Thrown-away Child

sweetly spelling out what everybody calls me—Hock.) The fact that I committed these sins as a cop on restricted duty after an enforced dry-out did nothing to aid in my bargaining position.
    So now something has to give. Me or this love-it-or-leave-it New York cop fraternity.
    “You really should flee it, and without looking back.” This according to Davy Mogaill when I sought his advice on my troubled place in a fraternity that includes the likes of King Kong Kowalski. “You’re a man more interested in justice than police work, Neil, which now you see can be opposing forces.”
    There was an ace in the hole to go along with Mogaill’s advice. He offered me a partnership in what he proposed to incorporate as Mogaill & Hockaday, Private Investigations.
    By the way, I am Detective Neil Hockaday of the New York Police Department’s elite SCUM Patrol, which is an acronym for something that does not sound too elite—Street Crimes Unit—Manhattan. Along with the TNT (for Tactical Neighborhood Teams), the SCUM patrol is one of the few remaining acronyms in a department that was for many years letter crazy. The enthusiasm for this sort of thing evaporated fast when somebody had the bright idea of forming the Special Homicide Investigations Team and was laughed out of town when people started figuring out the shorthand sound of that one.
    Inspector Neglio, being in charge of all of Manhattan’s acronyms and assorted other specialized squads, is the boss I was about to leave in the lurch for a while. He will get over it sooner or later. And Mogaill has all the time in the world, since he is a bachelor and a peep with only a few clients. Of my own time and chances, I am not so sure.
    “All right then, let’s get down to it,” I said to the inspector, agreeably. “First, what are you going to do about Joe Kowalski?”
    “What—you think I just sat on that beef of yours? Let it go through the regular drill? No, Hock. I called out the lepers on this wrong cop right away.“
    “Internal Affairs? Don’t make me laugh.” I laughed. “Kowalski isn’t one of your garden-variety wrong cops out there charging a little off-duty taxation on some drug dealer. Not that the lepers from IAD can deal with that even. Kowalski’s rabid.”
    “As in rabies?”
    “As in a guy with a gun and a badge and the idea that people ought to behave themselves according to his personal lights. Rabid, as in foaming at the mouth.”
    “Kowalski’s being handled.”
    “Not like I’m being handled. I got drunk too many times, so you tanked me. You take away my Nina, you put me in charge of paper clips. All right, I see the point. But who did I ever hurt besides myself, and my wife? You knock me down to the rubber gun squad for boozing, but King Kong Kowalski, who is running a torture chamber down at Sex Crimes—him you let alone.”
    Sheehan piped up. “I’m not hearing penitence from you, son.”
    I have been around priests my entire life, ever since choirboy days at Holy Cross Church in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan’s West Side. Which is home to this day. Never have I seriously thought about decking a priest until now. (Neglio, on the other hand, I have often thought about decking.)
    But at that moment as I considered giving Father Sheehen a clout, it occurred to me why he was there with the inspector that day: to make me think twice about what might otherwise come naturally. A variation of the good-cop, bad-cop routine.
    Anyway, Neglio and I argued back and forth for another half hour or so until we both realized there was no percentage in talking any further. Neglio wanted me to make my choice: stay with the department, or take early retirement. I wanted his personal commitment that Kowalski would be made to walk, one way or another.
    “If I had a real choice, I’d go back to the street where I belong,” I said. “I’ve had enough of your furloughs, your Straight and Narrows, your restricted duty, your rabid cops.”
    Neglio thought otherwise. Father Sheehan thought I was obsessed with King Kong Kowalski, which he said was evidence I was still “in denial,” which is an expression I have come to seriously dislike.
    “What I have decided,” I said to all this, “is that the department has more wrong numbers in it than any time I remember—”
    “Pills,” Neglio interrupted. “I’m telling you, Hock, all’s you need is pills.”
    “Loose and lovely,” Sheehan said brightly. All over again, I