LIEUTENANT JACK GILLIAM NUDGED THE man sitting next to him drinking a beer at Farrell’s Bar & Grill in Brooklyn. “There he is,” he said.
“You sure about this?” said a third man, sitting across the table.
“I’m not sure of anything,” Gilliam growled. “I’m just going to feel him out now that things have ramped up.”
“But he’s . . . you know . . .”
“Black? Yeah, I know, but he’s also a cop,” Gilliam replied. “A cop whose partner just got gunned down in cold blood. Then these so-called activists, like that piece of shit Mufti and his loudmouth pal with Black Justice Now, Imani Sefu, go off on that bullshit that a totally unrelated shooting was revenge. Like that gives them the right to riot. Six more cops were hurt during that ‘peace’ march the other night, and one of them’s still in a coma. Evans is black, but he’s a cop and he can’t like this any more than we do.”
Gilliam stood as Evans made his way over to them. “Hey, Eddie, good to see you,” he said, extending his hand. He pointed to the seat next to him. “Take a load off. You remember Joe Satars and Johnny Delgado?”
Evans nodded to the other two. “Been a while since I’ve been over to Brooklyn, much less Farrell’s,” he said. “It still a good cop bar?”
Delgado laughed. “It’s the best. Lots of cops and firefighters. A great place to hook up with uniform chasers; they all know where to find us.”
“We call him ‘Don Juan’ Delgado,” Gilliam joked. “But it is a good place to hang out with guys who know what it’s like to put on the uniform.”
“You married?” asked Delgado, who obviously spent a lot of time combing his wavy dark hair and working out at the gym. “I know a few girls in here who like older guys.”
“Hey, who you calling old?” Evans laughed, then held up his left hand to show the gold band. “But yeah, married twenty years. Two kids.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” Delgado replied. “You could be like Joe here. He’s been married more times than Larry King, but then they sober up and divorce him.”
“Fuck you, Delgado.” Satars was a tall, pale scarecrow of a man with a sour expression.
“Get you something to drink?” Gilliam asked.
“I’ll take a beer,” Evans replied.
Gilliam made a motion for a draft to a waitress standing over next to the bar. He turned back to Evans. “Hey, sorry things got a little testy the other day at Tony’s funeral.”
Evans looked at Satars. “Yeah, well, your boy here made it sound like I let Tony’s shooter get away.”
“I just asked why you didn’t take the shot . . .”
“There were kids . . .”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“Knock it off, Joe.” Gilliam gave Satars a hard look before turning back to Evans. “Sorry, Eddie. Sometimes my friend here acts like he watches too many cop shows on television instead of just being a cop.” He paused and gave Satars another meaningful look. “No one who knows shit blames you for not shooting when there were kids and other people around. We’re all just hot because of what happened to Tony.”
Evans continued to glare at Satars but relaxed when his beer arrived. “No one is hotter than me,” he said. “I loved that guy.”
Gilliam patted him on the back. “No one doubts it. Good kid, too. I worked with his dad some when I was on patrol. Good man all around, a crying shame he’s lost two boys now to terrorists.”
“Hey, I lost a partner, too,” Delgado said. “A junkie stabbed him when we were walking a beat in the Bronx.”
Evans took a sip of his beer. He was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “That would be almost easier to take than this. Don’t mean any disrespect, it must have been tough on you, too. But I think I could handle it better if he’d been stabbed by a junkie, or shot during a holdup, or a thousand other things that happen to cops every day. But this . . . this waiting for him to get done playing basketball with kids, and then shooting him down for no reason. There’s just something different about it.”
“The world is changing, brother,” Gilliam said.
“Damn straight,” Delgado added. “They’re hunting cops, and it’s goddamn time we do something about it.”
Gilliam made a motion to Delgado, who sat back and picked up his beer. “What do you hear about Tony’s shooter?” Gilliam asked Evans.
“Not much. You got anything?”
“A little,” Gilliam said. “I’ve been checking in with Homicide over at the Two-Five. I heard they got some touch DNA from the perp off of Tony’s shirt. And a pretty good physical description from that kid.”
“Tyrone.”
“Yeah, Tyrone. Apparently, his grandmother took him straight to the DA’s office, so I haven’t seen the report. But they’re looking for this guy Nat X who’s been bragging about it on television.”
“That son of a bitch Peter Vansand could help us catch him,” Delgado spat.
“But he won’t,” Satars hissed. “It would violate his ‘journalist’s ethics,’ whatever the fuck that means.”
“I’d like to stick his ethics—” Delgado began, but Gilliam silenced him again with a look.
“As I said, we’re all tired of it,” Gilliam said. “And it’s not just the nutjobs like this Nat X. These so-called activists like Mufti and Sefu are stirring them up, making it seem like killing cops is something good for the black community.”
“I heard one of them was arrested at the riot the other night for assaulting a cop,” Evans noted.
“Yeah, this punk Sefu, whose name apparently means ‘sword of faith’ or some mumbo jumbo like that; real name is Todd Reade, a former community college rabble-rouser, started the Manhattan version of Black Justice Now. He’s cooling his heels in the Tombs on the assault rap.”
Evans frowned. “He didn’t make bail?”
“Apparently he hasn’t tried,” Gilliam said. “He’s playing up the ‘political prisoner’ bit.”
“Anybody talk to him?”
“The guys from the Two-Five tried. No go.”
“Somebody ought to make him,” Satars snarled. “Him and Mufti are no better than terrorists, and we should be treating them like that.”
Evans was quiet for a moment. “So why’d you ask me to come here tonight?”
Gilliam put down his beer. “We’re thinking we need to start sending our own messages. Knowing how you felt about Tony, I thought maybe you’d want to join us.”
“And do what?”
Delgado piped up. “These guys like Mufti and Sefu do a lot of lying about cops. We’ll be sending them strong messages very soon.”
Evans frowned. “What do you mean, messages?”
“Eye for an eye,” Satars said.
Gilliam looked around and then leaned toward Evans. “We don’t want this to be a white-versus-black thing. We want this to be cops standing up for other cops. That’s why we want you to join us. Maybe with the right people, this goes nationwide, every department.”
“We put the fear of God in a few of these loudmouths who make psychopaths like Nat X into heroes, and turn this thing around,” Delgado added.
“You in or out?” Satars asked.
Evans looked from face to face to face, then raised his beer. “I’m in.”
The other three raised their glasses. “Here’s to the thin blue line,” Gilliam toasted.
“To the thin blue line,” the others echoed.