Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

CHAPTER 9

WHEN I ARRIVED A little before lunch, 125th Street, Harlem’s version of Main Street, was busy with people and activity.

There were sidewalk vendors and bustling clothing stores and lines of people in front of curbside food carts. There was also a lot of scaffolding and cranes from new construction and building renovations. I even saw a Times Square–style double-decker bus go by filled with wide-eyed tourists.

It was nice to see the historically run-down area busy, I thought as I parked. At least Harlem’s future was looking up.

My new work location was the ninth floor of a new stone-and-glass government building on the corner of 125th and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. There was a surprise waiting for me when I got through lobby security and walked off the elevator onto the ninth floor. And it wasn’t a happy one by any stretch.

It was even worse than I’d thought. Which was saying something, since I didn’t even really know what to think yet.

There was a long line outside the office. We’re talking waiting-on-line-for-Yankees-playoff-tickets long. But instead of elated fans, this one was filled with quite pissed-off-looking citizens. The crowd ran the demographic gamut of New York’s working-class whites and blacks and Hispanics and Asians. There were a lot of young women, a lot of them single moms, I’d be willing to bet, with squirming preschool kids in tow.

Instead of storming up front and immediately demanding to find out what the insane holdup was, I decided to take another tack. I got on the end of the line. Heck, I was pretty pissed off, too.

When I turned the first office corner twenty glacially slow minutes later, I saw the office’s official name for the first time. A long plastic banner on the wall said WELCOME TO THE SPECIAL PROJECT OFFICE FOR COMMUNITY RELATIONS WITH THE NYPD. Underneath it in smaller type was the peppy assurance, IT’S A BRAND-NEW DAY.

The SPOFCRWTNYPD, I thought, shaking my head. Rolls right o

ff the tongue. I mean, even a Polish radio announcer couldn’t pronounce that one.

“This is bull,” said a young black woman in a red hoodie in front of me as she shifted the bright-eyed two-or-three-year-old girl she was holding onto her other arm.

“You can say that again,” I said.

“You taking off work?” she said, turning back toward me.

“No, not really.”

“You’re lucky,” the mom said. “I’m wasting a personal day on this.”

“I wouldn’t call it lucky,” I mumbled. “Why are you here?”

“Drug gang just moved into my next-door neighbor’s apartment, an eighty-three-year-old woman. Just took it over. I told the local precinct three times but ain’t nothing been done. They told me to come here. I been standing here has to be an hour now. This city. I should have known.”

I spoke to some other people. It seemed like every aggravating case the local precincts didn’t want to deal with was being sent here to my new world.

And what a not-so-wonderful world it was.

What I saw firsthand over the next hour of waiting was unbelievable, unforgettable. There was one female clerk behind the DMV-like counter. One!

Not that there weren’t more personnel present. On the contrary. Through an open doorway behind the clerk, I saw a wide-assed male cop first sleep, then read the newspaper, then sleep again. The only other cops I could see were sitting at desks as far away from the reception desk as they could get, heads down, idly clicking at computers, shopping sites probably.

Everywhere phones were ringing. Everywhere no one was answering them. What a completely maddening New York bureaucratic disaster, I thought. No, worse, I remembered.

This was apparently now my completely maddening New York bureaucratic disaster.

CHAPTER 10

THE BETTER PART OF an hour later, I finally got to the head of the line.

“Here you go,” said the clerk as she shoved a sheet of paper at me in greeting.

Her shirt was unbuttoned low enough to show a lot of cleavage, and there was an earring in the lower of her DayGlo-pink lips. Or a lip ring, I guess you’d call it. Whatever it was, it was absolutely not up to the NYPD’s professional-appearance standards.

Who was running this asylum? Oh, yeah. Me.

“Hi, I need to talk to someone,” I said, ignoring the paper. “I just moved to Harlem four months ago, and I was robbed three times by the same street-corner kid. Nothing’s been done about this. The kid is still out there. He put a gun to my head, for God’s sake.”