Slow Motion Riot (19 page)

The judge ignores the growing
restlessness. It feels like a big fist is closing in my stomach, taking my guts
in its grip. Bernstein gives me a mean look as he pushes his glasses back up on
the bridge of his nose. "Mr. Baum," he says, "do you remember
when you were in investigations two years ago?"

"Certainly, Your Honor."
My first job with Probation was writing presentence investigations, which
supposedly help judges decide what sentence to give a defendant.

"Do you remember an individual
named Claude Briggs?" the judge asks.

"Not offhand, Judge."

"Let me refresh your
memory," Bernstein says. "I promised Claude Briggs probation. He was
a young man of eighteen. Not the smartest youngster I have ever seen, who
dropped out of school and impregnated a girl. He became the sole support of his
paramour and his mother, who was a junkie and badly in need of treatment for
drug abuse, and a couple of siblings. He had a job. He worked as a manager of a
pizzeria. He met someone older than him—a street person—who took this young man
and encouraged him to go on what he thought was a burglary. He entered the
apartment in a building near St. Nicholas Avenue, ready to steal, when the
complainant witness came home..."

"And they beat the crap out of
him," I say. "I remember the case now." And I remember Claude
Briggs too. A big slow-talking kid with huge hands.

"And do you remember what you
recommended?" the judge asks.

"I believe I recommended jail
time for this Briggs fellow." Almost as soon as I say this, I remember
that I did so despite the judge's early promise of probation for Briggs. In
those days I did not know better.

"That was indeed your
recommendation!" The judge slaps his desk so hard that sleepy eyes around
the galley pop open. "And do you know what Claude Briggs is doing now?"

"No, I don't."

"I ignored your advice and
gave that young man probation," the judge says. "He responded
beautifully. I gave him youthful offender treatment, which means that as far as
his criminal record is concerned, he has no criminal record. He is doing
spectacularly well in his job. He is going to buy his own pizzeria. He saw to
it that his mother entered a methadone program and is doing fine. And he was
trying to attain a high school equivalency diploma. He did not succeed! But he
enrolled in the course again! He's going to keep taking that course until he
finally masters it!"

I hear Darryl King make the angry
ticking sound with his tongue again and then mutter, "Bullshit," as
Judge Bernstein glares down at me for his triumphant summation.

"By being placed on probation
that young man assured society far more protection because we now have an
individual who can be productive," the judge says, smiling and shaking his
head in wonder. "And you wanted him locked up."

"Judge, nothing makes me
happier than a story like that. I went into this field to help people. But
this... individual is different." I point to Darryl King, who looks like
he's ready to explode and take everybody else in the room with him.

By the time I finish speaking, I
know it's too late. In Judge Bernstein's mind, this is no longer a typical
case. If it was, he'd be happy to violate Darryl King and pick up another
disposition for his scorecard. But now the judge has to teach me a lesson. I
made a terrible mistake, challenging him with my little speech, and now I'm
going to pay the price.

"I have already gotten one bum
steer from you, Mr. Baum," the judge says in a steely tone. "I don't
intend to get another."

He indicates he wants me to step
back to the prosecution's table. Then he looks over at Goldfarb, Darryl, and
Darryl's mother. Goldfarb is writing something in a date book. The mother has
her head down; she appears to be asleep standing up. Darryl has his broad
shoulders back and his bottom lip curled.

"Mr. King, I'm very
disappointed to hear about these violations from Mr. Baum," the judge
says. "Probation is a privilege and it should not be abused. Now, I don't
expect to hear anything else about you getting in trouble. But if I do, rest
assured the full weight of the law will be brought to bear on you. For the
moment, though, I'm impressed by your mother's involvement in your
rehabilitation, as Mr. Goldfarb has explained it to me, and I am restoring you
to probation... You should continue reporting to Mr. Baum as assigned."

My heart sinks. Goldfarb clicks one
of his pens, closes his briefcase, and walks away. Darryl's mother thanks the
judge and sniffs back the tears that never came.

Darryl King is already sauntering
past the balustrade and heading for the door. He gives his shoulders an
exaggerated roll and pumps his arms into the air victoriously. After what just
happened, why shouldn't he feel indestructible?

"OUTTA HERE!" he shouts
as he hits the doors.

An elderly, well-dressed black
woman in the fifth row looks after him with pure hatred in her eyes, like she's
just seen a parent's worst nightmare go by.

In the first row, Andrea looks hurt
and bewildered. "What went wrong?" she says. "I thought you did
great."

"Well, that's what they
do." I loosen my tie. "What can I tell you?"

Jeff Washington is already calling
the next case. A kid with two gold-plated front teeth—one of them with the
Mercedes-Benz insignia—smiles as he passes me on his way to the defense table
and Judge Bernstein.

"Come on, let's get out of
here," I say. "This place is getting me depressed."

Andrea takes my hand and
accompanies me through the big oak doors. The old marble corridor has that
peculiar sweaty scent that people give off when they're desperate.

Every few yards, variations on the
same scene are being played out. The lawyer is almost always an older man
wearing a three-piece suit despite the vicious heat. He's usually talking very
fast and gesturing extravagantly as he tries to delineate the plea-bargain
procedure to the clients, who are almost all under twenty-five and often have
small children with them. Few seem to understand the deals their lawyers have
made, but most are resigned to the result. It's a little like walking down an
assembly line at a movie studio. The dialogue and individual characters are all
a little different, but the basic scenario rarely changes.

Andrea and I round the corner to
the elevators and almost walk right into Darryl King, his mother, and their
lawyer. The confrontation unfolds so suddenly and unexpectedly that I don't
have time to collect my thoughts or react properly.

Darryl points one finger at me and
closes the rest of his hand into the shape of a gun. Something seems to catch
fire behind his eyes.

"Fuck you, man," he says.
"You dead."

His words are nothing. They're
banal. Schoolyard stuff. It's just the way he says them that hits me like a
punch in the face.

The elevator doors open and Andrea
pushes me in. "Your next appointment is Friday," I tell Darryl before
the doors close. "Don't be late ... Dooky."

"You hear what that
motherfucker called me?" Darryl King asked, pushing through the clumps of
people standing outside 100 Centre Street, with his mother and lawyer trailing
behind him.

"What?" His mother could
barely keep her eyes open.

"He call me 'Dooky.' Man, I
ain't with that. You know what I'm saying? Motherfuckers got killed for saying
less."

"That's right," his
mother said.

"Motherfuckers got killed for
saying nothing at all. Like last Christmas..."

His mother suddenly became alert
and gave him a look that said: Stop talking. They kept going along the curve of
Centre Street, heading toward the great stone edifices of New York's federal
courthouse and the municipal building. Small Chinese women scurried by them,
plucking soda cans out of the steel-mesh garbage receptacles.

Darryl was still indignant,
spitting and clenching his fists, as if he'd lost the case. "Man, he
shouldn't be acting like that," he said.

"Who?" his mother asked.

"Mr. Bomb. He's supposed to be
my P.O. Why's he all over my shit?"

Goldfarb, the lawyer, was silently
trudging along beside them with his heavy briefcase. Even in the day's bright
sunshine, he seemed gloomy and bewildered, like an old magician who'd
accidentally conjured up an unwieldy beast. Now he finally spoke.

"Excuse me, young man,"
he said. "But I would say your probation officer is the least of your
troubles."

Darryl's face got tight. "Say
what?"

The lawyer put down his briefcase
and smoothed his shock of white hair, like he was preparing to perform one
final trick to bring the curtain down. "If you get arrested again, you are
going to find yourself having a very hard time raising bail," he said,
wagging a finger at Darryl. "I've seen many young men just like you, and
the courts will not look kindly on your next appearance. I'm sure your poor
mother has already lost hundreds of dollars in bail money because of your prior
arrests and it will be very difficult to find another bail bondsman who'll be
willing to stake you."

Darryl and his mother had been
listening patiently to his sidewalk lecture, but now Darryl put up his hand
like he'd heard enough. " 'Scuse me, Mr. Goldberg."

"Goldfarb..."

"I know," Darryl said
pointedly. "You best go back and study your book. In New York State, you
get all your bail money returned once you go in probation. That don't have no
effect on future bail application."

"Is that true?" Goldfarb
looked stunned. He scrambled to recover the high ground. "But you know,
you still may have trouble getting a bail bondsman."

Darryl handed his wallet to his
mother. "Show 'im, Moms," he said.

She started taking business cards
out of the wallet and flashing them at the old lawyer. "Rothman and Sons
Bail Bonds," she read in a droning voice. "Jacobs and Sullivan.

Max Miller. Hagen and Seligman Bail
Bonds ..."

"Those are my homeboys,"
Darryl interrupted. "My credit is good with any of 'em. Is yours?"

His mother handed him the wallet
back and he put it in his pocket. "So don't you be giving me a lecture
too, Goldberg," he said. "I got enough from my P.O."

Passing cars stirred old newspapers
and paper cups in the gutter. Darryl and his mother were moving faster now,
leaving behind Goldfarb, who was still staggering along with his heavy
briefcase. The old lawyer shifted the case from one hand to the other, cleared
his throat, and kicked a pigeon out of the way. His shoes seemed to sink into
the hot asphalt with each step he took.

Darryl King and his mother were
about one hundred yards ahead of him now. He just barely caught sight of the
two of them as they crossed the street and disappeared into the rage of cars,
people, and colors around Foley Square.

My first day with the Field Service
Unit begins at 4:30 on a Tuesday morning. Something about the way the
pinkish-gray sky breaks over Manhattan at that hour always makes me melancholy.
And reaJJy irritable. Another day is beginning and the fact that I'm up so
early means that I didn't accomplish what I set out to do the night before.
Which usually means getting laid or getting obliterated.

In the shower, I think about Andrea
as the mortifyingly cold water streams down my back. I wonder if she'll ever
take me seriously. She'll probably just find another boyfriend when she goes
back to law school in the fall anyway. I dry off and get out the big blue
bulletproof vest I was issued yesterday. It looks like an apron for a chef at
an industrial barbecue. I fasten the Velcro straps and pull a black T-shirt on
over the vest. Then I put on a pair of jeans, black sneakers, and my wind-breaker.

Unfortunately, the train downtown
doesn't have air-conditioning, and I start sweating as soon as I sit down. A
homeless woman with a collapsing face stares at me from across the car. The old
man beside me babbles on graciously like a guest on a talk show for demented people.

I arrive at headquarters on Leonard
Street just before 5:30.

For my first tour, I get two
experienced partners.

Bill Neill is a heavyset,
dark-complexioned black guy in his forties, who served with the infantry in
Vietnam. He has a thick Brooklyn accent, practically chain-smokes cigars, and
votes Republican whenever possible. Because of a bad shrapnel wound in his left
knee, he has to elevate the entire leg at a peculiar angle once every ten
minutes or so.

He also has a ridiculously
overconfident way of speaking that makes almost everything he says sound
instantly suspect. "You know they got a lot of us addicted to monkey
tranquilizer in Vietnam," he tells me within ten minutes of our first
meeting. "Just 'cos they ran out of morphine. Now there are over ten
thousand monkey tranq addicts in the United States. You knew that, didn't you?"

I find Bill slightly intimidating
and immensely likable. His partner is a thirty-six-year-old former gang leader
named Angel Vasquez. Angel, who has a lean, athletic build and high cheekbones,
has boxed professionally and studied developmental psychology. I quickly
learned that he is equally at ease quoting Clint Eastwood movies and The Drama
of the Gifted Child.

Bill and him are constantly arguing
about politics, but they have an easy, jokey rapport and a long-standing
friendship.

"I been with this unit a
year," Angel says as he shows me to a locker. "And I'm telling you
that you're gonna like being out on the streets, man. You don't have to mess
around so much with other people's superegos and that family therapy bullshit."

"But I don't know if I'm quite
ready to give up being a regular probation officer. I still have a lot of
paperwork to take care of and people to see ..."

"How long you been with the
department, man?" Angel asks.

"Two years."

"You would've burned out
sooner or later."

I think about my recent encounters
with Darryl King and shake my head. "Yeah," I say. "I guess
maybe you're right."

"You know it, baby."
Angel slaps me on the back. "It's real simple in this unit. You don't have
to go through that psychic torture. If we have a warrant for the clients here,
that means they had their shot and they blew it and we go out there to lock 'em
up. Nobody gives us any static. If they come from a dysfunctional background,
it's not our fault. And the best part is you don't go home worrying about
someone else's problems."

Bill Neill ambles into the locker
room a couple of minutes later and presents me with my first department-issued
.38-caliber service revolver. He helps me put the gun belt through the loops in
my jeans and secures the holster on my hip.

"Don't look at it so
funny," Bill tells me. "It's not gonna bite you."

"I know," I say, touching
the handle gingerly.

"It might blow your balls off,
but it definitely won't bite you."

I manage an uneasy smile.

"What're you anyway?"
Bill suddenly demands.

"How do you mean?"

"Are you one of them phony
white liberals? Are you one of those types who goes running around telling
niggers to feel sorry for themselves because society's at fault and they aren't
to blame when they do a crime?"

The way he's talking is confusing.
I can't tell if it's a test to see whether I'm a bleeding heart or a racist.
Since we've just met and he seems pretty conservative, I decide to play it safe.

"I think I see things for what
they are," I tell Bill.

"Whatever that means," he
says harshly. "What they let these goddamn kids get away with now. When I
was a kid and I wanted a pair of new sneakers, I went out and I worked for 'em.
And if you got in trouble, you went to jail or you went into the army."

"That's right," Angel
pipes in.

"And if you got Article
Fifteen'd for insubordination, the sergeant was allowed to hit you in the nuts
with a rifle butt," Bill says. "You knew that, didn't you?"

"What?"

Bill slams shut a locker door and
looks at me in stunned disbelief. "You didn't know that?" He glances
over at his partner. "Angel, what kind of yo-yo have they assigned us
here? Next you're gonna tell me that you didn't know Ho Chi Minh went to Bronx
Science. You know that, don't you?"

I'm beginning to sense I'm being
put on. "I'd rather not say right now."

"That's very smart," Bill
says in a gravelly voice as he lifts his leg and places my hand firmly on the
gun on my hip. "Congratulations. You are now a peace officer for the City
of New York. You knew that, didn't you?"

As Bill walks out of the locker
room, Angel pulls me aside one last time. "Hey, don't worry about
Bill," he says. "He may talk tough and he may whack guys around now
and then, but deep down he's just as conflicted as the rest of us."

By five to six, we're in a black
Aries K car cruising up toward Harlem. "Brilliant that they give us these
cars, right?" says Bill in the front passenger seat. "A black guy, a
white guy, and a Puerto Rican guy. People on the street corners make us for
cops in about three seconds."

The deadening humidity is still in
the air. This must be what Calcutta is like in the summertime.

We follow two other K cars—carrying
four more Field Service officers—past the el tracks near La Marqueta. A young
woman with puffy eyes and a twisted mouth stands near one of the pillars. She
wears high heels, a very short skirt, and torn stockings.

"Tell her there isn't any bus
that stops here," Bill says to Angel between drags on his second cigar of
the morning. The smoke fills the car and makes me ill.

"I think she knows
already." Angel taps his fingers on the steering wheel. "Business
must be slow."

"Hey, Baum," Bill says.
"You fuck her, your dick will fall off three days later."

Bill chuckles to himself and pulls
out his Motorola walkie-talkie. "Hey, Turner," he says into the
radio. "Who the fuck are we going to see first?"

There's a blast of static and then
Probation Officer Jocelyn Turner, a stout black woman in the car ahead of us,
replies, "James Ferguson."

"What's his claim to
fame?" Bill asks.

"Nothing," Turner says
sullenly as though she doesn't want to bother looking at Ferguson's file.

"Nothing?" Bill takes
another long drag on his cigar. "Do you mean to tell me that we are going
to arrest an innocent person?" he asks.

"There are no innocent
people," an unidentified voice says over the walkie-talkie.

Bill and Angel laugh all the way to
the first address, an old squat apartment house on 167th Street. If this
building was a person, it would be a wino. It seems to rear back from the
sidewalk in drunken revulsion. Bill gets out of the car first and heads for the
front door without looking back to see if the rest of us are following.

"First door right on the
second floor," Angel calls out to him after checking the apartment number
with Turner. "The guy's a chain snatch. He's probably not armed."

I trail my two partners into the
building with the four other officers coming up behind us. The lobby, decorated
with broken marble and mirrors, is silent. This must've once been a nice place
to live, I think, as I follow Bill and Angel up the cracked staircase. But the
landlord let it go to hell. There's a smell like a bus's exhaust in the air and
dust flies into my contact lenses.

"The good thing about coming
out at this hour is that all the crackheads are still asleep," Angel
whispers over his shoulder to me. "They've all been out late partying last
night."

Bill is already standing on the
second-floor landing, nonchalantly cocking his leg in the air like a dog about
to relieve himself. "They never live on the first floor," he says
with a grimace.

"And they hardly ever have
working elevators," Angel adds.

"Yeah; so let's fuck 'em
up," Bill says.

Officer Jocelyn Turner, who moves
gracefully and wears her hair in braids, sighs as she joins the rest of us on
the landing. "The way you talk," she says.

Bill begins hammering the
apartment's front door with a blackjack. The sound is so loud and insistent
that I start to get a headache. If they knocked on my door like this at six in
the morning, I'd call the cops. There's a thumping sound from inside like
somebody falling out of bed. Then the door creaks open.

A small, fiftyish Dominican man with
a creased face and deep-set eyes peers out. He looks exhausted, frightened, and
bewildered.

"James Ferguson here?"
Bill asks gruffly.

The man just stares at him. He
seems unable to speak for a moment. "No," he says finally in a weary,
confused voice. "No hablo..."

Angel steps forward and says
something in Spanish to the man, but Bill is already pushing past him into the
apartment. "Yeah, bullshit," Bill is saying as he takes a flashlight
from his belt loops. "We'll see for ourselves."

Angel, Turner, and the others push
in after them. I reluctantly follow. The apartment is completely dark. I can't
discern its size or shape. All I can see is what the beam of Bill's flashlight
illuminates. I glimpse the small man who opened the front door. He wears only a
pair of old boxers and black socks. I feel embarrassed for him as the light
swings away. We bump through a short, narrow corridor into a side room. The
flashlight falls toward a bed on the side.

"Let's see. What do we got
here?" Bill walks over and pulls dow'n the bed sheet. A stocky woman
wearing only a hairnet rolls over quickly and tries to hide her breasts. I get
queasy like I would reading violent pornography. Bill shines the light under
the bed and then crosses the room to check the closets.

"All right, he's not in
here," he announces to the rest of us. "Let's see what other rooms
they got in the house."

As he sweeps the beam around the
rest of the room, I manage to briefly catch Angel's eye. "This is
awful," I murmur.

"I know," Angel says as
he follows the others out of the room and into the hall. "But you can't
take any chances doing this. If somebody moves, you better know where they're
going."

Bill and the others are already in
another room down the hall. "Stop fucking around, Baum," Bill growls.
"Get in here already."

I arrive in the room to see one
officer on his hands and knees looking under a bed while Turner and the others
rifle more closets and pull a chest of drawers out from the wall. I hear the
whoosh and creak of water pipes overhead. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust
to the slightly better light in the room. Then I notice a six-year-old boy
cowering on the bed. He holds an old stuffed gray rabbit with one of its eyes
missing. I glance up and see his father, the small man in the boxer shorts and
black socks, looking at his boy imploringly from the corner. He seems to be
asking his son's forgiveness for allowing all this to happen.

James Ferguson is not here or
anywhere else in the building. We can't find anyone who's even heard of him.

"Well, what do you think so
far?" Bill asks me in the car afterward.

"It's not exactly an exercise
in civil liberties, is it?"

"Ah, get over it," Bill
says, lighting another cigar and tossing the next warrant into the backseat
where I'm sitting.

For the rest of the morning, we
stop by a dozen different buildings, starting at the northern tip of Manhattan
and working our way down. But most of the people we're looking for are not
around. At noontime, we get assigned to check in on a transfer case, a young
Italian woman in Queens. She got arrested last year for buying crack and we're
supposed to make a home visit to make sure she's still living at the same
address. We find her sixty-five-year-old father-in-law sitting on the steps
outside the two-story house in Forest Hills where he lives with the woman, his
son, and their five-year-old daughter.

"Stick around," the old
man tells me and Bill as he looks up at the midday sun and strokes a panting
brown Chihuahua. "She comes home for lunch this time every day. Can't
stand to miss her soap opera."

Bill pokes me in the side with his
blackjack, cuing me to ask a question. "Is your daughter-in-law staying
off drugs?" I say.

"Ask her yourself," the
old man says, closing the top button of his light blue bowling shirt.

Ten minutes later, his
daughter-in-law shows up wearing too much lipstick and distressed blue jeans.
"What the fuck're you guys doing here?" she says, barging up the
steps and into the house. "Don't I got enough problems with my regular probation
officer?"