The Fence: A Police Cover-Up Along Boston's Racial Divide (4 page)

The adviser took Mike’s silence as confirmation. You really should stop, he said. You really should.

The meeting ended. Mike left feeling more disoriented than ever, and the feeling just worsened as the year went on. Most of all, he felt alone going through the biggest culture shock of his life, a shock that was not about race. He’d attended a largely white school at St. Mary’s, so being the rare black at Milton was not a foreign experience. It was the wealth; he’d never been around or seen such wealth before. He became acutely self-conscious. Seeing some of his classmates’ mansions left him paralyzed socially. “I was petrified to bring anyone from school to my house. It was just embarrassing, you know. Oh my God, look at the house I live in, look at how these people live.” He dodged conversations on campus when classmates talked about where their fathers went to college—Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and other elite schools. He was embarrassed his aunts and grandmother were maids. He was even embarrassed his mom’s name was Bertha.

Mike could not figure out how to make Milton work. He was a day student when most of the kids boarded on campus. With his commute, team sports, and the piles of homework, he found himself in a hole academically. “I had a lot of D’s and C’s at first.” It wasn’t as if the schoolwork was too difficult for him, he just could not find time to complete it. “The perception was that I wasn’t doing my homework because I couldn’t do it. But I wasn’t doing my homework because, at the time, I was just tired all the time and, I mean, there was a lot of stuff going on in my life.”

Meetings with teachers and advisers did not help—mainly, once again, because Mike let stand their assumption that the work was over his head.

You can’t do this, can you? Mike was asked. It’s really difficult, right?

“I was just like, ‘Yeah, I guess so.’”

By early spring, Mike thought he was making progress. Not playing a sport, he had more time for his schoolwork, and his grades improved. But it was apparently not enough. “My adviser went from ‘You smoke pot, don’t you?’ and ‘You have trouble doing the work, don’t you?’ to ‘You don’t really want to be here, do you?’”

It became a refrain: You’re not happy, are you?

Mike did nothing to rebut the school’s wrongful assessment, a response that was becoming a pattern. The next thing he knew, he would
not
return to Milton Academy. His mother and oldest sister Cora began working with administrators at Milton to find Mike a new school. In the spring and summer he visited other campuses, such as the Northfield Mount Hermon School in western Massachusetts and the Wooster School in Danbury, Connecticut. Mike was not impressed. “They all looked the same to me,” he said. And both schools meant he’d have to leave home and board. “I didn’t want to be a boarder.”

But what Mike thought did not matter. “My mother told me I was going to Wooster because it was a full scholarship and everything was booked—the whole nine yards,” said Mike. “So it was decided for me.”

In 1981 when Mike went to the Wooster School, he joined a sophomore class that numbered between thirty and forty students. The Episcopalian school, founded in 1926, took pride in its small size and its progressiveness. It became coeducational in 1970. Mike’s class had a few more boys than girls in it, and he was one of a handful of blacks. One of the other black scholarship students—a senior during Mike’s first year—was Tracy Chapman. They had very different interests. Mike’s focus was sports; Tracy was interested in politics, the black feminist poet Nikki Giovanni, and her music. She played at the campus coffeehouse Friday nights, where she sang songs she was working on, including one she titled, “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution.”

Mike’s mom, dad, and sister drove him down from Boston at the start of school in September. Most of the other kids were already on campus and unpacked. Mike was assigned to a triple. His roommates had set up the room to their liking. “I got the top bunk, whatever cabinets were empty—the leftover stuff.” Mike’s sister, surveying the situation, made it clear she didn’t like that her brother got the short end. “She’s like making faces, saying, ‘Oh, I can see you got the worst of this.’” Mike just wanted them to leave. His sister and mother shuffled between the car and the second-floor room. “I’m embarrassed. I got this teenage thing going on, you know, with a mother and sister running around and saying things to other kids. I’m like, ‘Oh, God, please, these people don’t even know me. Just leave.’ And my dad is so sick he never got out of the car.”

Escorting them to the parking lot, Mike made his farewells—as quickly as he possibly could. His father was in his seat, frail and shrunken. “He didn’t say a lot—study hard, stay out of trouble, that kind of thing. I love you.” Like his father, Mike had little to say in return. He gave his father a quick hug and said, “See you later, Dad.”

It was the last time Mike saw his father alive. The fall semester began and Mike became quick friends with one of his roommates, a boy from New Jersey named Tim Fornero. Mike played football and adjusted well academically—nothing at all like Milton Academy. But Mike didn’t like being away from Boston. “The school was fine, the people were fine, but my mind, you know, was not at that school.” The major distraction was his dad’s health. Mike called home most weekends and talked to his mother. But when he asked for his father, he was told his father was too sick to come to the phone.

“I didn’t really understand it,” Mike said. He was never given specifics about his father’s condition. Then just before Thanksgiving break he was called into the administration offices, where one of the school officials broke the news: His father was dead. Mike went blank.

It took a few days—after he’d gone home early for the holiday break for the funeral—for the shock to transform into anger. He learned his father died at home. Except for an older brother living in Michigan, everyone else was at his bedside. “I was totally out of the loop.” Mike was incredulous that his mother had not told him his father was dying and summoned him home. In response, Mike went deeper into his shell. He was angry at his family and at the world. He mostly kept to himself during the holidays, and when January came around and it was time to go back to Wooster, he refused.

The rebellion was uncharacteristic, and his mother would have none of it. She drove him to Connecticut, and, back at school, Mike shut down. “I don’t want to be there.” Friends and teachers tried being supportive, but Mike rebuffed them. He would say he was leaving after sophomore year, so why bother? “I wasn’t mean or hostile, I was just like, I’m not going to be here.” That summer his mother had a different idea, and, again, she prevailed. Mike did return for his junior year.

Mike continued to smolder, a potent mix of anger and grief. In a show of protest, he did not play wide receiver on the football team, and instead played goalie for the soccer team. With winter approaching, he told people he was not going to play basketball—his favorite sport—and was going out for wrestling instead. But then Mike felt something give way. “Somewhere around then I got over—whatever, some of those issues.” The sky cleared. “I realized I have a lot of friends, and I’m actually kind of happy, because I really didn’t have a beef with anyone and the people were very nice.”

The notion of not playing basketball suddenly seemed crazy. “I loved basketball.” Mike and a teammate named Vincent Johnson became the dominant players for the talented Wooster basketball squad. They had become close friends through the sport, often staying after practice to play one-on-one against each other. Vince was a scholarship student from Washington, D.C. In many ways, they were polar opposites—in terms of both their game and their personalities. Vince had never played much basketball before, and he relied on pure athleticism. “All I knew was to put the ball in the hoop,” he said, “and I was just going to keep at it until I got it in.”

Mike’s game was polished from years of playing organized basketball in Boston. “Mike was real finesse,” said Vince. “He could float through the air.” Their senior class yearbook featured a photograph of Mike in mid-air, gliding smoothly toward the basket past two opponents en route to making a left-handed layup.

Vince’s personality overflowed with self-confidence and he displayed a fierce competitive streak. “Even if I’d never played something before, I was going to learn and win.” Mike, in contrast, was selfless and diplomatic. “Mike would never run up the score on you,” Vince said.

Mike would also serve as Vince’s peacemaker. During a pickup game sophomore year, the player Vince was guarding faked him by pretending to take a shot—a pump fake—and Vince jumped. He was airborne, waving his arms wildly, watching helplessly as the player dribbled around him and easily scored. Vince looked so foolish; a heckler from the sidelines yelled, You see that big bird fly! Vince raced over and was right in the boy’s face. The boy happened to be a senior, a star of the football team. He pushed Vince away. Vince came back and hit him in the face. Fighting broke out, but Mike stepped in. He got them to stop by raising the race factor, pointing out the idiocy of two black students pounding on one another. “He was like, ‘Don’t screw up. That’s what they want. There aren’t many of us,’” Vince recalled.

Senior year, Mike and Vince were the team’s cocaptains. Tim Fornero was the manager. They had a blast. The team went undefeated, piling up a 15–0 record and capturing the Hudson Valley League Championship. Mike was scoring twenty or more points a game. But their run ended abruptly in the state tournament, when they lost a playoff game that saw Mike hobbled for the craziest of reasons. He’d forgotten his sneakers, and had to borrow a pair. “His toes were like bleeding through the game,” Vince said. “I think that’s why we lost; he wasn’t playing regular.”

Mike was named one of the team’s most valuable players. He was finally enjoying himself—popular, doing well in his classes and on the playing fields. “Besides being good-looking he had one of those one-in-a-hundred smiles,” Tim Fornero said.

Mike and Tim roomed together again senior year. Mike was an RA, or resident adviser, in a dormitory called New Building. “The thing about Mike, he was just a no-bullshit guy; he had an honesty about him that was true, and that’s unusual in life.” Tim struggled with his courses and, like a lot of kids, got bummed out about boarding school life. “We called it the Wooster Blues, and Mike helped you get through that.”

For most of senior year Mike dated a white girl from a wealthy New York City family. He acquired his taste in clothes. “He was a real sharp dresser, coming from Boston, I guess,” Vince said. “He always had his hair groomed and cut.”

They were all close friends, seniors riding high. “We knew everyone in school,” said Vince. “Kind of like big guys on campus.” There were parties after-hours, and “Mike would be a midnight rambler.”

Although outgoing with peers, Mike kept up his reserve in the face of authority. Mike and Tim had an English teacher who wanted his students to build their vocabulary skills. In class he frequently asked for the definitions of words. “Mike knew 90 percent of them,” said Tim, “but he wouldn’t raise his hand. He’d cover his mouth with his hand and he’d mumble the answer to me or whoever was next to him.”

At graduation, Mike’s thirty-nine classmates voted him “class flirt,” while Vince was named “class jock” and cited for “best legs.” Tim was honored as “laziest” and “least organized.” Mike was not happy about losing “best dressed” to another classmate who was always wearing clothes borrowed from other kids. Mike thought it was unfair, a form of cheating. “Mike took pride in his clothes,” said Tim.

The yearbook staff noted that Mike’s trademark was his greeting, the way he said, “Hi.” Vince wholeheartedly agreed. “Mike’s famous thing was to go up to girls and say, Hi, and they would melt.” The staff predicted Mike “will end up as a GQ model.” For his yearbook photograph, Mike, dressed in a tuxedo, tilted his head slightly, as he addressed the camera directly, with warm eyes and a groomed look. To Tim, Mike wrote: “You’re cooler than I am and you’re prettier too. When I am old and gray there’s no doubt I’ll miss you.” To Vince, Mike joked: “It is said that a good friend is an extension of yourself. So stay like me and we’ll always be friends.” To “Mom and Family,” Mike wrote: “I caused a lot of headaches; I made a lot of mistakes but all I really wanted was to make you all happy. I hope this helps. I love you all.”

In his essay for college, Mike wrote about his time at Wooster and how he’d come around after an uneven start to finish on a high note of self-respect and confidence. He applied to Providence College, Boston University, the University of Bridgeport, and other schools. He had thoughts about playing college basketball.

The fall of 1984, Mike began at Providence College. Right off, he mostly hung out at the gym and played with the guys on basketball scholarships recruited by the Big East team. Mike did not have a scholarship, but his sophomore year went out for the team anyway. He was a “walk-on” trying to impress the new coach, Rick Pitino. But he did not make the cut. To Mike, a key reason was his grade point average. It was low, and Mike knew the coaches were usually looking to bolster the team’s overall GPA by adding a few bench players whose grades were high.

Mike actually found Providence less demanding academically than boarding school, but he did not do well in his classes. “I was distracted,” he said. He was enjoying his freedom—sleeping late, playing pickup basketball, and socializing. He worked as a bank teller part-time to earn spending money. “I wanted to have fun,” he said.

The biggest thing in his life during college came after his junior year. Mike decided he needed a change of scenery, and, in the fall of 1987, he headed south to Georgia. He enrolled for a semester at Morehouse College, the all-male black college in Atlanta. “I had heard a lot about the school and the area and I just wanted to go there.”

While at Morehouse, Mike met Kimberly Ann Nabauns. Kimberly, a year younger than Mike, was from New Orleans. She was a pre-med student at Spelman College, the all-female black college in Atlanta. They fell in love and soon began talking about marriage and family. When the semester ended, Mike returned north, but without firm direction. He was committed to Kimberly, but little else. She was bound for medical school, but Mike wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. Sometimes his thoughts returned to his childhood interest in police work, remembering Will Saunders and other officers he’d known as a boy. His sister Lillian took him up on the idea and lobbied him to take the civil service exam.