My partner, Antrole Martens, and I were sitting in his Crown Victoria. By tradition, the most beat-up car in our homicide unit went to the rookie on the squad. Despite the faint odor of vomit, Antrole had handled the assignment of the shitty car with grace in his six years with the NYPD. He understood he had to earn his place in the unit, but there was no doubt he was on his way up. I thought he was exactly the kind of cop we needed in a command position.
I wanted this arrest to go well for him. I could still remember my first arrest in homicide. A pimp named Hermine Paschual. He’d stabbed a john who argued about the price. At the time, I thought I was changing the world.
Now it was my job to make sure things went right. I said, “How sure are you about this tip?”
He smiled. “Sure enough to drag your ass out here with me.”
“Let your kids get a little older, and life get a little busier, and we’ll see how serious you take anonymous tips.”
Antrole laughed. “That’s why I’m stopping at two kids. Thinking of you managing ten makes my head spin.”
“Imagine what it does to me.” Just then, my phone rang and I looked down to see that it was my oldest girl, Juliana. I always answered the phone the same way when one of my daughters called.
“Hello, beautiful.”
“Hey, Dad!”
There was no teenage disdain today. She was excited about something.
“What’s going on, sweetheart?”
“I’ve got big news. But I have to tell you in person.”
“How about at dinner tonight?” I smiled when I heard her giggle. She was not a giggler by nature, so this had to be something good. Harvard flashed in my brain. Although I would’ve preferred Columbia, a few blocks from our apartment on the Upper West Side.
Juliana said, “I can’t wait. I’ll tell the whole family at once. I gotta go. Bye, Dad. Love you.”
Before I could even say “Love you” back, the connection was dead.
Antrole deadpanned, “Can we squeeze some police work in now? After all, this tip was called in to you. I just happened to answer the phone at your desk.”
“Let’s call Alice and Chuck to come with us. Maybe Harry, too.”
Antrole said, “Why the party? We can grab this dope ourselves. We get all the glory and it’ll be easier to talk to him.”
“He’s a suspect in a murder.”
“And we’re NYPD detectives. I thought in the old days you guys used to make arrests by yourselves.”
“Yeah, we also used to get shot more frequently.”
“Am I going to have to shame you into coming with me? Besides, if we have a few minutes alone with this guy, who knows what he’ll tell us.”
“I hate it when rookies make sense. Let’s go.” His excitement was contagious.
Chapter 2
Everyone out in the neighborhood made us for cops as soon as we started walking down the sidewalk. It wasn’t as if we were working undercover, but a young black guy in a sharp suit and an older white guy with a sport coat to cover his gun—we could’ve been in uniform and not been any more obvious.
Our suspect had shot a customer who stiffed him on a bag of heroin, in front of a grocery store in Midtown with plenty of witnesses. A poor business plan all around.
The tip said the suspect was in apartment 416. I didn’t trust the elevator to make it up all four floors without some sort of issue, so despite Antrole’s objections, we took the stairs. It gave me a minute to talk to my headstrong partner.
I said, “Nothing fancy. We knock and hope he answers. Maybe we try the door to see if it’s locked. Otherwise, we come up with another plan that may or may not involve the SWAT team. Got it?”
Antrole nodded.
At each landing, I took a moment to get a feel for the surroundings. Antrole probably thought I needed to catch my breath, but this climb was nothing compared to the basketball games I played with my kids. I took it slow because every apartment building had its own aura. Sometimes it was because of the tenants and sometimes it was because of the area. Either could kill you if you weren’t careful.