeshare salesmen,
cabana boys and cashiers. We had everything but lifeguards, because this was not a county-run beach. My colleagues were all
hanging out and talking with each other, and no one seemed to notice us out in the water. I flailed one arm and tried to shout
over the crashing surf, but I couldn’t do this for more than a few seconds at a time. As soon as I’d turn to look at the shore,
I’d feel us slipping faster into the current.

Rolling on my back, I cradled the boy between my knees and started shaking him. “Wake up! Wake up!” I screamed at the top
of his head. He didn’t respond, so I tipped him over to one side and let him drink a little salt water. He quickly came to,
coughing and spitting and cursing me, “What the fuck, man?”

I said, “Start kicking!” and he did.

A few minutes later, we hadn’t gotten any closer to the shore, and the boy gave up. He folded his arms across his chest and
said he was “over this shit.” Seeing him float away again, I recalled meeting him for the first time. While most hotel guests
showed up for a dive in just a bathing suit and flip-flops, the boy wore a ball cap, a Lakers jersey, shiny sweat pants, and
a pair of Air Jordans so pristine they belonged in the Smithsonian. In one hand he’d had a cell phone; in the other, an iPod.
He’d looked like Vanilla Ice, and he’d acted like he was Jacques Cousteau, even though he’d only dived once before. He hadn’t
paid much attention to my predive briefing, when I’d explained the potential hazards of the site. So, later, when I finally
talked him into fighting the current again, he said, “We’re supposed to swim
perpendicular
to the flow to get out of a rip current. Don’t you know that?”

“Every rip is
different
,” I reminded him. “If we don’t fight this one, we’ll go farther out or get caught in the waves.”

“Those waves?” he said. “Those are nothing. I’ve bodysurfed gnarlier ones in California.”

“No, you haven’t,” I said.

He started swimming toward the waves, which were not only head-high but breaking over a shallow coral reef. In a few seconds
he’d be in the impact zone—the most dangerous place in Hawaii, as well as in Harlem. Unless the boy timed his exit perfectly,
the swells would pick him up and smash him down on the razor-sharp reef, over and over and over. He’d have better chances
of surviving a shark attack, so I swam after him. I grabbed his tank valve again, then put us back in a fighting position
against the current.

“What are you doing?” he said, jerking his head around to see me. “Let me go.”

His attitude was starting to make me panic now. I found myself screaming, “I have to get you back, don’t you understand? This
is my job!”

“Jesus. Relax!” he said.

I said, “Will you please
kick
?”

He didn’t move his legs, so I swam around to his feet and grabbed his fins. I tried pushing him against the current, noticing
this gave me a much better vantage point. I could now contact the multitude of possible rescuers on the beach. I shouted myself
hoarse, causing a chain reaction of alerts—starting with an observant sunbather and ending with my fellow dive instructor,
Max.

No, I thought, anyone but him. Max was about fifty years old, with as many inches around his waistline. He lumbered past the
sleek, twenty-year-old surf instructors and took one of their student boards. For some reason he picked the smallest one available,
a seven-foot foam board made for children. He tucked it under his arm and carried it down the shore to a deep-water channel
where the waves weren’t breaking. When he laid down on the board, he completely submerged it. He began paddling toward us.
Moving with the current, he quickly arrived at our location, but he overshot us by ten feet and kept on moving. Max was getting
dragged away from shore faster than we were.

My lingering cop instinct told me to go after my partner. The dive instructor inside me said take care of the kid first, because
if anything happened to him, my career on this island was finished. I looked back and forth between Max and the boy for a
few seconds, waiting for the choice to be made for me.

“I’ll be fine!” Max said while shrinking into the distance. “And ditch his gear, for chrissake!”

“Yes!” I shouted. Why didn’t I think of that? Streamline the boy; his wet suit would keep him afloat. I got behind him and
stripped off his bulky inflatable vest and air tank. When I let his equipment go, I saw he was in passive panic mode again.
This meant even less resistance to deal with, so I did not rouse him. I dragged him out of the current in only a few minutes.

The instant we made landfall, the boy jumped to his feet. He stormed across the beach and into the dive shack. Some of the
surfers pointed at him and laughed. I looked down the shore for Max, and I saw him trying to catch an incoming wave. Was he
crazy? The waves were too steep. If he tried to stand up, he’d be toast. But Max didn’t try to stand. He stayed on his belly
and clung to the board, and the wave crashed around him. After disappearing into the whitewater, he shot out of it like a
rocket. He glided just inches above the reef, until he hit the sandy beach and tumbled off his board.

Seeing that Max was fine, I thought about the boy and felt like I was ten feet tall, if not a little long in the tooth. Seven
years had passed since I’d started working in the danger business, and I’d finally rescued someone other than myself. I proudly
marched between the half-naked girls lying on beach blankets, then walked by the Hawaiian surf instructors, who gave me every
possible handshake-fist-bump combination.

“Nice save, brah,” said one. “I never seen no one fotta rip loddat.” Don’t ask me what that meant.

Walking into the dive shack, I almost tripped over a soggy wet suit on the floor. I sat down on a bench and started taking
off my scuba gear. The boy quietly emerged from the dressing room in his Vanilla Ice ensemble, then left without looking me
in the eye. If he’d been my prisoner instead of my diver, our time together would’ve just been starting. But he’d gotten in
and out of my hair in less than an hour. I smiled as he walked away. I guessed a tip was out of the question.

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Paul Bacon served as an NYPD patrolman from 2002 to 2005, working primarily in Harlem’s 28th and 32nd precincts. His true
police stories have appeared on
This
American Life
and the Moth Mainstage. As a writer and cartoonist he has contributed to
Cosmopolitan
,
The
Dictionary of American History
, Inside.com,
McSweeney’s
,
Mother Jones
, PBS.org,
Salon
, the
San Francisco
Examiner
, and
Wired.