Slow Motion Riot (23 page)

For about the last three nights
running, the lead story on the eleven o'clock news has been the Darryl King
shoot-out and its aftermath. The format's almost always the same. First they
show a clip of those wounded cops being carried out of the building on stretchers.
Then they cut to the regular patrol car parked outside the building on
Frederick Douglass Boulevard where Darryl usually lived with his mother. Then
they talk about how at least 125 officers are taking part in a massive manhunt
around the playgrounds, courtyards, bars, lobbies, friends' homes, and street
corners where he was known to hang out.

In the meantime, the rumors have
been getting started. The first one came out of the police public information
department. I think what happened is that somebody there thought he saw Darryl
standing behind the police commissioner in a picture of an outdoor awards
ceremony. They actually investigated this, on the theory that Darryl was
following the police commissioner around because that was the least likely place
for anybody to look for him. That lead turned out to be false, but then another
rumor started that Darryl had been seen walking the streets of Harlem in drag.
That tip turned out to be wrong too, and I read somewhere that the cops picked
up one very ugly and angry woman, who's filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against
the city for harassment.

But what really turns up the heat
is something that happens two days after the big Darryl King shoot-out.

Early in the morning, police got a
tip that Darryl had been seen hanging around the housing projects behind Mount
Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side.

A team from the Emergency Service
Unit was sent over with rifles and bulletproof vests, and several officers came
from the Technical Assistance Response Unit. A hostage negotiator was
dispatched and a dozen squad cars were assigned as backup. In one of them was a
rookie named Bryan Hopkins.

At twenty-one, Hopkins was still
trying to get over the fact that he couldn't be a lifeguard for the rest of his
life. He'd grown up in outermost Suffolk County and spent so much time on the
beach that when he did bother showing up at school, he had ta go straight to
the infirmary to deal with all the little skin cancers and windburns he'd
developed. In his entire life, he'd talked to perhaps two black people, and one
of them was an instructor at the Police Academy. His uncle Artie, a homicide
detective in Queens, had helped him get into the department. And every day that
Hopkins found himself patrolling these strange ghetto streets, like a visitor
to another planet, he cursed his uncle silently and swore he'd never forgive
him.

As he sat in the patrol car now,
listening to his partner and the radio shows talking about Darryl King, he
cursed again and felt himself tense up inside. He would've preferred to stay
there parked by the curb all morning. The other teams seemed to be doing a good
enough job searching the first three red brick buildings in the project without
his help. And when word came over the walkie-talkie that there was no sign of
Darryl here, Hopkins relaxed a little. Now, he figured, he could get back to
the serious business of hanging out in the back of a bodega, drinking beer with
his partner, a twelve-year veteran named Franco who claimed to have relatives
in the Mafia.

But then the sergeant came by and
said people on the first floor of one of the buildings had reported a couple of
burglaries the night before and they suspected one of the kids who lived in the
building might be responsible. The sergeant told Hopkins to go take some
statements from them. The rookie swallowed twice and blinked nervously, like a
man about to be lowered into a shark tank.

Jamal Perkins lived on the first
floor of the third building. Every morning when his mother saw him off to
school, she thought of the bumper cars she used to ride at the Coney Island
amusement park. Sending her son out into the world was like trying to navigate
a car around that track without having someone smash into you. He could get hit
from any angle. Somebody in his class could start him selling drugs. There
could be a scuffle on the subway platform and he'd get stabbed by a mugger. A
stray bullet might hit him when he was just talking to somebody on the corner.
Or he could end up like his uncle James, tied up with a bunch of low-life winos
and thieves, in and out of prison all the time, and dead from cirrhosis of the
liver at twenty-eight.

Just watching him cross the street
in the morning sometimes, she'd get so scared that her asthma would act up on
her and she'd have to sit down awhile.

But if it hadn't been smooth
sailing so far, at least nothing had happened that couldn't be undone. At
sixteen, he was turning out to be a tall handsome boy with a dazzling smile
that the girls all liked. If he was mainly interested in hip-hop and basketball
now, that was all right because he was doing well enough in school to make
college a real possibility. That foolishness with the stolen car was a long
time ago, now, and the judge had understood it was the other boy's idea and
Jamal was just along for the ride. Once he was out of the city, she could stop
worrying. She knew she shouldn't expect too much from him, because he hated
pressure. He had the brains to be a lawyer if he ever applied himself. But
she'd be proud if he could just get an apartment of his own.

Hopkins, the rookie, was talking to
people down at the south end of the first floor, but his mind was on what he'd
heard on the radio about Darryl King. Six cops he'd shot and they still hadn't
found him. These black people Hopkins was talking to now were acting like they
wanted him to help them with their burglaries, but he just knew they hated him
too and would shoot him the second he turned his back. He smiled uneasily and
didn't take in a single word they were saying.

Out of the corner of his eye, he
noticed someone leaving an apartment at the other end of the hall. He turned
and saw a black kid. Thinking as fast as he could, Hopkins tried to size up the
situation. The kid seemed to be about the same age as Darryl King and he was
black for sure too. Hopkins made the decision right then. He'd tell the kid to
stop and if the kid looked like he was reaching for a gun, Hopkins would draw
his service revolver. You only had a second to react to these things the older
guys said. Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.

Jamal Perkins was listening to
Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative" on his Toshiba Walkman when he saw the
people at his end of the hall gesturing wildly at him. They seemed to be
telling him to stop. A voice behind him was yelling something too. He figured
he better turn off the music so he could hear what everyone was saying. He
reached into his pocket and felt around for the stop button on the tape player.
Then he turned toward the flash of light coming from the other end of the hall.

I guess part of what's exceptional
about this case is that the kid was only wounded, instead of being killed like
a lot of the other black youths over the past few years. That's a good thing in
the long run, of course, but what's funny is that the day after his shooting I
start noticing that the myth of Darryl King is getting out of hand. In the
beginning, it's just a couple of pieces of graffiti around town saying things
like Darryl K. All the Way and Free Darryl King (though there's no way to free
Darryl King since he's not in prison). Then I get home, turn on the radio, and
hear a black college station dedicating Public Enemy's rap song, "Don't
Believe the Hype" to Darryl and wishing him Godspeed from Allah.

I suppose I can understand this in
a way. People are upset about that Perkins kid getting hurt, and given the
history of the criminal justice system in this town, they don't expect a cop to
be convicted for shooting a black youth. So they figure Darryl was just evening
the score ahead of time. But if you really think about that, it doesn't make
sense; Darryl didn't know that kid and he didn't shoot those cops out of any
sense of justice. He did it because he didn't want to get locked up.

But at the moment, you can't tell
that to anybody. Despite their offer of a ten-thousand-dollar reward, the cops
aren't getting much cooperation from the community in their search. Everybody's
too busy going to rallies and marches for Jamal Perkins and protesting the
Manhattan D.A.'s reluctance to press for an attempted murder indictment against
that bone-head cop who shot him. Now there's a rumor going around that Darryl
is getting shelter and food from strangers in Harlem and Brooklyn.

As for me, I've been keeping my
head down, hoping no one will remember that Darryl was my client. I've gotten a
couple of decidedly cool looks in the locker room in the morning, but other
than that, nothing. Andrea didn't even mention it when I saw her in the hall
the other day, but then again, things have been a little strained between us
and a lot's been left unsaid.

Out in the field, though, we've
been hearing about Darryl all the time. One decrepit apartment on Adam Clayton
Powell Jr. Boulevard is like a shrine to him, with his black-and-white mug
shots from the newspaper up on the walls next to the headlines. A shot of that
kid Jamal Perkins is taped to one of the other walls, and looking at it, I'm
glad the kid's going to be all right. The guy we're looking for isn't here, but
we stick around to watch the beginning of the noon newscast on Channel 2. As
soon as the announcer says a story is coming up about Darryl King and the
police, the two eight-year-old boys watching the show in the apartment give
each other high-fives.

"He smoked their shoes,"
one says to the other excitedly.

"Fuck the police!" says
his little friend.

It doesn't do any good to yell at
them. These days Darryl gets respect. "The only thing black folks hate
more than drug dealers is cops," Bill tells me later in the car. "And
your boy Darryl done shot both of them."

This whole notion makes me
distinctly uncomfortable. I wish I could tell people what Darryl was really
like the times I've met him. But I wonder if it would do any good. "I
guess people have their own reasons for identifying with Darryl," I say,
working out a backseat rationalization as a bus steers by us. "I'd be
pretty upset about the cop shooting that Perkins kid."

"Why?" Bill asks with a
completely straight face.

"The kid didn't have a
gun."

"What would you have
done?" Bill says irritably. "You're standing in a dark hallway and
homeboy reaches in like he's packing an Uzi or something. You got one second to
decide if you wanna live or not. I know what I'd do."

"That wasn't a bad kid,
Bill."

"Never a doubt, Baum," he
says. "Never a doubt."

I keep expecting him to turn around
and tell me this is all a put-on or a litmus test to see how I'll react. But he
doesn't. He just gives me that same look my father gives me when he talks about
how he survived the Holocaust. Like I just don't know anything. I start
squirming around and trying to find a way to change the subject.

Fortunately, Angel does that for
me. "I know somebody who's talked to the cop who shot the Perkins kid over
at Psych Services," he tells us. "She says he may have a narcissistic
personality disorder."

"What a crock of shit,"
Bill says to him. "The guy's got kitty litter for brains."

They both laugh. As the afternoon
sun burns on, Angel steers the car east on 125th Street past the Apollo and the
State

Office Building, a sheer slab of
concrete and glass stubbed down haphazardly in the middle of Harlem. Bill turns
and asks him if he's going to stop by the house over the weekend for a cookout.
The Four Seasons song "Let's Hang On (to What We Got)" plays on the
radio. Bill, the black Vietnam veteran, and Angel, the Puerto Rican ex-gang
member, sing along with the old white group's hit record.

For a moment, I feel kind of left
out. Over these past couple of weeks, I've developed real affection for these
guys. They've taught me how to get myself in and out of dangerous situations
and treated me almost like a baby brother. I wouldn't mind seeing them outside
of work, but now I'm beginning to realize there are too many barriers. They're
black and Hispanic; I'm white. They live in the suburbs; I'm in the city. They
came of age in the 1960s; I'm still learning. They're both married with
families; I'm on my own. I guess it's unlikely that we'll ever really be friends.

Just to make conversation, I ask
Bill how he thought people would react if the cops Darryl shot had died.

"They'd have a statue for
Darryl up by tonight," Bill says, lighting a fresh cigar and propping up
his injured leg on the dashboard.

They nod and give each other
knowing looks. I feel more white and ignorant than usual.

It happens that on this day, we
actually have an assignment at a housing project near the one where that
Perkins kid got shot. A guy called Bill Blass was arrested for possessing a
small quantity of marijuana there last week and was let go. But since he's
already on probation for a robbery, we get to pick him up as a violator.

There are signs of trouble almost
as soon as we park the car. From the backseat, I can see a bed sheet hanging
out the window of the front building with "Darryl K. ALL THE WAY"
scrawled on it. It reminds me a little of the old Banner Nights at Shea Stadium.

The three of us get out of the car.
"This skell's in the building at the back," says Bill, pausing on the
sidewalk to put out his cigar and double-check the file.

The project is made up of six
five-story buildings that started off red brick, but have been turned almost
gray by the New York City air. Some municipal architecture genius has arranged
them into an odd, cluttered hexagonal configuration, so that we have to walk
through a courtyard past the five other buildings to get to the one in the
back. Something about the courtyard tile under our feet and the baking sun
overhead makes me think of a giant oven.