IN MY NOVELS, I try to take the reader into my world of law enforcement. I want them to feel what it’s like to work in a patrol car, what goes through the mind of a detective chasing dangerous felons, the emotions involved, the good and the bad, the pain and the pride.
The Vanquished, although a work of fiction, was inspired by one of those incidents that occurred one hot summer night when I was on the job. That night I responded Code-Three—red lights and siren—to a residential robbery. I found Maury Abrams just as I described—that wasn’t his real name of course—with his head split open and bleeding. He tried to tell me in his own way what happened, unable to get the words out, the ordeal still too fresh in his mind. And he might have succeeded had I sat down with him, calmed his jagged nerves. But I was young and anxious and full of the thrill for adventure.
So when the second call went out, “shots fired, man down,” I left Maury Abrams to respond to the call, fully intending to return. When I arrived at that second call and saw the gang member shot in the back, smelled the blood, I realized my mistake. I immediately returned to the Abrams’ home and sat on the edge of Mr. Abram’s bed as he told me the story. How the two thugs tricked him into opening his reinforced door. How he shot them both in the defense of his wife who lay in that same bed with the covers up to her nose, still too terrified over the recent event to say a word.
I did refer the incident to the gang unit and tried to impress upon them the vulnerability of this elderly couple, trapped in their own home, in a dangerous neighborhood. I was worried about retribution, gang retaliation.
A week later, a detective in OSS—Operation Safe Streets—stopped me in the parking lot in back of the station to tell me the Abrams’ home had been firebombed. I remember standing there a long time overcome with emotions. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t save the Abrams; we couldn’t keep the street from eating them.