Grappling with Guns

1987

Killer flipped on his lights and hit the siren so it chirped twice, two short bursts or the long wail that a cop car makes while in route to an emergency. The car in front of us slowed and pulled to the curb. Our patrol car glided to a stop two and a half feet behind it and four feet from the curb, offset from the stopped car to give Killer a protected zone in which to stand while talking to the driver of the stopped car.

"How did you get your nickname?" I had asked earlier that day.

We were working the South East quadrant of the city. Killer made a right turn onto Lincoln from Duff Street. The border that divided the East and West quadrants was the train tracks one block West of this intersection. We headed toward the industrial outskirts of town.

"When I was hired the Chief asked me to do some undercover work."

He slowed the patrol car as we approached an old seedy hotel with weekly rates listed on a hand-printed sign taped inside the office window.

"A couple of coke dealers were living in here."

The hotel ran perpendicular to the road, the front office on Lincoln with the rooms behind it, opening to an alley that divided the block. We pulled into the alley and rolled to a stop.

"I spent two months living here and hanging with those guys. They were part of a ring that runs drugs across the country. Interstate 80 is the main channel."

"So they call you Killer because you arrested those guys and broke up the ring?"

Killer laughed. "No." He laughed again. "One night when I was cleaning my gun it went off. I didn’t know there was a round in the chaimber. Neighbors called the cops and they ran an investigation. No one knew I was undercover except the Chief and I wasn't going to say anything."

I looked at Killer's open, gentle, friendly face and tried to imagine him undercover hanging out with the seedy, bitter, unfriendly-looking people I'd seen coming out of that hotel.

"Was anyone hurt?" I asked.

"No, it just punched a hole in two walls and a dresser. They found the slug in the neighbor's sock drawer.”

Later I found out from the parking cop the other reason people called him Killer. He brought in the most revenue from traffic stops, sometimes hundreds of dollars per day in citations, each delivered with a smile.

"Open your door, unfasten the seatbelt, and get ready to get out," Killer said as he opened his door.

He walked with ease toward the car he had pulled over, looking to make sure the trunk was shut and locked. He peered in the back window to be sure no one was crouched down in the seat, then greeted the woman driving the car. I unfastened my seatbelt and got out of the car.

"Good afternoon. May I see your drivers license?"

"Good afternoon, officer. Did I do something wrong?"

*The driver is digging for her license. She has black hair, straight, to her shoulders. Her hair is flecked with grey. She's wearing a loosely knit sweater. She's thin like a librarian or college English teacher. Her plate number is VAL 647. I repeat the words from the phonetic alphabet I will need if I anything goes wrong and the driver decides to flee the scene: Victor Adam Lincoln 647. Victor Adam Lincoln 647.*

I shut my door and approached the car from the right side, stopping by the back right tire of the vehicle to observe.

"Did you know your registration has expired?" Killer asked her.

I hadn't ever been invited out of the patrol car on a stop before. Every sensory mechanism was on alert to tell me if something was wrong. The driver apologized in a torrent of words. Killer smiled, handed the license back through the car window and told the woman to visit the DMV to update her registration and to apply the stickers to the plates on her car as soon as possible.

He waived to the driver and we returned to the patrol car as she pulled back into traffic.
I fastened my seatbelt with the solid metal click of a 1980's seatbelt. Killer turned to me.

"What I meant when I said 'get ready to get out,' was, 'stay in the car but be prepared to run if anything happens.' You don't have a vest. I do." He was referring to the half-inch of Kevlar under his uniform that would catch a bullet, even if at the expense of cracking a rib.

"Where should I run?" I asked. I imagined Killer down and me taking two bullets in the back as I fled down the street.

"Run to a house and call 911," he said.

I imagined Killer approaching the woman with the expired plates only to hear a pop and see a puff of smoke drift calmly out of the window, Killer reeling back, his hand flailing at his holster. I imagine myself ignoring the order to run and instead unhooking the 12-gauge shotgun from its rest inside the car. I imagine leveling the gun against the door, pressing the butt of the gun into my shoulder, praying the first cartridge is a nice, light load rather than a deer slug, the recoil of which would send me backward just about as fast as it would send the ball of lead out the barrel. I imagine telling the woman to hold still, put her hands in the air. I imagine taking the radio handset and calling in the code 10-33 emergency, 10-52 ambulance needed, and because I can't remember the code for person with gun, 10-96 mental subject, the code we all laughed about, and because we laughed, we remembered. I imagine the woman crying with her hands in the air as Killer moans, sits up and pulls open his shirt to show the bullet flattened, like on TV, to his vest.

I don't imagine the PR nightmare that would result from this had the scenario ever been realized.