Year of the Dragon (10 page)

PRECINCT COMMANDER. Only one perk came with the job usually, a spot near the station house in which to park his car. Powers would have to learn where that spot was. For today he did not want to be seen searching - to search is to display weakness - and so he parked in a lot that would cost him five dollars plus tax until closing time.

Approaching the station house on foot, he was like a penitent approaching a shrine. It was as if the place itself had the power to heal, and would perhaps make him whole again. Since it was early, the sidewalk was in gloom The sun was still stuck to the cornices high above. The produce stalls were still being set up outside the shops. Tanks of live fish were being carried out onto the sidewalks. Chinese kids wearing aprons were brooming out the insides of stores.

The station house stood in a row of tenements on Elizabeth Street. It was one of the oldest in the city, built in the 1880s. Except for the flag hanging above the street and the double-parked police cars - and waiting news crews - it was indistinguishable from the tenements around it.

The news crews, Powers saw, guarded the entrance in phalanxes, one to the right, another to the left. They lurked like beggars wanting something from him, and he had to decide quickly how much, if anything, to give. He felt like an athlete coming up to the starting blocks. He needed a good start at all costs. But the rules for his event had not been written. What constituted a good start, what a poor one? He did not know.

Since the illusion of confidence was more important than confidence itself, he quickened his pace. As he climbed the stoop microphones were thrust into his face, and questions were slung at him sharp as knives. He knew he must not be seen to flinch - or get skewered either. Managing a warm smile, he ignored all questions, murmuring only, I’ve got nothing to say now, I’ll be glad to talk to you later when I’ve learned something about my new command, thank you, excuse me, thank you,” and he trotted past them.

He had a satchel with him that he set down inside the door. He was inside the sanctuary, his station house. Though it had seen a hundred years of crime and degradation it had also given scores of previous commanders this same feeling of sanctuary. How had their lives been, Powers asked himself. But he imagined he knew the answer. Precinct commanders were only cops with bars on their shoulders, and most of them, just like ordinary cops, were terrified of their superiors, and terrified also of running afoul of some citizen with clout. And so most previous commanders had cowered inside this place for most of the hours or years of their command. Cops on patrol from the beginning until now had had to make the life-and-death decisions by themselves, while their commanders had hid out in here; this was a commander’s second perk, to evade responsibility, if he wished, totally. Which was the time-honored way to survive in the New York Police Department, Powers knew. A commander could do very little to alter crime patterns anyway and a precinct would run well enough by itself. A captain who managed his paper work and who otherwise merely hid out was safer and probably wiser than one who came in determined to institute reforms, to improve the life of the community. On a realistic level a station house was not a shrine, not a sanctuary. It was more like a cavalry post. The commander was isolated inside his fort. To go outside was to court possible, even probable ambush, for there were hordes out there who didn’t like him and who would overwhelm him if they could.

A sergeant sat behind what was called the desk but was actually a counter ten yards long. Powers headed toward it across the broad-board floor over which so many platoons of cops had marched, so many prisoners been dragged. The boards rang to his footsteps. Stepping up onto the dais and behind the desk, he signed the blotter. No bands played, no salute was fired. Nonetheless it was with this banal act that he officially took command.

“They want to come inside, Captain.” Powers looked up sharply. It was the cop on security duty at the door. He stood with his back against it, holding it shut against the newsmen outside.

“No one comes in here,” said Powers. His first order. He took a deep breath and felt much better. “Sergeant, send some men out there and disperse them. Do it gently.”

He stepped across into his office. A small square room with a desk and two chairs. It had a single very grimy window. A barren place. It was like a stage without scenery, a library without books. New books would have to be written by him. Water stains showed like old sweat high up in the armpits of the room, and cigarette stains scarred the desk top. He opened each of the desk drawers. They were as empty as his future. He would have to furnish this place, ornament it with trophies. To close himself in here was for him not a realistic choice. He would have to go out into the community and bring back trophies of one kind or another. He had avoided the first trap set for him, the press outside. He had made no rash statements. He was going to need cooperation to succeed - from the PC, from Chief Duncan, even from Chief Cirillo, probably. He could not afford to antagonize them further. When they turned on the TV news tonight they would not see his face for very long, if at all. They could not get angry over the few words he had spoken. The score was in his favor so far. No victories yet, but no defeats either.

Through the open door he could hear a platoon of cops lining up in front of his desk. The eight-to-four tour was about to go out. He went out into the muster room, mounted the platform, and looked down on about thirty men. One or two were in their forties. A few pot bellies. Most were young cops in their late twenties, men, he judged, with no knowledge of or interest in their constituents, the Chinese.

“Ten-hut,” bawled the desk sergeant. The men snapped to attention in two long ranks. They wore short-sleeved blue shirts and regulation caps - the uniform of the day.

Powers tried to decide what to say to them. Cops became very cynical very fast. They hated bosses - and Powers now was their boss - because bosses were men who hid out in offices, sticking cops with the risk, taking credit if there was any, avoiding, at all costs, blame. In addition, most cops counted their own experiences as real and vital and all other police experience, especially desk experience, as being in some way fraudulent. They would respond to and respect only street cops like themselves. Powers knew this, he knew that it was useless to talk to them in terms of sacrifice or service or trying harder. He’d have to prove first that he was a street cop himself. This would take time, but he’d best begin now. “Nothing I could say would impress you,” he said, and made his voice go hard. “Just remember this.’ I was on the street more years than most of you have been on the job. For the time being, nothing changes. The sectors, the foot posts, remain the same. When I learn my way around the precinct, I’ll order changes, not before.”

He stepped back. “Sergeant-”

“Right face.” It was the patrol sergeant this time. “Forward march.”

The platoon filed out. The news crews, Powers noted through the door, were now across the street, filming the cops as they came out.

During Powers’ brief address the midnight-to-eight tour had straggled in, rough men moving in pairs, pairs as united as brothers, as united as married couples, united in hostility against any common enemy, real or imagined. Some of them had paused to appraise him., Gear clacking like medieval knights, leather creaking like a sheriffs posse, most had filed straight through and up the stairs to their lockers. They knew who he was but chose to ignore him. For them it was as if he didn’t exist.

Powers gave them five minutes to collect up there, then climbed the stairs and in an open space called them together: thirty hostile cops in various stages of undress. He made the same speech again. A number of men eyed him carefully. Others avoided any eye contact at all. Most, as he talked, went on changing their clothes so that the noise of slamming lockers punctuated his sentences. At the end he nodded curtly, as if dismissing them, and went back down the stairs and into his office. He hadn’t dismissed them at all, only himself.

The administrative lieutenant, Motherwell, stood with an armload of file folders beside the desk. He was a prissy, corpulent fellow. There was no time to accord him more than a glance. Powers sat down and opened the first of the folders. He saw he had 209 cops assigned to him, and eleven radio cars. Someone in the past had divided the precinct into eleven sectors, one for each car, and he began studying how they were laid out. There were foot posts as well. After a time he scanned the roster, looking for names he might know from the past. He found six that were familiar, none in any sense a friend. None could be counted on for help. He was completely alone here.

Motherwell still stood beside the desk.

Noting that the precinct investigative unit was headed by a Detective Kelly, Powers sent Motherwell to get him. There was a small alcove off his office and, while waiting, he changed to civilian clothes out of the satchel he had brought with him.

“Detective Kelly is here, sir,” called Motherwell.

Powers poked his head back into the office.

“That will be all, Lieutenant.”

He came out of the alcove with his brown sports coat over his arm. “How long have you worked out of this precinct, Kelly?”

“Twelve years, sir.”

Kelly was in his middle forties. Florid-faced. A harder man than Motherwell. There was nothing else Powers could tell about him merely from looking. People were not furniture or trees. One could not judge their strength and/or utility at a glance.

“Speak any Chinese?”

“No sir.”

“All right, Kelly, show me Chinatown.”

On Catherine Street the detective led the way into a tenement where, just inside the door, they found themselves staring at a rat. It stood on the second step of the stairs. Kelly simultaneously stomped his foot and slapped the banister. The rat scurried through a hole in the baseboard, and they started up toward the sound of humming. The entire building was vibrating. The stairs seemed to become more rickety the higher they climbed and in the dim light Powers could see that lathes showed through the broken plaster wall. At the landing Kelly pushed open a door. About fifty Chinese women sat at sewing machines. The humming came from their machines. It sounded like the violin section of an orchestra. The women sat under neon lights and pushed bolts of cloth through under the needles. They were working fast. The entire floor was taken up by the machines, and there was no ventilation. Windows front and back had been boarded up, and the air was so foggy from lint that many of the women wore surgical masks across their mouths. Some had toddlers sitting on piles of cloth beside their machines. A number of ten- and twelve-year-old Chinese kids were working too. They heaped bundles of finished clothing into bins.

“This place is in violation of the fire laws, obviously, Kelly said. “It’s also in violation of the child labor laws, the minimum wage laws, and health and safety codes. None of those violations come under our jurisdiction, as you know. These women probably work twelve hours a day. They get paid probably for eight hours a day. That’s the way things are done in Chinatown. The boss punches out for all of them, after which they go right on working. The Labor Department may have a civil suit going against this place, provided they’ve been able to find out who owns it.”

Lint hung in the air like snow.

“Who does own it?” asked Powers.

“According to our information, a syndicate of four Chinese businessmen, all of them directors of the Nam Soong Tong. We’d never find the documents to prove it though.”

“I see,” said Powers.

“The clothing manufactured here is sold principally in the garment district uptown, which is controlled, as you know, principally by Jews. People think Jews own the sweatshops in Chinatown too, but they don’t. The Chinese own them.”

“I see,” said Powers.

“There are about five hundred sweatshops like this in Chinatown,” said Kelly. “The last I heard, the Labor Department had ten inspectors to check the entire city. That doesn’t leave too much of a share for Chinatown. Very few of these women speak English. Most of them are probably illegal aliens. They know they are being exploited. They just can t do anything about it.”

Kelly let the door swing closed.

“There are four more floors just like this one,” Kellv said. “Want to see them?”

“I’ve seen enough,” said Powers. “Where are the gambling dens?”

“Usually in cellars. I’ll point them out as we walk along.”

In crowded Chinatown, commerce flourished not only at street level, but also one level down. Most cellars, Powers saw, had been converted into businesses and shops, and from them staircases led directly up to the sidewalk’ Walking along, he peered down stairwells into open barber shops and laundries, and also at the closed steel doors to gambling dens.

Then for an hour he sat parked in Kelly’s car watching the entrance to the den at 61 Mott Street. The sun was higher. It had dropped like a scaffolding part-way down the buildings, painting the walls in bright broad strokes, painting lower, painting quickly. The still gloomy sidewalks were already crowded. Faces hurried along, few of them white, which to Powers was still surprising and slightly confusing. This was New York, but the people who lived here belonged to a different world, one he had never looked at closely before.