Circle of Six (26 page)

He ever so slowly unbuttoned his suit jacket, three buttons in all, taking his time. He reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a copy of the DD5 I'd typed, requesting that I speak with Muslims, the same DD5 I'd sent to One PP.

I felt my pupils dilate, felt the blood rushing through my veins. My body was shaking; I actually had to place my hands behind my back to avoid punching a hole through his head, and then collaring him. I didn't scream, “Where did you get that?”

He just smiled, not saying a word. I looked at Ward, seething. “Do you not see what that is?”

His eyes dropped to the pavement. I wanted to call him what he was. I spun on Harmon. “That is an official police document. He is in possession of stolen property.”

I turned back on Josephs, “Where did you get that?”

His smugness was now defiance. He was baiting me. It was as if the hand of God reached from the sky and touched my shoulder, because I was suddenly able to step away. I looked one last time at Ward, my eyes burning, fixed on him like lasers. He wouldn't return the look, no surprise there. I smiled at Josephs, “You think this is over? I haven't even begun.”

We walked away as casually as we could. No reason to give the Nation of Islam and Ben Ward the satisfaction of knowing just how fucked I was.

Harmon didn't say anything; neither did I. From the mosque I drove straight to 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. “Jim, I'm sorry. Do you mind taking the subway down?”

“No, not at all.”

Before he stepped out, he said, “You know, I guess I needed to see things first-hand,” he hesitated. “And I'm glad I did.”

“Jim, this is by far the most fucked of all cases you are ever going to work. You still wanna do this?”

He pulled his watch from his pocket, strapping it back on his wrist. Then he looked at me and said with a grin, “Abso-fucking-lutely!”

I couldn't get to the 2-5 fast enough. I double-parked in front of the precinct, taking the steps three at a time. His office door was closed. I didn't
care. I slammed it open. Muldoon was startled, spun around in his chair. I darted across the office, stood inches from him. He was unable to stand; I made sure he had nowhere to look but into my eyes. I pointed in his face. “You know where I just was? I got a phone call telling me that someone from headquarters wanted to meet me at the fucking mosque. And guess who was fucking there?”

He was sucking air, trying to speak; I wouldn't let him. “Three of the FOI men. Do you know who the FOI are? Of course you don't; you don't have a fucking clue. All you know how to do is enable these motherfuckers to sabotage this case and you been doing it since day fucking one!”

He pushed the chair far enough away to stand. I moved in on him. I was almost as close to him as I was to Josephs. “What the fuck are you talking about, and why the fuck are you going to the mosque. I told you—”

“Ward! Commissioner Ben Ward was there! And do you know what we both witnessed? A crime, a fucking crime. The head of the fucking FOI was in possession of a DD5, my fucking DD5! The one asking to interview Muslims. And he didn't say a goddamned thing. Now where do you suppose they got the five from? I know I didn't give it to him.”

In his rush to back away, he knocked over the chair. He picked it up and slammed it onto the floor, snapping off one of its wheels. “I want to know what you were doing there. I told you it was off limits...”

I screamed something guttural and definitely incoherent. I slammed my hands on his desk over and over. Papers flew everywhere. “I was sent there to be set up by you sons of bitches. Now they know who the fuck I am. They know what I look like. Do you know the FOI has hit squads? Who in the fuck do you think set up Malcolm X? I know that because I helped enhance that case. I was at the Audubon Ballroom; you weren't! And now they can ID me. There were probably twenty FOI snapping pictures of me while I was standing there like a fucking fool in front of that place. I want to know who's going to question Ward about that stolen DD5. Who is going to conduct that investigation?”

As soon as he heard the name
Ward
, with the word
investigation,
his hands balled into tiny pink pom-poms. His face turned to a shade of maroon. He screamed, “No superior officers are to be questioned. Do you understand!”

He repeated this three times. It still came down to that,
no superior officers are to be questioned.
I calmed down. I shook my head, began to laugh. I walked in small tight circles in the nothing-by-nothing sized office.
I imagined that every one of the detectives in the adjoining squad was waiting for the gunshots. They knew as well as anyone the FOI men were dangerous. Half those guys also worked the Malcolm X case, and now I had been handed to them on a platter. I turned. His back was pressed into the farthest corner of the room. He appeared small, smaller than he ever had before. I was spent. I delivered this next statement with whatever strength I had left. “I am no longer making three copies of the fives. The borough and One PP are not entitled to duplicate fives on this case. I'm keeping the original, and you are getting the second copy. If that five ends up in anyone else's hands, I'll know where it came from.”

I'd always felt that to be a New York City detective was a privilege. From the moment I'd seen the inappropriately awarded gold shield pinned to Blair's belt way back at Clint's candy store, it's all I ever wanted. Though Blair certainly dulled its sheen, it still stood for something good, something true. I would do anything to be called
Detective Jurgensen
. When I received my shield, as a third grade detective, I was the only cop to be elevated that day. There wasn't any ceremony. They just handed me the shield at the old police headquarters. I didn't place it in its leather holder right away. I kept it in my pocket all day. I wanted to feel the raw jagged metal close to my skin. What that gold shield represented was a century of pride. Then all I wanted was to be a second grade detective. And when I got that, years later, I could only think of the last rank left, first grade.

Two weeks after learning the New York City Police Department was in bed with the enemy, I was suddenly elevated to the rank of detective first grade, NYPD. The same power brokers who couldn't find the reason to award Vito Navarra, a fighter, a victim, a cop with oak-like integrity, the rank of detective third grade saw the immediate need to promote me. Well, I knew one thing. No two-dollar whore could ever buy my silence on the back of a murdered hero cop. And they'd all soon find this out.

I took off. I didn't put in for lost time or vacation. I just didn't call or show up. I had to regroup. I assumed that the Muslims had been aware of the investigation from the very beginning. They knew I was looking for a witness, and I'm sure every member of Farrakhan's mosque, and other mosques around the city, was commanded to silence. The job of placing Muslims at the scene was going to be almost impossible.

And then it happened.

New York City was in financial ruins by April 1975. To alleviate the bleeding, the city was about to enact massive layoffs, first on the chopping
block, members of the NYPD. Of course that meant the men with the least amount of time on the job went first, and certainly no one of rank. The PBA organized rallies at all seventy-five precincts. Marches were held tying up rush-hour traffic, and demonstrations at City Hall played out on the evening news. Thousands of cops surrounded the perimeter of City Hall, all carrying signs bashing the current administration. Still, some cops, more than a few, held signs that amazingly read:
Remember Cardillo
.

In the three years since Phil had been murdered, twenty cops were killed in the line of duty, roughly seven a year. Some of these line-of-duty deaths were worse than others, and some were calculated assassinations. Thirteen of them were attributed to the BLA. Were any of these deaths any less tragic than Phil Cardillo's? I sat there watching the news from my living room, amazed. They were keeping their promise. They would never forget Phil Cardillo.

The city had proposed to layoff 5,000 of the newest appointees. Sam DeMilia stood at a makeshift podium as he ran down the crime statistics of the past three years. He explained that the loss of men would only increase the number of violent street crimes. DeMilia used the platform to blast the superior officers at One PP, the former mayor, and the former members of his administration for failure to police themselves regarding the Phil Cardillo murder. He screamed for the office of the special prosecutor to launch an investigation into the job's nonfeasance of duty. Of course, every news channel picked up on this, re-broadcasting the riots in living color. Different angles from the air, the ground, in front of the mosque, behind the mosque. It was a dizzying nonstop wheel of 360-degree angles: the crowds, the cops, and the Muslims.

I shot up off the couch. Lynn was startled. She asked, “What's wrong, Randy?”

All I could mumble was, “How in the hell could I have missed this?”

Then I said, “I'll be a son of a bitch,” over and over. I ran to the set, switching the channel. All the major networks were carrying the feed, and all of those networks had film of the day of occurrence. This was the piece of the puzzle that I had been missing, actually getting pictures of Muslims who were there that day. A picture is worth a thousand words, but film was going to make my case.

“Thank you, Phil.”

I wasted no time hitting all of the networks. The three major ones were located within a fifteen-block radius in midtown Manhattan. First one up: NBC. The file clerk was emphatic; the only way I was getting the dubbed tapes would be through a court order. I explained that there was no time to get a court order. The truth was I knew that once the network lawyers found out we were subpoenaing the footage, they'd fight it in court. Their argument would be valid. The tapes were property of the network. By handing over their tapes, they could be viewed as biased and could become vulnerable to civil lawsuits. But the woman didn't live under a rock; she knew the case I was working on. After thirty minutes of pleading, she caved. She let me have the tapes for twenty-four hours. I signed for the tapes, Patrolman Eveready.

I had the same problem at CBS. But after showing the woman the tapes I'd gotten from NBC, she was a little more inclined to give them up. I was in civilian clothes, and the only identification I had on me was my police ID. She agreed to give me the tapes, but only in the presence of a uniformed officer. I hadn't worn my uniform in fifteen years. I couldn't even begin to guess where it was, and I was sure if I found it, it would be out of date. I didn't want to expose Vito to the Charges and Specs if anyone found out.
Charges and Specs
was the NYPD's equivalent to a military court-marshal. The consequences were serious—ranging from loss of vacation days to jail time—but the NYPD's trial room was a joke. Once you were there, you were at the mercy of the judges.

Vito was probably forty pounds heavier than I was, and four inches shorter. I had no choice. I met him at the 2-5 and changed into his uniform. I looked starved and stretched. If a cop saw me wearing this getup in the street, I'd be clubbed over the head and taken to Bellevue for observation.
The clerk's eyes got as big as silver dollars. She didn't say anything, just handed me the paper to sign—Patrolman Eveready—gave me the tapes, and stepped out of the room.

ABC would prove to be the most difficult. I pled my case to the woman, but she was a new hire and terrified of losing her job. After a while, I had to give up. I gave her my contact number and left, dejected. When I got back to Fifty-fourth Street, Vito called to tell me that I left a package at ABC, and I could pick it up the next morning in the network's mailroom. I had a briefcase with me, but I hadn't left it. The next morning, I went to the network, and was handed two canisters of film wrapped in plain brown paper. More help from outside the NYPD for Patrolman Eveready.

I delivered all of the tapes to Larry Marinelli. He threaded the film onto an upright editing bay and showed me how to isolate the film one frame at a time. The good news was that all of the film was time coded, giving the exact date—April 14, 1972—along with military time to the tenth of a second. The bad news, film runs at twenty-four frames per second, so for every minute of film there were 1,440 frames, or pictures. An hour's worth of film had 92,400 individual frames. We acquired two hours of raw film that had to be viewed one frame at a time.

The next order of business was to take the best frames of film and duplicate them into individual photos, which could be blown up into eight-by-ten sized pictures. We devised a practical, though rudimentary, way of doing this. We'd stop the machine on the frame of film we thought was usable, place a table lamp behind the frame, illuminating the shot, take a 35mm camera attached with a micro zoom lens, and snap the picture. Thin as the plan was, it worked.

It took weeks of fifteen-hour days, seven days a week. There were lots of shots that were useless. There were plenty of good ones too, of the FOI men and the cops stationed in front of the mosque. As quick as I could isolate the pictures, that's how fast Larry developed them. After every twenty shots, I'd take them to the Saint George for identification. I was finally ready to bring the mosque to the cops.

Vito was able to identify three of the original assailants, all of whom he placed in the basement. As far as I was concerned, they were fugitives, because on the day of occurrence they were arrested, then they were allowed to go free. These three men needed to be brought in. I would threaten them with an arrest unless they gave up the shooter. I had their names and addresses. And Vito would be my witness.

I brought the idea to Van Lindt and Harmon. They agreed. Vito was an excellent witness, but he was also the worst witness. First and foremost, Vito was a victim, two times. He was hospitalized by the assaults, and he lost his partner of five years. Vito was also assigned to the case; he'd be viewed as biased, not to mention a hostile witness. The defense would use this against us. Yes, Vito would be an excellent corroborating witness, but, if he was the only witness to the original assaults, it wouldn't stand up in court. Van Lindt said, in his usual understated manner, “Randy, you're not down to your last strike, yet. There were twenty men in that basement. We need a better witness than the cop assigned to the case. Go find us one.”