Circle of Six (4 page)

She acknowledged the fact that we were arriving in plain clothes. In the midst of battle, during an all-out thirteen, we could have easily been mistaken for perps. I'd seen it happen all too often, and I didn't want to fall to friendly fire.

That was around the time Rudy Andre heroically led the charge into the mosque and found Phil heading toward death. He didn't realize Phil had
taken a bullet. The shot that Andre heard from behind the locked doors had come from Phil Cardillo's own gun. One of the FOI men had ripped it from his holster and fired one round into his sternum. Andre ran past, assuming Phil's mouth was bleeding because of the kicks he'd taken to the face. Andre led a group of cops down the steps to apprehend whomever they could find. A breathless and sweaty man, Bobby Hopes, dressed in suit and bowtie, charged up the steps toward Andre. No questions were asked. Without hesitation, the cop brought the butt of his revolver down on the man's head.

“He went down like he was shot,” Andre later recounted. “I put the cuffs on him. He probably was one of the men involved in the beating. As far as I was concerned, the man was a collar. I continued down toward the basement. I was seconds behind these guys. Next thing, I see a huge man towering over me, defiantly making his way up the steps. I screamed, ‘stop!’ He had this look of determination on his face, but before he reached me, I hit him too. He fell back down the stairs where I followed him.”

Later this was going to prove to be powerful information: The man's name was Lewis 17X Dupree.

Suddenly the radio erupted again, though this time the voice seemed to be drowned out by a thousand echoing screams. It was a unit calling in from ground zero, with the last thing any of us wanted to hear, “Shots are being fired, Central!”

Central: Shots fired, shots fired, shots fired. 1-0-2 West 116th, repeating units responding, 1-0-2 116th shots fired at this time.

My blood froze. Cops were being fired upon. It couldn't get any worse than that. Manhattan Avenue had become an impenetrable wall of vehicles. All of the crosswalks were congested. We were wedged between a light post and a truck.
Fuck it
—I left it idling. The car was the last thing on my mind. I jumped out and started to run.

As I was zigzagging between cars, I tried to place the building; after all, this was my precinct, my neighborhood. I'd played stickball tournaments on these streets as a kid, played Ringolivio and Johnny Ride a Pony. Why wasn't 1-0-2 West 116th computing? Maybe I was in denial of what lay ahead. Another voice screamed over the radio,
“Patrolman shot, Central...”

This transmission brought my two guns out of their holsters. With me were five other officers. Pedestrians saw us coming and dove behind cars or
back into buildings. We were six wild-eyed white men, cocked and loaded, running toward the blue insanity that was engulfing Lenox Avenue.

Patrolman James Kenney of the Manhattan North Task Force was one of the first cops to enter the mosque along with Rudy Andre and a few other patrolmen. First thing he noticed was all the blood splattered on the walls. Bloody footprints and streaks of blood trailed from the stairway to the middle of the hallway where Victor Padilla and Phil Cardillo lay. The blood trailed down to an adjacent stairway, which led into the basement where sixteen suspects were presumed to be hiding. Jimmy Kenney's one and only objective was to pull the wounded from location. He ran to Phil Cardillo, grabbed him underneath his arms and started to pick him up. Kenney slipped in the puddles of blood and screamed, “Someone help me get him to an RMP!” Three uniforms ran to his aid. They lifted Phil, who was fading from blood loss.

Jimmy Kenney remembered hearing a weak moan from the cop. He'd seen downed victims before, the gray pall that crept across their face's just before they expired—Phil's babyface was slipping into that dark oblivion. “I felt myself falling into a state of shock. You have to remember, this was a cop, and it was the first time I'd witnessed another cop shot and mortally wounded.”

He didn't care about the perps in the basement or the growing mob outside the mosque or the burning garbage flying off the rooftops at the cops below; all he cared about was getting Phil Cardillo out of harm's way. He needed to get Phil to an RMP where he could stem the bleeding and get to a hospital.

I was nearing Lenox Avenue. I looked above and saw as many people on the rooftops as there were down on the streets. Noise was coming from the windows to the rooftops, echoing down the streets and back onto the sidewalks and into the vast alleyways that Harlem was famous for. The entire area was wired and ready to blow—the perfect mix for absolute mayhem—something that I had witnessed before. I knew it could only get worse.

I finally reached Lenox Avenue and 116th Street—the scene of the crime; only then was I able to place the address—Mosque Number 7. The reality of it hit me in the face. I realized the magnitude of the situation and the backlash we'd be facing. This was Minister Louis Farrakhan's militant house of worship.

Harlem always had its share of crime—assaults, street robberies, drug dealing, shootings, murder—but the mosque had never been caught in the fray. People just knew to steer clear. If you took pushpins and marked all the criminal activity on a map of Harlem, the one empty patch would be the real estate surrounding Farrakhan's mosque.

For example, during one Harlem protest, 800 windows had been shattered. Every business, apartment, and car had a rock fly through the glass, all except Mosque Number 7. No one dared deface it. The presence of the FOI soldiers made it clear what the repercussions would be. And as an expert on Harlem during that time, trust me when I say,
the neighborhood took heed.

This was as close to a riot as anything I'd ever seen. An army of civilians and cops absorbed all four corners of the lot in varying displays of anger. The NYPD helicopter hovered low; the
womp-womp-womp
of its blades swirled up dust and debris. I was momentarily transported back to a hill in Korea. I stared at the four bloodied cops being dragged and carried into an RMP or ambulance. When the crowd of onlookers saw the battered cops, they burst into a great cheer. I felt an incredible surge of anger pack into my neck. Someone would have to pay for this.

Jimmy Kenney pulled Phil Cardillo into the RMP, slammed the doors and screamed, “Go! Go! Go! He's going out of the picture; FUCKING GO!”

The driver of the RMP, a rookie who appeared no more than twenty-one turned and saw both cops covered in sticky blood. Before he turned back to the street, his foot instinctively slammed onto the gas pedal. The patrol car skidded off the curb, directly into the middle of the street. The car cut a wide path through the waves and waves of people. The guy didn't brake for anyone, uniformed or not. In the backseat Jimmy Kenney whispered to a cop he'd never met before. But they both wore blue, so that didn't really matter. “It's okay, Guy. You're okay. Gonna get you fixed up at St. Luke's. You're doing okay, brother.”

Jimmy Kenney felt the young cop fall limp in his arms. He searched for the bullet hole. There were two of them running across his midsection, one from the top right of his ribcage, another from the lower left. One hole was bigger than the other, entrance and exit. He compressed both holes; blood continued to seep through his fingers. He screamed, “Hurry, goddamit, hurry!”

A band of patrolmen surrounded the mosque but gave way to a layer of rioting civilians–blue hats, swinging bats. I tucked both guns tightly against my body with the barrels pointed forward. I didn't want to be a cowboy,
but I had to get through.

I pushed into the mob toward the mosque. This was dangerous. I was dressed in ratty civilian clothing, an easy target. I stopped to collect my anger and thoughts. I recognized some of the faces in the crowd, people I had dealt with on the street. The detective in me suddenly kicked in; I began to observe everything and everyone around me. I spotted most of the players—cops, bosses, some of the Muslims, and a lot of punks itching to turn Lenox Avenue into a nuclear situation. The radio jumped again.

Central: Any further assistance required at this time, 1-0-2 West 116th?

Unit: Send Emergency Service. I understand that they have perpetrators in the building with the cops' guns.

Central: Ten-four.

In control of the cops' guns.
Guns.
That's plural? A sinking feeling. They
were
in control. They'd stolen our weapons, which in itself, was huge—we are trained to never relinquish our weapons under any circumstances. If you steal a cop's gun, then that cop is fucked. I knew we weren't leaving the building till an arrest was made and the weapons returned.

I felt, once ESU arrived, the bloody uprising would begin wrapping up. The Emergency Service Unit was the no-nonsense rescue team of the NYPD. The cops of ESU trained day and night for this type of
urban-specific
warfare—they were also trained in bomb removal, hostage removal, and barricaded perp removal—and were affectionately known amongst the rank and file as
Big Blue Sanitation.

ESU was the last line of defense for the NYPD, and they never lost. They were the department's mechanized artillery. The mere sight of the gargantuan blue and white ESU truck, named
Big Bertha,
accompanied by smaller armored vehicles loaded with men in Kevlar helmets and flak-jackets, all strapped to the tits with fully automatic carbines and shotguns usually changed the momentum of any situation. Their MO was this: two groups of eight cops, crouched behind bulletproof Plexiglas, enter the front and rear of the building in a wedged V-formation—like a human snowplow. Anyone in the way would get wedged to the sides and disarmed. Then a second team of ESU cops would pounce, collect, and arrest. I'd seen this before and it was always an impressive show of force and skill.

Jimmy Kenney keyed the mike for the third time, giving his ETA to St. Luke's. As the young driver pulled to the front of the emergency entrance,
a gurney was positioned at the end of the ramp surrounded by cops, nurses, and resident doctors. The car skidded in, and before it stopped, Jimmy Kenney kicked the door open. Outstretched arms were thrust into the RMP, securely wrapping around Phil Cardillo's limp body. One cop wailed, “Goddamit, not Phil!” Jimmy Kenney and the driver of the RMP, another guy he didn't know, watched as the gurney disappeared through the double doors of the ER. Neither cop said anything to the other.

Kenney instinctively searched the back of the RMP for anything. It would be a powder keg investigation soon. He looked for the bullet, in case it'd slipped out of Phil's wounds. He got nothing. He looked at the puddle of blood on the seat. He looked down; his dark blue shirt was black where it had been stained. The young guy who'd driven him noticed Jimmy's shirt and rushed up, “Are you hit? Are you hit?”

Kenney shook his head “no.” He began to walk back to the mosque. Jimmy Kenney didn't know it at the time, but he gave Phil Cardillo five more days to fight.

By then, the cops in front of the mosque seemed to be gaining control, forming a semicircular wall of bodies at the entrance. No one was getting in—no one was getting out. News crews were charging on foot up Lenox, cameramen stumbled as they shouldered their heavy equipment

I heard Big Bertha approaching. Its bullhorn whistle reverberated throughout the cement canyons of Harlem. The cavalry had arrived. The end was near.

Unit 1: No further West 116th. That's enough units on the scene. Authority sixth lieutenant.

Unit 2: Central, has that been a definite shooting of a cop?

Central: That's affirmative. Report of two patrolmen shot at this time.

And then I saw a man walking through the crowd. His bold advance divided the masses in two. It was like Moses had appeared wearing a tailored suit. He was tall and tan with wavy salt and pepper hair. He looked like someone out of central casting, a throwback movie star from the forties. You couldn't tell who he was by his threads. Every cop he passed saluted. He was Chief of Detectives Albert Seedman—
my boss
.

He entered the mosque, followed by three other unrecognizable suits. I figured arrests would happen, order would be restored, and I'd go back to being bored and burning up at my OP.

Unit: 2-8 John to Central, K.

Central: 2-8 John.

Unit: The inspector of the division is here. They are going to set up temporary headquarters here and there have been two patrolmen shot, removed to the hospital, no further information.

Seven minutes had passed since the ten-thirteen was broadcast. Four cops had been savagely beaten, two of them possibly shot, and there were scores of extremely violent people locked down in an overtly militant mosque. The detective in me kicked in again. I had literally passed that mosque every day for years and not once was that door ever left unlocked or unguarded.
Why was today special?
Imagination, I believe, is crucial for detective work. You have to allow the most ridiculous possibilities, because most crimes, especially murder, turn out to be far stranger than the movies. Two imaginative scenarios would lead me to the same conclusion. The NYPD had been set up. Or maybe the mosque had been set up.

This was now a working crime scene. I was still peripheral to the mosque, but I was impressed with the speed the police showed in locking down the building. Honestly, there wasn't much for me to do at the scene. The cops inside would handle the perps—the NYPD at its finest moment.

I knew the injured cops had gone to St. Luke's, a world-class trauma center—due in part to its location—Harlem. Somebody had calculated that in the year 1971, the staff of surgeons at St. Luke's had operated on more trauma patients than any M.A.S.H. unit surgeons had in all of Southeast Asia. Another thing to recommend the place was that my father was the head building maintainer at there. The boys would get whatever they needed. I also knew my father had a direct hotline to the surgeons.