Right-Hearted

His name is Dominguez. He shows up in papering on a Saturday morning, wide soft face with not much of a neck, dirty ski parka over his uniform shirt and a thermal underneath that, same navy blue cargoes as everyone else, handle of his Glock disappearing up into that first roll of gut. Most guys, they sit down in my booth and hand me the case jacket, maybe snooze a bit while I go through it, and don’t say a word till I start asking questions. But Dominguez, sleepy-faced though he is, smiles this soft grin like he’s that kid in third grade offering to be friends when no one else will, the starter friend until you move on, finding him too depressing, too fat maybe, though even when you leave him he smiles, just that way. “Hello,” is how Dominguez starts us off, which no one says around here. Maybe a “hey” or that “good-morning-sir” you get from the young ex-military guys still jarheaded up. “Hello” is different.

Dominguez drops the jacket on my table, the cover right-side up: AWIK, it says, in barely visible green ballpoint—Assault With Intent to Kill. I look back up at Dominguez, catching a winter-cold smell off his coat. Certain officers you associate with certain crimes; you can guess what they’ve brought in based on the face type. Is it a day-work face (round) or a night-work face (diamond)? How old? How lost-looking or far-gone are the eyes? Dominguez’s face is too doughy, open. It’s at most a misdemeanor theft, homeless-guy-boosting-toothbrushes-at-RiteAid kind of face. Or maybe possession of drug paraphernalia, addict-in-wheelchair-drops-crack-pipe-at-McPherson-Square. An AWIK face at least has a chin.

“You the arresting officer?” I ask.

“That’s me,” Dominguez says, and edges forward in the booth, his elbows on my table like he’s about to whisper something or else lay his head down. I give a look at his elbows and he backs off.

The Arresting Officer: this is your fall guy, credited with the arrest, who’s maybe there from the start or maybe showed up two hours in, and has no idea what really went down but gets to do all the paperwork anyway, gets to stay up till ten the next morning, sitting across from the duty AUSA who’s chewing Pepcids and getting his ankles bit by fleas in the windowless intake room, a person who hates the Arresting Officer not just because he’s dumb and tired and sad-mouthed and helpless—utterly helpless in this place, cop uniform and all—but because they’re both there. Or really, because he’s there, the lawyer is: an educated but youngish guy, a fancy clerkship behind him, who’s come to realize he makes his living cleaning up after cops. Wiping where they missed.

Dominguez looks to be about average in his dumbness. He’s pulled his elbows back from the table but still has his hands there, puffy with cold, the pinkies slightly raised, almost daintily, like a pair of antennae. I glance up as I pull his incident report out of the jacket, to see if the look on his face changes, the way some guys get that little ripple of shame around their mouths when they see me about to read whatever piece-of-shit report they’ve written about whatever piece-of-shit thing happened the night before. It’s a nightclub stabbing from three o’clock this morning, The Love Club, New York Avenue, Northeast. Dominguez’s report opens like this: “V a black male 27 years old was consuming alcoholic beverages and conversating when verbal altercation began involving S1 a BM 24 years old.”

I look up and Dominguez is leaning in again, not quite elbows on the table but just about, still smiling that I’ll-be-your-friend-Timmy grin. “The Love Club,” he says. “Stabbing central.” He lets the words hang for a moment, seeing them in the air...