Paladino

Paladino

The sun was about to set over East New York, Brooklyn, and it was the end of a shitty day. The details of the dead woman’s neighborhood were building up inside of me, the way little drops of poison build up—the rusty chain link fence with a shiny new padlock; the growling pitbull; two people yelling at each other somewhere up the block. All that, and my partner was an asshole.

“Remind me again,” my partner said as we walked up the block to the woman’s house. “What are we doing here?”

“We’re investigating a possible homicide,” I said. “I figure we might as well. You know, with us being homicide detectives and all.”

My partner, Paladino, spat on the ground. “No fucking homicide here,” he mumbled. “Just some sad bitch who took the easy way out.”

“You don’t know that. I’ve had cases where someone killed someone, made it look like a suicide. You have to be careful. Plus, dispatch says one of her windows is broken.”

“Bullshit,” Paladino said. “We’re just covering our asses so some fucking lawyer can’t sue us over some bullshit. We’re shoveling this shit instead of investigating real crimes and getting justice for people who didn’t deserve to die.”

“Shut up, Paladino.”

We reached the house. A patrol cop showed us inside. There were more cops inside, and they nodded gravely at me—the kind of respect young men think old men want—and exchanged smiles and winks with Paladino, who asked one of them about last night’s game. The first cop showed us into the bathroom.

Someone had turned the bathtub faucet off but it must have been recently, because water sloshed around on the floor. The woman lay dead in the bathtub, half submerged under pink cloudy water. I figured the razor was already in an evidence bag somewhere.

I heard Paladino say, “Fucking Red Sox? Never in a million years.”

The scene got to me for some reason, and I wanted a cigarette, even though I hadn’t smoked in years. Outside the bathroom, Paladino was talking to another cop, an attractive young blonde.

“Paladino.”

He turned. “What,” he said.

“Thought you might be interested in seeing the crime scene.”

He turned back to the blonde. I couldn’t see his face, but from her face I know he rolled his eyes. Then he stepped into the bathroom, looked at the body, whistled, and walked out into the kitchen. When I walked in he made a big show out of searching for clues, in the sugar bowl, in the fridge, under a pile of newspapers.

I looked around too. The little house was a dump. The kitchen floor sank in the middle, the table’s legs had been broken and taped and broken again, and light streamed in a filthy yellow through windows that looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in years. 

I walked over to one of the cops. “Anyone else live here?” I asked.

“No husband. Just her kid. He found the body.”

“Shit,” Paladino said. “Selfish bitch had a kid? How old?”

“Five.”

“Shit,” Paladino said again. “Bring him in.”

They brought the kid in. He didn’t say anything. “Come here, pal,” Paladino said. He crouched down so he was the kid’s height. “Hey buddy. C’mere. It’s OK.”

I get uncomfortable around kids, so I kept looking around. But I didn’t look that hard. I was suddenly exhausted.

I caught my reflection in an old yellowed mirror next to the refrigerator. For some reason I kept on looking. And for some reason I thought, You become what you want to be, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. Unconsciously, I ran my fingers through my thinning grey hair.

I thought, Any idiot can be world-weary. I thought, You can wear the bags under your eyes like badges of honor, but it doesn’t mean anyone will salute.

Then I looked back at Paladino. He was still crouched on the floor, playing thumb war with the kid, who was laughing now. The blonde cop, crouched next to him, was laughing too. And I thought, Maybe I hate Paladino because he still hopes.

The kid won the thumb war. Paladino gave him a playful push. The kid pushed him back, and Paldino acted like it was a hard push and fell back on the floor with a groan. Then he saw something and froze. He picked a scrap of paper up off the floor, glanced at it, and got up.

“Give us a minute, Pal?” he said. When the kid left he said, “I found the suicide note.”

“You sure?”

“No. Maybe it’s someone else’s suicide note.”

“Funny. Give it here.”

He tossed it on the counter. I picked it up and held it next to a shopping list that was taped to the fridge. “Matches her handwriting,” I said. “Guess that’s it.”

“You think? I told you.”

“Yeah. That’s it. Still, we’d better have them keep looking around, talk to the neighbors. Just to be safe.”

Paladino didn’t respond. He’d taken the note back, and he was reading it. I expected more comments, maybe a critique. But he was silent, reading intently. By the time he finished I noticed his hand was trembling.

“What, don’t like sad endings?” I said. “Expecting something different?”

He just handed me the note. I held it up and read the first line: To Whom It May Concern.

The poor woman didn’t even have anyone to write her suicide note to.

I glanced up at Paladino, but something in his eyes made me keep reading.

You might not understand this. You might think I did this because I’m sad, or confused. But I’ve never been clearer in my life. I finally understand the joke.

“What joke?”

“Keep reading.”

What joke, you might ask? The only joke—the whole thing. All of life. You and me and everybody. I know why people do what they do. I know why people hurt other people, and I know why it doesn’t matter. And I know why suicide is the only rational response…

“Wait!” Paladino said. He snatched the note out of my hands. “Forget it,” he said. “Don’t waste your time. Just some confused lady’s ramblings.”

Then he folded up the note and put it in his pocket.

“Hey!” I said. “You can’t do that. You’ve got to log that as evidence.”

“I’ll log it,” he said. “C’mon, let’s go already.”



When we got back to precinct I was still thinking about that note. I sat down at my desk knowing I should get to work on my report. Instead, I opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a binder.

I know it sounds strange, but I make a copy of every suicide note I come across and keep it in that binder. I’ve been doing it for years—I don’t know why. But sometimes when I start to wonder what it’s all about, why I should keep going, I pull the binder out and read it.

As if people find some kind of clarity in the moments before they do themselves. As if there’s anything but emptiness and confusion and usually drugs or booze as well.

I spent the rest of the day looking through that binder.



I don’t know what happened to Paladino after that. He didn’t say anything was different, but he started acting strange. And he started making dumb little mistakes, the kind you learn to avoid in your first week as a detective. There was a blankness about him, a sense of going through the motions.

A week later, he didn’t show up for work. I didn’t think much of it until the Captain walked into the middle of the large open room where we all have our desks.

“Guys, can I have your attention for a moment,” he said. “I have something I’ve got to tell you.”

Then he was quiet for a minute.

“I don’t know how to tell you all this…” He paused again and looked at the floor. “Well, you men all know Ed Paladino.”

“Unfortunately!” someone said, and everybody laughed. Most people shared my opinion of Paladino.

“Well,” the Captain said. “The thing is, I just got a call from his wife. And um, he’s dead. Ed Paladino is dead.”

The room got silent. Most people didn’t like Paladino, but he was still a cop. He was still a guy we knew.

“How?” someone finally said.

“Well, ah, we’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report,” the Captain said. “But at the moment, based on all the available evidence, and, um, the eyewitness testimony…”

The Captain looked down at the floor again, took a breath.

“It seems as if he killed himself.”



I went to the funeral. I talked to his wife, even though I didn’t know what to tell her. But I told her about the kid and the thumb war, and she loved that. I was worried they’d ask me to give a eulogy, but fortunately they didn’t. When it was over his wife gave me a long hug, then left.

If they had asked me to give a eulogy, I think that might have been OK. I think I could have said something nice and meant it. I found that I didn’t hate him now that he was gone.

Back at precinct everyone was quiet. I walked over to his desk. As his former partner, everyone knew it was my job to clean out his desk and take his stuff out of our car.

I walked out to the car with an empty cardboard box. I smoked a cigarette, then another. Then I walked to the car and pulled his things out. When I was done I left the box in the car, walked back into precinct and repeated the same process at his desk. I handled his things gently—almost reverentially, I thought later. I put the second box in the car with the first. After I got off work, I’d drive to his wife’s house and leave the boxes with her, figuring she could sort through it all and decide what she wanted.

I found a lot of things while I was doing that, but I didn’t find the woman’s note.

But then, I didn’t really look that hard.