by Luke Waters
This is how they like to party in the maddest square mile of New York City. The people in the academy forgot to put this sort of stuff in the Patrol Guide.
Six months earlier I’d stood outside the 42nd Precinct, surveying the place where I would spend my first posting as a newly promoted NYPD detective. Even then I couldn’t help thinking there was something a little odd about this place. Turns out it was stark-raving bonkers, and half the people who hung around the place were the same, including most of those wearing badges.
Not that it mattered too much.
After I’d left Narcotics, Mike Collins explained that I would only be based in the 42 for a couple of weeks. The chief of detectives was under pressure to increase numbers here in the Bronx and over in Brooklyn, another high-crime area—both far different from the 25, where I had asked to be posted for family reasons. A few years ago I had yearned for the action of an A-house like this, but I was married now, living up in Brewster, an hour’s drive north of the city, with Sue and our new baby daughter, Tara. While excitement was all very well, Manhattan was a borough both familiar and convenient. It was time to be practical. The hours would never change because we were always on overtime. On an average shift there would be five investigators, supervised by one sergeant; if your shift was from six a.m. to two p.m., five hours would automatically be added to that shift as overtime. At the time, Operation Condor was under way, and if we didn’t use the federal money allocated to it we lost it, so if we arrested someone on a Friday and they were to appear in court on the Monday, we’d be “on the clock” for all of that time, making the most of it. But even if I still had to put in the long hours, at least in the 25 I’d have a quick train journey home.
From a distance my temporary home in the 42 looked exactly the same as any other precinct house in the ghetto, but as I stood in the chill morning staring at the facade, I couldn’t help wondering why “36” was carved above the door in large numerals. The madness didn’t end at that false front, either. Twenty years earlier Fort Apache, The Bronx, starring Paul Newman, had been filmed here, and every so often a tour bus halted outside the front door and a guide would step off and start a running commentary for the benefit of the movie buffs piling out.
Undercovers learn to keep their collars up and their heads down—by contrast, my problem was getting someone to notice me. I started with the sergeant behind the desk, who had more important things on his mind, like baseball.
“Hello, boss, Detective Luke Waters reporting for duty,” I announced with a salute, tapping my gold shield with my index finger.
The sarge’s nose remained in the sports section of the newspaper.
A tall, thin Hispanic man in a white suit and a crumpled trench coat with a detective shield pinned to the flared left lapel was paying more attention. He was eyeing me up from behind the security barrier separating public from police, flashing a toothless grin as I stood waiting for the guy behind the desk to finish checking the Yankees’ batting game.
Another thirty seconds passed. I coughed politely. Nothing. I cleared my throat loudly.
Something. The sarge finally stared at me, before nodding to Columbo a few feet away.
“Detective Waters, eh? So, you’re our new DT. Well, well. Bobby, I got a assignment for yah. Take Detective Waters here and show him up to the squad.”
“Yes, sir!” replied my Hispanic colleague. “Follow me, DT,” and he disappeared out the front door.
For a moment I looked after him. The man with the stripes on his sleeve let out a sarcastic laugh and resumed his reading.
Sarges could be sadists. Most were simply bastards, taking a personal delight in torturing detectives, particularly rookies like me.
“Er, great, boss. Thanks,” I replied, walking out the door after Bobby, who stood waiting, his trench coat flapping wide open despite the cold weather.
“We gotta go to deh squat,” he said, a single tooth defiantly protruding from behind his lower lip. The man had a speech impediment, rather odd for a detective dealing with the public on a daily basis, but it was probably from a shooting, I reasoned. The sarge had put me in the hands of a hero, the sort of guy so dedicated to the Job that he continued to fight the good fight.
My companion walked a few yards around the corner with me three steps behind, stopping at the door of the precinct’s garage, pausing to press a button on the intercom. He missed. He tried again. Closer, but still no cigar.
Sticking his tongue out in concentration he gave it one more go, and this time finally landed thumb on plastic with a loud buzz. Clearly that shooting had damaged his coordination, too. What a guy.
“Detective Bobby Rivera. Got a … got a orda to go up to deh squat. Got deh new guy—Rivers—wimme. I jus’ got … got grade, an’ I caught annudah Hom-iss-side,” he mumbled proudly into the box.
“Ten-four, Bobby!” the voice on the other end confirmed with a laugh, as the door creaked open.
We went in, took a right up the staircase, and climbed two flights of steps, reeking with the unforgettable scent of pine disinfectant, before reaching the open doorway to the 42 squad. I paused a moment to take it in.
My pause for posterity was lost on Bobby.
“Hey, whad’ya … whad’ya waitin’ fuh?” he said, flashing me his toothy grin once more as he stared in fascination at the Smith & Wesson on my hip. I shifted uncomfortably. Maybe letting this guy return to duty so early wasn’t such a good idea.
I stepped over the threshold and immediately spotted two men whose lives would intertwine with mine just about every day of the four years of my “temporary” posting, during which I would learn more about policing than a cop discovers in an entire career answering dog calls down in Manhattan.
To the left was my new “Lou,” Lieutenant Frank Visconti, a middle-aged Italian who was, according to the grapevine, calm, mild-mannered, and a true leader, admired by all the men under his command.
“Luke Waters? Well, hello to you. Welcome to the 42, we’re real glad to have you on board. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next while.” My new CO beamed, shaking my hand.
To the right of Visconti stood another DT, about the same age, clumps of white curly hair sticking out from underneath his Yankees baseball cap. The boss introduced him as Billy Bruzack.
I extended my hand and got as far as my usual greeting: “H-e-y, buddy.” For the second time that morning it was ignored. Billy had spotted Bobby, who’d been standing behind me during the initial introductions, his eyes now switched from my pistol to the other DT’s holstered piece.
The guy was clearly a gun nut. It was also apparent that Detective Rivera and Detective Bruzack didn’t quite get on.
“Rivera! You dipstick! Stop lookin’ at my piece! Get outta this station right now, before I kick your ass!” Billy bellowed.
Visconti was frowning, hands on hips, looking around the squad room, which, buzzing with conversation earlier, had suddenly fallen silent.
“Rivera! Who buzzed him in? Do you guys hear me? Who’s playin’ around here?” Lou demanded, while over his shoulder Billy Bruzack was now chasing Bobby down the stairs, the hallways echoing with swear words.
“I’ll leave you to settle in. Billy will show you the ropes. We’ll talk later, Detective,” Visconti said.
New York City raised the hyphen to cult status. Everyone here is African-American, Italian-American, or Irish-American, and now, having dashed after Bobby, Billy invoked the hyphen to new and impressive effect.
“That retard! Son-of-a-bitch-shit-for-brains-motherfuckin’ asshole!” he fumed, finally flopping into a chair opposite me. “Sorry about that—Luke?—that Puerto Rican dimwit really yanks my chain. Hey, man. Nice to meet you. Did Lou tell ya? I’m your new partner.”
The silence which followed was long and embarrassing. There was nothing else for it. I needed to ask him about the bad blood between him and the other detective, but the question was, how do I casually introduce it into our conversation?
> “What’s with the bad blood between you and the other detective, Billy?”
“Detective?” Billy replied, his eyes widening incredulously, his lip curling in contempt. “Detective! Rivera? That retard ain’t no cop, Luke. He’s a nut. Guy hung around so long that one of our assholes gave him a badge. You see any number on it, like ours? No, you didn’t, ’cos all his says is ‘DEA’: ‘Detective Endowment Association’!” Billy continued, warming to his theme. “Swapped it with the tooth fairy for all his teeth, if you ask me. Trouble is, the fairy took his brain, too. And believe me, that poor fuckin’ fairy got ripped off!”
“Eh? Come on! What’s he doing behind the barrier with the sarge?” I asked, my turn for eyes to widen.
“Hell knows! Some of these guys think it’s funny to have Rivera around. He helps ’em with their reports. Fills in the paperwork, until he comes to the end of the line and writes the rest on the desk! You didn’t spot his hearing aid, Luke? Deaf as well as dumb. Anyways, fuck him. Hey, let me introduce you to the other guys …”
It was a scene straight out of the fictional Fort Apache when Captain Duggan, tired of the madness, finally let it rip.
“What do you think of that son of a bitch, huh? That clown they dress up as a cop. That fuckin’ banana. I mean, who does he think he’s playin’ with, some chickenshit?”
Bobby Rivera might be the oddest guy to hang around the station, but my new partner, Billy Bruzack, wasn’t your typical street DT, either. Over the following weeks I learned that his nemesis, Rivera, was like Rain Man when it came to memorizing the New York Penal Code, which he could quote ad nauseum, but struggled with everyday tasks such as making a phone call. A hospital, or sheltered accommodation, was the proper place for Bobby, not inside the barrier of the local police station, where he would occasionally approach distraught complainants. Often they took him for a real cop, as he nodded sympathetically and scribbled meaninglessly in a notebook before finally rising to his feet and calling them a muddafucka as he remembered his real goal—getting back up to the squad and swiping someone’s gun.
As far as I know he never achieved that ambition.
Bobby was more obsessed with finding guns than the ATF, and his search didn’t end at the station. On one occasion coming into the Bronx courts I spotted him using the handheld wand, a metal detector designed to scan visitors for weapons, on the line of people, letting some through and pulling others aside for a chat. It was pretty clear that the Brass knew what was going on and simply played along with the gag, but bosses from outside the borough hadn’t been let in on the joke, and when they first met our “challenged” detective the results were often hilarious, particularly when Bobby donned his NYPD sash every St. Patrick’s Day and worked as a parade marshal.
You couldn’t get rid of Bobby, because he summed up the 42 perfectly and, whatever his mental disability, our parade marshal picked up far more than he was letting on.
Nothing here was as it seemed. Even the station’s nickname turned out to be a lie.
The 42 wasn’t “Fort Apache” at all—at least not if you asked my buddy Sergeant Umlauft and his colleagues in Bronx Homicide over on Simpson Street, where much of the movie’s other scenes were shot and where the cops insisted that it was their house. During the filming, many locals, tired of the constant portrayal of the community as a stereotypical crime-ridden, violent ghetto, mounted a protest. Unfortunately one of them also climbed up onto the roof and was so pissed off that he dropped the toilet which he happened to be carrying down on the moviemakers. The director liked the image of porcelain clashing with pavement so much, he added the shot to the movie.
In the South Bronx, fantasy and reality were always hard to separate.
Bobby and his presence around the house was also a bugbear of DT Billy Brower, the other Billy in the precinct, who was known as “Mighty Whitey” throughout the borough.
Brower’s attitude toward life could be summed up by the picture pinned behind his computer. Most cops kept photos of wives, girlfriends, wives and girlfriends, their kids, pets, or the-boat-they-were-never-going-to-buy which they would take down and kiss when the going got tough. Mighty Whitey? A photo of himself—dressed in an old East German police uniform and WWII flying goggles. Carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.
He was a bigger nut than Bobby.
Brower and I would go through memorable times together, from the horrors of the 9/11 attack to chasing disabled gunmen along local streets. He had the uncanny ability to sum up the vagaries of life, and the Job, in a single sentence.
“Being ‘shineboxed,’ buddy?” our resident philosopher mused. “Means that you just got shitcanned. Being shitcanned? Hmmm. Well, lemme see … it’s just a polite way of being told: ‘Go screw yaself. Have a nice day, but have it somewhaz else!’ ”
Maybe the reason nobody in this joint ever bothered to take that “36” down from the front door of the precinct was that it was the ultimate scam. The more you confused the public, the more likely it was that they would take their uninteresting complaint somewhere else. Up to Brooklyn. Or to a talk radio phone-in. Or even to Boston.
That was where my first homicide in the station ended up. It would take three years to close and be overshadowed by the greatest mass killing ever on American soil—an investigation which I and every detective on the Job would be drawn into over the coming months.
*
I am asleep at home in Brewster when my wife wakes me.
“Wake up, Luke. Come on, wake up! You’ll want to see this. There’s been a plane crash in Manhattan.”
Sue is six months pregnant with our son, Ryan; our one-year-old, Tara, is teething on the cot in the corner. Nobody gets much shut-eye around our house during my early days in the 42, but after today nobody in the USA would sleep soundly for a long time.
I am exhausted from work but I mumble back to consciousness, stumble to my feet, and stagger into the living room, where Sue is already standing in front of the television set, which is broadcasting pictures of an aircraft embedded in the side of one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
I let out a deep sigh as the station replays the strike, and I am just about to fall back to bed when a new image flashes across the screen.
“Is that a replay?” I ask Sue. “This plane looks different.”
“It is different, that’s another altogether. It looks like a jumbo jet,” she says, her hand reaching to cover her mouth as the shock hits home.
“Jesus Christ!” I shout. “How could they let that happen?” The question would echo around the world over the next few hours, as the footage of two Boeing 767s, United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11, slamming into the Twin Towers is replayed time and again on a billion TV sets worldwide.
I get dressed hurriedly as our landline and cell phones start to ring. Family and friends, from Boston, Melbourne, Dublin, checking if we are okay, asking me what has just happened. Right now, they know as much as I do, and I know as much as the news anchors, which is not too much.
What is clear is that America is under attack. We have no idea from whom, and I don’t need the experts on CNN, Fox, or CBS to tell us that the United States is now, effectively, at war.
Until this point, the U.S.’s greatest fear is of a chemical attack. Police officers are trained in chemical warfare—we know that one pound of anthrax can kill one million New Yorkers. I say to Susan, “I gotta go to work. If there’s any sign that this is a chemical attack, take Tara and drive north to Canada, take water, diapers, phone chargers …” I never get a call from the Job to report for duty. Every cop in the city knows the seriousness of what has just taken place, though what to do about it is a different matter. The car radio keeps me up to date with breaking news in the hour it takes me to reach the 42. When I reach the house the place is quieter than I have ever seen a police precinct.
*
September 11, 2001, rewrote all the rules, the entire playbook.
*
&nb
sp; I found out that everyone had been relocated to Bronx Homicide, where a tactical meeting was about to be called. Hundreds of cops from the nearby precincts had converged on the three-story building. By the time I arrived they were all crowded around TVs as the experts struggled for explanations and the Environmental Protection Agency checked the air to see if nuclear or biological agents had been released over the city. From that day on we all carried gas masks, with spares for our family members at home.
Our first two days after the attack could be summed up in three words. Sit. Watch. Wait. Every set was tuned to a different channel as we tried to get a fresh insight into what had just happened, and it was pretty clear that the Brass had no idea what to do.
Eventually, succumbing to exhaustion, we grabbed some sleep wherever we could. Our waking hours were dominated by two emotions: anger and frustration.
Almost every one of the cops present, irrespective of sex, age, rank, or background, wanted to kill whoever was responsible. Not arrest them. Kill them. Many cops volunteered to fight, including one of our team, Ray Rosado, a National Guard reservist who would later serve with the U.S. Army in Iraq. For the first time the hyphen, the brackets, disappeared. There was no African-American, Italian-American, or Irish-American in our ranks, nor a single Republican or Democrat, either, as President Bush appeared on TV vowing to capture those responsible.
We were not even, for once, cops. Just citizens all united in one common cause.
The initial feeling was one of confusion, during those early, fraught days, but once rumor solidified into cold, hard fact, the mood morphed to anger, then despair, quickly followed by an overwhelming, vicious desire for revenge. Every New Yorker took the attacks personally, no matter where we had been raised. This was an attack on our city, an attempt to turn our wives into widows, our kids into orphans. Cops who normally advised victims’ kin to remain calm, and not to take the law into their own hands, happily volunteered to put a bullet in the head of those responsible: judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one. I was no different. Mixed with the anger and tears was a feeling of utter helplessness.