Without Fear or Favor

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Karp nodded. “Let’s take a break,” he said to the others. “I’ll get together with Kenny. And if he wouldn’t mind, Detective Fulton can get you something to drink from the vendor across the street. Would anyone like a soda or coffee?”

  Tyrone brightened. “You got orange soda?”

  “Do you have orange soda, please?” his grandmother said with an arched eyebrow.

  “Do you have orange soda, please?” the boy repeated after her.

  Karp laughed. “A man after my own heart. I think that can be arranged. Would you care for anything, Mrs. Butler?”

  “Just water, thank you.”

  “Sure.” Karp turned to the older boy. “Can we get you something, Maurice?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said abruptly until he saw the look in his grandmother’s eyes and added, “Thank you.”

  “Then we’ll start again in about twenty minutes.”

  After they left the three visitors in the conference room, Karp turned to Fulton. “Hope you don’t mind I volunteered you to run for sodas? I want to see what kind of magic Kenny can whip up here on the fly.”

  “No problem,” Fulton replied. “I wouldn’t mind getting a little fresh air and a soda myself. Orange for you, too?”

  Karp smiled. “You know me too well.” He pointed to the door leading to his inner office. “After you, Kenny.”

  Twenty minutes later, Karp and Katz walked back into the conference room. They were accompanied by another man, whom Karp introduced as Hal Sherman, a stenographer who had worked for the DAO for twenty years. Fulton had already distributed an orange soda to Tyrone and a bottle of water to Nevie Butler. Maurice sat on the floor in a corner of the room.

  Katz sat down next to Tyrone and opened his computer, though he didn’t let him see it just yet. Karp pushed his yellow pad toward the boy and offered his pen. “Kenny is going to show you a dozen photographs of different handguns,” he said. “The photographs are all numbered. But I don’t want you to say anything, or write anything down, until you’ve seen all of them. You can ask Kenny to go back to see any or all of them again. Then, when you’re ready, if you see a gun that looks like the one the man who shot Officer Cippio used, I want you to write the number of the photograph on the pad. Think you can do that?”

  Katz turned the laptop toward Tyrone and began to slowly click through a dozen photographs of handguns. “Let me know if you want to go slower or back up,” he said as the boy studied each with his brow furrowed.

  Karp noted that after a few photographs Tyrone’s facial expression changed. But no one said anything until they got to the end and the boy reached for the pen.

  “Do you want to see any of them again?” Katz asked.

  “No, I’m good,” Tyrone replied, and wrote the number 4 on the pad.

  “Are you telling me that Number 4 resembles the gun Nat X used to shoot Officer Cippio?” Karp asked.

  “Yes, sir, looks just like it.” Tyrone pushed the pad and pen back to Karp.

  “Please write your initials and today’s date next to the number,” Karp said. “And Mrs. Butler, would you please do the same thing and place your initials and date right below Tyrone’s?”

  After they did as requested, Karp turned to the stenographer. “For the record, Number Four is a stainless steel, forty-five-caliber revolver with a mother-of-pearl grip.”

  A few minutes and a few follow-up questions later, Karp told Tyrone, “You’ve been a big help.” He turned to Butler. “When we catch the people who did this, we will probably need Tyrone to testify at the trial.”

  “I understand. We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  Karp nodded. “Is there anything you need from me now?”

  The woman shook her head. “No, sir. We’ll catch the subway back home.”

  “If you need anything, or you think of something I should know about, you have my direct line. Please call me.”

  “And mine,” Fulton added, handing out two of his own cards.

  “Thank you, we will,” Butler replied. She looked at her older grandson. “Let’s go, Maurice. You have some explaining to do when we get home.”

  As the boys left the room, Butler pulled Karp aside. “I’ll be having a discussion with Maurice about these men. He’s a good boy, just a little mixed up. I ’spect he’ll come around shortly.”

  When she was gone, Fulton said, “Tyrone is pretty observant. Right caliber. A revolver explains the lack of shell casings. That mother-of-pearl looks like an after-market grip, not something you’d normally find on that gun. A little unusual for a shooter like this.”

  “Might be a good thing for us,” Karp remarked. “If we can find it and the man who pulled the trigger.”

  “What about Maurice?”

  Karp thought about it for a moment, then smiled. “Mrs. Butler’s a good woman. Let’s see what she comes up with.”

  Laughing, Fulton nodded. “Yeah, I had a grandma like that . . . wasn’t no way she’d have put up with me giving the po-lice lip. I suspect he’s in for a tough time when she gets him home.”

  Whatever Nevie Butler had said to her older grandson, so far it hadn’t produced any new information. They still didn’t know who Nat X was or where he was living. Nor had Fulton’s discreet inquiries in the neighborhood turned up a “Big George.”

  MARLENE SQUEEZED KARP’S hand as the NYPD Emerald Society Pipes and Drums began playing “Amazing Grace.” He glanced sideways at her and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks. She was staring across the grave to where Officer Tony Cippio’s young widow sat sobbing in her black dress, her hands on her pregnant stomach, her father-in-law’s arm around her shoulders. The Cippios’ bewildered and frightened children squirmed in their seats off to her other side, trying to make sense of their mother’s bereavement and this strange, sad gathering.

  Karp leaned over slightly so that his shoulder rested against Marlene’s for support. Sitting across from Tony Cippio’s widow and children, Karp thought it was time to pull young Maurice Greene in and let Fulton put the fear of God in him. A dangerous killer was on the streets, and not just dangerous to cops. Karp worried about the safety of Tyrone Greene and his grandmother. Somebody brazen enough to kill a police officer in front of witnesses might later decide to eliminate those witnesses.

  Fulton had talked to Mrs. Butler about it, but she didn’t want any additional police presence in the housing project where they lived. Not even plainclothes. “People around here can sniff out a police officer from a block away,” she’d told the detective, who relayed the conversation to Karp. “Rightly or wrongly, a lot of folks around here aren’t real happy with the police, and I’d be worried they’d say something to this Nat X if it looked like Tyrone was cooperating with you. I’ll rest easier when you catch him.”

  Marlene had told Butch that she didn’t blame Nevie Butler but had an idea about who might be able to keep an eye on them without drawing a lot of attention. As the funeral service came to a close, Marlene squeezed his hand again. “I feel so sorry for him, too,” she whispered.

  He followed her eyes back across the casket to the big man who sat with his arm around Fran Cippio: her father-in-law, Vincent Cippio Sr., a retired NYPD sergeant, was well known to Fulton.

  “Went to the academy with him,” Fulton told him. “Tough story. Old-time cop family. Lost a brother and another son—one of the nine/eleven heroes—in the line of duty. Lost his wife last year to cancer . . . now this. I feel for the guy.”

  “How’s Tony’s wife doing?” Karp asked.

  “Rough sledding. Two young ones and another on the way. Apparently she lost her folks in a traffic accident when she was young. She and Vince will need to lean on each other.”

  “If there’s anything we can do,” Karp said.

  “Yeah, I’ll let you know.” Fulton nodded. “The NYPD Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has a Widows’ and Children’s Fund to help out. We take care of our own.”

  Karp caught the edge in
Fulton’s voice. It surprised him a little bit. They’d met shortly after Karp joined the New York DAO out of law school and Fulton was a rookie patrolman. They’d been through a lot together, and Fulton was the epitome of calm and cool no matter what was going on around him. His bitterness now was unusual.

  “You okay?”

  Fulton started to nod his head but stopped and shook it instead. “No. I’m not okay. I’ve had too many friends killed in the line of duty. Too many good men, and women, who got up in the morning and put on the uniform or grabbed the badge, but then didn’t make it home that night. But to have a young father shot down just because he was wearing the uniform? . . . So no, I’m not okay. A lot of the guys aren’t okay. I’m pissed off, and so are they. It’s not just the killer, either. The public is buying this bullshit that racist cops are on the rampage. They don’t care that good cops are being murdered. I’m worried that someday there’s going to be a backlash.”

  There wasn’t anything Karp could say except, “I’m with you on this.”

  “I know you are, Butch, and it’s appreciated.”

  The three made their way over to offer their condolences first to the widow and then to Cippio’s father. “We just wanted to tell you again how sorry we are for your loss,” Karp said, shaking the man’s hand. “We’ll catch this guy.”

  Vince Cippio nodded. “And when you do, make him pay.”

  “I promise, justice will be done.”

  As the grieving family turned to speak to other well-wishers, Fulton looked at Karp. “You ready to go?”

  “Yeah.” Karp turned to Marlene. “Sure you don’t want us to drop you off?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got to see a man about a dog. I’ll catch a cab.” She stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.

  Karp frowned. “I don’t want to know where you’re going, do I?”

  “You’re so perceptive.”

  Shaking his head, Karp looked at Fulton. “Let’s go before she breaks down and tells me. I sleep better when I don’t know.”

  Leaving the cemetery, Karp noticed a group of four uniformed police officers standing in the parking lot. He recognized one of them as Tony Cippio’s partner, Eddie Evans; the other three, all white, seemed to be consoling him.

  At least that’s what he thought at first. But the more he watched, the more it seemed that there was some tension between the other three and Evans. One of the white officers, in particular, an older cop, seemed to be doing most of the talking.

  “What do you make of that?” Karp nudged Fulton and nodded toward the group.

  Fulton frowned. “Don’t know. The older guy I recognize as a lieutenant in the Homicide Bureau, Jack Gilliam. We’re not particularly fond of each other.”

  At the same time, one of the other white officers saw them looking and said something. The others stopped talking and looked. Gilliam turned back to Evans and patted him on the shoulder, and the three white officers left.

  Fulton frowned. “Like I said, there’s a lot of anger out there.”

  “I hope cooler heads will prevail,” Karp said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  “So we do, Mr. DA. So we do.”

  5

  THE TWO BLACK TEENAGERS FIDGETED as they waited in the shade of the abandoned Harlem tenement building. Even though shadows were starting to grow long as the evening progressed, the air hung oppressively hot and humid. But that wasn’t the sole reason sweat dripped from their faces and their shirts clung to them like wet rags. They were waiting for a man who promised that on this day they’d earn the respect that had eluded them all of their lives. But at what cost?

  The teens had been best friends since meeting in the third grade at the Frederick Douglass Charter School of Harlem and they were now seniors at Weyland High School for Gifted Students in Mount Vernon. Their education alone brought them closer, but it also reinforced their separateness from their neighborhood peers.

  Most of the local teens attended the public high school, which was only a few miles from Weyland as the pigeon flies but worlds away in terms of expectations. The students at Weyland, a magnet school for gifted minority children, worried about grade point averages, senior projects, and applying to college. Their counterparts in the public high school worried about survival.

  Set on the grounds of a former estate built by a nineteenth-century sugar baron, Weyland’s campus was lined with trees and carefully manicured lawns and gardens. A private security firm patrolled the campus to keep the students safe. The classrooms were fitted with the latest technology and run by well-paid teachers who had competed to land a job there. Upon admission to the middle school, each student received a new laptop computer, which was replaced by a newer version when they graduated to the next level. Students were expected to go to college after graduation and “make something of their lives.”

  Meanwhile, surrounded by a hard-featured landscape of concrete and asphalt, the public school students—those who hadn’t dropped out—passed through metal detectors just to enter the deteriorating buildings. Inside, the hallways were patrolled by NYPD officers and the classrooms were supervised by jaded, poorly paid union teachers who did little to control their unruly, and sometimes violent, charges. Most of the teachers were just putting in their time until retirement; those who did care had to battle Kafka-esque, inept bureaucratic system to reach the rare students not so beat down by the environment that they kept trying. Even then, few people outside of that rare teacher, and perhaps the students’ families, expected them to succeed at anything—such was the nature and cruelty of low expectations.

  The two teens took a bus to Weyland, which they also had to take back each day to the hood. They wore school uniforms of blue jacket, gray trousers, starched white shirt, and blue-and-white-striped tie. Some of their counterparts also wore uniforms of a sort, defined by the color claimed by one gang or another.

  Encouraged by parents who knew that education was their sons’ way out of the circumstances of their birthplace, the two teens were bookworms, devoted Harry Potter fans, nerdy in both their speech and their choice of clothes when not in uniform. Neither of them was athletic in a culture that judged young men on their ability to play sports or their hard exteriors.

  It was a tough way to grow up. The segregation inevitably led to bullying, which had escalated from having their schoolbooks knocked out of their hands to actual assaults. But it was the words that hurt the most, the accusations of “trying to be white,” and the lack of respect.

  Things would have been worse had it not been for Maurice Greene, one of the few friends they had in the neighborhood. It was him they were waiting for before walking to meet the man who was going to change everything. They’d known Maurice from the playgrounds of their childhood; he was one of the few who didn’t hold their opportunity to better themselves against them. Maybe that was because he was a star on the public school basketball team and drawing the interest of college recruiters.

  “Think Maurice is going to show?” DeShawn Lakes asked. He was tall and thin, light-skinned, with an oval face and large green eyes that bugged slightly.

  The other teen, Ricky Watts, shrugged and pushed his black-framed glasses up his broad nose. He was nearsighted, short, and built like a pear. “I don’t know. I talked to him on the phone last night and he said he’d be here. But he’s been hard to reach ever since his little brother saw that cop get shot. He told me his grandma is keeping him on a tight leash.”

  Lakes nodded but felt a knot in his stomach. Maurice was the one who’d brought them to a meeting with Nat X, the revolutionary. He’d teased them when he first told them about the meetings, which he called “community self-preservation discussions.”

  “I don’t know,” Maurice had told them. “Maybe you ain’t black enough to hear the truth.”

  He’d winked and laughed when he said it, and they knew he was kidding. But they’d heard similar accusations all their lives and it stung. They insisted that they were “black enough”
and asked to attend.

  AT THE FIRST few meetings, Nat X had talked a lot about black pride and African contributions to the world. “Contributions,” he’d argued, “that have never been recognized, or have been appropriated, by the oppressive white culture.” But as the meetings went on, the man’s rhetoric grew angrier. The only way for the black community to realize its full potential was to cast off the yoke of whites and form a separate black nation. But that, he added, could happen only by “taking up arms against the oppressor class and their servants, the police.”

  This had gone on for about a month with meetings held two and even three times a week. The meeting place was never the same and Nat X never told them his real name. He was always in the company of a huge violent criminal they knew as Big George, and another man he sometimes called Cousin Ny-Lee. The last couple of meetings had also been attended by a young man named Oliver Gray, who described himself as a “black radical Socialist” and told them that Nat X reminded him of Che Guevara. He seemed a little unbalanced despite his calm demeanor, so they avoided him and his call for “assassination and a bloody uprising.”

  At first, Nat X had derided the two teens and their educations. “You is being groomed to be a couple of house niggers, that’s all,” he said as both boys blushed in shame. “You know what a house nigger is? Back in the day, house niggers got special privileges the field niggers didn’t get. They got better food than the other slaves. They got taught manners and how to speak. And they got to eat and sleep in the master’s house. They thought they was better than the field niggers.”

  With Big George standing behind him with a menacing scowl on his face, Nat X had walked up until his face was only a few inches from theirs. “But at the end of the day, they was still just black slaves . . . property. They weren’t better than the field niggers; in fact, they was worse because they forgot who they were and where they come from. Is that what you want? To be house niggers? To forget who you are and where you come from?”

  “No, sir,” they’d said in unison.