Sons of the City (24 page)

S
ome people in my position might not have hesitated to kill Bravelli. No muss, no fuss, end of problem. What was the big deal? But I just wasn’t ready, not as long as there might be other ways of bringing him down, like the computer. I spent a lot of time wondering whether my hesitation was really a weakness. I worried about it. But in the end I decided that all I could do was the best I could.

The next morning, Doc got the warrant signed by a judge. We were set. Now all we needed was backup troops. Doc didn’t want to take anyone from OC—Lanier might hear about it.

No problem, I said. We’ll just take some of my guys. After roll call I rounded up Donna, Buster, Jeff, and Mutt in the Yard. I wanted Nick along, too, but I hadn’t seen him at roll call.

“What do you think’s on the computer?” Donna asked.

“Maybe names, maybe financial records,” I said. “Maybe just something about himself that we can use against him.”

“Would Bravelli be stupid enough to put that on a computer?” Buster asked.

The rest of us, at the same time, all said, “Yeah.”

A half hour later, Doc and I met my cops at Dogshit Park.

“Anybody know whether Nick ever came in?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s in today,” said Donna.

“We saw his car,” said Buster. He looked at Donna. “It was parked on Cedar, wasn’t it?”

“Tyler,” said Donna.

“No,” said Buster. “I think it was Cedar.”

Donna looked at me, shaking her head, and then did a Buster imitation: “Yeah, Sarge, I think we saw him up in North Philadelphia. Or maybe it was in Michigan.”

I asked Donna what block of Tyler Nick’s car was on.

“Fifty-eight hundred,” she said.

That’s what I was afraid of. Nick was back at the crackhouse.

I
told everyone to head over to Hotshot and park around the corner, I’d go get Nick. Sure enough, his car was in front of the crackhouse, just like it had been before.

At least Nick had the place to himself these days—Ronald wasn’t going to be coming back. A neighborhood group, thrilled to have the crackhouse finally out of operation, had persuaded the city to seal it up with cinderblocks within the week. I had heard from a neighbor that Ronald and Gail had set up housekeeping in an abandoned row house six blocks away.

I walked up the sidewalk to the house and then up the steps to the porch, and called Nick’s name, just like before. When I pushed the door open, there was Nick, in his uniform, standing in the darkness at the foot of the stairs.

“What are you doing, Nick?”

“I like it here in the dark.”

His breath smelled of beer.

“You drunk again?”

“Just leave me alone, I’m fine here.”

I suddenly felt very tired, like the darkness of the crackhouse was an enormous weight, pressing down on me. I wasn’t going to be able to help Nick, I knew it then. I wasn’t going to be able to give him the kind of help he really needed. Other cops had lost partners, other cops had lost parents—maybe, like Nick, even at the same time. But most cops eventually recover, they get back to normal. I had no idea why Nick couldn’t seem to be able to do that. Maybe in some way he was weaker. Maybe he just didn’t have the kind of strength most people have.

I was too weary to yell at him, to even say anything at all. As I silently helped him out of the crackhouse and into the bright sunlight, I realized that his career as a cop was probably over. I’d take him off the street, get him into some kind of treatment, but I already knew that wouldn’t be enough. It was sad.

For now, though, I had to decide whether to go ahead with the raid of Hotshot with six people instead of seven. I went over the plan in my head, figuring out where everyone would be. It could be done.

Nick, for his part, would be sitting by himself in my patrol car. I didn’t want to leave him at the crackhouse, but I couldn’t take him with us into Hotshot. Nick kicked and screamed, of course. When I met the others around the corner from Hotshot, and he found out what we were planning, he wanted to go with us. But he had to listen, frustrated, as Doc and I discussed some final details with the others. I didn’t tell them why Nick wasn’t going along, but they could smell the beer on his breath, they could figure it out.

A few minutes later, nightsticks in hand, the six of us quickly streamed through Hotshot’s front door. If this had been any other kind of raid, we probably would have had our guns drawn. But I didn’t expect anyone inside to be armed, and I didn’t want any of our guys shooting. If a college student in the store got hit, that would be the end of any plans I had for the rest of my life.

I was in first, leading our raiding party toward the back of the store, where we could see a set of swinging black-rubber doors.

Buster peeled off and strode over to a guy behind the counter who looked like the manager—he was tall, maybe forty-five, with black-rimmed glasses and a big shock of graying hair that he hadn’t bothered to comb.

“Hands where I can see ‘em,” he said, poking the guy gently with his nightstick. “You touch a button or something, I’m gonna touch your head with this.”

There were a couple of college kid customers playing video games, and Donna got them out. But we had another obstacle: a lumbering, heavyset guy in a bulging white dress shirt who had moved to block the swinging doors. Maybe he was supposed to be a salesman, but he looked more like somebody’s bodyguard.

“We’ll take this computer,” I said, pointing to one on a long table. He glanced at the computer, confused, and then back at me. As he did, Jeff and Buster passed by on either side of me and—holding their nightsticks in front of them like they were up at the plate bunting—simply bulldozed him out of the way.

I told Donna and Mutt to keep the front room under control, and then Doc and I swung open the double doors, with Jeff and Buster right behind. It was some kind of repair area—there were disassembled computers all over the place. None had any little yellow pieces of paper. A young black guy in dreadlocks and a sixties red tie-dyed shirt was bent over one of the computers with a screwdriver, and he looked up in surprise.

Farther back, there was a door to yet another room. That had to be where Bobby Mono ran his operation. It also had to be where Bravelli’s computer was—I knew that something so valuable would be kept in a secure location.

But the moment I saw that second door, I knew we had screwed up. It was made of thick steel, and even if we had brought along a battering ram or crowbars, it would have taken forever to get it open.

“Just knock,” said Doc.

I looked at him. He raised his hand and made a knocking motion in the air. I shrugged and knocked lightly on the door.

Nothing.

I knocked again, a little louder—but not much. I wanted Mono to think maybe it was the repair guy with a question.

The door started to open, and we heard a gravelly voice.

“How many fuckin’ times do I have to tell you—”

It was Mono. He stopped when he saw my uniform. But before his brain told his hands to close the door I pushed it all the way open, and he stumbled back.

Mono looked like a broken-down plumber nearing the end of his career. His face was splotched with red, and he had dirty gray hair, bifocals, and a sour expression. It was quite a shock—the last time I had seen him, just a couple of years before, he was a sharp-looking old guy.

The only other person in the room was a girl, about nineteen, sitting at a computer. She had short black hair, a face that was almost pretty, but was a little too hard, and she was wearing jeans and a skimpy orange bikini top that showed off a very nice set of attributes. When she saw us, she started typing quickly on the keyboard. I grabbed her by the arm and stood her up.

“Owwww,” she whined in a half-nasal Westmount accent.

“Leave her the fuck alone,” spat Mono. “You got a fuckin’ warrant?” He put his arm around the girl, protecting her.

“Who’s this,” I asked, “your granddaughter?” From the look on Mono’s face I could tell it was a good guess.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, making sort of spitting noises. He looked at my nameplate. “North?” he said. “That’s your name, North? Where’s the fuckin’ warrant, North?”

Doc pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to Mono.

“Here you go,” he said.

“We’re going to take along a few of these computers as evidence,” I told Mono.

“Evidence of what?” Mono demanded.

I looked around. There were a half dozen computers, seven or eight phones. They all seemed to be hooked up, they were part of Mono’s operation. Where was Bravelli’s computer? Max said he hadn’t taken it back to Bravelli’s house yet, but maybe somebody else had.

There was one computer box on a table off to the side, its cover off, its guts exposed. The cover was lying upside down, and I picked it up and turned it over—and there were the yellow Post-It notes. I read a couple: “Get car washed.” “Pick up cell phone.”

“Excuse me,” the girl said, walking over. “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.”

I looked at her. “You got to go to the bathroom?”

She was trying to act tough, she had her hands on her hips, but it just sort of made her attributes stick out even more.

“Excuse me,” she said. “This is private property.”

I ignored her and put the cover on the computer box. There was a screwdriver and several small screws on the table, and I started putting the thing back together. I didn’t know much about computers, but I did know about screws.

“Look at that,” said Buster, chomping his gum. “Sarge is one of those computer nuts.”

“Grandpa!” the girl yelled. “Do something.”

I glanced at Mono. He seemed paralyzed, but his granddaughter wasn’t going to just stand around and watch us. As I finished with the last screw, and picked up the computer, she stood in front of me, blocking my path.

“You can’t take that.”

“Buster,” I said, “would you cuff this girl?”

But before he could, she reached out and pulled the computer box right out of my hands. Damn, I thought, and I grabbed it back, and there we were, me and this nineteen-year-old girl, wrestling over a computer, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her orange bathing-suit top. It just wasn’t a fair-fight.

There was a small explosion, and we both turned. Nick was in the room—he had just put his nightstick through a computer screen. Without a word he swung at another screen and there was another explosion, and then he swung at another, and another, smashing them as hard as he could.

“Nick!” I yelled. “Out!” Mono was standing there with his mouth open, and the girl was getting hysterical.

“Stop it! Stop it!” She wouldn’t let go of the computer.

Nick came over to help me, but as he reached for the girl’s arm, she ripped the computer from my hands again and swung it around and drove it into Nick’s stomach.

“You fuckin’ bitch,” he yelled.

He came at her and she pushed the computer into his chest again, hard.

“Bitch!” he yelled again, and he brought his stick down hard on the computer. She was losing her balance, the computer was slipping from her grasp. I quickly grabbed it out of her hands, and she fell back onto the floor, onto her butt. But it was like she was made of rubber—she bounced back up and tore into Nick, clawing at his face with her fingernails.

Nick slapped her, and she started to fall back again, and he grabbed her arm and started dragging her toward a half-open door in the back. On the other side of the door you could see a toilet and a sink. Nick was going to lock her in the bathroom.

“Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go!”

Nick pulled her the last three feet to the bathroom and threw her through the door. She fell to the floor with a groan, and I expected Nick to slam the door shut. But instead he stepped into the bathroom with her, and then slowly closed the door behind him.

“Oh, shit,” said Buster.

The girl started screaming again, not in anger now, but in fear, panic.

“Susie!” yelled Mono, trying to get past Jeff.

I ran to the door and grabbed the handle. Locked.

“Open up, Nick!” I yelled. “Open up.”

The girl’s screams were getting louder and they were mixed with panicky sobs. It wasn’t a heavy door, I knew I could break it down. I gave the computer to Doc, backed up a couple of steps, and launched into the door with my shoulder. It popped open and there was Nick, pressing himself against the girl’s bare breasts, trying to pull down her jeans. I caught a glimpse of the orange bikini top, wadded up on the floor.

“Nick!” I yelled. I tried to pull him off her and then Jeff rushed in and together we got him away from the girl, and out of the bathroom.

The girl was crying hysterically, covering her breast; with her arms. I swung Nick around, and his eyes were jus empty, like there was nothing in there at all.

I turned to Buster, who was at my side. “We got to ge him out of here, now.”

Buster and I each grabbed one of Nick’s arms and hurriec him through the double doors toward the front, with Doc carrying the computer, right behind. Mono was yelling “You motherfuckers, you’re all dead! I’ll fuckin’ kill every last one of you.”

We pushed through the work room, carrying Nick quickly along. Mono was trying to get a glimpse of Nick’s nameplate, but we were moving too fast.

“I want this one’s name,” Mono was yelling. “What’s his name?”

We were almost at the front door, and Mono stopped short and yelled at me with tremendous fury.

“What’s his fuckin’ name, North? You tell me his fuckin’ name.”

I didn’t even turn to look at him, I just got the door open and pushed Nick through, and then we were all spilling out onto the sidewalk, into the soft light and warm breeze of the late afternoon.

When we got back to our cars, I waited with Nick on the sidewalk until the others drove off. Then I turned to him.

“Fuck you, Nick,” I yelled, and sent my fist flying into the side of his face. He fell back onto the sidewalk, more astonished than hurt.

“What the fuck were you doin’ back there?” I yelled down at him. “Do you really not care whether all your friends go to jail?”