Chapter Twelve
5:15 p.m.
The Fifth Precinct of the NYPD is located on Elizabeth Street and Canal. Forty years ago, the spot would have been at the dividing line between Little Italy and Chinatown. But when the federal government changed its immigration laws in 1965, allowing more Asian immigrants into the country, the population of Chinatown exploded. Now Mulberry Street, with its tourist-trap restaurants and sidewalk vendors hawking Bada Bing and Fuggedaboutit T-shirts, was the last remaining enclave of what had once been a real Italian neighborhood. And the Fifth Precinct now stood at the epicenter of an ever-expanding Chinatown.
Rogan parked the car on Elizabeth, just south of Canal, and began making his way north to the precinct.
‘Hold up,’ Ellie called out as she pulled open a glass door stenciled with gold Chinese lettering. She emerged sixty seconds later with a roasted pork bun wrapped inside a napkin, the first real food she’d seen since shunning the slop masquerading as lunch at the jail.
‘A buck twenty-five,’ Ellie said, popping a piece of the doughy ball of marinated meat into her mouth. ‘You can’t beat Chinatown.’
By the time they turned the corner to reach the sky blue door of the white brick building that housed the Fifth Precinct, Ellie had finished her makeshift lunch. A civilian aide with a round Charlie Brown head sat at the front service desk.
Rogan pulled back his jacket to reveal his detective’s badge. ‘Narcotics?’
The aide gestured toward a staircase just beyond the entrance. ‘Next floor up.’
A few years earlier, police assumed that all home invasions were drug-related. Teacher? Priest? Hero landing an airplane in the Hudson? Wouldn’t matter. Home invasion victims were always and automatically labeled as drug dealers. But in recent years, police had seen an increase in both home invasions and the number of tragic cases in which innocent people had found themselves targeted by the most predatory and violent offenders, simply because their address was one digit away from a reputed drug house.
On the second floor, Rogan asked a second civilian aide to see Sergeant Frank Boyle.
‘The sergeant had to leave. Are you Detective Rogan?’
Rogan nodded. ‘And Hatcher. I called Boyle a little more than an hour ago. He was expecting us.’
‘Something came up.’
‘Like maybe five o’clock?’ Rogan said, glancing at his watch.
The aide smiled politely. ‘Perhaps. He said to see Detective Carenza over there.’ He pointed to a refrigerator-sized man standing over a desk toward the back of the squad room.
As they walked toward the man who was apparently called Carenza, Ellie noticed that his tanned, veiny biceps were challenging the seams of his fitted black T-shirt. The rest of the ensemble consisted of faded blue jeans, pointed alligator shoes, and a heavy gold chain.
‘Ellie Hatcher,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Your sergeant left word to see you?’
‘Tony Carenza.’ The detective gave her a firm handshake and then turned to Rogan to offer the same.‘Then you must be Rogan, because Boyle told me some guy from Homicide was coming.’
‘You heading out on an undercover?’ Rogan asked, eyeing the wardrobe.
Carenza glanced down at his own clothing and shrugged. ‘Nah, man. Just wrapping up some paperwork here, and then I’m audi.’
Rogan was nodding politely when Carenza broke out laughing. ‘Gotcha nervous there, didn’t I? Nah, my stuff might not be quite up to what you got going on here,’ he said, pointing at Rogan’s three-button Canali suit, ‘but this getup’s definitely for the job. The mod’s running some buy-and-busts tonight at some of the clubs.’ In addition to the teams of stop-and-frisk uniform cops that had made New York’s zero-tolerance policing famous, the narcotics division used so-called investigatory modules to run undercover operations.
Carenza pulled at the diamond-encrusted dollar sign dangling from his gold chain, most likely a trophy seized during a prior bust. ‘Too much?’
‘Fierce,’ Ellie said.
‘Yeah, I thought so. So what can I do you for? My sergeant made a point of instructing me to be helpful, so consider me your most helpful helper.’
Rogan scratched his cheek while he spoke. ‘We’re still chasing a case from May – dead body left behind in a home invasion on Kenmare and Lafayette.’
‘Yeah, I know that case. The 212. Should be called the 646. Last time I checked, no one could get a 212 number anymore. The place belonged to Sam Sparks, right?’
Rogan nodded, and it struck Ellie that Sparks might be better known to the general public than she had realized, even without the assistance of a reality show.
‘We checked with Boyle at the time to see if we might be looking at a case of mistaken identity. He came up with nothing. Now Sparks’s lawyer says he hears otherwise. He claims you’re running an operation on one of Sparks’s neighbors.’
‘I wouldn’t call it an operation,’ Carenza said, handing Ellie a DD5, the departmental form used to report on ongoing investigations. This one related to Apartment 702 at 212 Lafayette.
‘It’s directly next door,’ she said.
Rogan glanced at the sheet of paper over her shoulder. ‘The only other apartment on that floor, as I recall.’
The DD5 contained entries for three events – two in March, one in June.
‘Two neighbors came to our front service desk in March, complaining about a drug dealer who had just moved into one of the luxury condos on the top of the building. You’ve seen that building?’
They both nodded.
‘Okay, so you know the deal. It’s this old building, been there forever. Most of the tenants are rent-stabilized. Also been there forever. Then Sam Sparks buys up the roof space, stacks a few multimillion-dollar apartments on top, and calls the place 212. Two totally different kinds of tenants, now sharing one elevator and one lobby. You get your culture clashes.’
Ellie felt her cell vibrate against her waist but let the call go to voice mail.
‘And where did these two neighbors fit into the clash?’ she asked.
‘The old ladies who eat dinner at four thirty at the corner-diner side. They’d lived a good century and a half between them. And I’m telling you, they were a hoot. Watched Law and Order and CSI reruns all day long on “the cable”, as they called it. They had the lingo down: skels, perps, mary jane, CIs, gun run. I mean, you name it, and they knew it. They were ready to sign up as CIs themselves. But let’s say that as confidential informants go, they weren’t the most reliable profilers when it comes to detecting drug dealing. Dirty old men? Not pushing the garbage all the way down the chute? That, I would trust them on. But they were the kind of sweet innocent citizens who think anyone who’s got friends coming and going at all hours of the night must be up to no good. Let’s
