by F. P. Lione
The owner of the store flew out the door, dressed in a white apron, looking like someone you shouldn’t mess with.
“My customers are complaining that someone is out here relieving themselves,” he said. Actually, that’s nothing like what he said, but I’m editing here.
“Can you get a bucket of bleach water?” I asked the owner before he killed the guy. “He’s really sorry and would like to clean this up for you.”
“Come on,” Gilligan complained. “People do this all the time. It’s so hot out here it’s already dry.”
“We’re not smelling this all day,” Joe said. “You made the mess, you clean it up.”
The owner came back with the bucket of bleach water, a scrub brush, and some paper towels. We stood there and watched Gilligan scrub it and then dump the rest of the water to rinse it off.
We might not have been able to summons him, but he’ll think twice before taking a whiz outside again.
Hanrahan came over to sign our books about 10:30.
“Rooney and Connelly took the van over to the seven-one,” he said. “They’re having their annual barbeque, you pay five bucks to eat all day. They got a nice spread set up. When Rooney gets back with the van, you two can head over. Do you know where it is?”
“Yeah, we’ve been there before,” Joe said.
The seven-one throws a barbeque every Labor Day and makes a fortune off all the cops working the parade.
At 11:00 Rooney and Connelly relieved us, and we walked up to the corner of Eastern Parkway holding our hats in our hands.
A lieutenant was directing traffic in the intersection while a couple of cops moved some of the barriers around to let police vehicles through. He looked up, staring at us. We knew it was because our hats were off. Not wearing our hats is a minor violation and could cost us part of our overtime, but a bus passed by, and Joe and I looked at each other and smiled. By the time the bus cleared the lieutenant, our hats were on and we were fit for duty. The lou gave us a “Who you kidding” look and said, “Officers, aren’t you supposed to have your hats on?” as we crossed the street.
“Boss, we made sure we respected you by putting our hats on,” Joe said diplomatically.
“How would you like to be standing in the intersection directing traffic with me?” the lou threatened.
“Is that why you’re here, Lou?” I asked. “You didn’t have your hat on?”
He actually turned red trying not to laugh, like he couldn’t believe I had the nerve to say that. Joe cut him off quick with, “Lou, we’ve been up all night working a midnight before we came here.”
“Get out of here,” he said as we crossed the street.
We picked up the van on the other side of Eastern Parkway and drove eastbound to Washington Avenue and turned onto Empire Boulevard. The precinct was packed, and I wound up parking in a bus stop halfway down the block.
We could smell the barbeque as we walked up to the front of the precinct. We went around to the courtyard on the side of the building and saw a line of about twenty people.
“Is this the line to pay?” I asked the cop in front of me, whose collar brass showed he was from the sixty-one precinct.
“I hope so, I’d hate to think it’s the line for the bathroom,” he said.
The Crown Heights precinct is in a residential and commercial area with lower- to middle-income families in central Brooklyn. The area is made up of blacks, West Indians, and Lubavitch Hasidim and is home of the famous riots of the 1990s.
They call the seven-one Fort Surrender because years ago the Hasids stormed the precinct and managed to take it over. They stormed it once when I was here as a rookie, during my field training unit out of the Academy, but they didn’t get control of it that day.
It took Joe and me about ten minutes to get up to the cash box and pay our five bucks. They gave us raffle tickets that said paid on them so we could come back later and eat if we wanted to. The pay line went directly into the food line, and we picked up dishes and plastic forks at the head of the food table. They had two huge rusted steel grills going, and we both grabbed a hamburger and hot dog before piling on potato salad and corn on the cob. There were trays of olives and pickles. They had those big dill pickles, the kind we used to get out of the barrels when we were kids. They don’t keep them in the barrels anymore. They found out the rats loved the pickles too and the barrels were easy for them to get into.
There was no place to sit, so we leaned up against the bumper of an RMP. I heard someone call “Tony,” and I saw Andy DeLuca, a Highway cop I knew from Staten Island, walking over toward us. He worked at the South for about a year before he went over to Highway.
“Hey, buddy,” I said. “This is my partner, Joe Fiore. Joe, Andy DeLuca.”
They shook hands, and Andy filled me in. He just had a baby, twins actually, since his wife was on fertility drugs. I wondered for the thousandth time why people who have kids think the rest of us want to hear about childbirth. I can see a rotted dead body and not lose my lunch, but talk about placenta and umbilical cords and I break out in a sweat.
“How’s Tommy doing?” I asked, talking about his brother-in-law Tommy Pagano. “I saw him down at court. He said you were getting him in Highway,” I said.
“Yeah, I got him in Highway. And the moron couldn’t pass the motorcycle test,” he said, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”
“I thought he knew how to ride,” I said.
“He does. Go figure. Oh”—he laughed—“remember Danny King who worked at the South with us?”
“Yeah, I heard he made boss and is working out in Queens,” I said.
“He’s here today. He told me he got drafted over to IAB before he went to Queens. He was saying that 90 percent of the allegations in Patrol Borough Manhattan South were from the South.”
Allegations are civilian complaints against cops. Since we have the largest command, it makes sense that we’d have the most complaints. Plus, given the nature of our job, how happy could we be making people?
We talked and chewed. I told Andy to say hello to Tommy for me and that I was getting married.
“To that same girl, the hot-looking one that worked on Wall Street?” I couldn’t tell if he looked impressed or surprised.
“Nah,” I said. “Someone else I met, a schoolteacher from Long Island.”
Joe and I finished eating, said good-bye to Andy, and drove back to our post.
As we parked the van we could see the sky was dark to the west of us. I guess a storm was coming in from Jersey. We could already hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.
We relieved Rooney and Connelly off our post, and they moved back down to their spot near the corner. The wind was starting to blow, kicking up dust, plastic bags, and garbage. It felt nice and cool even though it was gritty. We could actually see the rain as it came in toward us in fat drops along the pavement. Joe and I stood under the deli’s awning as it was flapping around with the wind. People were holding stuff over their heads trying not to get soaked. Some ran under the awning with us, and we all squashed ourselves against the building. The rain was torrential, running down along the curbs into the sewers.
I pulled down my vest to let some of the heat out while the spray hit my face and arms. It rained for about fifteen minutes, and within a half hour the skies were clear again. Steam was coming off the pavement as it dried, and the air was thick and muggy. You don’t get that damp woods smell in New York, you get the damp dumpster smell.
If anything, it got hotter after that, and the streets were starting to fill up as the parade got closer to us.
“Did you listen to the tape I gave you?” Joe asked.
“How was I gonna listen to it? You just gave it to me yesterday,” I said.
“I gave you one last week,” he said.
Since I hadn’t been to church in a few weeks, Joe had been bringing me tapes of the services. I didn’t know you could do that at church, but Joe gets tapes of the sermons and listens to them
in his car. I had started to listen to the one he gave me last week, but I felt too much like it was talking to me, so I shut it off.
“Is the tape supposed to be a dig?” I asked.
“Not at all, Tony,” he said seriously. “I just thought it lined up with what’s going on with you right now. I know you need money for the wedding, but just remember it’s important for you to be in church. Did you understand what it was saying?”
“Basically what it said was that the reason David got in trouble with what’s-her-name was because he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be,” I said.
“Yeah. It said it was the time of the year when the kings went out to war, where David normally would have been.”
“Instead of peeping on some female taking a bath,” I said.
He started to say something but then said, “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Don’t worry, Joe. I won’t be looking in anyone’s windows while I’m working overtime,” I said.
“Tony, that’s not what I meant. What Pastor John is saying is that when we consistently keep our mind on God it keeps us on the right path and not vulnerable to whatever could take us off track. He was also saying that the same way we feed our body food to keep it strong, we need to feed our spirit God’s Word to keep it strong.”
“I know what you’re saying. And to be honest, I feel the difference from when I’m in church every week and reading the Bible. I just want to get enough money put away for the wedding and the honeymoon and not come back broke,” I said.
“You and Michele are fine financially. You both work full-time. You said you pretty much had the wedding paid for, and I’m sure you could collar up on other days and be able to go to church on Sunday,” he pointed out.
“Once I’m living on Long Island I plan to go on Wednesday and Sunday,” I said. “I also don’t want to be working overtime for a while once I’m married. Christmas is six weeks after the wedding, and I don’t want to be killing myself. I want to have it all paid for so I can be home and enjoy it.”
“I understand that, but this week Pastor was talking about how we don’t know what we’re gonna need to be strong for. Like right now the thing with Vinny and the family. You need to build yourself up before taking on something like that. Or we might get into something at work that we need to be focused for.”
“I’ll listen to it,” I said, meaning it. “I’ll throw it in on my way home later. Maybe it’ll keep me awake while I’m driving.”
The parade was making its way down this end now, and we could see the floats on Eastern Parkway. It was a colorful parade with a lot of reds and yellows. I could see a group of females in exotic yellow headdresses and costumes that just covered the essentials as they danced their way along the street. Some of the floats carried steel drum players, and there was a lot of reggae and calypso music.
We could tell the crowd wasn’t intimidated by our presence there. I saw people drinking and smoking in the doorways and on their front steps, daring us to say something.
The cops were gearing up now, and Joe and I moved toward the corner to a cluster of cops. We were standing with our hands on our belt buckles or leaning over the barricades as our eyes scanned the area around us. Cops were talking about some of the stuff that had gone on already. Eight people had already been shot, some when someone shot into the crowd with an automatic weapon. Most of the injured people were hit in the legs and torso. There were other sporadic shootings, one with a fatal shot to the head. We saw clusters of gang colors as we watched the crowd, not the parade. We were looking for pickpockets, weapons, aggressive behavior, EDPs, or deviants like this one guy Joe and I spotted standing behind a group of teenage girls.
They looked about fifteen or sixteen and oblivious to how provocative they looked in their short shorts and bathing suit tops with their thong underwear showing at the waistband.
The first few years I was a cop, this kind of thing would really annoy me. How could these girls come out dressed like this? Where were their fathers? When they dress this way the psychos and perverts are gonna bother them. Now I just accept the fact that people dress this way hoping to get noticed, but it’s usually the wrong kind of attention.
The guy was maneuvering himself behind them, pretending to watch the parade and looking over their shoulders down their tops. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt that rode past his hips over cutoff jeans. As the crowd pushed closer to the street to see a float go by, he pressed himself against one of the females. She looked behind her, but he was looking past her at the float as if he had nothing to do with whatever had touched her.
As one of the steel bands passed by on a float, he started dancing up against her like a dog when it’s got hold of your leg.
The female looked horrified and froze with fear. Joe and I pushed through the crowd as he grabbed her and held himself against her. When we were just about there we saw that he had exposed himself. “Look at this fruit loop,” I said as a couple of onlookers grabbed the guy and started throwing him a beating.
“Alright, alright, we got him,” Joe said as we grabbed his arms. “We got him!” Joe yelled as one guy threw an extra punch.
“Did you see what he did?” the puncher yelled.
“We saw him, stop hitting him,” Joe said, yelling over top of the PA system on the float.
The humper was a skell and looked to be about forty years old. Other cops were there now, gathering around us while we cuffed him with the plastic cuffs issued at the detail. When we’re at details where we know there’ll be a lot of arrests, they give out these white hard plastic cuffs, almost like the plastic zip ties you’d use on a garbage bag. The cuffs are strong enough to restrain someone until you get them to a holding pen.
The crowd was watching us now. They hadn’t seen what the perv did to the girl; they only saw a bunch of cops cuffing someone who looked like he was just watching the parade. Their eyes were suspicious and hostile as they stopped and watched us, which ticked me off.
“In case you can’t tell by the uniforms,” I said loudly, looking around, “we’re police officers. The reason for our interaction with you today is because this lowlife”—I pointed to the perv in cuffs— “sexually assaulted that female over there.” I pointed to the female, who was crying now. “I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and I hope the rest of you enjoy the parade. Have a nice day.”
Joe was choking on a laugh.
“How’s that for community policing?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “You’re a piece of work,” he said.
“Who’s looking?” I asked the cops standing with us. I didn’t want the collar, as this was already overtime for me. I was exhausted and wanted to go home and sleep.
“I’ll take it,” a cop from the six-oh said, which was fine with me.
As the parade neared the end of Eastern Parkway the crowd was the biggest, with people twenty to thirty deep along the curbs and grass and all the way up the sidewalk to the storefronts. It’s not like New Year’s Eve, when the businesses are boarded up. The merchants here were all open, making a fortune.
It had gotten too congested at the Grand Army Plaza for the big finale, and Hanrahan called us all to the corner of Underhill and Eastern Parkway, where a captain was standing.
There were a bunch of cops holding rolls of orange mesh fencing, the kind they use during road construction. The captain was listening intensely to the radio, not talking to anyone as we filed in. He called over the sergeants and lieutenants, and Joe and I were close enough to hear him trying to tell them over the noise that they wanted to reroute part of the parade. He said when a certain vehicle hit the corner they would redirect it up Underhill Avenue. I saw Hanrahan’s face fill with a mixture of dread and disbelief and wondered what was up. Hanrahan and Sergeant Bishop called us in to tell us the deal.
“Boss, we don’t have any barricades on this block,” Joe said.
“They’re gonna have cops holding the orange mesh for the first tw
enty feet, after that they’re using us as a human barricade,” Hanrahan said, not meeting our eyes.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled, sickened. “We can’t write a summons for drinking in public and we’re gonna keep the crowd from rushing the float?” It wasn’t only stupid, it was dangerous.
“I know what you’re saying, Tony,” Hanrahan said. “I want you to stay close together and keep an eye on each other.”
“Boss, this is a bad move,” Rooney said, furious. “This isn’t gonna work.”
I saw Joe put his head down, I thought to compose himself, and then I realized he was praying. I added my own prayer for help, along with an apology for not being in church lately.
It turned out that the float in question had a well-known rapper on it. The guy has a huge following. The brass didn’t want this particular float adding to the pandemonium at Grand Army Plaza where the parade ends.
The cops unrolled the orange mesh and held it where the float would turn the corner and up another ten feet.
“Get everyone outta the street,” the captain yelled. “Then line ’em up on either side.”
Once we cleared the street, Hanrahan and Bishop put between twenty-five and thirty of us on each side of the street. I had Joe on one side of me and Rooney on the other, which was a good place to be if something went down. Rooney may be a dope and annoying as anything, but he’s a good cop and he’d have our backs.
“If the crowd breaks through let them go, we’re not getting trampled,” Rooney said.
We both nodded.
We could hear the float before it came into the intersection. It was on the bed of a huge eighteen-wheeler. The speakers that were set up throughout the float were so loud I could feel my eardrums vibrate. The rapper was shirtless, showing off his washboard and gold chains. He was wearing sunglasses and holding the microphone with lots of swagger as he bopped and danced up against the female singers in their black leather bikini tops and shorts.
The float stopped in the middle of the intersection as if to wait for the thousands of people who came in on a wave after it.
