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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 3, No. 8 |
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NOIR |
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Routine Call |
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wouldn't change the basic problem at home. |
Officer Lange tried to help
--and let his emotions loose
of TheColumnists.com
Sometimes you can’t
help it. Your perspective shifts, a single person or incident
penetrates the game face you’ve taken years to perfect and--Christ,
you can feel them, almost get inside their heads--understand
for that one moment what it’s like to be them. For that
brief moment, you’re not a cop, just another citizen of
the planet, another traveler on Life’s unholy path. A sensation
so startling you roll with it, just to prove you’re still
human, still capable of feeling such things. Most times that
moment is fleeting, gone as quickly as it came. Out here that’s
the best you can hope for: humanity in micro-servings.
The call that night was nothing unusual. “Domestic
Disturbance”--the usual Saturday night whiskey-talking,
ass-kicking lament that means love’s flown out the window
when pain swaggers through the door. The usual he said/she said
drama seen in every variation of every kind of relationship.
This time, it was just past midnight--the witching hour for most
domestic battles.
It was the wife who called, frantic and screaming that she’d
been beaten, she couldn’t take it anymore, send the cops
immediately to lock her worthless husband up. No weapons on the
scene, she reported, unless you counted his fists, her frying
pan and several shattered beer bottles.
Officers Norcross and Lange were dispatched to answer the call.
Upon arrival, they observed the woman’s blackened eyes,
her swollen face, and the trashed apartment. One screaming baby
was in her arms while a whimpering toddler clung to her leg.
Beyond them, the husband slumped in a kitchen chair, not quite
sober enough to manage a convincing snarl.
“This is my house, dammit! You got no business coming in
here. I pay the rent,
I got my rights.”
His voice was more exhausted than menacing, the sound of a man
who’d clearly
had enough. It wasn’t just the booze, Lange observed. The
grim tableau of their tiny apartment told the story. This building
was steps away from the wrecking ball, another of the urban slums
where the hopeless and defeated cling to life. No heat circulated
through the drafty rooms in spite of the frigid night. There
was a newspaper on the table--the classified section with prospective
jobs carefully circled....and then crossed out. Judging by the
family’s shabby outfits, the starvelings hollows in the
children’s faces, food and clothing were a luxury beyond
their reach.
The man watched them with eyes dulled by despair.
“So I had a couple drinks. So what? Why she gotta start
screaming every time I walk through the door? She thinks it’s
so easy out there, let her go get a damn job!”
“So you waste our money getting drunk instead? What about
us? What about the baby’s medicine?” The woman’s
screams scaled up to banshee shrieks.
Norcross and Lange had heard it all before a hundred times, maybe
a thousand.
Nothing unusual about it, not in this neighborhood. People without
jobs had a tough life. Whether economics or cutbacks or lay-offs--the
name didn’t matter when the result was the same. Nobody
bothered to pretend the system was fair. How can you survive
without a job? A question with no answer that elicited one typical
response: get mad, get drunk, get nasty. Next stop was usually
jail, if she wanted to sign complaints. Otherwise, they’d
leave with a warning, and possibly, show up an hour later when
the battle was really over, to transport one or both to the hospital....or
the morgue.
But there was something about this scene that affected the cops.
The baby’s cheeks were red with fever, and each sob came
out in a congested hiccup. The toddler in her sodden diaper simply
trembled, watching the grim scenario. In a world gone crazy with
terrorism, panic and fear, here was a home-front situation that
begged for resolution. They understood the woman’s panicked
pleas, saw beyond the man’s desperate bravado. These were
two people losing the battle, losing each other, losing their
family in the relentless undertow that claimed so many.
Norcross eyed his partner. They could lock the guy up for domestic
battery.
She’d be placated, but it wouldn’t change the problem
or the circumstances--especially after he got back home. The
cycle of violence would continue, and those frightened babies
might be the next victims.
Lange shook his head. In his experience, there was nothing about
this situation that made it special. In this couple’s defeated
eyes, there was everything that demanded another solution. He
could feel his game face slipping, the one he’d spent years
perfecting. Cops weren’t supposed to show emotions. Street
survival dictated that, but dammit, he was human. There had to
be some times when you could lay down the shield and open your
heart.
Later, Norcross would describe how Lange’s voice took on
a soothing tone, how he turned to the man and told him he understood
exactly what the problem was. And that he and his partner were
there to help them work it out and help their family.
They were statements that sparked a glimmer of hope in the man’s
eyes--and a muzzle flash of blue death from the woman’s
gun. The one she’d concealed behind her baby....and now
aimed at Lange’s head.
Her subsequent statement to the Homicide detectives was a simple
one.
She was tired of lies, tired of living in fear, tired of expecting
help that never came.
Cops who swore to serve and protect? A joke, as far as she was
concerned. Everybody knows cops don’t feel a thing, and
that sometimes, you have to take matters into your own hands.
© 2002 by Gina Gallo. The Gina Gallo caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI'S Master Clips
Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA.
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