As cops, we're trained to see the signs—something out of the ordinary, patterns in behavior, impressions in the ground. I can read a man in seconds, although I'm not so sure I learned that on the force. Reading the signs kept me alive on the streets. I used to like to sit on the steps on Rue Mont Cenis and watch people go about their lives. It was a game—finding patterns in the chaos, imagining their lives, reading their actions. I still play that game, only now they pay me for it.
While it's one thing to read who a person is now, seeing the signs of who they might become takes real skill. Bruno had that skill. Somehow he saw a cop in me. That's something because the first time he laid eyes on me I was stealing a piece of fruit. He didn't arrest me then; that was two years later. And by that time, I was up to my eyeballs in no good.
Still, he saw the signs of something salvageable in me. A promise of more, perhaps. I don't know how you can tell. But whatever it was, it was enough to make him take a risk and bring a filthy street tough home to live with him and his family. He saw more in me than I see when I look back at that boy. But whereas I'm always on the lookout for a sign that someone might do harm, Bruno searched for signs of hope. And he saw them in me.
