Curbchek, page 11
It didn’t really stop until Ben caught his wife with another man and planned to kill her - but passed out drunk in the midst of the attempt. He’d left a murder/suicide note, and she found it and called the police. Ben was arrested and ultimately lost his police certification over it. Years later, he and I became friends; he was a good guy when he was sober and not asked to be a cop.
Chapter 23
Grecko Wrestling
Robert Allen was a mean schizophrenic, and he could have easily taken on both Manu and Doobie.
He lived in some mid-block apartment in the central city and suddenly got very loud and violent for no apparent reason but his illness. I got a call to his apartment from his neighbors. He was enormous, almost 6-and-a-half feet tall and 300 pounds or more, depending on his condition at the time. His weight could vary a lot.
When I got the call, dispatch told me that Allen’s address had been flagged as the occupant being very dangerous and prone to fighting cops in the nude for fun. They sent me a back-up as well; the back that night was Skidmark – and with no Street Creds or common sense, he’d get both our asses kicked by Allen, so I canceled his ass and went in alone.
I knocked on the door for several minutes, listening to Allen yelling inside as he carried on a conversation with - it later turned out - himself. He finally answered the door, totally naked, yelling and screaming at me, “What the fuck do you want? What son of a bitch has called you to my house?” Dispatch then informed me that Allen did have a warrant, and that made the call a lot more interesting; now, I was required to arrest him since I’d found him there at the house.
I talked to Allen for some time, with dispatch checking on me frequently; they were nervous. The last group of cops that had come there had battled with Allen, and he’d fucked them up pretty bad. Dispatch had pulled the case and read it: the cops had been some guys considered heavyweights in the department, guys who were known for being able to handle themselves on the street - and Allen had beaten the hell out of them.
So, Allen was well known to the force. He had a habit of talking to you one minute - then in the next, in mid-sentence, changing his manner and growling or barking or charging at you, trying to start a fight.
I didn’t respond to his aggression; instead, I just kept talking to him. He finally asked me, “What are you planning on doing, officer? Are you gonna arrest me or what?” I told him that I was going to arrest him and that he had a choice as to how that was going to happen. I told him that he had quite a reputation for fighting and that he’d harmed some of the officers who arrested him the last time.
I said that I could tell he wasn’t the kind of guy that he acted like he was and that I was going to give him the chance to prove it. I’d come alone, and we could either walk out like men or fight; the choice was his. Just then, Chad Stiver showed up. He was a guy that I trusted. He wasn’t well liked in the department either, but we’d clicked. He sat back and listened to me deal with Allen. Dispatch had called him, worried about Allen going off. He knew about Allen and his history, but he didn’t interfere with how I was handling him.
When Allen saw Stiver, he did go off, flying into a rage. I calmed him back down, though, after he charged me multiple times, still naked and mad as hell.
I explained that Stiver was there because of the previous time that we’d shown up and he’d beaten up a couple cops. He wasn’t there to fight; instead, he’d shown up to see if Allen was going to go willingly this time, not fighting like a crazy man. He got angry about this, yelling, “I am fucking crazy! I am fucking crazy, and you know that!” I had to think quickly; he was escalating, breathing hard and sweating, getting amped up for a fight.
So, talking more and more quietly as he became increasingly angry, I said, “You may be crazy, Robert; I don’t know. I don’t care about that. I’ve been honest with you and told you that I have to arrest you. I’ve treated you with respect, and I hope that I’ve earned your respect. Now get your clothes on, and let’s go to the jail. I’ll walk you out so that all your neighbors can see that you aren’t a bad man and they shouldn’t be afraid of you.”
He watched me for a few minutes, panting and glaring; I stared back, not saying a word. Then, in a split second he said, “OK I’ll go if you promise not to beat me up like last time.” I did promise, and so did Stiver. Allen got dressed and allowed me to handcuff him. I then walked him to my car, and we laughed and joked along the way, his neighbors watching our every move; they were terrified of him. He was booked into jail without incident.
The next day in the shift briefing, Stiver told everyone that he saw something last night that he’d never seen before. “Slick talked Robert Allen into walking to his car without a fight. Allen is one of the most dangerous people in the whole fucking city, and he had him eating out of his hand.” He looked at the sergeant and said, “This is the kind of shit we should be recognizing instead of bullshit bad arrests and ass kissers.” They glared at each other for a while, and the room was quiet. Stiver had a way of making friends with the brass like I did.
I had a lot of experience with mentally ill people. Central city is stuffed full of them. Halfway houses, people living on Social Security for mental problems, lesbians, gays - not saying they’re mental, but the ones that end up in central city have a lot of issues, such as sexual abuse, poor coping skills, and the inability to attach in a healthy relationship. Seriously, we used to refer to central city as the dumping ground of the broken and damaged. I learned a lot from working the area day after day. Allen could have ripped me apart if he wanted, but I sensed something in him “like a dog that barks too much.” The real killers are quiet and might growl before they strike. They don’t bark to warn you; he did.
All of this made me suspect with the rest of the force. I was criticized for going into too many calls without back. I did that, though, so I’d have a chance to talk and listen. There were too many guys who would cowboy in and make the situation worse with the tough guy bullshit; I’d cancel back-up once I heard who the officer would be, not because of the call.
Fighting wasn’t a victory for me. I don’t like how it makes me feel; I feel like a failure when I fight because it means that I misjudged the situation. I believe I should be able to think my way out of anything, and most times I did.
Most cops see things from the perspective of being in control; I don’t see that at all. As cops, I never think that we’re in control of anything, so I don’t try to be. It’s a fallacy. I let the scene unfold, the interview unfold, the case unfold. I don’t force it.
I was never afraid of not rising to the occasion. My fear was that when it was over, I’d have reacted too quickly, too harshly, and not be able to live with it.
Chapter 24
Giving Victims a Bad Name
One night, I was dispatched to this formerly very exclusive club in town; it was one of those places that for so long had been a men-only club, then a membership joint for the high rollers that could afford it. It was old school and old money but was so far out of step with reality that it finally closed altogether and is now either a wedding reception parlor or a bingo club. I forget which.
This night, one of the waitresses was missing; the manager said that the girl had just disappeared in the middle of her shift, and he was worried that she’d been abducted - or worse. The waitress was extremely dependable, so he was convinced that something bad had happened. I called in other units, and we checked the club and the parking lot for any signs of the young missing waitress. She’d left her purse behind, but nothing else.
Apparently, no one had seen her leave. The people at the tables she’d been serving said that one minute she was there, and the next she was gone. The bar patrons were a surprisingly uncooperative bunch. We were rarely summoned there. When I was in vice, I heard rumors of college girls making large sums of money for having sex with businessmen there; however, I could never prove it.
I did interview one girl who told me about dating “Q-tips”; that was her term for older gray or white-haired men. She said that the Q-tips would have a lot of money and were more mature than younger men. She felt that they’d have better places to take a girl who was willing to be entertained. She denied having sex with any of the Q-tips for money, but she said that if they left her a gift after sex, she wouldn’t refuse it. She was only 20 years old.
Anyway, we searched for signs of the missing waitress with only the abandoned purse to go on. I put out a BOLO (“Be On the Look Out”) for her and cleared the club. Checking her apartment turned up nothing. I stopped to write up the case, and when I was almost done a call came in reporting a woman who had turned up at some guy’s door, claiming to have been raped. It was the missing waitress.
Our victim said she’d been abducted from the club by a group of men, then driven around the city in a car while they took turns raping her. When they were done, she said they dumped her off and she went to the nearest house for help. I interviewed her as she was attended to by medical, then followed as she was transported to the hospital, speaking to her in the Emergency Room.
She claimed that she’d been serving a table of professional men at the club who had been making suggestive remarks to her all night; she hadn’t responded to them, instead remaining polite in her refusals. Finally, they’d left, and she went on break for a minute, when she saw one of them in the parking lot alone; she said that he “looked sad,” so she went over to see what was wrong.
She said he then hit her on the head and knocked her out. When she came to, she was in the back of a vehicle with many men in the car who took turns raping her, cheering each other on.
I did see that her clothes were torn and that she had some mud on her arms and face. Her hair was also messy, but something about her demeanor wasn’t right. Her blouse had all the buttons, and her socks were clean - as were her shoes - and she showed no signs of physical violence; she just looked disheveled. Her eye contact was really good as well.
She was sitting on a gurney in her black and white waitress outfit while we talked. Her manner and behavior changed as I questioned her: she started biting her lip, and she made suggestive eye contact as she started flirting with me. I was surprised, but I didn’t respond; instead, I waited to see how this would unfold.
Finally, she ran her hand up the inside of her legs and slowly opened them while looking away; she was making sure that I looked at her crotch, her legs spread there on the gurney in the ER as we discussed her gang rape; I did look, and I noticed that she still had her panties on. They were white cotton panties with no blood, no dirt – and they weren’t even semen-stained. As we kept talking, I noticed that her eyes were more dilated than they should have been in the well-lit room. So, I asked her if she’d been drinking, and she said that she hadn’t and that it wasn’t allowed on the job. She sat for the Perk kit test, as they call it, to check for fluids in her vaginal tract.
The doctor later said that there was no evidence collected; there was nothing there, no semen, no hair, and no sign that she’d had sex recently. Checking with the ER nurse, I was told that every patient who gets a blood draw has an alcohol screen done as well. Her blood alcohol level was at .17 - more than twice the legal limit.
I told the victim that I was going to go out and look for the men who had raped her; instead, I went back to the club. I kept asking around until I finally found a waitress that would talk to me. She said that the victim had been flirting with a table of guys and that she’d observed her sneaking a drink with them as the night progressed. The guys had asked her to leave with them, and she told the other waitress that she was leaving with them and to “fuck this shitty job” as she was “going to party.”
I wrote up my report and forwarded it to detectives. I then went to our victim’s apartment to tell her that the detectives would contact her in the morning. I found her there, drinking beer with a group of guys and listening to music – and she was the only woman in the apartment.
She claimed that I didn’t care about her and said that all cops were worthless and that could I just go to hell! She then went back to partying.
The detective did contact her, and she eventually admitted that she hadn’t been raped and had made up the whole story to try to keep her job; she said that she’d gotten drunk at work and left and that this was all she could think of to avoid getting fired. We made sure that this was unofficially relayed to the club – and she was then fired.
Chapter 25
Blood Bath
I was parked in the early morning hours, talking to dispatch on a pay phone in a downtown parking lot. It was located near an old medical building, one of those pay phones you could pull up to and drive right alongside and dial without leaving your car.
I used it as often as possible because drug dealers also liked it; it makes them pissed to see a fully equipped, decked-out police cruiser with all the decals and electronics parked at their work phone. I can’t go up to a drug dealer and tell him to get off the phone - not legally, at least - but I can totally fuck up his day using that same phone myself, answering it when it rings and wrecking his Street Creds.
“Police department, can I help you?” The line goes dead; another satisfied customer. The little things make me smile.
That night, I was getting the details on a case that I was working, when around the corner of the building about 30 yards away came a woman stumbling across the parking lot.
It was dark, and there were no lights, so she looked to me like a transient, a drunk one. Her hair was a mess, and I could see that her clothes were filthy as well. I thought she was probably going to stumble up to me to try to ask for money or a ride somewhere, and I didn’t want to be bothered with some nasty ass, panhandling, alcohol-soaked transient needing a favor.
I couldn’t tell if she’d seen me yet, as I was parked in the dark, talking on the phone, so I waited for her to get closer; sure enough, I could see that she truly was a mess, hair all screwed up like her clothes - and in the early morning light it looked like she’d pissed her pants. I hung up the phone, cursing, and turned on my headlights and spotlight at the same time to encourage her, hopefully, just to go away.
The picture in my mind of what this woman would look like - leaves in her hair, missing teeth, urine-stained clothes, and more than likely vomit on her shirt and pants - was instantly transformed. She was lit up, night became day, and it took a moment for the real image to sink in.
She was a 16-year-old girl, stumbling across the parking lot. She was in shock - not drunk - and she was covered in blood from head to toe.
The hair that I assumed would be filled with leaves and lice was instead caked in blood clots; it stuck out in different directions, stiffened from dried blood. Her face was streaked with blood, and her clothes torn and covered in blood. What I assumed would be urine stains on her pants was actually blood shining in the light, dark red and fresh. She looked like she’d just walked out of a horror movie; picture the original “Carrie” by Stephen King with Sissy Spacek in the prom bloodbath, and you get the idea.
I’d never seen anyone covered in this much blood alive - much less walking. She didn’t react to my spotlight or headlights and just kept walking towards me, eyes staring straight ahead
I drove toward her and got out of the car. I was sure that she’d been in a bad car accident and had somehow walked this far; there was just too much blood for it to be anything else.
I asked her what happened, and she stared at me, registering for the first time that she was somewhere else. She blinked, mouth open, eyes blank, and mouthing words - but no sound came out. She finally said, “My boyfriend raped me.”
At first, I didn’t believe her. There was way too much blood to be from one person, much less from a rape. She started to faint, and I grabbed her. She told me, “I want to see my mommy.”
“Mommy”...just like that...said it like the child she used to be. I told her I had to call the paramedics and that we’d see her mom as soon as we could, but the paramedics had to come first.
She started getting hysterical, crying that she “wanted her mommy.” I finally had to say, “OK, OK. We’ll do that right now. You’ll have to get into my car, and we’ll go find her. Can you remember where you live?” She said yes. I got an old army blanket for her that I kept in the trunk of my car, helped her get in, then seat-belted her. She stared out the window, just blank, oblivious...no emotion.
I asked her who her boyfriend was, and she calmly gave me a name: Robert Harris, Jr. She said that they’d agreed to meet that night at his house to have sex. They’d been dating only a short while and hadn’t had sex yet, so tonight was going to be the first time.
When she got to his place, things immediately went to shit. First, he demanded a blowjob – and when she refused, it got ugly. He pulled out a knife and began cutting her repeatedly, she said, anally and vaginally. Then he smeared the blood on her face and hair. It all happened in his room in the basement of the house.
I asked her to show me where he lived, which was only a block from where we’d run into each other. She said she’d waited a very long time for him to fall asleep, then fled.
We pulled up in front of the house, and I stopped. Was he alone in the house? She thought so. I sat there, thinking. I wanted to go in and put a bullet in his head, seriously mulling this over. I imagined walking into his room, with him asleep on a bloodstained bed - and I’d add his brains to the mess. I gripped the steering wheel tighter and started breathing hard. In the straining silence, the girl finally spoke again, asking, “You’re not gonna go in there, are you?”
I told her I was thinking about it, that he deserved to die. Then I asked her, “What do you want me to do?”
