Circle of Six Read Online Free PDF Page B

entrance. No one was getting in—no one was getting out. News crews were charging on foot up Lenox, cameramen stumbled as they shouldered their heavy equipment
    I heard Big Bertha approaching. Its bullhorn whistle reverberated throughout the cement canyons of Harlem. The cavalry had arrived. The end was near.

    Unit 1: No further West 116th. That's enough units on the scene. Authority sixth lieutenant.
    Unit 2: Central, has that been a definite shooting of a cop?
    Central: That's affirmative. Report of two patrolmen shot at this time.

    And then I saw a man walking through the crowd. His bold advance divided the masses in two. It was like Moses had appeared wearing a tailored suit. He was tall and tan with wavy salt and pepper hair. He looked like someone out of central casting, a throwback movie star from the forties. You couldn't tell who he was by his threads. Every cop he passed saluted. He was Chief of Detectives Albert Seedman— my boss .
    He entered the mosque, followed by three other unrecognizable suits. I figured arrests would happen, order would be restored, and I'd go back to being bored and burning up at my OP.

    Unit: 2-8 John to Central, K.
    Central: 2-8 John.
    Unit: The inspector of the division is here. They are going to set up temporary headquarters here and there have been two patrolmen shot, removed to the hospital, no further information.
11:49 A.M .
    Seven minutes had passed since the ten-thirteen was broadcast. Four cops had been savagely beaten, two of them possibly shot, and there were scores of extremely violent people locked down in an overtly militant mosque. The detective in me kicked in again. I had literally passed that mosque every day for years and not once was that door ever left unlocked or unguarded. Why was today special? Imagination, I believe, is crucial for detective work. You have to allow the most ridiculous possibilities, because most crimes, especially murder, turn out to be far stranger than the movies. Two imaginative scenarios would lead me to the same conclusion. The NYPD had been set up. Or maybe the mosque had been set up.
    This was now a working crime scene. I was still peripheral to the mosque, but I was impressed with the speed the police showed in locking down the building. Honestly, there wasn't much for me to do at the scene. The cops inside would handle the perps—the NYPD at its finest moment.
    I knew the injured cops had gone to St. Luke's, a world-class trauma center—due in part to its location—Harlem. Somebody had calculated that in the year 1971, the staff of surgeons at St. Luke's had operated on more trauma patients than any M.A.S.H. unit surgeons had in all of Southeast Asia. Another thing to recommend the place was that my father was the head building maintainer at there. The boys would get whatever they needed. I also knew my father had a direct hotline to the surgeons.
    I knew they could use me more at the hospital, interviewing the cops, giving blood, picking up family members, even a coffee run would be more helpful than standing outside the mosque. The thirteen had ended and I thought arrests were in the mail. But things were going to get much worse and keep on getting worse. This was just the beginning of a war—war that I was going to be directly in the middle of. This was just the beginning of five years of hell.

“RIOT, WHAT RIOT?”
    If there were truckloads of people in the streets before, there were boatloads by the time I got back to my car to drive to the hospital. So I ran. We had another UC (undercover) car parked along Manhattan Avenue, in case one of us was summoned back to base while walking the streets. I was breathless when I reached it, thrilled that it was in one piece. As I drove, I reflected on what had just happened. It was big, bigger than any thirteen I'd ever seen. I tried to suppress the memory of Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones, two brother cops executed by Twyman Meyers and the BLA. I was at the Harlem morgue when