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It wasn’t the call we’d been waiting for.
“Phil, I need a favor.”
“Spit it out, James. I don’t have much time.”
David James was a fellow detective who had a serious gambling problem. He was always coming up short on cash and I had a bad habit of helping him out.
“Can you let me hold a hundred dollars till next Tuesday?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“You sound pissed off, man. Look, this is the last time.”
“I’m under a lot of pressure right now, James. Gotta go.”
“Can I pick up the money right now?”
“Yeah, man.”
I hung up before he could thank me. Hugo and I were waiting for a call from one of our snitches. We’d been waiting a long time—she was supposed to check in more than an hour ago. If she came through, we might take down one of the busiest crack dealers in the area. If she chickened out, we had lost a whole lot of man hours and a few hundred dollars that belonged to the NYPD. The boss wasn’t going to be happy.
The next call was from the boss. He barked out some orders.
I gave Hugo the thumbs down sign and he groaned.
“We’ll be there in a flash, sir.”
“You have five minutes.”
The captain hung up without another word. I grabbed my jacket and Hugo raced toward his desk to retrieve his own.
“Where we goin’?” asked Hugo.
I didn’t answer him until we were out of the precinct and on the road. “We got a body in Laurelton. Woman says she came in and found it . . . doesn’t know whodunit.”
Hugo groaned. “Why did I become a cop?”
I had to laugh. When shit got too thick, Hugo and I had this routine that we did.
“Same reason I did. To protect the good people from the bad people.”
“Who are the bad people?”
“Rapists, burglars, murderers and drug dealers.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“We can’t. So fuck it. Let’s lock everybody up and figure it out later.”
Sometimes the cops are the bad guys. That is an unfortunate reality. But Hugo and I were both clean. It’s really sad that the bad cops get so much ink in the newspapers because they are the minority. We’ve never even taken a free cup of coffee or a donut. We’re old-fashioned, honest cops and proud of it. So we rode through the busy streets of Queens in our black unmarked vehicle hoping that the woman who called about a dead body would just confess to the goddamn crime and save us a whole lot of trouble.
“Did you buy a Lotto ticket this week?”
“Nah,” answered Hugo. “You?”
“Hell, yeah. Something told me that the bitch was going to flake out on us. I’m going to need that Lotto money after unemployment runs out.”
“We should find her and kick that ass.”
