The Guardians Read online

  The Guardians

  Jim Fusilli

  Jim Fusilli

  The Guardians

  Tim Foley

  His stepfather was a cop, and Luther Addison became one, too, determined to address the indignities the old man suffered. A prideful shell now-racking coughs led to finding a dark spot on his lung-W.E. Addison was fading rapidly, down to a fragile hundred and six pounds from a rock-hard one eighty-five. So the burly young cop chose to keep his plan a secret from his loving family.

  But as he entered the living room of his parents’ little colonial in Cambria Heights, Queens, he found his stepfather already knew. Same as it ever was: No corner of his mind escaped the man’s insight since he began courting Lucy Addison when Luther was five years old.

  “Running for president?” W.E. Addison asked. The stereo was off, and his rocking chair didn’t move.

  “Organization needs a president,” the son replied lightly, trying to cut the tension. He’d already given the Entenmann’s to his mother, kissing her plump cheek as she prepared the cassoulet.

  “We don’t need the organization,” W.E. said, staring ahead, shoulders high, his elbows on the chair’s curved arms.

  Luther removed his blue clip-on tie. “Come on, Pop. Let’s not-”

  “That’s Sergeant,” he replied sharply. “Given the topic, it’s Sergeant Addison.”

  The son sat in his mother’s seat, lifting the TV Guide from the soft cushion and dropping it on the coffee table next to his eight-point service hat.

  He clasped his stepfather’s frail forearm. “Should’ve been Lieutenant Addison. Precinct Commander Addison.”

  “Maybe so,” the old man said. “But NYPD doesn’t need-”

  “Levels the playing field, Pop,” he said softly.

  “Says you’re black, not blue.”

  No, Luther thought, as he stood to turn on a Hank Jones album. Says we’re black and blue.

  ***

  The Times placed it inside the Metro section, but the Post allowed the story to scream on page one: “Activist Cop in Teen Shooting.”

  Her Anthony was a sweet child who took his sister to Saint Helen’s every Sunday morning, cried Rose Ciccanti, near collapse in the picture the tabloid ran next to her son’s junior prom photo. “How could they do this to my Anthony?” she wailed. “My only son.”

  According to the Post, Philip Altomonte, a cousin, said, “They want everything, and they’ll kill you to get it.”

  What Altomonte, who was known throughout the neighborhood as Fat Philly, actually said was, “These spooks want everything, and now they got cops who’ll kill you to get it.”

  On the day the story broke, neither paper, nor the Daily News for that matter, mentioned that Anthony Ciccanti Jr., a k a Little Flaps, spent eighteen months in Bridges Juvenile Center in the Bronx for his role in a scheme to rob winners in the parking lot at Aqueduct. Could’ve been worse: Their third victim was a cop who skipped duty to hit the track with a tip. The cop was carrying, but he let the crew lift his eight hundred dollars so he wouldn’t have to explain why he wasn’t on patrol.

  In January, jug-eared Ciccanti was released to the bosom of Howard Beach, where the Gambino crime family reigned.

  Three months later, he was dead near a Dumpster at the United Postal Service facility in Brooklyn, a short drive from his parents’ white brick house on 160th Street.

  TV crews descended on the Ciccanti home, where flowers were stacked against a plaster Madonna behind an ornate fence. Their reports, which led the news at six o’clock and again at eleven, featured an ID photo of a light-skinned black man with green eyes and a smattering of freckles across and around his nose. He was identified as Luther Addison, president of the Guardians Association, a fraternal organization for black cops.

  No photos of the other three policemen at the scene, all of whom were white, were provided to media. By the following morning, when the Post ran the charmless picture on its front page, it was widely believed that Patrolman Addison shot young Ciccanti, though his department-issued Glock 19 hadn’t been fired. The victim had been struck three times by rounds from a Cobra FS- 32, a classical throw-down piece. Addison didn’t carry one.

  Two patrol cars had responded to the call to the UPS site, which sat on the Brooklyn-Queens border. One rolled from the 106 in Howard Beach, the other from the 75 in Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood.

  Andy Hill, an oily, permanent-boil-on-his-butt cop, was behind the wheel of the car out of Howard Beach. The other car was driven by Joe Dalrymple, who graduated with Hill from the Academy when his “always by the book, college boy, Malcolm XYZ” partner was still in high school, back when W.E. Addison was walking a beat in oven-hot Crown Heights or directing traffic at JFK, yellow slicker doing little to ward off waves of freezing rain.

  In a moment of candor, Dalrymple once told his young black partner that Andy Hill was an opportunist, and connected. “His pockets never don’t jingle,” he explained with a knowing wink.

  ***

  Though they’d been all over the 7-5, Internal Affairs wanted him at 1PP. Addison knew there would be photographers-Mayor Koch was holding hands in Howard Beach and calling the black activist cop on the rug would play big-so to dodge the gauntlet, he took the R train to below City Hall, stayed underground, and entered One Police Plaza via its loading dock, where two Guardian Association members were in the doghouse, along with a redhead named Restovich who discharged his firearm into a Pac-Man machine at a bar in Bensonhurst.

  IAD seemed surprised he looked so composed, his polyester blues pressed to a guillotine blade’s edge.

  Addison studied the stuffy, wood-paneled conference room as he dropped a manila envelope on the long table. He’d half expected they would do it in a box at the First Precinct, maybe cuff him to a soldered-on ring. The other half of his expectations was that this was all foolishness that would pass with an insincere apology after the real shooter was revealed.

  “Luther Addison,” he said, adding his badge number as he sat.

  On the way in, he passed framed photos of President Reagan, Mayor Koch, and Commissioner McGuire, bracketed by the Stars and Stripes and the flag of the State of New York.

  The two IAD detectives were white too.

  “Where’s your union rep?” asked Alderman.

  “Maybe the Guardians don’t provide a rep or a lawyer,” said Zachary.

  Addison looked at his wristwatch. “Eight seconds,” he said. “Took you eight seconds to flip the card.”

  “Yeah, well, you knew Ciccanti was white when you shot him,” Zachary said. He was good looking, boyish with sandy brown hair and crisp-cut jaw; an unlikely choice for the bad-cop role. Maybe he wasn’t ready for any part of it: Slamming the Guardians confirmed IAD wasn’t recording the interview.

  “Check my ten card,” Addison said. “I don’t carry a Cobra.”

  Zachary, again: “You the kind of guy who puts everything on the ten card, Addison?”

  “That’s Officer Addison,” he said sharply. “Given the topic, it’s Officer Addison. And, yes, every gun I own is listed on my ten card.”

  “Hard case,” Zachary muttered as he left his chair.

  “Officer, we’re just trying to piece it together,” Alderman said, tapping his middle finger on an accordion folder. “I mean, it’s a tough one, right?”

  “It became tough when someone went to the media,” Addison replied. “You’re going to have to undo that and face the cover-up charges.”

  “Not if we make you for it.” Zachary.

  “I don’t throw down,” Addison said. “I don’t shoot unarmed kids.”

  “Says…”

  “Anyone you interview.”

  “Long as he’s black.”

  Addison sh
ook his head and, quoting Reagan, said, “There you go again.”

  Alderman said, “You told your CO you didn’t draw-”

  “No I didn’t. I drew,” Addison said. “I didn’t fire.”

  “The Glock,” Zachary said, his back to the table.

  Addison opened the manila envelope and withdrew a notarized document. He passed it to Alderman, who read it with care.

  Hearing silence, Zachary turned and looked over his partner’s shoulder. After a moment, he said, “What makes a man do something like this?”

  “People like you,” Addison replied.

  “Two tests,” Alderman muttered as he reread the report. “Overkill.”

  After the lengthy interview at the 7-5 following the Ciccanti shooting, Addison arranged for tests that proved he hadn’t fired a gun, making him the first to use the resource at City College he proposed and helped develop for the Guardians.

  “That’s going to the press,” Addison said, nodding.

  “Why’s that?” Alderman asked, suddenly agitated.

  Addison slid the front page of this morning’s Post from the envelope. “IAD set that in motion.”

  Someone inside NYPD told the Post the investigation would be guided by a respect for Office Addison’s “civil rights,” a phrase that meant one thing to blacks and another to certain whites, including many in Howard Beach.

  The Post headline: “Where’s My Brother’s Civil Rights?” Nine-year-old Angela Ciccanti in her Saint Helen’s uniform. Meanwhile, Fat Philly’s crew and their families marched Cross Bay Boulevard, signs in fists, demanding the medical examiner release Ciccanti’s body.

  Alderman asked, “Got friends in the press, do you?”

  Addison stared at Alderman’s face, the blond mustache that didn’t work, the clenching at the corners of his eyes. He was the one, not Zachary. Alderman wanted this black versus white, the easiest way for IAD to make it disappear.

  “No friends in the press,” Addison replied. But his wife’s sister knew the principals at D. Parke Gibson Associates, an influential public relations firm. “We’re just going to make certain that-”

  “Who’s ‘we,’ Addison?” Alderman asked sharply.

  “‘We’ is me and anyone in NYPD, the D.A.’s, and the Justice Department that wants to find out what happened to Little Flaps, who was breaking into the UPS depot last Thursday night with a Philips head, a box cutter, an Instamatic, and a duffel bag.”

  Alderman said, “The D.A. being your friend Sharon Knight. Sister is bucking for chief of the Homicide Bureau, isn’t she?”

  “‘Sister’?” Addison held back a laugh.

  Zachary put his palms on the table. “Officer,” he said, “I’m guessing you know nothing you do is going to wash this away.”

  “And I’m thinking you’ve got two days, maybe three, to hook this where it belongs,” Addison replied. “Once we get it off me, it’ll go where it goes. Which could be IAD, could be the mayor’s office, could be whoever shot the boy.”

  He looked at Alderman.

  “A lot of heads for your plate, Detective,” Addison said, “but the black one is up and leaving.”

  He sat back satisfied, the Guardians and Sharon Knight on his shoulder.

  Alderman smiled dark as he leaned in.

  “Let me tell you how we see it,” he said. “Kid made you run your lazy black ass. Dalrymple told you to cool down, but you wouldn’t have it, not after Flaps dropped a couple of N-bombs on you.”

  “Ciccanti was at least sixty feet-”

  Alderman brought up his index finger. “You pull your throw down-hell, half the 7-5 will say you carried it-and you shot him. Three times. Then you stonewalled your CO, ran to your black-ass friends at City College to kick off the cover-up, and you went out and hired some PR firm to work the press. You’ll ask the D.A.’s office to dump this on a white cop ‘cause blue ain’t good enough for you. You’ll say anything to tear us down.”

  Addison stared at him.

  “And that’s the way it plays,” Alderman said. “It’s 1982 and you shot a white boy in Howard Beach. You know what’s up and leaving, Officer? Your career, your freedom. Your freedom and your career.”

  ***

  Steele and August were at a table in the corner near the garbage bin and a stack of orange trays. They’d pretended they hadn’t seen Lucy helping W.E. out of the cab on Ninth, leading him by the elbow and then hanging back as he made his way alone along the haphazard aisle of Formica tables and yellow plastic chairs. But when they stood to greet their old colleague, they nodded discreetly to her, gestures she returned with a pained smile.

  “Mr. Man,” August said with forced cheer. The stout, coffee-light-skinned man took Addison ’s hands in his. “Bony but beautiful.”

  Steele said, “W.E.”

  They waited until Addison angled into a seat.

  “Started without me,” W.E. said when his grimace subsided.

  August had been dipping a finger into a small plastic cup of barbecue sauce. “Never.”

  “Hammer tied you down?”

  Henry Steele smiled.

  Three men old before their time, though Steele, with his shaved head and impossible taut skin, looked like he might still be dogging the Genovese family’s black lieutenants across Brooklyn and Queens. Cookie August, on the other hand, had put on twenty-five additional pounds since he left a stretch as the only black man in the Anti-Crime Unit. He was showing his age: The curly hair above his ears had gone from peppery gray to powder-wig white.

  Good men, W.E. Addison knew, dedicated cops. Thank God neither of them was on the clock with stage three non-small cell lung cancer that was no longer treatable by chemo or radiation.

  Savoring the mesquite-wood scent, Addison looked toward the pit. Not quite noon, which meant Smokey’s was still serving last night’s ribs. The tender meat would fall off the bone.

  “Same old?” August asked as he went for trays.

  Addison nodded, knowing it might be the last time.

  ***

  Luther Addison was on modified desk duty until someone leaked which phone he’d answer, so NYPD sent him home. After food shopping at Zabar’s for his Giselle and their baby son, he rented a black Buick Century, waited until dark, and drove the Williamsburg Bridge to Myrtle Avenue, making his way to Howard Beach. The funeral home was on 159th Avenue.

  Fat Philly was working the front door, shaking hands like he was running for office. Red shirt open at the collar under a black suit, heavy gold chain on his wrist, red carnation in his lapel, gray patent leather loafers: His idea of appropriately somber for the photographers and TV crews.

  One of the Guardians out of the 1- 13 in nearby Jamaica told him a snitch reported Fat Philly behind the scheme that landed Little Flaps in Bridges. Addison wondered if Philly was making some kind of move, knowing the TV lights would keep the real mobsters at bay.

  To dodge a tail, Addison drove the Belt Parkway and over to Rockaway Boulevard to circle Aqueduct before doubling back to 159th. Then he did it again. And again, driving past the funeral home, using the mirrors to see who was coming and going.

  Shortly after ten o’clock, he returned to find Fat Philly putting Mrs. Ciccanti and her daughter Angela in a limo; the fat man went inside, where he stayed even after the funeral home shut down. The crowd gone, Addison parked up the block and cut the engine.

  His partner Joe Dalrymple arrived shortly before midnight.

  Frowning in confusion, Addison took off his baseball cap and ran his hand across his close-cropped hair. Running no more than thirty feet behind him when a weapon was discharged, Dalrymple knew Addison hadn’t taken down Little Flaps, and Addison was fairly sure Dalrymple, who’d bent left coming out of the patrol car, hadn’t shot him either.

  Then why a visit to pay respects, especially after the widowed mother had gone?

  ***

  Sharon Knight said, “If he did it, if he’s lying and playing us for fools, I’ll take him down myself.”


  In the cafeteria at 100 Centre Street, white faces nodded. Who didn’t know Knight was angling to become the first African American Homicide Bureau chief in the D.A.’s office? Breaking a black cop in Reagan’s America would look good on her resumé.

  She knew they’d think her ambition would help make it go away, that she’d allow it to land on Addison to curry favor with NYPD and the right-wing media. Maybe they figured they’d let her choose whether to bring it to the grand jury, and then they couldn’t lose. If she got an indictment, fine. If she didn’t, it’d be a public failure by an African American. Or worse, it’d been seen as a refusal by a black woman to bring a black cop to justice.

  She didn’t care what they thought as long as they turned over the files on Little Flaps and Fat Philly, and IAD’s jackets on Hill and Dalrymple.

  She told Luther Addison they would.

  She didn’t expect they’d be delivered by Sarah Tolchinsky, the Homicide Bureau’s deputy chief.

  Tolchinsky, a tall Hassidim with skin that seemed translucent, appeared at Knight’s cubicle and waved for her to follow. They returned to her office where musty blinds prevented a view of the Woolworth Building.

  The files were on her desk. She’d requested them before she learned of Knight’s interest. Twenty-nine years in the District Attorney’s office allowed her to recognize an IAD cover-up the moment it began. The photo in the Post told her they saw Addison as an easy mark for a frame, a patsy.

  “What’s more important to you? Your career or seeing this through?” Tolchinsky asked, as she closed her door.

  Knight suppressed an inadvertent grin.

  “Your career. You’re young. Fine,” Tolchinsky waved, “but let’s see if we can help you and him.”

  She allowed Knight to use the files at a table in the corner.

  An hour or so later, lost in a confusing brief crafted by one of Knight’s peers, Tolchinsky heard a voice.