Lines and shadows by Joseph Wambaugh

Yolie had gone to the same high school as Robbie's police academy classmate and fellow squad member, Carlos Chacon. When the experiment began, she and Robbie spent many hours talking about it. She learned of terrible things the bandits did to aliens, and how this squad of cops was going to do something that had never been attempted before. There was file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009
    dummy1
    Page 29 of 256
    something else, something that Yolie was uniquely equipped to understand: Robbie Hurt, almost from the beginning, was feeling like an outsider.
    "The jokes they tell in Spanish," Robbie complained to her. "I never know if they're about me. Then I have to have them explained."
    "That's a little thing," she'd tell him.
    "It's not so little," he'd answer.
    And as the days passed, the others, some of whom at first spoke very poor Spanish, began boning up. They had to learn how the Tijuana cholos talked. It was to become critical that they learn.
    "I'm sure that talking Spanish makes them feel… closer," Yolie Hurt told her husband. "It's kind of… endearing for them."
    The wives of Tony Puente, Renee Camacho, Fred Gill and Manny Lopez were white. Carlos Chacon's wife was of Filipino descent. The wives of Eddie Cervantes, Ernie Salgado and Joe Castillo were the only ones of Mexican descent, Yolie Hurt was from mixed parentage: her mother was Mexican her father black, and physically she was a blend of both. She understood culture clash and how it feels not to precisely belong among whites, blacks or Mexicans… Robbie was proud of the fact that he was a good writer.
    "At least I can do the best reports," he said to her. "They come to me for help with their reports."
    "Those Mexican cops haven't had much in their lives," Yolie told him. "You got to be patient. This is real exciting for them." Robbie Hurt's young wife had no idea as yet how exciting it was going to get.
    Except for Dick Snider, Robbie was the only one of the original officers on the task force whom they called an Q.T.M., which was how the U.S. Border Patrol labeled aliens who were "other than Mexican." He was the only one not to understand Spanish, since Dick Snider did speak the language. There were forty black cops on the department. There were eight black sergeants and one lieutenant, so the blacks were only slightly better represented than the Mexican-Americans.
    "How can any rookie say no to this job?" he asked his wife, "Especially a black rookie?" This black rookie didn't say no. He leaped at the offer. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009
    dummy1
    Page 30 of 256
    They called him King Kelly. "Guys that ride bikes get handles like King ," he said. "And a biker always gets a rep, a jacket. Even a cop biker. Me, I had a cock jacket. They thought every broad that rode my bike, with the exception a my mother, got laid. Like I had a cock bike with a trick seat on it! I'm a married man with three children. Just because I'm a biker I get a cock jacket and a handle: King Kelly."
    There was a gaggle of waitresses at a certain restaurant near Southern substation. The cops had handles for them : Fat Mindy -Thin Mindy-Lana Banana. Two or more waitresses were always ready to party after work, to go to The Wing, a nearby park named in honor of early glider flights wherein daredevils soared fifty feet above the earth. The cops and waitresses would drink beer at The Wing and commiserate about their respective jobs and about how unappreciative the public is, and pretty soon they'd be soaring at five thousand feet without benefit of glider.
    One night King Kelly went for a run on his screaming 550 Honda with a blood alcohol reading of about .18, he believes, and his passenger, Lana Banana, was even drunker. Everyone loved that Honda and the bright-orange snowmobile suit that went with it. It was fun to see how fast the Honda would roar by the base