Somebody was shaking Tony’s shoulder. He just wanted to sleep. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“Tony, it’s me Blaze. Open your eyes.”
He lifted his lids a couple of millimeters. He saw his friend’s face, but it was dark. And why wasn’t he in uniform? Where the hell was he?
There was a table in front of him, and he used it to pull himself into a more upright position. He opened his eyelids wider and focused on his friend. Then he remembered. He was at the Saloon and called his sergeant to come and drink with him. He grinned.
“Hey, buddy. Thanks for coming.” He scanned the bar. “Yo, Johnny! Bring my pal whatever he wants, and I’ll have what I was drinking last.”
“How about instead we get you some coffee and some water?”
He shook his head. “Nah, I don’t want any of that crap. Let’s talk about Dolby.”
The cocktail server brought over two glasses of water and a cup of coffee. Wordlessly, she set them in front of Blaze.
“Thank you, Danielle,” Tony said in a mocking tone.
The sergeant pushed a large water glass toward him. “Here, let’s get some hydration in you.”
“I don’t wan—”
“What did you want to say about Sinclair? You called me down here so we could reminisce about him and his career.”
He remained silent.
“Are you going to talk or not?”
He drank half of the glass, then wiped his mouth with his hand. He sighed. “My friend Dolby got screwed by the department. He was a good man. An outstanding cop.”
“I’m sure he was, but sometimes guys get burned out.”
He felt himself stiffen. “He wasn’t a burnout! The ass-wipes in upper management wore him down.” He leaned over so he could be eye-to-eye with his friend. “They ruined his career over a nothing incident!”
“Listen. I don’t know the details of the story, but it sounded bad. As I heard it, he was working with a P-1, and somehow, he left the keys in the shop or dropped them. Along comes some intoxicated gangster who steals the black and white and runs from the cops. The pursuit lasted for over twenty minutes before the suspect crashed and totaled the patrol car. The only reason Sinclair kept his job was that no one was hurt except the dirtbag.”
“Come on. That isn’t the first time something like that happened. Remember the commanding officer who left her unmarked unit running while she ran into a donut shop for coffee and a bear claw? The plain-wrap car was stolen along with the captain’s badge and gun. There was no punishment for that asshat. In fact, a year later, she was promoted from captain to commander.” He finished off the water. “It’s bullshit, and you know it.”
Blaze pushed his glass over to him.
“I’m not going to make excuses for management’s poor judgment. It’s certainly not fair. But that’s how things work. Everyone on the job knows it.”
“So, the captain moves up the food chain, and Dolby had to give up his training officer stripes.” He shook his head. “They busted him down to a P-2.”
“Yeah, but he eventually earned his stripes again.”
Tony took a sip of coffee. “But he was never the same. And no matter how high he scored on the sergeant’s test; they’d never promote him.”
The sergeant nodded. “Someone up the food chain definitely wanted to make an example of him.”
“It’s not right, damn it. They give so many other screw-ups another shot.”
“My guess is the department felt by making him a training officer again a few years later, that was his second chance.”
Tony half-smiled. “Actually, I think he was happiest when he and I were both P-2s and worked together again. The other guys called us the clean-up crew. We busted our asses to get him his stripes back…and he was such an outstanding cop. But they’d never let him promote any higher than a P-3.”
“Maybe not here on Earth, Tony. But God promoted him to a worthy spirit in heaven. There’s no better promotion in the world than that.”