Dukkha Unloaded. Loren W. Christensen
shakes his head. “Got to wait to find out about David. It might … take a long time, hours maybe. I think he’s going to get a room on one of the upper floors. They said I … I could stay with him. I’ll just sleep. Got me on some crazy meds.”
“I’ll stay with you.”
“No. I just wanted to see you now that you’re home. Seeing you makes me feel better. Safer, for some reason.” He starts to smile but it ends up being a grimace. “Not exactly cop buddy banter, eh?”
I shrug. “We’re friends first.”
He pats my hand. “Yes, we are. Go home now and get some rest. I want … to hear about Saigon when we’re both in better shape.”
“Okay. Call me when you’re ready to leave and I’ll come and get you.”
He leans his head back against the wall and blinks slowly a couple times. “Deal. Glad you’re back … Sam.” His eyes flutter shut and his face relaxes.
I ask a passing nurse to point out another way down to the first floor and she directs me to a stairwell. I find the number for Captain Regan in my cell phone and tap it in. By the time I’m done filling him in on Mark, I’m in the first floor lobby and half hiding behind a coffee cart. I don’t want to deal with the media.
“Thanks, Sam,” Captain Regan says. “On another matter, you ready to come back to work?”
I knew that was coming. The shooting was two months ago and I haven’t been back since. The police shrink Doc Kari’s last words before I went to visit Samuel and Mai in Saigon was it was my decision when I want to go back. The unwritten guide for cops who have dropped the hammer on someone is you don’t return until you know you could do it again. No cop who has ever been forced to kill on the job wants a repeat of the experience, but the police shrink, the department, and the officer in question need to know he or she can do it again if required. A cop who can’t decide, or knows for certain he can’t, has no business on the street. The officer’s life, as well as those of other officers and citizens, might depend on him doing exactly that.
For the past two months, I’ve been telling my father and myself I will never again pick up a gun. I kept the proclamation even when I was in Saigon, and I was thrust into the middle of a deadly shooting. But now, after talking to Mark, it’s like I suddenly have an itch to get back and do some police work. I want to have it both ways, but I know I can’t.
“I don’t know, boss. I plan to make an appointment with the shrink tomorrow and talk about it. I’m sorry. I wish I had a solid answer for you.”
“I understand, Sam. Just know Deputy Chief Rodriguez wants to put your name back in Personnel as unassigned so we can fill your spot in Burglary. He was talking about doing it last week so it might have already happened. If it has, don’t worry about it. If you’re ready, I want you back and I’ll make it happen.”
“Thanks, Captain. I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on.” I stuff my cell back into my pocket and, not seeing any reporters, step out from behind the coffee cart. Rudy waves to me from where he is talking to the elderly woman behind the information desk. She is laughing at something he said. Quite the gregarious guy.
“How’s your friend?” Rudy asks, leading the way to the cab.
“He’s hurting and his partner is in bad shape. Still unconscious.”
He shakes his head. “Sorry to hear it, Sam. You said partner. Were they on duty?”
Whoops. I didn’t want to get into all that. But why shouldn’t I? Mark’s relationship with David isn’t a secret. In fact, it’s been going on for years while most of the hetero marriages I know of on the PD have crashed and burned.
“My friend is gay,” I say, watching him for a reaction. He opens the driver’s door, not giving me one.
“Ooooh, all right, all right,” he says over the roof. “Explains things some. Get in the front seat there if you want, Sam.”
I slide in and shut my door while Rudy struggles to fit in behind the wheel again. The seat is pushed back as far as it will go.
“Was it a, what do they call it, a gay bashing?”
I nod. “Looks like it. Perps are still on the loose.”
He backs out of the slot and winds us through the lot back out onto the street. “Another hate crime, right? Sons-of-a-bitches. Three now, if it turns out the lynching is one.”
“Three?”
“I forgot, you been gone. ‘Bout a week ago some fool threw a firebomb at the Muslim Community Center up in Northwest Portland—the one on Twenty-Fifth. Nobody hurt and the fire went out before it could damage anything on the building. Oh, hold the boat. There was a cross burning too. Southwest, near Council Crest. Make it four.”
“Has anyone been arrested?”
He shrugs. “Haven’t heard anything except a few TV news stories about Muslims being afraid and sayin’ how they are people of peace.” He looks over at me. “What do you think, Sam? What does it all mean?”
I shrug. “Hate crimes for sure. Several white guys attacked my two friends. Could they have lynched a black man? Sure. Could they have attacked the Muslim center? Sure. But usually haters focus on one or two groups. But who knows? What do you think?”
“I think there’s too much hate in the world. People get intimidated, scared so they turn to hate. Maybe hate gives them some kind of power over what scares them. Don’t know if it fits, but my mama used to say church gives some people just enough religion to hate but not enough to love.”
“Your mother was a wise woman.”
“Yes, sir,” Rudy chuckles as he turns right onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. “She was a wonderful … Uh-oh. I forgot my dispatcher warned us to avoid this part of MLK today and here I drove us right into this mess. Folks demonstratin’ again in front of the clinic.”
At least two hundred people are blocking the street in front of the Northeast Women’s Center, a well-known family planning clinic that performs abortions. Looks like about every other person is waving a sign:
CHILDREN KILLED HERE
STOP ABORTION NOW
BABY GOOD, BABY KILLER BAD
PRO-LIFE AND PROUD
Several are holding long poles with naked, red paint-splattered dolls dangling from them.
There have been demonstrations here by pro-life groups as long as I can remember. The first year I worked by myself, I worked uniform in this part of town for about two months. Got called here twice for crowd control. The first call was no big deal but on the second one a few weeks later, there were pro-choice and pro-life groups clashing hard. I caught the call and like the dumb rookie I was, I waded right into the middle of it before my backup arrived. When a guy pushed me from behind, I spun around and leg swept him to the sidewalk. Who knew he was the national president of “A Woman’s Right to Choose,” one of the largest pro-choice groups out of New York City? The man had flown into Portland to give a speech only to be launched face first onto the sidewalk by little ol’ me. He wasn’t hurt badly, but face injuries tend to bleed a lot, which fired up his people into breaking out windows and attacking the police. Since I had waded into the crowd without backup, and it was me who dumped the guy, and since I had less than a year on the job, I decided it best not to mention it was my action that fueled the riot.
Right now, a dozen cops wearing black helmets and black, heavily padded chest and leg protection are guarding the front door, standing stoically unresponsive to the demonstrators surging toward them, backing away, and surging toward them again. The cops aren’t about to get suckered into their antics.
Rudy twists in his seat to back us up, but we move only a foot or two before he has to anchor it. “There’s a truck on our butt and crazy folks squeezing between