Two Men In A Bar
*
“So it all boils down to, good cop bad cop.”
“You saying I’m a bad cop?”
“Bad tempered cop.”
“And you’re not?”
Jim Grant considered that for a moment before replying.
“I used to be. I’d rather play it cool nowadays.”
Vince McNulty looked at the transplanted Yorkshire cop whose path he seemed to have been crossing for years and shrugged.
“I play it as it lays.”
Grant shifted position on the barstool and rested one elbow on the bar so he was facing McNulty. It was a long bar and the two Yorkshire cops were sitting at the far end away from the windows. The back wall was stripped red brick with sepia photos from bygone days. The mirrored shelving behind the bar gave excellent sightlines of the tables and booths as well as the only entrance from the street. The door to the restrooms was ten feet away set into the red brick wall. Nobody was going to sneak up behind them. Their literary agent, Donna Bagdasarian, thought Grant considered that whenever he entered the room. In reality Grant just liked sitting at the end of the bar and people watching. Right now he was watching McNulty. Grant nodded and gave an understated smile.
“Like when you strangled Daniel Roach in the custody area?”
McNulty didn’t flinch.
“It was in the corridor.”
“It was around the throat, leaving throttle marks that got him released.”
“He was already released. That’s why I throttled him.”
“Playing it as it lay?”
McNulty kept steady eyes on Grant.
“He’d been fucking his sister since she was four. He didn’t do it again.”
Then he gave an understated smile of his own.
“What can I say? I’ve got a bit of a temper.”
“A temper that got you sacked.”
McNulty swivelled on his stool so he was facing Grant. He wasn’t bothered about having his back to the room. He tapped the bar with one finger.
“Look who’s talking. Lost your temper and dangled Chusan Palm over the edge of the quarry.”
It was Grant’s turn to keep a straight face.
“I didn’t lose my temper.”
“But you did hang him over the edge.”
The front door opened and two workmates came in before going home for the evening. It was dark outside. Slow moving traffic eased past the bar smearing red and white light across the rain splattered windows. The two workmates made it four customers including Grant and McNulty. The bartender stopped polishing glasses and went to the other end of the bar. Grant saw all that with his peripheral vision but stayed focused on McNulty.
“The little old lady he burgled almost gave up. The spectacles he stole were the last thing her husband bought her before he died.”
McNulty knew how that worked. Being a cop taught you how to deal with bad guys but nothing prepared you for the victims and their heartbreak. The law didn’t always help, being weighted in favour of the crooks not the police, so sometimes you had to ignore the rulebook and simply do what was right.
“So you got her glasses back and hung him out to dry.”
Grant took a drink of his Tetley’s Bitter.
“He didn’t do it again.”
McNulty picked up his glass of Pepsi…
“There you go then.”
…and clinked it against Grant’s pint.
“Sometimes going all bad cop is what makes you a good cop.”
Grant nodded but didn’t smile. He put his glass on the bar and let out a sigh.
“Sometimes being a good cop isn’t enough.”
McNulty put his glass down as well.
“Habergham?”
“Not just him.”
The Yorkshire cops sat in the New York bar, both lost in thoughts that came from different angles but ended in the same place. Mick Habergham’s leaving do at the Ecclesfield Police Station bar. The first time they’d crossed paths in years.
*
“Bet you didn’t expect this many to turn up and see you off.”
“Didn’t expect to see anyone. I’d better put more money behind the bar or they’ll be closing me down.”
Mick Habergham was amazed that anybody remembered him after twenty-six years service but having survived the ruins of midnight he reckoned he’d at least earned their respect. Andy Scott would be limping for a year but it was Mick who had taken early retirement. Ecclesfield Police Station hadn’t been this busy since the night of the long knives, the night when it had been all hands to the pumps and Trevor Garner’s stepson had reversed into Alpha 2 ending Mick Habergham’s career.
Jim Grant watched the friends exchange pleasantries from the corner of the bar. He was on Team 4 not Mick Habergham’s shift but he’d been in uniform long enough to respect a man who was still on the front line after more than two decades. Grant took a swig of his Tetley’s and noticed another figure coming around the end of the snooker table. He held his pint up and shouted over the hubbub and swearwords filling the air.
“McNulty.”
Vince McNulty glanced over his shoulder to see who was calling his name then carried his Pepsi into the corner away from the crowd. He nodded at Grant and the pair clinked glasses. Grant still had to raise his voice, even up close.
“I hear congratulations are in order. Vice Squad isn’t it?”
McNulty nodded his thanks.
“Starting next week. Undercover hits on massage parlours.”
Grant smiled.
“Out of uniform. Completely. Don’t forget the happy ending.”
McNulty covered his embarrassment by taking a drink of his Pepsi. Grant waved his glass to encompass everyone in the room.
“One less angry man in uniform.”
McNulty noticed B.F. Cranston standing at the bar.
“They’ve still got the original storm trooper.”
Grant followed McNulty’s gaze.
“Butt Fuck?”
Now it was McNulty’s turn to smile.
“I don’t know how he got away with that shit last Christmas.”
Grant knew what he was talking about.
“Malachi Ringwood? Breaking in to dump rotten meat in the canteen?”
McNulty watched B.F. ordering a round of drinks.
“Wishbone. Getting his anal G spot abused on the railings outside.”
Grant raised his pint and they clinked glasses again.
“To justice. Long may it reign.”
McNulty added his own toast.
“To angry men in uniform. Keeping the streets safe.”
Grant looked beyond the bar to a pair of huge policemen with grade one haircuts. Even in civilian clothes there was no mistaking them for anything but cops. Shady and Rook giggled like a pair of schoolgirls but there was nothing girly about the Velcro Twins, two more angry men in uniform. It had been the same Christmas as the Wishbone affair that they’d smashed Robert Coombes up against St Margaret’s Church in full view of the congregation singing “Away In A Manger.” Grant raised his glass to them as well.
“There’re still plenty of angry men in uniform. Ecclesfield is safe.”
McNulty lowered his glass.
“And there’s always you.”
Grant turned calm eyes on the new Vice Squad bird dog.
“I don’t do angry.”
McNulty kept his face deadpan.
“Of course you don’t.”
Grant raised his eyebrows.
“Until I have to.”
*
Traffic on West 57th Street seemed to be getting heavier instead of lighter despite being early evening. The intersection with Broadway was always a bottleneck and the Brooklyn Diner across the road added red and yellow neon to the headlamps and brake lights reflecting off the bar’s rain lashed windows. Two more customers had come in but it was still quiet inside. New York in the fall. A strange place for two Yorkshiremen to be chewing the fat over a pint. McNulty swirled the ice in his second Pepsi.
“Do you ever miss it?”
Grant paused with the pint halfway to his mouth.
“Miss what?”
McNulty shrugged.
“The good old days. Uniform patrol. Ecclesfield?”
Grant took a drink then wiped the froth from his lip.
“The good old days aren’t good because they’re old. They’re good because they were good. Best way to get over that is to make good days now. Everyday is a good day. Until it isn’t.”
He looked at McNulty.
“You’ve had your share of isn’ts.”
McNulty ignored the implication and stopped swirling his ice.
“It’s just that things were simpler back then. Patrol the streets. Answer the radio. Respond to calls. The bad guys were obvious. The good guys were cops. Everything was black and white.”
Grant snorted a laugh.
“In Bradford, more black than white.”
McNulty was beginning to hate the whining tone in his own voice but he couldn’t help it. Nostalgia wasn’t what it used to be.
“Life was more straightforward.”
Grant put his glass down on the bar.
“This is all about you not being a cop anymore.”
McNulty sighed. Even the sigh sounded like a whine.
“That’s part of it I guess.”
Grant straightened his back and flexed his shoulders.
“What you miss is the camaraderie. The Band of Brothers. Being part of a group working towards a common goal. Justice. Like in the army…”
He felt a hitch in his throat but carried on.
“…or the fire brigade or the ambulance service.”
The army. That had been Grant’s Band of Brothers period. Serving with a group of likeminded individuals who bonded into a unit and watched each other’s backs. That all ended with a helicopter crash and a dusty township and a shot he wished he hadn’t had to take. Being a team player was great until your team were dead. After that Grant preferred to work alone. It was easier to bear the losses when you had nobody to lose. He got the feeling McNulty wasn’t like that.
“You’re a team player. You miss having a team.”
McNulty tried to put a positive spin on things.
“I’ve got Titanic Productions.”
“The movie company?”
McNulty nodded.
“Larry keeps saying it’s a family. Amy reckons it’s a circus. Either way it’s a community. Of sorts.”
Grant softened his eyes.
“That’s good then. I’m happy for you.”
McNulty looked at the Yorkshire cop who was still a cop, not a technical adviser who taught actors to walk like a cop.
“You don’t sound convinced.”
Grant raised his eyebrows.
“That’s because you don’t sound convincing.”
McNulty took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Maybe not.”
Grant leaned forward and lowered his voice.
“You can take the man out of the police but not the police out of the man.”
McNulty had his own way of putting it.
“Once a cop always a cop.”
Grant put the icing on the cake.
“And playing make believe isn’t the same as taking down Northern X.”
*
Bradford Royal Infirmary was awash with reporters and TV crews but they weren’t there for McNulty or follow ups about Northern X. The Yorkshire Post was the only newspaper still running stories about the explosion in the derelict factory turned sex clinic at Southside Industrial Park. It was two weeks since he’d been splashed all over the television news being stretchered out of an ambulance at the BRI. He was an outpatient now, visiting twice a week for physiotherapy and checking the cuts to his head and knees. He killed two birds with one stone after each appointment by visiting Donkey Flowers who was taking longer to recover in Ward 13.
McNulty stood in the corridor overlooking the front of the hospital and watched the media frenzy that had moved on from him to another cop injured in the line of duty. He saw a figure reflected in the window and turned in time to see Jim Grant come stand beside him. Grant was in uniform but his jacket was open and his tie was hanging loose. McNulty nodded towards the activity out the window.
“They never give up do they?”
Grant followed his gaze.
“Blood in the water. Always brings out the sharks.”
Blood was right, and lots of it. The shockwaves had rocked police forces throughout the country. Officer down. Line of duty. Severe head injuries. Every policeman could relate to that. Every cop lived with the possibility that it could be them next time. There were two patrol cars parked outside but the blue lights were dark and the sirens quiet. The frantic dash was over but the silent vigil continued, the bedside vigil that Grant had just been relieved from by the late turn shift. McNulty let out a sigh.
“How’s Decker?”
“In and out. Mostly out.”
“Does he know yet?”
“Not unless he remembers. Doctors reckon he’s still blank.”
Severe head injuries. That’s what happens when you get your skull caved in with a paving stone. The footpath between the flats at White Cross was still cordoned off by crime scene tape. Everyone was working twelve-hour shifts. One officer per shift had to sit at Steve Decker’s bedside in case he woke up and gave a dying declaration. This morning that officer had been Jim Grant.
“I’m glad he didn’t wake up. Christ. I don’t want to be the one to tell him his partner didn’t make it.”
Both cops fell silent for different reasons. McNulty wondered about the survivor guilt that Decker would feel at having let his partner down. Grant was thinking about the partners he’d lost wearing a different uniform in a hot desert township. McNulty came out of it first.
“There’s going to be some serious boots kicking in doors when they find out who did it.”
Grant nodded.
“And somebody’s gonna get a serious kicking.”
An ambulance pulled out from under the Emergency sign and flicked its blue lights and siren on. The sound was different to the police and fire brigade but it still sent shivers down your spine. When the emergency services switched on the siren it was bad news for somebody. Without the men and women holding the frontline it would be even worse. Grant watched as several reporters jumped in their cars to chase the ambulance.
“So long as the kicking doesn’t get caught on camera. The hero shot looks a lot better without the hero kicking somebody’s teeth in.”
McNulty shook his head.
“The hero stuff wears thin pretty quick, I can tell you.”
He turned away from the corridor windows. McNulty knew all about media frenzies. Jim Grant wouldn’t find out until much later.
*
“Is the press still labelling you the Resurrection Man?”
Grant took a swig of his third pint. Hanging out with a fellow Yorkshireman was playing havoc with his alcohol intake.
“Until they find someone else to label.”
He put his glass on the bar.
“Hasn’t been a Blue Knight White Cross lately to take the heat off.”
McNulty nursed his second Pepsi. He wasn’t going to be drawn into a third or he’d be pissing all night.
“Yeah. What’s good for one is bad for somebody else.”
Grant nodded and let out a sigh.
“News forgot about you in a week. They’ve been stuck on me for years.”
McNulty glanced around the bar. There were now six customers apart from the Yorkshire coppers. Traffic outside had eased. The barman was serving two young women who were being eyed up by the workmen from earlier. It was a typical bar in a typical city on a typical weekday evening. The after work drink was a dying tradition. Back in Yorkshire the police used to gather in the pub after their shift. It was part of what made being a cop so good, not the drinking necessarily but the gathering of minds and exchanging of stories. Who did what to who during a shift that could have finished with any one of them ending up like Steve Decker. Camaraderie gave you strength. Your mates watching your back meant you survived to fight another day. Not Blue Knight White Cross.
“After the shit you pulled at Snake Pass and Jamaica Plain it would have to be something pretty big to de-Resurrection Man you.”
Grant’s tone turned introspective, almost like he was talking to himself.
“I guess Steve Decker getting his brains bashed in wouldn’t cut it.”
He looked at McNulty.
“That’s the trouble with America. Everything’s got to be bigger. More tragic. It’s all about size and scale.”
McNulty returned the look.
“Not a little old lady and her glasses?”
Grant shook his head.
“And not some pencil-dicked motherfucker poking his little sister.”
McNulty stretched his back. Bones popped like knots of wood in the fire.
“Bigger lacks the personal touch.”
Grant linked his fingers and flexed them with the same effect.