PROLOGUE

In New York City, September is a beautiful month. The summer humidity is gone, and the skies are warm and clear. It’s also the time of street festivals throughout the five boroughs of the city. Neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island close off their streets, and people bring their picnic tables and grills out from the backyard for block parties. We sit and schmooze with neighbors we’ll argue over parking spots with for the rest of the year and talk about who died, who moved, who got arrested, and how bad the neighborhood’s getting. We also have the San Gennaro feast, with the annual procession of the statue of the patron saint of Naples paraded through the streets of Little Italy, and the smell of sausage and peppers, zeppoli, and cannolli from the street vendors fills the air. Labor Day starts it off with the West Indian Day parade on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn.

September 11, 2001, was a beautiful clear day with a soft wind blowing from the north. It was also the electoral primaries in New York City. With new term restrictions, there was a mass exodus of a lot of the incumbent locals, and the new blood wasn’t impressing any of us. The last thing we needed was another mayor who hated cops and handed the streets back to the perps.

But all of this was forgotten at 8:46 that morning when American Airlines flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center and began the darkest day New York City has ever seen. This forever changed not only our skyline but also the lives of everyone in our city. And the soft winds that blew that day were of smoke and fire and death.