by David DeLee
Levy wasn’t sure she agreed one-hundred percent, but often in her experience it was borne out.
“Can you work up a profile on him for us?” Whalen asked. “Give us a read on him from his co-workers, his CO. We were working on it, but with this new Olivarez and Cabot thing…”
“Glad to,” Greene said. “Get started on it right away.”
They all exchanged handshakes. Captain Greene headed for the front lobby, pulling his overcoat on as he went.
Flynn’s phone rang. He excused himself, stepping away from Whalen and Levy to take the call. When he rejoined them, pocketing his phone, he said, “That was Toro. We might have a break. TARU pulled some screenshots from the F train video. Our two suspects, based on our witness’ identification, met up with a couple of skells on the subway platform. Toro reached out to some contacts of his and floated the photo around. A guy he knows, a detective in the gang unit out of the Seven-three in Brooklyn, picked one of ’em out.”
“One of the shooters?” Whalen asked.
“Sounds more like it’s one of the guys the shooters met up with. Toro’s guy, Hector Calderon, said he can’t be sure from the quality of the photo, meaning it sucks, but he thinks he knows the skell.”
“If so, Calderon’s guy can get us the shooters,” Levy said.
“That’s the hope,” Flynn said. “Toro’s still tied up with canvassing—”
“Then go,” Whalen said.
“What about Kevin Wills?” Levy asked, meaning the witness Goodall had.
“We can’t do anything with him until we find ’im and figure out a way to get him away from Goodall,” Whalen said. “Let me work on that. In the meantime, you two track down Calderon. See what he can get us. This could be the break we need.”
73rd – Precinct – NYPD
1470 East New York Avenue
Brownsville, Brooklyn
Tuesday, November 28th 11:35 a.m.
DANNY TORO’S GANG UNIT friend worked out of the Seven-Three in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. It was an area of the city that’d been a hotbed of violence, property crime, and all sorts of unpleasantness for decades. Poverty, crime, and drug addiction ran rampant through what was the densest concentration of public housing projects in the nation. Closed storefronts, abandoned buildings, and empty lots, many of which were now ad hoc community gardens, a grassroots effort to beautify the neighborhood, populated the area that consistently dominated the city’s murder rates and ranked lowest for personal safety.
The two-story brick precinct building filled the city block along New York Avenue from Thomas S. Boyland Street to Bristol Street. Flynn pulled up onto the sidewalk in front and parked alongside a row of blue and whites and battered unwrapped detective cars.
When they got out, they found Hector Calderon, a dark-skinned Hispanic man, half sitting, half leaning on the bumper of a blue and white, smoking a thick cigar. Upon seeing them, he stood up. He wore civilian clothes and looked like a day laborer hanging around waiting for someone to hire him. His dark hair was streaked gray at the temples. He puffed a cloud of smoke into the air and approached them.
“You Flynn and Levy?” he asked around the cigar, squinting against the sunshine or the smoke, Flynn couldn’t tell which.
“Yeah,” Flynn said.
“Calderon,” the man said. They exchanged handshakes.
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” Levy said. She kept her sunglasses on and returned her hands to the pockets of her trench coat. The sun might be shining but it was still damn cold outside.
“Fuckers killed a couple of cops,” Calderon said. “Damn right I’ll give you whatever you need.”
“Danny Toro said you might have a lead as to who our doers are?”
Flynn keyed up the screen shot of the subway platform Toro had sent them on their phones. It was of four black or Hispanic men congregating on the F train platform minutes after the shooting deaths of Olivarez and Cabot. The dark clothing and hoodies matched the witness descriptions they’d been given.
He held the phone out to Calderon.
The gang unit detective didn’t take it or even look at it. “Yeah, seen it. Looked at it like a thousand times already. The guy on the left in the puffy coat and gray knit cap, that’s a dude named Juan Diego Cruz. Goes by JD. A piece of shit banger runs with a club called the Pit King Spades. They’ve got about thirty members, own the drug and prostitution trade along Pitkin Avenue from Bristol to Watkins Street.”
Calderon started to walk, leading them around the corner to Bristol Avenue.
“They hang out in a MacDonald’s about a block from here.” He blew out a thick cloud of cigar smoke.
Flynn and Levy fell in step on either side of him. They walked beside a twelve-foot high brick wall that separated the sidewalk from the police parking area. Small saplings lined the street.
“Their territory’s only a block away from the precinct? That’s pretty ballsy,” Flynn commented.
Calderon shrugged. “Not really. Every section of Brownsville’s controlled by someone. Besides, the deck’s stacked in their favor. We practically have to see them shoot someone with our own eyes to make an arrest. DA won’t touch a case unless it’s a slam dunk and tied with a pretty bow. And even when we do, they’re out on bail before the paperwork’s even submitted. You don’t cross a T or dot the I’s and they’re out on a technicality. Every tool we’ve ever had that’s worked gets yanked away from us.”
“Such as?” Flynn asked.
“Stop and frisk, for one. Riot gear, ammo. We’re too militarized. Puts people off, they say.”
“Doesn’t it?” Levy asked.
He stopped. “I worked this neighborhood during the height of the crack and heroin epidemic, when it was at its worst. In oh-nine we had twenty-eight murders. You’re talking a portion of land that’s just over one square mile. That’s one square mile. Out of forty shootings last year, fourteen people were murdered. We boast the highest murder, robbery, and felony assault rates in the city most years. The incarceration rate for Brownsville residents is three times the rest of the whole goddamn city, forget the nation.”
He resumed walking. “They say we should be guardians, not warriors. Ask me, this city needs a fucking army. And we should be equipped like one.”
“A show of force on that scale scares people,” Levy countered.
“The only people it scares are the skells. The rest? They feel reassured. It makes them feel safe.”
“What about the abuses by the police?” Levy asked. “The profiling. Cops targeting minorities, abusing their authority. Left unchecked—”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re the IA chick Toro told me about.” Calderon shook his head. “So, here’s a question. Do you take all the cars away because some idiot drives drunk? Do you throw the baby out with the bathwater? No, you deal with the knuckleheads on a case-by-case basis. You learn how to recruit better cops. Here’s one. Maybe you pay us a little bit more and have your politicians support us rather than crying about the poor criminal’s rights. You don’t take away the tools to do our jobs and then wonder why crime rates go sky high and cops are getting killed.”
“What about the innocent people targeted by bigots and racists cops?”
They reached the corner. A ‘For Lease’ building that had once housed a Foot Locker store. It wasn’t the only one in a row of storefronts that offered a bodega, a pawn shop, a bling store, an electronics place and a bail bondman’s office.
Calderon stopped and turned. “Like I say, you deal with them. You got your guidelines. You’ve got your laws. You’ve got your experienced officers training your rookies. A cop steps over the line, he or she loses the right to wear the badge. Now, let me ask you. You ever cradle a six-year-old girl who’d been shot in the throat by a drive-by gangbanger? Hold your hand to her neck as she bleeds out in your arms and the guy who done the shooting, you had him on a gun possession charge the week before, but because you didn’t provide,” he made air q
uotes, “proper justification for the stop and frisk, he got cut loose.”
Calderon looked at his hands as if he could still see the blood on them.
“Okay. Enough,” Flynn said. “You made your point, Detective.”
“I know my beat,” Calderon said. “I know its people. We’ve got a population density of seventy-eight people per one acre. One acre. That’s a lot size for the average single-family house in the suburbs. Think about that. Ninety-six percent of the people here are black or Hispanic, fifty-six percent of ’em are under the age of forty-four. It’s not about racial profiling. It’s about protecting that six-year-old girl, giving her the chance to grow up, to live. If a few people get their feelings hurt while I do that, then so fucking be it.”
“What can you tell us about this Cruz character,” Flynn said, changing the subject.
A yellow cab blasted through a red light. His carelessness was answered by the screech of brakes and the long, angry blast of a car horn. The people who hurried along on the busy street didn’t even bother to look up.
“He’s twenty-two,” Calderon said. “Been with the Pit King Spades since he was fourteen. He’s got a rap sheet goes all the way back to family court. I’ve arrested him three times myself. He never knew his dad. Doesn’t even know who he is, the result of a one-night stand his momma had. She spent her life selling her body for the price of a fix. Cruz’s got three or four step-brothers and sisters—I’ve lost track—every one of ’em with a different daddy. The streets raised him, and the Spades turned him into the hard-ass turd he is today.”
“Armed?” Levy asked.
“You can count on it.” Across the street was the McDonald’s. Calderon jabbed at it with the cigar pinched between his fingers. “He’s in there with a couple of his homies—”
“How do you know that?” Levy asked.
“CI. Got the call from him ten minutes before you showed up.” He looked at the fast food joint. “There’s only one way in or out. We toss his homeboys out and sit JD down for a chat.”
“You make it sound easy,” Flynn said.
“I deal with these guys every day. They don’t like me, but they respect me. I don’t abuse that.” He shot Levy a look. “That said, I don’t expect him to try anything with us, but you never know. Stay alert. Ready?”
“Let’s do this,” Flynn said.
Calderon took a last puff on his cigar, tossed it to the sidewalk, and ground it out under his heel. He yanked the door open.
The restaurant was a typical L-shape layout. The service counter was on the long side, to the left. Flynn felt a twinge of panic when he saw the line of people waiting to order. Should’ve been expected, after all it was lunch time. Ahead of them were colorful plastic booths lining each side and a row of anchored tables and chairs down the middle. In the back were doors to the restrooms and a back room.
The tables were unoccupied. But two of the booths to their right were filled with a young couple, one black, one Hispanic, and a family of three. A father, mother, and a little girl with pigtails. Nervous eyes tracked the cops as they walked in.
Calderon’s awful story came roaring back into Flynn’s head as he stared down at the three young black men lounging in the rear booth near the restroom doors. They had gangsta written all over them, right down to the red and black bandannas either tied around their arms, a leg, or worn as a scarf on their heads. Facing them, he recognized Juan Diego Cruz from the subway camera screen shot.
The two bangers with their backs to the door turned when Cruz nodded his chin toward Flynn, Levy, and Calderon. Just as he saw gangbanger in each of them, they saw cop.
The other point of concern for Flynn was they had the three young men trapped. The restaurant had two sets of doors. One at the far end of the service counter and the other one the cops had just come through. The Pit King Spades had nowhere to go to escape except to go through the cops. Or they could decide to shoot it out…
Flynn was starting to have a bad feeling about their chosen course of action.
Without moving his lips, Calderon whispered, “Be cool and everything’ll be fine. Just follow my lead.” He stepped toward the three young men.
Flynn and Levy followed closely behind.
“JD, my man,” Calderon said. “We gotta talk.”
Cruz cocked his head like a confused puppy. “Do we?”
“We do,” Calderon assured him. He looked at the other three men. “You two are gonna wanna scram.”
“Do we?” one of the young men challenged, smiling a mouth full of gold-capped teeth.
“Unless you want to spend the night in lockup, you do.”
“For what?” gold teeth asked.
“For being stupid and ugly in public,” Calderon told him. “That’s a double felony.”
Gold teeth stopped smiling.
“Go on,” Cruz told his crew. “I ain’t done nothing wrong. ’Sides, I’m curious ’bout what my man Calderon’s got to say.”
They got up and filed out of the booth. Gold teeth looked Calderon up and down. “We’ll be right outside you need us.”
Flynn and Levy stepped back, giving the two young thugs room as they walked past. They gave Flynn and Levy hard stares but let it go at that before slamming the fast food restaurant’s doors open and exiting out to the busy street.
When they were gone, Calderon slid into the booth next to Cruz, crowding him into the corner. Flynn and Levy slipped into the booth across from them.
“What’s this about?” Cruz asked.
“We want to talk to you about your friends,” Calderon said.
“You might’ve not wanted to kick ’em out then.”
“Not those friends,” Flynn said. He slid his phone across the table with the subway screen shot on it. “These friends. This was taken on the F train platform in the Lower East Side.”
Cruz looked at it. “I don’t know them.” He looked at Flynn before pushing the phone away. “I don’t know you, either. I was taught to not talk to strangers.”
Calderon nodded toward Flynn and Levy. “You know me, dipshit, and they’re my friends, so it’s cool.” He tapped the table with his finger, redirecting Cruz’s attention to the phone. “Those two knuckleheads you were paling around with last night, they did a very bad thing.”
“What bad thing?”
“Something you don’t want a piece of, trust me. We need to know who they are.”
“I told you. I don’t know ’em.”
“What were you doing in the city last night?” Levy asked, her voice soft compared to the men. People from the outer boroughs called Manhattan the city, like they were from upstate or Long Island.
Cruz leveled her with a stare. Like how dumb are you? “I was messing around. Like everybody else.”
Translation: Looting and robbing. Flynn remembered a term used a lot in the late eighties: Wilding. Back when gangs of young people would wander the streets and Central Park and commit all sort sorts of unprovoked attacks. Muggings. Robberies. Rapes. It was a good word for it. Then and now.
“Who are the people with you?” Calderon asked again.
It was clear Cruz was measuring the seriousness of his situation by the stern expressions the cops wore. It was also clear he was getting the message. “What’s this about?”
“These two people with you,” Flynn said. “They killed a couple of cops last night, right before they hooked up with you.”
“Uh, uh, man.”
“Which means,” Levy explained, “anyone with them gets charged with accessory to murder after the fact.”
Cruz knotted his forehead head. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, genius,” Calderon said, “the people in this picture are going down as cop killers. All of them.”
“Wait? What?” Cruz sat up straight. “No way. I ain’t had nothing to do with that noise. I was just out messing around. I didn’t kill nobody. ’Specially didn’t kill no cops.”
“Tell us about the men in
the picture,” Levy said.
“I don’t know ’em. I swear.” He looked at the phone again. He pointed at one guy who had his back to the camera. “Except Dragon. He’s one of my boys.”
“Dragon?” Flynn said, arching an eyebrow.
“That’d be David Moses. Goes by Dragon,” Calderon explained. “Gold teeth.”
Cruz nodded vigorously. “That’s right. Dragon and I heard about what was going down in the city, the protests, you know. We figured to check it out. We didn’t waste no cops. My hand to God.” He put his hand on his heart and looked up at the ceiling. “That ain’t my shit.”
“Who are the other two men?” Flynn asked.
Cruz shrugged. “I. Don’t. Know. I never put eyes on ’em before. They was getting on the train, same as Dragon and me. That’s it.”
“You talked?” Flynn asked.
“No.”
Calderon slapped his hand on the table. Cruz jumped.
“Okay. Okay. We conversed. But they didn’t say nothing, and we didn’t say nothing.”
“What did you converse about?” Levy asked.
“Nothing. How crazy the protests were. What niggers were doing and all, stuff like that.”
Cruz got peppered with questions.
“Did they say anything about where they’d been?”
“What they’d done?”
“Where they lived? Their names? Anything.”
He held up his hands. “All I can tell you is they wasn’t from around here.”
“What does that mean?” Levy asked.
“The one, the taller one, he kept looking at the subway map, complaining he couldn’t read it cause of all the graffiti on it and complaining that the subway smell like shit.”
“Where’d they want to go?” Flynn asked.
“He wanted to know if the train stopped in Brownsville. I told him he’d had a transfer to the three at Atlantic Avenue. Like us.”
“And did they?”
“They got off at Atlantic. What they did after that?” Cruz shrugged. “They didn’t get on the three with Dragon and me. We never saw ’em again.”
