I felt everyone’s eyes on me as I walked through the precinct towards my office the next morning. Of course, everyone had heard about Gary. It was the biggest news the precinct had ever had—one of their cops turning out to be dirty—and everyone wanted to know how I was reacting to the news, though no one seemed brave enough to ask.
“Morning, Grasso,” Johnson said as I passed by his office.
I smiled at him, grateful for his kindness, even though I heard the tension in his voice. He, like everyone else, wanted to hear the story from me. I’d been the only witness to Gary’s arrest. They wanted to know the truth of what happened. I couldn’t blame them. Luckily, though, no one seemed bold enough to ask.
A half-full mug of coffee sat on Gary’s desk from the day before, and I was tempted to throw it out, but somehow it felt disrespectful. I ignored it and dropped my purse on my desk, sinking into my chair.
All I’d ever wanted was my own office, my own private space. But now that I had it, it felt too empty. Too large for just one person. I wondered whether I’d be moved to a new office when I was finally assigned a new partner or whether they’d move my new partner into my office.
The phone rang, and I almost didn’t answer it. That had always been Gary’s department. For whatever reason, he liked to answer the phone. On the fourth or fifth ring, though, I remembered he wasn’t there and picked it up.
“This is Grasso,” I said. Gary had always answered the phone like that. This is Unwin.
“Grasso, hey,” a deep, gravelly voice said. “Sergeant Hale here. Would you mind stepping into my office when you have a second?”
The sergeant never invited me to his office, let alone called me directly. However, I suppose I was in a rather unusual circumstance. It made sense he’d want to talk to me about what I knew and how we were going to move forward.
“Yeah, of course. I’ll head your way right now,” I said.
“No rush,” he replied, and then hung up.
I set the phone down and held it there for a second, gathering my thoughts. I’d stick to the exact same story I told the arresting officers: I had no idea what kind of racket Gary was up to, he lied to me about the nature of the frequent stops we made, and I was just as surprised by his arrest as anyone else. I took a deep breath, and stood up, straightening my shirt.
Walking back through the office again was no better than the first time. I felt everyone’s eyes following me as I walked down the hallway towards the sergeant’s door. When I got there, I rapped on the glass three times.
“Come in,” his deep voice said from the other side.
I opened the door and went in, glad to be away from watchful eyes, but incredibly anxious to be talking to the sergeant. The last time I was in his office, I’d hinted ever so slightly at the idea that Gary had been a dirty cop, and Sergeant Hale had basically told me to keep my thoughts to myself.
I’d tell him that I did what he asked. I hadn’t looked into Gary’s business anymore. And I had definitely, under no circumstance, been the person to rat him out. The only thing worse than a dirty cop was a snitch, and I did not want to be considered the precinct’s snitch.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” I said, lowering myself into the chair across from his desk, my body too alert to do anything but balance on the edge of the seat. “You wanted to see me?”
Sergeant Hale slipped off his reading glasses and ran his thick fingers down the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I did. I’m sure you, like everyone else, has heard about Detective Unwin.”
“Yes, sir. I was actually present for the arrest.”
“Ah, yes. That’s right. Forgive me, I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
“That’s okay. It’s early.”
He chuckled. “Yes, it is.”
A long pause followed, and I wasn’t sure whether I was meant to speak or whether I should wait for him. Frozen with indecision, I balanced on the edge of my chair and waited, my hands clasped together between my knees, my feet shifting nervously on the floor. Finally, Sergeant Hale spoke.
“What did you know?” His voice came out harsh and gravelly. It was always deep, but at that moment, it sounded ragged, desperate. I had the sense I was dealing with a wild animal, and any false move would be cause for attack. I had to tread carefully.
“About Gary’s dealings?”
Sergeant Hale nodded. “Yes. His dealings, as you say. His racket. What had he told you?”
“Nothing,” I said, which was true. Though Gary hadn’t gone to any extreme lengths to hide his side business from me, he had never expressly talked about it. It had been an unspoken understanding between us.
“You came to see me a few weeks ago?” he said.
He spoke in the form of a question, but I understood the true meaning. I’d been to see him about Gary possibly being dirty. I’d tried to bring this to his attention and he’d as good as told me to leave it alone, so I had. Now that Gary had been caught, however, the meeting took on a new significance. It was no longer a simple case of a rookie overstepping their bounds. It was now a case of a sergeant failing to be a sergeant, failing to control his precinct. If word ever got out about the nature of our meeting, Sergeant Hale’s reputation could be on the line.
“I did, but it was nothing more than a hunch. I had zero evidence, and I assumed I was being paranoid. You were right to send me away,” I lied, hoping my words could put him at ease.
As much as I didn’t like the way things had been handled, I didn’t want to see Hale fry for Gary’s mistake. And I definitely didn’t want to end up on Hale’s bad side. He needed to see me as part of the team, a loyal member of the precinct.
“That was my understanding of the situation, as well,” he said quickly. “I just wanted to ensure we were on the same page.”
“Yes, absolutely, sir.”
“So, Gary had done nothing since our conversation to lead you to believe anything shady was going on?” he asked, resting his elbows on the desk, his fingers woven together and lying flat in front of him.
“He hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. We went on our route every day, just as we had at the beginning, and Gary made regular stops at the same businesses. However, he made it seem as if he was checking in on things, and I assumed he was speaking with police informants and just generally keeping an ear to the ground in different neighborhoods. It seemed like good police work to me, actually. I now know that was not true, but, at the time, I had no reason to doubt him.”
“He never said anything to you about who the people he was meeting with were?”
“No. I mean, you know Gary. He likes to keep things pretty close to the vest—never show his cards. I made a lot of assumptions about him during our short time as partners.”
“Okay,” Sergeant Hale said, his mouth pulled down in a frown. “We can work with that. You never suspected anything, Gary never gave you any reason to be alarmed, and you believed he was doing good police work.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. When the words had been tumbling from my brain to my mouth, they’d sounded a bit more accusatory. However, as Sergeant Hale repeated them back to me, they sounded flattering, almost like a defense.
“The testimony of a partner holds a lot of weight, so yours could very well help Gary be cleared of these charges,” he said.
“Cleared?” I asked, certain I’d misheard him.
“Gary has been a major part of this department for a long time, and now he needs us to stand up for him. We have to do what we can to try and help him get through this.”
Get through this. Sergeant Hale talked about willful criminal activity as if it were a stomach flu. As if it were something Gary would get over. He had been caught red-handed delivering weapons to the criminals the rest of the precinct spent their time trying to get off the streets. He was working in direct opposition to everything the department stood for, yet they were supposed to help him be freed? I couldn’t believe it. My mind refused to wrap around the concept.
“Gary would have done the same thing for you or anyone else in the department,” Hale said.
Yes, but I wouldn’t have started selling guns to criminals in the first place, I thought. Gary wouldn’t need to help me because I wouldn’t be found doing anything illegal.
“We have to look out for one another,” he said. It suddenly felt as though he were trying to convince me, as if he could sense my hesitation.
“Yes, of course we do,” I replied, every word burning as it crossed my lips. I was waiting for my pants to catch on fire any second. “But Gary was caught accepting money from criminals. The guns were recovered. I don’t see how my testimony could clear him of that.”
Sergeant Hale held one finger in the air as if he’d just had a wonderful thought. “Ahh, but Gary was not caught accepting money. He was caught holding money, and there is a large difference.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, feeling as though I had been submerged underwater.
“There is no hard proof that Gary was accepting money. He could just as likely have been speaking with police informants. This could all be a huge misunderstanding.”
I stared at Sergeant Hale, unsure whether he was trying to convince me or himself of what he was saying. Either way, it wasn’t working. He sounded insane.
“Now, I just need to record your official statement,” Hale said.
“I already answered questions at the scene.” I was anxious to get out of his office and back into my own; anxious to get back to a world that made sense.
“Yes, but as this is a department issue, I need there to be an official statement. And since you were Gary’s partner, and you were at the scene, I figured it would be best coming from you.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly, unsure what more I could possibly say that I hadn’t already said.
“Great,” he said, sliding a piece of paper across the desk towards me. “You can just sign at the bottom, and then you’re free to go.”
I began reading the document, but Hale stopped me. “You don’t need to read it. You can just sign if you’d like.”
I nodded and grabbed the pen he held out, but my eyes still skimmed the page, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was “my” official statement, written by someone else, probably Sergeant Hale himself.
It claimed that Gary had been working with informants on a case. The three men at the scene were delivering recovered guns to Gary, and Gary was holding a duffel bag of cash because he was paying the informants. This had been going on for months and was part of a secret undercover operation he’d been working on. He hadn’t informed the department of this operation, which was a mistake, but he wasn’t a criminal. He had simply been doing his best to clear the streets of illegal firearms.
I looked up at Hale, my mouth hanging open. I couldn’t sign this, could I? Every word of it was a lie. The entire document was falsified. I hadn’t even written it, for God’s sake. However, as Hale stared back at me with his unflinching gaze, I knew there was no future for me at the precinct if I didn’t sign the document.
Besides, somebody else would certainly make a similar statement if I didn’t, and then Gary would suspect me more than he already did. When Gary was freed, and it seemed more and more likely that he would be, he’d know I’d ratted him out.
While my brain screamed at me to drop the pen, walk out of the office, and leave the precinct, I scrawled my name along the bottom of the page, then dropped the pen on the desk.
“Thanks, Grasso,” Sergeant Hale said, picking up the signed statement and slipping it into a manila folder. “Is there anything else you need to talk about?”
I stared at the man who was meant to lead the precinct. At the man who had been placed in charge of an entire department, and was meant to be the moral background. I stared at him, wondering how he slept at night. How he could wake up every day and show up to a job that he didn’t deserve.
“No, there’s nothing else,” I said.
He nodded and turned to his computer, and I slipped out of his office and into the hallway, feeling like a kid who had just learned Santa Claus didn’t exist. Even the cops who weren’t “dirty,” were dirty. They were willing to lie for one another, make excuses for one another, cover up each other’s crimes.
It suddenly made sense why Gary had been so open about his dealings in front of me. He hadn’t expected me to tell anyone. No one else had, so why would I be any different. Everyone else he’d worked with knew the rules. They knew that you stood up for your brothers in blue. That you didn’t rat. That you looked the other way.
I had been the exception, though. I’d come into the precinct with naïve notions of making the world a better place, of working with the best people in the city. No one had told me the rules, and now it felt like I had lost the game.