“You know,” said Michelle, “it’s enough to make me want to spend the night in my own apartment once in a while.”
“Up in the Northeast?”
“Yeah, on Rhawn a few blocks from the Boulevard. Theresa, that’s my roommate, she doesn’t really know much about what I’m doing. But I told her I wouldn’t be staying there for a while.”
“I wouldn’t go back there unless I had to,” I said. “If you’re going to get into the part, you’ve really got to do it all the way.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, gazing out the truck window. I found myself looking at her face, her smooth skin, just drinking it in. She turned to me and smiled.
“Want to hear my name?”
“Sure.”
“Lisa Puccini, like the composer. What do you think?” “Mama mia!”
She laughed. “I’m actually one-quarter Italian.”
“And it’s certainly a very nice quarter. What about a cover story? Given any thought to that?”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got it all worked out. I’m from Wilkes-Barre, born and raised. Two sisters, one three years older, one three years younger.”
“What happens if you run into someone who really is from Wilkes-Barre?” I asked.
“Well, I sort of did grow up there—that’s where my grandparents lived. Steve and I and our mom spent our summers up there.”
“What about Lisa Puccini’s parents?”
“My father worked at the post office. He’s retired now, my mother has a sewing business out of the home.”
“You got names for everyone?”
“Let’s see. Older sister is Regina, she’s married and lives in Pittsburgh, younger sister is Sandy, she’s got tattoos and a pierced nose and she’s the lead singer for a rock band.”
“What’s the band’s name?”
“Um—I can’t remember?”
“Not good enough. You have to know everything.”
We tried to think of a good name for her sister’s band, and I suggested “Turn That Damn Thing Down.”
“That way,” I said, “when a kid’s father yells that upstairs, the kid’s going to think, Boy, my dad’s hip.”
Michelle laughed, but said she’d have to think about it. I asked her a lot of questions about Lisa Puccini, including what she was doing in Philadelphia. Her story was that she left Wilkes-Barre to get away from a violently abusive boyfriend, and was trying to start a new life. She wanted to keep a low profile so he wouldn’t be able to find her.
“Lisa Puccini” had worked as a manicurist at a beauty shop on South Main Street in Wilkes-Barre. It was an actual beauty shop, owned by Michelle’s real cousin Darlene. If anyone called asking about Lisa Puccini, Darlene would say she had recently quit and hadn’t been heard from.
“That’s good,” I said. “You’ve really thought this through.”
I glanced at my watch. The cab would be back soon.
“Eddie,” Michelle said quickly. “Look out your window.”
I turned. There were the three guys, standing right there, malevolence rising from their bodies like steam. Apparently they had decided we weren’t cops.
“Hey, white boy,” said one of them, a short, muscular guy in a black T-shirt. “You got a cigarette?”
There was about a 99 percent chance he had a gun and was four seconds away from pulling it out. I reached under my T-shirt on my right side, pulled my Glock from its holster, and then stuck it out the window in the guy’s face.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I said. “We’re the police.”
He took a step back and then turned angrily to his friends.
“What’d I fuckin’ tell you?”
“No, man,” one of them said. “I was the one told you.”
“You both lying motherfuckers,” said the third. “I was the one said it first.”
“The fuck you did.”
“I’m tellin’ you, I said it, I said five-oh.”
They had totally forgotten we were there.
“Yo!” I yelled. They turned. My gun was still out the window. “Take a fuckin’ hike.”
Without a word they shrugged and ambled off, looking for something else to relieve their boredom. I put my Glock back in its holster.
“You going to carry a gun?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. It’d be nice to have, but what happens if Bravelli or somebody finds it? Most women in Westmount don’t have guns.”
“Your decision. By the way,” I said, “don’t ask Bravelli a lot of questions. In fact, don’t ask him any questions. If he starts talking about business, seem totally uninterested, change the subject. Particularly if it’s about Steve.”
“Why? If he’s telling me…”
“It’s like you turning him down for the Bordeaux. You have to convince him it’s not that big a deal. If you can do that, maybe you can get him to tell you a lot more. He’ll never trust you, but maybe he’ll get stupid.”
Michelle’s cab was approaching. I made sure I had her pager number, and that she had mine.
“If you run into any problem at all,” I said, “call me right away.”
“I will. You know, I guess the only thing I’m really worried about is that my mother or father will find out.”
“Aren’t they going to wonder what you’re doing on your leave of absence? What are you telling them?”
“Are you kidding? I’m not going to tell them anything—particularly not my father. He asks way too many questions. If my parents call my other apartment, Theresa will take a message for me. I’m going to keep this as simple as possible.”
The cab pulled up next to my Blazer. I didn’t want to let Michelle go, I didn’t want to let her go back into that world. I tried not to look worried, but Michelle knew.
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “And thanks for not trying to talk me out of this again. It wouldn’t have done any good.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I just hope this works,” she said. It was the first hint of doubt I had seen.
“It will,” I said. “You’ll do great.”
She smiled and this time I kissed her. And for a moment it was just me and her, sitting in that truck, as if no one else in the world existed. Not even Mickey Bravelli.
Right after roll call that afternoon, I headed over to Barney Stiller’s protest march in my patrol car. If we were expecting to get off easy, we were kidding ourselves. Four thousand marchers showed up.
It seemed that the harder we went after the black Mafia, the worse things got. We just couldn’t seem to make any progress—it was still like throwing darts blindfolded. We had no idea what we were hitting, though we kept hearing the cries of the black community.
Until that summer, one of the things that had always distinguished West Philadelphia from many other black neighborhoods was that people were willing to cooperate with the police. If there was a street-corner murder in parts of North Philly, for example, just try asking neighbors for help finding the bad guy. You’d be met by a blank face and a quickly closing door. It wasn’t that people there were afraid to cooperate, though some were. It was just that they didn’t like cops. White cops, black cops, they weren’t particular. They didn’t like any of us.
In West Philly, it was different. You’d be at a murder scene, see a young guy lying dead on the street. A crowd would gather behind the yellow police tape. As you walked back to your car to get something, you’d hear a soft voice: “Officer.” An elderly black man, maybe, or a young mother holding a small child. They’d motion for you to walk with them around the corner. “I saw who did it. It was that boy Darnell, he lives across the street with his mother, Mary Owens. She’s a good woman, she don’t cause nobody no trouble. But that Darnell, he shot this young boy down in cold blood, then ran right back into his house. Still there, probably.”
You’d knock on the door and make the pinch, and the detectives would show up and just look at you in amazement.
Over the years, a trust was built up
between the community and the police. They needed us, we needed them. We understood each other. But now that trust seemed to have vanished. The black community was hurt, humiliated, full of rage. Why should they help us?
I drove to Dogshit Park, where the march was to begin its twelve-block route to 20th District headquarters. Actually, the official name was Ariwanna Park, after a tribe of Indians that presumably hundreds of years ago lived on 56th Street and bought Chinese take-out from around the corner. People in the neighborhood wanted to rename it Conrad Park, after Nathan Conrad, a black Vietnam War hero who had grown up across the street. They argued that the Ariwannas had long since moved out, and hadn’t left a forwarding address. City council was more than willing to make the change, but it turned out there were still a few Ariwannas left here and there, though not in West Philly, and they demanded that the park’s name stay the same.
Faced with a tough decision, city council as usual ducked the issue completely. Which meant that everyone in the neighborhood called it Conrad Park, but as far as the city was concerned, it was still Ariwanna Park.
We didn’t know what to call it, so we just gave it our own name. At night, purse-snatchers and other criminals were always running in there to hide, and we were always running in after them, and when we came out we usually had to scrape off the bottoms of our shoes on a nearby patch of grass. No one knew exactly who came up with our new name for the park, but I would have put him in for a commendation.
When I arrived at the park, protesters were still gathering under the trees. I pulled my police car to the curb and got out and just started chatting with people, hoping to ease the tension a little. I knew some of the people there—residents, store owners, community leaders. They were friendly to me, and I even ran into a woman who called me by name and thanked me profusely for finding the thief who stole her VCR. I didn’t remember her at all. Still, most of the people there watched me with suspicion, a low anger in their eyes.
Finally, the march began, as protesters spilled out of the park and onto the street. Leading the way were two police jeeps from Traffic, side by side, their red and blue lights flashing.
There were men from the neighborhood, but also a lot of women with young kids. Some people were carrying signs with such heartwarming sentiments as this is not a police state and philly cops are racist. Nearly all the marchers were black, but here and there were a few young whites. They looked like Penn students, full of self-importance. I figured maybe they got in the wrong line and thought they were in a march for better cafeteria food.
One young guy near the front of the march was walking backwards with a bullhorn, leading a singsong chant with the words “GESTAPO POLICE, YOU’RE WHITE AND MALE, YOU’RE THE ONES THAT BELONG IN JAIL.”
It took me a second to recognize him—it was Homicide, the guy we picked up the night Steve was shot. As I was watching him fade noisily into the distance, Marisol got on the radio and asked me to come to 64th and Pine, about halfway along the route. She was calm, but from the sound of her voice, I had a feeling there was trouble. When I got there, two boys, both about thirteen, were standing on top of Nick’s car, kicking at the red and blue lights. It didn’t look like the protest was exactly instilling respect for the police among the young.
One of the kids had on a red Phillies cap, the other had a red Sixers cap. Nick was furious, his face was as red as the hats. He was yelling at the kids to get off, and he was trying to grab their legs, but they kept jumping out of the way, playing a game with him. Meanwhile, the street was full of people marching by, chanting about putting police in jail, and they were all watching Nick. It was not a good situation.
Marisol and her partner, Yvonne Shelley, were standing nearby. “We figured you better handle this,” said Marisol.
I walked up to Nick. “Calm down, just ignore them for right now.”
Nick looked at me like I was crazy. “Just try it,” I said, and turned my back on the boys. I motioned for Nick to do the same. Reluctantly, he turned around. It worked—they just stood silently on the car roof, and eventually joined us in watching the march. I told Marisol and Yvonne to take off, we had it under control. After a few minutes, the march had passed, and everything was quiet. I turned back to the boys.
“All right, time to get off.”
“You can’t tell us what to do,” said the kid in the Phillies hat, pointing his finger at me. With that, both of them kicked at the red and blue lights again. They just had sneakers on, but they were kicking hard, and we heard a crunch and pieces of blue plastic flew across the top of the car. More kicks, more crunches, now red plastic was flying. The kids were laughing, having a great time.
“Get off my fuckin’ car, NOW!” Nick yelled. They just laughed and kept kicking. Nick’s face got red again, and he climbed on top of the hood of the car and took out his nightstick.
Before I could even tell him to put it away, he whacked the boy with the Phillies hat in the leg, and the kid yelped in pain and fell to one knee. He looked at Nick in astonishment, like how could he ever do such a thing. Meanwhile, his pal slid down the back window onto the trunk, then onto the street, and took off running.
“That’s enough, Nick,” I said.
It should have been over then. The boy in the Phillies cap had given up, he was ready to come down, just looking for a way to do it. Nick was still standing on the hood of the car, he could have just grabbed the kid’s arm. Instead, he put one foot on the windshield to brace himself, and then swung his stick again, catching the back of the boy’s knee. Without a sound, without resistance, the kid collapsed forward, toward Nick. “Nick!” I yelled. I knew what he was going to do. I could see it coming. I tried to grab Nick’s leg, but he had reared back, he was swinging as hard as he could, and his stick caught the kid’s head with a crack. The boy fell onto the hood of the car, unconscious, blood streaming over the bright white paint.
“What the hell you doing?” I yelled.
Nick was almost surprised by my question.
“You saw him, he was fuckin’ up my car, you think I’m gonna let him get away with that?”
“So you’re going to get us both fired, is that it? Is that what you’re trying to do?”
I looked around—there was no one anywhere. It was like a ghost town. All the onlookers on the sidewalks and the front porches were gone, they seemed to have been simply swept away by the protest march. Was it possible that no one had seen what happened?
What I should have done was call for Rescue, and then filed a full report. But had I done that, Nick would have been charged with assault and fired before the end of his shift, and I probably would have gotten jammed up for letting it happen. You just don’t beat a black kid senseless at a protest march against police.
I had no doubt the Department would hang Nick without a second thought. It wouldn’t matter that maybe he was acting a little crazy because his father had just died, and because his partner had just died. They wouldn’t take that into consideration. They wouldn’t care.
Which meant I had to choose between my cousin and the Department. It took about one second to make a decision.
“We can take him to the hospital ourselves,” I said, taking another look around. “Help me get him into the car.” There was still no sign that anyone had seen.
Together we picked the boy off the hood, carrying him under his arms, and put him in the backseat. He was still unconscious, still bleeding badly. I checked the trunk for the first-aid kit that was supposed to be there, and somehow wasn’t surprised it was missing. I did find a reasonably clean white towel, though, and I got in the back with the kid and held it to his head.
“St. Mike’s,” I told Nick. “Let’s go, now.”
It was a small hospital, only a few blocks away. At one point I took the towel away and looked at the kid’s wound.
“Damn, Nick, you really split the kid’s head open.”
“He had it comin', Eddie.”
As we pulled up to the emergency room area,
the boy was beginning to wake up. I quickly unpinned my badge and my nameplate, and dropped them into my shirt pocket. When the car stopped, I pushed opened the door and helped slide the kid out.
“Think you can make it to those doors?” I asked him, and pointed at the two large sliding glass doors to the ER. He was still groggy, and I don’t think he really knew where he was. Without a word, he staggered off in the right general direction. I ran around the back of the car and jumped in the front passenger seat, and Nick oh-so-casually put the car in gear and glided back out into the street. As we made the turn we looked back and saw the ER doors close behind the kid.
There was still blood on the hood, which is not the kind of thing people wouldn’t notice. The only place I knew that had a hose was the Yard at headquarters, but since that was where the march was headed, it probably wasn’t exactly the best place to go. Nick said he had seen a hose behind the supermarket at 54th and Baltimore, it was probably used to clean out the Dumpsters.
We pulled behind the supermarket, and hosed off the car and cleaned out the backseat. Nick gave me a smile as he started to get back behind the wheel.
“Thanks for saving my ass, Eddie.”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him back out. “You think this is a good time?” I said. “This was a fun thing that you did?”
“No, but like I said, he had it comin'.”
“The fuck he did, Nick. First you deck that guy on Fifty-second, now you try to kill this kid. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“C’mon, Eddie …”
“I should beat the shit out of you right here, Nick. If you weren’t going through such a tough time, I swear to God I would, right here, I would just lay you the fuck out on the street.”
Nick’s eyes were full of surprise and hurt.
“You may not have to deal with Internal Affairs,” I said, “but you’re going to have to deal with me. And I’m going to be a lot fucking worse.”
“What do you want me to do, Eddie?”
Sons of the City Page 10