Sons of the City (17 page)

There was no question that they would catch him first. And now there weren’t just five or six anymore, other neighborhood guys were joining the chase, not even knowing what the black guy had done.

The driver took a right at one corner, a left at the next. He was almost a block away from me now, I was losing him. But his other pursuers were getting closer, like a pack of wild dogs about to take down their prey.

I was getting out of breath, I didn’t know how much further I could keep running. And they were all getting too far away. A block later, I didn’t see where any of them had gone.

Some people were out on their porches, looking toward an alley, and I ran down the street until I reached it. And there they were, halfway down the alley, a dozen of them, in a tight circle. It was exactly like Bravelli’s men around the black kids at Lucky’s. It was happening again.

There was a loud gunshot, and suddenly the pack was scattering, running out the other end of the alley. When I reached the driver, he was lying on the ground, trying to catch his breath, holding his right shoulder with his left hand. His orange tank top was turning red under his fingers. Still, he didn’t seem to be badly hurt.

“They shot me,” he said in astonishment. “What’d I do to them?”

I couldn’t say anything, I was just trying to get my own breath back. I kept my gun aimed at him, and knelt and patted down his green shorts. No weapons. I got him to use his free hand to empty his pockets. All he had was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, which I sat on the pavement next to him. I got on my radio and called for Rescue.

The guy looked about twenty-five. He had a shaved head, muscular arms, boyish round face. From what I could see, he had probably been shot by a small-caliber bullet that had gone into the fleshy part of his shoulder. There was a lot of blood, but it didn’t look serious. He seemed to be more annoyed than in any great pain.

“Can I have my cigarettes?” he asked casually. I handed them to him, then gave him his lighter. Guy gets shot, at least he deserves a smoke.

He gave me a friendly smile of thanks. This was nothing to him. Steal a car, try to whack someone, crash the car, run from police, get chased and shot by white vigilantes. All in a day’s work.

“Why’d you shoot at Bravelli?” I asked.

“Motherfucker killed Ru-Wan,” he said matter-of-factly, lighting a cigarette.

“You missed, you know.”

He seemed surprised for a moment, but then he shrugged. Hit, miss, didn’t make any difference to him. Nothing made any difference. A sudden anger rose inside of me.

“Why’d you use a garbage gun?” I asked, almost spitting out the words at him.

“Huh?”

“Why’d you use a TEC-9? It’s a fucking piece of shit. What’d you expect to hit?”

He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. What was going on here?

“Why didn’t your passenger do the shooting?” I asked. “You were coming at Bravelli from the wrong direction. What are you, a fucking idiot?”

“I’m not an idiot,” he said defensively. A police car and a wagon were pulling up.

“What do you fucking call it, then? You can’t even do a drive-by shooting. What was this, a drive-crash shooting?”

The guy’s mouth was half open. V.K. and Larry were coming over from the wagon, and he glanced toward them hopefully.

“You fucked up, you know that?” I was yelling now. “You had a golden opportunity and you fucking blew it.”

He just stared at me.

“You OK, Sarge?” Larry asked.

“Yeah, it’s under control,” I said, trying to calm myself down. “Once we get this asshole out of here, I guess we’ll have to try to find the other assholes who shot him.”

“I’m not an asshole,” the guy said.

“Take my word for it,” I said. “You’re an asshole.”

“What about Larchwood Street?” V.K. asked.

“What’s on Larchwood?”

“This guy’s partner ran into a house, got himself a hostage. Fifteen-year-old black girl.”

T
he scene at Larchwood was a zoo. Unlike my guy, the passenger hadn’t been chased by anyone but Randy and Dave, so he was able to get much farther—across 67th Street, out of the Italian section and into black West Philadelphia.

He ducked into a house on Larchwood Street near 65th, apparently hoping to run out the back. We found out later that the back door had a deadbolt that locked from the inside with a key. But the key was hidden, and the guy was trapped.

The only person in the house was a fifteen-year-old girl, sitting in the living room watching TV, and the guy dragged her upstairs, to the second-floor front bedroom. Randy and Dave were out front, on the street, and for a moment they weren’t sure which house he had run into. Then the guy opened the upstairs window, and showed them the girl, and said he’d kill her if they came in. For good measure, he fired a wild shot that went through the roof of a parked car.

Captain Kirk was already at Larchwood Street when I arrived. He told me that a squad from SWAT was on its way, and he was trying to track down someone in Hostage Negotiations.

If the guy had been alone, we could have just waited him out. Sort of like the old joke, a man holds a gun to his head, threatens to shoot, and tells the cops, Don’t laugh, you’re next. But this guy was pointing his gun at a hostage, which meant we didn’t have forever.

We had another problem: crowds were already gathering behind the yellow tape at each end of the block, and they were hot. During the foot-pursuit, the guy had occasionally turned to fire at Randy and Dave as he ran. They fired back, which wasn’t such a good idea. There were a lot of people on the street, particularly kids.

Fortunately, Randy and Dave didn’t hit anybody. But you had the sight of two white cops, blazing away with their guns as they ran after a black guy in a crowded black neighborhood. Not the kind of thing to help police-community relations.

As we stood down the street from the house, separated from the crowd by the yellow police tape, first one bottle, then another came at us. One young woman, holding a small child in her arms, called out to me, “You could have killed my baby, you know that?”

I glanced over at her. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Her black sundress barely hung on to her scrawny frame, but her face was full of fury. I didn’t know what to say to her, and she shrugged, like she didn’t expect me to say anything.

“You police just don’t care at all, do you?” she asked.

I figured the television reporters would be pulling up in about five minutes. Maybe a little longer—after all, they had to spray their hair before they came out.

An hour later nothing had changed, except that we were all on live TV. One section of the yellow tape had been designated for the media, and we could see the TV reporters giving their breathless updates every few minutes. They must have thought they had hit the lottery: a botched hit on a mob boss had led to a tense hostage situation with racial overtones. This was why ratings were invented.

SWAT was on the scene and in control now, and a hostage negotiator had arrived. He had a portable cell phone, and was calling the phone at the house every few minutes. Each time, the guy would pick up the phone and say “Hello,” like he lived there, like he had no idea who might be calling.

When the negotiator would identify himself, the guy would immediately say “Fuck you,” and hang up. But every time the phone rang, he’d pick it up again. Maybe he was expecting a call from Publisher’s Clearing House saying he had just won $10 million.

I’d never seen this hostage negotiator before. He was in his early fifties, black, a little overweight, neatly trimmed mustache, clear eyes. You looked at him and could tell there was no way he could ever be bullshitted. He was wearing plaid shorts, sandals, black socks that stopped just below the knee, and a light blue Caesars Atlantic City T-shirt with a fresh mustard drip right in the front. I had no doubt he had been cooking hot dogs on the backyard grill behind his row house when he got the call. One moment he’s grabbing the pickle relish from the refrigerator, the next he’s trying to keep a fifteen-year-old girl from getting killed.

We still hadn’t found any of the guys who had shot the Toyota’s driver. Not that I expected we would—they were probably all inside their houses, watching us on TV.

“Hey, Eddie.”

I looked up, it was Nick.

“I heard about the drama you got goin',” he said brightly. “Which is the house?”

“It’s about halfway down the block,” I said, pointing. “Dark brown brick, black metal railing on the steps, gunman in the window. The usual.”

“Yeah, I see it,” said Nick. He seemed very cheerful, almost chirpy. This wasn’t Nick, even on a good day.

“You on something?” I asked.

“You mean like drugs?” He laughed. “Look at my eyes, do these look like drug eyes to you?”

No, they didn’t, they looked normal. There was no alcohol on his breath, either. Maybe Nick wasn’t drunk or high, but then it was something else.

“How long has everybody been out here?” he asked, glancing around.

“Over an hour.”

“Oh, man, you should have called me sooner. I’ll get ‘em.”

And with that, he started walking down the middle of the street toward the house.

“Nick!” I yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, Eddie,” he said over his shoulder. “Be back in a minute.”

Kirk appeared at my side.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

I couldn’t give him an answer. I yelled to Nick twice more, but each time, he turned and waved and gave me a big smile.

Finally, I ducked under the tape and ran after him. We were a few doors down from the house when I reached him and grabbed his arm.

“Nick,” I said. “Where you going?”

“It’s no big deal,” he said, almost surprised that anyone would think it was. “Somebody’s got to go get this guy, right? I don’t mind doing it.”

We were still in the middle of the street, maybe forty feet to one side of the house. Close enough to see the upstairs window, close enough for the gunman to see us. His face appeared for a moment, then vanished.

Nick turned and walked the rest of the way to the house, leaving me there. The gunman was back again, this time holding the girl half in front of him as he pointed his gun out the window, first at me, then at Nick.

“Get back or I’ll shoot,” he yelled.

It was Nick he was more worried about. Nick was now in front of the house, casually walking toward the porch like he was just going to visit a friend. He didn’t even have his gun out.

The guy fired a shot at him, and missed, then fired again. Nick kept walking, like nothing was happening, like he was Superman or something, and the bullets were bouncing right off him. Then he was on the porch, out of sight of the shooter, and he simply opened the door and walked in. I glanced up at the window. The gunman had a panicked look, then he was gone.

This was insane. What did Nick think he was going to do? And what was I going to do, stand there with my thumb up my ass while my cousin got blown away?

I ran toward the house, listening for gunfire, and then I was on the porch, and through the open door and into the living room. A music video was blasting from the TV.

There was a loud thrashing and thumping upstairs, and I ran toward the staircase and smashed my shin against a heavy coffee table. I took the stairs two at a time, and as I came up the staircase I could see, in the front bedroom, the guy lying facedown on the carpet and Nick straddling him, cuffing his hands behind his back.

Nick looked up and smiled at me when I came into the room, it was like he had been expecting me. The girl was cowering in a corner, hugging herself, shaking, crying with open eyes. She was wearing a blouse and skirt, she looked like she had just come home from school.

Nick stood, then grabbed the handcuff chain and pulled the guy to his feet. I’d never seen a prisoner so shamefaced. He wouldn’t look at Nick, he wouldn’t look at me. Thirty seconds ago he had a hostage, he was in control—suddenly he’s captured by a cop who doesn’t even bother to take his gun out of its holster.

“Told you I didn’t mind doing it,” said Nick, with that bright, eerie smile. He picked up the guy’s pistol from the floor and started taking him out of the bedroom.

I walked over to the girl. “He hurt you?” I asked.

She shook her head no, and I helped her over to the bed. “Can you just sit here for a second?” I said. “I’ll get someone up here to take care of you.”

I stuck my head out the window and gave Kirk the thumbs-up. Cops started streaming under the yellow tape and running toward the house.

Nick, meanwhile, was taking the guy out the front door. He was so casual about it, he looked like he was just going out for a stroll. Think I’ll get a beer, oh, by the way, here’s that barricaded man you wanted. And here’s his gun.

A crowd of SWAT cops converged on the guy, and hustled him into the back of a police wagon that had pulled up in front of the house. I spotted Donna, and told her to go upstairs and try to comfort the girl.

Some of the SWAT guys were giving Nick dirty looks. Saving that girl was their job, not his. Who the hell did he think he was? I heard one of them mutter something about disciplinary action.

But Buster, Randy, and Dave had come up to the house, too, and they gave Nick high-fives. Nick was smiling, enjoying it.

Like nothing, nothing at all, was wrong.

L
ater, just about everyone who had played a part in the day’s events made an appearance at the 20th District. It was like the cast of a play coming out for a curtain call.

I had to go upstairs and get interviewed by the detectives, and so did Nick, and Randy and Dave. Bravelli and Goop were brought in to give their statements, and the two guys from the Toyota were being interrogated as well—I was right, the driver’s gunshot wound had been minor. The doctors took the bullet out and released him into police custody, like what he had come in for wasn’t anything more serious than something stuck between his teeth.

Even one of the punks who had chased down the driver was there. It was the blond guy with the eyes on the backs of his legs. His mother had seen the story on TV, simply assumed her son was involved, wormed it out of him, and drove him to the district. He admitted he was part of the chase for a while, but claimed he wasn’t there in the alley when the shot was fired and didn’t know who was. Even his mother couldn’t make him rat out his friends.