Buddy Boys (28 page)

“I was bad as a police officer and now I'm trying to make things better for us as a family,” he explained. “I was taking money and drugs and selling it back to the department to catch other police officers. I ratted on them.”

Meghan's eyes grew wide with bewilderment. Her daddy had broken one of the family's cardinal rules.

“Daddy, you told me never to rat on my sister,” she said. “You always say, ‘Don't be a rat on your sister. She gets in enough trouble on her own.' But you are ratting.”

Henry tried to explain why he had ratted. He only had to mention the word “jail” once before Elizabeth hugged him.

“Daddy,” she said. “Are you still a cop?”

“Yeah. I'm still a cop.”

“Well, you'll always be a good cop,” she decided. “I love you very much.”

Henry walked home crying. He felt destroyed as a cop, but he was very proud of his daughters. The entire Winter family slept in one bed that night, hugging their father's tears away.

The Police Department never made official notifications of the suspensions. Brian O'Regan was sitting in his apartment when a friend phoned and told him to turn on the television. He watched his name flash across the screen. Gallagher heard the news on the radio. Rathbun was standing with a prisoner in Central Booking when he called his wife and learned he had been suspended. Another cop was just being seated with his girlfriend in a restaurant when he saw his name roll up the television screen at the bar. Brian called his sergeant, Robert Jervas, to break the news.

“I had to tell him five times. He wouldn't believe it.”

One by one, the suspended cops came in to the 77th Precinct that night, turning in their guns and shields. Brian entered through a side door, avoiding the glare of television lights. He was escorted down to his locker by a cop assigned to Internal Affairs, who rummaged through his belongings, taking his police identification, gas card, and daily memo book.

“I guess they were afraid we were going to blow our brains out,” O'Regan said. “I asked the guy, ‘What kind of job do you have?' And he says, ‘It's just a detail.'”

As his locker was emptied, Brian paused to write the word “Suspended” next to the date, September 23, in his memo book. Then he walked out of the precinct, driving back to a Catholic church in Rockaway. Despite the time of night—it was well after 8
P.M
. by now—Brian coaxed a priest into hearing his confession. He then cleansed his soul of all the sins he had committed while working as a uniformed officer in the 77th Precinct.

“I thought the priest was going to fall over and take a heart attack. But he didn't even bat an eye. He just said, ‘I've heard worse. Get a good lawyer and be prepared for what might happen.'”

In the morning, Brian and several of the other suspended officers drove to their union headquarters, where they discussed the suspensions with lawyers. Gallagher, the once-brazen union delegate who had taught both Henry and Brian how to steal, cried six times during the meeting. Brian was amazed by the change in him.

“I couldn't believe it. He was always cement. I was a follower. He was infallible.”

On the street outside the union office, Brian found Robert Rathbun sitting in his car weeping. Brian tried to console him. “Maybe they ain't got us that bad. Shit, Bobby, at least you got family.”

Rathbun pulled a snapshot from his wallet. Brian saw the face of a smiling boy looking back at him.

“See this?” Rathbun said. “How can I ever tell him about this?”

By the time he reached his girlfriend Cathy's apartment in Park Slope later that day, Brian still hadn't cried. But then he met Cathy at the door and saw the redness in her eyes. “Have you been crying, Cathy?” She nodded. He walked past her and continued upstairs into the bedroom. He closed the door and sat on the bed crying.

Later Brian returned to his own Rockaway apartment, meeting his landlord outside the building. “That was me on the news, you know,” Brian said. The landlord nodded.

“If you want, I'll move.”

“Absolutely not.”

Over the next few weeks, as a special grand jury prepared a first round of indictments against thirteen police officers, Brian avoided his family. He missed a dinner date at his older brother Greg's Long Island home and only returned to his mother's Valley Stream home at night, the darkness covering his identity. He also started attending church regularly, taking communion.

“I know when I die I'm going to heaven,” he later said.

After one of his visits to church, Brian felt in such a state of grace that he even dared to call Henry Winter at home, leaving a short message on his old friend's tape recorder.

“Hey Hank,” Brian said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “This is Brian. I don't hold any animosity toward you at all. What is done, is done. If you want to talk, let's meet and talk. Believe me, that's all it is. We won't even talk about anything that's going on. We'll just talk.”

Henry came home and played the message over and over again. Then he began to cry. He could not chance a meeting with any of the Buddy Boys.

A few days later, William Gallagher called Henry's home, leaving a message of his own on the recorder. Speaking in a voice that shimmied like a car with a bad transmission, Gallagher said, “Hank, this is Billy. Billy Gallagher. You know my number. Call me and let me know what's going on.”

Henry only noticed one thing about the message when he played it back later. Junior Gallagher was scared. Henry erased the message, choosing to remember Gallagher as the precinct tough guy.

Henry and Tony spent most of October reviewing tapes, correcting transcripts, and testifying before a special grand jury. Hynes told Henry to go out and buy new clothes to wear to court, explaining that he couldn't testify against cops in dungarees and flannel shirts. So one night in early October Henry and Betsy went shopping, buying tapered shirts, silk ties, tailored pants, and fine sports jackets for a cop who had only one suit hanging in his closet—the one he had worn on the day he married Betsy Bassett. Henry tried to pretend that he was having fun, but she saw through his mask. They paid for the clothes and headed home.

The next day Henry was sitting on the witness stand when he reached into his pocket and found a note that read, ‘Have a nice day, Love B.' He smiled. His wife had never written him a love note before. An hour later, after telling a particularly harrowing story, Henry saw a look of disgust on several faces in the grand jury box. He reached into his jacket pocket and found another note. This one read, ‘Don't worry about it. I love you. B.'

Over the next few weeks, Henry found dozens of love notes hidden in his new clothes. It seemed to him that every time he began to doubt his own life, asking why he had agreed to testify against other cops, he found the answer hidden in his jacket pocket.

“I did this for my family,” Henry later said. “I had no choice.”

On November 4, Brian O'Regan called a friend to say he and twelve other cops had been told to surrender for arrest and arraignment on November 6. The first set of indictments had come down in what the newspapers were calling “The Shame of the 77th Precinct.” O'Regan and the other cops were told to report to Internal Affairs headquarters at 7:30 in the morning along with their lawyers. They would be arrested, given the
Miranda
warning, pose for mug shots, and have their fingerprints taken. Brian said he planned to wear dark sunglasses, a hooded sweatshirt, and a baseball cap. For the first time in his life, he was scared to go to Central Booking.

“It's funny how you can be good your whole life, for so long, and then …,” he said later.

Henry arrived at Internal Affairs headquarters on the morning of November 6 shortly after dawn, walking into the brick building through a steady drizzle. He sat at a desk near Tony, sipping coffee and eating a doughnut. He chatted nervously. Tony sat in silence. Words were no help to Tony. This had been an investigation of words. He was sick of listening to them on tape and reading them in transcripts. On this day—especially this day—Tony wanted to hide behind a wall of silence.

“They're bringing them out now,” someone said at 8:30
A.M
.

Henry got up out of his chair and walked over to the third-floor window. He looked down into the street and saw the cops he once worked with manacled, their hands behind their backs in handcuffs. With the exception of William Gallagher, almost all of the defendants wore jackets and ties. Crystal Spivey had tied her hair back with a pink ribbon. Robert Rathbun hid his tears behind sunglasses. They all cursed the newspaper photographers and television cameramen.

Henry walked back over to Tony, who was pacing near his desk. The cops could hear the metallic clicks of the cuffs that bound the hands of their friends.

“They're in handcuffs, Tony,” Henry said gently.

Tony began to swear. He reached for a cigarette and said, “There's no need for that. The motherfuckers. They told us they wouldn't do that to them.”

Henry and Tony stood at the window watching the cops head off to Central Booking in separate cars. Henry stood in the window for several minutes, watching silently, tears running down his face. A sergeant walked up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“What are you doing this for? Come on. Get out of here.”

Henry left the window and returned to a seat near his partner. He sat there several moments, trying to remember what the cops had looked like.

“You know, I didn't see Brian out there,” he said, standing up, his voice filled with worry. “Where's Brian?”

12

“Good morning. I missed my appointment.”

On the evening of Wednesday, November 5, Brian O'Regan walked into the Ram's Horn Diner in Rockaway. He wore the night rain in his hair and a four-day growth of beard on his face. His delicate blue eyes were framed with dark circles. He searched out the restaurant, as only a cop can, with a single look.

Brian slid into a back booth, smelling of perspiration. He had called a newspaper reporter earlier in the evening, setting up the meeting. He said he wanted to talk. Brian O'Regan sounded scared. It was raining out and it seemed an especially terrible night to be scared and alone. So the reporter agreed to meet O'Regan at 10
P.M
. in a diner near the cop's apartment in the Rockaways.

“Just come out,” O'Regan said. “Just come out and we'll talk.”

Originally the reporter balked at meeting the cop. His wife was pregnant, expecting their second child any day. The reporter mentioned that Brian had to be up early in the morning anyway. He had a date with an arrest.

“I won't sleep tonight,” Brian said on the phone.

Although Brian should have been concerned with time—in nine hours he was scheduled to be arrested for his role in the 77th Precinct corruption scandal—he wore no watch. He looked out the window, rain spattering against the pane. A waiter came over and the cop ordered coffee, the first of six cups he would consume over the next four hours. Brian watched the waiter walk away before turning to the reporter.

“How many years do you think I'll get?” he whispered, the words hissing out of his mouth like steam from a boiling kettle.

There was no answer.

“Why didn't somebody come down and just say, ‘Knock it off'? Why didn't the guys from Internal Affairs come down and say, ‘If you do that again you're fired.' Why not transfer us? Why jail?”

Brian looked like a soldier suffering from combat fatigue. He jumped when a waiter dropped a spoon. He wore a brown United Parcel Service jacket over a blue T-shirt which read: “77th Precinct. The Alamo. Under Siege.” The white words were printed over a drawing of the real Alamo.

“Now I'm under siege.”

O'Regan said he had been sitting home the last few weeks worrying about jail. He had not been back to the precinct since turning in his gun and shield on September 23. “I don't want to see the precinct anymore. The precinct is hell. Why would you want to go to hell? I know when I die, I'm going to heaven.”

There was music in the background. Someone in the kitchen turned the volume up on a radio. Glenn Frey sang a song that was used in an episode of
Miami Vice.
“You be-long to the cit-ee. You be-long to the night.”

Brian noticed the song and shrugged, ordering his second cup of coffee. “And the city goes round and round,” he said. He tapped his right index finger on the table and looked up, eyeing the room suspiciously. “I look at people in the street now and get scared. I'm afraid someone is going to say, ‘There's the guy. He's the one.'”

He tried to shift the tenor of the conversation, telling a story about giving a summons to a beautiful girl and how he was frightened of her beauty, unable to even look her in the face as he wrote the ticket.

“The sarge came up to me and asked, ‘Why are you giving her a ticket?' I said, ‘Sarge, I don't even dare look at her.'”

Brian tried to laugh. But the humor was lost somewhere between the thought and the sound. “I told my lawyer everything. He told me to take a plea, and I might get two or three years. He wanted $15,000 up front. I don't think he trusted me. How am I gonna do on the stand? I can't lie. I can't lie. I don't know how this will all end.”

But he knew how it all started.

There was a burglary in a dress shop on Nostrand Avenue. Another cop dipped his hand into the cash register and pulled out a fistful of dollars. O'Regan sipped his coffee and ran a hand over his lips. “I will never forget that,” he said.

Brian went back to his coffee and then glanced out the window. Rain pounded the streets.

“There were days I didn't care. I didn't care about nothing. I went to three doctors and they said I needed psychiatric help. They gave me antidepressant pills. But I never faced the facts. I had problems and I never faced the facts. Does a man talk about his weaknesses?”