We walked downstairs together, letting the moment linger, but when I tried to leave, she called out to me and said, “Wait!” I was getting a little impatient, I needed to get moving, but I stopped dead in my tracks because it seemed like she had one last very important thing to say. And I wanted to hear it, just in case I never saw her again. We stood a few feet apart, me with one hand on the doorknob waiting to hear what was so important, and her trying to stop crying long enough to tell me what she had to say. And that’s when she said, “I want to make you…a sandwich.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or what, I was about to race into who knows what and maybe never come back, and she wanted to make me a snack before I left. She assured me it wouldn’t take long, and if I wasn’t hungry now, she could wrap it up, so I could take it with me. We both stood there, just looking at each other, and finally she stopped crying long enough to laugh a little.
I yanked open the front door, bolted down the steps, and jumped in the car. As I backed out of the driveway, I saw her standing on the front porch. The laughing had stopped and the crying started again as she waved good-bye. I rolled down the window and said quickly, “I’ll call you—but if I don’t, please don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” The last thing I heard as my tires screeched out of the driveway was “Be careful!”
The next thing I know, I’m doing about ninety miles an hour down the Palisades Parkway with the red light flashing on the dashboard. I’ve got the police department radio on the first division listening to all the chaos, and the car radio on the all-news station announcing that there were more unaccounted planes in the air.
I flipped open my cell phone and hit the speed dial for Bobby. He’s my administrative sergeant and right-hand man all rolled up into one. I freely admit that I’m administratively challenged. I would rather be out in the street making a collar than doing paperwork, so without Bobby covering my administrative ass, I would be lost. Besides, he was a good friend and I was really going to need him today.
As soon as he answered the phone I said, “You see the news?” I could sense his excitement on the other end of the line, and before I even finished the question he said, “Yeah I saw it. Un-fucking-believable. I guess the takedown is going to have to wait awhile.”
I asked him where he was and how soon it would be before he got to the office. He told me he had his girlfriend with him. With Bobby that’s not specific enough, so I asked him which one. He said he had the nurse with him and had to drop her off at the hospital first before going to the office. I figured I would most likely get there first, so it would be my job to get everybody squared away and ready to move while I waited for him.
I knew everybody would be in early, gearing up and getting ready for our takedown, so I was sure they would be ready to move out as soon as I got in. I told Bobby, “Hurry up, I’m not going anywhere without you—so don’t leave me hanging!”
I could hear him laughing on the other end of the phone. “What the fuck is so funny?” I asked. “You need me,” he replied, stressing the word need. Bobby liked to remind me that I counted on him to keep the squad running smooth, and he was right. And today I was going to need him a lot, so I said, “Yeah, yeah, just get your ass in here as soon as possible.” Then I hung up.
Suddenly traffic stopped, so I jammed on the brakes. Up ahead in the distance I could see flashing red lights and a police roadblock. Nothing was moving, cars were at a standstill waiting to be detoured off to who knows where. I couldn’t believe it, they had closed off the George Washington Bridge. They were shutting down the city! I had never seen anything like this in my life. I wasn’t about to wait for anything, I had to get to work, so I jumped up onto the grass divider and drove around the stopped cars until I reached the barricade. A couple of cops with some really serious looks on their faces stared at me as I got closer. I flashed them my ID and told them I was on the job and needed to get to work. Immediately, no questions asked, they waved me through, and the next thing I knew I was on the bridge. It was an eerie feeling. Except for one or two cars going out of the city, I was the only one on the bridge. This frigging bridge has traffic jams at three in the morning, and here it was in the middle of rush hour and it was completely empty. The world had suddenly become a very different place.
Up until now, I had been flying, doing at least ninety, weaving through traffic with the red lights flashing, but suddenly I was alone, so I stopped for a moment, trying to take it all in. I looked down the river, and from ten miles away I could see the clouds of smoke pouring out of the towers. I could even see the tiny news helicopters buzzing all around, trying to capture the scene for the rest of the world to see. In the distance, I could hear sirens blaring everywhere as every cop and fireman in the city raced downtown, and that’s when it hit me—in a few minutes I was going to be one of them. It was all too much to comprehend, and for the second time today, time seemed to stop, and the world stood still. When I woke up this morning I knew this was going to be a really big day, I just didn’t know it was going to be like this.
—
When I got to the office, almost everybody was there gearing up and getting ready to go. I told them to grab everything out of the equipment locker: battering rams, sledgehammers, and pry bars just in case we needed them. My division was assigned to the Detective Bureau, and for some stupid reason I thought we were going to be hitting doors later and executing search warrants all over the city—but I could not have been more wrong. I thought there was going to be some kind of a terrorist watch list with hundreds of names on it, and we would be just one of the units going out to round up the usual suspects. Later in the day, in the middle of all the confusion, I would find out there was a list, but there were only a few names on it, and some were on there twice and most of them were out of the country. As far as police work as I knew it, there was nothing for us to do. My unit would end up being tasked to help set up a temporary morgue, and that’s where I would be for the next few months, except for some days digging at the pile that was once the World Trade Center.
In the background the TV was on, and we could see that the first tower had just fallen. I’m sure we all had the “Holy shit” look on our faces, but that was it, there was no panic or hesitation about doing our job. I was kind of surprised by how calm everybody seemed to be, but every cop in that room was a professional and all they could think of was getting downtown, and I could not have been more proud of them. As I watched the chaos and confusion, I was determined to keep my people together as a unit. I was afraid once we got down to ground zero we would get separated, and then we wouldn’t find each other for days. I kept stressing to them how we needed to stick together. In the past we had been through a lot of stuff, and I vowed that we were going to go through this together.
A few minutes later Bobby would come roaring up on his motorcycle. I threw him the keys, and we all piled into cars and started speeding down the West Side Highway—and that’s when the second tower came down. Bobby remembers we were at Sixty-Second Street when the second plume of dust and smoke filled the sky, and over the radio we could hear the frantic voices of cops yelling that the second building was down. All the traffic was heading north in the opposite direction. There was nothing between us and the Trade Center, and I knew we would be there soon—real soon. Later we would figure out that we missed it by about ten minutes. Grabbing all our gear, getting everyone organized, and waiting for Bobby ended up being a blessing.
I didn’t have much of a plan. I wasn’t exactly sure where we were going, or what we were going to do once we got there, so we just headed for the smoke and dust. I kept thinking, I’ll figure it out once we get there. Bobby and I were in the lead car, and the dust cloud was getting bigger and scarier the closer we got to it. You might be wondering what was going on in my head at a time like that, and the answer is—nothing but business. Not that I’m any braver than anybody else, but at the time my biggest concern was my cops in the cars behind me, They were my squad, my people, and I was
responsible for them, and all I could think about was having us do our job, and somehow, at the same time, keeping all of us safe. At a time like this—especially at a time like this—you have to keep your head screwed on straight, and concentrate on doing your job. If you start thinking about anything else, that’s how you get hurt.
We made it down to Chambers Street and stopped dead in our tracks because we hit what looked like a wall of dust and smoke. On the other side of that wall, it was dark and hard to see, and I’m not afraid to admit it, the thought of going in there scared the shit out of me. On the corner was a doctor dressed in scrubs, handing out surgical masks to anybody who dared go past the wall. I grabbed a couple, figuring we were going to need them. When I looked at the flimsy little paper mask, I knew this wasn’t going to cut it. I figured if I went in there, I was going to choke to death in about two minutes.
We made a left on Chambers Street, stopping at every corner, trying to find an opening in the wall that we could enter, but there was nothing but darkness. I could see people staggering out, covered with this thick gray dust, unable to see or breathe. When I saw some fireman staggering out with these stunned looks on their faces, I knew it was bad in there. Firemen are ballsy guys, and if they needed to get the hell out of there, it had to be really bad.
It seems hard to believe, but I really don’t remember much after that. It all seems like a big blur to me. I want to remember more, it was the Pearl Harbor of my generation, but for the most part, all I have are brief snapshots of some of the things we did and saw. Maybe it was just sensory overload—there was so much happening all around us, making it too difficult to absorb everything. Or maybe it’s all buried deep in my memory, where it needs to stay—the mind’s way of protecting you. I don’t know, but I wish I could recall every second of it. When I talk to some of the guys I was with, everybody seems to have their own memories, their own snapshots and images. Some of these memories we shared—some we don’t.
I’ve only told a handful of people what I saw and did down there, usually other cops. When a family member or a civilian friend asks me what it was like, the conversation usually stops when I tell them that most of the time I was assigned to the morgue. I can see it on their faces, they kind of zone out, not wanting to hear about it. Once I confided in my little sister about some of it. I don’t know why I told her, I guess I figured if I got hit by a bus the next day, maybe one person in my family should know who I was, and what I did for a living. Her response to my story was “I think you should talk to someone—a professional.” I shrugged her off because cops don’t open up to anyone except another cop, and if medication is needed, we’ll do it over a couple of beers.
The one image that really sticks in my mind is the next morning, September 12. I was standing right in the middle of everything on West Street, looking up at the pile, watching the smoke rise from the fires still smoldering inside. It had been dark for the past twenty hours or so, but now the dust was settling, the sun was rising, and for the first time the universe was shedding some light on what had happened. I was in a business where people die. I understood that and accepted it—but this was different. The only way I could describe it is that it looked like a small nuclear bomb had gone off. When I stood there looking around, surrounded by all that devastation and rubble, I was stunned, but more than anything I was numb. Maybe it was too much for me to comprehend, or maybe it was the wall, doing its best to protect me—just like it had done for the past nineteen years.
In those years I thought I had seen almost everything—nothing really shocked me anymore. Before 9/11 someone would ask me what was the worst thing I ever saw—people like to hear gory stuff—and I would always have a difficult time answering. Was it the guy who jumped off a tall building, or the person hit by a train, or maybe the abused five-year-old boy covered with fifty cigarette burns, courtesy of his crackhead bitch mother? But now the answer was simple.
The one feeling that seemed to overwhelm me in the months and years after was a feeling of inadequacy. When a cop sees something horrible, the way we find closure is to make an arrest, build a case, and see the guilty punished. But there was no police work to do—as I knew it. There were no doors for us to hit, or search warrants to execute, so instead, we would dig through the rubble and process human remains.
On my breaks at the morgue I would walk up to the corner on First Avenue to get some fresh air. I remember family members of the victims standing behind the barricades, waiting, hoping to hear some news that we found their relatives. They were hanging missing-person flyers everywhere, on walls, light poles, mailboxes, you name it. The flyers would always have a picture of a smiling face, usually taken at a party, a picnic, or a graduation, and underneath would be a phone number to call. I was usually dressed in scrubs, so they knew I was from the morgue, and they would give me their flyer and ask if I had found that person. I would take it, study the face carefully, and tell them, “Not yet.” I tried to be helpful without giving any false hope. And as carefully as I could, I would fold the flyer and put it in my pocket, and promise if I saw their family member, I would call. I would end up with a pocket full of flyers, but there were never any calls. When I spoke to these people I was as kind and compassionate as I could possibly be, but inside I had to keep my distance. I had to keep that wall between me and them. I desperately wanted to help them but I couldn’t, and it broke my heart, because in the months that I was there, there weren’t too many faces, just tiny pieces of what used to be people.
A few days into it, we were down at ground zero digging through the rubble. A civilian engineer came over to me and said, “Hey Lieutenant, if I tell you to start running, grab all your people—and start running!” Cops don’t normally like being told what to do by civilians, especially when they tell you to run away, but when he pointed to some giant steel beams on top of the pile not too far from us, I understood what he meant. They had bulldozers and cranes moving some of the debris, and he was afraid some of the beams were going to roll down on top of us.
That’s when one of my detectives told me that McDonald’s had set up a tent a few blocks away on Greenwich Street, and they were giving out free food. Free and food are every cop’s two favorite words, so I rounded up a bunch of the guys and told them, let’s go get something to eat. We hadn’t had much food or sleep in the past few days, so I figured it was a good time to take a break.
When we got there, we found a small canopy with some tables underneath. There were bags of burgers and fries on one table and sodas on the other, nothing big, just a Happy Meal, but it meant a lot to me. After almost twenty years of police work, I wasn’t used to the world being nice to me. Bricks and bottles being thrown off some roof at us was a more common occurrence. I grabbed a bag and a soda and looked for a place to sit, but there wasn’t any, so I sat on the curb. I had grabbed a few napkins and tried to clean that gray dust off my hands and face. At the time I didn’t know what exactly was in it, but it smelled bad, and I didn’t want it on my burger.
I opened the bag and grabbed some fries. They were probably the best-smelling, best-tasting French fries I ever had in my life, because for the past few days, all I was smelling and tasting was the smoke and dust that hung in the air. Plus I was starving. When I reached into the bag to get my burger, I found a folded-up piece of construction paper buried on the bottom, the kind kids use to draw on. At first I didn’t know what it was, but when I opened it I realized it was a homemade card done in crayon, by what was probably a five-year-old kid. I guess McDonald’s was collecting these cards from kids all over the country, and putting them into the bags was an easy way to get them to the first responders.
Inside the card the kid had drawn two tall buildings with squiggly lines coming out the top—the World Trade Center, with smoke pouring out. Next to the buildings were two stick figures, one was wearing a policeman’s hat and the other a fireman’s hat. And on the bottom, first in big letters, and then progressively smaller as he tried to cram in everythi
ng he wanted to say, the kid wrote, “Thank you. You’re my hero.” Then he signed it, and after all these years I still remember his name: Alex.
For the past several days I had been numb, like I was made out of stone. All I would allow myself to think about was getting the job done. Everyone deals with an event like this in their own way, and I did it by shutting down emotionally. But when I read this kid’s card, something happened inside me. Something deep inside began to bubble up, and I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to stop it. I needed to stop it. I had no time for this—not here, not now, not out in the street. There were people out here searching for their lost loved ones, and I felt I didn’t deserve the right to be emotional. Besides I was surrounded by my guys, a real hard-core bunch, and I would prefer for them to think of me as heartless. But whatever it was that was bubbling up inside me, I couldn’t stop it, and I felt my eyes start to water a little. I covered my face with one hand while I shoved fries in my mouth with the other, hoping it just looked like I was tired. I certainly didn’t feel like a hero, and neither did anyone with me, but the fact that some little kid, perhaps in another part of the country, was thinking about us—and looked up to us—hit me hard. For the first time in days, something was breaking through the wall, causing me to feel something. And I couldn’t believe it, it was a Happy Meal, and a homemade card from some five-year-old kid that I never met, that broke through and made me feel like a human being again.
The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop Page 26
