Five Frank was an NYPD blue and white 1991 Chevy Caprice. It was being driven at this time by Sergeant Brian Crewes, a sixteen-year veteran patrol cop with a chestful of citations and ribbon bars. Crewes’s nickname was, probably inevitably, Crewcut. Crewes had earned the name by staying faithful to his Marine Corps haircut for years after his discharge. At five nine and one-eighty, Crewes was not a big man by NYPD standards, and he was considered quiet and perhaps a little shy by the other members of his squad. Crewes spoke with a soft, vaguely midwestern accent, had pale gray eyes, bristly graying hair, and a large brown mustache. He was a little vain. Certainly he took more care with his uniform and personal appearance than the average New York City cop, who tended to run slightly to seed as the years went by.
Sergeant Crewes enjoyed his life, the Pittsburgh Steelers, lifting very heavy weights and putting them back down after a while, and being a New York City patrol cop. He did not enjoy anything connected with the O. J. Simpson trial, any kind of food you could get delivered to your house, playing board games with small children, or the wit and wisdom of loudmouthed homicidal gangbangers with bonehead nicknames.
As it happened, it was the fourth item on his got-no-time-for list that was concerning him at twenty-five minutes after five on this Friday evening. Sergeant Crewes was driving southeast along Hunts Point Avenue looking for a private spot to complete a conversation that had been imprudently initiated by a seventeen-year-old gun dealer whose street name was Doctor Dred. Doctor Dred was currently under arrest and handcuffed in the back of Five Frank and had been, until his recent ill-considered action in the back seat, on a routine run up to the Spofford juvenile facility in Hunts Point to await an arraignment.
The good Doctor had been busted by the 41st Precinct gang squad on a charge of Class A Felony Attempt Murder and related felony violations under Section 265 paras 8 and 9 of the Penal Law governing firearms. He did not seem to feel a sincere regret for the bungled drive-by shooting that had wounded a forty-eight-year-old health care worker on her way home from Claremont Village and had, ultimately, landed him in the back of Five Frank this afternoon.
A powerful, thick-necked, slope-shouldered young man who weighed around two hundred pounds, Doctor Dred suffered from a severe case of bravado overload, and he had been telling Sergeant Brian Crewes what was going to happen to any fucked-up cop who ever got in his way—talking to the back of Sergeant Crewes’s head, actually, since Crewes wasn’t really paying attention—when he had made the grievous tactical error of deliberately coughing up something truly noxious, which he then spit upon the back of Sergeant Crewes’s head through the iron grid that separated the rear seat from the driver.
Crewes had been driving southeast along Hunts Point Avenue—was actually within a couple of blocks of the Spofford facility—when Doctor Dred’s spit struck the back of his neck, a soft warm wet slap, queasily solid, and slithered down into his uniform collar. Doctor Dred howled with delight, doubled over laughing, your gangbanger humor not being very complex.
Crewes brought the patrol car to a stop, wiped the spit off the back of his neck with a tissue from the pack on the seat beside him, leaned forward, picked up the radio, and called in to Central.
“Five Frank, K?”
“Five Frank?”
“Central, I have a prisoner here complaining of chest pains. Request permission for a ten-97H.”
A ten-97H was NYPD radio code for permission to transport a prisoner to a hospital.
“Chest pains, Five Frank?”
Doctor Dred had managed to contain his laughter by now and was paying fairly close attention.
“Ten-four, Central. Pretty severe.”
Doctor Dred’s gold-toothed smile was fading faster than a snowflake’s kiss.
“Yo, Dred don’t need no fucking hospital.”
Crewes looked up at the Doctor’s face in the rearview mirror, raised one eyebrow. “Ah, ten-six, Central. Could you say that again, sir?”
Doctor Dred repeated his statement at the top of his lungs and with a number of elaborations that were picked up by Crewes’s handset and heard by Central, as well as taped by the automatic call-recording system at communications HQ.
“You mean you don’t need any fucking hospital? I mean, setting the double negatives and that genealogical stuff aside?”
“Word, peckerhead.”
“You heard the man, Central?”
“Ten-four, Five Frank. Wait one.”
In the silence that followed, Doctor Dred found his enjoyment of the spitting event dissipating fairly quickly. In a moment or two his laughter had trailed off to a chuckle or two and finally subsided completely.
“Roger, Five Frank. We’ll make that a ten-56, K?”
“Ten-four, Central.”