This Is a Bust (2 page)

I headed over to the Five Precinct on Elizabeth for the 0800 to 1600 shift. It was a cold January morning, but I was sweating. Something didn't feel right. I chomped down on a Tic Tac and toyed with my right collar.

The st
reet was filled with high-school kids heading to the subway. After school was over, they'd head off to college-prep classes and/or piano lessons. Saturdays were for Chinese school and Sundays were for Chinese church. Chinese kids learned how to cram, or they learned how easily their skin bruised.

The kids
stared at me as I walked by. I could see they were worried that if they didn't get into a good college, they'd end up with a dumb, low-paying job like mine. That was the Chinese attitude about it. I smiled and said, “Good morning,” to the kids closest to me as I went up the steps.

“Good
morning,” the kids said to their socks.

The
Five Precinct is an old brick building in the middle of the block, on the west side of Elizabeth Street between Canal and Bayard. The Five was built in 1881, and being in there is like taking a trip back to those days. There's no elevator and no modern heating. Someone was always on duty to shovel coal into the furnace in the basement. The giant iron hook on a chain at street level hauled out bins of coal ashes, but all the parents told their kids the hook was for hanging criminals.

When yo
u first come in the door, the C.O.'s office is to the immediate left. There were only two reasons you'd be called in there: if you were in trouble, or if you were in big trouble.

The c
ommanding officer was a small, thin Irishman named Sean Ahern. He had short reddish-brown hair, without a spot of gray although he was well into his 50s. His clear blue eyes twinkled when he looked directly at you, which was deceptive, because he was never nice to anyone, and the last thing you'd ever want to do was block his view of his closed office door.

The
C.O. favored heavy-soled shoes that he liked to stomp, even when he was sitting. In his chair, he liked to hunker down, pound his fist on the table, and look up at you, as if you were some bully out of his childhood that he never got to settle the score with.

His
right eyebrow was missing hair about the width of a pinkie right in the middle. When he raised his voice, his eyebrow went up and you could see the muscle in that hairless part flex. That was why we called him the Brow.

The
Brow kept a woodcut print framed on the wall above his head. A British soldier in a Revolutionary War uniform stood with one foot raised on a step and one hand brandishing a sword over his head. In front of him was a defiant teenager in rags holding up a dirty elbow to block the soldier's blow.

I'll
never forget my first day at the Five and my first meeting with the Brow. I couldn't believe I'd gotten assigned to Chinatown. It was the last precinct I'd wanted, and everyone else from my class had been assigned elsewhere. Funnily enough, everyone else wasn't Chinese.

By th
e time I walked into the Brow's office for the first time,
I was already having second thoughts about what I was doing there. The reek of gun oil filled my nose and mouth while resentment throbbed in my heart. In the Five precinct I'd be dealing with people who knew me and my parents. People who would ask about the war, my father, and other stupid questions. I'd even considered putting my badge on the table and saying, “That's all, folks!”

Instead,
I stared at the British soldier woodcut. There wasn't
much else to look at apart from the Brow's face.

He followed my stare to the woodcut and spoke.

“Tha
t dirty little boy is Andrew Jackson, the first Irish President of the United States,” he said. “That's him being slashed for refusing to shine that bloody English officer's shoes. Carried that scar on his arm to the grave. Now let me make something clear to you, mister. I don't shine anyone's shoes, either!”

He looked at me expectantly.

“Yes, sir.” Apart from being a sign of respect, it gave me something to say.

Then he exhaled slowly and stretched his arms a little.

“I
understand, Mr. Chow, that you're one of our boys from Vietnam. A good soldier follows his conscience. A good policeman, too. I'll bet you're wondering why you're here and how we selected you for our rather exclusive house.” The Five had a rep for being one of the safest precincts in the city, with great cheap food. It was a nice place to work 20 years and then retire at half pay.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,
it just so happens that you're a very special person
to
this house, don't you know? As a Chinese cop, you're very important to our image in the community.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In fact, from time to time, I'd like to ask you to represent us
at community functions and other gatherings. Just talk to people. Smile. Show them you care.”

“Sir, I'm not one of the more experienced men. . .”

“But, son, you've got the right look.” I felt honored to be
asked to represent the house, but at the same time, I was being asked to be the resident wok jockey. I leaned back on my heels and stared at little Andrew Jackson.

“You
really like that woodcut, don't you? That little lad Jackson stood up to that English bastard, and he went on to become one of the great Presidents of the United States of America.” The Brow squinted his eyes at me before continuing. “He's the only Irish President I care for. That Kennedy was a dirty, dissolute man who got everything
he deserved.”

“What do you think about McKinley, sir?” I asked. I knew that William McKinley was Irish because in grade school.

I'd gotten stuck writing a profile about him.

The Brow's brow went up.

“I don't think about McKinley!” He pounded the desk
and cocked his head at an angle. “And neither should you, mister! There are crimes being committed right this second! Now go do something about it!”

But of course, he didn't really mean it. Well, sure he did
want me to go write up tickets to bring some more money into the city. But he didn't want me to seriously fight crime at large. That was for the real policemen.

I
was the guy who proved that the NYPD could get along with people with sing-song names and black hair. I went to graduation ceremonies, new restaurant openings, and Chinese New Year celebrations.

It
was great at first, but then I got to feeling like I was a teddy bear in a police uniform for the kids to hug, a prop for the newspaper photos. Once in a while they would let me handle a domestic complaint, the kind that broke up as soon as I rang the doorbell and resulted in nobody willing to press charges.

The other blues thought I was a joke.

In
time I got to hating what I was doing and, worst of all, hating Chinese New Year and the rash of ceremonies I had to attend before, during, and after. That holiday used to mean a mouthful of candy to me. Now I was gritting my teeth through it. The NYPD liked us Chinese, all right. As long as we didn't try to be more than a lowly beat cop.

Most daytours and nighttours would end with me drinking
my
fucking eyeballs dry.

—

Directly opposite the C.O.'s office, the desk sergeant sat up in his pulpit. The muster room for roll call and assignments was farther back inside, where it was always drafty. The door to the staircase going down into the backyard and the rear tenement would never stay shut. The back wall

of the muster room had an RC Cola machine and a candy machine. The holding cell for patrolmen was off to the side.

When
you trudged up the wooden staircase to the second floor, you'd come across the detective squad and their holding cell. The third floor featured showers, lockers, and the most diverse collection of Hanoi Jane stickers in the world.

The
fourth floor was called the lunch room, but the lights were off for the most part because cops on the turnaround and some old-timers liked to nap there. The place stank of cigarettes. The volume on the black and white TV was broken, probably on purpose, and the screen would bathe the sleeping cops in a fizzy light. The open and empty pizza boxes and crushed Coke cans on the table made the room look like a teen sleepover party that had run out of steam.

I was
glad that I lived close to the Five. When I was coming off the 1600 to 0000 I could go home and sleep, then come back for the 0800 to 1600.

The
only reason I'd go to the fourth floor was because, like a lot of the newer guys, my locker share was there. It was a big deal to get a share on the third floor when one opened up — a big enough deal to get into a pushing match.

It never mattered to me because I lived in a walkup and
my legs, numbed to climbing, could take it. One more floor wasn't going to change my life. But if you were planning
on doing 20 and out, one more floor every day for the next X number of years could drive you to murder. If a share on the third floor ever opened to me, I'd trade it for season Rangers tickets.

I got
changed and got down to the muster room on time. I slept with my eyes open through most of roll call. They were telling us to look out for delinquent youth activity. But kids weren't stupid. I'd been in a gang when I was a kid. Cops might as well look for signs of witchcraft. You weren't going to catch anyone in the act of anything here.

I
thought about my old partner, a guy named John Vandyne. He had moved on, and was now running with the detective squad of the precinct, so he didn't have to stand for roll call anymore. Just before the layoffs and cutbacks kicked in, Vandyne and I had lost our sector car, but he'd found a way to pick up investigative assignments. He'd been on the job a year longer than me and the extra experience must have helped him.

They'd
told me to walk a footpost to get in touch with the community. Yeah, that was how they put it. In one way, they were right. Most cops on the footpost sulked around, chatting more with tourists than with the Chinese.

The way the Chinese felt about it, talking in English to
an
American cop could only invite misfortune, like how visiting an American doctor can only cause you to become sick or start an entire chain of events to get you deported.

They'd let Vandyne work in plainclothes and someday soon he was going to have a detective's gold shield. That was what I wanted, but I was too valuable as a Chinese face in uniform. I got to collar bad guys, but most of them were older Chinese men who frankly were no match for me.

Roll
call droned on. I yawned into my fist through the last bit. Then I hit the street.

Right
away, I had to stop for someone's car that had gotten scraped by a tofu truck off of Baxter. I lifted up a flattened cardboard box on Bowery and told the guy under it to move on now that he'd had a full night's sleep.

It
was still cold, although the sun was bright as hell. My eyes felt raw and red. I rubbed them a little. I did a quick circuit of my footpost, just to make sure everything was set for the time being before heading for Martha's Bakery. You don't want buildings to burn down while you're out for coffee.

Martha's
makes iced coffee by pouring old coffee into a foam cup, mixing in condensed milk from a can, and spooning in sugar like it was healthy to have. They stir it before they add in the ice. After they put on the lid, they turn it upside down and give it a few good shakes.

Two
women at the counter handled several hundred customers in the morning rush hours, and neither was named Martha.

If Lonnie
is making my coffee, I'll take two hot-dog pastries fresh from the oven and damp with steam inside the wax-paper bag. A hot-dog pastry is a unique Chinese American invention. They use the same dough as for the custard buns and taro buns, only they wrap it around an Oscar Meyer hot dog. The ends stick out like horns on a Viking helmet. They're good.

Lonni
e was young, only 20, but very good-looking, and not too skinny. Well, how skinny can you stay working in a bakery? She had thick black hair that looked pretty okay

by me. Sometimes she'd tie it up with a plastic hair loop that helps women style hair that perms can't curl.

Lo
nnie would shake my coffee upside down and say, “Officer Robert, how are you today?”