Circle of Six (30 page)

We stepped off the elevator at the ADA's floor. Movement was once again permitted. As we stepped toward Van Lindt's office, the door of the back stairway was kicked opened. It was him, all 225 pounds of twisted molten anger wrapped in a lieutenant's uniform—Muldoon had come for my head.

Go ahead, Lieutenant, say what you want, because I'm done, going to Disneyland, out there on the West Coast. I'll make it easy for you. I'll hand you my shield in front of everyone.
I felt Van Lindt and Harmon step close to my side.

Muldoon stood in front of the three of us, livid. He didn't look at either man at my side. He didn't care what they thought.

He said, in an even tone, “Whether you believe it or not, we all have a job to do. Today, my job was to protect you and the subject, to bring you both in unharmed. You don't show up, I assume you were in trouble. If we are going to make this work for the duration, however long that might be, you've got to follow the tact plans, which have been laid out and prepared by men who do this for a living.”

He still hadn't acknowledged Harmon or Van Lindt. All of the piss and vinegar suddenly evaporated from within.
Could this guy actually have meant all that?
I nodded slowly, “You're right, Lieutenant, and I apologize.”

He dropped his head shuffling his feet slightly, “Well, just wanted to say...good job.”

He turned, heading back down the stairway, accompanied by a dozen ESU and TPF cops, most of whom smiled, winked, and gave me a thumbs-up. It felt good being a New York City cop that afternoon. But the afternoon wouldn't last till tomorrow.

We were led into Homicide Bureau Chief John Keenan's private conference room. For the rest of my stay at the DA's office, I was to be assigned a detective from the DA's squad—old crony—Nick Cirillo. Most of the men in the DA's homicide squad were NYPD detectives, but their assignments were to investigate for the assistant district attorneys' cases. They'd enhance what the precinct detectives had already procured during their own investigations. They were basically an extension of a squad at the DA's office. We made the case in the street, the DA's detectives helped make the case for court.

Nick Cirillo was a good street detective, and he was an excellent DA's squad cop. Cirillo understood that with me came Foster, and he had to bring Foster into his fold, which he did easily. The Harlem-bred detectives could speak a lot of street languages, which is why they had a lot of informants and street
jugo
, or juice.

I said good-bye to Van Lindt. It was his final week in the DA's office. I was happy he could see some progress before he left.

The transition from Van Lindt to Harmon was easy. The guys were dispirited that the team was breaking up, but they kept the vibe upbeat. Van Lindt demanded his forty bucks back, and Harmon said I was having an affair with some hotty Brazilian maid at the Saint George Hotel (Harmon's fantasy, not mine). The jokes were a nice change of pace from all the stress. They were good soldiers, and I was thrilled to end my career with them.

Muldoon put into place a security detail of five detectives who would be assigned twenty-four seven to Foster. I was going to get a much-needed hiatus from the case. This was good because Lynn was ready to give birth to our firstborn any day. It would also give me the time to enhance the case with Harmon. But all of it was icing on the case. They didn't need me to make the arrest. Anyone could've made the collar. My gig was to testify at
the trial. Case was over. Now I just had to wait on the ADA's office to say when Dupree would be yanked. The problem was—though not really a problem—Harmon was shoring up this case to the max, which took time. He was the most thorough ADA on all nine planets.

Foster gave Harmon all of the Muslims who were there the day of occurrence, and I had to go find them and try to extract statements from them. Most of the men were going to say,
Yes, Sir, I was there, but I didn't see anything.
And that's exactly what we wanted them to say. Our objective wasn't to make our case; it was to stop the defense from making its case. They could've had men say they saw Foster shoot Phil, or they saw Dupree, but he wasn't near Phil. Once it was on record that a man was there and saw nothing, anything he said afterward would be seen as a lie.

Muldoon did as promised; he sent out a teletype to all of the squad bosses of Zone-6:
send a list of available detectives who could work security detail.
The problem was that no squad boss was giving up his best DTs just to make my or Muldoon's job easier. They'd send some good ones, and some not so good. We made do, for a while. Then things went bad, really bad.

The five DTs we got were from the zone, and I knew all of them, though never really interacted with them. They were inside guys, clerical DTs who'd never caught cases. I needed to have Foster as willing, able, and productive as he'd been; these guys weren't making it easy. They just weren't with the program. Even though they had been schooled on the Muslim way of life, when they brought Foster to breakfast, they just didn't think. Everyone ordered bacon and eggs. They didn't think they were doing anything wrong when they had alcohol in the room.

They didn't hide their feelings about Foster. They didn't care for studying what Foster stood for. They just knew he was there, day of occurrence, and took part in it. The DTs started calling in sick, taking lost time or vacation days. We'd have to have other detectives with no knowledge of Foster guarding him, which created a whole new set of problems. Foster started to feel like the redheaded stepchild, shuttled from one place to the next. He was miserable. So after my days working the case with Harmon, I'd drive up to be with Foster, even if it was for a half-hour walk-and-talk. We couldn't help moving him from one no-tell motel to another. Too many people knew. The Muslims were now aware of Foster's defection, and the ADA's office received death threats against both him and me. I promised him it would all be over relatively soon. That's what they told me. But detective time and district attorney time are on two different clocks.
Detectives move at breakneck speed—we have to—and the good ones get what's needed and move on to the next case. ADAs have all the time in the world, because they have more resources to work with in order to develop a complete case. In the ADA's mind—rightfully so—there can be no stone left unturned. My problem was I had been on the case almost four years. I felt my job was done. I was ragged and ready to move on. It was beginning to wear on Foster too, and everything hinged on his testimony and believability. If he seemed hostile or under duress, the case would implode.

I began to travel up to Foster, bringing him with me to the ADAs offices and to my Hollywood office on Fifty-fourth Street. This would alleviate some of the tension he was feeling, and it would make him feel integral to the case. Foster had never seen the real-life semantics of being an NYPD cop and got a pretty stilted view of things. After hanging out with me, he assumed every B-movie cop flick was true. The lone detective out there, continually twisting in the wind, so on the edge, gunplay around every corner, him against the world; that's how he viewed the detectives who were assigned to him, and that's how he viewed me.

I began to show Foster the pictures from the news broadcasts. He began to pick out faces, giving me names, aliases, Muslim tags, where they were employed, and in some cases, addresses. And then it happened, he pointed to three very important individuals: himself, Lewis 17X Dupree, and a Muslim named Mitchell 5X San-San. That was huge to the case, because Foster said he was there, and the picture now verified that fact—Dupree, same scenario. When he pulled the picture of Mitchell 5X San-San out of the thick file, he said, “There's Mitchell, he's the caretaker of the Mosque. He was the one who mopped up the blood in the hallway, and he was the one who took the gun out.”

I felt as though I had been hit with a cattle prod in the ass, the stinging realization of ineptitude on my part. The biggest piece of information—where was Padilla's gun—had completely escaped me. I was so wound up in the shooter that everything else was lost on me. This was more damaging information, which could button up the case. I asked him, “How do you know he removed the gun from the mosque?”

“He told me he took it home with him. He said Captain Josephs told him that Minister Farrakhan didn't want the gun in the building. It had to be removed.”

I had to get what Foster had just said in the court documents. It showed a number of crimes committed by Farrakhan and Josephs. They could've
and should've been collared for them. It just kept getting better and better.

After the stenographer took Foster's statement, Harmon smiled and said, “Well, Buddy, you know what you have to do now, don't ya? Bring this Mitchell 5X San-San on in. We have to get his testimony into the grand jury.”

I'd have to find him and subpoena him. If he refused to come in, I'd basically have to kidnap him.

That wasn't all I had on my plate. I had told Lynn the case was over. She assumed I'd be retiring in a matter of days. But with every new turn-of-events came more investigation and more surveillance. To keep everything running smoothly, I had to seriously subdivide my time between my pregnant wife, Foster, and the day-to-day business of the case. Foster hadn't seen his girlfriend in weeks, since before he was arrested—he needed to get laid. So I was now his chauffeur to her place. He had a voracious appetite for Loretta, so we went over there often, and that wasn't without its share of drama.

Loretta lived about twelve blocks from the mosque, so these little trysts had to be at night. She lived in the crime-riddled Wilson Housing Projects at 104th Street and Second Avenue—East Harlem. You could score anything in that neighborhood, from drugs to sex to babies to rocket launchers. We'd see plenty of sales on our way to Loretta's.

The buildings were massive in size, like giant gray cellblocks, eight in all, connected by poverty and a broken chain-link fence. I'd park my car as close to the projects as I could without being made. A white guy maxed out on adrenaline, hustling a black dude into the projects. It wasn't exactly covert. With my shotgun at the ready, we'd dash to the building. The first time we were in the urine-soaked elevator, I could tell that Foster was embarrassed for Loretta's living arrangements. He was a proud young man, something else about him I was beginning to latch onto. I tried to make smalltalk. I told him I was from Harlem and a little about how I grew up in a building not far from where we were. He didn't answer me. Maybe he knew what I was trying to do. Or maybe he was just thinking about Loretta, because I'd come to learn he truly loved her.

The apartment itself didn't have much furniture, but it was tidy. Inside the living room was a small couch, no television or radio, and a makeshift overstuffed bookshelf with lots of books on Islam and the Middle East. There was a beautifully-bound leather Koran positioned delicately on an end table. It seemed to be the focal point of the room. Two windows faced east. Underneath the sills were two worn prayer carpets. In between the
carpets stood a tiny table adorned with candles and incense. Though Loretta was surrounded by hell, her living quarters were her and Foster's sanctuary, a place to be alone with their thoughts, ideas, and prayers. They were the real thing.

When Loretta saw Foster, she ran to him and held him. They hadn't seen each other in more than a month. I was already uncomfortable. After they kissed for a while, and I observed the room some more, Foster introduced me to Loretta. She was about five foot two, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. It appeared that she had just showered and had been prepping this moment for a long time. She was very pretty. Her hair was pulled back severely, accentuating her almond-shape black-as-coal eyes and high cheekbones. I remember thinking,
Her eyes are sparkling. They look like black pearls
. When she spoke, there was a lilt in her soft voice, an excitement. “I want to thank you for bringing Foster to me. I love him, you know.”

At that moment I felt so alone. I thought about Lynn, about missing the better things in life. We still loved each other, but I knew the life I was giving her was not the one she deserved. I needed to find Mitchell 5X San-San and end this thing.

Foster had his needs, but we were now in enemy territory. As wonderful as Loretta seemed to be, I still didn't trust her. She was going to have to earn that, just as I'd have to earn hers. “Where are your phones?” I asked. I was paranoid, but still. She could have ended us with just one call. At that point, I didn't know if the members of Mosque Number 7 had turned her.

“Just one in the kitchen,” she said.

“Do you mind if I check the bedroom?” I did, no phone. Lit votive candles and incense surrounded the bed, which was dressed in colorful silks.

Loretta offered me the couch. I refused. I pulled a clunky chair from the kitchen into the foyer. Loretta stayed in the living room, watching me, unsure, head cocked slightly to the left. Her smile now seemed forced. I assume she was sizing me up. Foster nervously hovered behind her, and there was that uncomfortable gap of silence. Loretta knew that I knew what this meeting was all about. We weren't trying to game each other. She finally said, “There is tea in the cupboard, and thank you, again.”

She turned and Foster followed her into the back room. Before he entered, he turned to me with a big sloppy grin. I sat in the hallway, shotgun in my lap. Nothing had changed since our first night together, except now Foster and I were friends, and this time it was Foster on the right side of that wall.

I didn't sleep much through the night. The chair wasn't built for comfort.
And I figured if I went into the living room, I'd be that much closer to some very private moments.

I was dozing when Foster gently tapped my shoulder. He looked showered, shaven, and refueled; I was jealous. I was barely able to stand. I put my head under the faucet in the kitchen to wake up. A boost of adrenaline prepared me for the run back to the car. It was now daylight. I strapped the shotgun to my side, pulled on my field jacket, and we both ran.