Without Fear or Favor

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Now, Detective Fulton and his boss, DA Butch Karp, hoped that with his capture, they could prove him wrong and expose him and his cause in open court.

  THE EVENTS THAT led to the ESU readying to enter Ny-Lee’s apartment had begun the night before, when Nevie Butler called him at his home as he was relaxing in front of the television with his wife. He’d given Mrs. Butler his direct line when she brought her grandsons to talk to Karp, instructing her to call him “anytime” if there was an issue.

  Apparently, there was an issue—he could hear someone screaming hysterically in the background as Butler tried to explain why she was calling. “Detective Fulton, I am so sorry to trouble you at this hour,” she said calmly, considering what she was about to impart. “But I’m afraid we have a problem, a bad problem. A man just tried to kill my grandson Maurice. I’m not quite clear what happened after that because Maurice is beside himself, but apparently that man is now dead.”

  Fulton sat up. “Did you call the police?”

  “No. I thought I should call you first. Given the circumstance, I wanted to talk to somebody I could trust. What do you want me to do?”

  “First, are you safe?”

  Butler hesitated. “As safe as we can be in this neighborhood behind a locked door. But I’m scared, though I’m trying not to let the boys see that I am.”

  “Where is the man who tried to kill your son? Is he there in the apartment?”

  “No, he’s apparently in an abandoned building across the street. It used to be a clothing store, but it’s empty now. All I know is that Maurice got a phone call last night, and when I wasn’t looking, he sneaked out of the house. I was about to go out looking for him when he came running back in hollering and looking like he was being chased by ghosts. He told me that some man named Big George—I’m guessing it’s the same man that Tyrone mentioned to you and Mr. Karp—had knocked him out, but when he woke up, the man was dead. My boy’s got blood all over himself.”

  As the woman talked, Fulton walked to his bedroom and changed into his work clothes. The mention of Big George had him on high alert. It didn’t surprise him that whoever killed Tony Cippio would try to silence any witnesses—that’s why he and Karp had offered extra police presence. But if not the cops, who’d saved the boy?

  “I’m on my way,” Fulton told Butler. “But it’s going to take me a half hour to get there. In the meantime, I’m going to have marked patrol cars sent to your address from your local precinct because they can get there faster. I’ll make sure that the officers are told not to contact you; they’ll be outside for your protection and also to check on the man across the street and if necessary protect any evidence there. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, but please get here faster because this isn’t going to be a secret for long.”

  “I’m afraid that can’t be helped. But we will protect you and the boys. How is Maurice now? Was that him I heard when I called?”

  “Yes,” Butler said. “He was hysterical. He’s calmed down some now, but he’s curled in a ball and won’t talk to me.”

  “I’m sure he’s in shock,” Fulton said. “So I’m also going to ask for a paramedic to come to your apartment to check on him. Okay?”

  “Yes, please, I don’t know what to do for him.”

  After repeating that he was on his way, Fulton hung up and called Karp, filling him in on what he knew.

  “I’ll leave right away and meet you uptown,” Karp said.

  “You’ll probably beat me there. Be careful. Apparently Big George is no longer a threat, but we have no idea who killed him or why. And we don’t know where Nat X is.”

  With a blue light on top of his car, Fulton drove as fast as traffic would allow from his home in Brooklyn to Harlem. As he pulled up, he noted the police presence and the ambulance parked in front of a dilapidated walk-up that he surmised was the Butler residence. He also saw that the building across the street had been cordoned off with crime scene tape as investigators came and went. A crowd had gathered at both ends of the street beyond the police barricades.

  Fulton walked up to a uniformed police captain. “Detective Fulton with the DA’s office,” he introduced himself. “I got the call from the woman inside, Nevie Butler. How’s it going?”

  “Reminds me of the bad old days of Fort Apache in the Bronx,” the captain replied. “A lot of hostility out here, Detective. It looked like it might get out of hand earlier, but Mrs. Butler came out and told the crowd that everything was okay and for them to go home. Most are still here, but it seemed to calm them down a little bit. Meanwhile, other than letting her know we’re watching the entrances to the building, we’ve left her alone as instructed.”

  “What about across the street?”

  The captain made a face. “Pretty messy. We got an unknown stiff, black male, somebody gutted him like a tuna at the Fulton Fish Market. Crime scene techs and an assistant medical examiner are in there doing their thing. Here’s your boss.”

  Fulton turned to see the tall figure of Butch Karp walking toward him. “Hey, Butch, where do you want to start?”

  Karp nodded toward the abandoned building. “The paramedics are checking on Maurice now. He’s in a bad way, and I’m not sure we’re going to get anything out of him tonight. So let’s see what we got and then check on him and Nevie.”

  The crime scene was still being processed when they entered the building. Walking carefully, a photographer was taking pictures of a large pool of blood that surrounded an enormous young black man who lay in the middle of it.

  “Hi, Al,” Karp said to the NYPD photographer, whom he’d known for several decades. “What do you have . . . other than the obvious?”

  “Just trying to get a good photo of some imprints in the blood,” Al said. “In addition to the deceased, it looks like we have at least three others. One I’m assuming is the kid from across the street; you can see where he was lying down, his handprints, and tennis prints. Then there’s those large prints there; they’re rather indistinct, as if whoever stood there wraps his shoes or feet in rags. Then there are these I’m photographing now. Look like boots—hobnailed boot imprints, you can see the nail heads, sort of old-fashioned. He and the deceased were apparently standing face-to-face. The other big guy, the one with the rags on his feet, was behind the deceased when he went down.”

  “Ugh! What’s that smell?” Fulton asked. He’d been at enough crime scenes to recognize the sweet, slightly metallic scent of fresh blood and the stench when a victim’s entrails have been sliced open, but this was different. “Smells like something rotten.”

  Karp didn’t answer, though a funny look had passed across his face. Instead, he turned to a detective who was looking at a wallet. “What do you have, Detective?”

  “Looks like the deceased was one George Washington Parker, age twenty-seven, late of 110 West 151st in Harlem,” the detective responded. “At least that’s according to his government-issued identification card. No driver’s license.”

  Karp looked at Fulton with a raised eyebrow at the mention of the deceased’s name. “Big George,” he said, then turned and walked over to a woman who was talking into a tape recorder. She stopped speaking when he approached.

  “Hi, Gail,” he greeted Assistant Medical Examiner Gail Manning. “You were on call tonight.”

  “Yeah, I’m basically on the ‘gun and knife club’ shift these days. But I like it. It gives me time to be with the grandkids during the day while their mother and father work.”

  “So which is it,” Karp asked, raising an eyebrow, “gun or knife?”

  “Other than the obvious, I’ll know more when I get the body downtown for an autopsy. But, as you can see, he was essentially disemboweled by what I’m guessing was an extremely sharp and large blade of some sort. I didn’t want to move him too much until we’re ready to bag him and go, but there appears to be one entry wound with several tracks, one cut up, starting just below his navel, then back down and cutting left and right. He�
��s basically lying on top of a pile of his intestines. That takes strength and technique from whoever did this.”

  Having seen enough, Karp and Fulton left the crime scene and walked across the street. They knocked on Nevie Butler’s door.

  “Good evening, Mr. Karp, Detective Fulton,” she said, her voice trembling. “This is all so horrible.”

  “Good evening, Mrs. Butler, we’re glad you called,” Fulton responded. “We’re here to help and get to the bottom of this. Where are your grandsons?”

  “They’re in their rooms. Tyrone is scared, but he’s okay. Maurice, however, is a mess. He hasn’t said a word after he stopped screaming and told me what happened. Just sort of has a terrified look on his face. The paramedic is with him now, says he’s in shock and they want to take him to the hospital.”

  “What can you tell us?” Karp asked.

  “Well, he says he got a call from Big George saying to meet him across the street,” Butler said. “And I know he snuck out of the apartment when I was taking my bath. He says that this Big George told him he was going to kill him and me and Tyrone. And that’s all he remembers until he woke up next to a dead man with blood all over.”

  Nevie Butler stopped for a moment, and her eyes welled with tears. “Mr. Karp . . . you don’t think . . . that my grandson killed that man, do you?”

  Karp shook his head. “We can’t be sure until our investigation is complete, and I’ve had a chance to talk to Maurice, but we believe that someone else killed the man across the street. Do you have any idea who else might have been involved?”

  “No, no idea.” She shook her head.

  At that moment, a paramedic came out from a back bedroom. “How is he?” Karp asked.

  “In shock, traumatized, showing classic signs of PTSD,” the paramedic said. “Nonverbal. He started to get agitated so we gave him a sedative. We’d like to move him to Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  The paramedic shrugged. “You can try, but I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere right now between his state of mind and the sedative.”

  As the paramedic predicted, Maurice either couldn’t or wouldn’t cooperate. He just looked at them blankly when they entered the room and then closed his eyes.

  The paramedic and his partner arrived with a gurney. “Okay to take him?”

  After assuring Nevie Butler that she and Tyrone would be kept safe with a police presence and that Maurice would be well cared for, Karp and Fulton left the scene. But instead of going home, they went to the Criminal Courts Building, where they worked the rest of the night.

  In the ensuing hours, the dominoes continued to fall. The police had gone to the apartment listed on the deceased’s identification card. The current tenants, who had been living there for several months, said they didn’t know anyone named George Washington Parker, or Big George, but that the last tenant had left the place a mess.

  The homicide detectives working the scene also called in and confirmed that the dead man’s telephone proved that he called the number for Maurice Greene that evening close to Gail Manning’s estimated time of death.

  A quick check revealed that George Washington Parker had a rap sheet with convictions ranging from armed robbery and aggravated assault to manslaughter. “He’s basically bounced in and out of the system since he was a kid,” Fulton said. “And those are only the charges that stuck. He was a suspect in a dozen more, including murder.”

  A big break came after Fulton suddenly left Karp’s office and returned ten minutes later. He was smiling grimly. “I knew there was something familiar about the name George Washington Parker,” he said, “but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I remembered where I heard the name. George Washington Parker, same address, was the first witness to reach Ricky Watts, the kid shot by Officer Kim. I called the detective working the case and asked him to read me the report. According to Parker, he was outside the tenement when he heard a single shot and then Watts staggered out the door and collapsed at the curb. He stated that Watts didn’t have a gun.”

  “Quite the coincidence,” Karp remarked.

  “Yeah, and the detective told me that Parker was also involved in inciting the riot that night.”

  Karp thought about the implications. “So we have Tyrone Greene placing Big George Parker, if this is the same guy, with Nat X at Marcus Garvey Park when Tony Cippio was shot. We also have Parker at the building where Ricky Watts was shot by an officer who claims that Watts shot first. And now Parker shows up and threatens to kill Maurice Greene, his brother, and grandmother, but is instead disemboweled by a person or persons unknown.”

  “What do you want to do next?” Fulton asked.

  Karp thought about it for a moment. “Let’s put together a photo lineup including George Washington Parker and see if Tyrone Greene can pick him out.” He picked up the telephone and called Bellevue to speak to the psychiatrist evaluating Maurice Greene.

  Two hours later, the district attorney and the chief of his detective squad made their way to Bellevue’s psychiatric ward. After speaking to the psychiatrist, who asked them to keep the questioning short, Karp and Fulton entered the room where Maurice Greene lay in a bed, with his grandmother sitting in a chair next to him. “Maurice, do you remember who we are?” Karp asked.

  Maurice nodded. “Yes, sir,” he answered, which was a good sign.

  “We’d like to ask you some questions about what happened last night,” Karp began, “but first I’d like you to look at some photographs and let me know if any of them look familiar to you.”

  Karp handed the file containing the photo lineup to the teenager. It took him only a few moments before he closed the file. “Number three, that’s Big George,” he said.

  “Do you know him by any other name?”

  “No, just Big George.”

  “Was he the man who attacked you last night?”

  “Yes. He said he was going to kill me, Tyrone, and my granny. He put his arm around my neck and I guess I blacked out because the next thing I know I”—the boy stopped talking and choked up—“the next thing I know I woke up and I could feel something sticky on my face and my hands. It was dark so it took me a minute to see him—”

  “See who?”

  “Big George. He was lying on his stomach. His eyes were open but he was dead.”

  “Did you see anybody else?”

  Maurice hesitated and then shuddered. “I thought I saw something in the shadows at the back of the room. It moved and I started to scream and got up and ran back across the street. I don’t remember much else.” He trembled.

  “Maurice,” Karp said, “just a couple more questions. How do you know Big George?”

  Maurice took a deep breath, held it, and let it go with a sigh. It was obvious he was conflicted, but at last he said, “I know him from Nat X.”

  Karp and Fulton looked quickly at each other. “Nat X?” Karp asked, to keep him going.

  “Yeah, Big George was sort of his bodyguard. I attended some meetings.”

  “Do you know Nat X’s full, or real, name?”

  Maurice shook his head. “No, he never told us.”

  “Do you know Ricky Watts?”

  This time the teen’s eyes filled with tears; he had a hard time answering. “He was my friend,” he blurted out. “I’ve known him since elementary school before he started going to that charter school. But we stayed friends.”

  “Did Ricky Watts know Big George and Nat X, too?”

  Maurice nodded as his face flushed and tears crept from his eyes. “Yeah, he went to some of the same meetings I did.” He started to cry.

  Karp waited for him to pull himself together, then said, “Maurice, I know this isn’t easy, but I need to find Nat X.”

  Maurice turned his head to the side so he wouldn’t have to look at Karp.

  “Maurice? Do you know where we can find Nat X?”

  The teen turned back to look at him but remained quiet un
til his grandmother prodded him. “Maurice, son, you answer the man,” she said gently. “I know you made promises, but promises to bad men are bad promises. This man sent his evil friend to do you harm, and to harm your brother and me. He’s not somebody you should protect.”

  Maurice looked at his grandmother and finally spoke. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I could sometimes find him living at his cousin’s apartment.”

  “What’s his cousin’s name?”

  “Ny-Lee Tomes. He lives on the corner of 134th and Malcolm X Boulevard, Browning Apartments, sixth floor.”

  And that was how Fulton found himself at the end of a line of the Emergency Services Unit, which most police departments referred to as a SWAT team, waiting to bust into an apartment where they hoped to find a cop killer. But first other members of the unit were quietly evacuating apartments on either side and above and below the target in case bullets started to fly.

  They were just about ready to go when a woman’s scream from inside the apartment made the decision for them. “Go! Go! Go!” shouted the officer in charge of the unit.

  Team members swung a battering ram twice at the door before the doorjamb shattered. They stepped back as other officers, their guns raised, swarmed the room.

  “Police officers! Hands where we can see them! Get down!” they shouted to some unknown person.

  Fulton entered the apartment, where a woman sat on the floor with her hands above her head looking at a television and moaning. Meanwhile, the other officers moved quickly through the apartment.