by Robert Cea
Bully counted out the cash for us, two hundred crisp onehundred-dollar bills. Again the thought of all the hours I would have to work to see this kind of money flashed before me; it was so much easier to find a mope like Bully and just place him on the pad. “On the pad” was a saying that came from the old days when cops had a list of store and bar owners and wire rooms and illegal card games written on a pad. They would go through the pad each week and collect money from them to allow them to continue with their notso-aboveboard business transactions. Cops made more money from the pad than their entire salaries garnered them all year. This was one of the unwritten and unspoken perks of the NYPD back in the day.
Bully smiled at us as Billy and I took it all in: all that cash, all that weed. Bully then lifted his mammoth arm up and jiggled it lightly. “Let me get that ticket so I can go, C.”
“There’s just one more thing I have to do, Bully. We have to put you in the cage in front of the precinct to write you the summons. Cool?” I asked.
The prospect of being in a cage did not sit well with him, though he agreed. I put him in, then turned around to look at him sitting there behind those bars. His hat had long since disappeared during the debacle in the car, so his dreads hung down freely. As he sat on the wooden bench, he started to pick at his dreads and the sergeant on the desk whispered to me as I passed him, “You can take the monkey out of the jungle…” He just laughed at his own twisted humor and went back to the sports page of the Post.
I followed Billy back into the room where all that cash and weed was. Inside, there were two guys in suits waiting for us. They both had mustaches, looked to be in their late forties, and seemed to be put off that they had to come out to the 6-7 on a rainy night to enhance, or cover, a bribery collar. They did not introduce themselves, didn’t smile, nothing. All they wanted was to get all the information on the arrest, and write up the UF49, the NYPD’s unusualoccurrence report, and then get the fuck out of the military zone. The taller of the two asked in a clipped tone, “Where’s the tape?” I had no idea what he was talking about, but Billy moved to that brown paper bag at the edge of the desk and pulled out a very old-fashioned tape recorder and clicked it off. The NYPD spares no expense in its quest to remain high tech, I sarcastically thought. The tall guy hit the rewind button and heard himself asking the same question; he then rewound it to the beginning. “We’ll voucher this at the desk, the forty-nine will be forwarded to you and the DA’s office; my name is Sergeant Lenahan. This is Detective Schlongo. We’ll be in touch.” Scholongo made sure he looked at Billy and me when his name was mentioned to see if his surname brought smiles to our faces. It didn’t till after the IAB pricks left. The two self-loathing IAB guys walked to the cage with us in tow. I could see that Bully, on first seeing the four of us, knew that he had overplayed his hand; he just dropped his head and didn’t speak a word. They informed him that additional charges of bribery in the first degree were added to the original charge of possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell. They turned around and spoke briefly to the desk sergeant, who made an obvious point of not looking at either of them. They walked out quickly.
IAB guys are not welcomed in any precinct; they are pretty much the enemy. They know it, so when they have to walk into a precinct like the 6-7 where every cop is just an inch away from some bullshit accusation—“Negroid nonsense”—that will lead them to an interrogation by one of those empty, duplicitous suits, they adopt a false sense of bravado and fearlessness. You see, back in the day, most of those guys were caught being very bad in the street: stealing, whoring, creating their own pads. They were turned by IAB to roll over on other unwitting cops. They were usually wired for sound to entrap any one of their brother officers; the more cops they could get on the wire, the easier it would be for them not to lose their jobs and pensions. Once found out by the rank and file, they were blackballed, their cars usually spray-painted with the word “RAT,” their lockers smeared with feces and then set on fire. Some cops even had posters of giant rats placed in front of their homes so their neighbors would get a clearer picture of just who was living next to them. So the only safe place they could work on the job became the internal affairs bureau, rat central.
The rat patrol was called in on this bribery collar because in the twisted minds of these IAB guys, if someone tried to bribe a cop once, he’d tried it and gotten away with it a hundred times. They weren’t at the 6-7 to pat two young uniforms on the back for having exemplary integrity. No, they were there to let Bully know he was collared for the bribe and that he was to be briefed in central booking to find out what other scumbag cops he had bribed. They weren’t after Bully; they were after the cops he had paid to turn a blind eye. As a matter of fact, we found out later that they offered Bully complete immunity to roll on other cops. We were called to the grand jury, and that was the last I heard of the case and of Bully. I assumed the case was dropped because he in fact gave them what they wanted. I could only hope that no cop would get entrapped by lovable Bully of the Badlands.
What was my motive behind this elaborate collar? It did nothing for the taxpayers or the flow of excellent Jamaican herb through the streets of East Flatbush. No, but it would get me closer to Conroy. You see, whenever a bribery collar is procured, you are automatically invited to go to the “integrity review board.” This is the board of police bosses who convene every month to review bribery collars, and to decide if you are in fact as clean as a whistle and beyond the temptations of the street. They want only the finest young guys who won’t steal a penny sent into details where illegal money, and a lot of it, is present in every collar or case, such as the narcotics bureau, or the public-morals division (PMD), the two big guns in the organized-crime divisions. At the interview they ask you a couple of questions about the collar and why you would not take cash, and assuming you are not a total imbecile, you’ll give them all the answers they want to hear. Then—and this was what it was all about—you are asked which detail you’d like to transfer to as a career path on the job. Now Billy and I had discussed this in great length. Every cop who goes before this little tribunal asks for the same details: narc, auto crime, or PMD, details where after serving eighteen months you can get your gold detective’s shield. Billy and I, having less than a year on the job, knew this was a tall order. We would not be able to get that detail for two more years, which is standard procedure in the NYPD; no investigate details with less than two and a half years on the job, period. So, we reached for something a little closer to home, but just as enticing…to me more than Billy. We asked to be put into the plainclothes detail with John Conroy in Red Hook. Billy was still a little gun shy about working with this animal cop, but I presented it to him as being the only move we’d have to get closer to one of those investigative details in organized crime. And it would also be a no-brainer for the bosses of the integrity review board. It was a lateral patrol move; we would not be eligible for the shield and we would make room at the review board for worthier cops with much more time on the job. We were granted our wish, and told that we would be notified through the personnel orders of the transfer. We walked out of the meeting jubilant, to say the least. We had pulled off an amazing coup on a very street-wise cat who had much more time in the streets then we did, and we were heading off to a place called Red Hook where we would be working with the king of kings, John Conroy. All within the first six months on the job.
It happened eventually, the move, but I still had plenty of time to cool my heels in the Badlands and learn some more about the intricacies of the streets. I had a strong footing on the job; now it was time to secure my other life, Mia.
5
Mia
I was supposed to meet Mia for dinner at Peter Luger’s, a restaurant on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset, Long Island. I had made an arrest the night before, and with all the paperwork had grabbed only two hours of sleep that afternoon. I was spent but looked forward to spending time with my girl and having a good meal. I was running la
te, and I hoped she would not be too mad. The gun collar from the night before had beat the shit out of me and I was in no mood to apologize for the dicked-up traffic in this parking lot called Northern Boulevard. The sun hadn’t set yet, and as I drove east on the boulevard, I felt like a vampire looking for my coffin. I was dehydrated and still felt really dirty from the thirteen hours I’d sat in that crack den called central booking. I’d showered and tried to cleanse off the nastiness of the place, but the deeper I drove into this bucolic, moneyed town, the dirtier and more out of place I felt. Here, on these bright, clean streets where happy families strolled, and store owners greeted them, and everyone was smiling, without a care in the world. They didn’t have the slightest notion that there are places out there called the Badlands, and that these pretty people stroll here in heaven, and not there, in hell, only for the grace of God.
I pulled into the valet-parking area, left the shit-box Plymouth K car running, and just walked past the valet as if he wasn’t even there. I was in such a daze and so out of my element that I just wanted to get into the restaurant, have a few big, fat drinks, eat something other than fast food, and go home to bed. I entered the famous steak house, and even though it was early for dinner on the North Shore, the place was packed, three deep at the bar. I tried not to read any of the people in the restaurant, but I couldn’t help it. The black cat who looked like an accountant, sitting in the dark corner with his white date. She was probably his secretary, having a “business dinner.” They were most definitely from the lower end, South Shore, as his shoes were Barney’s knockoffs, the kind that can be purchased at Macy’s, and his shirt screamed “off the rack.” She occasionally touched his hand, letting me know there wasn’t anyone she could know in this part of town. There was the manicured wanna-be wise guy sitting in the middle of the room for all to see; he had a diamond ring the size of a potato on his pinkie, probably a cubic because his watch was a Movado. There were the three waiters near the men’s room quietly arguing over who was taking the table full of blue hair and diamonds. Then there was the bartender, probably a part-time bartender, parttime weight trainer, and part-time con artist/gigolo to all those old ladies of the North Shore who’d drop by for Bellinis after their spa visits on the miracle mile. He was definitely a full-time knucklehead, and right now he was out of his league, as he was just a hair too close to Mia at the bar.
She had prime real estate at the corner of the small bar, as she had probably been there waiting for forty minutes. She wore a form-fitting black Norma Kamali cocktail dress with a plunging neckline; over the stunning dress she wore a white Chanel cashmere jacket with tastefully monogrammed gold buttons. She wore a pearl necklace I had given her and a diamond tennis bracelet I was able to pay for with my yearly uniform allowance; her hair was loosely tied up over her ears, which revealed diamond studs, a gift to herself after graduation. Her diamond engagement ring should’ve been a beacon to the douche-bag, pretty-boy bartender, but I guess he just didn’t give a rat’s ass. In any case, I tried desperately to untwist my balls before I got to the bar. I was here to relax, not go to war. I moved behind Mia; she didn’t realize I had come in. The bartender looked at me and lowered his eyes, back to Mia, leaning in really close on his elbows, talking in a very low, sexified tone. He had to have thought that there was no way in hell I could be with this fabulous-looking woman. He said something that made her giggle slightly. She leaned back and bumped into me, turned, and saw it was me. For a second, I thought I saw a flash of embarrassment, which further let me know that what I’d had my balls twisted for was in fact justified. When jerkoff realized who I was, he quickly tailed down and moved to the safety zone at the other end of the bar. Mia touched my face and kissed my cheek.
“Baby, why so late? Traffic?” she asked nervously.
I didn’t return her kiss or answer her question; I just looked at the bartender. Now, at this point in my life, I felt I was not even on the same planet with a guy like this, even though had I not taken the NYPD test when I was sixteen, I just might be serving behind this very same bar. I saw him glance at me as he mixed a Rob Roy for one of his half-inthe-bag admirers, then he nervously grinned at me and walked over. “Hey, guy, can I get you something?” His voice was affected; it had an annoying cool and carefree ring to it. “Heyyyy, guy,” sounds like a game-show host. God, what in the fuck am I doing out here, this could only lead me somewhere bad. I tried to chill, but his voice, his wormy smile, his fake tan and raised eyebrow; these were things that weren’t computing. This guy just did not live in the real world, he lived in a netherworld. I would rather have been with fifty Bullys or a hundred of the animals I was locking up daily than actually have to sit and talk to this guy. He was a fake in life, a coward, a hustler, and I, at that point in my life, was not going to get hustled by him or the likes thereof.
After a long look into his eyes, which did not seem as bright as they had before, I said, without trying to hide the disdain I felt for this bartender, “Yes, get me a Jack Daniel’s straight up, make it a double, and get yourself a vinegar and water, douche bag.” Mia had not yet seen this darkness in me, and why should she have? She was not of that dark netherworld, nor did I want her to be a part of it. She was the color in my life, beyond that other life.
I felt Mia tighten up; she was too smart not to understand where this was headed. She was immediately embarrassed, and tugged at my arm.
“Rob, please, not here, please, baby.” She whispered this to me so plaintively; I did not like hearing her ask me for anything with such a tone. The red I was seeing completely vanished. Suddenly douche bag was no longer standing in front of me wearing a target, he was just some knucklehead bartender who was trying to get over. Hey, look at her, for Christ sakes, she’s beautiful, man, can you blame him? I thought. All the heat was suddenly cooled out in me; I looked at Mia, squeezed her hand, and smiled at her reassuringly that everything was going to be all right.
I reached in, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “I apologize, Mi, long day.” I looked up to the bartender. “Just kidding, guy. Keep the change on that forty, but I’ll take one more, make it a single.”
We finished our drinks, and had a fabulous meal. The bourbon and the bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape had given me a second wind. One I was going to need. Mia had her eye on what she was sure would be our first home. A friend was a high-end real estate broker and had given her the keys to the property. Mia was incredibly happy and assured me I would be too; it was hard to say no to her. I had to go along.
I followed Mia in her fine, brand-new ride—a candyapple-red Volvo station wagon. She looked very much the part she was trying to project: Wall Street executive/soccer mom. We traveled north down a road called Little Neck Boulevard. The streets were wide and well attended, and rightfully so, as this area had some of the highest property and school taxes in the country. I felt as though I was on a different planet, and considering where I had spent my last twenty-four hours, the Badlands, and then central booking, or crack central, as we referred to it, this place was a different planet. We drove past a signboard that read: “Welcome to Kings Point.” She made a few quick turns and we pulled up to a highly manicured two-story colonial. It had large stone pillars at the front door, which was adorned with a hanging stained-glass lantern, and beveled leaded-glass panels on either side. I was impressed, but I did not expect anything less from Mia; she had extraordinary taste. She jumped out of the Volvo and opened her arms as if to say, WELCOME HOME! I could tell there was no talking her out of this.
“So, what do you think, tell me you can’t see us sitting on this lawn sipping chardonnay, I absolutely love it.”
I smiled; I liked her fired up. Though I did feel a pang of guilt about all of this opulence. I felt as though this wasn’t really in the cards for me. I had never known that this world existed. After all, I was a cop from working-class Brooklyn. What I was familiar with was living check to check, hand to mouth. Hell, I would’ve been happy living on the beach fifteen minute
s from the Badlands. Mia, however, had different plans, and right at that moment, her plans were my plans. She excitedly grabbed hold of my hand. I followed her to the yard, which really wasn’t a yard at all. There was a little knoll of grass that led to two wooden boat slips, the Long Island Sound was the backyard. A screened-in gazebo made it seem like a location out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. I was blown away. “I’m, I’m speechless, Mi, I mean, Jesus Christ, how can we afford this?” Always work the money angle into the equation; she’ll think I’m frugal when I tell her we shouldn’t live here, I thought.
She smiled and shook her head slowly. “I did the numbers. We can swing this.”
“But how? We need a down payment, no?”
She was quick. “I can get a low-interest loan from work; the principle is deducted from my salary every week, we won’t even feel it. My mother and father are paying for the wedding; the money we get from that, bang, we pay back the loan and uncork the chardonnay.” I followed her to the back door. She keyed it opened and the opulence continued on the inside. She turned on a hallway light and I followed her to a dark, sunken living room where a stone fireplace was its centerpiece. She sat me down on the floor and started to unbutton my shirt; I tried to unbutton her Chanel jacket, but this wasn’t about her, it was about me. Mia wanted to show me what our world was going to be like in front of that fireplace, on so many nights. I lay naked on the thick carpet, which felt like a fur coat. The place was completely empty, which added to the mystique of what it would look like after she was done designing our world. She’d make it a home, much the way she had with my apartment fifteen minutes from the Badlands. She stood in front of me, and slowly undressed. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and yes, if this was what she wanted, then this was what she should have. She sat down on top of me, held my face in her hands, and kissed it slowly.