No Lights, No Sirens: The Corruption and Redemption of an Inner City Cop

by Robert Cea

  The warmth of the bourbon and the very friendly bartender was the perfect ghetto antidote to what I thought were the worries of the world. I looked around and felt very insulated, cared for. I felt as though everyone in this room had the same disease I had, and all the ghetto beauty that surrounded us, and the bottles filled with that warming liquid and the lights, and my partners, and the life and death that we faced every day, and the chicks getting high in the bathroom…well, this was it, the place we could all go with the same goal, to find the cure. And at Alfredo’s, cured we fucking were.

  Pirelli danced over, leaving his two hotties alone to grind each other. “Rob, I thought you collared up?” He swabbed the sweat from his head with a bar towel. Roxanne jumped in.

  “Don’t get him started again or I’m a have to pour him another three shooters. Tatico won’t be able to take me home tonight.” I knew what “Tatico” meant in the streets: boyfuck-toy. I pretended I didn’t hear it, though I saw Billy jerk his head at me and felt Pirelli’s foot kick my ankle. He then leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Tatico? Kid, I swear to God, look at those two chochas on the dance floor. They’re into whatever the fuck I want them to be into. You, me, the bartender, and them, think of the laughs.” I knew Roxanne knew what was being said. I thought of my girlfriend, who I was just starting to get serious with, and felt a pang of guilt.

  “Got another one tossed at BCB.”

  Pirelli looked at me like I had suddenly grown testicles for ears. He looked at Roxanne. “Baby, fuck him, give me the shot.” He then turned to me with absolute disbelief. “Are you kidding me, you’re pissed because you got a gun bounced from some schmuck ADA?”

  “Not one gun, six guns, Patty, six!”

  “C’mon, Rob, fuck all that nonsense. Make a gun collar, go to BCB, make some overtime, get your arrest numbers for the month, and write it up for a medal. All this while having some fun putting our foot up some ani-mule’s ass who really deserves it. Who really gives a shit if it’s thrown out? You get the excellent police duty award either way. I got five EPD medals, not one a them made it to the grand jury. Tossed before I was even able to take a decent dump at central booking, and guess what, I don’t give a rat’s cunt.”

  “Wait a minute, all your guns thrown out and you still write them up for medals?”

  “Hell yes, and why not? I’m entitled. Scumbag gets a shot off, caps me in the head, I go out of the picture, am I getting something posthumously?” Billy and Pirelli highfived each other. The booze, the women, the music—they were reaching Pirelli, I saw it in his eyes. There was no turning back for him once that fire was ignited. “Goddamn right I’m a get that medal of honor…”

  Billy jumped in, “And a really nice funeral.” Again they high-fived. Roxanne poured another round of shots, and we all drank, including her. I still did not understand the logic. I wanted to stay on a higher plain. I was sure my methods were beyond reproach.

  “Fuck entitled Patty. It doesn’t mean dick without a conviction.”

  “Personally I could give a fuck behind convictions. We write the shit up, get a bunch a medals, look like heroes for the chicks at parades”—he made a masturbating motion with his hand—“And that is fucking that, my friend. I guess you ain’t figured it out yet, Rob, but we aren’t doin’ balls out there anyway. So I’m just playing the game like you should be doin’, my man, and on that note I’m a head back to those two pretty PRs and work on tappin’ them two tight asses.” He high-fived Billy, Roxanne, me, and everyone else he passed as he jiggled his way back to those very tight wagons on the dance floor. He really did not give a fuck; from the beginning I knew that Patty was a survivor, he had to be given where he came from, which just reaffirmed his couldn’t give a fuck attitude. One way or another, he was going to make this job work for him. Me, I still didn’t get it. That’s when I heard a familiar voice.

  “They’re right, Tatico, play the game.” I turned around. There he was, three bar stools separating us. John Conroy. I sobered up quickly. Did he just call me Tatico?

  “John, hey, man, I didn’t know you were here.”

  His words were slow, thick, though his eyes were as focused, maybe more focused, than usual. “Well, here I am, drinking.”

  I looked at Roxanne, then pointed to John. She moved to him silently. She did not look in his eyes, just poured. “What are you doing here alone, John?”

  “Only drink with the ones I trust.” He raised his glass, we toasted. Before the glass reached his lips, I saw him look into the mirror behind the bar. Someone was walking in, a large Spanish dude wearing tons of silver. He seemed like he had some serious street jugo and presence—the small entourage of beauties he had draped on his long leather duster said as much. He had to have been a regular, as Roxanne gave him a big hello, so he had to know the place was wired with ghetto cops. He clearly had no fear of us. John slowly placed his glass on the bar, not taking his eyes off the cat. There was an electricity emanating from John, and I knew something was happening, something between two Brooklyn cats from very different sides of a dirty fence. It was at this point that this Spanish Lothario noticed John. His smile faded, and the color drained from my man’s face. He quickly turned to Roxanne, whispered something in her ear, did an about-face, and walked out, girls in tow. John slowly turned back to the drink on the bar, and without missing a beat, smiled at it then shot it down his throat.

  I did not want to let the drama go. “What was that all about?”

  He blinked at me, so laid back, the liquor working its magic on him. He almost smiled, then looked at Roxanne and raised two fingers; he dropped money on the bar and she poured, then took his money. “Just another unhappy soonto-be-collared, broke-down motherfucker,” John said. We shot them down. I guess both of our guards were lowered behind the liquor because he slapped me on the back and laughed. “Tatico, I like that, yeah, Tatico.” John Conroy liked me. He squinted his eyes at me and suddenly turned serious, as if he were now in full control of himself. I thought it was amazing how you can be lulled into thinking one thing is happening with John when really something completely different is taking place. He should be an actor, he’s always pretending, or is it lying?

  “You’re doin’ all right out there, Tatico, really impressive for a guy who’s only been in the precinct less than two months. How much time you got on the job?” Roxanne poured another round for us. He lifted it to his lips.

  “Came on in the summer,” I said.

  Before he was able to drink, he stopped and side-glanced me. He watched me for about five long seconds, then turned back to the drink and shot it down as well. He picked up a wad of wet bills, dropped a twenty on the bar, and without looking at me turned toward the door and said, “Let’s go.”

  I pulled a deuce out of my pocket as well, dropped it on the bar, and followed him out without saying good-bye to anyone.

  His car was so nondescript, I, to this day, still don’t know what it was. The backseat was filled with job-related paperwork, beer cans strewn on the floor mats. A pad hung off the dash, and a pen was jammed into the air-conditioning vent for quick access. Guy is always on point, I thought.

  We drove north on Hamilton Avenue, which separated Carroll Gardens from Red Hook: the good and the very bad. Once Hamilton Avenue ended, we swerved left, driving west briefly, making a quick right past the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, heading west on Columbia Street. It was eleven o’clock in the evening though the streets were so crowded with people it might as well have been eleven in the a.m. My first impression of this long stretch of road was just how dark it was; it made the East Flatbush Badlands seem like an amusement arcade. Although the street was wide enough for three car lanes on either side, it made me feel extremely claustrophobic; I had an incredible feeling, as if I were traveling in a tunnel. The street was framed on both sides by low, pockmarked redbrick buildings. There was garbage everywhere, on the streets, in the doorways, in the bare branches of the trees—hell, diapers and sanitary napkins hung like Chr
istmas ornaments. This little stretch of land felt like another planet.

  We drove quietly. John was cruising, seemingly very content with where he was. This was his environment. He was clocking everyone on the street, occasionally nodding at someone who’d recognized the fact that King Kong was on the block. More and more people saw us driving and quickly U-turned the fuck out of Dodge. This was exciting for me because when I noticed someone, John would notice the same person. We would laugh when the cat we both spied would drop his head and turn away quickly, into the dark recesses of the Red Hook projects. John and I were having a silent dialogue with each other. We were a good fit.

  “How is it you know a lot of these guys out here, John? We’re a long way from home.”

  He glanced at me, his eyes red slits; he smiled. “ ’Cause we all speak the same language out here,” he said.

  Another riddle, though I knew what it meant. He may not have known them at first glance, but they certainly recognized that he was a cop. The car we were driving in might as well have been an RMP and we might as well have been wearing uniforms. But there were still guys out there who were calling him by his street name, Con. John knew everyone, and the smart ones, they knew him.

  He lowered his window all the way down, inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly. “Love the smell of that boned-up air.” Boned-up air: the smell of weed, car exhaust, and coconut oil, the ghetto bouquet, I thought. Yes, it was good.

  “This is where I belong, right here, right in the middle of it. Fuck all that train riding to the straight job, in the straight world, living in the straight burbs bullshit. This here, this is in the blood.” He turned to me. “Been watching you, you got a dose for it too, yes? You understand the life; you know what has to be done, don’t you?”

  I nodded, half understanding. I looked back out into the intense urban landscape. I suddenly thought of Sergeant Tom. “You and O’Lary, how come he ended up in the academy?”

  He hesitated. This again raised me up. Whenever the past relationship between these two guys was brought up, there was always that slight blip on the screen.

  “Tommy boy was going to get made sergeant and he wanted to… calm down a little.”

  “Calm down?”

  “He didn’t want any complaints pending that could hold up his promotion, so he put in for a transfer to the academy, easiest place not to get jammed up in.”

  “What kind of complaints?”

  He smiled again. “You know, everyday Negroid nonsense.” I’d been on the job long enough to know what “Negroid nonsense” meant. Most if not all of the perps who were being locked up in the 6-7 were male blacks who’d resisted getting collared, which would mean they were physically subdued by the officer. Negroid nonsense referred to these perps dropping a complaint against the arresting officer for brutality. Each complaint was taken seriously by the job’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, CCRB. Even though most of them were unfounded, the complaint stayed in your folder for the duration of your career. If you had enough of these nonsensical complaints, you could be held up for transfers or even promotions. These complaints had held down many a good cop. O’Lary did not want to be one of them. I got the feeling that John Conroy did not give a fuck.

  “How much time you got on, John?”

  “Fourteen years of kicking ass and taking names.”

  “How come you’re still in the bag?”

  “You ask a lot a fuckin’ questions there, Tatico.” He laughed. “Was in a robbery unit, three months from my shield, some mope I locked up claimed I coerced information out of him with my gun.” He turned to me, suddenly very serious. “I ain’t never coerced anything out of anyone with any kind of physical threat. The threat of twenty to life was always enough of a lubricant to make any animal roll. Prick rolled, his people heard, and he lied to save his own scumbag ass. Job took the word of a six-time-convicted mope over mine. I was given a choice of where I wanted to go, the contract was set up by my bosses, and that’s how I ended up in the six-seven, back in uniform. Now, I’m on the move again.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, “On the move?” I asked.

  He pointed to an atrium that led to the entrances of eight buildings; in the middle of the atrium stood an empty flagpole. “Last year that place right there was the scene of twenty homicides. This whole area, there were sixty homicides. This precinct is one of the smallest in the city, but per capita it has the most homicides. You know why?” I was rapt, shook my head. “Because the best heroin in six states is sold right here, eighty-five percent pure when it hits the vein. You know how potent a hit that is?” He tapped on his forearm with his hand. “It’s quite the motherfucking dose. Easy access into this shithole with the tunnel and bridges close by. The cops here are fucking morons or they just don’t give a fuck, and the people who live in this toilet go along to get along. That is, till one of the”—he made quotation marks with his fingers—“community activists’ kids took a hot one in the ass. Now there is a crusade to stop the drug crimes, and killings in Red Hook. So now ‘the Job’ is doing its little dog-and-pony nonsense to show it really cares for little Tommy Hill-nigger who was probably slinging anyway, which is why he took one in the ass in the first place. So I, because of my infinite wisdom of most a the players out here, am going into this plainclothes detail to clean up the out-of-control mess between the local businessmen.” He smiled; so did I; “local businessmen” sounded very proper.

  “That’s great, John, when is it effective?”

  “Orders came down today. My old robbery boss is in charge of the initiative, so I get to more or less run the show.” He glanced at me, grinned. “You can’t make a move till you have about a year in a precinct, but tell you what, stay in touch. Lots a people still owe me a solid or two on the Job.”

  The thought of working in plainclothes with one of the city’s best cops was inconceivable to me at the time. I thought it was just boozed-up small talk, but I would not forget what he said.

  “I had five young guys like you, fuck, we could really do some damage out here. You know, give it back to the animals, something those stuffed shirts at the precincts and at One Police Plaza are afraid to do. Sh-i-i-it, you remember all the lessons you learned in the academy?”

  I thought about Tom O’Lary, his impassioned speech to me on Second Avenue. “Yeah.”

  “Good, now throw it all away. None of it means a fucking thing out here. All that horseshit’s fine for the classroom, but when you’re out here alone, it’s a fight to the death. The day you forget that is the day you take two in the head. Before, your buddy boy there at the bar, the cat with the two mommies, he was right. These ADAs don’t have the slightest conception of what it’s really like out here—no one does—so you have to tell them what they want to hear. I make a gun collar, I become fuckin’ De Niro: ‘Yes, sir, me and my partner approached the car to write a summons, and there on the dashboard under the newspaper is a loaded gun, right in plain view.’ ”

  “They don’t buy that, John, c’mon—”

  He jumped all over me, much more animated than I had ever seen him. This was another John Conroy, John Conroy the teacher, the preacher.

  “They buy what you sell them; they don’t have and don’t want a choice. By the time there is a suppression hearing, the mope usually will plea out and there’s the ADA’s conviction. They want us to bullshit them, makes their job a hell of a lot easier. They need us to bullshit them. We want the collars, they want the convictions. Don’t really matter how it’s done as long as it gets done. It is a tool just like this booty trey-eight they give us, only this is more powerful. Tell you something else; on the streets, scumbags ain’t our only enemy, it’s the jerkoffs who hide behind the desks and quarterback our every move, and sit on the benches in the courtroom…You’ll see, the only way to get the job done is to tell them what they want to hear. Follow?”

  I nodded, sucking it all in. I was learning something I knew anyway, deep in the back of my mind. I knew that every collar
I had brought in was one word away from not getting tossed or 343’d at central booking. I just wanted to try doing it the right way. But the truth was and still is: The laws are built to protect the guilty. The cops are just the fall guys for when the shit hits the fan. I, of course, did not fully realize the latter until much later in my career, but guess what, it’s so fucking true. That night in John’s car was worth three years on the streets and lost cases in court.

  I saw John’s eyes light up from what I thought was the headlight reflection in the mirror. He slowed the car down and waited at the light. That same look crossed his face that it had in the bar.

  A maxed-out Benz rolled up next to us. The smoked windows revealed nothing but John’s reflection. John didn’t care that he could not see the driver. He pointed his finger with very little effort toward the curb. The Benz slowly pulled in front of our car and parked. John pulled behind and wrote the name “SHAH” and the license number down on the pad he had stuck to the dash. I was really confused. We can’t do a car stop, we’re not working. I nervously blurted out, “What’s all this…”

  John did not look at me, did not utter a word. He unclipped his five shot in his belt and moved stealthily out of the car. The driver’s door opened on the Benz. Out stepped the man known as Shah King. He was in his mid-thirties, about John’s height, though he had long, thin muscles that flexed under the colorful tracksuit he was wearing. He wore a thick, gold, braided chain around his neck, a six-inch diamond-studded cross hanging from it. Around his wrist was a thick gold-nugget watchband that held a presidential Rolex. I immediately assumed he was clean. Nobody, not even the dumbest of dumb criminals, would drive around with anything on them while they were wearing the flags that Shah King was wearing. John obviously didn’t think like the average cop or the average perp.