The Adored (54 page)

Officer Vercillo, now positioned in front of the building, peeked in the front door and saw the shattered glass, saw the broken door, and saw Pedro facing the rear of the office area. As she came around the building, she heard a furious amount of shooting that ended quickly. She reasoned the officers in dispatch had shot some of the intruders. She felt she could take out this one before her. She reached the front door, pulled it quietly open and slipped in. Pedro thought he heard something behind him. Before he could turn he took three shots to the body and fell dead.

Officer Vercillo now saw the desk officer and the duty sergeant, John Walsh, who she had spoken to not thirty minutes before. She went to each, felt for a pulse. They were both dead.

Just then, shots rang out from the jail downstairs. Vercillo ran back to the dispatch area. Both officers were dead, with one of the intruders dead beside them.

She heard yelling from the jail downstairs. She knew whatever was happening was going to come up through front stairwell from the jail in less than a minute. She picked up one of the dead officers pistols, the same issue as hers.

Officer Vercillo then positioned herself strategically between the front door and the stairwell, behind the duty officer’s desk. The sound of the alarm was now audible—it hadn’t stopped but Vercillo only heard it in the first minute of confusion and now from where she watched, and waited.

Carlos and Paco burst forth into the station’s open area from the stairwell. Vercillo killed Paco first, then hit Carlos in the arm. He pulled backward into the stairwell.

Entering the bottom of the stairwell Curtis Strong called to Parker, “Barnes, look out,” and he raised the jailer’s pistol and shot Chunk DeLuna in the back. As Francois Piermont turn and fired on him, Strong shot him twice in the stomach. He fell forward and then tumbled down the stairs. Strong pulled himself to the wall as Francois passed by, and then he raced up the stairs just as Carlos retreated back. Barnes picked up the other Piermont’s Uzi, spun and fired into Carlos. The blast into Carlos’ chest sent him reeling back into the squad room where he fell dead.

“You got him,” yelled Vercillo, who in the moment before had begun fearing for her life.

Barnes and Strong came through the stairwell door cautiously.

“Freeze,” the on-edge Vercillo screamed at the two men who emerged in the orange jump suits of jailed prisoners. “Drop those guns or I’ll blow your head off.”

Strong dropped both guns. Barnes dropped his and said, “Don’t shoot.”

“On the floor both of you with your hands above your head,” and as they dropped down, Vercillo moved in and kicked the guns away from their reach.

Vito Boriello’s alarm sounded at five past five. It wasn’t his alarm clock; it was the alarm that was put in his house ten years before.

Rose Boriello woke up beside him, “Vito, what is that noise?”

“It’s the alarm from the station, trouble,” Boriello said, bounding his round body out of bed and heading to his closet. “Someone’s in trouble at the station.”

“Be careful,” his wife said as he left the room.

He was dressed and out in ninety seconds. He pulled his car right to Police HQ’s front door two minutes later. At that same moment, Sergeant Chris Redwine pulled up next to him. It was 5:12 a.m. They both broke from their cars on the run.

“What the hell is it, Vito,” Redwine asked with pistol drawn.

“I don’t know, Chris, but it’s not good,” the fat lieutenant said as they reached the front door.

They entered, each from a side and quickly saw the bodies of two fellow officers. Then Officer Vercillo standing over Barnes and Strong swung toward them as they entered with her pistol aimed at them.

“Hold up, Rita,” Redwine said.

A broad relief came over Vercillo as she saw other living officers, “Thank God.”

Boriello said to Redwine, “You cuff those two.” And as Redwine bent to his duty, Boriello asked Vercillo, “What went on here?”

“I’m not really sure, Lieutenant. I was in early, working out. I think we had an attempted jail break with lots of help from the outside. Two dispatchers are dead, also the desk officer and Sergeant Walsh. I don’t know about downstairs.”

“Come with me, cover me,” Boriello said as he stepped into the stairwell. They found DeLuna dead at the top of the stairs and Francois Piermont dead at the bottom of the stairs. Through the door to the jail, they found Henri Piermont and partially, out of sight behind a wall, the officer on jail duty.

The nine prisoners still behind bars were agitated and yelling. Boriello walked to the aisle in the middle of the cells and said, “You boys alright?”

“You fat fuck, those assholes could have killed us all,” yelled a tall thin man, drug abused, whose better days were behind him.

“Calm down, there’s a lady present,” Boriello shouted. “We’ll be getting some help in here soon.”

Boriello shook his head, and he and Vercillo went back up to the main squad room. More officers were arriving, some from patrol as the alarm also went into their cars. Boriello took charge, gave orders to get ambulances in; he called the Chief, whose wife said he was on the way in. Captain Paiva arrived.

By 5:34 a.m. ambulances had arrived; officers were treating the whole station house as a crime scene. At 6 a.m. interviews were begun with Vercillo, the only surviving officer in the station at the time, and Barnes and Strong who had witnessed the mayhem and took down three of the killers.

By 7 a.m. the first reporters were at the scene, now cordoned off by more than one hundred feet. Detectives were pouring over the two cars used by the assailants. The four duffel bags, some still holding Uzi clips, were taken inside the station as more evidence. The first bodies began being removed by 8 a.m.

At 9 a.m. the chief of police, John Brennan, Captain Paiva, and Lieutenant Boriello were meeting to piece the siege together. It appeared that six gunmen tried to break the prisoner DeLuna out of jail; in the process they killed five Stamford officers, including duty officer Sergeant John Walsh. It also became clear to the three police leaders that Officer Vercillo killed two of the intruders, the officer on jail duty killed one, and a dispatch officer killed one. And the two prisoners, Barnes and Strong, killed two others and the prisoner DeLuna.

“Not only do we have as a prisoner Curtis Strong, who we know is innocent of that murder seven years ago,” Boriello was fuming, “now we have Parker Barnes, who we just got a call from Manhattan that his arrest warrant that we executed for them is in error. He should not have been arrested. They were preparing to interview him.”

“What are you telling me,” the chief said, “I’ve got five dead cops and two heroes as prisoners who are both innocent?”

Captain Pavia piped in, “Well, we do have seven dead bad guys,” and he said it with a smirk.

“What in the fuck do you find funny in this whole goddamn thing,” Chief Brennan said, slamming his fist on his desk.

““Nothing, sir,” Paiva snapped. He hadn’t called the chief sir in the five years he’d been chief, but now seemed an appropriate time.

“Paiva, who’s your friend at the
Advocate
?”

“Mike Slade, the editor?”

“Get him in here; we’ve got to control this story or we all look like horses’ asses. Give him the exclusive and have him feed every detail to the NY Times. I don’t want to win the local battle and lose the war with the city.”

“Yes, sir. In fact he’s in the building. We’ve given the press a temporary office on the second floor.”

“Good and I want a very good write-up on how fortunate we are to have had NYPD screwup and have us bring Parker Barnes in and what a hero he is in killing one of these vermin dealers. And what’s the black kids name again.”

“Curtis Strong,” Boriello said.

“Well make sure they say something nice about him too.”

“Sir, if I may,” Boriello interrupted, “even Barnes acknowledges that Strong is the hero.”

“Strong gets us nothing. Barnes is the key. It’s him the media will focus on. They’ll try to paint it as our screwup.”

“Chief,” Boriello began, “think about this. We’re the ones who have gotten Strong sprung. We’re the ones who found out he was innocent. We paint the picture of the dual heroes; the community could use a black hero.”

“Fuck black heroes,” the chief said. “Vito, are you forgetting who put him away in the first place? Us, the Stamford Police department. And are you not aware that the diligent officer sitting beside you is the one who made sure that young Mr. Barnes was never charged in that murder?”

“Chief,” Captain Paiva protested.

“Shut up, Paiva,” the chief intoned.

“You mean it is true?” Boriello asked.

“Yes, sadly it is true. Paiva here was always the one to handle the dirty work for the big boys. We’ve kept it as our dirty little secret all these years. And now, here it is out in the open.”

“But you knew I was working with Jim Ford on this.”

“That’s why I gave you to him when he called me. I knew you’d get to the bottom of it. I knew you’d get the kid out finally. Damn, that’s the one thing that bothered me in my whole career. After a day like today, it doesn’t seem to matter as much,” and the chief paused, a long tired sign came out. He looked at his two officers. “Most everything we do is good, very good. And every once and awhile we screwup, not intending to cause harm, but when we do what we did to Curtis Strong we cause harm, irreparable harm.”

“Here’s our chance to fix it then,” Boriello said, and to himself he thought, “I have been on this planet too long.”

“Well then fix it, but do no harm, Vito. I don’t want this department looking like fools over this.”

“I’ll fix it,” Boriello said.

“I’ll help,” chimed in Paiva.

“You stay the fuck out of the way,” the chief said. Then he summoned the guts he had lacked for years in competing with Al Paiva. “Al, I want your resignation on my desk by tonight.”

“What,” Paiva seemed to scream, but it was a silent scream, more a squeak.

“You heard me; now both of you, get out.”

Chapter 75

It was the wedding day of Winston Trout. The bride to be and the groom to be were separately busy with their individual preparations although Winston was somewhat worried about his brothers. He was surprised about how very quiet his cell phone had been from the prior evening. It was 7 a.m. on Saturday morning.

And he would have been surprised if he knew that Tray Johnson was in San Juan at this hour. And he would have been surprised to learn that contrary to his plans, Sebastian Ball did not return on a flight on Friday after his meeting with Jane Lane’s husband and an overnight tryst with Mrs. Lane. What would also have surprised him was that the cell phone of Parker Barnes sat in the property room of a partly destroyed Stamford police station.

But he would really be shocked if he knew that the two-year-old ring bearer stayed at home with his grandfather as Edward Wheelwright Jr. accompanied Valerie Samson to interviews with the SEC and NYPD in the Greenwich Police station, and that while they were being questioned in separate rooms, Kish Moria was being questioned at the NY Office of the insider trading task force.

His final surprise would have been that Gideon Bridge, was bringing a female date to the wedding.

This morning what had Jim Conroy upset was the screwup by his team that turned a request for an interview into an arrest warrant for Parker Barnes. And it didn’t happen that Mr. Barnes was any inside trader, having purchased not Rocket Solar but Trout Solar. He happened to be the son of one of the wealthiest contractors in the northeast and a candidate for the US Senate from Connecticut. Compounding it all was the fact that somehow Barnes is now a hero in a crazy jail break attempt where he was being held. Seems that Barnes shot and killed at least one of a gang of drug dealers who were trying to break one of their own out of the Stamford Police station. “So much for coordination,” Conroy said to himself.

**********

At the altar of St. Mary’s Church, an old gothic reminder of the strength of Catholicism in the late nineteenth century, his second best man appeared. The wedding neared.

It was 4:45 p.m. as Kish came in a limo. As he walked in from the side altar, he stood beside Winston and Gideon, another of Winston’s best men who had arrived earlier. Winston asked, “Where are the rest of our brothers?”

“Don’t worry, they’ll be here. It’s early yet,” Kish said.

“In fifteen minutes the ceremony starts. Kish, do I smell curry?” Winston asked.

“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later.”

“Good luck getting anyone to dance with you,” Winston said.

Other friends of the brothers were ushers, accompanying guests into the cavernous church. Tom Brandon, IT director of Brunswick Fund and former classmate of Wheelwright at Harvard, ushered in Santa Alba, who wore a rose dress she designed herself, with matching wide brim hat. With her olive skin as a perfect complement, she was radiant. She smiled warmly at the men on the altar in their tuxedos. Before being seated, she walked to the altar, put her hand on the arm of Gideon Bridge and kissed him.