by Robert Cea
The Shah was all smiles as he stepped from the car. He opened up his arms as if they were long-lost buddies hooking up at some tailgate party. “Con, what up, kid? Long time.”
I would later learn that Shah was the biggest and baddest dealer not only in the Red Hook projects but also in many other jail-cell projects around the city. His street-business acumen had made him rich, so rich, in fact, it was said that he had legitimate money managers inquiring about purchasing the New York Knicks basketball team. This was long before the Puff Daddies of the city had the sense to mainstream their own street talents into legit gold. The Shah was one of the originals. He was handsome, played both sides of the street fence very well, and was an organized street thug. He came up in Red Hook, but had long since removed his entire clan from its nastiness. Only John knew where Shah’s main residence was, a secret they’d both take to the grave with them if need be. Shah sold TKO-brand heroin—technical knock out—the purest in the city. It was the same heroin that Conroy said fed into all the shootings and homicides in the area. Cars would line up with plates from as far west as Indiana and as far south as Virginia, and that is some serious play. Reason being, a street dealer could step on, or water down, the boy three times and still have a great product. The junkies would only have to purchase a few bags, stepping on it themselves or using less of the boy, cutting their trips to the street pharmacies in half, thus minimizing the risk of getting locked up by narcotics teams doing buy-and-bust raids. The Shah understood this: Sell a good product, the people will come and buy.
John did not hug the Shah, but peeked into the car. “All alone tonight, Shah?”
“Just dropped my aunt off, she love that bingo hall, yo, play that bingo long as the days ma’fuckin’ long, son.” He laughed nervously. “Yo, Con, what’s with all the drama now, we ain’t got a thing no more?”
John bent down and squinted at something in the front seat of the car, leaned in. At this point I got out of the car. I absolutely did not know what to expect. My heart racing, I unconsciously slid my windbreaker behind my holster. Upon seeing this, the Shah sucked his teeth slowly, then made an extremely sour face at me that told me there were miles between the two of us. I was slightly intimidated, definitely out of my league, but I was fuck sure not going to show either of these men this. I just tilted my head at him trying to give as imposing a look as the one I was receiving. He countered by shaking his head, raising his eyebrows, and turning back to John, annoyed. “C’mon, Con, you know a nigga’s clean now, what’s all this?”
John slowly came out of the front seat holding on to a book. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said. The book was an abbreviated version of the Koran.
Shah held out his hands, palms up. “So, you gonna lock me up for reading verse five from surah number six? What, you low on collars this month, Con?”
John did not smile, did not frown, he was robotic. He leaned back in the car and I heard the trunk pop. He stood in front of Shah, not looking at me. “Check the trunk, Tatico.”
I wasn’t sure that I liked the name, though in hindsight I don’t think John really knew my first name, and now it was carved in the asphalt since the biggest dealer in the city knew me as Tatico. I noticed the sheen bouncing off the sixty-thousand-dollar Benz; I was almost afraid to touch it for fear of smudging it. The trunk was the cleanest I had ever seen; it was empty except for a GRAYCO diaper bag. It was zipped up, and bulging with its contents. I unzipped it and out popped some diapers, a thin box of Wet Ones, and underneath a plastic baby bottle were seven neatly stacked bricks of hundred-dollar bills wrapped in thick purple rubber bands, the kind guys like me never get in banks. Up to this point, my only collars were guns and the occasional assault second degree, or domestic bullshit off the radio. I had never seen this much cash in my life. I lifted up one of the bricks; John looked at it and was still unemotional.
“How many bundles you move for that?”
“C’mon, Con, you know me better than that, I’m holding that for my boy. Told you, yo, dropped my aunt off from the bingo hall.” The word “aunt” was pronounced distinctly southern black, auwwwnt; this guy was about as southern as I was black.
“Is there a strap in the car, Shah?”
“Hell no, Con. Shit’s beyond me, son.” Shah looked down at his manicure, then adjusted the twenty pounds of gold around his wrist. He seemed appalled that the question would even be asked.
John, with the same blank expression, slowly walked to the driver’s side of his car. He opened the door, pulled a set of handcuffs from his waistband, hooked one end to the steering wheel, then nodded for Shah to come to him. The Shah complied, though if a man’s head could actually spin off and shoot into space, it would have happened right then. John clicked the cuff gently on his wrist. “Have a seat, Shah.”
The Shah looked into the messy car. “Think I’m a motherfuckin’ stand.”
“Watch him, Tatico.”
The Shah lifted his cuffed wrist up, repulsed. “Fuck am I gonna go?”
John went into automatic pilot. With intense speed and precision, he meticulously started to remove every item from the inside of the car, checking the contents thoroughly. When he was satisfied, he then went to work on all the interior parts: the door panels, front and backseats; he dug around in the speaker wells, he moved under the dash pulling at wires, in the trunk he pulled the spare and jack out. He laid the contents of the car neatly on the sidewalk. It resembled an illustration from a car manual. He then got on his back and went to work under the car. This I thought was a little obsessive. I actually believed Shah, but Shah was Conroy’s job. The Shah was what Conroy did for a living, period.
It was at this point that I noticed an RMP moving slowly down the street. I realized two things. One, there were no crowds watching us. I assumed that the Shah owned these blocks, and nobody was about to show face in this uncomfortable moment, further embarrassing him. Two, in all the time we were on Columbia Street, this was the first RMP to cruise down the block. John was right; the cops did not give a fuck. When the RMP saw us, it slowed. John stood up, glanced at it briefly, then went back to work on the vehicle. The RMP made a quick U-turn and proceeded out of the area. Shah laughed at this sarcastically. I then heard the hood pop open; John moved to it and dug around. He checked the fan belt, and then I heard the spinning of a wing nut and the top of the air filter was removed. I had to breathe in deeply. This guy is out of control, I thought. I heard the movement from under the hood suddenly stop. I caught the Shah dip his head slightly; all the piss and vinegar in him seemed to evaporate before my eyes. John slowly walked around the car, not taking his eyes off his target. He was carrying a .45-caliber automatic. It looked big and clean, like everything else in the Shah’s car. John just stood in front of Shah, who was looking at the ground. I was supremely impressed, shocked and awed.
“I’m never wrong about these things, am I, Shah?” he said quietly, slipping the gun into his waistband.
The Shah slowly looked at the gun. He didn’t even try to feign disbelief, though he did not answer. He suddenly looked like the little boy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. John’s hand lashed out across the Shah’s face like a cold, wet towel. I jumped at the sound. The Shah just looked at him. John’s fingers left thick red marks on Shah’s smooth chocolate skin. “Am I?” Again the Shah did not answer, though the sting of the slap deflated any residual belligerence that he might’ve had left. Again without warning John slapped him; this time a welt was starting to rise above his brow. “Say it.” Before the Shah answered, John hit him again. I saw a glob of spit shoot out of his mouth; I also heard a whimper of pain. I was sure he was beaten down by this point. Like a dog who was being trained by its owner, the Shah stepped up to the program.
“You’re never wrong, Con.” He was now as docile as a poodle. This did not sit well with John. During the whole encounter, it seemed, he had the Shah walking three steps forward, only now to have him walk six steps behind. He hit him once m
ore for good measure, drawing blood from his ear. John didn’t look twice at the blood on his hand. He pulled the .45 from his waistband, felt the weight of it, then pulled the slide back slightly, checking the load. There was one in the pipe. John placed the barrel on the Shah’s temple. I had to catch my breath. This was not in the playbook that O’Lary had so explicitly laid out for us. What was I going to do if John put a hole in this guy’s head? I’m sure I grabbed hold of my gun, for protection. Please, John, fucking chill. Don’t let this get out of control! John pulled the hammer back. He leaned in, whispering in the Shah’s ear. The Shah nodded his head many times. John then put the gun back in his waistband, unclicked the cuff, and Shah King briskly walked back to the safety of the Benz’s hand-sewn leather seats. Maybe crime does pay, I thought. After all, he had just been given a pass, and after collecting his car parts was going to drive away in that very sweet ride, with a lot of cash in the trunk. I was sure that was not the last I was going to see of Shah King.
John got into the car and I followed suit. I was scared and amazed, all at once. This was a high-stakes game that I wasn’t aware even existed. This was the major leagues. John tossed the gun in the backseat, looked at me, and smiled. “That boy is my best snitch, he is why I own these bitches out here, all a’ them.”
“He’s your best snitch? Thought you were going to kill him…Why didn’t you collar him?”
John went off. “That little twat will bend over or lay down for me or get on all fours behind my shit while I fuck him dry, you understand? He don’t have but one simple choice either, I own him. These punks think they own you, like they got some sort of entitlement to these streets because they came up in this fuckin’ toilet here. They think they got you right up under their arm, BULLSHIT! Every once in a while you got to show them that we are the Babylon bosses, you have to remind them that they need us a fuck lot more than we need them. By not collaring him, he realizes just how close he can come to getting collared, you understand?” I nodded, though I was completely unnerved by the street lesson I had just borne witness to. Many things crossed my mind: the brutality that had occurred, the fact that I’d believed Shah King was clean and would’ve fallen for his street shit and let him go. Was I that gullible? I decided at that moment that everyone out here was fair game, and the game was getting really interesting. John swung the car in a wide U. “I’m hungry. You wanna go to Nathan’s?”
The next night had started out with a bang. Two cops from the precinct had been involved in a shooting earlier in the day. When I arrived for the four to twelve, I saw the looks on the cops’ faces. They had lit up some animal carrying a MAC10 machine pistol, and now seemed distant, worn out by questioning from the bosses, internal affairs, the ADA. The mope actually shot at the two cops as he was running away from them. Unlucky for him because one of the cops was a crack shot and took part of the Rastafarian’s jaw off with a perfectly placed head shot. So upon entering the station house, there was a vibe, as there is in any precinct when a brother officer has faced death toe-to-toe and won: It is us against them. No matter how hard they try to drill into a cop’s head in the academy that that is the wrong approach to take, the truth is, it really is us against them, no matter how you cut it. We are not the individuals carrying guns illegally, we’re just the poor schmucks who are paid, poorly, I must add, to go out and retrieve them. What we are not paid to do, however, is to get shot at by them, and a certain message must always be branded into the psyche of every street thug or potential animal: This fucked-up behavior will not be tolerated without brutal retaliation.
So Billy and I set out to collar another bad guy carrying heavy armament. I wanted the two veteran cops who were involved in the shooting to know that they were not alone, that no street thug can feel that it is “kool and the gang” to bust a shot at any one of us. I think that every cop who went out that tour felt the same thing, because it was a recordbreaking day for gun collars in the precinct—in one fourto-twelve tour, eleven guns were brought in. Now that is one serious display of blue-wall solidarity. My friends who still work in statistics at One Police Plaza tell me that record still stands, and I was the four-to-twelve cop to bring in the first gun.
Billy was driving; the sun had not yet set, so visibility in the Badlands was good. We turned onto Rockaway Parkway, a block west of the dividing line, Ninety-eighth Street separating the 6-7 from the 7-3, or Brooklyn South from Brooklyn North, bad to worse. Rockaway Parkway is a wide four-lane street that traverses East New York, East Flatbush, and deep into the southeastern end of Canarsie to Jamaica Bay. The roughest area was certainly the section of road we were traveling on right then. The moment we turned the corner, I saw him crossing the street. He was squat, with short, thick arms and a large, round head to match. He wore DayGlow sunglasses that made him stand out like a crackhead at a Weight Watchers meeting. Billy and I hadn’t said more than two words to each other since we’d pulled out of the precinct lot. We were keyed and ready to do some damage, as Conroy put it. Without saying a word, I pointed to DayGlow. His jail-house antennae must’ve been up because the second I pointed at him, BOOM, he took off.
I jumped from the moving car, gun drawn, and gave chase. He was about fifty feet ahead, but had nowhere to go except into an abandoned building, because all the apartment houses on the street were connected to one another. He hit the metal door and disappeared into the darkness of the tenement. I heard Billy screaming into the radio that we were “in pursuit, man with a gun.” As I hit the door, everything left my body— thoughts, fear, anxiety at the unknown. I didn’t even think that he might be on the other side of that door in combat position, ready to shoot the first white guy in a blue uniform to come through. I just moved on adrenaline and instinct; my target was acquired and I was going to get me some. Did I see the gun? Absolutely not. Did I know he had a gun? 99.9 percent absolute. Was I thinking about the ADA, the medals, the high stakes we were now playing for? Nope. All I was thinking about was collaring a man who was running from the police because we both knew he was filthy dirty.
I heard him hit a back door. I knew I was close because the door was still swinging shut when I got there. I jumped out into the courtyard; the light hurt my eyes, but I wasn’t in the dark long enough to have been blinded. He was now very close to me, screaming, “I’m clean, Officer, why you chase me!”
I could not see his right arm, he was running like a fullback carrying a football, and I knew he was holding on to something heavy. My gun was pointing straight at the back of his head. We were now in a narrow alley where there was a line of metal garbage cans he started to pull down to slow me, all that little flurry of action did was slow him down and make me run with much more ferocity. I wanted to put an end to this chase immediately. I hurdled three cans; my foot came down hard and hit him just below his ankle. I heard a loud crack and then I heard him wail. He was determined though, because he kept running, despite the limp and the pain he must’ve been in. I was now focused on two things, his head and his right arm; the second I saw metal or something even remotely resembling anything other than a hand, I was shooting him, and not to stop, but to kill. I was now less than a foot away; I lifted my left hand, lunged forward, and came down with my gun onto the back of his head. A solid hit, it sounded and felt like a watermelon had been split open. He went down immediately. Blood flow, in any head injury, is going to be heavy, but this seemed like a river gushing freely. It covered my face and I tasted that distinct coppery flavor. He still moved on the ground, so I hit him with the butt of my gun again to stop him. He laid flat and started to gag. I knew he had a concussion, so he would not be able to fight back or resist any longer. I cuffed him and turned him over. In his sweatpants was a trusty Badlands wire holster that was securing a beautiful Taurus .9-millimeter defaced automatic handgun, defaced because its serial numbers were scratched off. I grabbed my Motorola and screamed into it, giving my approximate location. I also called for an ambulance, or “bus,” as it’s referred to over the radio. Bil
ly skidded the RMP to the front of the alley. When he saw me he screamed, “Rob, you’re hit, motherfucker, you’re hit!” He ran to me and checked my head, neck, and torso for holes because I was covered in blood. I wasn’t sure what was happening, if in fact the mope was able to get a shot off and had hit me. Of course he hadn’t, but when you’re caught in an insane moment, when the difference between life and death is just an arm movement away, your mind gets fucked, so much so, you don’t know if you’ve been shot or not.
He doesn’t realize how close he came to dying in a very horrific way that day. If he is alive today and he is reading this—and by this description he certainly will know who he is—you can thank God, or Jah, or Allah, or whatever supreme being it is you pray to that you did not die in that dirty, abandoned courtyard, because, brother, you were as close as you can come to finality.
The paperwork was processed, and Day-Glow had a bedside arraignment at Kings County Hospital. I was off to central booking to process the arrest, and lo and behold, I met my old pal ADA Archibald “Wimpy” Waxman. I just described the arrest exactly the way it wasn’t, the way that they wanted to hear it, the way the judges wanted to hear it so their calendars were cleared when the mopes pled out, and the way I wanted to tell it to keep the animals in the cages where they belonged. “My partner and I were driving southbound on Rockaway Parkway when we noticed the defendant checking what appeared to be a firearm between two parked cars. He sees us and takes off; I briefly chased him and after a struggle placed him under arrest for 265.01.03.”
Wimpy sat up slowly, pulled the fat gold Mont Blanc from his shirt pocket as slowly as he could. He leaned in, puckered his pink lips at me, and said, “That’s my boy. Grand jury in three days.”
Test-i-lied. My second felony within the first couple of months on the job. Number one was letting Shah King go. There is no such thing as proper discretion when a felony arrest can be made, and the perjury I’d just committed, well that “tool” was the most powerful weapon I had on my gun belt, just like Conroy had said. Thank God for it, because there were many bad men who deservedly were put away behind it, including this mope. He was wanted for a double homicide with the very gun I’d caught him with.