Naturally, no partnership is perfect. Certain pieces will be at odds – you’ll have that. With these two, the oddities were a lot to do with generational frictions. Hern disliked hearing people younger than him cuss and he would dog curse Ricks on the infrequent occasions when Ricks ever did cuss, whereas, on the other hand, Hern was in the habit of using the N-word and Ricks had been taught to internalize his racism. But they made it work because they were the police and they had a job to do.
They’d been partners three weeks, the morning Hern told Ricks to pull onto the side street. There was a space in front of a fire hydrant next to an old church. Ricks parked the Charger and Hern got out and raided the clothes donation bin, returning with an outfit: an old, raw-wool pullover; a turquoise pair of lined parachute pants; and a black, oversized, trench coat.
‘If you’re ever going to be a proper narc, you’re gonna need some undercover experience, and I think you’re ready. I’ve got the go-ahead for you to infiltrate Lomax High. Put these on.’
‘Is this a prank, Sergeant? – a high school?’
‘This is no prank, Ricks. A lot of guys started their undercover careers this way. You know who Donnie Brasco is?’
‘It’s one of the DVDs in the Stress Room.’
‘Brasco was a real guy. He got his start undercover at a high school.’
‘Don’t kid me, Hern.’
‘Search Donnie Brasco if you don’t believe me.’
‘How do you spell his name?’
‘Like it sounds, Donnie with an i-e, not a y . . . Then space, B–r–a,’ Hern had anticipated Ricks might buck at the assignment, so he had edited the Wikipedia page for Donnie Brasco, ‘. . . s-c . . . o, that’s right . . . What does it say, Ricks?’
‘Uh . . . says, Donnie Brasco . . . a lot of stuff . . . hold on . . . conducted his first undercover sting operation assignment at . . . Lomax High School in the 1960s. Wow, I guess you were right.’
‘Apology accepted. Pop the trunk.’
They exited the vehicle. Hern lifted the trunk lid. Ricks said, ‘We’ve been driving around with drugs in the trunk of the G-car this whole time?’
Hern said, ‘We’re the laws, Ricks. What could possibly go wrong?’
‘Yeah, wow . . . it’s just that . . . this is a lot of dope though, right?’
‘There are over a thousand students enrolled at Lomax High School. Try using common sense.’
‘This is like . . . three, four, six, eight, nine – nine big things of drugs.’
‘It should be ten. Wait. No. Right, it’s supposed to be nine because of another thing I have to do.’
‘What kind of drugs is it, Sergeant?’
‘Its essence is carfentanil.’
‘You’re not serious – fentanyl?’
‘Carfentanil, Ricks. Much stronger, made for elephants, like for when you’re doing surgery on an elephant but you don’t want the elephant to feel any pain. Don’t worry, you’re going to get to step on it some more before you go and intent-to-distribute it to these kids. There’s a video for how to do it.’ Hern tapped into his phone. ‘You’ve got the link . . . now.’
Ricks’s smartphone went ding.
‘Give them free tastes in the morning if they don’t want to buy and check back with them in the afternoon. By the afternoon, you’ll be able to do whatever you want to them. Have fun with it. It’s supposed to be fun.’
‘We really have the go-ahead for this?’
‘It’s called budgets are up for renewal and we’re not the only ones who are out here doing shit like this right now today, I bet.’
Ricks went to close the trunk.
Hern said, ‘Don’t. Here, put the drugs in this duffle bag. We want to be sure it all fits.’
‘Sergeant, isn’t this stuff supposed to be dangerous even to touch?’
‘You fucking moron.’
‘What?’
‘I put the dope in the trunk, Ricks. I fucking did, and I’m fine. Do you really want to ask me about this fake bullshit or do you want to ask me about something real? What are we really talking about right now?’
‘I’m cool. It’s just that there’s a lot of drugs here for a high school. Like, how many kids are we trying to kill do you think?’
‘Relax, this is mostly cocaine. This is what cocaine smells like, or what it smells like when Crime Lab give it back to you with too much ether in it.’ Hern slammed the trunk closed. ‘Why do you think they call it Vice Squad, Ricks?’
‘Because we focus on vice?’
‘Shit. Fine. Do you know Willy? – big, tall guy on Homicide Squad’s softball team, bats lefty.’
‘The first baseman.’
‘Finally, he knows something.’
‘He plays first base.’
‘Jesus, fuck, we heard you. Way to fucking ruin it.’
‘My bad.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Hern drew his gun, casual-like, like something fatalistic were in the works.
‘Now, you remember what I said about the budgets are up for renewal.’
‘I do.’
‘Amazing. But you don’t know what it means.’
‘It means how much money we get.’
Hern racked a round. There was already a round in the chamber. It popped out and landed on the street and rolled toward the gutter. Hern jabbed his gun toward it. ‘Do me a favor and pick that up for me.’
Ricks turned to fetch the bullet. He thought: how’m I supposed to know what this SOB wants me to act like? – I’m here to do a job, get a paycheck, go home, buy a barbecue, find my Mrs Right, host Super Bowl parties, and now I’ve got this old man, this grouch, who’s supposed to be my partner, my mentor, my guide, he thinks he can talk to me like any old way and I guess I’m just supposed to take it off him, when I’m pretty sure I could beat his ass in a fight . . .
Ricks was steamed. He was so steamed he didn’t clock how Hern was following a step behind him on his way to the gutter, until Hern brought the butt of his pistol down on Ricks’s dominant shoulder, where it met with the neck, just as Ricks was coming back up with the bullet. The butt of the gun came down hard enough to drop Ricks to his knees.
Ricks yowled. Both in pain and in real fear of his life. His partner stepped around to the front of him, smiling a grim way that Ricks hadn’t seen him smile before.
‘What are you doing to me, Sergeant?’
‘Open your mouth.’
‘Nope –’
Hern grabbed Ricks by the forelock and shoved the pistol into Rick’s mouth and said:
‘Look into my eyes. This is not a game. This is not a test. This is initiation. If you look away from my eyes even for a second, I’m going to shoot you in your brain, knock that brain right out of your retarded head. Blink twice if you understand me.’
Ricks blinked twice and then looked away.
Hern yanked the pistol and whipped him on the eye: ‘Last chance. My eyes, you pussy-ass gump. Don’t think about looking away! Don’t think about it because I’ll know and I’m a son of a bitch. That’s what you wanted to call me, wasn’t it? Blink twice if you wanted to call me a son of a bitch just now.’
Ricks blinked twice. Hern said, ‘I can read your mind, Ricks. I can read you like a book, like a gay little book. I know you better than you know yourself. Blink twice if you believe me.’
Ricks blinked twice.
‘Now put my gun back in your mouth . . . Don’t touch it with your hands. Bring your mouth to my gun. Remember, you’re looking in my eyes.’
Ricks scuttled forward on his knees. He had to duck his head funny because Hern was holding the gun too low for what they were supposed to be doing. Ricks didn’t break eye contact. Hern was staring back at Ricks, with dead eyes and a grim smile. The split above the corner of Ricks’s eye was stinging something fierce. Blood was running down warm to cool against his red-hot cheek.
Why do bad things always happen to me?
Is it really me doing them to myself?
Hern said to him, ‘You minced-up little beta cuck. Your father would be ashamed of you if he ever gave a rat’s ass and he wasn’t chopped up in a goddamn hole full of lime someplace overseas. Don’t get me started on that shitbird. At least he knew how to act like a man. For all his faults, he was a chad. I can say that because I’m a chad. I doubt I’ll ever say it about you. Blink twice because I said so . . . Good job, Ricks. You’re doing such a good job. We were talking about budgets, weren’t we?’
‘Yeah,’ Ricks said. Except it didn’t sound like yeah on account of the gun back in his mouth. It sounded like baa.
‘I’m going to be honest with you, Ricks. We’re only this far into our partnership, and I despise you. I think you’re a worm. I actually have more respect for worms than I do for you. Worms don’t embarrass me. Yet as much as I’d like to put you out of your misery, you’re my partner and I’m not in the mood to be explaining shit to anybody today. Besides, if anything, I like to think of myself as an educator.’
Hern took his piece out of Rick’s mouth, being careful this time to not fuck up Ricks’s teeth. He holstered the piece under his arm, and waited for Ricks to get up so he could see into his eyes better.
Ricks wasn’t up to his feet straight away. His knees hurt him and his back was stiff from leaning forward. His bell was rung from the hits he had taken.
Whatever you do, don’t cry, don’t let him see you cry, you’ll make him mad again and he’ll lose respect for you.
‘You know, that was unfortunate,’ Hern said. ‘But I had to scare the shit out of you, because I’m about to tell you something not a lot of people realize, and I need you to understand that if you fuck up and breathe a word about it to anybody I will kill you like a dog.’
Ricks spit and wiped his chin: ‘So what’s up?’
‘The first baseman.’
‘Willy.’
‘Yes, Willy the first baseman. You know him.’
‘I know who he is.’
‘Back when I was on Homicide Squad, whenever budgets were up for renewal, Willy would mask up and push white women in front of trains. Has anybody ever told you that about Willy?’
Ricks swallowed: ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘Well that’s what Willy does, Ricks, and it’s a lot of what he does. It’s what he did the whole time I was on Homicide Squad and he was already doing it when I got there. Willy’s a professional. He knows the job. If a budget’s up for renewal, Willy’s destroying all the office furniture, killing the plants in the office, then he orders more new shit to replace the shit he stole, until not one penny’s gone unspent. Then he’s out there pushing white women in front of trains, in front of busses, taxicabs, tripping them down flights of stairs, knocking them out in elevators from time to time randomly – and not because he wants to. He’s a regular guy, a decent guy. I think he has kids, but above all Willy is a professional, so he’s going to be out in the streets right now, trying to secure every last red cent of the pie he can get allocated to Homicide Squad. He’s out there doing it as we speak, I bet, while we’re wasting precious time standing here talking about him.’
Photography © Zora J Murff, Implement, 2019, From the series At No Point In Between
