Yesterday's News

reason for anything to happen. We turn a corner two blocks off The Strip, Neil s at the wheel, and we go by an alley. I see this skinny kid in blue jeans and a tee shirt playing with the back door of a store. Well, you don’t have to be no fortune-teller to know what he’s getting ready to do, so I tell Neil to turn right, and I reach for the passenger side spot. I flip it on, the kid’s off and running like a deer. Neil had this bad knee from football, lucky he passed the physical with it, so after he takes the cruiser as far as it can go, I get out and sprint after the little fuck. He’s maybe five-ten, one-forty dripping wet if he ever took a bath, which I doubt. But he ain’t no Olympic threat, and I catch up to him just as he stumbles and goes down near this abandoned building. I didn’t see any weapon, so I don’t pull mine. I just reach down for him, but when I lift him up by the left arm, he’s got this brick in his right, and he bashes in my nose. How many times your nose been broke?”
    “Twice.”
    “Yeah, it looks it. Well, I had mine busted maybe three times before this, but they didn’t hurt like this one. I just plain wasn’t ready for the pain. It was like a killer wave crashing onto a beach in a storm. It put me down and near out. Then the kid comes down with it again, and almost tears my cheek off, over here.” Schonsy tapped under his right eye. “I was about out of it when Neil tackled him. I mean, those days, no question he coulda just shot the kid. But no, he tries to be the good cop, take the kid without deadly force, and the kid falls funny and breaks his fuckin neck. Neil realizes the kid’s dead and breaks down. He was like that, too sensitive for the damned job, I thought then. But he don’t know what all to do, so I tell him, pick up the kid and bring him to the cruiser, we gotta radio, alert the hospital. So Neil picks the kid up like he was somebody’s new baby, me shagging my ass out of the alley. Lucky I had the sense to bring the brick he used. We called it in, then headed to the emergency room.”
    “Justifiable.”
    “No question. For God’s sake, the kid was braining me with a brick. Neil could’ve put six into him, and even today, with the damned shooting teams and paperwork and plaintiffs’ lawyers like bucks around a bitch, it woulda been a good shot. What got the guy in trouble was he tried to take the kid without a gun, like I said.”
    “What kind of trouble?”
    “Oh, just the usual newspaper shit. The department, the city, everybody backed him on it. Lucky we had a camera of ours at the hospital, they got some shots of me with more blood coming out than a butchered cow. But the papers still played it up, and the kid’s mother tried to start some shit, but nobody paid her much mind, and that was that.”
    “The mother still around?”
    Schonstein flapped his lips. “Wouldn’t know.”
    “Would you remember her name?”
    “Probably not.”
    I said, “The mess doesn’t seem to have held Hagan back much.”
    “Why the hell should it? That’s what really burns me, you know? That’s what woulda driven me off the force, the knees hadn’t done it first. You’re a cop, you spend half your time locking up guys you know are gonna be on the street before the end of the shift, you gotta be so careful to say ‘alleged’ and ‘supposed’ so you don’t violate their rights to a fair trial, and then when they get a trial it’s about as fair as the Celtics playing a school-ground team, the way the system’s rigged for the guilty. So they get off entirely. Or, if they do get convicted, the judge hands them three to five, which means maybe eighteen months if they don’t try to fuck the chaplain, and then we’re not supposed to single them out once they’re released. We’re supposed to treat them like they paid their debt and all. Well, I how about us, huh? When a cop like Neil saves his partner’s life, and I’m telling you that’s what happened here, he saved my fuckin life for me. When a cop does that, and he hurts the perp by accident, by accident now, and it comes down as justifiable, how come that has to drag him down for the rest of his life, huh? Why the fuck is there one standard for them and a different one for us? Tell me that.”
    “How about you tell me about your son, instead.”
    “He’s a good cop.”
    “I’ve seen how he is as a cop.”
    Schonstein pretended I meant what he meant. “Then what else you want to