DETECTIVE GERALD PARKS WAS in hell. Or close enough. He was stuck in a filthy unmarked car, baking in the sun, with a partner who not only had BO but insisted on smoking, which was clearly against regs, explaining that being on stakeout constituted exigent circumstances, since he couldn’t take a cigarette break. Not only that, but after ordering a double beef burrito for lunch, which stank the car up even more (Parks was vegan and competed for the department in long-distance races), he had clearly farted, despite ardent denials. Then he claimed that the smoke from his cigarette would help cover the smell.
“Isn’t that what they say?” Detective Fusco, his senior partner, asked. “To light up after you rip one?”
“That’s a match. And you just denied farting anyway. If this was an interrogation you’d be caught contradicting yourself.”
“Match, cigarette, it’s the same idea—you actually need smoke. And if this was an interrogation, my lawyer would argue the first law of evidence: he who smelt it dealt it.”
“Whatever,” Parks said, rolling his eyes. He was trapped in hell with a gross fat infant. “You want to talk about dealing it. Tell me why we’re here.” He nodded at the scene unfolding down the street, which Fusco and he had been discretely observing from afar. It was a corner in Sunset Park. A couple of teenagers in drooping, pegged jeans and hoodies were standing on the corner. Most folks walked right by. But a steady string of more scraggly characters approached the youths, who directed them into a nearby alley. A minute later the same person would emerge and quickly rush away.
“Because,” Fusco said, unbuckling his belt. “My gut tells me something isn’t right here.”
“Yeah it tells me that too. I’d say it’s the burrito and coffee for starters.”
“Out there, genius.” Fusco nodded at the usual hustle playing out. Parks shrugged.
“Looks like a pretty standard cop spot and some friendly neighborhood dope fiends to me.”
“Yeah but who are the guys working it?”
“I don’t know. Nobodies. Kids.”
“Chinese kids.”
“So?” Parks braced himself for some racial shit. Not that he was Chinese. He was African-American, from Fort Greene. His father was a retired high school principal, his mother a nurse and community activist. A lot of his friends wondered how he could be a cop, considering all the conflicts it raised for a politically-conscious Black man, but Gerald had always wanted to be a detective. It sounded simple, but seeing his sharply dressed father head out to work each morning, tie and pocket square and polished shoes, and come home drained and exhausted gave him a simple goal: he wanted to wear nice suits to work, but he didn’t want to sit in an office. He liked being out in the fresh air, in the street. Though not in a car inhaling some fat-ass’s farts. He also had a gift for solving puzzles, for analytical thinking. And he was brave. So he excelled on the force, rose quickly, and landed this assignment, as junior partner with Fusco in Major Case as a prize. Because despite everything—the bad jokes, the bad breath, the farts and cigarettes, and even the suspicious phone calls from what sounded like angry bookies—Fusco was a top investigator and a legendary detective. He was the real deal and Parks was determined to learn from him, if there was anything left in him but gas.
“Chinese neighborhood, Chinese drug dealers. Standard,” he told Fusco.
“And the last spot I took you too? In East New York? Who was selling there?”
Parks gritted his teeth. “Black kids.”
“Right,” Fusco said. “Black neighborhood, Black kids. Also standard. Selling what though?”
“Dope, man. Heroin. What is this?”
“What brand?”
“The touts were yelling White Angel. It’s the bomb, apparently.”
“Right.” Fusco checked his gun and took the keys from the car. “Come on, let’s take a walk. Get some fresh air. That cologne you wear is driving me nuts.”
Chuckling, Fusco lumbered from the car and started walking down the street, while Parks followed, trying to control his temper and, yes, taking some deep, cleansing breaths. Maybe this was Fusco’s brand of ball-busting. And okay, he was new on the squad. But he was no rookie, and he didn’t plan to sit still for any hazing. He’d knock him right on his ass.
But Parks’s attention shifted quickly, and he jumped into high alert when he realized where his new partner was leading him—right into the bustling little operation they’d been observing.
“Five-O, Five-O.”
“Cops yo!”
“Police coming!”
The lookouts and touts—immediately recognizing that a heavy white guy in a rumpled, blue suit, food-stained white shirt, and creased red tie walking with a well-built, six-two Black man in a glen plaid with a subtle dark green woven in the gray, with a crimson tie and matching pocket square, could be nothing but cops—vanished, as did the customers, scurrying off like roaches in the light.
“What the fuck?” Parks asked as Fusco walked into the alley. It was empty. “You really think they were going to hang around, answer your questions?”
“Don’t need them to,” Fusco said. Eyes on the ground, he walked to the end of the alley and downstairs into a stairwell. He drew a utility combo knife from his pocket then bent over, grunting a little, and came up smiling. “Here,” he said, holding a small, torn glassine envelope by the corner with the knife’s tiny tweezers. “Got a small evidence bag?”
Parks took one out and held it open. Fusco dropped in the envelope, then held it up. It was stamped with a small, poorly reproduced image: an angel, wings spread.
Fusco grinned. “A Chinese crew in Sunset Park and a Black crew in East New York, both selling the same brand of dope? That, my tofu-eating, nonsmoking, perfume-wearing young friend, is not standard. Is it?”
“No,” Parks said, examining it more closely. “It definitely is not.”
“Interested now?” Fusco asked, lighting a cigarette as they headed back to the car, a chorus of whistles alerting the block to their progress.
“Very interested,” he said, and grinned.
Unfortunately, their boss, Captain Maureen O’Toole, didn’t share their interest.
“Who cares?” she asked, looking at the small collection of used baggies they’d laid on her desk.
“Captain,” Fusco said, “this White Angel crew is all over. Not just Brooklyn. They’re in Harlem. On the West Side. Maybe the Bronx too. They’re organized. And the product is strong. Junkies are dropping right and left.”
“He’s right,” Parks added. “I checked around, and everyone on the street is saying White Angel is the bomb.” It was a bleak truth of the dope business—killing off some of your customers was the best advertising there was. Junkies heard about ODs and knew that meant the brand was legit.
“I repeat, who cares?” O’Toole repeated. “I’m asking. Literally. I know I don’t. Junkies OD’d? In other news, drunks threw up and pigeons shit on a statue.”
“But you have to admit,” Parks added, “for a gang to be crossing ethnic lines like this, taking on different groups in different neighborhoods. It’s highly unusual.”
“But this isn’t the highly unusual case squad, is it? This is the Major Case squad. And what they meant by Major Case is a case where anyone with a rank of major or up is going to catch shit from the press or the politicians.”
Fusco glared. “So you’re saying come back when some rich white kid or celebrity dies.”
The captain pointed at him. “Now that is inappropriate and discriminatory, right detective?” She winked at Parks. “Teach your new partner some manners.” She pushed the baggies toward them. “And file this crap under NHI.”
As they walked back to their adjacent desks in sullen silence, Parks muttered to Fusco. “What’s NHI again? I don’t remember it in the manual.”
Fusco snorted. “It’s not in the fucking manual. Dealers killing junkies? NHI means No Humans Involved.”