Yeah, Canarsie could be rough. It was so far out at the end of the line and so insular that the first black families that moved in there in the late sixties had a particularly hard time. Some retard even firebombed a real estate office that broke ranks and sold to blacks in the neighborhood. But what Curran was talking about was a situation from a few years back where a Canarsie headcase named Crazy Sal de Sarno had run over a beat cop named Sledge. I remembered it well. My friends and I all hated Sledge—he made a big deal out of everything, loved breaking up groups of kids hanging out as much as we loved to hang out, and generally had no clue how to handle minors in a tight-knit neighborhood. Nobody liked Sal, either. As his nickname indicated, Sal de Sarno was nuts. He lived by himself, like some kind of Brooklyn caveman, did lots of coke, and arbitrarily busted into stores, houses, and cars when he needed money.
In January 1980, Sledge was doing routine traffic stops on Flatlands Avenue on his own. For whatever reason his partner hadn’t shown up for their shift. The city was running on empty financially and even though Sledge shouldn’t have been solo, manpower being what it was, he had to go on radio car patrol, partner or not. Because of its proximity to the bay, Canarsie can be as cold as Chicago in the dead of winter. Nobody in their right mind would have walked a beat that time of year if they could help it. Pulling Sal de Sarno over probably seemed like a good way for Sledge to get back inside where it was warm and dry. There was a 90 percent chance that Sal would have drugs or stolen property on the seat next to him and that Sledge would have a collar.
When Sledge came around to the driver side door of Sal’s car he found out exactly what Sal had. Without a word Sal, unrolled his window, emptied a .38 into Sledge’s brass-buttoned coat front and hit the gas. Somehow Sledge’s belt got caught on Sal’s car bumper. Sal dragged the dead or dying cop a dozen blocks at about eighty miles an hour down Flatlands Avenue before the belt snapped and what was left of the poor guy fell away.
True to his nickname, Sal broke into a house and held a woman hostage until the police surrounded the place and he gave himself up. About the only rational thing Sal did in his life was plead to second-degree murder and a few lesser charges, but he’s still in prison and probably always will be. Every time he comes up for parole the PBA and Sledge’s widow lobby the parole board good and hard.
Holding a neighborhood and its residents responsible for Sledge’s murder is like holding a beach responsible for a shark attack, and I told Curran as much.
“Maybe it’s just that people in Canarsie are better at smelling fear on a beat cop who’s lost his nerve and is looking for a job on the inside,” I offered. Curran’s “experience” was why he was here in the academy and not meeting and greeting the people of Brownsville that he missed so much.
A few days later Curran made a point of volunteering me for a frisking demonstration. He pushed me against a wall in the front of the classroom and bent his head into mine.
“Give me a little fight,” Curran said, as he shoved my head toward the blackboard.
“C’mon, give me a fight!” No problem. I shoved back. Curran swung his shoe hard against my anklebone and pushed my legs out to a spread eagle. It hurt like a bastard but I didn’t say anything. Typical. The “little fight” was his excuse to give me a limp for a couple days. He’d manipulated me the same as he manipulated the system so that he could be here in the academy collecting a paycheck for parroting a textbook and beating up on guys half his age without risking getting hit back like he would on the street.
“Choose partners!” One of the mandatory gym drills was a boxing glove workout designed to give those recruits without any fighting experience some sense of how to throw and take a punch. Each company numbered about forty guys. Out of those, one guy was chosen to be company sergeant. The company sergeant was supposed to be a sort of team captain, but with real duties like picking up and distributing paychecks to all the recruits in his company and generally acting as liaison between the academy brass and his or her PPOs.
It was hard for me to believe at first but a lot of PPOs in my class had not only never hit or been hit, but in a few cases had never really even been in the city before. Go figure. I’m not saying that every future cop needs to have trick-or-treated at Little Vic Amuso’s house, rolled a pimp, and done a burglary for hire (the department’s background checks have actually gotten a lot more detailed since my day and I might not have made the academy if they were as thorough back then) but some of these guys and girls I knew from that academy seemed like lambs going to slaughter.
Unfortunately, the guy that had been selected to be 83-58’s company sergeant was one of those unsullied individuals who’d chosen a police career in a city he hardly knew. Without anyone asking, our sergeant had proudly told us all on the first day that he’d only ever been in the city twice—once to take the exam and again to get sworn in and line up for our first roll call. He was raised on the not very mean streets of Northport, Long Island, a suburb mostly known for some teen Satan worshipper murders and that had no social or physical resemblance to any beat he was likely to walk anywhere for the NYPD. Simply put, he was an asshole—a rod-up-his-ass racist jerk always looking to make life hard for the people he thought he was better than. Which was everybody, I guess. Since he was an Irish white guy from the ’burbs, anyone of any other ethnic background or community was beneath him. He was recruited on the city cop list so that meant any transit and housing cops like me in his company were beneath him, too. He was always finding extra duty for us and forgetting to pick up or give us our paychecks. Everyone in the company hated him, housing, city cop, and transit trainee alike.
The academy had strict rules of conduct. You marched in formation from class to class. Uniforms had to be spotless (even though the gym locker rooms were so old and small that no one ever could get dry after a shower) and in good order at all times. Tie clips were to be at regulation height, book bags all needed to face the same way. If a superior saw you on the subway coming to and from Twentieth Street with a button unbuttoned or a scuffed shoe, they could issue you a “star card” that gave you demerits and cut into your class ranking. If the academy higher-ups got wind of anything questionable happening on your own time, you were on the carpet that Monday. Fighting was 100 percent forbidden.
Suited up in the same group as my company sergeant, the boxing drill became an opportunity. I’d fantasized a few times about smacking the fucking jerk when he yanked my chain about my paycheck or said some racist bullshit that made him feel tough and look like a moron. He reminded me of the wannabe wiseguys I knew from high school who were at home or furtively doing coke in the bathroom at the Nut at the same time I was pulling on my gloves at the academy. It was clear from the way our sergeant carried himself—flatfooted with his weight evenly distributed between both feet—that he had no idea how to handle himself physically and what I’d just seen of him warming up, shadowboxing leading with his chin and not protecting himself clinched it. As we partnered up for the boxing drill, I quietly slipped out of my row and into his. Every other recruit stepped aside and let me.
When the company sergeant looked up and realized who he was about to spar with, the smug smirk on his face vanished. The first part of the drill involved each of us taking turns punching the other guy’s gloves. I let him go first. He lunged and alternated punching at me pretty tentatively, like a kid throwing a baseball for the first time. Then the whistle blew. It was my turn. I started hitting his gloves. Hard. He didn’t roll or move with the blows. Instead he took the shots with his whole arm, extending it farther and stepping back awkwardly at each impact. I could tell I was hurting him. The second part was a short sparring session. This time I went first. I grinned through my mouthguard, faked a jab, and caught him full in the left side of the head. It was almost too easy. He was scared shitless, rooted to the ground, and took the punch full in the temple. His head snapped back and the rest of him followed it. The whistle blew and Sergeant Long Island was out cold on the gym f
loor.
The gym instructor ran over to scream at me, but he was drowned out by the rest of my company clapping and cheering. The instructor decided to call the exercise off and told a couple of recruits to drag the company sergeant over to the side. Our sergeant was never late with a check again. A few years later they stopped doing full-contact drills in the academy. I later heard our former sergeant turned in a veteran cop during his first year in a rookie precinct post for some minor infraction. The other cops there made life so hard for him he had to join the Internal Affairs Bureau to stay on the force. No one else would have him.
If you subscribed to the academy party line, he did the right thing when he ratted on a guy at his rookie precinct. Instructor after instructor drummed into our heads that no matter what the circumstances, no matter how difficult it was, if we saw another officer doing something against the rules—anything from fudging an overtime slip to taking a bribe—it was our duty to report it. But this one-size-fits-all message was hammered home by the same instructors who, like Curran, had completely given up on actual police work, and who sat idly by as various “experts” addressed us on topics like organized crime that those of us with any prior knowledge on the subject knew were barely credible. Like I said, the academy was a joke to some and was a seminary to guys like my company sergeant on their way to a paper precinct and twenty years of self-imposed misery as part of a brotherhood that hates them. For a small number of guys like myself it was a chance to get the official version of what was expected of you until you figured the rest out on your own with the help of that small minority of other cops who knew the score and liked the work.
Avenue D
Gio and I make pulling Big Arthur Washington over and spread-eagling him on the hood of his Alfa in front of the whole neighborhood our 1987 summer project. We look for him every day we work the D in plainclothes and find him plenty of times, but the motherfucker is always clean.
“Rambo, you guys ain’t ever gonna find anything on me,” Arthur says to me each time as he calmly picks up the contents of his pockets off the sidewalk. “I ain’t going back to the joint. Not ever.” I still can’t figure it. Dope sales run like clockwork until Arthur shows up then all hell breaks loose. The organizational shadow I’m just starting to figure out seems to have vanished. Finally, a corner dealer named White Boy Ronnie reaches out to us about Arthur’s rampage. Ronnie’s a kid from a dairy farm in the Midwest who comes to the Lower East Side and starts dealing on the avenue instead of starting a band or whatever the hell it is kids come from a place like that to a place like this to do.
Ronnie is an Op 8 regular collar before Gio and I joined, but the other guys in the squad never make him useful as a snitch. Most of the young, lower echelon dope dealer kids doing hand-to-hands on the D have more professional jealousy for the dudes in the Third and D crew than professional ambitions to work their way in and up to become a member of the club. Ronnie’s different. He’s one of those guys who sees himself on top in a few years. He takes a liking to Gio and me and starts feeding us info now and then. My guess is he thinks he can use us to collar and hassle his competition and I’m only too happy to let him believe we’ll let him get away with it as long as he keeps us fed with info. It’s pretty nervy—he’s as likely to get shot for the stuff he tells us by the Third and D crew, as get collared by us or the Feds who increasingly come into PSA 4 to serve warrants and pluck out dealers that come under their microscope. That’s his fucking problem.
Like everyone else, Ronnie wants business to go back to normal. He tells us he’s worked it to stay on Arthur’s good side and has even middle-manned material to him. Since he and Arthur are close, he offers to let us know when Arthur is carrying a gun so that we can catch him dirty and get him violated back to prison. Ronnie also lets a new name slip: Davey. Come again? Davey Colas or Davey Blue Eyes as Ronnie calls him is apparently someone very heavy and very dangerous. Ronnie is pretty much a wiseass about everything but when we press him for details on this Davey guy he looks like he’s going to cross himself. Or shit. Apparently Davey and Arthur go way back and somebody owes somebody else in their business partnership big time. I figure we’ll find out more when we bring Big Arthur in with a solid weapons charge and offer to violate his ass back upstate for two decades unless he tells all about this Davey guy.
But before Ronnie can come through for us, Arthur seals his own fate. A week or so after my conversation with Ronnie, the whole avenue is buzzing about Big Arthur’s latest move. Apparently, Arthur sees one of the heaviest main dealers, an Avenue D native nicknamed Dougie Dee walking out of a bodega on Pitt Street one evening with his wife and daughters. Arthur doesn’t have a gun, but he has his mouth and his balls, and he goes out of his way to fuck with Dougie. He knows full well like we do that Dougie Dee isn’t a killer like some of the other main guys and would never carry a piece when he is with his family, so Arthur hassles him bad in full view of a busy project block full of eyes and ears.
“That your bitch-ass dope I grabbed yesterday, Dougie?” It was but Dougie Dee doesn’t answer. “That shit sold real good. My boy in Brooklyn, he sold that shit out in like half a hour. You think you coulda sold it that fast, bitch? Yo, let me know when you open another spot, I gotta grab some more of your shit, nigga.” Dougie takes his wife by the hand and walks faster. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going? I’m talking to you, bitch!” Dougie’s wife and kids look at the ground. Arthur lets them get across the street and then comes after them again. He makes a show of sneaking up behind Dougie and smacking him in the back of the head. “Ohhhhh,” Arthur said, “that hurt? Get the fuck out of here, punk ass! Go the fuck home and find me some more shit to sell!”
Arthur’s bravado is beginning to border on the insane. Yet everything I hear and see makes me believe that as over the top as he acts, Arthur knows what he’s doing, or at least thinks he does. He isn’t setting up shop on Avenue D as much as he’s diverting material to Brooklyn. Whatever the fuck Arthur’s plan is, it doesn’t involve taking over the lucrative PSA 4 drug franchise as much as leaching off it to stake a claim of his own across the river. Arthur has a pass and what we’re finding out is that it was issued by Davey Blue Eyes. This guy Davey has declared Arthur off limits. Nobody ever would’ve told us except that Arthur is fucking up too many livelihoods and lives.
After calling out Dougie Dee in front of the neighborhood and humiliating him in front of his family, Arthur’s ticket only has a few more punches left in it. Armed with a name, we start asking about Davey. Shit-scared of Arthur, people start telling us. Slowly, Ronnie, Venus, and others start saying the name more and louder. The word is that this guy Davey gave Arthur the Alfa along with carte blanche to do as he liked when he got out of the joint. What we hear is that Arthur either stood up and did time for Davey, or he had something on Davey that bought him slack. But the slack had run out. Whatever arrangement Arthur has made with Davey is apparently at the breaking point.
I doubt Arthur is thinking about Dougie when he comes out of the same bodega himself a half a month after humiliating Dougie in front of his family and the Third and D crew. Mobile phones are still a novelty and payphones are the way that dealers keep in contact with the people they need to talk to. Arthur has just finished using the coin-op phone next to sacks of rice inside the store. A Pitt Street regular named Pito sees Arthur go. He does what he’s told to do the day after the smacking incident—go to the nearest corner phone and call Dougie Dee. Arthur comes out of the store but before he can get to the double-parked black BMW he just bought for eighty grand cash, Dougie Dee calls out to him. Dougie has company. It’s not his wife and kids.
Dougie isn’t a killer but the guys flanking him—Londie, Macatumba, ChaCha, and Jimmy Rivera are some of the baddest bad guys on the D and are rumored to have done dozens of shootings. Londie for sure. Arthur goes pale for a second. Londie is holding a Uzi. Londie hands it to Dougie who momentarily struggles with the small gun’s awkward weight and heft.
“This motherfucker gots to go!” Macatumba yells. Dougie is shaking. “Fuck all y’all,” Arthur shouts as he breaks into a run. Dougie fires. Submachine guns look easy to shoot on TV because bullet-less blank cartridges cut down on their weight and make the shooting mechanism work less violently against the person squeezing the trigger. But in real life an Uzi belches clouds of burnt gunpowder gas and several pounds of lead bullets per clip out of a tiny barrel and is surprisingly difficult to aim if you’re not ready for it. Personally, I hate shooting machine guns. The motion and noise gives me a headache. Dougie’s a first-timer and clean misses with his first burst. He then rakes the gun back across Arthur like a fire hose, holding the trigger down the whole move. Lead tears chunks from Arthur’s arms and ass, but he keeps running.
Macatumba quickly shows Dougie how to change clips. Dougie’s into it. The other dealers all have guns out and are firing. Crime scene detectives later count over thirty shell casings on the sidewalk and street. Bullets lodge in Arthur’s back, punch through his legs and ricochet around him but he’s still going. Thick gobbets of his blood smear and spatter in front of and behind him. Big Arthur makes it to the ground floor of his mother’s building before he falls to his knees one last time. A second later, the guns have stopped, smoke is drifting past the upper floors of the projects and Arthur is the only person left on the street. A few breaths after that he’s dead.
Alphaville: 1988, Crime, Punishment, and the Battle for New York City's Lower East Side Page 8