CHAPTER 58
WE ROLLED OVER the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge back into the run-down town that had almost taken the lives of two of my kids.
I still couldn’t get over the dichotomy between the town’s Gilded Age history-not to mention its pleasant layout and architecture-and its current decrepit state. Every other house seemed to be a Carpenter Gothic or a Greek Revival or a Queen Anne. These “painted ladies” had definitely seen better days, though, since many of their windows were either missing or boarded up and their gingerbread molding was blistered and rotting.
I continued to shake my head as we pulled onto the four-lane thoroughfare called Broadway. With its forty- five-degree parking and three-story brick buildings, it looked quintessentially American, like a street scene in an Edward Hopper painting. I was almost expecting a trolley car to turn one of the corners or a soda jerk to walk out of one of the corner stores in a bow tie and white paper hat. But like so many Rust Belt towns in the northeast, Newburgh reminded me of the scene from
Talk about wasted potential, I thought. What the heck had happened to this once beautiful place? Staring out at Newburgh’s blighted streets, I wondered if George Bailey had maybe caught a bullet in a drive-by.
“I knew I should’ve taken Water Street,” the cabbie said before letting out a loud, slow, scared breath.
We stopped at a red light near Lutheran Street. I leaned forward and watched as a group of teenage black kids crossed in front of the cab. Every one of them was wearing a red do-rag, whether tied to their wrists or peeking out from under their hoods and ball caps. Staring back at their swaggering and arrogant malevolence, I was reminded of Perrine’s demeanor in the courtroom. Like Perrine, these kids seemed quite used to driving fear into people’s hearts. In fact, they seemed to enjoy it.
I instantly felt myself getting worked up, really starting to seethe. The Newburgh detectives had already told me that the town’s drug trade was run by the Bloods and the Latin Kings, and that it looked like it was a member of the rag-wearing Bloods who had shot my sons.
I couldn’t take my eyes off them as the group made the opposite corner. I was seeing red, all right. All I kept thinking was that my outgoing son Eddie wasn’t so outgoing anymore. That these bastards might have screwed him up for the rest of his life.
By the time the light turned green, I was done. I literally couldn’t take it anymore.
“Wait. Stop. Let me out here,” I said to the driver.
“What the heck? What are you doing?” my young blue-haired cabbie said. “You don’t want to get out on this block. This is like the ’hood, you know what I’m sayin’? The police department is only a couple of blocks down.”
Instead of answering her, I dropped a twenty into the front seat.
I opened the door with the hand that wasn’t holding my quickly drawn and cocked Glock.
Now it was time for some answers.
“HEY, WHAT HAVE we here?” one of the gangbangers said as the cab sped away. “That Men’s Wearhouse two-for-one you wearing says you definitely ain’t no pimp. You one of Newburgh’s Finest? Or maybe you Bill O’Reilly from the TV?”
The rest of his crew broke up laughing as I approached the north side of Broadway. Every ground-floor business up and down the beat-up block was closed, I noticed. Nothing but steel gates in both directions as far as the eye could see. Everyone had gotten out of Dodge, which was only smart because drug gangs like these Bloods protected their turf with beatings and stabbings and shootings.
The head jokester was a thin, six-foot-three kid of about nineteen. He was relaxed, smiling, enjoying himself. A broad-shouldered youth sitting on the corner mailbox beside him took a toke of the blunt he was smoking and blew the rancid smoke in my direction.
As I approached them, I felt a flicker of fear for the first time as the sane part of my mind began to realize what kind of situation I was putting myself in. There were six of them. Two of them were skinny high school kids, but the others were hardened-looking street punks, tattooed and prison-jacked under spotless XXXL white tees. I could tell at least one of them had a gun in his waistband by the way he was standing a little hunched to one side.
Armed cop or not, I was all alone and didn’t even know where the hell I was. What the hell was I doing? You needed backup in an area like this. SWAT, maybe.
But then I did a smart thing. I told the rational Dr. Jekyll part of me to put a sock in it, and let the unhinged Mr. Hyde part of me begin to roll.
“No, no. I’m not Bill O’Reilly,” I said with a laugh as I finally showed them what was in my hand.
They reared back, whoa-ing and raising their hands in unison as I leveled my chunky black polymer Glock in their faces. The gangbangers stood in complete shock, absolutely frozen, as though I’d just conjured up an elephant or a cruise ship out of thin air.
“But I am looking for news,” I said. “You guys hear about some little kids that got shot over on Lander Street last week? Speak up, fellas. I can’t hear you. I heard the shooter was wearing a red Yankees cap. You guys look like red’s your favorite color, like maybe you shop at the same store. I’ll ask nice one more time. Who shot those kids?”
They kept staring at me in mute wonder.
The funny thing was, at that moment, I was willing to shoot them, and they knew it. They could see it in my eyes that I was about as far from messing around as one can get.
As a cop, you draw your gun for one reason: to kill someone. You don’t wing people, you don’t let off warning shots. When you take out your gun, it’s for putting bullets into someone’s head or chest before they can do the same to you. If you’re not willing to go that far, then you leave it in the holster.
“Hey, chill, Officer,” the pot-smoking tough finally said. “We didn’t do nothing. This ain’t Lander Street. This be the east end. Just chill. We got no beef with you.”
“Oh, yes, you do, homey,” I growled, my knuckles whitening around the grip of my gun. “See, those kids who got shot, they were my kids. I’m not a cop here. I’m a father. Now you tell me right now which one of you red-rag- wearing jackasses shot my kids or by tomorrow morning, your girlfriends and mommas are going to be laying out so many damn memorial candles on this corner it’s going to be lit up like Times Square.”
That’s when I heard it. It was the high squeal of tires behind me. For a second, I panicked, thinking my Irish temper had finally gone and gotten my dumb ass killed. For a moment, I was seriously convinced that I was about to get run over or hosed in a drive-by.
Then over the engine roar of the rapidly approaching car, I heard a glorious sound. It was the metallic double
The gang kids scattered as I turned around, holstering my weapon.
Two cops got out of the unmarked car and stood behind its flung-open doors.
“Hi, Mike. Um, out for an evening stroll?” Detective Bill Moss said, rolling his eyes.
His partner, Ed Boyanoski, shook his head at me with an expression somewhere between disappointment and awe.
“Well, what do you know? The cavalry, right on time,” I said.
“Let me guess. Long day at the office, Mike?” Bill said as I climbed into the backseat.
I smiled.
“It was, but that little meet and greet has rejuvenated me all of a sudden,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I think I just got my second wind.”
