The morning after MacWhite’s call, I walked into the bullpen with a knot in my chest. Then I saw him, strutting past like it was a Paris runway, those red shoes flashing. It was grotesque and hilarious all at once. How do you take a man seriously when he dresses like a clown in a badge? I called him Detective Red Shoes. Not to his face, of course—he didn’t need more reasons to obsess over me—but in my head, that’s who he was. 4’11” on a good day, maybe 4’10” after lunch, and he strolled around the squad room like he was a heavyweight from the Bronx. Or was it Brooklyn? He made sure everyone knew he was from New York, as if geography alone granted him toughness. But toughness doesn’t clatter down the hallway in shoes with heels that sound like tap dancing on linoleum.
He boasted about being from New York, carried himself like he’d survived gang wars and back-alley shootouts, but he acted like a child denied candy. He’d walk around with his box of donuts, passing them out like gifts from the gods, and when he got to me? He’d skip my desk on purpose. Childish, deliberate, petty. Coffee runs were the same circus. He’d strut through the room, asking everyone what they wanted, performing hospitality like it was a Broadway act, but when it came to me, silence. The kind of silence that speaks volumes. Every afternoon, he would grind coffee beans, waking everyone up with the noise. Then, he’d wonder over to my desk and ask my poor co-worker if she wanted a cup of coffee from Colombia. Reluctantly, she’d walk over to his desk and accept it—a coffee that, as she told me later, tasted like an ashtray.
And then there were his hands. The first time I noticed them, I actually blinked twice, convinced I was seeing things. They looked like a six-year-old’s hands, soft and stubby, dangling from his wrists like afterthoughts. He’d hold a pen, and it was like watching a child attempt calligraphy. A man who’d spent thirty years on the job, reduced to toy-sized appendages that couldn’t quite fill the role. His shoes told the same story—size six, maybe, if we were being generous. He had to buy footwear in the children’s section. I couldn’t forget his permanently sour face. His face always looked mid-complaint, as if the world had personally wronged him and never apologized. Maybe bitterness was all he had left to hand out, and I became the easy target.
And that’s the truth about Red Shoes. Everything he did was an announcement of insecurity. He tried to erase me—walking past me in the hallway, staring right through me before lighting up for the person behind me. He’d dodge my requests for follow-ups, undercut my reports, treat my work like something he could ignore into nonexistence. But he wasn’t erasing me. He was advertising himself. Advertising his bitterness. Advertising his desperation to be taken seriously.
Sometimes, I think that cruelty is just noise—all that clattering. Red Shoes was so short that I barely noticed him beside me half the time; I only caught sight of the top of his head. Every time he walked away from me, clattering down the hall on those absurd heels, I didn’t see power. I saw a child stomping their feet to remind people they were there. I saw a person so consumed by their own smallness that they needed to make someone else feel invisible just to feel taller, but it only made them look ridiculous. It’s just the sound of heels on a too-small person, walking away from the truth of who they are.
Detective Red Shoes wasn’t my nemesis. He wasn’t my equal. He was a cautionary tale: thirty years in the game, and still too small to fill the room without making noise.
If Detective Red Shoes was a cartoon character, then his sidekick was straight out of a bad buddy comedy. I called him Detective Bro. 6’5″, 230 pounds—built like he missed his calling as a linebacker or maybe a sumo wrestler. The biggest man in the squad room, and somehow the smallest when it came to dignity. Every sentence ended with “bro,” like punctuation. “What’s up, bro?” “You see the game, bro?” “Coffee run, bro?” If you closed your eyes, you’d think he was auditioning for a role in some straight-to-DVD fraternity movie.
Allegedly, he graduated from UNC. I say allegedly because I’ve never seen the diploma, never heard of the graduation, never even heard him talk about anything vaguely academic. But I’ve seen the UNC logo slapped on every inch of his desk like a college freshman trying to prove he belongs. Desk, chair, coffee mug, mousepad—he turned the squad room into a Rameses-themed dorm room. It didn’t say “educated”; it screamed “insecure.”
And that wasn’t the half of it. This clown was the biggest guy in the room, but the biggest ass-kisser you’d ever meet. Watching him fawn over the female lieutenant was enough to make you gag. The way he leaned in, smiled, turned on the syrupy charm—you’d think they were auditioning for a romance movie. I wanted to tell them to get a room. His career was built on that smarmy act: charm your way to a promotion, charm your way into the sweet spot assignments, charm your way into being tolerated. It worked, too.
What made it unbearable was the noise. He never shut up. From 6 a.m. until 4 p.m., it was a constant stream of chatter—sports, movies, politics, what he ate, what he was going to eat, what he thought about what you ate. Loud, obnoxious, attention-seeking. He was like the squad’s unwanted radio station: no off button, no volume control, just static all day long.
And of course, he and Red Shoes were inseparable. The perfect couple. Laurel and Hardy if Laurel was insecure about his height and Hardy was obsessed with the sound of his own voice. They’d vanish together for three-hour lunches, waddling back like they’d been on some grand adventure, laughing too loudly at jokes nobody else wanted to hear. The two of them—Red Shoes with his clattering heels and Detective Bro with his nonstop chatter—were the squad room’s comedy act. Not funny, but unforgettable.
