by Bill Stanton
“What about the raid?” Domenico asked, getting up from behind his desk for the first time. “What’s the status of the various investigations?”
“We’ll be fine,” Brock said without any attitude. He sensed the mayor’s quiet agitation. “Now that the last Arab’s dead, there are no witnesses other than cops. The investigations at this point are simply routine and should be wrapped up shortly.”
“What about the deaths of Jafaari and his family?”
“I have no reason at this point to think it was anything other than what’s been reported, a distraught mother who killed her son and took her own life,” Brock said.
The mayor, who’d been walking around the office for the last five minutes or so, now leaned against his desk, right in front of Brock. “Get moving right away on those instructions I gave you earlier,” he said. “The sooner you get started, the less friction there’ll be in the process.”
They shook hands and Brock stood up to leave. When he was by the door, the mayor said, “Oh, I almost forgot. One more stunt like this morning’s little show on the bridge, and I’ll pull the fucking plug on your nomination myself. Close the door on your way out.”
15
THE LATE SATURDAY-morning sun hit Lucy right in the face, momentarily blinding her as she drove east out of Manhattan in her rental car. She fumbled with her right hand to get her sunglasses out of the bag resting on the seat next to her. Once she got them on, the road reappeared and she was able to relax. Lucy loved to drive and it was something she’d rarely gotten to do since moving to the city. She was still a little tired from the all-night ordeal that began at Roxx and ended with her getting booked downtown, but she was feeling really good. She’d slept through most of the afternoon and then gotten another solid ten hours that night. More important, she was very happy with the way she’d handled herself when things got ugly. She’d never really been tested that way before, and she was thrilled that she’d been tough enough to maintain her composure and deal with it like a professional.
When they left Bell’s yesterday, A. J. had tried to get her to go home with him so his wife, Nikki, could pamper her and she’d be guaranteed some rest. But Lucy just wanted to lie down in her own bed and sleep. Surprisingly, A. J. relented, dropping her off at her apartment once she’d promised to call when she got up. On the way there, she convinced A. J. that she was fine, just a little tired, and he should let her go to the Hamptons to interview Kevin Anderson’s wife. He was resistant, but she got him to cave on this, too, making it clear to him that he couldn’t be in two places at once and his priority, given everything that had happened, should be a face-to-face with Supreme at Rikers Island.
Lucy had made this trip to the Hamptons countless times over many summers. It was almost a ritual. For a while, it was all partying all the time. She’d stay at some rich player’s house with her model girlfriends; they’d hang out poolside during the day, and at night they’d go from one A-list event to another. She was on every publicist’s guest list. Eventually she graduated to more sophisticated outings where the conversation was a little more interesting and the people had a lot more money, but the bottom line was more or less the same—too many annoying men hitting on her, a memorable hangover, and a really empty feeling the next day.
This trip would be very different. She thought about how far she’d come in such a short period of time. It was strange. In some ways, it seemed like only yesterday that she’d been a model, and in other ways it seemed like another lifetime. Lucy never thought of modeling as a long-term thing, but the money had been great, the perks even better, and for a while the whole thing just became irresistible. It was also fairly easy. Mindless, but easy. She remembered the moment she knew she was done. She was at a studio shoot in SoHo for the spring lines from the hot new Italian designers of the season, and for the first time in her career she decided to make a creative suggestion. She wasn’t being annoying or temperamental or acting like a diva. She simply thought the setup for the shot could be more interesting. Lucy was standing under the lights and a stylist was primping and fussing with her clothes when she offered her suggestion. There was no response. No one even looked at her. The music in the studio was pretty loud so at first she thought maybe no one heard her. She said it again, a little more assertively, and there was still no response. This time it was clear they were ignoring her. Finally, when she’d repeated it a third time the photographer said, “Sweetheart, please don’t worry about anything other than looking beautiful. It’ll give you wrinkles.” That afternoon she went online and began the application process for grad school. She continued to model quite a bit that spring, but she knew the end was in sight. She took the summer off, and in September, she started classes at Columbia to get her master’s in journalism.
As she passed Exit 60 on the Long Island Expressway, Lucy turned off the radio and plugged in her iPod to play her favorite recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, featuring Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, and Shlomo Mintz. She needed to focus on the task at hand and classical music always helped her concentrate. Almost overnight, she’d gone from handling mostly banal, run-of-the-mill research tasks and the occasionally interesting background interview for A. J. to serious reporting. Every interview she did now was crucial and had the potential to break a big story. More important, lives were possibly on the line. Lucy knew she needed to get this right, but she just wasn’t sure about the best way to handle a woman whose husband had been found dead in the bedroom of their house with a naked hooker who’d been beaten to death.
• • •
While Lucy was on her way out to Long Island to see Yvette Anderson, A. J. trekked uptown to Harlem for a little background work and some waffles and fried chicken at Willie’s Uptown, a restaurant that served what was often called the “best Southern food north of the Mason-Dixon Line.” A few minutes after A. J. walked in and sat down at a table, the owner, a very large man named Willie Lynch, came out of the kitchen to say hello. “It’s been too long, brother,” Willie said warmly. “We gotta get you uptown more often.”
“You know I love coming here,” A. J. said with a smile, “but every time you feed me, I’ve gotta spend a week at the gym doing double time.”
“Hey, no talk about waistlines today. I’m gonna make sure you and the reverend leave my place happy.”
“You always do, but don’t go to any trouble for me,” A. J. said.
“It’s no trouble. It’s what I love to do, especially for good people like you and the Rev.”
With that, the front door opened and the Reverend Kellen “Muddy” Watters walked in. There were few bigger head-turners in New York than Watters. Whatever else he was, and he was many things, he was a transcendent celebrity, the kind of personality that made people of every color and from every walk of life stop and take notice when they saw him. Even people who couldn’t stand him had to acknowledge his extraordinary television presence and his skill at manipulating the conventions and symbols of the black struggle for civil rights. Every aggravating Day of Outrage he conducted, every mindless cry of “No justice, no peace!” and every appearance with a black family grieving over the murder of one of its members had left an image of Watters burned into the public psyche.
“A. J. Ross,” Watters boomed, “I know if you’ve come up to Harlem for breakfast you must need somethin’ from me. What’s up? That magazine you write for need a little newsstand rejuvenation? You come up here to put me on the cover again so you can actually sell some copies?” he said with great laughter. “How are you? It’s been a while.”
“It has indeed,” A. J. said. “You look good, man. Nice to see you.”
A. J. had known Watters for more than a decade, and in that time he’d written two cover stories about him. He’d followed the reverend’s transformation from a grotesquely overweight buffoon to a legitimate political power broker with his own cable news show, a progression that surprised just about everyone except the reverend himself. Nevertheless,
he remained for many white people the worst kind of opportunist—someone who drove them nuts, a small but significant annoyance like a pebble stuck in their shoe. And he remained for many blacks—precisely because he drove white people nuts—a crusader.
As A. J. looked at the reverend now, slimmed down from a scale-busting 325 pounds to a ridiculously svelte, almost sickly 165, looking very sharp in his dark three-piece suit, white shirt, and silver tie, he thought pretty much what he always thought about him: So much wasted potential. Watters would no doubt argue he’d accomplished a huge amount as an activist (an agitator, really) working outside the system. But the reality, whether he wanted to admit it or not, was that for most white people, and some blacks as well, he’d never be more than a fraud, a disgrace to the cloth, and the ringmaster of the racial circus that had played on and off in New York for almost two decades.
But, man, could he preach: arm-waving, bellowing, Bible-quoting, foot-stomping, hellfire-threatening, old-fashioned shaking-the-pulpit-and-moving-people-to-tears Baptist preaching. It was something to see.
A. J. had come to Willie’s to talk to Watters about Supreme, to draw on his street connections to hopefully get some useful background. They made some small talk about politics, starting with Mayor Domenico, who had done the worst possible thing someone could do to Watters: he’d ignored him. He’d seriously diminished the reverend’s clout by simply acting as if he didn’t exist. Domenico had made a strategic decision when he became mayor that he wouldn’t take the reverend’s bait. He didn’t respond to anything he said, he never sat down with him, and he never bowed to any community or activist pressure on the issue of race. Not surprisingly, being shut out infuriated the reverend.
“How ’bout Brock?” A. J. asked.
“Good for me, good for my community,” the reverend said in between bites of his waffles and fried chicken. “Despite Domenico’s outrageous refusal to recognize me, Brock knows if he wants to get any cooperation from me and the other community leaders in this city, he has to spend some time courting us.”
“What’d Brock do to reach out?”
“Well, he’d do things both over and under the table, like having all of the black community leaders in the city come down to police headquarters, where his people would explain his crime-fighting initiatives. Especially any time he introduced anything new. He also made sure the precinct commanders reached out to people in the neighborhoods. A little goes a long way, know what I’m saying? But you’re not here to talk about Brock, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” A. J. said. “I’m here to talk about Supreme. How well do you know him?”
The corners of the reverend’s mouth curled into a hint of a smile. “We on or off the record?” he asked.
“We’re whatever you want us to be,” A. J. said, playing his role in their little dance. “We’ve known each other long enough, so you know you can trust me. I need real, honest information. If you can only do it on background, that’s fine. I’d rather you be candid and tell me what you know.”
“What’re you looking for?” Watters asked, motioning for the waiter. He asked for more water and another glass of lemonade. “Is this about the incident with the gun the other night? He’s in Rikers now, right?”
“Yes and no,” A. J. said. “Yes, he’s being held at Rikers without bail, but no, this isn’t about the thing with the gun. I’m not looking to hurt him. Just between us, he’s reached out to me for some help and I’m trying to find out what I’m getting myself into. I’m trying to get some details on his background. Real stuff, not the record company’s bullshit. Anything you can give me here would really be appreciated.”
The reverend looked around for a moment and wiped his mouth with his napkin before saying anything. “Supreme was always different in this neighborhood. He did what he had to do, but he did it responsibly.”
“You’ll forgive me, Reverend, but I didn’t know drug dealers could be responsible.”
“Anybody can be responsible, even journalists. That’s why I’m sitting here talking to you, A. J. Let me explain. Church Jackson, his predecessor, was a mean, violent man. He was ruthless and he didn’t care who he hurt. But when Supreme took over, the neighborhood got smooth. He was chill and everybody was able to just mind their own business.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” A. J. said.
“When Church Jackson was running the streets, it was all about war, constant violence. Innocent bystanders sometimes got hurt, and it was really bad for the neighborhood. All that violence kept people indoors, so it was bad for business. It also created a negative atmosphere. That meant no new investment, no people moving here, no new housing built. But once Supreme took over, there was peace in the streets. It was like a combination of the bad guys doing what they had to do and the cops filling in the gaps.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you had Supreme controlling most of the trade with the other major guys apparently okay with a smaller piece of the pie. And whenever somebody got stupid trying to make a name for himself, the NYPD upped their game. They’d step in and make arrests. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said they were working together.”
“Maybe it was all just a coincidence,” A. J. said. “When Church Jackson was running things, crime was out of control everywhere. The city was a mess until the police department started implementing CompStat and things began to settle down. Then Supreme takes over. So maybe it was all just timing.”
“No question the city was like the Wild West and it was every man for himself,” the reverend conceded. “It was very hard to get anything going by way of real organization. So Church Jackson’s strategy, if you can call it a strategy, was basically kill them all and let God sort it out. At some point, it all changed and order was brought to the neighborhood. I always figured it was Supreme. Look, don’t get me wrong,” Watters said, sitting back and putting his hands on his vest-covered belly as the waiter cleared the dishes from the table. “We’re talking about a drug dealer. No question. But given that Supreme was a significant drug dealer, he was also, in that context, a decent guy. I’ve never heard that he himself committed any acts of violence or that he had his guys doing it. And his rep on the street was he was always available if someone needed help—money or whatever. People knew they could go to him.”
“I think I’ll let someone else nominate him for man of the year,” A. J. said sarcastically. “But as far as the business goes, you’re saying Supreme was able to build up his empire because of the lack of competition, right?”
A. J. was fascinated by the way the whole enterprise worked and how it had all gelled because of Kevin Anderson and the NYPD. Everything Watters was telling him fit perfectly into the story Lucy had gotten from Supreme. It was mind-blowing. And Watters essentially had it figured out; he just didn’t realize it.
A. J. took the check when it came, and he thanked the reverend for his help as they walked out together. “As always, it’s been enlightening. And a pleasure.”
“I’m always happy to eat Willie’s cooking, but we hardly talked about me,” Watters said with a big smile. “What about my story?”
“Reverend,” A. J. said as they shook hands out on the sidewalk, “I’ll get back to you on that.”
• • •
Bishop had spent most of last night poring over all of the intel his investigators had gathered. He put it all into separate piles: one for the information related to Brock’s raid and the Emergency Service Unit, another for the medical examiner’s report on the dead terrorists and witness statements, a third for background info on the terrorists, and one more for everything they came up with on the Jafaari family. It was a lot to process.
Just before turning in, he highlighted a statement in one of the follow-up reports on the raid. One of the ESU officers on the entry team, the first guy in the stack, said he thought he heard a cell phone go off inside the apartment just moments before they hit the door. He realized only afterward that i
t had to be a cell, because the apartment didn’t have a landline. The detail nagged at Bishop as he lay in bed and drifted off to sleep, and was still lodged in his brain when he woke up, sandwiched between his two king shepherds.
Wouldn’t the ESU command cut off all cell phone use in the area before making their entry? Standard procedure dictated they shut down all communication and eliminate the possibility of anyone using a wireless signal to detonate an explosive. He got out of bed feeling strong and reenergized. This was going to be his kind of day. He had every intention of pissing someone off. And at the top of his list was ESU commander Anthony Pennetta.
He’d showered and gotten dressed quickly and was walking to his car when a black Crown Victoria pulled up to the curb next to him and the back door opened. “We need to talk,” Chief Fitzgerald said, raising his hand to cut Bishop off before he could respond.
Bishop quickly looked up and down the street through his rimless Revo sunglasses. No one was around, and running was probably a bad idea. He had no doubt he could get away—Manhattan was a really easy place to quickly get lost in—but the last thing he wanted to do was look scared. He reluctantly got into the backseat.
The driver continued down the block and turned when they hit Lexington Avenue, heading downtown. “We’ve been friends a long time,” Fitzgerald said. “I’ve helped you whenever you came to me and I’ve saved your ass more than a couple of times. Now listen to me closely, because I’m only gonna say this once. I’m asking you as a friend, and I’m telling you as a chief, back off of this case. Officially and unofficially.”