by There used to be a cop in my precinct who would vomit every time he saw a dead body. In police work, dead bodies come with the territory: From natural causes to bullet wounds. When I was in the police academy, the instructors would take the cadets to the city morgue to watch an autopsy just to get us used to smelling and looking at dead bodies. But Jimmy never got used to it. He’d take one look at grandma dead in the bed, run out the back door, and puke in the daisies.
One summer day on patrol this transmission came over the radio (I’ll paraphrase): “4-Adam, investigate a body on the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) near the Northern Blvd exit.” The sector car, 4-Adam, complied & a few minutes later the cops transmitted back: “Central, we can’t find a body. Do you have further information?”
“No,” said Central.
“Mark it 90 x-ray (unfounded).”
A few minutes later Central called 4-Adam again: “Respond to a body on the eastbound BQE, 30 feet west from the exit sign.” The sector car returned to the same location, still couldn’t find the body, and marked the job unfounded. Then for the next twenty minutes, Central continued to send 4-Adam back to the BQE to look for a body. Two, three more times the call came over, and every new call had a little more information, “go down 20 feet” and “make a right turn behind a tree” but the Sector car couldn’t find the body. Whoever was calling 911 was playing a game.
Finally, on the fifth call the patrol sergeant got on the air and said he’d go to the BQE to look for the body. Three minutes later, the sergeant announced he’d found it. Well, cops are curious people, and when they heard the sergeant had found this elusive corpse every sector car within a five mile radius had to race over to the BQE to take a look. And this is what they saw: in a small wooded area off the expressway was the body of a woman in a hole. She had been placed in a “standing” position and buried up to her neck. Her head was sitting above ground and the murderer, and/or caller, had placed an orange bucket over her head (I wonder if the sergeant found the body because he tripped over the bucket).
When I pulled up to the scene there were a half-dozen patrol cars parked on the shoulder of the expressway. The cars were empty because everybody ran over to look at the head under the bucket. Everybody, except Jimmy. He was standing next to his patrol car puking his brains out. Knowing his aversion to corpses, I said, “Jimmy, did ya look at the body?”
“No.”
“Then why’re ya sick?”
“Because my partner went to look,” he said. “And I was imagining in my head what he saw and it made me sick.”
One day I finally asked Jimmy why he vomits every time he sees a dead body. He said, “One of my neighbors had a heart attack and his wife was banging on my door, screaming for help. So I went over to help. I knew the guy was dead, but I didn’t wanna do nothin’ so I performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and the guy vomited in my mouth. So every time I see a dead body I think back to that guy regurgitating bile down my throat.”
Yuck. Now, I understand. ~ AA