Love or Honor Read Free Page B

the badge on the uniform jacket. As a cop gathered more medals, the number on the bar would change. Chris would eventually earn thirty-two medals of varying degrees, but that first medal, the EPD, was always special to him, and so was Andy Glover.
    When Chris was assigned to regular car duty with Phil, others considered them an extremely odd couple. True, they were both Greek, but after that, whatever did they have in common? Chris was a playboy, a regular at McSherry’s; Phil was so straight that Chris teased him he should have become a priest.
    Phil had wanted to be a cop as long as he could remember, since he was a schoolboy passing the policeman who stood at the corner of 85th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan. When Phil was ten, he’d gone with his mother to visit his godmother, who lived at 68th and Third. While the grownups were visiting, Phil walked around the corner to the 19th Precinct on 67th Street, where the sign on the door said VISITORS WELCOME. Phil went in. “I’m a visitor,” he told the man behind the desk. “Please take me on a tour of this police station.”
    The cop stared at him. Looking back on it, Phil thought he must have looked like Opie from The Andy Griffith Show. “Well, sure,” the cop said. He showed Phil all around the first floor, including the holding pens in the back. “This is where we put the bad people,” he told the wide-eyed boy. At the door, they shook hands. “I’m glad you want to be a policeman when you grow up,” the cop told Phil. “Don’t let anybody change your mind.”
    Phil took the exam as soon as he could, when he turned twenty, though he wasn’t eligible for the Academy till twenty-one. He was doing an army stint as a medical corps-man when he flew back to New York on a furlough to take the exam, and he enrolled at the Academy just after his next birthday. Phil was serious, kind of old-fashioned: Describing how careful he’d been not to make any mistakes at the Academy, he said, “I was determined to mind my Ps and Qs.” He was amazed at the kidding around that went on, even about weighty matters, and at what he considered “childish horseplay.” But he kept a wry perspective on himself. “You have to remember,” he told Chris, “I was considered a serious person when I was four years old.”
    Chris didn’t find it surprising that he and Phil got on so well. He thought they were alter egos. Chris envied Phil for his stability; he thought Phil envied him for being so carefree. They made more arrests their first year, in uniform, than were made by plainclothes teams at the precinct. Phil called Chris “Butch” or “Partner.” He was going to college at night, determined to earn his degree and thus qualify for the FBI. “You’ll never make it,” Chris teased. He knew Phil would do just about anything he made up his mind to do, but he kept hoping Phil would change his mind.
    One sweltering summer day, another radio car pulled alongside theirs. A cop in that car handed Chris two cans of soda. Chris took the icy cans gratefully and passed one to Phil, who was driving. Chris pulled the tab and was about to drink when Phil spoke sternly.
    â€œDid anybody pay for these sodas?”
    Chris looked at the cop in the other car. “Did anybody pay for these sodas?”
    When that cop shrugged, Phil threw his unopened can out the window. Chris pressed the cold can wistfully against his cheek, then threw his can out the window, too.
    Phil drove around the corner and stopped.
    â€œThose sodas weren’t paid for, and we don’t accept anything that isn’t paid for,” Phil said.
    â€œRight,” Chris said.
    â€œI’m not saying it’s corruption to take a soda,” Phil went on, “but it’s better to make it an absolute rule not to take anything that isn’t paid for.”
    â€œRight,” Chris