Death
Copyright 2011 Michael Power
He didn’t remember kissing her. She said that he had, and she seemed like an honest woman so he believed it was true, though he couldn’t help but suspect that it was out of character for him to kiss strange women on the street. The most compelling evidence in favor of her claim was the feeling he couldn’t shake; as a police officer she wouldn’t risk perjuring herself by filling out the arrest report, charging him with sexual assault, and starting the ball rolling in the case of The People of New York v. Thomas Crain.
Officer Lopez believed him when he told her his name was Tommy Crain, because of the way it dropped from his lips like a dare, but she was incredulous about his excuses for his lack of identification. There was something not right about a white man, affluent in appearance, without a wallet, and her suspicions were only reinforced by his claims that he didn’t need one. Her experience had been that people without identification were hiding something. Still, she proceeded with the rest of the questions on the arrest report, accepting his answers as truthful in anticipation of their verification.
“Phone.”
“212-769-1382.”
“Address.”
There was a moment’s hesitation before it rolled off his tongue. “230 Bleecker Street, Apartment 2D.”
“Place of birth.”
“New York City.”
“Date of birth.”
“January 17, 1978.”
“Age.”
“Do the math.”
She stopped, did the math, and looked him over to answer the next questions for herself – sex, race, ethnic, skin. “Height”
“Six – one.”
“Weight”
“One seventy five.”
His hair and eyes, she noted, were both brown and he wore glasses. She judged his build medium. “Marital status.”
“I’m free as a bird, baby. I’m all yours if that’s what you’re askin’.” She gave him a hard, unfriendly look and her lip curled. “US Citizen?”
“Yup.”
“Social Security Number”
“157-82-9134”
“Education.”
“The best.”
“Religion”
“None of your goddamn business.”
She set down her pen and took a deep breath. “Look, Mr. Crain…”
“Tommy.”
“You’re being charged with the assault of a police officer, which is a felony and for which you can be sent to prison.”
The seriousness of the situation reached him for the first time and it was shocking to him how little he was bothered by the prospect of imprisonment. “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves here? Look, it’s not like I raped you.”
“It’s a difference of degree, Mr. Crain, not kind.”
“That’s not true,” he snapped angrily enough to jolt her. He hadn’t intended to be so aggressive. “It’s very much a difference of kind,” he assured both of them. “I had no intention to do anything but kiss you.” He caught her eyes and returned her deep confusion. “I really, really wanted to kiss you.”
Officer Lopez looked back down at the arrest report. “Occupation.”
“I still do.”
She asked no more questions and filled out the rest of the form without his input. When she was finished, she typed it and presented him with a confession for his signature, advising the people of New York that he had, without provocation, assaulted an officer of their law. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and read it closely.
“Without provocation?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“But I find you quite provocative.”
“Sign it,” she said, and he did. “Wait here,” she said. This time he was not as accommodating. He sat perfectly still and watched the movement of her legs as she walked away with his paperwork in her hands. Then his eyes scanned the room for the stealthiest escape route. The very thought of escape thrilled him to the bone. He thought it would be the perfect end to this confounding situation if he were to go down in a hail of bullets. He remembered the feeling he had as a boy when he played hooky from school — that sacred sensation that all the rules of the world no longer applied to him. Was that how all criminals felt? And to escape after capture — wasn’t that heaven?
His calculating gaze scanned the floors and walls, and then the desks piled with papers and computer monitors behind which his fugitive scalp could hide. Eventually he spotted a clear path to a stairwell. A red sign above it gave simple instruction to those hoping to escape fire or other disasters with one word: EXIT. He verified the passivity of everyone in his vicinity. dropped into a crouch, and hustled through a maze of desks, straightening his spine as he slowly descended the stairs. His breathing and footsteps slowed as he walked calmly through the precinct doors without looking over his shoulder. He reflected on the beauty of his fortune to live in a society where a well-dressed, mild-mannered white man’s stereotype is calculated to draw no suspicion.
“Where is he?” Officer Lopez yelled on returning to her desk. Several heads snapped toward her but only the one attached to her partner answered.
“Who?”
She sat down at her desk and took a deep breath. This was a lesson she had learned a long time ago from her father — the first thing to do in a crisis is breathe. Her father was a cop and he’d wanted anything but the same life for his daughter. She’d never wanted any other. He made sure his little girl went to college and studied; literature was her choice and that suited him fine. He didn’t see how she could get here from there, but she found the path illuminated by the writings of Poe and Dostoevsky. And there was nothing she read that interested her more than the calculated reasoning of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His writing kindled her desire to be a detective and furthered her quest to develop the qualities she needed most – observation and reflection.
She sat silently for a moment contemplating Tommy’s freedom. She wondered if she would tear up the arrest report if she hadn’t already filed it and concluded that she wouldn’t. She didn’t know enough about him yet, and she was determined that she couldn’t let someone like him remain loose on the streets of her precinct or her city.
“You’ve got to find him for me,” she told her partner, showing him Tommy’s mug shots. She supplied her partner with whatever sketchy information she had as her mind proceeded with a logical, methodic plan to track Tommy down, beginning at the residence he supplied on the arrest report.
Nobody answered the buzzer at Apartment 2D on 230 Bleecker Street, so Officer Lopez rang the super. She asked him about the tenant in 2D but even when she questioned him in Spanish he pretended not to understand. He did show her to the apartment and rang the doorbell aggressively enough to elicit a response.
“Who?” came a frightened voice on the other side of the door.
“Super!” he yelled and, after a series of tumblers clicked, the door slowly opened. A small Asian woman began shaking her head as soon as she saw the uniform of the NYPD.
“Thomas Crain?” Officer Lopez asked.
“No, no, no,” she insisted with more intense head shaking. “No. No Crain. No.”
“Do you know Thomas Crain?” She asked the super who also shook his head.
“Just started here. I don’t know.” Officer Lopez felt uncharacteristically angry toward the super. His instinct to withhold information struck an ugly chord in her personality. She was certain that the trail to her perpetrator ran through this building and she was determined to unravel his mystery if she had to arrest every person in it.
“Thomas Crain?” boomed a boisterous voice from down the hall. “Who’s lookin’ for Tommy?” A giant of a man closed in on the trio of much smaller people with disarmingly benevolent goo
d humor. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth had obviously been put there by years of intense smiling. His grey ponytail wagged from side to side as he approached them. The little woman retreated into her apartment and quietly locked her door. The super shot the giant a surly glance and also abandoned the hallway.
“What’s Tommy done now?” he smirked in such a way that Officer Lopez understood the man to believe Thomas Crain incapable of criminal activity.
“He assaulted a police officer,” she said.
“No shit?”
“What’s your name sir?”
“I’m Bobby. Bobby Jenks. Jenkins.”
Officer Lopez retrieved a small black notebook and a pen. “And you know Mr. Crain?”
“Yeah, sure, but I think you might have the wrong Tommy Crain. He’s not the assaulting kind. Anyway Tommy hasn’t lived here for years. He moved uptown in what … the nineties? Hey Honey,” he turned and yelled into his open apartment door, “when did Tommy and Caroline move?”
“Who wants to know?” came the sarcastic reply. The two walked automatically toward the door.
“The police.”
A slightly frazzled woman entered their view. She was visibly discomforted by the presence of the law on her doorstep. “Jesus, it had to be…it was…it was the end of ’96. Right after Christopher was born.”
“Yep, that’s right. Sure.”
Officer Lopez applied her pen to the notebook. “Do you have the address?”
“No,” the woman blurted.
“Sure we do, Hon. Check the Christmas card list.” Bobby was too busy congratulating himself on his civic