Rookie Philadelphia police officer Paul Webb kicked in the door. Five officers rushed into the room with their weapons drawn. Their target, Washington Davis Beaumont, lay face down on a mattress. A pistol rested on the nightstand near his head. Beaumont made no effort to reach for it.
Sgt. Warner Russell, a fifteen year veteran, rammed his knee into Beaumont’s back, pinning him to the bed. “Don’t move motherfucker or I’ll blow your brains out!” yelled Russell in his heavy Philadelphia accent. He jammed his weapon into Beaumont’s temple.
“You gonna show me a warrant?!” Beaumont demanded.
“Shut the fuck up!” In one fluid motion, Russell holstered his weapon, pulled his handcuffs from his belt, locked Beaumont’s hands behind his back, picked Beaumont off the bed, and wiped the sweat from his brow onto the sleeve of his dark-blue uniform jacket. Russell pushed him toward two other officers. “You’se two take Beaumont to the cruiser. Rook,” Russell addressed Officer Webb, “search the other rooms. I’ll search this one.”
“Hey, you can’t search my place, you ain’t got no subpeonis, offica’,” Beaumont said mockingly.
Russell’s eyes narrowed, accentuating the crookedness of his face. His right eye sat slightly lower than the left and his nose and chin were too far to the right, the aftereffects of several fights. He grabbed Beaumont by the back of the neck and shoved him against the wall. “Wha’d I tell you,” he growled, before stepping back and motioning the two officers to take Beaumont out of the apartment.
When they were gone, Russell closed the front door to keep anyone in the hallway from seeing what was going on inside. With the door closed, Russell walked over to the nightstand, opened its top drawer, pulled a large manila envelope from his jacket and emptied its contents into the drawer. As he did, Webb returned from searching the filthy kitchen. Out of the corner of his eye, Russell saw Webb watching him. Russell closed the drawer.
“Hey Rook, why don’t you check the nightstand,” Russell said, trying but failing to sound nonchalant. “Beaumont was tryin’ real hard to keep us from looking in there. Might be something important.”
Webb walked over to the nightstand and pulled open the drawer. Inside were documents, credit cards and checkbooks.
“Whoa, hey! You found his stash! You’ll probably get a commendation for this.”
“I don’t understand? What’s going on, Russ?” Webb asked. The meekness of his tone betrayed his lack of confidence when it came to challenging the forceful personality that was Warner Russell.
“Wha’da you mean?”
“This wasn’t here.”
“’Course it was, right where you’se found it,” Russell suggested unconvincingly.
“But, I saw-”
“You didn’t see nothin’!” Russell barked, poking his finger in Webb’s face for emphasis. “You made a good find. Now go back to the cruiser while I seal the room for evidence.”
“Russ, what’s going on?” Webb’s wavering voice highlighted his deep dismay.
“What does it look like? We’re taking a piece a’ shit off the streets. Don’t make no fuckin’ waves partner!” Russell tapped Webb’s chest with two fingers. “You made a good discovery. Go down to the cruiser. I will talk to you about this later.” Russell signaled another officer, who had just re-entered the apartment, to escort Webb downstairs. As they left, Russell called after them. “Hey, don’t say nothin’ to nobody. Understand!”
An hour later, Webb sat alone in the police station’s small break room. The other three chairs were empty. Webb stared at the vending machines. The paper cup in his hand had been empty for some time. As his eyes moved toward the internal affairs poster for the hundredth time, his partner appeared, closing and locking the wood and frosted-glass door behind him.
“There was nothing in that nightstand, Russ,” Webb said preemptively.
Russell remained calm. “Look here, Rook. You ain’t been out there as long as I have. You’se don’t get it yet. This is the way it needs to be. This fucking mook is the nastiest piece of shit you will ever see in your life. This fucker’s so bad the devil calls him for advice.”
“But Russ, you can’t frame a guy for something he didn’t do,” Webb replied softly. He remained seated and stared at the empty cup in his hand.
“You can when you can’t catch him no other way.” Russell pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He lit one before offering the pack to Webb, who declined. He then tossed his spent match into the garbage can, just below the “No Smoking” sign. “Sometimes you gotta help the system put a rotten bastard like that away. Fahgetaboutit, he deserves it.”
“How do you decide who deserves it?”
“Wha’da you mean, ‘how do I decide’?!” Russell raised his voice.
Webb shrugged his shoulders, but still didn’t look up. He barely spoke loud enough for Russell to hear him. “What I mean is, what gives us the right to-”
Russell erupted. “What gives me the right?! What gives me the right?! Did you ask me ‘what gives me the right’? This badge gives me the right!” Russell tapped the silver badge on his chest. “That son of a bitch’s past gives me the right! That ain’t no fuckin’ choirboy we’re sending up. That is one evil motherfucker. Every day he stays free is another dead hooker or another kid on crack. That’s what gives me the right.” Russell took three quick puffs from his cigarette.
“We can’t make that decision.”
“Yes we can! Yes we can!” Russell growled, jabbing his cigarette at Webb for emphasis.
“Why can’t we let the system work?” Webb’s voice grew louder, but he still lacked confidence and he still wouldn’t look into Russell’s face.
Russell threw his hands up in the air. “Let the system work?! It don’t work for guys like this!”
“Look I agree too many guys are getting away with murder, but if we start doing this, then we’re not cops anymore. Let the system take care of him.”
“Oh, fuck that! This guy is beyond the system, he makes a mockery of the system. If guys like this keep gettin’ away with their crimes, then there ain’t no system. It’s up to me and you to make the system work. We protect the system. If that means we gotta bend the rules now and then to get shit like this off the streets, then so fuckin’ be it!”
“If he’s such a bad guy, take him down for the other stuff he’s done.”
“Oh, listen to the rookie. Don’t you think we tried?! We had him in here for rape five years ago. The victim vanished. We had him for murder. The witness died. Drugs. The fucking drugs walked out of the station house. Do you understand me?! They walked out of the Goddamn station house!” Russell waved his cigarette around the room as he spat out each word.
Webb started to speak, but stopped himself.
“That piece of shit killed five people in cold blood! He sells crack to Goddamn school kids! And you’re worried about a little planted evidence?! Well, fuck you, Officer Rookie! You’re a cop, and being a cop means making hard choices. Sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty if you want to keep the streets safe. Sometimes, you gotta improvise to get trash like him off the street. If that takes pinning an ID theft on the guy, then so fuckin’ be it. I’ll sleep fine tonight, knowing I saved somebody’s life and kept somebody’s kid off crack.”
“What about the real ID thief? He walks?”
Russell laughed. “Some Arab working in a mailbox store. He starts stealing credit cards and checks from mailboxes, uses them to buy electronic gear from local stores, writes bad checks, that sort of thing. One of the stores he hits calls the fraud boys. They look into it, figure it out. We go to arrest this towelhead. Only, he skips the country a couple days before we get there. Un-fuckin’-touchable.”
Webb remained silent.
Russell leaned against a vending machine. “You know, I’ll bet you’se if the public knew about this, they’d support us ten to one.”
“Then why do it in secret?” Webb looked at Russell’s eyes for the first time. “Why not just haul him downtown to the mayor’s office and announce to the world that he’s a bad man and it’s time we locked him up?”
“Don’t be a smart ass, Rook. You ain’t earned that right.”
Webb tried to sip from his empty cup.
Russell pulled some change from his pocket. “Here, get yourself a coffee.”
“Thanks.”
“Look kid, just get with the program. It’s for the better. This guy is evil. He needs to be taken off the street. This is the only way. He’s that special case where the system needs to be tweaked. You wanna protect people and keep the system working for everybody else, you gotta do this. Nobody who don’t deserve it is gonna get hurt by this.”
Webb tossed his hand out as if to object, but voiced no objection.
“Just sign the report I left on your desk and put it in the file. That’s all you gotta do.” Russell put his hand on the door to leave. “Me and you solid, Rook?” Russell asked over his shoulder, without turning to face Webb.
“Yeah, we’re solid,” Webb replied quietly.