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  CONTENTS

  Glossary

  Prologue—April 2008

  1. Bang! You’re Dead

  2. Long Island Iced Tea

  3. Frankie Maybe

  4. Shoot the Thug

  5. Dog Day Afternoon

  6. Pick a Pocket or Two

  7. When You’re In, You’re In

  8. Krusty

  9. Uncharted Waters

  10. It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

  11. Curious Cases of U.S. Code 18

  12. Arthur’s Theme

  13. End of Innocence

  14. The Sleep of the Just

  15. Justice Delayed

  16. Eyes Wide Open

  17. Cop Out

  18. You Can’t Stay Off the Grid

  19. Be Afraid, Scooby Doo

  20. Little by Little

  21. Scooby Doo, We Got You

  22. Don’t Forget to Duck

  Acknowledgments

  About Luke Waters

  To my wife Susan and our children, Tara, Ryan, and David

  GLOSSARY

  ADA:

  assistant district attorney

  ATF:

  Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

  AUSA:

  assistant United States attorney

  B&B:

  buy and bust

  CI:

  confidential informant

  CO:

  commanding officer

  CSU:

  Crime Scene Unit

  DEA:

  Drug Enforcement Administration

  DT:

  detective

  ECT:

  Evidence Collection Team

  EMS:

  Emergency Medical Services

  ESU:

  Emergency Services Unit

  GTO:

  geographical targeting order

  IAB:

  Internal Affairs Bureau

  IRS:

  Internal Revenue Service

  “Lou”:

  Lieutenant

  ME:

  medical examiner

  MOS:

  member of service

  NITRO:

  Narcotic Investigation and Tracking of Recidivist Offenders system

  NMI:

  Northern Manhattan Initiative

  OCCB:

  Organized Crime Control Bureau

  OP:

  observation post

  OT:

  overtime

  PPO:

  probationary police officer

  RICO:

  Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act

  RMP:

  Radio Motor Patrol

  RTCC:

  Real Time Crime Center

  RV:

  rendezvous point

  SWAT:

  Special Weapons and Tactics

  TAC:

  tactical assignment

  UC:

  undercover

  VFS:

  Violent Felony Squad

  PROLOGUE

  APRIL 2008

  “Central, stand by; ten-thirteen, stand by!” I call tersely into the handheld radio. The police channel which crackled with coded updates moments ago is silent.

  Thousands of police officers pause, waiting for my location.

  Those nearby will respond immediately with lights blazing, sirens wailing, pistols drawn to the most serious of all calls: “Officer needs assistance.”

  Updates on my position have to wait. My attention is focused on the large Hispanic man who has broken away from his three friends, the sunshine glinting off his chrome semiautomatic pistol. He raises it towards the crowd of men, lead pipes held aloft, who are approaching him and his companions—and he pulls the trigger.

  People scatter in all directions, including the gunman and his crew, who pile into a silver SUV which accelerates away from the curb with a squeal of tires. I take off on his tail, my cherry light, beloved of Kojak, beside my Kevlar vest and NYPD jacket in the trunk. Whatever I am about to face, it will be alone—while I handle this hot pursuit my partner is off duty, nursing a cold bottle of beer, working on tomorrow’s headache. So for now it’s just Luke Waters along with Messrs. Smith & Wesson.

  I know that I need to call in my location, but I struggle to juggle a gun in one hand and a radio in the other while steering the bouncing Buick as the speedometer needle tickles a hundred miles per hour and street signs blur.

  “Okay, Bronx Homicide, 165 and Westchester … fuck! … Central, silver Lincoln, New York plate, 165 pursuit … Da-vid-Frank-Will-iam … 627 … 167th Street … Lincoln Navigator … 167 and Intervale … 167 and Boston Road … Crotona Park … Fulton Avenue … shots fired! Shots fired! …”

  My car struggles to keep up with the SUV, and I pray that we don’t hit another car or a mother pushing a baby carriage as we blaze through lights and intersections, the driver in the Lincoln desperately trying to shake his pursuer.

  “Claremont Parkway … southbound on Third Avenue … male Hispanic in a white T-shirt with a silver semiautomatic pistol … southbound on Third Avenue 170 … ten-thirteen.” The gunman suddenly pulls to the side of the street and jumps from the car.

  I’m out of my vehicle and running, crouched and frantic.

  “Get the fuck on the ground! Eighty-four Washington and 170.”

  The radio goes silent again. Throughout the South Bronx every cop on duty waits for another update. I take a moment to catch my next breath, thankful that it’s not my last.

  “Bronx Homicide: negative on shots fired at MOS,” I gasp into the Motorola handset. The cavalry has arrived.

  The Lincoln is pulled up on the curb, its occupants lying facedown, breathing heavily through mouthfuls of asphalt and tar as they are cuffed by the officers already on the scene. I lean against the wall, my suit drenched in sweat, just knackered, offering a prayer heavenwards and a thumbs-up to the NYPD helicopter hovering above the rooftops.

  Washington Avenue is now crawling with dozens of cops, some in uniform and others with shields pinned to their shirts and jackets. Their pistols are pointed at the impetuous and foolhardy men and they scream at them to lie still, their abandoned cruisers flashing red, white, and blue across the startled street.

  The perps’ stupidity is good for the overtime, and the OT is the lifeblood of every detective. Cynical? Probably. But ultimately, that’s the way it really is.

  For cop and criminal alike, it’s not about that silver Lincoln pulled over on Washington Avenue or a guy with a gun who got his ass arrested. It’s about the game, the chase, the pictures of Presidents Lincoln and Washington and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin landing in your wallet at the end of the month. It’s about the cash hidden in some bus station locker or tucked away in a pension plan at the end of your career. Just depends which team you played for and the rules you played by. It’s all about “the green,” buddy.

  Welcome to the land of opportunity. Welcome to the maddest, baddest, most exciting couple of square miles in the entire US of A, where crime really can pay if you stay lucky and play your cards right.

  Welcome to the South Bronx, baby.

  CHAPTER ONE

  BANG! YOU’RE DEAD

  “What are you lookin’ at? Get in that bread van now, you little bastard, before I blow the head off of ye!”

  In my twenty or so years as a New York police officer I put about one thousand people behind bars. I work
ed on so many armed robbery cases that I lost count. But you never forget the first time you face an armed criminal. It was the summer of 1975 and I was just nine years old—and, to judge from the eyes staring out of the balaclava, my career in crime fighting was destined for a premature end. My fate rested with this criminal whose finger hovered on the trigger of a sawn-off shotgun, both barrels waving in my face.

  Eighteen inches separated me from life and death. My lips moved wordlessly. I didn’t budge an inch. It wasn’t that I was a tough guy or that I didn’t want to cooperate. It’s just that nothing below my waist seemed to work anymore—with the exception of my bladder, that is, which had just sent a long stream down my trousers, trickling into my left shoe.

  We stood there, staring at each other for what seemed like an age, until my brain suddenly rebooted and my legs finally got the message, sending me squelching and stumbling towards the back of the delivery truck. I clambered in and joined a baker’s dozen already held hostage, the door slamming behind us with a heavy clang as the gunman snapped the lock into place.

  My future career in law enforcement was a million miles from my mind right now. A toy silver six-shot revolver lay under my bed alongside my shiny plastic policeman’s badge, filed in a shoe box with a Swiss Army knife and a thirdhand copy of Playboy. If my mother ever found them, she wouldn’t need a gun to sort me out.

  I was outnumbered, outgunned, and out of my depth. An hour earlier I had been stacking cans of Heinz Spaghetti Hoops in my father’s tiny corner shop on Russell Avenue in Dublin’s inner city. My mother, Sheila, was sweeping the stockroom as my fourteen-year-old sister, Bernadette, cleaned down countertops, waiting for my dad, Vincent, to return from the local bakery distribution site. In those days, he—like all of the local merchants—used the bakery depot as a bank to exchange coins and pound notes for larger bills. But that night Ireland’s most dangerous man decided to make a withdrawal of his own.

  Da wasn’t back yet and Ma’s patience was wearing thin. Da had driven our ancient Ford Escort one hundred yards up the road and turned the corner into JMOB—the Johnston Mooney & O’Brien bakery distribution site. It was a fifteen-minute round trip at most, so even allowing for the chat with his delivery pals and all the bluster, my mother sensed that something was wrong. Bernie took matters in hand by kindly volunteering her baby brother for the rescue mission.

  “Good idea. Get over there and see what the holdup is, Luke,” Ma said, unwittingly prophetic in her turn of phrase. “And tell your father that if I miss my bingo tonight, I’ll kill him.”

  I skipped down the street between the cracks in the pavement, whistling a song as I descended the short ramp into the yard. I made the sharp left turn, as I had done countless times before, stepping right into the two dark circles of a twelve-gauge shotgun.

  At first I assumed the whole thing was some elaborate practical joke and grinned at the man on the other end. I was surprised at his roughness as he shoved me across the yard past the row of electric trucks, humming steadily as they recharged for the deliveries next morning. We stopped in front of a knot of half a dozen masked raiders, dressed in black and, like the sentry, all armed.

  Their sudden explosion of curses and threats made me feel about as welcome as Santa in September. The raiders had carefully cased the joint and knew the high walls surrounding the site would give them the time they needed to empty the bulging company safe. But my unscripted appearance caused some of them to panic, never a good sign in a man with a long criminal record and an illegally shortened shotgun.

  “What’s yer name, ye little bollix? What are you doing here? Where’s your ma and da? Who’s goin’ to come lookin’ for ye?” one of them said calmly. He seemed almost amused by the sight of a schoolboy in short pants surrounded by a semicircle of irate armed robbers, desperate men who realized that with my mother, or more likely the guards, next on the scene they were cooked.

  “Right, lads. We’re banjaxed, thanks to this little bastard. Time to go,” the leader said with a sigh, shooting me nothing more dangerous than a grin as he ordered them to bundle me into the back of the van with my father and the employees. Meanwhile, he walked over towards my dad’s car.

  We strained our eyes to peer out through the vents of our wheeled cell. Through the descending dusk we could just make out the last raider piling into the Ford. For the first time ever, it took off with a single turn of the ignition and a squeal of tires, and presumably a stream of curses, as the frustrated thieves were forced to leave all the dough behind.

  They had even missed out on the consolation prize. The gunman who had ordered Da to hand over his car keys hadn’t thought of searching him. Vincent had hidden the shop takings of about three hundred pounds behind a shelf of half-baked rolls. He retrieved the stash with a gleeful chuckle and joined the other men booting the lock, which popped under the battery of boot leather.

  Half an hour later the place was crawling with detectives, some taking notes, others taking our footwear, which was sent to the forensics lab for analysis. My first brush with criminals proved more than an early lesson in crime scene investigation.

  Standing there, shoeless, in urine-soaked shorts, I learned nothing about forensics but a little about life. It’s all about luck and being prepared to take a chance. My mother did miss her bingo jackpot that evening but she was probably the most fortunate woman in Dublin. Nobody was ever charged, but the police told my father that they were sure it was the work of Dublin’s most significant crime gang. In my years on the Job, I would question a lot of armed robbery suspects, but my first interrogation had been carried out by Martin Cahill.

  The man who would become infamous as “the General” rose from the miserable conditions of his childhood in the worst slums in the city to become one of the few “ordinary decent criminals” to defy the IRA, robbing banks and jewelers in multimillion-pound holdups, even stealing priceless Dutch masters in art heists which horrified and fascinated the nation in equal measure. His exploits sold a lot of copies of the Evening Herald and inspired a couple of Hollywood biopics.

  The General died as he had lived, gunned down by an IRA hit man on his way to return a copy of A Bronx Tale. Tellingly, the movie chronicled the life of a youngster who, despite the temptations, managed to stay on the straight and narrow. Cahill was shot almost eighteen years after the day he and his brothers stood pointing shotguns at a terrified child.

  (In another strange coincidence, one of the actors from A Bronx Tale, Lillo Brancato, Jr., would later cross my path. Hopelessly broke and addicted to drugs, he shot an off-duty NYPD officer dead after a botched burglary. As fate would have it, I ended up discovering the shooting range where he and his crony practiced, complete with the mercury-tipped “cop killer” bullets he boasted of specially preparing before the shooting—evidence which would destroy his claims that the murder was a tragic, spur-of-the-moment mistake.)

  *

  I was born in October 1965 to Sheila and Vincent Waters, who, despite their modest means and raising our family of six children in a shoe-box-sized house, taught us that respect for others begins with respect for yourself. I grew up the second youngest of the six—three boys and three girls—in our version of the “Wild West”: Finglas, complete with horses, guns, and natives armed with bows and arrows. Finglas was one of a number of areas which had sprung up to replace the bulldozed slums of the inner city, which had bred people like the Cahills. Our housing estate was better than many, but it was far from perfect—in some ways like the New York housing projects I would visit years later, but on other levels far different.

  Drugs and guns fuel crime in the USA—when I was young, narcotics were unheard of in the community, and cooperation with the Gardaí was the norm, not the exception.

  Finglas has a reputation for being edgy, and it was much the same in my day: horses roaming freely on public parkland opposite our front door adding a realistic touch to the games of cowboys and Indians; children plaguing the deliverymen by grabbing on to the
backs of their vans “for a carry” as they dropped off bread, milk, or bags of coal and sacks of dark, damp turf—in an era before central heating, the only way our parents kept the home fires burning, in the process blanketing the streets in smog for six months out of the year.

  The Waterses had a far longer record with the law than Martin Cahill, but on the right side of it. Both my grandfathers had spent their careers in the Dublin Metropolitan Police and An Garda Síochána, a tradition followed by many of my cousins, and my older brother, Tom, would go on to serve as a sergeant in the force.

  I formed a lot of close friendships through those years, and one ultimately would drag me to the USA. Paul Hurley was raised in a house identical to ours, but from an early age he was obsessed by the idea of moving to America. He eventually opened a string of Irish bars in New York and made a name for himself in one of the toughest businesses in the city.

  My 1970s summers were spent on endless games of football in the streets, doing poor impersonations of Johnny Giles or Brian Mullins. I had no problems making friends and keeping them, although my social skills didn’t transfer into the classroom of St. Kevin’s, where I proved a consistent student—equally poor at everything.

  I would happily play hooky if Sheriff Sheila hadn’t deputized my brothers, Vincent and Tom, to walk me the half mile to the front gates for our nine a.m. start and another seven hours of torment. My brothers were my keepers. And if they were busy, my two older sisters did just as well.

  Bernie and Lucy not only took me to school, but on my ma’s orders stayed with me after school. They helped me with my “ecker” (slang for “homework” in my neighborhood), trying in vain to explain the mysteries of math and the Irish language. I would listen, nod, chew my Bic Biro to a pulp, and fill my copybooks with fiction, hoping that the teacher wouldn’t pick on me. Mostly I got away with it.

  Ireland was a different place then, a different world, where joining the guards, the army, or the civil service was the height of most parents’ ambitions for their children: secure, pensionable jobs for life, entry decided on your performance in the Leaving Certificate; university education was not even discussed. Sports or music offered the only real alternative in our neighborhood—if you were lucky you did the same job as your father or, failing that, you emigrated.