Because of his courage, a lot of cops went down during the years Frank Serpico was on the force. To good cops, he is a hero. To dirty cops, he is a rat. In the months following the shooting, the rumor was that the Mafia had a contract on his head. Some still want him dead.

During the months leading up to our meeting, I asked all kinds of people—my hairdresser, students, friends, my dad, strangers, Goth kids on the Mall, a few homeless guys (they all remembered and admired him), a waitress, a bus driver, the librarian, a couple of academics, some cops (they all remember him, too), a couple of musicians, a cab driver, my kids, "Do you remember Frank Serpico?" Some gave me this vacant stare, so I added, "Remember the movie, Serpico, with Al Pacino?"

"Is he still alive?" "Is he a real guy?" "Yeah, I really respect him, the way he stood up for what he believed in." "Ummm...no, I don't think so." "He's my hero, he's why I became a cop." "Is he in that band...you know the one, oh man, I can't think of it. Do you know?" "Wasn't he Al Pacino in that movie?" "MMMM, I think so. What was it he did again?"

So here's this man who risked his life for what he believes in. A man who stood alone against corruption. I wonder what makes him tick. What is it that makes integrity more important than life itself? I want to know this, because there is so little to look to these days. So few heroes to emulate. We're living in a time when world leaders are publicly accused of lying. A time when we hunger for gossip and the media obliges our cravings with daily doses of tabloid journalism. A time when few can hold onto hero-ship because we pick at the edges of the human scab until we make it bleed. And then when its raw underbelly is exposed, we shake our heads yes. We knew it. He was no good. I wonder what the cost of courage is. What price has Frank Serpico paid? How did this betrayal—being left in a pool of his own blood to die—change him? Who is he, really?

Now, as I sit in this little restaurant, somewhat of a cross between a hip trendy café and a New York diner, I wonder what to expect. We marked our calendars. Perhaps this, September 25, 1 p.m., will be our first and only meeting.

I'm five minutes early. It smells of good coffee, organic vegetables and cilantro. When I first walk in, two men at the counter stop eating, their forks halfway between plate and mouth. One's wearing a black vintage shop jacket and 1950s hat, the other a white T-shirt and khakis. I'm thinking a town that still has nickel parking meters is small enough to know a stranger. A red-haired waitress comes up to me, her eyes questioning.

"Do you know Frank Serpico?" I ask, half-thinking he doesn't live anywhere near here. So when she gives me her expressionless "yeah," I am relieved.

"I'm meeting him, and we don't know each other," I explain. "Would you mind letting me know when he arrives?"

"You'll know," she says.

"I'll know?"

"Yeah, you'll know."

It's taken months to set this meeting up. The checking on me, my resume, my clips. It's been a series of mediated conversations between Frank, his lawyer-nephew Vincent and me. And I still don't know Frank's phone number or exactly what town he lives in. It's five after one, and here I sit—more than 500 miles from home, not even sure he'll show.

ROOTS Frank Serpico is 64. An Aries. Each day, he checks what the stars have in store. Astrological stars, that is. He has little time for Hollywood or labels or anything that smacks of conformism. He speaks five languages, dances the tango and plays the harmonica and African drums. And he's rarely without a woman. His friends are really acquaintances, and he's not afraid to cry. When asked if he's a vegetarian or an artist, he responds with another question, something he does a lot. "I don't know, am I?" And then with eloquent poetic precision, he uses another's words to describe how he feels:

The bullet left fragments in his skull, and his hearing is impaired. Still, he's got much more compassion for the guy who shot him than for the ones who left him for dead. Frank says, "No doubt my life changed after February 3."

He retired from the New York City Police Department after 11 years—a disability retirement a year after the shooting. The only thing Frank had wanted was to earn his gold shield (detective badge); the department finally gave it to him, promoting him after the shooting. They gave him the Medal of Honor, too. But what makes Frank mad is that the commendation is not for standing up to corruption, but for getting shot.

Where did this passion come from? Frank points to Vincenzo and Maria Giovanna Serpico, his parents. And even though Frank has traveled to many parts of the world, he's still a Brooklyn kid. Sometimes in his innocence, he can momentarily look like the kid who shined shoes at the subway stops or stole away to catch glimpses of the huge goldfish at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

When Frank talks about his childhood, he's a different person. He's calm, centered and laughs a lot. He tells how his father taught him to use a shoe hand polishing cloth. How he and his friends would get pictures of Jane Russell, the sex symbol of his time, erase her dress and fill in the missing pieces. He tells about going to the Brooklyn Museum to look at the jeweled Arabian daggers. "It was a magic carpet ride for me."

In the mornings, Vincenzo woke Frank with a big cappuccino. "He'd boil milk and the left-over espresso from Sunday on Monday morning," Frank says. "He would always have a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice for me. And he'd make me a big sandwich for school. A round loaf, I can still see the cracked grain, and cut a hole in it and stuff it with meat balls."

Frank says the kids would make fun of him, but Maria Giovanna said they were just jealous. He calls her a true macrobiotic and respects the way she would conserve energy, lighting candles at night. "The seeds are there, it's so important the framework you build your life on," he says.

THE ENTRANCE He shows, about six minutes late. The waitress was right. I know. Frank's movements are sweeping, theatrical. I feel his energy.  He's wearing sunglasses, two silver hoop earrings, a black shirt, black pants and a gray jacket. He's got a Sean Connery-like white beard, and I notice he's cut his shoulder-length hair. It's in longer layers. I put my hand out; he kisses my cheek. I'm not sure why, but I expected he would be taller.

Barely in his seat, he pops back up. He removes his driving gloves, finger by finger. Then his jacket. Then the rounds: the chef, the two guys at the counter. He orders carrot and celery juice and a soy cappuccino, from two different waitresses. We talk about last night's sky, the stars and his car date with his tango teacher. It's a new car, a convertible white Toyota Spyder. They're hard to find, he tells me. About five sentences later, he's back up. "How's your bladder?" he asks, before walking away. This time I watch him. His movements are just as I had expected. Just like Al Pacino portrayed him in the film.

"Yeah," he says when I mention it. "People who know me say, 'Al Pacino acts more like Frank Serpico than Frank Serpico.'" But I hear the tension. He doesn't like the movie talk. Still, he shares that he met with Robert Redford in Greenwich Village before they cast the part. Redford was considering the role, Frank tells me.

He orders a salad, dressing on the side. I offer him my bread. He peppers a small ramekin of olive oil and dips the crusted end in, takes one bite and pops up, still chewing.  "Gotta plug the meter," he says, laughing. I can't figure out what's funny, so I ask when he returns. "That's a line from the film."

There are parts of the film that make him cringe, especially when Al Pacino is going across the bridge singing. "People say I have a great voice," he tells me, now leaning into the table. "I love opera, I love to sing opera." But if you ask him about Pacino, he reveals little. "Al Pacino is an actor," he says. "I'm the real thing."

"Hollywood is no different than the police force, with its corruption and racial profiling. Take my movie," Serpico says, fingering the silver and glass object around his neck. "They make the bad guy black. I tell Sidney Lumet he wasn't black, and he says to me, 'Pussycat, I'm trying to make a movie.'" The way Frank tells it, after he was on the set for a while, there was a parting of the ways. They even took his rental car away.

Seems Frank got more than he bargained for in Hollywood, though. A woman he dated there got pregnant, and he was slapped with a paternity suit. But Frank did the right thing—he pays her half his monthly pension. And he sees his son, who is now 20, about four times a year.

Our conversation is about as disjointed as his eating. A bite here, a swallow there. But eventually he comes back to the topic. I ask about the glass object he continues to cradle. "It's a talisman," he says. I discover later that it's his looking glass so he can read the fine print on food labeling.

"You wanna see something?" he asks, and pulls his wallet out. In the first plastic cover is his police I.D. badge from the 1970s. "See my eyes?" I look, but I don't see. "See, across here." He rubs his forefinger across the photo. "The Japanese call it sampuco, life out of balance."

After about four hours, we go for a ride in the Spyder. Kids are yelling as we drive by. "Hey, Paco." "Paco." That's what everyone calls him. But then he remembers he has a tango lesson in 30 minutes and drops me at the side of the road. "Tomorrow?" he asks. "Tomorrow."

EUROPE Frank lived in Europe for more than a decade, with most of his time spent on a farm in Holland. These were some of the best, and the hardest, years. Suffering from post-traumatic stress, he studied the Bible, trying to solve it like a case, questioning everything. And now he's working on what he calls the case against Moses.

In his search for answers, Frank found a spiritual group in England, The Order of the Star, and together they established a mind, body and spirit school (ORISA). "It was a wonderful concept, we allowed people to use their own innate creativity," he says. "We would guide and support, rather than inhibit, children." But eventually this endeavor fell short of Frank's expectations. "Too culty," he says, and he backed out. But working with kids stuck. He's a natural. Today Frank teaches kids about nature and issues of integrity.

Some have called Frank Serpico a womanizer. So I ask him if he even likes women. At first, he seems insulted. Days later he tells me, "You're right, I don't like women. I like food. I love women, they are the yin of my yang."

There have been many. But perhaps really only one. Marianne. A Dutch woman. The woman who lived with him in Holland. The woman he married in a spiritual wedding. The woman who died of cancer. The woman he says is his true soul mate.

Seems like some might have given up, after all that Frank endured. Some may have backed off, gotten selfish, not worried about the world anymore. Not Frank. His passion for doing the right thing only intensified. "Suffering is part of learning," he says. He lets no one slide. "I know I'm a pain in the ass," he says. "I've got to say what I feel."

His hero? The controversial Thomas Paine. Interestingly, Paine was often ostracized by those who feared his free and sometimes radical opinions. And like Paine, Frank sees himself as a citizen of the universe. He gets fired up when he talks about his frustrations with the American system, Mario Cuomo, the police department and prisons. "Look at the corruption in Hollywood, the corruption in society," he says. "What's the answer? It starts with each person. It's time to take responsibility."