Deceptive

by James Hanna

         

Those who say the truth will set you free have probably never been polygraphed. I had the experience in my early thirties during a campaign of self-renewal, leading inevitably to the West Coast. After spending a decade as a counselor at the Indiana Penal Farm, a provincial Midwest prison, I felt like a bastard at a family reunion. Was it because I built on my education instead of boozing with good ol’ boy guards? I had attended a nearby state university under a blind assumption: the patented belief that a master’s degree would open the door to promotions. Sadly, the reverse proved true. Organizations will stigmatize overachievers as surely as they flag the fuckups. (If you doubt this, watch any season of Survivor.) And so I was deemed overqualified when I faced the promotion boards. One of the inmates summed it up well when I told him I was leaving. “Sounds like a plan,” he said. “Do it soon. You don’t need to be hanging around Podunk, Indiana.”      

          I relocated to the Golden State and submitted a job application to the Santa Clara Department of Corrections. California has always been an innovator in the field of criminal justice, so I was more than confident I would soon take my place among the learned elite. I applied for the position of deputy jailor, a menial job, but one from which I intended to soar like a butterfly shedding its cocoon. Before long, I would be devising programs, publishing in correctional journals, and initiating critical reforms.

          I reported to the Santa Clara Government Center to take the written test. The questions struck me as wholly redundant, and I scored in the high nineties. The oral interview, which took place at the Santa Clara County Jail, was also an effortless challenge. One of the board members, a plump correctional lieutenant with a goatee, simply shook his head. “Ten years as a counselor,” he said. “A master’s in criminology. And you want to work as a deputy jailor?” I told him I needed a change and he laughed. “I see,” he snorted. “Are ya gonna take up surfing?” The board gave me a ringing endorsement, which left me with one final obstacle. To wear the uniform of a deputy jailor, I would have to pass a polygraph examination.

          I received a letter from the Santa Clara Human Resources Department, instructing me to report to the Government Center, Room 101, to take the polygraph test. I was advised to allow three hours for the test and to bring a number two pencil. I chuckled at the irony of the location. Room 101—wasn’t that the chamber of horrors in Orwell’s 1984?  The place where aberrant Winston Smith was reduced to a quivering pulp? Convinced I would fare better than poor Winston, I showed up early on the day of the test.

          Armed with my number two pencil, I entered Room 101. The room was utterly barren except for a desk and a chair. No carpet cushioned the floor, no flowered plants scented the air, not even a requisite landscape painting hung from the drab green walls. Behind a second door, in what must have been the testing chamber, I could hear a couple of voices. Voices so strained and muffled that they seemed to belong to ghosts.  

          I sat by the desk and waited, my pencil as sharp as a tack. After ten minutes, the second door opened and I felt my muscles tense. The man who entered the room was so fleshless that he appeared to be carved from bone. His nose was sharp and hawkish, his smile was frozen in place, and a thick pair of horn-rimmed glasses expanded his muddy brown eyes. He looked at me incuriously and handed me a booklet. He smelled of cheap aftershave.

“Answer these questions, pardner,” he muttered. “Answer ’em truthfully.”

He vanished back into the testing room in a lingering wave of Old Spice.

I broke the seal to the booklet and began to read the questions. There were approximately two hundred of them and they made me feel like a freak. Have you ever exposed your anus or genitals for sexual gratification? Have you ever been married to two persons at the same time? Have you ever had sex with animals?

Indignant, I cruised through the questions and marked almost all of them no. Only a few gave me pause. Have you ever engaged in drug use? Well, I smoked pot a few times in college. And once I sampled a dab of meth. Better check yes, I decided. I don’t want to make the scrolls flutter.

Have you ever been referred to a collection agency? another question read. Once, I remembered. When I didn’t pay a medical bill because I had been overcharged. Do they really need to know that? I wondered. I gritted my teeth and marked the yes box.

Have you ever abused, struck, or injured any person under fifteen? I remembered spanking my toddler brother after he crapped on the living room rug. Did I have to put that down? I shrugged and checked the yes box once again.

You’ll be given a chance to explain your answers, the last section of the booklet advised. I signed and printed my name in this section, acknowledging the terms of the test. I then pocketed my pencil and waited for Ichabod Crane.

An hour passed. No one came. Has he forgotten me? I wondered. Eventually, the voices grew louder—they seemed to be at odds. “If you’ve stolen a car we’ll find out!” boomed Ichabod when the inner door finally opened. 

The woman who dashed across the room looked angry and harassed. “Do I look like a car thief?” she shouted back as she opened the door to the hallway. Glancing at me, she held her nose, then hurried from the room.

A practical soul may have seen this incident as a portent of pending doom. But my instincts were akin to Don Quixote, not savvy Sancho Panza. One less rival for the job, I thought as I rose from the chair. It was my turn now. I held my head high, like a bird drinking water, and entered the testing room.

---

As I sat by a desk where the polygraph was perched, my palms began to sweat. I felt more like a patient on life support than a pilgrim on a mission. A blood pressure cuff, plump with air, gripped my upper arm like a hall monitor; a couple of rubber tubes, also tightly inflated, hugged my chest and abdomen; and a pair of electrodes pinched two of my fingers like dime store rings. The cuff was to measure my heart rate, the tubes were to record my breathing, and the electrodes were to pick up whatever perspiration my fingers might produce.

I tried to chat with Ichabod, but his focus was on the machine. Clearly, he had no interest in whatever I had to say. “Answer the questions truthfully,” he mumbled. “Don’t be making stuff up.”

 Activating the polygraph, he asked me some baseline questions.

“Your name is James Hanna?”

“Yes,” I replied, and the scrolls began to nod.

 “Are you sitting down?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Have you got a bachelor’s degree?” he inquired.

“I have a master’s,” I said.

Ichabod shut off the polygraph as though he was swatting a fly. “That’s not what I asked you, pardner,” he muttered. “Stick to yes or no answers.”

 I felt familiar anger as he turned the machine back on. How many times was I going to be penalized for advancing my education?

“Have you ever stolen from an employer?” he asked.

“No,” I sarcastically said.

“Have you ever lied to someone who trusted you?”

“No,” I fibbed.

“Have you ever driven a car when you had too much to drink?”

I knew enough about polygraph tests to know that these were control questions. Who hasn’t taken a pen from work, lied to a friend, or driven a car after having a sip too many? I was expected to lie on these questions, which would provide a comparative response. If the scrolls fluttered less on the relevant questions, that meant I would pass the test.

“Ever committed a sex crime?” he asked.

“No,” I proudly replied.

“Ever been addicted to drugs or alcohol.”

“No,” I triumphantly chirped.

“Ever stolen an automobile?

“No,” I crowed with glee.

The questioning continued for another minute then he turned the polygraph off.

“How’d I do?”

He scratched his jaw. “The results are inconclusive.”

“What does inconclusive mean?”

He sighed. “Shall we try it again?”

He asked another series of questions, this time intermingling the control questions with the relevant ones. Whenever I was asked about job theft or drunk driving, I dug my fingernails into the palm of my free hand. If I spiked on the control questions, I reasoned, I would surely pass this damn test.

When the questioning was done, he turned off the machine and gave me the final verdict. “Deceptive,” he snapped.

I looked at him incredulously; I felt as though I had been slugged. “Just where was I deceptive?” I asked.

“Alcoholism, drug addiction, sex crimes, and car theft.”

“You’re kidding,” I stammered. “I’ve done all that? When would I have found time to go to work?”

He folded his arms then stared at me with the air of a hanging judge. “Ya may as well come clean, Tom Hemmings. Whaddya trying to hide?”

 “Nothing,” I snapped.

“Horse turds,” he answered. “Whaddya trying to hide?”

I knew my anger was showing when he opened the drawer to the desk. The drawer contained a handgun and several ammo clips. As I looked at the gun, he pushed the drawer shut; he was only warning me to calm down. But the sight of the weapon did not dissuade me from taking a shot of my own.

“Ask me if I killed John Kennedy,” I said. “I’d like to see the result.”

He looked at me so piously that I felt like a Salem witch. “Whaddya trying to hide?” he repeated. “Whaddya trying to hide?”

Arguing was useless; his mind was as closed as a tomb. What have I done to deserve this? I wondered. What is my unavowed crime? Whatever the sin, I would never forget that unforgiving gaze.

I unhooked myself from the tubes and wires. “Have a good day,” I said. I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I walked out of the room.

Only when I stood in the hallway did I feel the full weight of my anger. I had a crime coming to me, I reasoned, and vandalism would do.

I whipped out my number two pencil as though I were drawing a sword. And I scrawled a single word on the door to Room 101.

                                                   Deceptive

James Hanna worked as a counselor in the Indiana Department of Corrections and recently retired from the San Francisco Probation Department, where he was assigned to a domestic violence and stalking unit. His familiarity with criminal types has provided fodder for much of his writing. His debut novel, The Siege, depicts a hostage standoff in a penal facility. Call Me Pomeroy, James’ second book, chronicles the madcap tales of a street musician on parole who joins Occupy Oakland and its sister movements in England and France. Hanna’s stories and essays have appeared in many journals and have received three Pushcart nominations. Many of his stories are included his third book: A Second, Less Capable Head, which was designated a Distinguished Favorite by The Independent Press Awards. Hanna’s books are available on his Amazon Author Page. 

Midnight Stops

by Eugene Durante

The Manhattan bound train is empty as it lurches forward and begins its midnight journey out of Coney Island. Winter winds whip through the train when its doors open as passengers board at the elevated stations. Most are headed to a night shift job or New York night out. My police radio is dead silent. With only one year on patrol I have yet to learn the best crime fighting efforts do not come from police executives or politicians, but from the tendencies of Mother Nature.

My assignment to late night train patrol was precipitated that winter by a ‘lush worker.’ He was cutting open the pockets of passengers to remove personal items while they slept. The crime is not atypical for the hour or area, and the eyewitness description of the perpetrator was a black male eighteen to thirty years old wearing a black jacket, black jeans, and armed with a box cutter. My platoon had been briefed numerous times about the robbery pattern, and with rookie ambition we certainly generated many stop and frisk reports that winter for the NYPD.

As the train pulled into the Neck Road station, I saw a figure on the opposite platform. He was a tall black man with braided hair, and he wore a full length black jacket and black pants. His hands were in front of him and he was facing the wall while awkwardly pivoting left to right. I could not tell if he was kicking the wall, marking it with paint, or moving back and forth while urinating.

Utilizing the advice of veteran patrol officers, I exited the train and stepped down a few stairs to tactically survey the cloaked figure out of view. Fortunately, his train had also just left and there was ample observation time. His behavior persisted, so I quietly approached for a closer look, but while crossing to his platform I made a common rookie mistake.

My radio had begun screeching and I quickly muffled it with my hands. The male froze, then looked around. I was surprised he heard the noise from the distance, but Neck Road is an eerily silent place at night. Prior to renovation, the train station was a spawning ground for rats and pigeons, and to this day there is not enough revenue to justify staffing the token booth overnight.

Broad shouldered, the curious figure turned my way and stood silent as I slowly approached. His hands were at his sides and his fingers were spread apart. He looked about forty years old from the sporadic gray hairs in his braids. I sensed he was no stranger to being stopped by the police.

“How you doin?” I casually asked, utilizing a common Brooklyn greeting.

“I'm lost,” he said. “I fell asleep on the train.”

Getting closer, I noticed black dress shoes and a black suit beneath the trench coat—not the common attire of a lush worker.

“Must’ve been a good sleep,” I said. “You’ve drooled on yourself.”

He started wiping his coat with a handkerchief, yet he awkwardly looked away and not at the stain as most people would. Then I noticed his walking stick and backpack on the floor next to a garbage pail.

“I know my home station perfectly,” he said gathering his articles, “But I have no idea where I am now. Thank you very much for being here.”

“Just check your belongings, Sir. Unattended items grow legs quickly in Brooklyn,” I replied. “These scummers will steal your walking stick if you weren’t looking.”

He smiled, and with that we broke the ice.

We made small talk as we walked toward the Manhattan bound platform. He reminded me to let the blind person grab your arm for better guidance. We exchanged names as I led him to a bench.

“So how long are you on the job?” he asked while using air quotes. I replied, then I enquired if he was born blind or lost his vision over time.

“My sight has diminished in the last decade,” he said, “but I can still see silhouettes.”

“That's very fortunate,” I encouraged.

“Sometimes I wish I never had vision though,” he said while adjusting his long coat in the thick wooden arm rests of the bench. “I think I'd have less anxiety overall.”

He continued; “Instead of earning my independence as a man in this world, I'm forced to live with my mother and sister for support. I'm blessed that I still have family, but I always dreamed of moving out of the ghetto after college. It's sad enough that I've changed, but I have witnessed myself become a different person to others.”

His voice then cracked, “To the outside world I’ve become a ‘he,’ as in would ‘he’ like a chair or booth, or would ‘he’ like another cup of coffee...as if ‘I’ never existed. You have no idea what it feels like when I go shopping and I ask the salesman if a shirt is a lighter or darker tone of black, and his response is, ‘Does it really matter?’”

“I used to always date hot women,” he said, “and now I'm alone. Heck, I don't even know what the Spice Girls look like.”

The blind man became silent and looked away into the darkness. The rattle of a distant train started vibrating the tracks. We then boarded the train together, arm-in-arm, toward his home station. On our way we discussed our experiences growing up in Brooklyn and how the city was changing. Upon arriving at Newkirk Avenue he softly pushed my arm away.

“I got this,” he said, and he breezed up the stairs and out to street level. I followed him up the steps, and we stopped together on the sidewalk. I offered to walk him home, but he insisted on walking alone.

“No problem,” I said. “I understand we both have reputations to protect in these parts.” We shook hands and extended that half-a-hug gesture that men do so well.

“Hey, Gene,” he said, “thanks again for being there, and more importantly, thank you for treating me like a regular guy.”

He walked away as my radio reverberated off the buildings on Marlborough Road.

Though I do not remember his name, the man’s heartfelt compliment was poignant and lasting. That appreciation is rarely experienced on patrol any more. Yet after two decades in public service, I’ve learned to embrace the lasting value of small deeds. Helping many people in little ways, with empathy and compassion, can be more beneficial to the spirit than helping a few people in big ways. Such interactions benefit the public by breaking down barriers and cops’ professional selves by promoting positive solutions. As police officers, we’re conditioned to think our careers are defined by newsworthy events, but too often we overlook the touching moments that help us become better cops, and better human beings.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Eugene Durante is an NYPD patrol officer and front row observer of the offbeat. City University of New York educated, Durante received his B.A. in Criminology and his Master's in Public Administration. "Gino" is well-known for not stroking others and not getting stroked in the process. 

Night Watch

by Paul Pekin

        I'm no good at political arguments, one side always right, the other always wrong. The current uproar over police shootings finds me outside my comfort zone, finds me disagreeing with very good friends. "I'd like to see," I told someone I very much like and hardly want to quarrel with, "I'd like to see Jon Stewart make a traffic stop on a dark lonely road, walk up to the driver's window, and make that arrest."

        "That's not what we’re saying," she replied, with some heat. Of course there were good police officers, and no one was blaming them, she acknowledged. It was just that …

        My side of the argument was lost before I could find words for it. Could this be because, after many years and many jobs, I finished my working life as police officer? Not something I ever planned on doing, but a man needs work, health insurance, a shot at a pension, and sometimes you take what is out there. Life, you know, happens.

        So I stay out of these arguments. They bring me back to the days when I drove a beat, wore a uniform, carried a weapon, and was expected to routinely do things I never, in all my life, planned on doing. Such arguments feel personal to me.

        Instead of making an argument, let me tell you a little story. Imagine me, a man in his fifties, finding himself working for the county forest preserve police, a small department, but police all the same. Guns, squad cars, uniforms, radios, all the stuff that sets you apart from the rest of the citizenry. Walk into a Burger King on River Road at nine pm and you will be seen not as a person, but as a cop. And, as a cop you will, almost certainly, take a seat facing the door, because you never know who might come walking through it.

        When I drove these late shifts, I was always alone. It was my job to lock up the forest preserve gates and see that no one came into the woods after hours. If it had been up to me, this sunset to sunrise rule might have been a bit different, but it wasn't up to me, just as it wasn't up to me to decide how fast people could drive, or where they could park. I locked up the gates, I chased people out, and I arrested those who were up to mischief, mischief mostly being large bonfire parties involving teenagers and alcohol, parties I would have gone to myself when I was a teenager.

        The night I almost shot the kid happened in this context. I'd already closed all my gates. It took hours to do that. And now I was just driving from one grove to another, looking for a little action. Yes, I did look for people to arrest. The nights were long and tedious, and time passed so much faster when I was processing a drunk driver or, more likely, chasing a gang of kids out of a picnic shelter.

        That night there was someone in the shelter at Davis Woods. When I pulled into the parking turnaround, planning on killing a few minutes going over my reports, I heard what sounded like firewood being broken in the shelter. It seemed odd because I could see no fire, nor could I smell smoke. But this particular shelter, a stone structure built back in the WPA days, was distant from the road and surrounded by trees, which made it popular with certain people. It was a place I kept a watch on.

        But the last place on earth where I thought someone would point a gun at me.

        I got out of my squad-car, locked it, and started down the path, flashlight in one hand, baton in the other. The moon was out, I could see pretty well, and my flashlight was turned off. If it turned out someone worth arresting was waiting for me to arrest him, well, I didn't want to scare him off.

        What seemed odd was there was no sign of a fire in the fireplace. So what was that cracking sound I had heard? As soon as I stepped off the path and onto the concrete walk, I switched on my light, one of those long black police flashlights with about eight batteries, very bright, and also very heavy in case of a fight.

        Instantly I caught a figure in the beam, a male who spun around before I could identify myself and, using a two hand grip, aimed a pistol directly at my face. I'm dead, I thought. My own weapon was safe in its leather and no way to get it since my hands were already full, one with my flashlight, the other with my baton, "Police," I shouted, pointing that metal baton at him, exactly as if it were a gun. "Put that down or I will blow your head off!" I may have used the f-word as an intensifier. In certain situations, a wise cop will try to sound a little fiercer than he actually is.

        This is a story I have told many times, and the next line always is, "It took me and that kid almost fifteen minutes to find his gun, that's how far he threw it." Then I explain it wasn't a real firearm, just a pellet gun, not quite a toy, for no one in his right mind would want to take a pellet to the forehead, but still, not a real firearm, nor did it even look all that real once we had found it.

        The kid, and now I saw he was only sixteen at the most, had been playing "war" with his buddy (who, I suppose, was still running). They had been shooting at each other with these pellet guns and when I arrived with my flashlight, quite naturally he had mistaken me for his antagonist.

        "Don't you know you can put an eye out with one of those things," I said. I couldn't resist a little joke. Meanwhile, I was thanking all the gods that protect the police that I had been reckless enough to approach that shelter with my baton in my right hand, and not my loaded Smith and Wesson.

        I wrote the kid a ticket and confiscated his pellet gun. We met again about a month later in court. I never expected to see him there because these personal recognizance tickets we gave out were little more than invitations. But there he was, and my favorite judge, the one who tossed out so many of my tickets, was in charge. This isn't going to go well, I thought. This judge had never looked favorably upon me or my fellow officers. He seemed to think cops wrote tickets just for the fun of it and routinely lied in court. But this time, fingering the kid's pellet gun (offered in evidence) he got it. And delivered a very well put lecture to that kid. "You can thank this officer for your life," he said. And the kid did. No further penalty was necessary.

        I suppose the point of this story should be obvious. When the talk turns to "police shootings," I think first of myself, and there is no way this cannot be. So I back away. I say, yeah, that cop shouldn't have used the choke hold, shouldn't have fired the extra shot, shouldn't have done whatever they say he did. I leave unsaid the way it feels to get out of a squad car and walk toward the unknown, and why a person would do it.

        I could have killed that kid. I think that.

        And if he had been something more serious than a kid with a pellet gun, who knows what he might have done with me.

Born in 1928, Paul Pekin currently draws a pension from the Cook Count Forest Preserve Police, the last of a succession of jobs that included teaching Fiction Writing at Columbia College of Chicago, English Composition at the School of the Arts Institute, owning a little mom and pop store on Diversey Avenue, and working as a letterpress printer back in the days when there was such a thing.