Ordinary Evil

KC Barrientos

Miles Campbell was nothing but skin stretched drum-taut over wire the last time you saw him in ’98.

To say you were surprised when you Googled the local police station and stumbled upon his name among the recent Employee of the Month honorees would be an understatement. You never shared more than a general ed class with him in senior year—that art course with thirty-six enrollees, a miserable paint-splattered catch-all for the untalented or those uninterested in exerting more effort into the more enthralling electives—and so, aside from his proclivities for tormenting the substitute teacher with rainbow-colored splat balls on the ceiling and pencil shavings on her desk, you never got to know him well enough to predict whether he would have become local mayor or corner shop butcher or president of his own fuzzy sock company.

Still, once you had squinted at his strong-jawed portrait on the Schenectady PD website and then squinted some more at his incongruously beefy portraits with his wife and toddlers on Facebook, you bit the bullet and messaged him privately rather than shooting off your original inquiry into the black hole of the main SPD email address.

It’s good to hear from you, man, he writes back within a day. That sounds like the type of story they should be covering in the news out here. I’m glad you reached out. I feel like I remember you, feels like we had some good times at school or something. What class did we share again?

That is how, three days later at half past four in the afternoon, you find yourself performing the most complicated back-slap-handshake ritual with a man you haven’t seen in seven years.

“Hey! What’s up, chico!” he crows exuberantly as you shake out your hand. “Still trying to keep it loco?”

You swallow down your retort: It’s Eddie de Porres to you, not “chico.” With a thin-lipped, tenuous smile, you proffer instead, “You still remember some of your high school Spanish.”

“Eh, nothing more than a word here or there. All the ingredients for tacos, though—that I know.” He waves off one of his colleagues on a smoke break peeping round the corner of the tired, sandy brick station. Then he unlocks the cruiser and swings a leg inside, with one hand gripping the roof of the vehicle. You follow suit, sliding into the passenger seat and inhaling the stale scent of kevlar and gunpowder as he fires up the engine to drive you through his daily haunts.

As you roll up to a yellow at the intersection where you used to grab bagels on your way home, you find that precious little has changed. Fresh reflective lane paint glints up at you, but aside from that, the same sagging trees and huddled shops slip sluggishly past your window. One of the corner shops that used to hawk vintage wares now stands boarded up with two teens leaning cock-kneed against the wall. 

Miles flicks his fingers at you from where they are resting on the gear shift. “It’s been too long, man. What’s new in the — in the news reporting world?”

You could regale him with anecdotes of your stint interning at the heels of dusty-ballcapped cameramen and five a.m. weather reporters in their stilettos and windbreakers, but then that would mean explaining how you sent out seventy-three applications and received a rejection from the coveted entry-level position of coffee-fetching assistant the year after you graduated.

You glance at the side of his face: his barely trimmed beard, the ruddy complexion beneath flax curls, the beginnings of crow’s feet crowning his eyes when he laughs loudly at every half-hearted joke you tell. He has the air of someone who found long ago what he’d been meant to do all along, patrolling the streets like a familiar guardian and waving at townies while receiving commendation for the difference he makes in the community.

So instead, you tell him in halting bits how you ended up at the independent culture magazine you write for now.

“Independent culture?” He sounds out the phrase. “How’s that?”

“Our coverage is less about daily news and more about thoughtful pieces on the various subcultures that have proliferated in and around the Albany area,” you reply. “Our head writer, Ridhi, produced this fantastic cover feature last year on the college Bhangra dance teams and how they’re a unique blend of American and Desi culture that isn’t replicated anywhere else.”

“Desi,” says Miles. “That’s like Bollywood, right? I always enjoyed those dance bits in the movies. Interesting, interesting.” As he hangs a left, he rolls down his window to wave and holler in greeting at a grandfather on a street corner. “And what about you, amigo? You guys do that—um—Bollywood-type dance thing with your familia?”

“Eddie’s fine.” You do so wish he would refrain from the Spanglish. You and papá may indulge in it from time to time, but this is different. “You’re probably thinking about ballet folklórico. That’s more of a Mexican thing.”

Miles raises his brows at you, nonplussed. 

“I’m Venezuelan,” you inform him. 

From his blank visage, the distinction seems to fly over his head. Still, he smiles. “Must be why you look so white!” he exclaims. “I swear, I never would’ve thought you were Spanish until that day I heard you talking lightning-fast with your mom. Or was that your sister?”

You judiciously steer the conversation away from the matter of whether Venezuelans, in short order, look white or not; all your life you’ve only been surrounded by the de Porres clan, gray-eyed and coffee-haired, and only met some distant cousins of the darker variety on Día de Tres Reyes Magos when you were too small to tell the difference. Mamá had swiftly dissuaded you of the notion of commingling with them on the regular.

Next year, Deo and Nelsy aren’t coming to our house for Tres Magos, Eddie. No, don’t fuss. You know I don’t approve of how wild and bratty they acted last time. Remember, we’re different from that side of the family. We’re different from your father’s side. I’m raising you properly.

Of course she raised you properly. A pharmaceutical litigation attorney, married to the medical billing supervisor she’d supported through college, your mamá ensured that you spoke your t’s without the countryside aspiration and enunciated all your s’s like the proper folk did at school.

You’ve got your father’s handsome face and my good skin, but that won’t be worth anything if you open your mouth and start talking just like your cousins, now, will it?

To his credit, Miles seems mildly impressed with your brief history of how your parents made it stateside and carved out a life for themselves. “And you?” he probes. “You always wanted to be…y’know, writing about people and stuff?”

“Yes,” you admit, smiling back this time. “My last piece was about the Dominican barber shops on Central Avenue.” You didn’t know a lick of anything about hair at the time, nor about the easygoing gossip that accompanied the braiding and worship of steaming locks in the cramped comforts of those salons. With no small measure of fondness, you reminisce on the research you did with the accommodating shop-owners—tostones shoved into your hands, slurping up sancocho in the back with the boisterous, pearly-teethed guys.

“I’ve been begging Faith—that’s my boss—begging her for the chance to write a feature for one of our print editions this year,” you tell Miles. Only now has the chance tumbled into your lap with Ridhi away on maternity leave. Ridhi left you copious notes in her loopy cursive on the influx of college-age dealers from the Albany area lighting a simmering fire under anti-police sentiment in the district, but you have yet to glimpse evidence of that in the casual greetings Miles exchanged with residents at the station before you hopped into his car. 

Ridhi balked from across Faith’s desk that last day before her leave when it was announced you would be taking over her brainchild. “You write a mean literary piece, don’t get me wrong,” Ridhi muttered, “but you’d wax poetic about rats overtaking New York City.” And then, as though to preclude the wild possibility of you mistaking that jab for a compliment, she added: “You’re a regular Pollyanna—if Pollyanna were born in the twenty-first century with a Windsor knot tied around your neck from the day you were dedicated.”

No matter. Ridhi has no control over which direction you end up taking the piece. Literary musings are as much your forte as they are your comfort zone, and you’re confident you can make Miles’ day with the locals sound literary enough if you find the right moments to milk. Either way, your abuela was so ecstatic when you broke the news to her that she set about making about ten thousand arepas in celebration.

“You telling me this is your first feature?” Miles echoes. “On our old station? Well, I’m honored. Look at you, Eddie, making it big in your writer world, huh! Would ya need to be recording me for an interview at the end of this whole thing? Grab some Thai, maybe, and have a debrief about how we do things down here at the SPD?”

“Some pithy quotes probably would be useful,” you allow him. “Thanks.”

“Aw, man! And do I get to be named in the article? Is that—you don’t need me anonymous, no nothing?”

“Unless you’re planning to tell me you’ve suddenly been promoted to deep undercover narcotics, I doubt it,” you quip back. That earns you a lazy grin from him. 

You run through the possible titles in your head, now: The Unassuming Hero Behind the Badge. Guarding Home on the Streets. Rebuilding Bridges in a Distrustful Community, One Smile at a Time.

Miles stabs the air with a finger. “Narcotics—now there’s some lucky folks who actually get rewarded for the things they do, day in and day out.”

Your pen is at the ready, thirsting for an angle. “Do they get paid significantly more than beat cops?”

“I’m not a beat cop,” says Miles. When you pause, scrambling to rephrase, he takes your silence for doubt. “I’m not a beat cop. I got my own cruiser—had a partner for a while earlier this year, but he’s on medical leave — and I’m not the one out on the streets patrolling by foot.”

Beat cop with a car, you amend silently, with some amusement.

Miles goes on pontificating about the nuances of the various positions within the department. Those “suits and ties that deal with the FBI”— the detectives on cold cases, as you take it — he has no envy for. But it appears he could lecture at length on the injustices suffered by his fellow so-called “peace officers.”

“Peace officers, they call us, and yet we’re the ones facing down the unknown every day. You get a call, there’s a code and you think you know what you’re facing, but then next thing you know, the domestic turns into you staring down the barrel of a gun, and it’s a split-second thing, y’know? Bam! Bam!” He slams his palm down on the steering wheel, startling you. “Life or death, it’s a split-second decision between life or death, and then suddenly you’re on unpaid leave and your wife’s upset and your kids are crying and you don’t know when you’re getting back on the roll. If you’re getting back on the roll.” Miles swabs at his beard with the heel of his palm. “And then those guys in narcotics get loaded up with all the fancy gear they need and all the mission bonuses—you see them cruising around after in their Beamers—and they don’t have to do hardly anything of anything in between.”

“Well, your job sounds just as tough as anyone else’s,” you acknowledge.

Miles turns to you with a sigh. “Not just as tough. Tougher. Look at you, Eddie. Going into barber shops and sitting at your laptop, typing up for the paper, and then you get to collect your six-figure paycheck and wander on home early.”

Cheeks heating, heartbeat ratcheting up in indignation, you are stymied by which inaccuracy in his accusation to address. You are in the middle of debating whether to reveal how unpretentious and minimalistic your studio apartment downtown must be to keep up with the rising costs of living, and how hours upon hours must be poured into perfecting your pieces long after you have trudged out of the office, when Miles’ scanner crackles to life.

Ten-sixteen on the corner of Ashby and Lippert. One unit requested.

You flip through your moleskin notebook as furtively as you can, miffed that you didn’t think to memorize more of the police codes before today’s ride-along.

This is 2065. We’ll take the 10-16. ETA two and a half minutes, someone else jabbers over the radio.

Ten-four, Carlisle. Be cautious.

Miles spies your fumbling from the corner of his eye. “Possible stolen vehicle,” he supplies for you. “Somebody reported it with suspicious individuals inside.”

You scribble the information down on a random blank page, eager to cover your moment of incompetence.

But Miles has already forgotten his grudge against you and your soft-handed type. Shooting you a conspiratorial grin, he mimes zipping his lips. “I won’t tattle on you to your boss, Eddie. Relax. Today’s your first ride-along. Everything gets easier with time. For me, it’s like second nature.” His chest puffs up a bit. “You know how many codes are in the manual? Close to two hundred. Two hundred. I memorized ’em all within a week of getting to the academy.”

You can’t help the small, inquisitive sound that escapes you. Back in the day, Miles couldn’t memorize a semester’s timetable to save his life.

“That’s impressive,” you say. “I’ll…I’m sure I’ll get familiarized with the codes as we go along. It’s just that I was staying up late editing my other piece. Sometimes these assignments arrive back to back to back.”

Miles grunts, somewhat distracted, but somehow the reaction rankles you as dismissive. Hunched next to a man who flunked algebra twice and yet decimates a pack of gum with ease while speeding toward uncertain danger day to day, you feel inexplicably defensive over the job you studied four long years and two undignified internships to acquire.

After another glance at you, Miles shrugs and flips on a switch overhead. A second later, the lightbar wails to life.

“What are you doing?” you demand.

“Going to check out the scene,” Miles says, lips quirked and cocky. “I’ve been at my desk all morning pushing paperwork. Gotta get the high somehow, yeah? Besides, it’ll make the ride worth it for ya. You’re lucky you’re getting in on the action in the first hour of your ride-along.”

More weary brick buildings and quivering maples zip by as Miles skirts the curb and streaks down the several blocks that separate you from the corner of Ashby and Lippert. For a moment, as an out-of-place Benz screeches to let the cruiser blow past an intersection that’s blazing red, you understand the thrill of the hunt that drew Miles to the police academy. With the thrum of your heartbeat syncing up with the war cry of the sirens overhead and round-mouthed faces of alarm blurring by on the sidewalk, you realize how much easier it is to explain the adrenaline rush of descending like an army of avenging angels on the armed suspect than it is to explain the high you ride late at night typing up an eloquent homage to the transcultural roots of Cuban vieja ropa.

Miles’ radio crackles several more times as he careens toward the scene. You don’t catch any codes exchanged, but from what you can infer, the voices of multiple units are commenting on what they see.

Possibly hostile suspect. Units on standby.

“This is 2047. Just arrived on the scene,” Miles interjects into the radio chatter.

When you pull up to the curb and you make as though to unclick your seatbelt, Miles halts you with the back of his hand flat against your chest. 

“Vehicle’s occupied, remember?” he murmurs. “Suspect could be armed and dangerous. I think it’s best if you stay inside for now. Keep watch through the windshield and take notes, if you want, but just don’t pull out your phone and start recording, ’kay? That’s what we got the dashcam for.”

“I wouldn’t share it anywhere. The piece is on a deadline, and if it takes forever to pull up the footage, I wouldn’t want to be hounding you at the station,” you try to reason with him. You’re uncertain of how to remind an officer of the law that said law permits anyone the right to film what they need to in public police encounters.

“I know, yeah, I know, but I’m thinking about your safety here, man,” Miles replies. “If you’re too busy trying to get a good video and too slow to take care of yourself if the suspect comes in this direction, that’s on me, you know?”

You eye him dubiously. Considering that he wasn’t dispatched, and yet Miles still flew down here with a civilian in tow, you begin to wonder if it was prudent for him to have dragged you to the scene at all.

You offer a noncommittal hum. Miles exhales with relief and pitches himself out the driver’s side, adjusting his utility belt and waving at you through the glass.

Three other police cruisers and about five or six other officers have swarmed the beat-up caper-green station wagon parallel parked on the residential street. Two officers are leaning down inside the open driver’s side window, one with a proprietary hand on his side piece and the other with his arms akimbo as he nods at Miles and a few other newcomers in greeting.

It’s nigh impossible to discern the driver’s voice in the conversation. The officer leading the traffic stop—you assume the one with his hands lax on his hips—flicks his head impatiently to the side. I won’t ask you again. Step out of the vehicle, he raises his voice enough for you to make out.

The station wagon is old enough that the rear windshield stretches tall and wide, clear of tint. You spy the shock of curls on top of the driver’s head, the death grip of his long fingers around the steering wheel, the shorter afro on the head of the woman gesticulating beside him. Is she remonstrating with her man? With the officer? Either way, neither one is capitulating.

That’s it. I gave you enough chances, the officer in charge snaps. He darts out a hand over the rolled-down window and jams open the lock from inside. He wrenches the door open and dives inside, hands clawed, fingers fisting in the frayed hoodie of the driver. The black man ducks his head just in time to avoid bashing his skull on the car frame but flings out his hands too late to catch himself before the pavement meets his cheek and tears at the prey-soft skin there.

Get up. Stop play-acting. The one who had stood with his palm resting on the butt of his gun wrestles the driver to his feet.

“Call mama! Bernice, call mama!” the man hollers.

The woman tumbles out the passenger side door. Your heartbeat gallops, thundering in your ears. You wish you could shout at her to stay inside, but your vocal cords have been severed.

You know you should be seizing something from your pocket. Your messenger bag, nestled at your feet. Your phone — to call the police — but —

The black man is shoved against the side of the station wagon with an audible impact to his ribs. He keeps shouting to the woman, Bernice, Bernice, and the woman keeps shrieking back, one arm flailing for attention for the officers to let him up.

Give us two days, I said! My paycheck’s coming in! Stop! Stop! He’s bleeding, you’ll hurt him if you —

It all happens in a whirlwind. The driver plunges his hand into the pocket of his sweatpants. Miles bursts into view out of nowhere, muscles bulging against his uniform, firearm drawn and locked on the man. Three more identical bodies whip out their sidearms and flank him. Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move, don’t move! Hands where we can see them! Put your —

“My phone! I’m trying to reach my phone! You can see my pocket — she’s got my papers, my proof, everything —”

Knees crack against the asphalt. The butt of a gun slams into his nape. Miles follows him down to the ground, shin pressed between shoulder blades, another officer crowding in to rein in the man’s trembling arms and elbows in a vise grip and wrench his shoulders back.

The man erupts in a sharp cry. He makes a horrid, gurgling sound and jerks on the damp street.

His woman sobs: these hitching, raw sounds that rend the air like a baby crying. It’s only then that you notice the toddler in her arms, bawling.

Another officer draws back his boot to drive it deep into the man’s ribs, once, twice, again and again. The glass does nothing to muffle the sound of bones cracking and organs bruising.

Your fingers shake as you finally unglue yourself from your marionette position. Your phone is on you somewhere — but it’s too late.

The officers who haul the driver to his feet pass directly by your passenger door as they drag him cuffed and stumbling to one of the cruisers. Carmine rivers leech slowly down the side of his face. One cheek swells, blooming flesh-red under broken skin. The man looks no more than a year or two older than you.

Good. That’s good. No men down. With the radio to someone’s mouth, hand cocked again on the hip: Suspect in custody. All units stand down.

Hands slap. Someone bro-shakes Miles, grinning. You sly dog. You wanted in on this, didn’t you?

Did you see how he was bucking and squealing?

We gotta get on the cams later. Connor’s gonna shoot himself that he missed this on his day off.

More back-slapping. Through static, you register the guffaws.

Miles saunters back to his cruiser before the rest of his colleagues have cleared the scene. Your tongue is like a block of oak, tasting like a desert, as your brain rolls around in molasses and tries to feel for what to say to him.

Miles is cranking up the heat and warming up his hands, intermittently flexing them in front of the vents and blowing on his cupped palms, when you finally work up the courage to speak. “Was the car stolen, then?”

Miles glances askance at you, eyes round, as if only remembering your presence now. “No,” he says, sounding as though the truth was shocked right out of him. “No,” he says again, more calmly. “Dude was driving around on an expired registration. Couldn’t even come up with a driver’s license when Finnick asked him.”

When he feels the weight of you staring at the side of his face, Miles turns to you, mouth set grimly and head shaking. “His excuse was that he’d gotten out of county jail four days ago. Four days ago! The stupid decisions these bozos make instead of just heading to the DMV and taking care of their business like the rest of us do. You’d think, after spending almost a year in lockup, he’d have decided to finally become a good citizen, y’know? Can you imagine throwing away a chance like that? Can you believe that?”

The truth is, you can believe it. You remember from the grapevine that it took your cousin Deo six months to raise the money to reinstate his license, and even then it was another several weeks to convince him to set foot back inside the DMV because he’d heard from your other cousin in Indiana that they were starting to demand social security cards to renew the drivers. 

Something icy settles over you, like the stripping away of a cloak you’d never known was pinned around your shoulders until today.

Through numb lips, you ask: “Well, what was he—what was his charge? What was he in jail for, anyway?”

“Finnick said it was possession. Weed, probably.” Miles snorts. “His whole car reeked of it, honestly. Carting around his wife and kid in that trash? Unbelievable.”

Miles never even ventured near enough the open door to catch a whiff of anything. He’d tackled the man to the ground near the manhole cover in the center of the street. You sit there, rabbit-still and frozen.

“But he’ll get out, right?” You swallow. “He’ll just have to do the paperwork to get his stuff renewed, and then he’ll be back out, right?”

Miles’ look is incredulous. “He assaulted two police officers today. That’s seven years, minimum.”

Bile rushes up your esophagus. In the middle of Miles speaking, you shove open the door and empty the contents of your stomach onto the pavement. You hang there with watery eyes, feeling wrung-out like a muddy rag, and swim in disgust as acrid as the wet chunks that splattered back toward you from the asphalt.

Miles pats you on the back with sympathy as you clamber shakily back inside the cruiser. “Don’t worry, that’s seven years that menaces like him will be off the street. No need to get all twisted up about it.”

You are helpless to offer anything in return but a queasy shake of your head.

“No?” says Miles. “What was it, then? The smell was that bad?” He fishes for a bottle of water from the console and cracks it open for you, barking out a laugh. “I know just what you need to clear the taste from your mouth. What do you say to some of that Thai now, huh?”

That night in the gloom of your bathroom where you slump on the toilet cover, you worry the edge of your phone. The screen has remained black and useless since the last fruitless call you made to the the city halloffice of the attorney general.

You rouse yourself. You stand to flick on the light, and then, still swaying on your feet and bracing yourself against the vanity, you tear page after page out of your moleskin notebook. On a fresh line, you press your bleeding pen to the paper and begin to write: An Ordinary Evil in Our Streets.