Blue Truth

It was a hard-metal trinity: the badge, the gun and the handcuffs. Each was cold and heavy with inherent power and responsibility; each was forged with precise purpose.

I wore that hard-metal trinity as part of my Fort Lauderdale police uniform the day I stood at proud attention and graduated with the 33rd Police Academy class in Broward County. The virginal handcuffs lay coiled in their leather pouch, still unaware of the taste of angry sweat or the pull of resisting tendons. The gun rode in its holster, waiting, confident, a passive judge in condescending repose. And on my chest, stroked by the rhythmic beating of my heart, lay the badge. It was pinned to the fabric of my uniform shirt, and it summed up with a singular clarity everything I worked for, stood for and represented. It was my identity, my reason, my passport to the truth.

And what of the flesh and blood that was me?

I was a young soldier come home from Vietnam, curiously aged by a war I did not yet know I had lost. Battle had triggered something in me. I was fueled by the sure knowledge that I had fought for the right, the good. I liked soldiering against evil, I liked taking up arms and pitting myself against an enemy who would do bad things to good people. I came home to the only war in town, the only battle I could soldier in--the field of struggle where the good side needed me, where an identifiable enemy could be met in physical combat and defeated.

I came home to the street.

•

Here we go, out of the car and feet sliding in the gravel of the alley. There you are, roundin' the Dumpster, one crushed-down sneaker comin' off while your feet grab for traction. I see you look over your shoulder, eyes wide, mouth open. You tryin' to be cool and run from me at the same time, asshole?

"Freeze, motherfucker, or I'll blow your face off!"

So you look over your shoulder again and turn right between the buildings, heading for the open field and the green apartments on the other side. You and I both know that when you get to those apartments, you gonna disappear like a rat in a hole, huh? Well, guess again, asshole, 'cause there's my partner in the cruiser, wait-in' for you.

"I said stop, asshole--I swear I'll blow you away!"

But you keep on runnin', turnin' again to get back into the alleys. Did you run this fast when you grabbed that old lady's purse? Did you have to knock her down and break her hip, dirtbag?

Now! Now you slip right in front of me, don't you? Now you roll and fall, and you look up at me with those big eyes. What you coverin' your head for, boy? 'Cause you know I'm comin' down, huh? Yeah. You so bad when you be takin' that old woman's purse, so bad when you be knockin' her down and runnin' off like the wind. If you so bad, how come a little Paddy motherfucker honkie cop like me done got you down in this alley? Huh? Why you be lookin' so helpless now? Why, motherfucker?

I stand over him, breathing hard. He's lookin' up at me with those big, wide eyes. His mouth is open, and when his shuddering breaths come out, his lips quiver and the spit falls on his chin. And he stinks--he stinks 'cause he's scared. I watch his mouth as he looks up to say, "Why you crackin' on me, man? I din' do nuthin', man. Why you crackin' on me?"

And my fist hits his face so hard it makes me want to shout. I do shout, "Yeah, motherfucker, let's see how bad you really are!"

And I come down with the other fist. I'm gettin' good leverage 'cause I'm standin' on the balls of my feet, puttin' everything into it, left and right, my fists crunch into his face.

He screams, "No, man!" as his nose shatters and the blood goes everywhere. "I ain't bad, man! Oh, please, mister, I ain't bad."

But you were so bad back there on the sidewalk, weren't you? You so bad, and so cocky. Yeah, knock that old woman down--old woman lives only a couple of blocks from you, shithead. Knock her down and run off with her sorry little Social Security check. Such a bad little motherfucker.

I lose my grip on him and he falls to the gravel, bleedin' real good all over.

So here comes the sergeant and my partner, both sweating from running. I straighten up, clip my radio back on and tuck my shirt back into my pants, dusting myself off.

Sarge says, "What happened?"

Partner says, "You OK?"

I say, "Motherfucker fought with me, tried to take my gun, went for my throat, so I beat his ass."

Sarge looks down at the spitball, who is slowly trying to sit up. Sarge says, "Guilty," and we stuff him into the back seat and drive out of the alley.

The people look. They say, "They hurt that boy."

Yeah. We did. I did.

•

"Alpha two-three, make it code three, baby choking, not breathing. E.M.S. also en route."

I'm on Commercial Boulevard, just west of 18th Avenue, when it comes down--only a short distance away. I stuff the accelerator through the floor, make a wild, sliding turn north through the intersection, and with my siren and lights blazing, I head for the address. Nothing gets a police officer going like a report of a child in trouble. All you want to do is get there and fix the problem. Now.

From several blocks away, I can see a man standing in the middle of the avenue, waving his arms. He moves out of the way as I roar up and slide into the parking lot. I pop the trunk, jump out, grab the oxygen and run toward the apartment. The door is standing open, and inside, a young woman is crying on a sofa, her face buried in her hands. The man in the street is behind me. He looks terrified and points excitedly toward one of the back rooms.

Baby's room. Winnie the Pooh and Garfield the cat. Blue sailboats and yellow kites. Tiny T-shirts and miniature jogging shoes. Hopes and dreams and Ferris wheels.

I run into the room and look into the crib. There's the baby, about one year old, lying on his back in a little blue jumper. The muscles in his neck are stretched tight and his face is bright purple. I throw down the oxygen, sensing I don't have time to fool with it, and grab the baby out of the crib, letting his little head fall back against my hand.

His skin feels cool but not dead cool.

I open my mouth, cover his nose and mouth with it and blow carefully. I do it again, and then again. Each time I do, I watch the tiny chest rise and fall. Snoopy the dog and Mickey Mouse. Both parents are standing in the door-way behind me now, the father with a stricken look on his face and the mother with tears in her eyes, wringing her hands. A furry monkey from Grandma and a mobile made of little airplanes. Prayers and wishes and baseball caps.

I bend down and blow once more into the baby's nose and mouth. He hiccups, struggles, gags, turns pink, and then starts crying like you wouldn't believe--his small chest heaving as he takes big shuddering gulps of air. He spits up on my shirt and grabs my collar with his tiny hands. He is breathing. And crying. And breathing.

I stand there with the E.M.S. guys, watching as the parents drive off with the baby to the hospital. Then I drive a few blocks away and sit on a park bench in the shade, drinking a lemonade. It tastes great, and as I bring it to my lips, I notice that my hand is shaking pretty good. I think about Dad standing in the street waving his arms around, and Mom sitting on the sofa crying her eyes out while the hopes and dreams and wishes and prayers lay there turning purple. I shake my head.

After that baby started breathing again, I should have put him back in his crib, turned around and kicked his parents' asses.

•

"Why are you turning the car around? What did you see back there? We have dinner reservations for eight. We don't have time----"

"Wait a minute, honey, something didn't look right back there at that convenience store."

"Something didn't look right? So you have to turn around and go back, while we're supposed to be on our way to dinner? You already did a shift today. You're off duty now!"

"Yeah, but somethin' just didn't look right. One dude by the side of the building and the other one hangin' by the phone."

"So who are you, John Wayne? Can't you just leave it alone?"

"Well, damn it, they're gone now, anyway. Must've just been looking the place over. Gee, honey, don't get upset. I just had to take a look, that's all."

"But what if they'd still been there? You would have done ... what?"

"I don't know, watched them for a moment, that's all. They're gone, let's forget it, OK?"

"You're supposed to leave the job at the station when you get off duty."

"Uh-huh."

"I don't want to play cops and robbers when we go out to dinner."

"All right."

"I want my husband to be a person all of the time and a cop only some of the time. I feel like I don't even know you when you're a cop."

Silence.

•

Three bad guys in a blue Torino. I'm right on their ass as they skid across a big parking lot and run off the pavement into a ditch.

(continued on page 134) Blue Truth (continued from page 88)

I'm screaming into the radio as I jump out. The doors fly open and the driver and two passengers try to flee. I scream, "Freeze!" and concentrate on the driver, who runs toward the front of the car and falls down. I run to the edge of the ditch and yell "Freeze!" again and he looks up at me with big eyes and turns to run. My gun's in my hand, but, hell, the rules of the game say I can't shoot him, and I guess he knows that. So as he starts to move, I hurl myself at him and land beside him with my right arm around his neck, trying to pull him down. At the same time, I'm screaming, "Hold it, asshole!" and we both fall into the heavy underbrush. Then I realize that this dude is no midget--probably 6'3", 230 pounds, big, round and strong.

We struggle on the ground and neither one of us can get to our feet. He's trying to pull away from me, we swap a couple of punches and I realize right away that he's gonna knock the shit out of me if I let him. So I stick my revolver right in his face and I scream, "I'll fuckin' blow your head off!"

"Nooo!" he yells, and grabs me in a bear bug and we roll down into the scrub again. I climb to my knees, but then he grabs my gun with both hands. I've got the gun solid by the grips, but I can feel him beginning to pull it away from me, so I grab it with both hands.

There we are, on our knees, face to face, chest to chest, with the gun between us. There is no screaming now, just heavy breathing and grunting. I think he can smell my fear, because he's getting stronger and starting to grin, and I can feel his hands, like steel, slowly pulling mine apart. I can see how it's gonna look and feel when this motherfucker gets my gun away from me and starts pumping .38 bullets into my chest with my own gun.

I know he's going to kill me, so, fuck it, I'm gonna pull the trigger anyway and let the bullet blow away whichever one of us it hits. So I grab as tight as I can around the grips and get ready to jerk my head back hard before I pull the trigger. I start to squeeze that motherfucker when suddenly I see this shiny black shoe hit the side of the guy's head. His face jerks sideways and his eyes open wide, but he still hangs on to the gun with his big hands. I'm trying to pull back when the shiny black shoe gets him again, just above the left ear, and I hear a voice screaming, "Die, you motherfucker!" His grip loosens and I fall back and see three guys jump into the ditch all over the guy and start beatin' the piss out of him. They're all screaming, "Die! Die, motherfucker!" and punching and kicking the crap out of him. I can hear him screaming and moaning as I lie looking up into the sky, breathing hard.

All the guys start grouping around me now. They're shouting and yelling, happy as shit because all three suspects are in custody. The two other guys had run across a field and into another compound, where they tried to hide in some trucks, but the K-9 sniffed 'em out and the dogs ate on both of 'em and it's fucking beautiful.

I'm pulling my act together, dusting myself off, when one of the officers comes over and stands in front of me. There's blood all over his right shoe and pants leg. He just smiles and says, "You owe me one, Cherokee."

•

Walter has no way of knowing how hungry Alvin is. He has no way of knowing that Alvin and three other scumbags want to put together a cocaine deal so bad that they will do anything to make it work. It isn't a big coke deal by today's standards, but Alvin and his partners take it very seriously.

The only things Walter takes seriously are the love for his wife and his undying belief that life is about having a good time. He's a prankster, a guy with a quick wit and a sharp tongue. In briefing, he always has a gag going or harasses some new guy or a lieutenant, to everyone's delight. On the street, with the public, he is neat, courteous, professional and efficient. He just doesn't take it seriously, that's all.

Walter has no way of knowing that it's Alvin and his partners who have prompted the manager at the seafood restaurant to set off the silent robbery alarm. The dispatcher advises the north-end units about the alarm, and Walter drives his cruiser that way. Silent alarms go off all over town, every day, and most of the time, there is a malfunction or some clerk has hit the button unknowingly. This is ten a.m. on a beautiful Sunday, and Walter still has parts of the morning newspaper scattered all over the front seat of his car.

Walter has no way of knowing, as he approaches the restaurant, that Alvin's partners have seen him coming and have driven off, leaving only Alvin inside. Walter parks his cruiser on the north side of the building and grabs his clipboard so he can record the pertinent information for his false-alarm report. He walks easily into the restaurant through the kitchen door and meets Alvin in a small hallway leading out to the parking lot. There he stands, a pen in one hand and his clipboard in the other; and there is Alvin, with a cut-down .22-caliber rifle--a small gun that shoots a small bullet, and, as a high-noon weapon, is pretty hard to take seriously.

Alvin shoots Walter three times with the .22, and as Walter goes down, Alvin runs past him and out into the parking lot to escape with the others. He finds that they have fled and he knows more police officers will be along in seconds. He turns and runs back inside. Walter, lying huddled on the floor in the fetal position, manages to grip his radio and transmit, "Help me, I've been shot." Those of us who hear those words on the radio don't recognize the voice, we only feel the terror and the pain. We rush headlong toward the scene.

Alvin kneels beside Walter and demands the keys to the police cruiser. Walter, through clenched teeth, tells him which pants pocket to dig into. Alvin gets the keys. Then he rips Walter's .38 service revolver out of the holster, places the barrel just behind Walter's ear and fires one shot.

Alvin makes his getaway in the police cruiser, and the first officers to arrive at the scene find Walter dead.

There is the inevitable violent surge of police activity, and all four suspects are eventually captured.

Walter is buried with a quiet private service. The court system plods along, and Alvin's three partners are given life sentences. Alvin is sentenced to death. Now he sits on Florida's death row, and even though well-meaning or publicity-seeking lawyers have appealed his case in every way, his sentence stands. The governor has signed the warrant.

Alvin has waited to die in the electric chair for more than ten years. Those trying to save him claim that he is mentally ill--that he sees space beings and talks with God. The court is pondering whether or not we can put to death a man who is now insane, though he was sane at the time of his crime and conviction. But for now, the sentence still stands: Alvin must die for what he did.

If it were possible, I would travel to where Alvin is today, and I would watch as he was strapped into the chair, and I would pull the switch myself.

Seriously.

•

"Hey, honey, I'm home. Sorry I'm late--had a bunch of paperwork to do. (continued on page 168) Blue Truth (Continued from page 134) We still going out tonight?"

Silence.

"Hey, you OK? How was school today--learn some good stuff?"

"Have you seen the newspaper? The story about what happened yesterday? The front-page story?"

"Yeah. Crazy paper went wild with it, didn't they? It's----"

"It's a front-page story about how you and your partner beat up this poor kid after he had an accident in his car! Of course they went wild! Witnesses said the kid was just walking away. You were seen beating him after he was handcuffed, with your radio! Jesus!"

"Don't drag him into this----"

"Oh, it's something we can joke about, right? Do you know my mother has already called me, she's so upset?

"And my friends! They already ask me how I do it, and after this----"

"After this, what? Honey, it's just a newspaper story. Sure, it's front-page stuff now, but only because they've got it all bent out of shape! Six weeks from now, after the department review board and the state's attorney's office clear me, the story will cover maybe two lines on the last page. Don't worry about it."

"Oh, you're going to get away with this one? What if you get time off without pay? What's it going to cost us?"

"Goddamn it! Did the paper mention that the kid crashed a stolen car into a house? Did they mention that he was coked out of his skull, that he has a record for auto theft and battery on a cop? If I break my police radio, I have to pay for it! You think I'm gonna chance that on some scroatbag's head when I can do a better job with my hands? Listen, honey, the paper doesn't have the whole story, and they don't want it."

"Your name--and my name now--is still spread all over the front page, and you sound like every other overly aggressive cop out there, like a monster. Why can't you just take it easy?"

•

"Officer, tell us again how you came to stop the defendant in the first place. I mean, what did he do that made you feel you could detain him and 'check him out,' as you say?"

"Well, sure. I was talking with some of the guys coming off the midnight shift and they told me to look for him, because they were pretty sure he had done the smash-and-grab at Davie Boulevard and Twenty-Seventh Avenue."

"They were 'pretty sure'?"

"Yeah, you know, they had seen him in the area earlier, and they know the way he usually works."

"Now, wait a minute. Officer, all this is hearsay. How much of this do you know personally?"

"Well, I know who he is and I know he is one of the neighborhood burglars."

"And just how do you know that? Have you ever seen him burglarize anyplace?"

"No, I haven't. But, hell, everybody knows he's been into this stuff since he was a kid. He even used to be on a list that the juvenile squad put out."

"Do you have that list with you?"

"No."

"Ok, please go on. Tell us why you stopped the defendant."

"Like I said, the midnight guys told me to be on the lookout for him, and a little while later, I observed him scootin' through an alley. His hair was longer then and he was wearing jeans and a windbreaker. He kept lookin' all around, you know--hinky."

"Hinky?"

"Yeah, hinky--acting nervous, not right. So I told him to stop and he looked like he was gonna rabbit, so I----"

"Hold it, Officer. How far from him were you when you first saw him?"

"Across the street."

"And from there, you could tell he was, as you say, 'hinky'? From there, you could tell he was going to, as you say, 'rabbit'?"

"Yeah."

"How could you tell these things, Officer?"

"You know, the way he looked. I could just tell, that's all."

"So you decided to accost him there in the alley--stop him, detain him, force him to submit to a search? Is that right?"

"Yeah. That's right."

"And you claim he had a camera under his jacket? And a bag of what you claim to be marijuana in his pants pocket, right?"

"Well, yeah. I was told to look for him. I saw him. He was hinky, so I patted him down, you know, for his protection and mine. That's when I found the camera--it could have been a weapon under his jacket. And the bag of grass made a bulge in his pants pocket, so I thought I'd better check it out. The camera was stolen during the smash-and-grab."

"Do you know where the defendant got the camera? Didn't he tell you he found it in the alley?"

"Well, sure, but----"

"But nothing, Officer. I have no further questions of this witness, Your Honor. And at this time, I would like to ask that the court consider the facts: that, in actuality, this officer had no real basis--legal or otherwise--to stop and detain the defendant. Then he illegally searched him and charged him with possession of narcotics and of stolen property. At this time, I ask the court to find that these charges stem from the product of an illegal search and that they should be dropped immediately."

The court concurs, Mr. Counselor. And before we adjourn, I want to take a moment to warn you. Officer, that what you do out on the street must conform with the law. You can't just do what you please out there. You must work within those guidelines so clearly set out for you. Don't get so carried away with trying to do the right thing that you violate a man's rights, as you have in this case.

"Well, Officer, don't you have anything to say?"

•

I'm exiled to the Communications Center again. I languish there for a couple of months, waiting impatiently to be reassigned to the street. The incident this time involved what is termed "excessive use of force" and "falsifying a police report"--meaning I beat some dirtbag's ass and disputed his version of it in my report. The dirtbag's parents complain, and rather than get into a costly investigation, the easy way is taken: "severe disciplinary actions."

I'm going through the motions, biding my time, and I begin to notice some things about myself that worry me. I admit to myself that I've known this for some lime, and I've been ignoring it, and it has festered and inflamed like a wild case of emotional acne.

I tell the communications sergeant that I think I need help; he immediately refers me to the chief's office. I say that I am mentally injured as a direct result of my job, and the help I need should be funded by the city. The city agrees, and I'm given a series of appointments with a psychiatrist.

The chief makes me promise to comply with the doctor's final evaluation and recommendation. If the doctor thinks I can be a cop, then I can keep my job. The doctor's letter to the chief is six pages long and a masterpiece of ambiguity. There is some question that I should be a cop, he says, but there is no question that I could be a cop. I can do the work, but I'm probably not cut out for it.

The chief shrugs his shoulders and tells me that he'll lake the chance on me. I can keep my job, but if I screw up again, the letter will be interpreted the other way, and I'll "be gone."

On my last visit, I ask the doctor flat out if I should be a cop. He says he understands that I could be an effective police officer but that I may pay a terrible price. He sees me as an artist, maybe a writer.

From that time on, if anyone accuses me of being crazy, all I have to say is, "I'm not crazy--and I've got a six-page letter to prove it."

•

The strip on New Year's Eve.

The very same part of the beach I used to come to as a kid with my parents. We would get cherry Cokes at the drugstore fountain and waffle ice-cream sandwiches down the street near the old Casino Pool.

It was clean then, sunny and nice. The people were different, we were all different. The beach was a nice place for the family to go on a weekend to be together and enjoy what Fort Lauderdale was supposed to be all about.

The strip on New Year's Eve is nothing like that. I'm leaning against the wall, in uniform, watching the people drift by.

Drunk, dirty, drugged, nasty, filthy, spaced out, leering, laughing, giggling, spitting, cursing, crying, shrieking, stumbling, falling, pushing, fighting, gaggles of street types making their abrasive way from one end of the strip to the other. Happy New Year. We're all assholes and we're going nowhere.

I don't want to be here, obviously.

Anyway, here I am, trying to stay out of the way and just make it through the night. I'm at the entrance to a videogame arcade when it happens.

Clinging hands clutch at my ears, wet lips press against mine and a slick, rubbery, darting, probing tongue invades my mouth and penetrates almost into my throat. I push away with my hands and jerk my head back hard. The tongue and lips and hands fall away.

Shocked, I look down at my attacker.

There, standing in front of me, is an honest-to-God primo example of a female street maggot. She is not very tall, not very old and not very clean. Her long, greasy brown hair clings to her bare shoulders. She wears a silver metallic-looking tube top with no bra, and it is easy to see that when she takes it off, her still-young but oh-so-old breasts will sag against her pudgy belly. She has stuffed her heavy thighs into dirty jeans, and her feet are black with street filth. Her face is painted with glitter eye make-up and rouge, and she has thickened her pouty lips with a heavy layer of greenish lipstick. Her oily, sweaty skin--even on her shoulders--is pocked with acne.

And she smells bad.

She stands there looking up at me with a leer on her grotesque-pathetic face and her hands on her hips. She sways slightly on her spread legs, giggles and blurts out, "Happy fucking New Year, piggly-wiggly!" Then she sticks out her tongue and, with a wink, adds, "And if you think you can handle it, little policeman, I'll show you another place where I'm pink on the inside!" Then she turns away, looks over her shoulder at me, gives her greasy hair a toss and walks off, blending in with the crowd and disappearing quickly.

I stand there, wiping her spit off my face, thinking about gargling and wondering where I'm going to find a quart of penicillin mixed with paint thinner.

•

"It's stupid."

"Because I'm hurt on the job, that's stupid?"

"It's stupid to punch someone in the mouth with your fist. It doesn't help in the arrest, and it only proves you're not as tough as you think you are. The dirtiest place on this planet is someone else's mouth. Punching someone in the teeth is a guaranteed way of getting infected."

"What if I'd been shot, or run over again, or stabbed again, or hit with a bottle again? Would that be better?"

"It's still stupid."

"Jesus, honey, getting hurt is one of the things that happen sometimes with this job; you know that."

"I know that other cops go thirty years without firing their guns, without shooting and killing someone. Other cops don't get gangrene from punching other people in the mouth. They don't get stabbed or run over, either. They get promoted, assigned to inside jobs, jobs where they use their heads. And they don't do the job, job, job and forever the job all the time! And they don't use their bodies like some kind of macho sacrificial weapon to accomplish their mission! There are other people out there doing positive things with their lives, living real lives, in peace."

She bites her lip, close to tears. I sigh. We look into each other's eyes.

"I didn't purposely go out to get hurt," I say quietly. "But it happens in my real world. Next time, I'll try to get hurt in some acceptable way, all right?"

"It's still stupid. This life we live is stupid," she says, and walks out.

•

I'm standing in the sun, looking at her driver's license and feeling the heat rise from the rough pavement of Seabreeze Boulevard. The photo shows me one of those beautiful, healthy surfer-type girls--you know, with the long, straight blonde hair and the glowing, tanned face with perfect white teeth, full soft lips, a cute nose and big, lovely blue eyes. It's a picture of a teenage girl trying hard to be a woman, and I want to smile at the doubt in the young eyes staring at the camera.

She lies on her back on the cruel hot street, her legs spread and her arms flung outward. Her hands are balled into loose delicate fists. She has been covered with an old Army blanket by a guy who will later become a cop but who now just sits on the curb, staring at the sun.

She had been riding on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle, in jeans and a tube top, wearing a helmet she hated because it made her face look too small. They had waited in the sun at the top of the causeway bridge, and when it finally closed and the gates went up, they had come charging toward the beach, leading the pack. Her boyfriend could handle his bike, and he roared over the small bridge east of Pier 66 and then leaned it over nicely into the first curve on Seabreeze.

The curve is not banked, and her boyfriend had suddenly realized that speed and centrifugal force were working against them, so he tried to slow down as they drifted toward the curb. He almost made it. But as he leaned into the curve, that same centrifugal force made her lean the other way, out toward the sidewalk and the concrete light poles. The front tire of the motorcycle ripped into the unforgiving curb, the bike bounced once and went down and her boyfriend was scraped and scratched up pretty good as he slid several feet on the rough asphalt.

At the same instant the bike went down, the right side of her face hit the brutal edge of a concrete light pole, her helmet exploded and she cart-wheeled off the bike. As her body slid on the asphalt, her tube top was peeled down and, when she finally stopped, her breasts were exposed to the sun.

The guy who would later become a cop told me that was why he had covered her with his old Army blanket. He had been a Beret in Vietnam and had seen blood--that didn't bother him. What bothered him was that her breasts were exposed. He was embarrassed for her, because people were standing around and driving by slowly and they were all staring at her breasts. No one had tried to cover her. They just stared.

I look at her license photo again, then I bend down and lift the top corner of the Army blanket. Some parts of her lower jaw and her left ear are still there. And her left eye is still in its socket, but it's impossible to tell what color it is. The skin is peeled back from her shattered facial bones and skull--it lies wet and bloody against the blonde hair fanned out behind her.

The rest is gone. I try mentally to reconstruct her face. I can't. It's gone forever. The only tangible evidence that it ever existed is that awkward, doubting, sad little face on the driver's license.

•

We roll code-three on a statistic.

The nine-year-old had gone next door to the eight-year-old's house to play. The eight-year-old proudly showed his friend his dad's high-caliber hunting rifle, which had been standing behind the door in the bedroom. They took it out into the back yard to play, excited and happy. The nine-year-old turned to say something to the eight-year-old, who held the rifle waist high. The roar of the rifle going off could be heard for blocks.

When we arrive, we run into the back yard and find the nine-year-old sitting on the ground, the eight-year-old kneeling beside him. The eight-year-old still holds the hot-barreled rifle, his face ashen. The bullet had exploded into the nine-year-old's stomach, causing most of his intestines to be blown back out of the entry wound. The nine-year-old sits there, holding his insides in both hands, crying. As I kneel beside him and place my hands on his shoulder to lay him down, he says to me quietly, "I don't want to die. Can you put me back together?" The eight-year-old looks at his friend and then down at the rifle. He understands everything.

The nine-year-old dies.

•

The divorce is quick, friendly and brutal. Our small home goes up for sale, proceeds are split and we both move out and go separate directions.

She is gone. I am a divorced cop. And I drive around town in my new macho Firebird with tinted windows, feeling a hard, cold aloneness creep into me. I feel tickled by a curious freedom, but I'm not sure if I will fly or just withdraw into myself, peeking out only occasionally to examine, with skepticism, anyone peering in at me.

•

The chase ends about seven blocks north of Sunrise Boulevard. The Cadillac with that dirtbag Aconomie and his two partners has screeched to a halt in a cloud of dirt and dust and blue smoke. Aconomie has the gun.

Now we'll see about shooting a cop.

Paul slides his patrol car to a stop almost directly behind the Caddy. I swerve to the right and stop 30 feet behind and to the right of it. As we open our doors, I see a sweaty black arm flick out of the right front window, holding a gun. It fires toward us once, and then the arm is drawn back quickly inside the car.

Paul, using his door for cover, begins firing at the guy in the back seat. He hits the trunk of the Caddy and then the rear window, and one of the slugs crashes through the glass and hits the guy in the face. He goes down.

After firing at us, Aconomie crouches down on the seat behind the door of the car, knowing that we will hide behind our car doors and yell for him to give up. But that's his fatal mistake, because when he raises up quickly to see where we are, he's looking into the eyes and gun of a cop running straight at him.

A cop had been shot, a cop had been shot, a cop had been shot--and now these bastards had shot at us, and now I was going to kill them!

I had killed in Vietnam the same way--charging forward, leaning toward my target. I know he is going to come up. I'm less than three feet away, and with my service revolver tight in my hands, pointing right at him, I scream and fire twice--point-blank--into his face. One slug hits the top of the window edge and breaks up before spinning into his skull like shrapnel. The other takes him dead on, between the eyes. His body punches backward and he is gone.

Now other units start sliding into the area and other officers are running up. The driver gets out with his hands up. Then there's the usual craziness and shouting and orders and confusion; bright lights, ambulances and captains.

As Paul and I reach in to pull the two fluid bodies from the car, all rubbery and loose-limbed as they slide onto the dirt, the scene suddenly becomes juxtaposed in my mind with the bodies of North Vietnamese soldiers: long-sleeved dark-green shirts, small backpacks, rubber sandals....

I have relived that shooting in my mind many times since that night. I can still feel myself running toward the car, leaning forward with my gun, coming down on Aconomie to kill him. He shot a cop and I killed him. And I'd stand in front of you or the face of God and say, "That's right, I did. I did!"

•

Working the streets for you and knowing the truth took its toll on me. I had the same problem many cops have: I believed in what I was doing. I would go out at night in my marked cruiser. I'd have a radio so I could hear you when you called for help. When it was happening, you didn't call an attorney or a reporter or a judge or a city administrator or an influential person. You called me. I had a flashlight, the better to see you with, and I had a gun, because that's what the world has come to. I went out looking for those who would steal from you, or hurt you.

You slept, and just outside your bedroom window were people who would violate your wife. They would steal your little girl and leave her body in a canal. They would smash their way into your business--where you had worked so hard to make a living--and take your tools. They would go into your house, your castle, your sanctum, and after they took what they wanted and smashed the rest, they would defecate on your kitchen floor.

Who was out there to stop them? Me.

When you were afraid, I felt the fear. When you cried out, I felt the pain. When you bled, I cried. I stood in your living room and felt your loss. The color TV, your mother's ring, your daughter--she was only 17. When you were violated, I was violated. When you were dying on the hard pavement, I knelt over you to keep the sun from your eyes. I wore your powerful tin badge on my chest and it gave me reason.

Often, I was criticized or reprimanded for my actions. I kept on, though, because I learned that my critics were hollow relics of what I represented. They fulfilled themselves vicariously through my courage, and the paper projectiles they hurled in response to my street actions were just manifestations of their desire to control me. They had never known the street I knew; they couldn't function there.

Was I a rogue police officer, a renegade? Did I turn my back on our laws, our system of rights and freedoms?

No.

I never abandoned the truth of the law. Its spirit remains pure, even as its implementation is perverted by egotistical opportunists and sanctimonious, hypocritical overseers.

I took up your sword and hurled myself against those who would hurt you. Every day, my physical and emotional reserves were a little more depleted; every day, another piece was torn from me.

Everything I did, I did for you. And I did only what I thought was right.

"I can see how it's gonna look when this motherfucker starts pumping bullets into my chest with my gun."

" 'The kid was just walking away. You were seen beating him after he was handcuffed, with your radio!' "

Sergeant Cherokee Paul McDonald resigned from the Fort Lauderdale police force in 1980, after ten years of service.