Authors: Randy Jurgensen
As I approached my desk, Amby pulled out a white handkerchief and gallantly dusted off the city-green metal chair. In a poor attempt at cockney, he announced, “Your table and chair await you, Gov'na.”
I laughed and gave my old friend a big hug. “I like you better southern, Brother.”
I was quickly surrounded by the rest of the 2-8 detectives. After more hugs and a lot of back slapping, they dispersed back into their normal chaotic routine of typing, interviewing complainants, sifting through photos, making phone calls, and printing and questioning prisoners in the overflowing detention cell, or
cage.
It felt good to be home.
I hadn't spoken to Amby since the hospital. I wanted to get his take on the case. I poured a cup of black and eyed Amby. I then left the building and walked to the corner of 125th Street. This was our pre-arranged meeting place for the past ten years. Moments later, the big DT ambled out of the precinct; it always astounded me how agile a man he was. At six-four, two-forty he could dance around and in between a cluster of children playing near the precinct steps—once the safest piece of real estate in Harlem. He approached and said, “Walk-talk?”
We started walking and talking through the streets of Harlem. This had always been our time, picking away at each other, looking for answers, distant from prying ears. Amby and I were simpatico on a lot of things, and I
knew that if anyone was privy to the investigation, he would be. “So wha'cha hearing, Amby?”
He hesitated ever so slightly, “Not much to say, Randy. We caught it and they took it.”
“Who took it?” I asked, hoping it went to Chief of D's office. By now, I assumed, a handpicked blue-ribbon team of Seedman's detectives were working the case.
“The borough took it, Randy.”
I stopped walking, confused. “The borough? Why in the hell would the borough conduct the homicide of an MOS (Member of the Service)? What cop is gonna talk to those idiots, anyway? Inspector Mitchelson's throne is in the fuckin' borough. After what happened on the roof, they'll never get anything out of the cops on the scene. Why in the world is it there?”
Amby slowed his walk, seemed to be calculating what his answer would be. He turned to me, “Keep it in the zone, I guess. But it doesn't matter, case was bounced back to the 2-8.”
Ambrose wasn't the type of man to venture a guess about anything, let alone the murder of one of his own; he knew more than he was letting on. “Bounced back to the 2-8?”
I was trying to keep calm. When a case is bounced back to a squad, it generally means that it's a hot potato, or its greater worth is outweighed by the trouble it's going to cause. This was the murder of a cop. “Who's got the case?” I asked.
Ambrose looked down, shook his head. Even he didn't believe what he was about to say. “Sleepy was up, so he caught it.”
Detective Basil Slepwitz had an array of nicknames—
Schlepy, Slip-ups, Shitwitz
—but the one that most fit DT. Slepwitz was Sleepy. Every precinct has a Sleepy. As a guy, he was well-liked—a loveable loser.
“Well, what's he doing, Amby?”
He motioned a shooter of liquor to his mouth and said, “Drinking a hell of a lot more than he did before.”
“Does he have a team, a partner?”
Amby started to walk again. He nodded and said, “He's got a partner.”
He looked back at me as I caught up to him, “One of the aided cases is working it with him.”
Aided was the term for an injured individual. As far as I knew, there were no other detectives requiring medical attention. “Who?” I asked.
“This young uniform, Navarra. He was—”
I held up my hand, stopping him. I began to feel physically sick. “Cardillo's partner,” I said.
Amby put his hand on my shoulder, “Borough had it, and then dumped it, because in all honesty, downtown doesn't really give a fuck
who
caught it. Not their priority, Randy.”
What could a uniform cop with no investigative experience do on this case? He himself was a victim. Didn't the brass realize that he wouldn't be viewed impartial to the investigation if it went to trial? They obviously didn't care. I couldn't look at Amby. No one wants to believe his wife is having a dirty affair. I was now given the plain facts: my wife—the job—was a two-dollar whore.
Unfortunately the day-to-day business at the murder factory didn't recede along with the morale in Zone-6. The BLA was still fueled by malevolence toward the establishment, and just as I was on their
to-do
list, they were on mine. It was back to work.
And so my days and nights were filled with intelligence gathering, and debriefing of arrestees and their arresting officers. The easy part was getting info out of the detainees; it was dealing with the cops and squad guys that was becoming a problem. When I got to any precinct, the first thing was, “When is the union gonna subpoena the bosses, Randy? We know you were there, Jurgensen. When are these motherfuckers gettin' hammered?”
Their hearts were in the right place, but their gun-sights were off target. Someone killed Phillip Cardillo, and it wasn't the superior officers. My feelings—at the time—catch the shooter first, then go after the job. I tried to explain that I was as far removed as the next guy. They wouldn't listen. They'd reply, “Well when you need us, we'll testify against those scumbags.”
It seemed that everyone I spoke to in those next few months was either inside the mosque or at the double doors and was commanded to
look the other way
by bosses right up the chain, to Lindsay himself. It seemed impossible—given the fact that I was there—all 500 cops I interviewed were so deeply embedded in the case. I knew where their anger came from. Hell, I felt some of the same, but I understood that this reasoning was serving no purpose, not until all perpetrators were brought to justice.
The fallout came quick and hard. After Haugh's curt resignation, Chief of Detectives Albert Seedman was next to abscond, and the fact that he did so while his boss, Murphy, was away in London, spoke volumes, not only to the councils of power, but also to the job as a whole. It was no secret that
Seedman's disgust over Phil Cardillo's murder had driven him to the point of no return. Being unable to conduct a proper investigation had to feel like a slap in the face by men who could never imagine walking in his shoes. Haugh's angry exit was felt mainly by the cops of Zone-6, but Seedman's hit the entire detective bureau, the headquarters, and after the press releases, Lindsay himself.
Seedman made a parting statement to Robert Daley, “You've got to have some kind of love for these guys—the cops—you can't lead them unless you have that.”
Almost immediately after, Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Robert Daley phoned in his resignation. It was a Sunday.
The poisonous atmosphere was beginning to cloud the business at hand: catching and prosecuting criminals. The cops and detectives who felt the tumult, thought:
The job's dead, let's lynch the fuckin' bosses.
I did feel some of the same belligerence. But I wasn't ready to fold up the tents just yet. There were cop killers in the streets. The BLA was going to strike again. My target was not the white-sleeved, blue-coat, brass-buttoned crowd. My guy had real street value, was armed to the teeth, and had a gang of “freedom fighters” ready to die for him—he was Twyman Meyers—number one on the FBI's most wanted list and at the top of mine.
Clint Blackstone was a known gambler, KG, to the NYPD. But he wasn't just some small-time hood, taking a few numbers, booking some games. Clint was a monster
street numbers
man. He made a lot of friends—on both sides of the street.
I'd known Clint my whole life. We met when I would place numbers for my mother, and subsequently, for the other neighborhood moms and dads. Before long, Clint and I were friends.
Growing up, Clint was the proprietor of
Clint's Candies
, located on the southwest corner of Amsterdam Avenue at 124th Street. This, of course, was the front for his numbers operation, and it suited me fine, because when I'd drop off the daily bets, I'd inevitably leave loaded with candy.
Clint was a rail thin, dark-skinned black man. He was a soft-spoken man. As youngsters growing up in the forties, we were in the street morning, noon, and night. We played sports, but that would soon grow tiresome and we'd find some trouble to get into. Clint recognized this, so every Saturday he'd line up all of the neighborhood kids and put us in the Columbia Movie House on Amsterdam Avenue at 125th Street. This was a sort of
give back
to the parents for their business. To take this generosity a step further, Clint had been known to pay back rents for some out-of-work tenants in the area, white and black folks, it didn't matter. Clint Blackstone was a neighborhood fixture and was well-liked all over Harlem. Depending on how you looked at it, and what period in time it was, Clint was my guy, or I was Clint's guy. When I was fresh off of a tour in Korea, I was back home, jobless. I needed a stopgap job until the NYPD would call me to service. Clint came calling. I responded.
I was what they called a
runner
, picking up the
work
, or the actual slips, from three different
drop spots:
The Valentine Ink Company and two beer-and-shot
bars along Broadway. After hiding the work on my person—this was a crime—I'd deposit the slips back at the candy store. Clint would survey the paper, pay me twenty bucks, and I was on my way. It was relatively easy harmless work, and 120 dollars a week back in the 1950s was a lot of money. I never forgot Clint for the trust he invested in me and the much needed and appreciated work he'd given me.
Not long after, I was called by the job, and my love affair with the Harlem numbers game came to an immediate end. The juice and acquaintances I'd collected in those years, however, remained. Clint knew that our friendship was going to change drastically after I became a cop, but that didn't mean we weren't going to look out for each other throughout the years.
I was sitting in the 2-8 squad, analyzing one-on-one photos of recent arrestees when I got a phone call from a uniform cop at the 2-5 Precinct. “This Detective Jurgensen?” He asked in a hushed streety tone.
“Who's this?” I asked.
“Patrolman Evans, 2-5. You'll know me when you see me. I'm a blood nephew to the Candy Man, there's something I need to get you...now.”
Candy Man
was Clint's street name. I was intrigued. I didn't even know Clint had a nephew. I thought setup at first, given the climate, but then he said, “Blair's on the desk.” He hesitated, then chuckled and said, “Candy Man said you'd like that.”
I was nineteen years old after my tour in Korea, when I strolled into the candy store, loaded with the day's work, which was jammed in my socks and down my pants. That was lucky, because standing in front of Clint was a very angry,
half-in-the-bag
detective, pointing ominously in his face. I recognized the situation, and when the DT spun on me, I began to look for a pack of cigarettes and gum. The DT wasn't as dumb as he looked, not at first, because he bent his finger at me, and in slurred Irish brogue said, “C'mere, lad.”
I knew exactly what I'd walked in on—illegal business. “Who the hell are you?” I asked pugnaciously. In reality, I was scared to death. He had the gun, the badge, and the power to lock my ass up—end of a police career before it even began.
His mouth dropped open slightly, shocked that anyone would question his authority. “I am Detective Blair. What's your name?”
“Jurgensen,” I said.
He stared at me. I saw Clint nervously roll his eyes. If Candy Man didn't know I was headed for a career living undercover, after this encounter,
he'd be damn sure of it.
He garbled, “Listen, Kid, doing police business here,” pronouncing business
biznez
, “so I'm gonna need you to run along.”
I saw Clint's eyebrow raise as his head snapped at the door ever so slightly. I smiled. I turned and strode out of Clint's with a large amount of Harlem's bets sticking to my sweaty body. Years later, upon entering the job and working in Harlem, I'd come to know Detective Billy Blair, who became Sergeant Blair and later Lieutenant Blair. And I made damn sure he remembered me, the kid he threw out of Clint's Candies. I didn't like Blair, and he didn't like me. I'd heard he'd just been transferred to the 2-5, and it wasn't at all a shock to me that Clint knew about it, probably before Blair himself. So I knew this Patrolman Evans of the 2-5, was a real cop, and had real street info to give me. I signed myself out of the 2-8 Precinct and left.
As I made my way up the crumbling steps of the precinct, I heard my name called. Evans came on the job late—thirty-two—so he was pretty much a rookie, even though he was older than I was. He approached me with his hand extended. I shook it.
“You recognize me, Detective Jurgensen?” He asked, smiling.
“It's Randy, and yes, of course I do,” I said.
We walked briskly. Evans was all business. He said, “BLA's making a play for Harlem's numbers policy.”
I was rocked by the bluntness of the info, and its ramifications. The policy, or street numbers, ran Harlem. If the BLA tried to make a move against the Harlem lottery, rivers of blood would flow through the streets. He continued, “The gunfight at the Audubon Bar on 133rd and Eighth, team of heavy-strapped individuals looking to snatch and grab policy dudes.”
There had been a horrific gunfight at the Audubon Bar where customers and assailants traded at least 100 rounds of ammunition. When NYPD arrived, they were fired upon by at least seven men, all of whom escaped unharmed. During the exchange, one uniform cop lost his gun. Subsequent to the detective's inquest, it was deemed that there had been an attempted robbery in the bar, and it was reported as such. The case was still open.
The Audubon was an excellent establishment to hit, a favorite haunt with Harlem's policy men. I asked, “Any names?”
He looked at me coldly, “J.C. and T.W.,” he said.
I stopped walking. These were the acronyms of two of the country's most wanted individuals: Joanne Chesimard and Twyman Meyers. Chesimard was wanted for armed robbery in four states. She was also wanted for questioning
in an armored car heist in Rockland County, New York, where an armed guard was brutally shotgunned to death. Twyman Meyers was the
young leader
of the BLA, and Joanne Chesimard was their heart and soul.