Circle of Six (18 page)

“You don't have to explain anything to me, Rand. Fact of the matter is,” he again jabbed his thumb upward, “they feel they can trust you. But that's half of it. You've worked in the sixth division most of your career. You know all the players up there, mopes and cops.” He stressed the word
cops
.

The rank-and-file cops wanted a pound of flesh from the commanders. They wanted to see the bosses hanged by their balls for the immeasurable betrayal. I understood what I was, the token Zone-sixer, one of their own,
Harlem bred
DT. Randy Jurgensen.
He'd never turn on his own boys. See guys, the brass isn't killing the case.

The detectives needed me to save face. The PC needed me to appease the cops. The cops needed me to hammer the bosses. It was all about retribution, about fucking image. But nobody seemed to need me to catch a cop killer. Nobody needed Phil Cardillo cleared. Nobody but Phil's devastated
wife, his three little kids, and me. That's what I needed. That and Lynn and the Pacific.

Still, the job was my life. The Pacific wasn't going anywhere. I shook Tom's hand and all I said was, “Okay.”

We turned for the door. He patted my back, “Tomorrow, report to the 2-5. A Lieutenant Muldoon from the borough will meet you and brief you, 9 a.m., Rand.”

In that ugly long hallway, he clapped my shoulder and said, “Go get'em, Rand.” He looked over his shoulder, then back to me. In a whisper he added, “And take no fuckin' prisoners.”

Just like that I was back on the job. All those daydreams of sandy beaches, brunches with movie stars, directors, and studio heads were all ebbing out to sea. The rush I heard was not a cresting pacific wave, but that of the A train whooshing into the 125th Street station, Harlem, the 2-8 Precinct, home.

I knew Lieutenant Muldoon. He was the Zone-6 integrity control officer, or the ICO. He was a pear-shaped man of about fifty years with a wispy comb-over on the shiny scalp of a tiny head. His sweaty nose wasn't thick enough to hold up his glasses, which he constantly pushed up. Muldoon made an art of never making eye contact with anyone.

It was the ICO's gig to make sure the men in his charge were on the
up-and-up
—they weren't chronically sick, weren't cheating on overtime requests, weren't scoff-laws, weren't total drunks, or weren't receiving gratuities from any of the local vendors. Muldoon's favorite pastime was making sure all paperwork was forwarded to the proper channels.

Most ICOs were generally good guys. They weren't out to hurt the cops in their precincts or zones, because ICOs were handpicked from within. Though Muldoon was an immense ball-breaker over the paper and procedure, he did have the distinction of never actually writing any cop up for an infraction in all his time as the Zone-6 ICO. Muldoon didn't want to be bothered with anyone, and he didn't want anyone to bother him. His newest assignment—me—had to have been quite the pill to swallow. He must've viewed me, and what I represented, as 100 million pounds of pure trouble.

I entered his small clerical office in the 2-5 Precinct. He swung around in his chair, studying his hands, which rested in his lap. He didn't disappoint, no eye contact. He spoke to me as if we had been in the middle of a long conversation that he was trying desperately to wrap up. “So where were you yesterday?”

It astounded me how everyone knew where in the fuck I was at all times. “Uhhhh, working?”

He paused, eyes still on his hands, deciding whether he liked my answer. He swung the chair back to the desk, snapping folders closed, tidying the
pens and pencils that were already set neatly in an NYPD coffee mug. “So you've been assigned the Phil Cardillo homicide, yes?”

“Yes, Sir, as of yesterday.”

He turned his head. His glasses slid halfway down his nose. He tapped them back up with a stubby pink finger. “Don't get cute, Jurgensen. I know when you were transferred, just wanna know that you know when you were transferred.”

For the life of me I didn't understand what he was saying.

“As of today, you're my detective,” he said. “Anything you do, you put it on paper, and it comes to me,” he tapped the pile of folders on the desk, “Right here in this room. I want fives and memo book entries. I want daily activity reports and I want progress reports.” He tilted the back of his head in my direction, raising his voice slightly, “I have to see it before it gets forwarded to the borough, the bureau, or headquarters, follow?”

I'd stopped listening. What he was telling me, not so directly, was that he wanted to edit my reports. I wasn't about to let that happen. “Yes, Lieutenant. You'll get everything before I forward anything.”

He looked directly into the wall, not six inches from his face, “You're not being a smart guy are ya, Jurgensen?”

I almost laughed. He was staring at a wall.

“No, Sir, I'm totally on the same page with you. I won't send anything out before you review it.”

“Good, that's very good. We're off to a warm and pleasant start. But just so you know, if you have any ideas of doing something behind my back, I'm gonna take you to the mat.”

I decided that with Muldoon's morning bowl of sadness, he also drank a few cups of paranoia. In any case, the last thing I was going to do was allow him to change reports that I had written. If a defense attorney saw inconsistencies in reports and the case—if I was lucky enough to develop a case—it'd be tossed out the window. So I was going to write as little as possible. His next command was priceless. “And listen, the mosque.” Now he dramatically wheeled the chair out from the desk. He leaned back, the chair squeaking under his weight, his double chin resting in a fold of skin somewhere to the left of his collarbone. “Policies have been created. There's now a process by which we address that building, and it's going to be followed to the letter. You do not go near the mosque. You will not have any business in the mosque, and you can't talk to anyone in the mosque.”

Whenever I thought that I'd seen and heard it all, this job inevitably
proved me wrong.
The murderer was in the mosque. There where at least sixteen eyewitnesses in the mosque. The crime scene was in the mosque. It was where three cops had been assaulted, where another cop had been murdered, and where the investigating detective wasn't allowed?
I had to ask, “We're talking about
the
Phil Cardillo murder, right?”

We finally had our first eye-to-eye. He squinted at me. Then he tapped his glasses back up his nose. In a deviant whisper he said, “Don't make me take you to the mat, Fella. Don't make me do it.” He hesitated. “You feel the burning urge to do any of those things, you come to me and headquarters will handle that request on their end.”

He stabbed at a 28-form, an overtime sheet. He snapped it high in the air. “You see this? There will be no unauthorized OT. You and your partner are doing straight eights.”

Straight eight-hour tours, no more, no less—company man's logic.

I leaned in, “Partner, Sir?”

“You'll be working this with Vito Navarra.”

I blinked a few times. I cleared my throat. “Um, Sir, he's not a detective. He's more a victim than anything else. He's...”

“He's your guy, and you're my guy. Those are the orders. No OT, no meddling in the mosque, any paper comes to me first, and you report here, this office, every morning.”

He pulled a handkerchief out of his hip pocket, dabbing at the sweat collecting in the creases of his jowls. “Oh, and by the way, you will not interview any superior officers regarding the case.”

He'd saved that little tidbit for the end, the backbreaker.

I suddenly knew why One PP had chosen Muldoon. He was a Zone-6 guy, who they assumed, wrongly, was going to be up my ass out in the field. I'd already made up my mind that he was never going to find me. It was his job to act as a buffer, tidying up anything that might look detrimental toward the building, toward that circle of six. That's why I couldn't question them about their responsibilities on the day in question. There was no way through the brick wall, so I had to move around it, and with ginger steps at first.

I made it a point to move into his line of vision. Hoping he'd find some contempt within my question, “Anything else?”

Still, he wouldn't look at me. “No. Those are the ground rules. Abide by them, or else.” He flipped open a folder on his desk, and didn't say good-bye. Nor did I.

I found myself at my car, fumbling for the keys.
I can't go to the mosque? How in the fuck am I going to develop a case?
“What in the fuck did I get myself into?” I wondered aloud.

No meddling inside the mosque. Was Phil meddling when he was murdered?
I heard the word
fuck
cross my lips. I don't know how long I stood at my car. But that condescending look from Lieutenant Muldoon only strengthened my resolve to catch a killer. And if some bosses were to fall along the way, so fucking be it.

Number one on my to-do list was to set precedence in regard to this puppet expecting me to show up in his office every morning. I was no rookie on patrol. If he wanted me, he was going to have to find me. If he found me, and he wanted to bounce me from the case, fine. But I had a pretty strong vibe from Lieutenant Tom that this scenario wasn't going to happen so easily. Next on the list was the mosque. The truth of the matter was I didn't have to deal with the mosque as of yet. My focus was on two aspects of this case. The first was proving that there was no premeditated invasion into the mosque by the first responding cops, as asserted by Minister Farrakhan. The second component was to prove that Phil Cardillo—in the heat of battle—didn't shoot himself, nor was he shot by friendly fire, as stated by the NYPD. I didn't need the mosque for this part of the investigation. The cops at the scene, Phil's uniform, gun and holster were all I needed to disprove Farrakhan and One Police Plaza.
All right, Lieutenant Muldoon, the bosses and the mosque are off limits...for now.

The pay-phone was on Park Avenue at 122nd Street. I dropped my dime and called Vito at the office I had just walked out of. “Vito, you got a locker in the 2-5?”

He told me he had. “Good, clear it out and meet me in the 2-8 tomorrow at 9 a.m. Oh, and Vito, that's a coffee, medium,
non zucchero
,
capiche
?”

The next morning, Bart Gorman and no fewer than twenty uniforms—all of whom I'd never met—were gathered in the precinct parking lot awaiting my arrival. They surrounded me as I got out of the car. There were lots of hugs and backslapping. “We're with you, Randy. Whatever you need, we're here,” they shouted. “Now we're gonna get some justice, right, Randy?” The emotion was raw and powerful, though misplaced. They wanted the bosses. I wanted the shooter.

I smiled, trying to get through, “We're gonna get the shooter. One way or another, we're gonna get him.”

“And the motherfuckers, Randy. Don't forget those motherfuckers.”

Inside wasn't any different. The cops all but broke out into a round of applause. Before I made my getaway up to the second-floor squad, Inspector Robinson motioned for me to meet him in his office. Robinson was smart enough to detach himself from the continuous queries and fits of anger from the cops—toward the bosses—in regard to the case. Some cops were downright insubordinate when questioning whichever superior officer turned them out on their tours. Robinson knew it was a no-win for anyone, which made his job as peacekeeper all the more difficult. This was sad because Robinson was one of the good guys. The 2-8 cops just didn't give him a chance.

Inside the office, we didn't sit. “There was a very short list of guys as to who was going to catch this. You were first up, and I'm glad you took it.”

“Well, Inspector, there's a dead cop. I don't think there was much of a choice.”

“Oh, there's always a choice. This could be the case of a lifetime, Randy, or the case from hell.”

He looked into my eyes, and nodded reassuringly, “case of a lifetime.”

I believed that he truly believed that statement. Both Robinson and I were cut from the same cloth. We both loved the job. We were law-and-order type guys. He believed in the job, believed in the fact that downtown only wanted what was best for the men on patrol, which is why I was brought onto the case. And at that moment in time, so did I. Yes, there were some knuckleheads in the building with agendas, and some mistakes were made along the way, but the majority of the men had to have seen the error of their ways, and they had to want to make it better. Hell, what else was there to believe in?

He tapped at the oak leaves on his collar brass, which indicated his rank as Deputy Inspector. “I was a cop first, Randy. I know what they're feeling out there.”

“I know you do, Inspector. This is a step in the right direction. We're gonna clear Phil's name. We're gonna get the shooter. And we're gonna get back to where we were before all this ugliness happened, no?”

We moved to the door. He stopped. “Listen to me, Randy. If there's anything you need along the way, you let me know.”

“Muldoon...”

“He's breaking them already?”

“Oh, yeah, is he ever. And I get what he's here to do, but there is no way I'm gonna report for roll call to him in the 2-5 every morning at nine. I need
space, need my desk upstairs. Guys out in the street know where to find me. I have to be here, accessible, and I have to make my own time doing it.”

He nodded, “Done.”

It was men like Hamilton Robinson who kept me grounded and focused for the next four years on what was to become an increasingly impossible task. “Anything else?” he asked.

I had put a lot of thought into this next one. It was as good a time as any to ask. “Sir, Phil was murdered. There was no friendly fire. I'm sure of this, and I'm gonna prove it. The bad taste in everyone's mouth is that Phil was never exonerated for doing what any one of us would've done, going into that building to help another cop on that thirteen. Wouldn't it be the right thing to do, for everyone involved, if he received the proper recognition?”

Robinson's eyes dropped to the cracked green linoleum tiles. He made his way behind his desk, deep in thought. “Write-up, you mean?”