No Lights, No Sirens: The Corruption and Redemption of an Inner City Cop

by Robert Cea

  “Can I check my memo book?”

  “G’head.” I flipped open my blue memo book, my bible. Any job that a cop went on had to be placed in that book, even his days off. Everything a cop did while on patrol was by strict order supposed to be in that book—it could either save you or sink you.

  “I was RDO.”

  “Not an emergency day or a chart day, it was an RDO?”

  Irvman tapped me once under the table with his foot, then looked at his manicured nails and said, “He already answered, next question.”

  “Do you remember where you were?”

  “Yes, I was home with my wife.”

  “How could you be so sure?” the greasy pint-size detective asked. Now, he was not my superior, he was just a detective, which is basically a glorified patrolman who doesn’t have to wear a uniform, so he should not have been asking me any questions. I felt Irvman about to speak, but I beat him to the punch. “You are?”

  “Detective Mendoza.”

  “So why in the fuck are you asking me questions?” Irvman smiled, then kicked me gently under the table. The lieutenant briefly looked to the detective, then back to me.

  “Officer Cea, try and refrain from cursing.” Ferber nodded to the tape recorder. I glared at Mendoza, saw his face flush. He could not take any type of confrontation. If I wanted, I could have you easily, you fuckin’ coward. This I thought as I fantasized about meeting him on a Badlands roof. I’d have you in a dress and lipstick selling cigarettes and blow jobs, you wormy rat. I turned my attention back to Ferber. “How well did you know Theobaldi Rodriguez?”

  “Not well, he was just a street guy I’d see in passing around the Red Hook Houses.”

  “Was he a drug user?”

  “Yeah, he seemed like he may have used drugs.”

  “Did you ever witness him taking drugs?”

  Irvman’s foot tapped ever so gently against my foot. I knew what that meant. “No, never witnessed him using narcotics.”

  “Did he ever give you any information?”

  “Occasionally, in passing, he’d throw me a bone if there was someone around who was wanted.”

  “You ever throw him any bones in return?”

  Irvman immediately raised up, “Phrase the questions professionally. No, no wait, let me rephrase that …as professionally as you can.” He now glared at Ferber.

  “Did you ever give him gratuities in exchange for this information?” he asked coldly.

  “No.”

  “No money?”

  Irvman kicked me twice; I could feel from the taps that he was getting angrier by the second, though he remained just as condescending and cool. “He already answered. Next question.”

  Ferber tilted his head at Irvman. He was flying very high in very thin air, way out of his league. Irvman ate up guys like Ferber before his first shit in the morning. “Any bargaining if you ever caught him with anything?”

  “I never caught him with anything.”

  “Ever give him any drugs?”

  The questions were starting to hit home. Of course I had done that and so much more. Hell, I’d cooked up for him with drugs, I’d stolen for him. I was trying desperately to remain as cool as Irvman was. “That’s a crime, I would never do that.”

  It was now time for his performance. Ferber leaned in and searched my eyes; I was sure not to look away, tilting my head at him and hoping he’d recognize boredom and nothing else. “You never gave him any drugs?” This was asked with mock disbelief. I heard Irvman laugh sarcastically.

  “I never gave the man drugs.”

  “Did you ever witness PO John Conroy giving him any drugs?”

  My answer wasn’t as quick; this was the first time Conroy’s name had been brought into my inquiry. I wondered why. I also wondered what his answer to that question would be once it was posed to him. “No, never witnessed John Conroy giving him drugs.”

  “Do you have any information regarding the death of Theobaldi Rodriguez?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea as to why he might have been murdered?” Irvman grabbed hold of my leg before I could speak. “Don’t answer that.” He leaned in and shook his head slowly at Ferber. “That’s a question for one of the street mopes who knew the victim, or it’s a question that needs to be asked of homicide or the PDU guy who caught the case. It is, however, not a question for my client. Next question.” He leaned back in the chair. The truth was that I did have ideas as to who the shooter might have been, that the bullet had come from one of two people, and the man in the room directly next to the room I was in was one of those people. This I could not tell them; my suspicions were probably going to the grave with me.

  Ferber smiled. It seemed as if he knew something I did not know. All the Valium and Richard Irvmans in the world were not going to make the if-they-wanted-me-they-had-me feeling go away. Ferber snapped the recorder off. “No worries, we’re through here.” “Through” sounded like “true.” He turned to Mendoza. “Make copies of his memo book from June twenty-eight to September twenty.” He didn’t look at me. “After he gets a copy of your book, you can go.”

  “Bobby, let’s go to Montague Street for lunch, my treat,” Irvman said as he stood, brushing his pants off. He was about to step out of the room when he noticed me staring at Ferber. I wanted to make eye contact with him, wanted him to know the truth about me, about what I’d tried to do. He still would not look at me, his way of letting me know that he had some sort of control. I could not let the moment pass. I stepped to him.

  “I didn’t commit no fucking homicide, Lieutenant. I am a good cop, regardless of what you people may think.” My tone was deadly serious. Coupled with the fact that I was physically very close to the man when I said it, he had no choice but to look at me and respond.

  Ferber looked at me, then back at Irvman. “You mind if I have a few moments with Officer Cea alone?”

  Irvman scowled at Ferber, then placed his hand on my shoulder and started to lead me out. “Yeah, I mind.” If looks could kill, Ferber would have been a corpse. “C’mon, Bobby, there’s a bottle of VSOP with our names on it and a very cute bartender who we’re going to make very happy waiting for us at the Montague saloon.”

  I stopped. “No, Rich, I want to.”

  This time he leaned into me so Ferber could not hear. “Bobby, this prick is not your friend. These guys would turn their mothers out to sell tricks if they thought they could collar a cop, you understand?”

  I looked at Irvman. He had to know from my responses and attitude during the interview that I wasn’t going to give the lieutenant dollar one. “Rich, I know what I’m doing, I won’t hurt myself, trust me, I just want to let scumbag know the witch-hunt he’s on is gonna get him dick.”

  He squeezed my shoulder and whispered, “Don’t talk into the recorder, don’t let scumbag bait you into anything, and if that suck-dick detective comes back in, walk the fuck out, ’cause then they’re just playing you. Call my office immediately if you get any notifications from these pricks about charges and specs. I’ll talk to you either way next week…You did good today.” He moved toward the door. “All right, Bobby, I’ll meet you at the bar. I’ll order the oysters Rockefeller. Hurry though, because they’re delicious … and I’m hungry.”

  He winked and was gone. For some reason, I was able to breathe easier being one-on-one with Ferber. I knew who he was and what he was all about, but if I was going down, I wanted one of these talking heads to understand what I was all about. I also thought I would be able to Geiger-count how much trouble I was really in from the way the conversation went. Ferber leaned back against the desk. “What’s your definition of a good cop, Officer Cea?”

  I folded my arms, though I tried very hard to appear friendly. I wanted to lull him into giving me something, anything; after all, he was no different from the thousands of other street punks I wormed info out of daily. “A guy who’s out there every day locking up animals who’d kill their babies for the almighty dollar or a
vial of crack. I am stopping crime, not committing it.”

  “You ever break the law, Cea?”

  I wanted to say no, that the laws I broke were not for any personal gain, that they were twisted and manipulated for the good of all of us, for the good of the five-year-olds who never had a summer vacation because they weren’t permitted to play in the streets of the Badlands. The laws I broke were without question only directed at men who would not think twice about killing any one of us, regardless of sex, age, color, or creed, and the sad thing about all of it is, without men like me who would dare to question these laws, which are built solely to protect only the bad guy, the streets would be owned by the animals I tried so hard to arrest. Democracy in a place like New York City doesn’t work, the reason being, it’s too diverse. Ask Rudy Giuliani, who reigned as an absolute monarch, and dragged the city kicking and screaming into lawful prosperity. His “monarchy” allowed every cop in the city to get right the fuck up in the face of the animals who ran the city under the administration of the fabulously inept David Dinkins.

  Ferber continued. “Ever let a misdemeanor slide in order to get a felony? Because you do know that’s a crime. If you do that, then what’s to stop you from letting an A two felony go in order to get an A one felony? Maybe a rape for a murder?” Ferber wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. What Ferber failed to mention was that this bargaining occurs every day between the defense attorneys, the prosecutors, and the judges. Sammy Gravano admitted to killing nineteen men, but because he was the only rat they could get to testify against a bigger scumbag, John Gotti, well then he was treated with kid gloves and allowed to serve only a five-year sentence that ran concurrently with his testimony. Which means that when he was done telling his tales, he was a free man, and that was after admitting in open court to his own atrocities, including killing his wife’s brother. Why was it okay for the federal government to do this on such a grand scale? Because it’s the only way to beat an unbeatable foe.

  I did not have the patience or the time to school Ferber on the intricacies of the street. He wouldn’t understand it anyway. I let him continue, I wanted him to tell me what it was they had, without him really telling me, and it was working famously. The more he talked, the more he liked the sound of his own voice. He was no different from every perp I’d ever locked up. Give them a loud-enough microphone with a long enough cord and they were certain to hang themselves. I now understood why Conroy was always so eerily quiet; he was clocking everyone.

  “You ever lie to get a collar or a conviction, that’s a crime.” What he had told me so far was that I had turned a blind eye to some offenses in the streets, and I had test-ilied, and so far he had nothing. “What about drugs? Would you consider a cop who gave drugs to a junkie in exchange for information a bad cop?” This was the area that could quite possibly put me away for a very long time. I had given many snitches in the street bags of dope for info. Cholito was the man who’d received most of the street gratuities, but there were hundreds of others just like him, and lots of them were still alive. If they were collared, it would not take a great leap of the imagination to allow myself to think that they were turned by these pricks; they would be offered immunity for their crimes in order to testify against me, for my crimes. More nauseating hypocrisy.

  “’Cause that’s the same as selling drugs. That, in my book, would make you no different from every Shah King the street can shit out.” As we eyed each other, I felt a brick of bile develop in my throat. He had told me what I had feared the most. All their information was coming from John Conroy’s ho, Shah King, and I was mightily fucked. He smiled and I noticed that his teeth were tobacco stained and chipped; he leaned in for the coup de grace. “It doesn’t seem like you got an answer for me there . . . Tatico.” He had the Shah, he may have had Conroy, and he certainly had me, hell, he even had my fucking street name. I did not answer him; I can only hope that my eyes did not give away my absolute fear. He turned from me dismissively and moved to the door. Before he opened it, with his back to me, he quietly said, “If any of these allegations against you can be substantiated, I am personally going to take your shield away, and all the Richard fucking Irvmans on planet earth are not going to stop me and save you…You have a nice day.” He walked out of the room. Those stinging words lingered. I had the feeling of sinking defeat. They had me, and goddamn, they wanted me. It was just a matter of time before it all ended.

  I rolled up to the rear gate of an abandoned Christmasdecoration factory on Columbia Street. The scarred building was northeast of the Red Hook projects and was situated on one of Brooklyn’s many lonely, forgotten docks. I looked up to the roof of the building and noticed the giant plaster Santa Claus that looked out into the East River and north of the city. Years of abuse and neglect had made him quite the image. Bullets had sheered off the right side of his face, leaving Santa with a permanent and hideous scowl, smog from the East River’s ships and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway’s car traffic had turned his once-bright red coat and hat into the color of granite.

  The pier was full of marked and unmarked cars; suits, uniforms, cops, bosses; a harbor-unit boat was anchored between two ancient cement piers, guiding a team of divers searching for clues. It was an impressive giant, working crime scene. I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular. I’d signed out at the precinct a half hour before, but something had led me there. I moved through the crush of cops and saw her, lying on her belly, her face turned toward the entrance of the pier, welcoming all who have come to do their jobs. The killer wanted to leave a lasting impression. He was an artist, still life, postmortem his specialty.

  She was completely naked and lying on top of a mound of garbage, the bottom part of her torso facing north while the top part of her torso was arched up and her shoulders and head were facing south. She seemed twisted in midair. I saw a black, bulbous spot where her eye once was. Her other eye remained intact though it stared up to the sky, milky and vacant. Her arms were tied behind her back with what appeared to be thin panties, and a brick was jammed into her mouth. I moved closer. I heard cops talking to me, though I continued to move forward, not acknowledging any of them. That’s when I noticed the pipe that was protruding from within her; it ran in a big arch three feet from her body and was jammed into the ground, giving her the appearance of floating in space. Why doesn’t someone remove the fucking pipe, give her one last bit of dignity? I thought. She was smallish, maybe 105 pounds, olive skinned, Hispanic. I felt something I hadn’t felt in years, a deep sorrow for this woman. What she must have gone through before the Monster allowed her to die. I also felt deep hatred and so much anxiety that I wanted to scream. I wanted to go back out on patrol and stay in the Badlands until I could meet Mister Monster. I wanted to gently remove that pipe from this poor beautiful shell of a woman and keep it until I found the animal who had perpetrated this crime. Then I would use the pipe on him, as meticulously as he’d gone to work on this helpless and blameless victim. I felt a kinship with the Monster; the kinship was knowing that we were going to end up in the same place, only I was the one who was going to put us both there. I felt a hand on my shoulder and Patty Pirelli was behind it. He looked somber. This was particularly tough for Patty. He could kill anyone twice and not give it a second thought, but when it came to brutal victimization of a woman or a child, Patty was as soft as the rest of us.

  “Rob, what are you doing here?”

  “I went in to sign out, heard it over the radio. It’s fucked up, man.”

  Again he held my shoulder. Patty was comforting, and a leader in his own way. Different from Conroy and different from me or Devlin, you knew he’d been in gnarly situations before, on and off the job, and whatever advice he gave you was from experience and the heart. He truly was a good man and a great cop. If Patty made it to the twenty, he could definitely fill Richard Irvman’s Ferrigamos with much ease. “Hang tough, bro, long as they don’t have a wire or tape, it’s all good.”

  I did not
remove my gaze from the woman in the pile of garbage. I shook my head slowly, “Not that Patty, this. This is fucked, brother. This is so fucked, look at what this scumbag did, motherfucking look.” I barely uttered these words; it was more of an affirmation to myself.

  Patty watched, as helpless as I was. “He likes it here, Rob, and that’s a good thing, because we are here.” I nodded. I wanted to survey the area, to feel the dirt where my man walked, to breathe the same air as he did. I wanted to be consumed by the Monster, because in my world, dog eats dog, or in our case, monster eats monster.

  I spotted Mahoney standing back, allowing the crimescene unit to sift, take pictures, and collect what evidence they could. In a garbage dump on a two-hundred-year-old pier I wondered how one deciphers what is evidence and what is just plain garbage. Again I was proud to be in the presence of these men who were digging in hundred-yearold shit all for the same cause, to avenge this woman’s death. Mahoney walked toward me and Patty, a black canvas bag strapped to his back. He too patted my shoulder when he reached me. “You all right, kid?” I nodded. The vibe was somber all the way around. He reached into the bag and pulled out a police sketch of the wanted perpetrator. “This is from the Hamilton Avenue rape. It’s going out today. According to her, it’s dead on.”

  I took the sketch from Mahoney; it wasn’t as clean as a photo—they never are—but there was something familiar about the face. I could not put my finger on when or where, but I knew I had seen this man somewhere. The trick was remembering where and then working backward from there. Knowing that I had crossed paths with him excited me, and knowing that we would cross swords almost gave me a hardon, just like the ones IAB and the feds now had for me. I crossed to the woman. All I could do was shake my head. Patty joined me again. “Rob, man, you look terrible. You can’t do anything here. Go home, get away from all of this for a day or two. None of this…” He half-nodded to the woman and then he raised his chin toward the projects, which were now casting a dark shadow over Red Hook, in the distance. “Not any of it is worth it. Life is too short, paisan… this job just isn’t worth it.”