Kiss

East Orange, New Jersey, near midnight on a hot, humid night in the late fifties was not quite what I had in mind when I looked for work as a reporter. Still, my night police beat was a learning experience and writing short, declarative copy all the time was the training I would need later during my TV years. One of the problems, then as now, is that TV news people don’t have that discipline and experience and are far too concerned about their appearance and time on camera. Not all, but many.

I had filed the night’s copy and was preparing to leave for a couple of hours sleep before driving to my other part time job as the news editor/writer at a radio station in Newark, when the phone rang. It was an unwelcome intrusion because I was living on four hours sleep per day.

It was an informant telling me that there had been a suicide in a local jail. “You oughta’ get your ass over there,” he advised. It was the kind of story you couldn’t wish away so I got in my trusty Morgan “plus four” and drove to the lock up. Sure enough, there was confusion, with a lot of cops looking concerned. I was neither welcome nor unwelcome, a necessary irritant who had tried to be a good guy and present the cops’ side of any story, and they appreciated that.

I spoke to the ranking officer on the scene, let’s call him “Foley,” and he said, “Yeah, this spade hung himself.” The obvious question had to be answered, “How often did the turnkey make his rounds and when had the suicide expired?” It was then I realized that something was askew: Foley hesitated before answering. He didn’t like blacks and didn’t consider this too big a deal. “Every twenty minutes, and we figured he was dead just before twenty of twelve.” I studied the big cop for a minute and knew him to be one of the best and bravest police officers in the region, but I had to ask the next question.

The breath of life, mouth to mouth resuscitation, had just come into vogue. It was saving people in crisis. “That means he was discovered within a couple of minutes of when he hanged himself. Did you give him mouth to mouth?” Foley looked at me and whatever modicum of tolerance he had for reporters, even sympathetic newsmen, went up in the anger in his eyes, “You asshole, why do you ask me that? I have to kiss my wife.”