Night Train

Martin Amis NIGHT TRAIN

To Saul and Janis

Part One. BLOWBACK

I am a police. That may sound like an unusual state­ment—or an unusual construction. But it’s a parlance we have. Among ourselves, we would never say I am a policeman or I am a policewoman or I am a police offi­cer. We would just say I am a police. I am a police. I am a police and my name is Detective Mike Hoolihan. And I am a woman, also.

What I am setting out here is an account of the worst case I have ever handled. The worst case—for me, that is. When you’re a police, “worst” is an elastic concept. You can’t really get a fix on “worst.” The boundaries are pushed out every other day. “Worst?” we’ll ask. “There’s no such thing as worst.” But for Detective Mike Hoolihan this was the worst case.

Downtown, at CID, with its three thousand sworn, there are many departments and subdepartments, sec­tions and units, whose names are always changing: Organized Crime, Major Crimes, Crimes Against Per­sons, Sex Offenses, Auto Theft, Check and Fraud, Spe­cial Investigations, Asset Forfeiture, Intelligence, Narcotics, Kidnapping, Burglary, Robbery—and Homicide. There is a glass door marked Vice. There is no glass door marked Sin. The city is the offense. We are the defense. That’s the general idea.

Here is my personal “ten-card.” At the age of eighteen I enrolled for a master’s in Criminal Justice at Pete Brown. But what I really wanted was the streets. And I couldn’t wait. I took tests for state trooper, for border patrol, and even for state corrections officer. I passed them all. I also took the police test, and I passed that, too. I quit Pete and enrolled at the Academy.

I started out as a beat cop in the Southern. I was part of the Neighborhood Stabilization Unit in the Forty-Four. We walked foot patrol and did radio runs. Then for five years I was in the Senior Citizens Rob­bery Unit. Going proactive—decoy and entrapment— was my ticket to plainclothes. Later, another test, and downtown, with my shield. I’m now in Asset Forfei­ture, but for eight years I was in Homicide. I worked murders. I was a murder police.

A few words about my appearance. The physique I inherited from my mother. Way ahead of her time, she had the look now associated with highly politi­cized feminists. Ma could have played the male villain in a postnuclear road movie. I copped her voice, too: It has been further deepened by three decades of nico­tine abuse. My features I inherited from my father. They are rural rather than urban—flat, undecided. The hair is dyed blonde. I was born and raised in this city, out in Moon Park. But all that went to pieces, when I was ten, and thereafter I was raised by the state. I don’t know where my parents are. I’m five-ten and I go 180.

Some say you can’t top the adrenaline (and the dirty cash) of Narcotics, and all agree that Kidnapping is a million laughs (if murder in America is largely black on black, then kidnapping is largely gang on gang), and Sex Offenses has its followers, and Vice has its votaries, and Intelligence means what it says (Intel­ligence runs deep, and brings in the deep-sea malefac­tors), but everyone is quietly aware that Homicide is the daddy. Homicide is the Show.