Love or Honor Read Free

shoes.
    Chris didn’t feel like a cop, and he didn’t even look like a cop, much of the time; with a shortage of lockers at the station, he had to carry his uniform back and forth from home. He was so aggravated at the whole setup that he didn’t bother with a garment bag; he just folded the uniform and carried it in a brown paper grocery bag in the trunk of his car.
    He got so fed up with answering endless questions—“Where’s the Ferris wheel?” “Where’s the subway?” “Where’s the toilet, Officer?”—that he filled out a Form 57, Request for Transfer, specifically asking for assignment to either Harlem or the South Bronx. Hearing stories of the work other cops had done there, or the work that cops they knew had done, made him envious; by comparison, he felt he wasn’t doing police work at all. “If I’d wanted to spend my days on the beach, I’d have gotten myself a wagon and sold ice cream,” he grumbled to guys at the precinct, who usually told him to shut up and count his blessings, usually in more colorful terms.
    When summer ended and the beach emptied, it was even worse: the seemingly aimless patrolling, standing on deserted street corners. Until he finally got the long-awaited call from the guy who monitored the teletype—“Hey, Chrissie, you’re going to the 4-oh in the Bronx!”—he had plenty of time and energy, after work, to play. He and a bachelor buddy dropped in one night at a lively place, a cocktail lounge with a bowling alley attached. They were in partial uniform—raincoats over uniform pants and shirts—and after they’d been drinking and laughing a while, they became friendly with a woman at the bar, Josie. She had a girlfriend with her.
    Pretty soon, the women invited Chris and his buddy to come home with them, to Josie’s friend’s apartment. The women said they lived right next door to one another, on the same floor in the same nearby building. Josie seemed especially gleeful that Chris was a cop, and assured him that her husband would be out all night, playing cards. “Hey, I don’t get involved with married women,” Chris protested. But by and by, after some more drinks and some more laughs, the four of them went over to the girlfriend’s apartment. They were all drinking, laughing, fooling around, when Josie’s husband began hammering at the door, cursing, yelling, looking for his wife. Chris and his friend made an immediate exit through the second-floor window. Chris felt daredevil and rakish, rather like Errol Flynn. He felt he hadn’t been in any great danger—although he knew, even then, that the place was a mob hangout.
    In his very first week at the 4-oh, he’d made an arrest. It wasn’t a big arrest; in fact, it was a measly little arrest. But as his first arrest, it was the first proof that he was indeed a cop, protector of the right, avenger of the wrong. And, as measly little arrests go, it was rather colorful.
    He was assigned to duty at an elementary school where there had been serious discipline problems. He was standing at the window of a classroom when he saw a man opening the hood of a car and removing the battery. Chris knew that the teachers parked their cars there, and he knew the guy wasn’t a teacher.
    He raced out to the street. The thief saw him, dropped the battery in the snow, slammed the hood of the car and took off. Chris caught up with him and tackled him from behind. They fell down together. Chris’s hat fell off, and they both rolled over it. The hat was bent totally out of shape. Chris pulled out the handcuffs and put them on, just as he’d been taught, the lecture running through his head: When you put the handcuffs on, be careful, because that’s their last moment of freedom. If they’re going to try anything, they’re going to try it then. Do it as quickly as possible. Try to get the