Grief Street

speak. Meaning I know a threat when I hear one.
    Of the various NYPD fraternal customs down through the years, “wreathing” is among the unloveliest. Cops employ this threatening custom to deter officers from ratting out their own kind, which is to say lodging a misconduct complaint against another cop with the Internal Affairs Division down at One-Pee-Pee. Last year, I was twice wreathed—a double commemoration of my filing brutality charges against one Joseph Kowalski, a desk sergeant at the Manhattan Sex Crimes Squad. What is it with these desk sergeants?
    First it was in the station house basement, with a garland of thirteen dead sewer rats nailed anonymously to my locker door. The day after, another baker’s dozen of the expired sweeties were strung over the outside doorknob of my apartment. This was all on account of my being uncharmed by what a number of my brethren either ignore or take as comedy, to wit: the “dickprint,” meaning a ritual torturing of homosexual perpetrators in the custody of Sergeant “King Kong” Kowalski, as he is called on account of his size.
    A couple of years ago when I was working a case that overlapped with the Sex Crimes Squad, I got wind of the dickprint routine. Two years and no resolution on my complaint of a drill that goes like this:
    Some gay perp gets himself collared and is hauled into Kowalski’s bailiwick. The perp is nervous, maybe this is his first time. Seeing the chance of squad room merriment, Kowalski feigns a sort of fatherly concern for the tenderfoot. He volunteers to personally take the guy’s fingerprints. Kowalski escorts the perp into an airless, unused janitor’s closet below the stairs at the Sex Crimes Squad, where stands a small battered desk, an immense chair, and an overhead naked light bulb. Kowalski takes the chair and rummages through the desk drawer, removing a standard FBI fingerprint form and an ink pad. He takes the perp’s trembly hands and rolls them nice and gentle over the ink, splotching all ten imprints into the appropriate squares on the form. Kowalski then searches the drawer again, this time removing a pair of hospital gloves. He snaps the latex over his big mitts and announces, “Okay, now for your dickprint.” The perp says, “My what?” Kowalski explains sympathetically, “Son, I don’t like this any more than you do, but it’s regulation in this here age of AIDS. Anybody arrested, we got to keep records of their fingertips, right? Now we got to also do the same with their johnsons. Understand? So now, drop your pants and flop it proud up here on the ink pad. Go ahead, son, close your eyes. Won’t take but a few seconds.” The perp, who is grateful to close his eyes during this indignity, does what he has to do, though not proudly. Kowalski makes some more rummaging sounds in the desk drawer, muttering, “Now, where’s that dickprint form?” Of which there is no such thing, of course. Instead of gently inking down the perp's johnson, Kowalski takes a braided sap from his belt, raises it high over his head with both meaty paws, then whomps it down across the guy’s vegetables.
    So I did what I had to do: I complained. I make no claim to being a perfect cop and I carry no particular brief for homosexual gentlemen. But this Kowalski violates my code, such as it is. If I myself should for instance break somebody's thumb in the line of duty, which I have done, I will make certain of two things that to me seem only sporting: the perp should be guilty as hell, and his eyes should be open so he can see me coming at him.
    So, two years ago I filed against Sergeant Kowalski. The only thing that has happened to date is my being wreathed twice, and now told by this sergeant with the shiny pants from Massapequa I should watch my back.
    As I walked away from Becker and the latest threat, I was thinking with a cringe not only of cops who think the greatest sin—the only sin—is blowing a whistle, but of Ruby in her delicate condition. It was only luck, my finding the wreath on the apartment door before Ruby. It pains me to say so, but cops who make threats are like rabid dogs; they will bite, and they are not choosy about their victims. What ¡ if my luck ran out?
    I headed for the stairs that would take me up to the squad room that Midtown South has seen fit to assign my sector of the SCUM patrol. My steps fell into the rhythm of Becker’s wetly gnashing jaws. He chewed like a dog, open-mouthed, the sound of him