Evolution
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I didn't know what to think of her.
There were times that first day I thought she had to be some kind of vapid moron, stupid beyond any rational measure. As in: totally clueless. And I was sure of it, too.
How she had made it through academy – well, I had no idea – but after two nights on the street with her I was sure she was going to be nothing more or less than a danger to everyone she came in contact with – myself included. It wasn't just, as far as I could tell those first few days, that she was simply stupid. No, with each passing hour I spent with her those first few nights it became clear she reveled in her own joyous asininity, because after each and every one of her stomach turning comments she laughed – and more obscenely so, in direct proportion to the inappropriateness of her last "joke".
And now that I think about it, maybe 'snorted' or 'chortled' are the best, most appropriate words to describe her outbursts of inappropriateness, because the word 'laugh' really doesn't convey the sheer embarrassment around her. Because, well, she made these rough snorting noises when she laughed, and her eyes squinted down into narrow slits – causing her eyes to water and her cheeks turned red – leaving the impression of having seen a mad pig screaming at a passing garbage truck.
Her name was Amy, Amy Goodman, and she'd been out of academy for two months; the word on her was that she was brilliant at classwork – and perfectly terrifying when anything had to do with so-called 'people skills.' In mock person-to-person encounters she'd been through during academy, the ones where cadets get to intervene during a staged domestic fights, she drew down on the woman in her first encounter, called the 'actress' playing the 'aggrieved housewife' an overbearing, self-absorbed slut and pushed the poor woman down to the floor before 'cuffing her. Instructors had been quite impressed with that, before reminding her that her class that they lived in a litigious society, and actions like this would cost the city a million and change, plus assorted court costs, in damages.
It turned out that she'd alienated every one of her classmates during the course of academy, to the point the academy staff almost felt sorry for her. Almost. I think she managed to piss off every one of them, too. That was the rumor, anyway, and she'd almost washed out, too. Runs through Glen Canyon almost got her, and she'd just managed to do the required ten pull-ups to pass the graduating physical agility test, then fallen to the side of the court and flashed hash all over the gym floor.
Following our standard rotation, she went from academy to work a week in a precinct jail, then was sent to day shift for her first two month rotation with an FTO, or Field Training Officer.
And I knew her FTO, too. If not quite a real friend, Ben Royal and I were close in the way cops that have worked together for twenty years usually are, and we had been training rookies long enough to know all the signs of a real, classic loo-loo. Goodman had all the makings of one of those, yet he said she wasn't a hopeless case. Not yet, anyway. Still, she was a presence, always bigger than life wherever she went anyway, and certainly a lot bigger than the average female cop. Six feet tall, probably a hundred and sixty pounds when I first met her, she was gangly, all arms and legs, though for some reason I thought her feet tiny, like a size six or so, and I only mention this in passing as I wondered how the hell she could run on feet that small.
Well...not very well, as it turned out.
On a foot patrol down along the pedestrian mall beside Fisherman's Wharf, Ben spotted a purse-snatcher about the same time Amy did, and they both took off after the kid, weaving through people and bicycles as they gained on the suspect. But at some point Ben noticed Amy had both hands on her "Sam Browne" belt, and after a few hundred yards her hands slipped and her pants flew down around her ankles – and down she went, tumbling down the sidewalk in a blur. Ben caught the kid about the time Amy managed to get herself up and put back together, and she found the owner of the purse and got all the information for the report – like right out of the department's procedures manual – but she'd been embarrassed by the whole thing, enough to talk about quitting.
And I guess that's the rub a lot of people had with her. It was like she just didn't fit in, like she'd grown up on the outside – and had always been looking in.
She had always been a tall girl, which had – as far as I could tell – kept her socially isolated as a kid, though in truth it was really difficult to tell what was under her uniform and vest and all the other horse-shit we have to wear. And another truth she had to contend with: women were still the odd man out, if you know what I mean, in a department that was still very much a male oriented organization.
Why was that a problem?
Because of quotas, and stigma, because the department didn't have enough women in uniform on the street, and so the feeling was, as was perhaps true for most of the women on the force, she'd been passed along despite some glaring issues. Once upon a time, or so the saying went, a girl like Amy would have never made it into academy, let alone pass, but a lot of us who'd been around for a while had seen the handwriting on the wall. Times had changed, or so we'd heard, and we had to change along with the times – or get steamrollered by forces we'd never see. So resentments bloomed, men vs women in the beginning, but this is the real hard part of the equation we all had to confront: we, the old white male vanguard, had to change in such a way we didn't get new officers – let alone innocent civilians – killed. Affirmative action forced real change on departments everywhere, and somehow I had to get Goodman through the next part of the ritual in one piece.
The first time I saw her, in uniform in the briefing room, she looked like just about every other cop in the room. Uniform starched with razor creases on her trousers, brass shined and blazing away, and the only thing even marginally out of place was her longish blond hair done up in a bun and her pale lipstick, and when I walked into the briefing room that first afternoon she locked onto me quicker than a heat seeking missile. Yet the odd thing? I didn't see anxiety in her eyes, or fear of any kind. In it's place was an easy-going curiosity lurking in those cool, greenish-blue orbs, and I could see she'd held the seat next to her's open – for me.
After I was seated next to her the shift sergeant came in and began the briefing, going over the most troubling episodes and calls from the evening shift, pointing out the few lurking hotspots we might get called back to. All pretty mundane stuff I guess you'd say, and when briefing was over I let Goodman get her briefcase put back together before I let her lead us out to our squad car. She had picked up a lot over the last two months – the rough edges weren't as glaring, anyway, but just listening to her I could tell she was going to be a real character.
My usual beat back then was 'Snob Knob' – the area north of Golden Gate Park and west of the bridge. Lot of money in that neighborhood and all-in-all about as far from South San Francisco as you could get. Still, we got some world class domestic disturbances on deep-nights, not to mention big-time burglaries from time to time, so 'the Knob' was a good training ground for rookies – a little more action than 'days' – but not quite up to the bruising pace on evenings, so think of her training as a planned progression. She'd worked downtown on days, and would go south for evenings – assuming she made it out of deep nights in one piece – before being cut loose to ride solo for a few years. Then she'd be able to try for sergeant or CID or, heaven forbid, traffic.
But let me jump ahead a little...just a couple of days, though.
She seemed in good spirits that night, our third night together. She ran through the car's inventory of flares and cones softly singing some old 'Sinatra' type song, and the thing is...Amy could sing. I don't mean like sounding good in the shower type singing; no, I mean like Ginger Rogers or Judy Garland. I mean...what the hell was she doing out here wearing a gun and a badge? Why the hell wasn't she cutting record deals down in Hollywood?
"What is that?" I asked, knowing the tune but not able to place it.
"What?"
"What's that song?"
"Glenn Miller's
Moonlight Serenade
," she said, looking at me like I was the moron.
"Oh," I said, knowingly. Then, "You have a nice voice. Soothing."
She looked at me again and smiled that time, yet for some reason I felt like I had just uttered the singularly most inappropriate words in the department's history.
"You think so?" she said, letting me, gently, off the hook.
"Yeah, like Ella Fitzgerald. Smooth as good whiskey."
"You like jazz?" she asked.
"It's against the law to live in The City and not like jazz," I tossed back, the all-knowing FTO.
"I never heard that one in academy."
"Dereliction of duty," I muttered as the shift sergeant walked by, but the thing of it was, her voice was familiar.
