WORDS FROM THE MEAN STREETS by Marc Cameron

Coppers are storytellers. Partly, I think, because so many stories happen to us on a daily basis—stories that, as I’ve said before, worm their way into our subconscious and shape who we are and how we view the world.

My wife and I had business that kept us in town late last night. Driving home, we passed through one of the rougher areas of Anchorage—which only gets more dangerous in the dark and bitter cold. I couldn’t help but think of our youngest son, who would soon be out patrolling these same streets. I know, I’ve already written about him, but I’m a dad, I know what it’s like out there—and I can’t help but worry. Anyhow, those thoughts brought to mind one of my favorite Raymond Chandler quotes:

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean…” The rest of the quote is pretty cool too, but seems a little self-serving since I spent thirty years on the job.  

My son’s a good guy, sweet really, with a kind heart and a gift of empathy that is rarely seen. He is also quite capable of…well, kicking ass. He and I have talked much lately about what makes a good cop. In some ways the job is different than when I started over thirty years ago.  But it’s also much the same—

lunch break

A mutual friend recently told my son that though he’d heard many of my war stories as he grew up, now that he was “on the job”, I’d likely tell some that that were new to him. That friend was absolutely correct.  Some stories, you just don’t tell your eighth grader.  

The fact is, I learned early on that I had to be careful with my storytelling—especially at parties with those outside the profession. Years ago at a church social I sat at a table of sweet, tenderhearted family folk. One of them asked something about what it was like to be in law enforcement. I’m sort of like one of those pull-string dolls when it comes to war stories, so I began to tell them about a recent adventure—

I’d been dispatched to an apartment complex where the manager had noticed the windows to a certain apartment were covered with flies, lots of big, green-backed, nasty things, crowding inside the heavy drapes, leaving countless black specks and tiny trials of something more sinister on the glass. An incessant buzzing, enough to drive you crazy if you stood there very long, vibrated the air. It was mid summer and no one had seen the occupant for nearly two weeks.

Sitting there at the church social over punch and cookies, and oblivious to the under-the-table nudging from my wife, I explained to the paling folks around me that my backup officer and I dabbed our mustaches with Mentholatum jelly in anticipation of the gruesome scene we knew we’d find inside… Finally, my wife put a boot to my ankle and I realized a couple of our friends were about to throw up. I toned down the rest of the story, minimizing the goriest details of what we found in that apartment, while noting the entranced reactions from several at the table. I knew I wanted to write and some people were keenly interested in this stuff. 

Writing about a violent conflict is of necessity different that the real deal. In a book or on film, fights, as I’ve noted before, are usually portrayed as contests of skill where opponents go toe to toe in a flurry of fists and feet, square off with knives, or even have a showdown at high noon. In reality, a person who wants to hurt you will rarely face you mano a mano. Extreme violence looks a lot more like an assassination than a fight—a brutal attack with overwhelming force. Think a brick to the head when you round a corner, a blade to the kidney that feels like a punch, or the bullet you never hear. There are, of course, fights. I’ve talked about the realities of a punch to the beak in past essays. When I was younger, I liked to box. I still enjoy a good scrap. But an honest to goodness fight—the kind into which I throw Jericho two or three times per book—those are a different story. 

Many years ago while en route to pick up a load of prisoners in Ardmore, Oklahoma, my partner wrecked a van during an ice storm on I-35. We rolled one-and-a-half times, coming to rest on the passenger side.  Other than the box full of leg irons smacking me in the head, I don’t remember many details—only that it seemed to go on forever. There was an odd hissing noise coming from outside once we stopped. Both my partner and I thought we might be on fire and scrambled out like gophers through the driver’s side door, which, and that moment, was pointed toward the sky. Turns out, the noise was air leaking out of the tires. My partner, the senior deputy and former Texas Highway Patrol, nodded in approval as we stood on the side of the road—and told me he was proud I hadn’t wet myself and run off screaming. Interesting to find out where he set the bar on my behavior.

 Working in DC

I think of that wreck often when I’m teaching defensive tactics—or writing about a fight—because real human violence has a heck of a lot more in common with a car wreck than a boxing match.  

            Law enforcement officers know this. They see it everyday. So, they try not to fight, but when they do, they certainly don’t fight fair. A good cop, one who is well trained and fit, will always bring a gun to a knife fight—or even a stick fight—because they aren’t there to go toe to toe.  They’re there to take care of the situation—and win.

            Jericho knows this as well. When he fights, it will always be with the most overwhelming force he can muster.  Of course, a good adventure requires the odds be stacked against the hero, so Jericho gets plenty of that as well.

            Well-meaning folks often ask if I’ve ever shot anyone, if I’ve ever been shot, or if my vest has ever saved me. Most of that is none of their business. But the fact is, my vest has saved me from serious injury on more than one occasion—once, during a knock-down-drag-out fight in a restaurant kitchen where I was kicked in the chest and knocked into the edge of a stainless steel table. I reimagined that scrap for a scene in DAY ZERO. In reality, I was off work and peeing blood for a couple of days—Jericho is built of stronger stuff. Hopefully, so is my son.

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He's published eleven novels, six of them Westerns.   
DAY ZERO, fifth in his USA Today Bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series, is available now. Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:

www.marccameronbooks.com 

http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor  

YOUNG GUNS: Passing the Torch Without Getting Burned---by Marc Cameron

       

      I got this text from my youngest son the other day, bringing me up to speed on his adventures in the police academy:

     “Got punched in the face today. Failed to block a left hook. It was awesome.”

     That’s my boy.

     Of course, his mother wanted to know the name and badge number of the recruit who hit her baby, but his words brought a tear of nostalgia to my eye.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was in his boots, attending a regional academy in Texas with officers from a dozen different departments. At twenty-two I couldn’t grow the middle of my mustache, but I tried anyway because cops had mustaches—and I was a dead ringer for Opie Taylor without one.

When my son tells me about his day of firearms training and shows me how he’s put so many rounds through his Glock over a two-week period that he’s had to superglue the wound on his trigger finger closed, I’m transported back to dirt berms in a rural pasture, avoiding rattlesnakes and stepping over cow patties as we advanced on our targets.

            When he shows me a new move he’s learned in defensive tactics or a certain handcuffing technique, I envision the ginormous dude who will spin on him someday and bark (or slur or slobber or scream), “You’re just a @*%#& cop! I think I’ll take your gun and…” Anyway, you get the idea.  Thankfully for the folks my son will have to arrest, this new generation of lawdog has Tasers where we only had big honkin’ metal flashlights for the in-between times not covered by open hand or resorting to our sidearm.

            When he tells me about the naiveté of some new recruits, I remember a freshly graduated Highway Patrolman and a Texas Ranger. The two of them walked behind my captain, the Trooper sergeant, and me. It was daybreak and we were all on our way to breakfast. Unbeknownst to us, the Ranger asked to see the new Trooper’s revolver, saying something like: “Is that one of the new 586s they’re issuing at the Academy?” Now, an old salt knows you don’t go handing your sidearm off to someone else in the middle of town—but this kid was new, and it was a Texas Ranger doing the asking. Innocent as a lamb, the young Trooper handed his revolver over so the Ranger could take a look. The Ranger, always a joker, fired a round into the grass, then, quick a wink, passed the gun back to the astonished Trooper. When we all turned, we saw the flushed Trooper holding a smoking Smith and Wesson, a big divot in the courthouse lawn, and a twinkle in the Ranger’s eye.

            Poor kid.  He learned an important lesson that day.

            I just returned from Bouchercon, a conference for Mystery and Thriller writers. Great fun, it afforded me the opportunity to associate with incredibly talented and successful authors. I could name drop here but the list is just too long.  There were a handful of former law enforcement officers in attendance, and oddly enough, we all tended to gravitate toward one another, sometimes without even knowing each other’s background. Call it radar for like-minded thinkers. All of us having either retired or quit to write fulltime, we sat for hours telling tales, cussing the system, and reminiscing about favorite partners who’d had our backs during the toughest of times. Often, we’d each end up staring into space, locked in thought about some past adventure or nightmare that would never make it into a war story.

            You certainly don’t have to have a law enforcement background to write about gunfights, fistfights and evil men—but it doesn’t hurt.

As luck would have it, there was an international motorcycle show next door to the conference.  Since my characters are often found on the back of a bike, I snuck away from the author panel discussions and belly-up-to-the-bar chats long enough to walk around the show and do some research.

Along with the BMWs, Ducatis, Triumphs and Harleys, there were, of course, hundreds of vendors. A college-age kid pointed to the Maui Jim sunglasses resting on top of my head and asked if he could demonstrate his lens-cleaning product.  Happy to get free stuff, I handed them over. He was a nice guy, chatting about motorcycles and all the famous writers next door while he cleaned—one lens. He gave back the glasses and let me look at the world as I had been seeing it, along side the new world through the clean side. I handed the glasses back to him for the rest of the cleaning and asked if he would please take my money. 

One of the most important things they teach at any law enforcement academy is clarity—seeing things as they truly are rather than the way we wish they were.  My son stopped by the other day to talk to me about his officer survival class. When he parroted back that little truism, I knew he was going to be okay.

          It’s astonishing to watch the kid who used to run around in those little baby gowns, pin on a badge and strap on a pistol. It will be two years next month since I’ve hung up my own badge—and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss it. Don’t get me wrong. I love this writing life. But the people I met in my former life—both heroic and heinous—all inform my writing to one level or another.  My knees are achier these days, I need trifocals if I want to be able to see the computer and the front sight of my pistol, and the ring finger of my right hand feels like someone attacked it with a ballpeen hammer—but when my son regales me with stories about ground-fighting, arm bars and shoot-and-move exercises, I forget about getting old, remember the way it was—and put it in a story.

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He's published eleven novels, six of them Westerns.   
TIME OF ATTACK fourth in his USA Today Bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series, is the newest release from Kensington February of 2014. DAY ZERO will hit the shelves February 2015.
Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:
www.marccameronbooks.com 

http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor