From: Jacques Duprès, Deputy Commissioner Police Department Public Information Division
For Release: Immediately
On Saturday, April 4th inst. at 1:00pm., narcotics seized in 6, 955 arrests by the Police Department will be destroyed at the Department of Sanitation Incinerator on River Harb Drive at Houghton Street.
Included in the contraband to be destroyed is 24lbs, 4 ounces and 113 grains of heroin, valued at $24, 251, 875.
Cocaine Valued at $3, 946, 406, crack cocaine valued at $583, 000, marijuna valued at $221, 689, and other drugs and equipment to administer drugs, including LSD, opium, and hashish will also be destroyed.
THE CROWD WAS mostly black. The Deaf Man was counting on that. There were also whites in the crowd. The Deaf Man was counting on that as well. There were Hispanics in the crowd, and some Asians, but the Deaf Man considered them inessential to his plan. Most of the people in the crowd were young. This fit in perfectly with his scheme. Young males were quick to take offense and to seek reprisal; young girls were quick to urge mischief and to seek excitement. Fifty percent of the teenagers in this city carried guns. This was a well-publicized figure that had not escaped the Deaf Man’s attention. He knew that at an event as massive as the concert, a weapons check would be unlikely if not impossible. This was not a junior high school with a security guard at the door. This was a ten-acre meadow with a makeshift entrance marked by two pylons spaced some twenty feet apart and painted in alternating red, white, and blue stripes, with a security guard standing at each pylon, smiling benignly. But even if there was a weapons check, even if every young male who entered the concert site was unarmed, there would be a riot anyway.
The Deaf Man was counting on it because he knew human nature and he knew it would happen.
THE GIRLS INTERRUPTED their sound check when Sil came over to introduce Chloe to them. They were wearing the same overalls and high-topped boots the men were wearing, but the bibs on theirs seemed cut a bit more narrow to reveal generous breasts in tight blue T-shirts. Sex and violence, that was what Chloe guessed rap was all about, never mind the protest crap. Protest never sold a nickel’s worth of records. She’d have to tell that to Sil one day. Later. In the future.
The one named Grass, the prettier of the two, and the youngest—Chloe judged her to be no more than eighteen, nineteen—looked her up and down the way some men at the club did, gauging her, taking her measure, wondering if this was competition here, Sil holding to her hand so tight that way. Chloe figured the same as she had the night they’d had dinner together, when he’d mentioned her name so offhandedly: There was something going on between these two.
“Nice to meet you,” Grass said.
Her eyes met Chloe’s directly.
A challenge in them.
Little eighteen-year-old pisspants.
Chloe grabbed Sil’s hand tighter.
WHILE HE WAITED for Brown to come out of the men’s room, Carella looked over the squadroom bulletin board. Aside from the usual Wanted flyers, there were bits and scraps of everything from notices of changes in departmental rules and regulations, to a detailed reminder on how to administer the Miranda warnings; to a For Sale sign from an officer wanting to get rid of a ten-speed bike, to a flyer about aerobics and weight-lifting classes at the Headquarters Gym, to another flyer about the D.A. Easter Dance and another about the Emerald Society’s Celebrity Auction, and a…
For Release: Immediately
On Saturday, April 4th inst. at 1: 00pm., narcotics seized in 6, 955 arrests by the Police Department…
“Let’s go,” Brown said, and zipped up his fly as he came out of the men’s room.
THEY LET the crowd in at twelve noon.
The crowd streamed in between the red, white, and blue pylon markers, an orderly crowd here for a day’s outing in the sun. The promoters of the event had set up concessionaire trucks around the perimeter, so that all sorts of food and soft drinks were available, but many in the crowd had brought along their own sandwiches and some of them had brought bottles of beer and soda pop in ice coolers, and some of them were sipping mixed alcoholic drinks from plastic Gatorade bottles. There was the usual mad rush to grab space near the stage area, but on the whole this was a civilized crowd intent only on enjoying the day and the music. Nobody wanted a hassle here today. Nobody wanted to fight over who got closest to the performers.
This was going to be a good, sweet, sunshine-filled day.
THE CHIEF security officer’s name was Fred Bartlett. He was a burly man almost as tall and as wide as Brown, with a ruddy face and a nose that appeared to have been broken more than once. His flinty blue eyes said Don’t mess with me.
“I’ve seen crowds at any kind of event you’d care to name,” he told the detectives. “I worked security at baseball games and football games and hockey games and ice shows and pop concerts and folk concerts and rock concerts and even a concert Barbra Streisand done in her own backyard in L.A. I know when a crowd’s gonna be trouble and when it ain’t. I can spot a crowd gonna turn mean from the minute it comes in the place, whatever kind of place it may be, an arena, a concert hall, an ice-skating rink, or a park like this one today.”
“Uh-huh,” Brown said.
He was thinking the man was a blowhard.
“And I can tell you,” Bartlett said, “that this crowd here today is as peaceful as any kind of crowd you’d hope for. They’re all here to have a good time today. The sun don’t hurt. It’s about time spring really got here. That’s what you can sense with this crowd. It’s been a long hard winter and now spring is here and we’re all gonna sit back and enjoy it.”
“You haven’t received any threatening phone calls, have you?” Carella asked.
“Nothing.”
“Bomb scares, anything like that?” Brown said.
“Nothing,” Bartlett said.
“Anybody threatening to set a fire?”
“Nothing.”
Carella looked at his watch.
It was twelve-thirty sharp.
THE GARBAGE TRUCK made a sharp turn off the street leading to the river, and then paralleled the river for several blocks, Gloria at the wheel, the Deaf Man sitting beside her. Hanging on to either side of the truck were Carter and Florry. Each of the four was wearing the sanitation department uniform: baggy spruce-green trousers, T-shirt, and jacket. Under the jackets, each of the four had tucked into the waistband of the trousers a nine-millimeter semiautomatic Uzi assault pistol. The Israeli-made weapon carried a twenty-round magazine and, because it was designed to absorb recoil, could accurately fire all twenty rounds within seconds.
They were going in with eighty rounds of ammunition.
The Deaf Man figured that would be more than enough to do the job.
FROM WHERE chloe Chadderton sat on a folding chair on the left hand side of the stage, she saw someone she thought she’d known from another time, another life. The white detective who’d investigated her husband’s murder all those years ago. The good looking one with the slanted eyes that made him look like a Chink. Standing there with a brother bigger than a mountain, talking to a man in uniform almost as big. She couldn’t remember the detective’s name. Maybe she didn’t want to.
She looked at her watch.
It was twenty minutes to one.