Chapter 2

December 24, 1989
2:15 p.m.
Probationary Police Officer Dabney Hoban was excited. He was actually going to see the inside of a patrol car! As soon as roll call was finished, he turned to his friend Steve Heinz and beamed. Steve, who was also assigned to a patrol sector, gave his buddy a discreet high-five. It was really no surprise that the two rookies got sectors that night, it was the four-to-twelve tour on Christmas Eve, and everybody with time on the job was taking the night off. There were a few exceptions, however; guys who weren’t Christian, guys with no families, guys with no vacation time on the books, guys who hated their wives . . .
“Boy-David, huh? You’re in the shit tonight, tough guy,” Heinz said.
“About fucking time, Ketch.” Pretty much everybody called Steve “Ketchup.” Dabney—and a few others—had shortened this to “Ketch.” Dabney looked around. “You’re working with Collins tonight, right?”
“Yeah, I got Barbara. We’re Sector John-Lincoln-Mary,” Ketchup admitted without enthusiasm. “You?”
“Caban. You know his first name?”
“I think it’s Carlos,” Ketchup said. Something was eating at him. “I hear he’s pretty wild. You’ll have fun.”
“Yeah, well, I hear Barbara Collins is a fuckin’ maniac.”
“At least you’ll have somebody watchin’ your back tonight.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Dabney wanted to know.
“My first friggin’ night in a car and I’m stuck with a broad.”
So that’s what was bothering him. “Don’t be stupid, Ketch.”
“Dan, all I know is when the shit hits the fan, I got . . .”
“When the shit hits the fan?” Dabney interrupted. “Hasn’t Barbara been in three shootings, or something crazy like that?
“Yeah, well . . .”
“Yeah, well . . . if she’s been through all that and is still here to work a sector with you, then I think she can handle herself just fine,” Dabney said.
“Which one of you is Heinz?” Barbara Collins demanded. She’d appeared from nowhere. She was lanky and not very tall, with the ropy arms of a deck hand, and sunken ice-blue eyes. Eyes with the weathered look of someone twice her age. Stringy brown hair hung lifelessly down, brushing the shoulders of her duty jacket—which looked to have been to hell and back.
“Me, I’m . . . er . . . Heinz,” Ketchup managed. He extended a hand to Barbara and continued with his introduction. “My name’s Steve, but everyone calls me . . .”
“Look, kid,” she cut in, “we got car 2357. Go get the key, make sure it has gas, and give it a good toss. I’ll meet you outside in ten minutes; I gotta make a phone call.”
“All right, I just have to . . .” Ketchup began, but Barbara was already walking off.
Then she stopped and looked back. “Oh yeah, one more thing. You’ll be recording tonight, so don’t even think about being in the driver’s seat when I get outside.”
Before Ketchup could agree or protest he was looking at Barbara’s back again. He turned back to Dabney. “Oh, this is bullshit. Who the hell does she think she is?” Ketchup was turning tomato red. The irony of this was not lost on Dabney, and he cracked a smile.
“I’m glad you think this is funny,” Ketchup snapped. “We’ll just see how funny she thinks it is later on tonight. I’ll set her straight. Put money on it.”
He stomped off to get the keys to 2357.
Dabney was alone in the muster room now. He had seen Carlos go out the door to the parking lot after roll call, so he went out to look for him. In the lot, Dabney found Carlos and two other senior guys, huddled together in conversation. He could only hear part of what they were saying—something about a shooting on Post Avenue near the change of tour. One of them was speculating that the patrol supervisor might be looking for somebody to relieve the day tour and sit on the crime scene. Another of them was commenting on how there shouldn’t even be a crime scene—if these animals wanted to shoot each other, so be it. Afraid to interrupt the conversation, Dabney waited patiently until they broke away from one another.
He intercepted Carlos on his way into the station house. “Hi, I’m Dan Hoban.”
“That’s nice,” Carlos said without stopping.
Dabney watched as Carlos disappeared into the station house. He felt like a dick. He decided to go get a radio and maybe the keys to the car.
To the right of the shoulder-high, twenty-foot-long Thirty-fourth Precinct front desk was the demi-closet christened, "the Radio Room." Inside was a single file cabinet, a milk crate full of defective Motorolas, and today, one Joe Vingilli stooped over the tattered yellow radio log doing, jugging from the intense expression on his face, advanced calculus.
“Hey, Joey,” Dabney said.
“This fuckin’ thing . . .” It took Joe a few seconds before he allowed Dabney’s salutation to penetrate and distract him from his inventory. “Oh, hey, Dan. You get a radio yet?” he asked in his slow, plodding voice.
“Nope. I’ll take one for Caban too.”
“Okay.” Joe plucked two radios off one of the numerous chargers that lined the room’s walls ceiling to floor. He handed the radios to Dabney and returned his attention to the log. “4657’s yours, 4659’s for Caban. Whachyou doin’ tonight?”
“Boy-David.”
Joe’s pen froze. His eyes lifted to Dabney’s. “You’re in a sector car?”
Dabney smiled.
“And I’m stuck inside doin’ this shit?” He shook his head, looked back to the enigmatic log, and wrinkled his brow.
“You Hoban?” The voice came from behind.
Dabney turned around. He saw Carlos Caban standing there. Duty jacket weathered and unzipped, exposing a bulletproof vest in a stained white carrier worn over a powder blue uniform shirt. The top button was characteristically unbuttoned, the tie clipped through the buttonhole and off to the side. Carlos was stocky and only about five foot six, but he had a certain largeness about him. Like he could crush you in his left hand. At the same time, however, there was a pleasant easiness about Carlos that Dabney had never noticed before—probably because Carlos had never before acknowledged him.
“Looks like it’s you and me.” He swatted Dabney on the shoulder with a heavy hand and a smile. “I got the car, you ready? They’re holding jobs.”
“Yeah. Uh . . . here.” Dabney handed Carlos his radio. “My name’s Dan.”
“Okay,” Carlos said, walking away.
Dabney followed Carlos outside, and together they found the car. Physically, the two were contrasted like a pair of Disney co-villains. Dabney, tall and lean, his uniform immaculate and neatly pressed. His leather goods, matte black, crisp and stiff, disaccorded with Carlos’s, which were so broken in they resembled soft brown calfskin. Dabney’s eight-pointed hat was sharp and sat high upon his head like that of a Swiss Guard, covering a square razored field of military-cut blond hair. Carlos’s hat was . . . what hat? And his hair was . . . what hair?
“You wanna drive?” Carlos asked, throwing Dabney the keys before he had a chance to answer.
“Sure!” Dabney replied, trying not to appear overanxious, and missing the keys as they arched past him.

* * *

Dabney got them to the address of their first job of the night, a family dispute, as fast as he could without looking like he was rushing, while Carlos did something with a bunch of papers and his checkbook. As Dabney pulled up to the front of the location, Carlos said, “Don’t park right in front,” without looking up from his bills. “We don’t want ‘em to see the car.”
As they entered the building, Carlos put on his gloves and removed a four-D-cell battered MagLite from his belt. The outer lobby door was broken off its hinges, but the inner door was locked. Carlos began pushing random buttons on the intercom, avoiding 4E, until a voice crackled over saying, “Quién?”
“Me,” replied Carlos, muffling his voice.
The door buzzed and Dabney followed Carlos in. The two ascended the stairs at the rear of the lobby, penetrating deeper and deeper into the ever-thickening aromas of a thousand dishes of kielbasa, stewed ox tails, chicken and rice, beans, beans, and more beans that have pervaded the surrounding walls for generations. It made Carlos think of visits to his grandmother’s place when he was a kid; it made Dabney think of puking.
Once in front of apartment 4E, Carlos put his ear to the door and listened. Nothing. He gently, discreetly tried the handle. It was locked. He stood to the side and knocked on the door with his MagLite.
A woman’s voice spoke from behind the door in Spanish.
Carlos answered her. “Policía. Abra la puerta por favor.”
The woman hesitated. Then they heard the locks disengaging. When the door opened, Dabney gasped. The woman had been beaten to the fringe of deformity.
Carlos got his foot in the door and asked a single question in Spanish. “Where is he?”
The woman answered, saying that “he” was in the living room.
Carlos was about to ask his usual questions—Who else was in the apartment? Were there any children present? Were there any guns in the apartment? etc.—but Dabney, overcome by the woman’s appearance, decided to take a more active approach to the situation. He pushed past Caban, and demanded, “Who did this to you?”
The woman replied, in Spanish, that her husband had done it.
From this, Dabney concluded that a Mr. Esposo was the perpetrator. He wondered if this was Mrs. Esposo. He then put together a question using some bits of Spanish he’d heard on TV. “Is Señor Esposo in mi casa su casa?”
The woman looked at Carlos. He said nothing. Only one person can direct the handling of a dispute or the entire thing becomes a calamity. If the kid wanted to try this one, Carlos was happy to back off and let him do his stuff.
Dabney repeated his question.
“Dee libing roong,” the woman said in English as proficient as Dabney’s Spanish.
Dabney stepped past the battered woman, and walked down the narrow hallway toward the living room, while Carlos quietly ascertained from the woman that no one else was in the apartment.
Dabney found the husband sitting on a lime green, plastic slip covered sofa in the living room, watching TV at an obnoxious volume, and drinking a frosty bottle of El Presidente. “You, stand up!” Dabney commanded.
The guy didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t even look at him.
“Stand up, I said!” Dabney shouted.
Nothing.
“Get up or I swear to Christ you’ll spend Christmas in jail!” Dabney shouted against the volume of the TV.
Carlos walked into the living room and stood off to the side, his arms folded.
Now Dabney felt pressure to impress his senior partner. He absolutely would not be ignored or disrespected. “Are you Mr. Esposo?” he demanded.
The man smirked, still looking at the TV. “Pendejo,” he said.
“Pendejo Esposo?” Dabney asked, believing he’d elicited the subject’s name.
The guy exploded. He leapt off the couch, screaming and cursing at Dabney like nothing the twenty-two-year-old had ever heard. Dabney found himself on the defensive, awkwardly backing away from the guy. The enraged husband took this for weakness and began waving his fist at the white intruder in his home.
“Sit down! Be quiet and sit down!” Dabney was saying now. “Sit down right now!”
But the man became only more and more agitated, raving like a lunatic, and getting closer and closer to Dabney.
When Dabney disengaged the holster lock of his service revolver, Carlos decided to intervene. He clicked off the TV and inserted himself between Dabney and the monster he’d managed to create in under a minute.
“You have to be careful walking into a Latino man’s home and ordering him around,” Carlos explained. “You gotta handle these things delicately.” Carlos turned to face the husband and grabbed him by his hair. He dragged the man to the closest wall, slammed his head against it, pulled a straight razor from the inside pocket of his duty jacket, and put it to the man’s throat.
The husband was a doe in high beams. He stopped hollering.
Now Carlos spoke to the husband in a low steady tone. “They might believe I beat you. They might believe I shot you. Hell, they might even believe I threw you out the window. But they won’t, I mean they won’t ever believe I cut your fuckin’ throat. You understand?”
“Si. Yes—yes,” said the doe.
“Suave,” instructed Carlos.
“Suave,” the husband confirmed.
Fifteen minutes later the husband, real name Hector Rivas, apologized to his wife as well as to the tall white cop who had come into his house, ordered him around, and called him an “asshole husband.” He also agreed to go to his brother’s place for the night. Dabney was quietly outraged at first when Carlos wouldn’t let him collar the guy, and, seeing this, Carlos explained a little bit about the way the world worked. One, if they brought a collar into the Station House on Christmas Eve, the desk officer would crucify them both. Two, the woman really had no interest in seeing her husband arrested; she just wanted them to scare him a little—which Carlos had. Hence, three, if they had collared Hector, he would have been released when his wife refused to press charges. Then, four, he would have beaten her even worse for having him locked up in the first place.
“Believe me,” Carlos continued, wrapping a wide, calloused hand fraternally around Dabney’s neck, and pulling him into confidential range, “it’s the same thing over and over. A lot of these families are pretty fucked up around here.”
“I guess you’re right,” Dabney conceded.
Carlos slapped the rookie on the back. “You’ll get used to it.”
Dabney smiled outwardly. “I hope not,” Dabney he muttered to his partner’s back as the veteran headed out of the lobby.
They were about to get back into the car, when they heard, “Carlos!”
They looked across the street and saw Barbara Collins standing by herself next to car 2357, holding a black duffel in one hand. She was waving them over.
While Carlos and Dabney began making their way across St. Nicholas Avenue to wiry, intense-eyed cop, Dabney asked, “Tell me something, is it true that Barbara’s been in three shootings?”
“Nope,” Carlos answered simply. “Five. And she’s been shot. And stabbed. Yet she stands before you.”
“Shit,” Dabney said in awe.
“You don’t ever wanna fuck with Barbara,” Carlos said matter of factly as they closed the last few yards.
“It’s you and me, babe,” Barbara said to Carlos. “The kids gotta sit on a crime scene on Dyckman and Post. This one,” pointing at Dabney, “and that little idiot, Heinz.”
“Okay,” Carlos said amiably. “Whose car we in?”
“Yours,” Barbara said. “The kids can take 2357 up to the fixer. Adam’s gonna cover your sector, we’re gonna go uptown and do John-Lincoln-Mary.”
“Cool,” said Carlos. He turned to Dabney. “Nice working with you.”
Dabney was heartbroken at having lost the sector and his new mentor in one fell swoop. “Yeah, you too. Merry Christmas.”
“Okay,” said Carlos. He looked at Barbara. “Got all your stuff?”
Barbara hoisted the duffel in acknowledgment. She looked at Dabney and thrust the keys to 2357 into his chest. “Here. Grab your shit, and take that moron Heinz up to Dyckman and Post forthwith.”
Dabney looked around. He didn’t see Ketchup. “Where is Heinz?”
Barbara pointed at 2357. “In the trunk.”