Now I was in the cruiser, not cruising, but cuffed and uncomfortable. One blue to my left, the same cop who first searched me; one blue to my right, the young frightened rookie. Nightstick blue was driving up front. The stern stout blue was riding shotgun. Loud police radio reports and orders coming in and out. No oxygen in the car, just heat. Serious-faced cops, even their body language and breathing was pure intimidation.
“How does it feel, asshole?” The nightstick cop broke the silence. I was blank-faced and facing front. “Can you believe this fucker?” the same cop, the driver, said. “He doesn’t show us the respect of a response even though he’s caught in our monkey trap.” They all laughed.
“I think the nigger’s deaf,” the searching cop right beside me announced loud and clear in my ear. I didn’t flinch.
“Must be,” the arresting stern cop said. “We’ll have to talk to him with our fists and guns. He’ll understand that,” he threatened, and the backseat cops chuckled.
“No, seriously, you know Officer Moldonado? The Spanish guy with the deaf sister who speaks only in grunts? He’s sensitive about all the handicaps. He was on foot post, tailing this perpetrator right here, said he showed no signs that he could hear what was happening around him. Moldonado is supposed to apprehend this guy. He protects him instead. Lets the perp walk right out in front of him and disappear into thin air.”
“Fucker might be deaf but he ain’t blind. When I had my nine-mm pointed at his head and told him to get down, he dropped down like a prostitute,” nightstick cop said. They all broke out in laughter. I didn’t move.
Silence is discipline. Even while being provoked, lied to, lied on, insulted, and maligned.
“I just want to thank him for the overtime. I needed the dough. I’m ready to question him all night,” the rookie blue said.
“Me too,” the searching cop agreed.
I’m thinking these big white-boy cops ain’t from Brooklyn. The way they’re talking and their accents, they weren’t from any close-by place. Probably poor white boys from upstate farms who caught a job that armed them, then paid them more than they could ever earn from their own intelligence.
Police cruiser I’m in, gets cut off by a speeding black Plymouth. All heads yanked forward then slammed backwards after the nightstick cop driver reacted to the shock and rammed the brakes, barely avoiding a collision.
“Fucking bastards!” he said as he jumped out of the cruiser at the same time as his front-seat partner.
“Don’t fucking move,” left blue in the backseat warned me with heated anxiety, “or you’ll end up in the morgue.” The crooked cruiser was paused right there in the middle of the street blocking all cars behind us. Both backseat cops remained seated on either side of me. The two trash-talking blues began barking on the two Plymouth pushers soon as they jumped out of their vehicle. They were all shouting and strapped.
All cops, all four of them, I thought while watching their every move through the cruiser windshield. Otherwise the uniformed cops would’ve popped and locked them two plainclothes ones easily for speeding through the red light, for cutting off the cop cruiser and causing the traffic foul-up, and even for getting out of their Plymouth, walking towards the uniformed cops, and looking them in their eyes and mouthing off. If the two Plymouth guys were not cops, if they were regular civilians, the cops would’ve killed them for that handful of violations. Killed them first and called it justifiable later.
Now the two blues beside me opened their back doors; each placed one foot on the ground but didn’t get out. The rookie cop was on his walkie-talkie calling for backup. I observed that frightened cops are the most dangerous. Their fears and their imagination link up, and before you know it, there will be bodies everywhere. The uniformed blue who had arrested me was chest-to-chest with the plainclothes cop. “Hey! Back off! This is ours. We cuffed and collared him,” his partner yelled as the four who had already been arguing were now shoving one another around and about to go to blows.
Some decorated captain showed up in a third vehicle, fucking up the already fucked-up traffic jam even further. A couple of drivers were forced to drive their otherwise deadlocked vehicles onto the sidewalk, to clear the way for the captain. Almost one in the morning; luckily there were no pedestrians. I knew it wasn’t because no one was outside walking. Once late-night pedestrians peeped it was the po-po, they’d opt to take a detour on foot rather than encounter them.
The cop crew was out there for almost an hour before they made a decision. Left blue was out of the cruiser now, rerouting traffic around the cop beef. Right backseat blue, the rookie, was still beside me, inflating with anger as he watched the uniformed cops fighting and losing in the loud negotiation he could see clearly through the cruiser windshield.
“Get the fuck out the car!” The nightstick cop who had been driving and then arguing screamed on me. He had returned with the saltiness of an athlete who had just lost the NHL hockey championship game after an undefeated season, and by only one shot. When I did not move, the still seated rookie blue pushed me forcefully, then jumped out the cruiser himself. Now all uniforms were out of the car standing in the street, leaning in on all sides, ordering me to move. I didn’t speak. I didn’t move. Left blue had already said that if I moved one muscle, the next stop was the morgue.
Pushed and then pulled and dragged out of the car where everyone could see me, I balanced myself on my feet, hands still cuffed tightly behind me. I was turned over to the two detectives in plainclothes, who walked on either side of me, then mashed my head down until I was seated in the backseat of their Plymouth. Doors slammed shut and they screeched off at a high speed for a short distance.
Commotion at the 77th Precinct, I was cuffed and seated. A fat-fingered cop attempted to type, while another stood over me.
“Name?” the fat cop asked me. I stared ahead, blank-faced. “Name,” he repeated, then paused, waiting for me to jump at his command. “Name, name, name, name?” The volume of his voice was steadily increasing, his fat head flushed now with a maroon color. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed.
“Maybe we should name him Jesus Christ,” the standing officer said straight-faced, and other cops seated at their own desks dealing with their own matters laughed.
“Cómo se llama?” An officer from across the room stood up from his desk and walked over to where I was being held. He was serious-faced but even-tempered. Seemed like he really suspected that he was speaking a language that I understood. But I didn’t.
“De dónde eres?” he questioned, attempting to look me in the eye. I continued to stare forward, still blank.
“He’s obviously not Spanish!” the officer who had been standing over me the whole time said. “They ain’t got no Spanish people that black! No offense, Officer Ruiz,” they clowned the Spanish-speaking officer for trying.
Officer Ruiz didn’t answer back to the ignorant cop. He probably knew what anyone with common sense knows. There are black-skinned people all over the world, speaking any and every language that has ever been spoken. Just then I recalled the Senegalese brothers whom I met in Tokyo. They spoke that Japanese fluently, like it was their father tongue. They could switch from speaking Japanese to Wolof, to Italian to even German, like it wasn’t nothing, and they were black Africans, skin as black as mine.
“This asshole won’t get the benefit of doubt from me. He hears and he understands and he speaks English. Let me walk him into a side room,” the uniformed cop standing over me said. He wanted a reaction. Seemed to think I was supposed to start blabbering because he threatened to take me to the side room.
That’s all they could do, I thought to myself. I had emptied my pockets of a slim stack of hundreds, a thick pile of twenties, and of all of my personal belongings. I also handed my gym bag, my cash, and identification to my second wife and told her to bury it in a place that only she knew, and where it could not be found. When she and I parted, I purposely had only my nine, three twenty-dollar bills, and one clean white
washcloth on me.
“Address?” the obese typing cop asked me. Getting no response, he leaned back in his chair. “I’ll give you one more chance before I hand you over for your private meeting, in a side room,” he threatened. “Address?” he repeated. “Date of birth?” He switched his question. Completely frustrated, even though he had just got started, he pushed himself backwards and away from his desk, the chair wheels squeaking like they were alive and crying for mercy beneath his heavy weight. “Goddamn it, throw him in the holding cell till he talks,” the fat-fingered cop concluded while blowing out a blast of hot air and rising up slowly, then wobbling away.
The cop left standing over me leaned in close to my ear. His breath was the odor of shit and his spit splashed out his venom.
“That guy right there is a good cop,” he said, referring to the fat one. “The kind who gives knuckleheads like you a second chance. He cares whether you’re a juvenile or not. That’s why he wants your date of birth, for your own good. He even takes care of his kids. Why don’t you cooperate with him? Tell him when that bitch you call momma dropped a fatherless son of a bitch like you out of her filthy fucking hole.”
The fat cop looked back at the angry officer from across the room as though he wanted to know what the other had said to me. Then he disappeared.
“It’s against the law to be outside without identification,” the shit-breath cop said, now looking down on me. “And that’s not the only charge you’re facing . . . There’s failure to stop and obey an officer’s command, resisting arrest, fleeing from a crime scene . . .”
Then I knew. To hold me, they would grab at any charge. They would lie and make things up, and they did. I did not resist arrest. I did not defend myself. I had been silent and still. To me, that meant they were desperate and had not found the murder weapon yet, or an eyewitness to the murder, or any solid evidence. Instead, they needed me to incriminate myself, to make the major charges stick.
“Get up,” the officer ordered. I stood.
* * *
Behind bars but no longer cuffed. It was crowded in their holding cell, dudes hugging the bench the same way they do on the block. Cool, I walked to the far right corner and squatted, my back against the wall, one of my usual thinking positions.
“What size you wear?” some nigga standing and staring at my Nike Jordans asked me. I stood up like I was about to cooperate. Halfway to standing with my back still against the wall, I kicked him and he flew backwards into the next man. He leapt up and now they were both glaring. I gave ’em the deadpan stare. Let’s face it: we each knew we were all empty pockets and not holding. Hand-to-hand they would have no wins against me. Besides, I knew they didn’t want none. I could see it in their eyes. They did what punks do. They backed down and went back to their nonsense. One of ’em picked a new vic; maybe that guy would believe him. I didn’t.
Squatting again with my eyes wide open, I was traveling into my mind, setting and cleaning it up. First I had to empty out the anger and the fury and the rage. It was much less than before the murder no doubt, but even the amount remaining was a red fog that blocked me from precise, clear, and new thoughts. I was quietly inhaling and exhaling, shaking it off, lowering my blood pressure. At the same time, I was attempting to discipline my eyes not to keep checking the clock that was lodged into the wall outside the cell.
“While in captivity,” my sensei had taught me in one of my many private ninjutsu lessons, “never obsess over time. It is a form of self-torture. Use your memories of the past. Relive them in your mind. Stretch each memory out, even the ones that only lasted a few minutes in real life, and relive each of those memories for days at a time. A man with no memories of happiness and pleasure, or family, friendship, and adventure, will be conquered by imprisonment, conquered by time, and conquered by his captors.”
Faces and bodies in the holding cell kept changing. Some were released, others transferred to hospitals or central booking or wherever.
In the stench of blood, shit, and piss, my aim was to calm myself completely. I had considered whether this was a physical battle or a mental one. I concluded that it was both. It had to be physical, because I am confined. It had to be physical, because I had been nightsticked and dragged and electrocuted by the cops.
A mental battle, I had learned young, was tougher than a physical one. As I surveyed my surroundings, I was swiftly realizing that my mind, which was accustomed to being challenged, to learning and hearing various languages and actively solving problems and handling and conducting business and seeking out new and exciting things, was now imprisoned in a small and dirty place with small-minded, stupid, crazy, and backward men who could neither learn anything nor teach anything or even communicate effectively to one another in their own English language. Their vocabulary was limited to mumblings, curses, insults, screams, and corruption, and there was no light to be had from any of them, the police or the captured. I told myself that my mental battle would be to keep my mind strong, while being surrounded by the weak. I had to keep learning and growing day-to-day without any teachers or true examples. I had to remain active and increasing in knowledge. Moreover, I had to maneuver and outthink the cops. Even though I had considered owning up to the murder, I knew it mattered what I revealed and what I concealed, how much evidence I allowed them to collect and confirm. Yeah, I slaughtered the sucker, but the details of how that happened would determine how much time I would have to serve. The less time the better. Especially because I merked a joker who was a lesser man.
I know these Americans believe that “all men are created equal.” I don’t. I believe all men are created, period. And each man makes choices and takes action one way or another. What a man chooses to do or not to do is the only way to measure his worth. A man who chooses to love is not equal to a man who chooses not to love. A man who builds is not equal to a man who destroys. A man who protects is not equal to a man who offends and assaults women, children, and defenseless people. A man who thinks and solves problems is not equal to a thoughtless man who makes mischief and problems and who is himself a problem. Nah, not equal at all. How could a lazy man of excuses be equal to a hardworking man? How could an undisciplined man be equal to a man who is disciplined, who is straight, who resists temptation, addiction, and gluttony? He can’t be equal. Those are my thoughts, my beliefs and my answer, and I’m one hundred percent certain. So now that the lesser man is deceased, I thought to myself, I gotta accept my punishment for doing the murder deed, but that punishment should be equal to the worth of the man I slaughtered. The more worthless he was, the less time I should serve. That’s justice to me.
“You, let’s go,” a cop suddenly called me out. “Put your hands between the bars.” He cuffed me and then opened the gate to let me out.
Escorted into a small room with a table, four chairs, and a video camera mounted on a tripod, I checked there was nothing but one blackened glass window, one same door to enter and exit, and no pictures or artwork or certificates or degrees displayed on the walls. There was a clock, though, embedded in the wall, large and circular and impossible not to notice or watch. Matter of fact, the precinct had clocks everywhere. For the cops, time is money, I thought to myself, recalling the rookie officer who was amped to be making overtime pay while dealing with my arrest and questioning in the dead of night. They love the clocks, ’cause with every tick-tock they was earning and no one else is making money while they’re in here except them. To the prisoner the clock is a slow poisoning, a device that confirms a man’s loss of control over himself, loss of control over his time. My sensei was correct. Staring at the clock just confirms the distance between a prisoner and his family and loved ones. Concentrating on that was a useless losing strategy.
New faces, one uniformed and two plainclothes cops, came in calculating, with their coffee cups in their hands. One of them threw a brown bag onto the table. The other cop opened it and pulled out a burger; I could tell from the smell. It was wrapped in white greasy paper and
accompanied by a red-and-white paper dish filled with fries and a can of grape soda.
“Sit down,” the uniformed cop ordered me. I sat. “We get that you ain’t the talkative type. We got that you ain’t got no name, because you’re a nobody. We agree. You are nobody. We don’t even want you here. But there’s only one way out. Give us the name and location of your bosses. If you don’t want to talk, just write it down.”
He pulled out a small pad of paper and a half pencil with no eraser, laid them down on the table, then pushed them over to my side. I didn’t reach for them, didn’t move. We sat in silence. I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about anyway. My bosses?
“Holy shit, it’s four a.m.,” the uniformed cop said with intensity. “We can transfer you out to a place where no matter how sleepy you get, you’ll be afraid to shut your eyes for fear of some nut crawling into your little dookey-hole.” I didn’t react. I didn’t say anything or move one muscle in my face or body.
“Your silence is assuring us that you are guilty. You did something criminal and you know it,” one plainclothes cop said. “There is a bunch of shit that we can pin on you. A busy Friday night in Brooklyn, a perp won’t talk, got no name, no address, no identification, six dollars, no alibi, no defense. We could match you up with anything, from pickpocketing to murder one. But that’s not what we’re trying to do here. We want the truth, the name of the players. If I was you I’d start talking real fast and real soon,” plainclothes number one said.
“I’ll handle this,” plainclothes number two said to number one. “You must be hungry,” he said to me, pushing the burger towards me and moving the grape soda within my reach. Inside I was laughing. These were the type of cops my man Ameer had told me about, who would come around the high school asking students to participate in the police lineup in exchange for a lemonade and a baloney sandwich. Like a police lineup was some type of legitimate after-school job and the police were friendly neighborhood employers.