Sergeant Bishop put on his best politician’s face without the smile as he addressed us.
“As you know, there’s a No Drinking Enforcement at parades in New York City. Being that this is a residential neighborhood, it will be difficult to enforce.” He looked at each of us before he went on. “Anyone can go into their house or into a bar and come back out onto the street after drinking. We will not be issuing urination, drinking in public, marijuana smoking, or possession summonses. If paint or powder is thrown at you, you are not to retaliate. There’s been problems in the community with our increased presence in the area. This year the department has increased the number of officers present to four thousand.” He shot Hanrahan a look and said, “We don’t want this escalating into an incident with bad press for the department.”
Yeah, it’s a big conspiracy. Us cops have nothing better to do than come down here on Labor Day and harass the parade goers. I love how this always gets twisted around to the cops.
“You finished?” Hanrahan barked at Bishop.
Bishop looked hard at Hanrahan before he nodded.
“Good. My guys, listen up.” Hanrahan gave a “Come here” gesture with his hands, and we moved in closer.
“Sergeant Bishop and his squad can get hit with as much paint and powder and bottles as they want,” Hanrahan continued, his face hard. “If you get hit with anything and need to defend yourself, use your nightstick. Then we’ll take whoever hit you over to Kings County Hospital if we need to. We are here to make sure everyone enjoys the parade, not to be assaulted for doing our job.”
“You got it, boss,” Rooney said, nodding and glaring at Bishop.
This is why cops hate this detail; none of the rules apply here. I never understand why the permit isn’t revoked, and the only reason is the city is afraid of backlash with the press. If this crap was going on at the St. Paddy’s Day parade, they would have shut it down long ago.
“We’ll be taking the south side of Lincoln Place,” Hanrahan said, looking at his roster. “Sergeant Bishop will be taking the north side. Split up into twos every hundred feet up the street.”
We were closer to Eastern Parkway, more where the action is. While the barriers were along Eastern Parkway, there were none here because we weren’t in the direct line of the parade.
We were in a residential and mom-and-pop-type commercial area. At the beginning of the block there were dry cleaners, Jamaican delis, restaurants, and a place that advertised live chickens and goats. Most of the gates were still down on the stores, graffitied in the urban scrawl that I can never understand. The stores gave way to brownstones toward the middle of the block, with big stairs and black wroughtiron handrails. The brownstones are beautiful and probably worth a million bucks a piece.
It was now 9:00, and the block was still quiet enough to hear the birds chirping. Joe and I grabbed our post, the first one off the corner.
My cell phone rang about 9:30, and I saw Michele’s number on the display.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey yourself,” she said, as I tried to place her mood. It’s not that she’s moody, but this bachelor party thing was showing me a whole other side of her, a side with claws and fangs.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Flatbush, we’re over by Eastern Parkway, near the end of the parade.”
“Did it start yet?”
“No, it’ll start in about an hour, but it takes a while for it to get down to this end,” I said. “What are you up to?”
“I just finished wrapping the favors,” she said. “They came out nice.”
We’re getting married at one of the restaurants on the North Fork of Long Island in November. Since it’s a Sunday, an afternoon, and the off season, we were able to afford it. For the favors Michele picked out sets of glass candleholders with candles that smell like vanilla. There’s three candleholders, with one that says Faith, and the other two say Hope and Love. She loved them, and I could care less what the favors were, so it was fine with me. We had an unspoken deal going—Michele was making all the arrangements for the wedding, and I was working all the overtime to pay for it.
“So how’d it go with your brother last night?” She asked it nice enough, but here’s where it could get ugly.
“Pretty much how you’d expect. He’s not talking to me. My father screamed at me, says I’m selfish—”
“I thought he wasn’t talking to you,” she cut in.
“He was screaming, not talking,” I said dryly.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “Your father screamed at you and your brother’s not talking to you because you won’t have a bachelor party with strippers and hookers?”
I felt my head start to pound behind my eyes. “Michele, I can’t talk about this right now—”
“They are so controlling and manipulative,” she said, raising her voice.
“You knew all this when you had to have this wedding,” I shot back.
“So now it’s my fault? I deserve this for wanting to have a wedding like any normal person? If this is what they’re doing and it’s just the wedding, what will they be doing once we’re married?” she yelled.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure by the time we’re married no one will be talking to us anyway and you’ll be happy,” I yelled back and caught Joe in the corner of my eye trying to look like he couldn’t hear me.
“What I don’t understand, Tony, is why you’re mad at me. Why aren’t you mad at them?”
“I’m not mad at you. I expect them to give me a hard time, I don’t expect it from you,” I said tiredly.
“I’m giving you a hard time because I don’t want my fiancé messing with some hooker the week before I get married?” She was in her teacher mode, sounding like she was talking to a ten-year-old or an idiot. “And I won’t let you do this to me behind my back, Tony. I won’t marry someone who would do that to me. If I marry you and find out down the road that you did that to me, I’ll leave you.”
“That’s not what—”
“Tony,” she cut me off, her voice rising. “I don’t care what Vinny or your father think. It is of no interest to me whatsoever. I don’t care if I don’t fit into their view of what a woman and a marriage should be. I won’t allow you to go off on some wild binge before you’re married because of some barbaric notion that you deserve one last night of freedom before being shackled to a wife.”
“Are you finished?” I half yelled.
“Probably not,” she said calmly. I gotta admit I admired her for sticking up for herself. She never gets riled, and she’s sexy as anything when she’s mad. Maybe it’s the Italian in me. I like a good fight.
“You had your say, so let me talk now,” I said, calm. “I’ll go out to dinner with whoever wants to go for my party, and I’ll pay for the party Vinny wants and stay home,” I said, catching Joe’s smirk as his eyebrows went up.
“Really?” She sounded happy now, and I gave Joe a thumbs-up and mouthed “Thanks.”
“I’m so glad, Tony. That was really bothering me,” she said, and I could hear the relief in her voice. “I don’t like the whole bachelor party thing. It’s not right to do something like that right before a marriage, it cheapens it. I also think if a lot of women knew that their husbands were with a prostitute before they got married, they wouldn’t marry them.”
“Good, I’m glad you feel better,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Let me call you back tonight when I get back to the precinct,” I said. She got all mushy then, saying I love you and promising me something pretty interesting on our honeymoon that made me forget that I’d have to tell Vinny I wouldn’t be there for his night of depravity.
I hit END and shut the phone off. If I leave it on in my pocket, a lot of times I dial myself and wind up with twenty minutes of muffled conversation. Then I have to listen to the whole thing before I can delete it.
“Thanks, Joe,” I said. “She sounds better now about the bachelor party. Now I just have to tell Vinny, but I know it’s gonna be a problem.”
“Tony, this isn’t just about him. And he has no right to manipulate you into doing what he wants just because he’ll be mad about it. Let him be mad. Someone in your family is always mad about something.” Sometimes Joe and Michele sound so much alike it’s scary.
“That’s what Michele said, that they’re controlling and manipulative and if they’re doing this now it’ll be worse once we’re married,” I said.
“Not if you take care of it now.”
I took off my hat and lit a cigarette. It was getting hot already, and if I left my hat on I’d end up with just the tip of my nose sunburned. The streets were still pretty quiet. A few older people walked by. I guess the partiers from last night were still sleeping it off. Joe started saying good morning to the people that walked by. I could see they were taken aback by it. They’re used to our bored indifference, and I guess they were suspicious of Joe’s friendliness. An older woman was strolling by, and Joe smiled and said good morning with a nod.
“Well, good morning, officer,” she said with her West Indian accent, beaming.
“What are you doing?” I asked Joe once she passed.
“I’m trying to make nice with the public,” he said.
“Why? They’ll think we’re an easy target and start throwing bottles at us,” I said.
“No, they won’t. You should try it,” he said.
I shook my head and took a drag off my cigarette.
“Weren’t you paying attention at roll call last week?” Joe asked. “You were supposed to memorize that blue card Santiago gave out.”
I pulled out my wallet and fished through it to find the blue plastic card. Last week Santiago, the training officer, gave these out at roll call. It read like The Idiot’s Guide to Addressing the Public, and we keep finding them in the garbage cans all over the precinct. I looked it over to see if it said anything about saying hello to people as they walked by.
Address and introduce yourself to members of the public during the course of your duties as appropriate.
I didn’t think standing on our post meant we had to say hello to everyone who walked past us, so I moved on.
Use terms such as “Mr.,” “Ms.,” “sir,” or “ma’am,” “hello,” and “thank you.”
Refer to teenagers as “young lady” or “young man.”
If we started saying “Hello, sir, lady, ma’am” to everyone who walked by, they’d be tying up merchants and cleaning out their stores while we addressed the public, so I knew this was useless too.
Respect each individual, his or her cultural identity, customs, and beliefs.
Nope, nothing about saying hello.
Evaluate carefully every situation that leads to contact with the public and conduct yourself in a professional manner.
Nope.
Explain to the public in a courteous, professional demeanor the reason for your interaction with them and apologize for any inconvenience.
“So now when we lock up a perp we have to apologize for the inconvenience?” I asked, incredulous. “Who was the moron that thought these up?”
“It doesn’t say that,” Joe said with a laugh.
“Yes, it does, read it.” I showed him the card, my finger pointing to the line near the end.
He shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with a little community policing. Hey, good morning,” he said as he smiled at an older man walking his dog.
“Mornin’, officer,” the guy said, smiling at him.
The next guy to walk past was a Rastafarian.
“Good morning,” Joe said, smiling again.
“Morning, mon,” he said to Joe. He had the Bob Marley look and walked with a laid-back kind of bop. His braids were caught up in a red, yellow, and green Rasta hat.
“How are you today? Looking forward to the parade?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, and how is it witchyou?” he asked, nodding with his whole body.
“Good, thanks,” Joe said.
The Rastas are generally mellow. I don’t know if they’re smoking weed or if that’s just their way, but they’re usually pretty friendly.
“Come on, the next one’s yours,” Joe said.
The only reason I said hello to the next person walking by was to shut Joe up. It was a heavyset woman who looked to be in her fifties. She was dressed in a pink polyester housedress and orthopedic shoes. I could hear her pantyhose scratching from ten feet away. She looked mean as anything and was sweating and gasping for breath in the morning heat.
“Good morning, you’re looking nice today,” I said with a smile as she passed me.
She stopped and looked back at me and spit on the ground next to my foot, mumbling as she walked away.
I heard Joe choke on a laugh, and I said, “Ya see? She spit at me.”
“She spit on the ground, Tony. Maybe she had a bad experience with a cop,” Joe said, still laughing.
“And this is my fault?” I pointed to myself.
I didn’t say good morning to anyone else, but Fiore was saying hello to everyone who walked by. About 10:00 a freaky-looking guy stoned out of his mind and covered in ashes shuffled past us. He had short-cropped kinky hair and was wearing only a pair of cutoff jeans and sneakers with no socks. The whites of his bloodshot eyes were more pronounced because of the ashes, and as he passed us, all we could do was stare.
“What are the ashes for?” Joe asked me. “I see it every time I’m here.”
“I don’t know, Joe,” I said. “But I noticed you didn’t say hello to him, and according to rule four on your blue card, not saying hello because he’s stoned out and covered in ash is disrespecting his cultural identity, customs, and beliefs.”
The day was heating up, and I could feel my arms and face getting sunburned, and my T-shirt was already soaked in sweat under my vest. Joe and I watched as some yo-yo in a white Gilligan hat and red shorts urinated in a doorway next to the entrance to a deli about twenty feet from us.
“Check this out,” I said to Joe, nodding over at the doorway.
“Is he kidding me?” Joe said. “We’re standing right here.”
We walked toward him as people in the deli looked over at him with disgusted looks on their faces. He was actually humming when we walked up, and I pulled out my nightstick and poked him in the back.
“Hey!” I said.
He spun around like he was gonna hit me, and his eyes got big when he realized I was a cop.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled.
“Officer, I really had to go,” he said as he fixed himself.
The owner of the store flew out the door, dressed in a white apron, looking like someone you shouldn’t mess with.
“My customers are complaining that someone is out here relieving themselves,” he said. Actually, that’s nothing like what he said, but I’m editing here.
“Can you get a bucket of bleach water?” I asked the owner before he killed the guy. “He’s really sorry and would like to clean this up for you.”
“Come on,” Gilligan complained. “People do this all the time. It’s so hot out here it’s already dry.”
“We’re not smelling this all day,” Joe said. “You made the mess, you clean it up.”
The owner came back with the bucket of bleach water, a scrub brush, and some paper towels. We stood there and watched Gilligan scrub it and then dump the rest of the water to rinse it off.
We might not have been able to summons him, but he’ll think twice before taking a whiz outside again.
Hanrahan came over to sign our books about 10:30.
“Rooney and Connelly took the van over to the seven-one,” he said. “They’re having their annual barbeque, you pay five bucks to eat all day. They got a nice spread set up. When Rooney gets back with the van, you two can head over. Do you know where it is?”
“Yeah, we’ve been there before,” Joe said.
The seven-one throws a barbeque every Labor Day and makes a fortune off all the cops working the parade.
At 11:00 Rooney and Connelly relieved us, and we walked up to the corner of Eastern Parkway holding our hats in our hands.
A lieutenant was directing traffic in the intersection while a couple of cops moved some of the barriers around to let police vehicles through. He looked up, staring at us. We knew it was because our hats were off. Not wearing our hats is a minor violation and could cost us part of our overtime, but a bus passed by, and Joe and I looked at each other and smiled. By the time the bus cleared the lieutenant, our hats were on and we were fit for duty. The lou gave us a “Who you kidding” look and said, “Officers, aren’t you supposed to have your hats on?” as we crossed the street.
“Boss, we made sure we respected you by putting our hats on,” Joe said diplomatically.
“How would you like to be standing in the intersection directing traffic with me?” the lou threatened.
“Is that why you’re here, Lou?” I asked. “You didn’t have your hat on?”
He actually turned red trying not to laugh, like he couldn’t believe I had the nerve to say that. Joe cut him off quick with, “Lou, we’ve been up all night working a midnight before we came here.”
“Get out of here,” he said as we crossed the street.
We picked up the van on the other side of Eastern Parkway and drove eastbound to Washington Avenue and turned onto Empire Boulevard. The precinct was packed, and I wound up parking in a bus stop halfway down the block.
We could smell the barbeque as we walked up to the front of the precinct. We went around to the courtyard on the side of the building and saw a line of about twenty people.
“Is this the line to pay?” I asked the cop in front of me, whose collar brass showed he was from the sixty-one precinct.
“I hope so, I’d hate to think it’s the line for the bathroom,” he said.
The Crown Heights precinct is in a residential and commercial area with lower- to middle-income families in central Brooklyn. The area is made up of blacks, West Indians, and Lubavitch Hasidim and is home of the famous riots of the 1990s.
They call the seven-one Fort Surrender because years ago the Hasids stormed the precinct and managed to take it over. They stormed it once when I was here as a rookie, during my field training unit out of the Academy, but they didn’t get control of it that day.
It took Joe and me about ten minutes to get up to the cash box and pay our five bucks. They gave us raffle tickets that said paid on them so we could come back later and eat if we wanted to. The pay line went directly into the food line, and we picked up dishes and plastic forks at the head of the food table. They had two huge rusted steel grills going, and we both grabbed a hamburger and hot dog before piling on potato salad and corn on the cob. There were trays of olives and pickles. They had those big dill pickles, the kind we used to get out of the barrels when we were kids. They don’t keep them in the barrels anymore. They found out the rats loved the pickles too and the barrels were easy for them to get into.
There was no place to sit, so we leaned up against the bumper of an RMP. I heard someone call “Tony,” and I saw Andy DeLuca, a Highway cop I knew from Staten Island, walking over toward us. He worked at the South for about a year before he went over to Highway.
“Hey, buddy,” I said. “This is my partner, Joe Fiore. Joe, Andy DeLuca.”
They shook hands, and Andy filled me in. He just had a baby, twins actually, since his wife was on fertility drugs. I wondered for the thousandth time why people who have kids think the rest of us want to hear about childbirth. I can see a rotted dead body and not lose my lunch, but talk about placenta and umbilical cords and I break out in a sweat.
“How’s Tommy doing?” I asked, talking about his brother-in-law Tommy Pagano. “I saw him down at court. He said you were getting him in Highway,” I said.
“Yeah, I got him in Highway. And the moron couldn’t pass the motorcycle test,” he said, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”
“I thought he knew how to ride,” I said.
“He does. Go figure. Oh”—he laughed—“remember Danny King who worked at the South with us?”
“Yeah, I heard he made boss and is working out in Queens,” I said.
“He’s here today. He told me he got drafted over to IAB before he went to Queens. He was saying that 90 percent of the allegations in Patrol Borough Manhattan South were from the South.”
Allegations are civilian complaints against cops. Since we have the largest command, it makes sense that we’d have the most complaints. Plus, given the nature of our job, how happy could we be making people?
We talked and chewed. I told Andy to say hello to Tommy for me and that I was getting married.
“To that same girl, the hot-looking one that worked on Wall Street?” I couldn’t tell if he looked impressed or surprised.
“Nah,” I said. “Someone else I met, a schoolteacher from Long Island.”
Joe and I finished eating, said good-bye to Andy, and drove back to our post.
As we parked the van we could see the sky was dark to the west of us. I guess a storm was coming in from Jersey. We could already hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.
We relieved Rooney and Connelly off our post, and they moved back down to their spot near the corner. The wind was starting to blow, kicking up dust, plastic bags, and garbage. It felt nice and cool even though it was gritty. We could actually see the rain as it came in toward us in fat drops along the pavement. Joe and I stood under the deli’s awning as it was flapping around with the wind. People were holding stuff over their heads trying not to get soaked. Some ran under the awning with us, and we all squashed ourselves against the building. The rain was torrential, running down along the curbs into the sewers.
I pulled down my vest to let some of the heat out while the spray hit my face and arms. It rained for about fifteen minutes, and within a half hour the skies were clear again. Steam was coming off the pavement as it dried, and the air was thick and muggy. You don’t get that damp woods smell in New York, you get the damp dumpster smell.
If anything, it got hotter after that, and the streets were starting to fill up as the parade got closer to us.
“Did you listen to the tape I gave you?” Joe asked.
“How was I gonna listen to it? You just gave it to me yesterday,” I said.
“I gave you one last week,” he said.
Since I hadn’t been to church in a few weeks, Joe had been bringing me tapes of the services. I didn’t know you could do that at church, but Joe gets tapes of the sermons and listens to them in his car. I had started to listen to the one he gave me last week, but I felt too much like it was talking to me, so I shut it off.
“Is the tape supposed to be a dig?” I asked.
“Not at all, Tony,” he said seriously. “I just thought it lined up with what’s going on with you right now. I know you need money for the wedding, but just remember it’s important for you to be in church. Did you understand what it was saying?”
“Basically what it said was that the reason David got in trouble with what’s-her-name was because he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be,” I said.
“Yeah. It said it was the time of the year when the kings went out to war, where David normally would have been.”
“Instead of peeping on some female taking a bath,” I said.
He started to say something but then said, “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Don’t worry, Joe. I won’t be looking in anyone’s windows while I’m working overtime,” I said.
“Tony, that’s not what I meant. What Pastor John is saying is that when we consistently keep our mind on God it keeps us on the right path and not vulnerable to whatever could take us off track. He was also saying that the same way we feed our body food to keep it strong, we need to feed our spirit God’s Word to keep it strong.”
“I know what you’re saying. And to be honest, I feel the difference from when I’m in church every week and reading the Bible. I just want to get enough money put away for the wedding and the honeymoon and not come back broke,” I said.
“You and Michele are fine financially. You both work full-time. You said you pretty much had the wedding paid for, and I’m sure you could collar up on other days and be able to go to church on Sunday,” he pointed out.
“Once I’m living on Long Island I plan to go on Wednesday and Sunday,” I said. “I also don’t want to be working overtime for a while once I’m married. Christmas is six weeks after the wedding, and I don’t want to be killing myself. I want to have it all paid for so I can be home and enjoy it.”
“I understand that, but this week Pastor was talking about how we don’t know what we’re gonna need to be strong for. Like right now the thing with Vinny and the family. You need to build yourself up before taking on something like that. Or we might get into something at work that we need to be focused for.”
“I’ll listen to it,” I said, meaning it. “I’ll throw it in on my way home later. Maybe it’ll keep me awake while I’m driving.”
The parade was making its way down this end now, and we could see the floats on Eastern Parkway. It was a colorful parade with a lot of reds and yellows. I could see a group of females in exotic yellow headdresses and costumes that just covered the essentials as they danced their way along the street. Some of the floats carried steel drum players, and there was a lot of reggae and calypso music.
We could tell the crowd wasn’t intimidated by our presence there. I saw people drinking and smoking in the doorways and on their front steps, daring us to say something.
The cops were gearing up now, and Joe and I moved toward the corner to a cluster of cops. We were standing with our hands on our belt buckles or leaning over the barricades as our eyes scanned the area around us. Cops were talking about some of the stuff that had gone on already. Eight people had already been shot, some when someone shot into the crowd with an automatic weapon. Most of the injured people were hit in the legs and torso. There were other sporadic shootings, one with a fatal shot to the head. We saw clusters of gang colors as we watched the crowd, not the parade. We were looking for pickpockets, weapons, aggressive behavior, EDPs, or deviants like this one guy Joe and I spotted standing behind a group of teenage girls.
They looked about fifteen or sixteen and oblivious to how provocative they looked in their short shorts and bathing suit tops with their thong underwear showing at the waistband.
The first few years I was a cop, this kind of thing would really annoy me. How could these girls come out dressed like this? Where were their fathers? When they dress this way the psychos and perverts are gonna bother them. Now I just accept the fact that people dress this way hoping to get noticed, but it’s usually the wrong kind of attention.
The guy was maneuvering himself behind them, pretending to watch the parade and looking over their shoulders down their tops. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt that rode past his hips over cutoff jeans. As the crowd pushed closer to the street to see a float go by, he pressed himself against one of the females. She looked behind her, but he was looking past her at the float as if he had nothing to do with whatever had touched her.
As one of the steel bands passed by on a float, he started dancing up against her like a dog when it’s got hold of your leg.
The female looked horrified and froze with fear. Joe and I pushed through the crowd as he grabbed her and held himself against her. When we were just about there we saw that he had exposed himself. “Look at this fruit loop,” I said as a couple of onlookers grabbed the guy and started throwing him a beating.
“Alright, alright, we got him,” Joe said as we grabbed his arms. “We got him!” Joe yelled as one guy threw an extra punch.
“Did you see what he did?” the puncher yelled.
“We saw him, stop hitting him,” Joe said, yelling over top of the PA system on the float.
The humper was a skell and looked to be about forty years old. Other cops were there now, gathering around us while we cuffed him with the plastic cuffs issued at the detail. When we’re at details where we know there’ll be a lot of arrests, they give out these white hard plastic cuffs, almost like the plastic zip ties you’d use on a garbage bag. The cuffs are strong enough to restrain someone until you get them to a holding pen.
The crowd was watching us now. They hadn’t seen what the perv did to the girl; they only saw a bunch of cops cuffing someone who looked like he was just watching the parade. Their eyes were suspicious and hostile as they stopped and watched us, which ticked me off.
“In case you can’t tell by the uniforms,” I said loudly, looking around, “we’re police officers. The reason for our interaction with you today is because this lowlife”—I pointed to the perv in cuffs— “sexually assaulted that female over there.” I pointed to the female, who was crying now. “I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and I hope the rest of you enjoy the parade. Have a nice day.”
Joe was choking on a laugh.
“How’s that for community policing?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “You’re a piece of work,” he said.
“Who’s looking?” I asked the cops standing with us. I didn’t want the collar, as this was already overtime for me. I was exhausted and wanted to go home and sleep.
“I’ll take it,” a cop from the six-oh said, which was fine with me.
As the parade neared the end of Eastern Parkway the crowd was the biggest, with people twenty to thirty deep along the curbs and grass and all the way up the sidewalk to the storefronts. It’s not like New Year’s Eve, when the businesses are boarded up. The merchants here were all open, making a fortune.
It had gotten too congested at the Grand Army Plaza for the big finale, and Hanrahan called us all to the corner of Underhill and Eastern Parkway, where a captain was standing.
There were a bunch of cops holding rolls of orange mesh fencing, the kind they use during road construction. The captain was listening intensely to the radio, not talking to anyone as we filed in. He called over the sergeants and lieutenants, and Joe and I were close enough to hear him trying to tell them over the noise that they wanted to reroute part of the parade. He said when a certain vehicle hit the corner they would redirect it up Underhill Avenue. I saw Hanrahan’s face fill with a mixture of dread and disbelief and wondered what was up. Hanrahan and Sergeant Bishop called us in to tell us the deal.
“Boss, we don’t have any barricades on this block,” Joe said.
“They’re gonna have cops holding the orange mesh for the first twenty feet, after that they’re using us as a human barricade,” Hanrahan said, not meeting our eyes.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled, sickened. “We can’t write a summons for drinking in public and we’re gonna keep the crowd from rushing the float?” It wasn’t only stupid, it was dangerous.
“I know what you’re saying, Tony,” Hanrahan said. “I want you to stay close together and keep an eye on each other.”
“Boss, this is a bad move,” Rooney said, furious. “This isn’t gonna work.”
I saw Joe put his head down, I thought to compose himself, and then I realized he was praying. I added my own prayer for help, along with an apology for not being in church lately.
It turned out that the float in question had a well-known rapper on it. The guy has a huge following. The brass didn’t want this particular float adding to the pandemonium at Grand Army Plaza where the parade ends.
The cops unrolled the orange mesh and held it where the float would turn the corner and up another ten feet.
“Get everyone outta the street,” the captain yelled. “Then line ’em up on either side.”
Once we cleared the street, Hanrahan and Bishop put between twenty-five and thirty of us on each side of the street. I had Joe on one side of me and Rooney on the other, which was a good place to be if something went down. Rooney may be a dope and annoying as anything, but he’s a good cop and he’d have our backs.
“If the crowd breaks through let them go, we’re not getting trampled,” Rooney said.
We both nodded.
We could hear the float before it came into the intersection. It was on the bed of a huge eighteen-wheeler. The speakers that were set up throughout the float were so loud I could feel my eardrums vibrate. The rapper was shirtless, showing off his washboard and gold chains. He was wearing sunglasses and holding the microphone with lots of swagger as he bopped and danced up against the female singers in their black leather bikini tops and shorts.
The float stopped in the middle of the intersection as if to wait for the thousands of people who came in on a wave after it.
“This is the float that’s gonna turn,” Hanrahan said.
“Oh no,” Joe said as he watched the sea of people heading for us.
Rooney said something else.
The cops with the orange fencing ran across Eastern Parkway and blocked it off.
“This is insane,” I said. “Look at these people.”
“We shouldn’t do this,” Rooney said, shaking his head. “This is not good.”
The captain walked over to the cab of the float and pointed down our street, telling the driver to move this way. As the driver turned and passed the corner the float stopped again. There was a sea of people now rushing toward the float, psyched out of their minds at the rapper.
The rapper bent down and picked up a bottle of Heineken, and they went wild as he saluted them with it.
“Let’s give it up for the cops,” he yelled and guzzled the beer as the crowd went wild.
I’d like to think that he meant it and wasn’t trying to get us all killed, but considering the liquor ban, I doubted it. He started rapping again as the float moved forward, and people were now running from Eastern Parkway, following the float toward us.
As the float came up on us I saw that the wheels were almost as big as me. If we got pushed back into them, we’d be crushed. I started thinking that if the crowd rushed me, I’d spin them around and toss them to the side and work my way into the crowd away from the wheels. The float probably wouldn’t stop any quicker for a cop than it would for a bystander, and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.
“If they rush us, jump up on the float or you’ll go under the wheels,” Rooney yelled.
I could picture Rooney trying to haul his 230-pound rear end onto that float. He’d probably fall off attempting to heave himself over and go under the wheels anyway.
The crowd was close enough on us now that I could feel the heat coming off them. They were young, most of them in their early twenties. The guys were shirtless and sweating, stinking of booze. And the females—although the clothes were minimal, the hair and makeup was done up.
It was frenzied now, and I felt a shift in the atmosphere as the rapper passed behind me. The sound was so loud it obliterated everything around us, and while we could see the animated faces, they made no sound. Fists were pumped in the air, and mouths were moving while all eyes were mesmerized on the float.
We were trying to keep the crowd back, but they were pushing in on us. As the crowd looked past me, up at the float, I saw a kid, maybe about ten years old, struggling to keep from getting crushed in the crowd. He was big for his age, but I could tell he was young. I wondered why the kid was here and who in their right mind would leave him alone in a crowd like this.
I don’t know what happened behind me, but the crowd roared, and I saw the fear on the kid’s face right before he went down. I started screaming, “Watch the kid!” as I pushed people out of the way to get to him.
No one heard what I said, and I saw the eyes of the crowd swing toward me, and I knew it was gonna get ugly. I saw their anger, like I was challenging them, and I pointed to the kid on the ground. A couple of people realized what happened and started pushing everyone out of the way to grab the kid. Once we got him up we pushed back the crowd and pulled him out of there, and it was almost like it broke the spell.
I went to step back next to Joe and Rooney, and the next thing I knew, the crowd overtook us. I panicked a little realizing I couldn’t see Joe or Rooney, and I started to pray, Lord, help me here. I don’t want anyone getting killed, especially not a kid.
People spilled from the sidewalks, filling the street in a matter of seconds. They reached the float as it passed, running after it as it went down the street. I saw one of the cops holding the mesh get knocked on the ground as everyone scrambled to put the barriers back up and close off the block.
Once the barriers were in place it stopped the stream of pedestrians onto the block while the rest of them ran after the truck. I heard someone yell, “They’re calling us on the radio to get back to the corner of Eastern Parkway.”
They didn’t have to tell me twice. My hands were shaking as I lit a cigarette, and I was sweating so much my clothes were sticking to me. I spotted Joe and Rooney at the corner, sweating and looking like they just cheated death.
Rooney started screaming at the captain, “That was the most asinine thing I’ve ever seen. You could have gotten us killed! Who’s the moron that thought this up?”
The cops were so angry, ranting about how we could’ve gotten killed. The captain and Sergeant Bishop didn’t say anything, but I could see Hanrahan was fuming.
Walsh and Snout, who I hadn’t seen since this morning, looked scared out of their minds. I smiled at them and said, “Welcome to the NYPD,” as I took a drag off my cigarette. “You’re alive, you’ll get to sign out at the end of the day.”
“Aren’t you glad you signed up?” Joe asked them.
Walsh looked shell-shocked as he said, “I can’t believe that I’m at a parade where I’m almost killed and they tell me not to summons anybody.”
“You’ll get used to it,” I said.
Rooney went on to say that the brass had no testosterone-producing body parts.
“No, seriously,” Walsh said. “Why didn’t we lock up that rapper? He was guzzling that beer, inciting the crowd.”
“If we locked up that rapper,” Joe said. “There would have been a riot.”
Walsh and Snout wouldn’t be back next year. The way it works is you work the detail and it winds up being a day like today. Then you stay away for a few years until you forget how bad it is and you sign up again.
The parade was winding down, and we opened the streets again to pedestrians but not cars. We were all exhausted, legs aching, full of sweat and grime. At about 4:00 they mustered up another group of cops to take over for us. We climbed back into the van at 4:30, and I immediately fell asleep to the sound of Rooney complaining about the captain.
We got back to the precinct at 5:00, and I went down to the locker room to change and was back upstairs to sign out in ten minutes. We were getting travel time until 6:00, and I wanted to be home by then.
“What time are we meeting tomorrow?” Joe asked, looking exhausted.
Joe and I were working a day tour tomorrow. We had to qualify at the range up in the Bronx, and we wanted to get there early so we could be in the first relay and get out early.
“How about six fifteen?”
“Sounds good,” he said, shaking my hand. “I’ll see you then.”
My steering wheel was hot to the touch when I got in my truck. I rolled the windows down and blasted the air conditioner to cool it off. There was no traffic on the West Side Highway as I headed downtown, just long shadows of the buildings in the afternoon sun. It was one of those weird days, a Monday that felt like a Sunday.
The roads were clear. The day was nice enough to keep everyone at the beach, but by 9:00 tonight it’d be bumper-to-bumper coming in from the Jersey Shore.
I took Father Capodanno Boulevard home, watching families pack up their coolers and blankets in the parking lots along the beach.
I live in a basement apartment in Grant City, a block up from the beach. It’s a dead-end street with access to Miller Field, the old airfield that is now used by the Parks Department. It’s quiet there, except on Saturday and Sunday mornings when the sounds of whistles and soccer games can be heard from a mile away.
I moved there a year ago last month when my family home was sold. The sale of the house was the last round of my parents’ long divorce battle. They had a verbal agreement that my mother would keep the house, which was worth half a million bucks, and my father would keep his pension, which was worth double that. In the end my father screwed her and had the house sold out from under her anyway.
My landlord, Alfonse, was in the backyard grilling sausage with one hand and holding a glass of wine in the other.
“Tony!” he said with a smile. “You look exhausted. You work today?”
“Yeah, I worked the parade in Brooklyn,” I said.
“What parade?”
“The West Indian Day.” I said it like a question.
“Never heard of it,” he said.
Most people haven’t unless they’re from the area. Plus, he’s Italian, so unless it’s the San Gennaro feast he can’t relate. Alfonse must be about seventy. He came to America from Sicily about fifty years ago and still makes his own wine and sopressata. He has a huge garden with figs and a grape arbor, and I’ve been eating beefsteak tomatoes for a month now.
“Hey, Julia,” I said to Alfonse’s wife.
She’s pretty in an old-world Italian kind of way. She has short black hair and big brown eyes and always wears a dress. Even today barbequing in her backyard she had on a white shirt and pink floral skirt.
“Did you eat?” she asked.
“Nah, I’m good,” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, already putting together a plate for me.
I sighed and put my bag down next to the picnic table. I might as well sit and eat to save myself the ten minutes we’d argue until she talked me into it.
She sliced some Italian bread and took a sausage link off the grill. She made me a sandwich and topped it with sautéed peppers and onions. She threw some tomato and red onion salad, grilled chicken on a skewer, and a skewer of grilled zucchini, tomato, yellow pepper, and carrots on the plate. Then she added some cold ravioli salad with sun-dried tomato and basil and set the plate down in front of me.
“Sandy stopped by,” Julia said. “She left something by your door.”
Sandy lives across the street with her two kids. In the spring her psycho soon-to-be ex-husband almost killed her. He beat her within an inch of her life one day and then came back the next day and stabbed her three times. Alfonse woke me up on both days to go over and help her, and the day her ex stabbed her I managed to hold him at bay while she crawled out of the house. She’s so grateful it borders on pathetic. She makes me food, gives me vegetables out of her garden, and washes my truck while I’m sleeping. She also told everyone on the block what a hero I was, which, trust me, wound up working against me.
Now every time someone gets a parking ticket they want me to take care of it. They call me when the guy on the corner plays his music too loud, and last week they had me pulling an old lady with Alzheimer’s off the cement divider on Father Capodanno Boulevard. Not that I wouldn’t have helped her, but you call the cops for stuff like that.
“You’re gonna be here on Saturday, right, Tony?” Alfonse said, talking about the block party. Everyone on the block chips in money for the rides and stuff, but we all do our own food.
“Yeah, I’m working the night before, so I’ll catch a couple of hours’ sleep first.”
“Who did you invite? I have the two tables for the food and about twenty chairs. Let me know if you need more, and I’ll have my brother bring some.”
“Well, Michele and Stevie are coming. My partner Joe, his wife and three kids, his parents, my sister, my grandmother, and I don’t know who else.” I shrugged.
Half my family wasn’t talking to me, so I didn’t know who’d show up. Fiore’s father said he hasn’t been to a block party since he left Queens and moved to Long Island, so he’s all excited about it.
“We got the slide and the moon walk,” Alfonse said, talking about those inflatable rides that you rent. “We also got the pirate ship, the candy cart, and the face painters. The only thing we need is the fire trucks, and we thought you could call the firehouse up in New Dorp to make sure they’re coming.”
“Just get me the number, I’ll give them a call,” I said. I knew a couple of firemen there.
I finished my food and felt my eyes starting to close.
Alfonse smiled. “Go get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I’m beat,” I said. “The food was delicious, thanks.”
I walked down the cement stairs to my apartment and found a brown shopping bag with a foil-covered plate outside the door. I unlocked the door, put the bag on the counter, and hit the play button on my answering machine. I had four messages.
The first was Denise. “Mom’s coming Saturday, but I want to talk to you about it first. Call me back.” It beeped again, and I heard my grandmother’s voice. “Tony, it’s Grandma,” she said in a clipped voice. “Call me back.” The third call was a hang-up, and the fourth was from Michele asking me to call her when I got in.
I called her cell phone but got her voice mail. I called the house and told the answering machine that I got her voice mail on the cell and to call me when she got the message.
I took the plate from Sandy out of the bag and put it in my fridge without unwrapping it and sat down on the couch to watch the Yankees game. I was too tired to call anyone else back, and I would have read my Bible, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. I didn’t have to think to watch the game. The Yanks had just wrapped up a three-game sweep with Boston and were beating the Blue Jays. I passed out after two minutes and woke up at midnight. I ignored the blinking light on my answering machine. I hadn’t even heard the phone ring. I set my alarm for 4:45 and crawled into bed.
I showered, shaved, and was out of the house by 5:15. I stopped for coffee and an everything bagel with cream cheese on the corner of Clove Road and Hylan Boulevard. It was early enough that I didn’t have to wait in line for twenty minutes, and the guy made a good bagel, soft and chewy, still warm from the oven. I finished the bagel, lit a cigarette, and drank my coffee with it.
The sun was still on the rise, sending streaks of pink and blue across the eastern sky. It was cooler today, probably in the sixties now that I would be out of uniform and wouldn’t have to stand around in the heat all day.
I put the radio on 1010 WINS because, like every other New Yorker, I’m obsessed with traffic. After years of being stuck in it we know at least three alternate routes to anywhere around the city. 1010 WINS is the only place you can hear traffic reports from all five boroughs, upstate, Connecticut, Long Island, and Jersey. Six times an hour you get the skinny on East River Crossings; Hudson River Crossings; the bridges; the tunnels; inbound and outbound traffic; subway delays, including which lines are running, who had a track fire, and which lines are closed because someone got pushed onto the tracks; which alternate side of the street parking is in effect; and where there was an accident. I couldn’t live without it.
The range where we qualify to shoot is in the Pelham Bay Park up in the Bronx. I took the Gowanus Expressway—or the “Don’t Go on Us Expressway,” as it’s called. It’s always crowded and the slowest way to get into Manhattan. I took the FDR to the Bruckner and took the Willis Avenue Bridge to City Island Road. Because it was early in rush hour, it took me less than an hour to get there.
The range is an old fenced-in compound. It’s isolated by marsh but close enough to the bay that you can smell the salt water. It opened in 1960 and still uses the same life-size, two-dimensional target it used back then. The old-timers call him the thug. We just call him the bad guy. He reminds me of a gangster from the fifties, a cross between Ernest Borgnine and Rocky Graziano, which is who my father said they had in mind when they made him.
I pulled up to the gatehouse and let the old-timer check my ID. It was early enough that I got a parking spot near the front, next to Rooney’s car.
I went around to the back of the cinder-block building and got in line to sign in. Rooney was in front of me, still bellyaching about the captain who used us as a human barricade at the parade yesterday. I shook my head. It was the last thing I heard him talking about yesterday and the first thing I hear him talking about today. Then he started yapping about what a great shot he is, how he always qualifies with a 100 and his groupings are always great. No wonder his wife is a stewardess. Who could live with him on a full-time basis?
The line was getting longer now, and I gave a “Hey, buddy” to Fiore, who was about three people behind me. He switched off with the guy behind me so we could shoot together. Further down the line I saw Walsh and Snout, along with Rice and Beans from the four to twelve.
I got up to the table, showed my ID, and filled out the paperwork to get my rounds. Since I use my Glock 9mm both on and off duty and I have a .38 for off duty, I would have to qualify with both and would need bullets for both.
I got into relay 2 and had the twenty-first shooter position, which meant I’d shoot first and then hear the lecture on how not to point our guns at anyone, not to scratch our heads with our guns, and not to turn and point our guns while we’re looking around or being chased by a bee. The speaker also tells us that if we get hot brass from the bullet casings down our shirts to holster our guns, step back, and raise our hands instead of screaming and letting off rounds as we jump around while our skin blisters.
I reholstered my gun, got my bullets and paperwork, and waited for Joe and Rooney, and the three of us made our way over to the range.