The Fence Part 4

CHAPTER 6.

Closing Time at the Cortee's At the club Cortee's, the fact that s.m.u.t and Mike and Craig did not b.u.mp into one another was simply one of life's happen-stances. By the time s.m.u.t had arrived around midnight, Mike and Craig had completed their quick turn inside to gauge Hip-Hop Night and were already riding off in their Tango Ka8 car.

It wasn't as if they didn't know one another; Mike and Craig had played cat and mouse with s.m.u.t ever since s.m.u.t got home from jail in 1992. By then, the two cops in plainclothes were known on the street for pulling up fast in their unmarked cruiser and jumping out to confront gatherings of "hoodies." The in-your-face arrival was not solely cop macho; it had a purpose. "On the street the way these guys work is by intimidation," Mike said, "so jumping out showed them we're not intimidated."

The up-tempo entry was also a barometer, a way to gauge a street gang's level of current criminal activity. If the kids reacted with swagger and trash talk, then they were likely just hanging out, not up to any trouble. But if the kids went silent, looked away, or tried to melt into the night, "then we'd sense something was up. Something was just finished or something was in the works."

Mattie Brown, however, was not impressed with their head-strong style. She nicknamed them the "Jump-out Boys." Her son and his friends often hung out in front of her house, and then along came c.o.x and Jones. "I'd yell at them from my porch," she said. "Cuss 'em out to get off my property. Sometimes they'd yell back, 'The street isn't private property! We can do what we want.'"

For his part, s.m.u.t regarded the two cops as no-nonsense, but straight-up and honest. The two cops, meanwhile, saw s.m.u.t as princ.i.p.ally a dealer who seemed levelheaded, "one of the more reasonable ones in the group," Mike said. Mike and Craig were mainly after g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers who specialized in the lethal combination of drugs and guns. s.m.u.t Brown, said Mike, "was not a shooter, not a gun guy."

Of course, that didn't mean Mike and Craig were going to look the other way. The "Jump-out Boys" and s.m.u.t did eventually have a memorable clash. Mike and Craig were heading down West Selden Street one night. It was about eleven o'clock on March 23, 1993. s.m.u.t was driving up West Selden-fast-and he roared past the two cops. Mike guessed s.m.u.t was. .h.i.tting about 50 mph, well above the speed limit for the residential neighborhood. He and Craig turned. s.m.u.t cut sharply down a side street and then turned onto another street running parallel to West Selden. Mike and Craig caught up, the lights on their cruiser flas.h.i.+ng. s.m.u.t pulled over to the curb and jumped out. He ran across the street and was heading between two parked cars. Mike followed and caught up to s.m.u.t on the sidewalk near the parked cars. Craig joined them. Something on the ground between the parked cars caught Mike's eye. He picked up a plastic bag. Inside was s.m.u.t's stash-sixteen pieces of crack cocaine individually wrapped and ready for sale.

Four weeks later, s.m.u.t was found guilty of possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute by a judge in Dorchester District Court. The judge sentenced him to serve a year in the House of Corrections. s.m.u.t immediately appealed. His lawyer and the prosecutor then worked out a deal. s.m.u.t would plead guilty to the lesser charge of c.o.ke possession, and, in exchange for the guilty plea and dropping the appeal, the jail term would be suspended. s.m.u.t was placed on probation for two years-or until July 1995.

Once again, he'd managed to stay on the street. The stay-out-of-jail card meant when s.m.u.t walked into the club Cortee's on the night of January 24, 1995, he was on probation from the Mike c.o.x bust.

Once he was inside, s.m.u.t never noticed that in back, Lyle Jackson was seated at a table playing cards, dressed in Boss blue jeans and a purple-colored Champion sweats.h.i.+rt. Years had pa.s.sed since s.m.u.t and Mama Janet's son played together, either at Lyle's house off Humboldt Avenue or at s.m.u.t's Franklin Hill housing project.

Lyle quit the card game just after midnight and hooked up with a couple of his friends, one named Marcello and the other named Stanley. They drank and mingled around for a while, and by 1:30 or so, Lyle and Marcello decided they were hungry. One of them mentioned Walaik.u.m's, a tiny hamburger joint about a half mile away on Blue Hill Avenue in the Grove Hall section of Roxbury. Of the three, Stanley was the one with a car, a red Hyundai, so they asked him for a ride. Stanley said fine; he was hungry too.

Like Lyle and his friends, a lot of people at the club were starting to pull out, including s.m.u.t and his crew of Tiny, Tiny's brother Marquis, and Boogie-Down. Closing time was approaching, and the club had stopped serving drinks. The music was winding down. Tiny was still on edge after seeing Little Greg. He might have recovered from the leg wound from the summer before, but there was no recovering from their beef. s.m.u.t tried his best to keep Tiny distracted. "I told him to chill." The four discussed a nightcap. s.m.u.t suggested they head down to Mattapan where he knew an after-hours place. Tiny liked the idea because his mother lived in Mattapan and he wanted to swing by her house.

Meanwhile, Mike and Craig were outside turning their car around to resume their surveillance position on the hill overlooking the club. During the dustup with the girls, other members of the gang unit had not blown their cover. Donald Caisey, for one, was still in the decoy cab right on the street across from the club, while Joe Teahan and Gary Ryan were not far away in their unmarked cruiser.

But they were not the only cops waiting for something to happen. Unknown to the gang unit, another cop was nearby. Dave Williams also knew Hip-Hop Night at the Cortee's might get interesting. On a typical night, his Dorchester station's "batting order" for patrolling the district included four or five "service units" manned by a single officer, another two or three "rapid-response" units manned by two officers, and usually one "anti-crime" unit manned by two officers dressed in street clothes. Williams had begun the night working alone in a service unit known as the Harry 411.

Williams was a.s.signed to patrol the Savin Hill neighborhood, a sector located on the east side of Dorchester, bordering Boston Harbor. It was several miles from the Cortee's on Was.h.i.+ngton Street-basically from one side of the district to the other. But Williams was nonchalant about straying so far from the patrol sector his s.h.i.+ft sergeant had a.s.signed. "They pretty much tell you, you have the Savin Hill area, but you can go anywhere you want," he said later. No one was really looking over his shoulder.

On the force, Williams was known as a "working cop." It was a label to distinguish cops like him from those seeking uneventful s.h.i.+fts that might even include a nap. Williams was action-oriented-so much so that he'd actually drawn some supervisory concern about a tendency toward "physical abuse during arrests." In fact, along these lines, Williams had had a rough few months. In September, a Dorchester woman complained to Internal Affairs Williams punched her out. She'd saved a clump of hair she claimed Williams had pulled from her scalp. The charge stemmed from a confrontation involving police and partygoers one Sunday morning over an illegally parked car. Williams admitted he hit the woman, but said he did so only after she and two of her friends attacked him. He'd met force with the minimum force necessary to subdue them, making the punch justifiable.

The next month his response to an "excessive noise" call led to another brutality complaint. Williams was one of three Boston police officers arriving at about 1:30 A.M. to a party in a third-floor apartment. After talking to the party's host, Williams walked past four young men hanging out on the front porch. One was a teenager named Valdir Fernandes, a seventeen-year-old high school student. As Williams walked down the steps, Valdir spat. Williams turned and demanded to know if the spit was aimed at him. Valdir denied any such thing. Valdir said later that Williams then bounded up the steps, pushed him against a wall, and "grabbed me by my throat, smacked me on the right side of the face." Valdir's mother rushed outside and confronted Williams. Williams insisted the boy had been disrespectful. He denied striking him at all. Valdir was taken by ambulance to Boston City Hospital, where he was treated for head trauma and for cuts and marks on the tracheal area of his neck. The family photographed the teenager's battered face and soon after filed a complaint against Williams with Internal Affairs.

That made two abuse complaints against Williams in two months-or a total of four in just over two years. In theory, the two recent complaints should have triggered the department's Early Intervention System, created in the early 1990s as part of a major reform effort. The intervention system was supposed to kick into gear when an officer received three complaints within a twenty-four-month period. But theory was one thing, the practices of the police department were another. By the night of January 24, four months had pa.s.sed since the Valdir Fernandes incident and Williams hadn't heard a word about any intervention or retraining requirements. For the officer the brutality complaints were more a nuisance than any real threat to his standing in the department.

Having abandoned his a.s.signed patrol, Williams was parked alone in his cruiser down the street from the Cortee's. He knew the club's reputation for trouble; the club, he said, was a place "where gang members were going and they were having fights and shots were fired." Initially he'd driven up a hill with the idea of watching the club from there, but then he spotted a gang unit vehicle. The unmarked car-which was c.o.x and Jones's-was sitting in a driveway. He didn't want to get in the way of an ongoing operation so he'd decided to keep moving. He'd driven down the street a few blocks past the club and pulled into an empty lot. He was out of sight and had his radio going.

"I just sat back," he said. "I think I was reading the paper."

Mike and Craig were back to their lookout on the hill when Lyle Jackson and Marcello climbed into Stanley's car to head over to Walaik.u.m's. It was just before 2 A.M. Moments later, s.m.u.t Brown, Boogie-Down, Tiny, and Marquis left the club. s.m.u.t and Boogie-Down walked toward s.m.u.t's Volkswagen Fox around the corner. s.m.u.t had told the others the bar to go to was Conway's, where he knew the manager. He told Tiny to follow him. Tiny and Marquis walked toward the parking lot across from the club where Tiny had parked a 1994 gold Lexus, a "loaner" from the dealer. Tiny had bought a brand new GMC Jimmy SUV-a birthday present to himself-but the truck wasn't ready and the dealer had given him the Lexus to drive for a few days.

s.m.u.t pulled his car around the corner and was facing the club so Tiny and Marquis could see him. He and Boogie-Down sat there with the engine running and the heat cranked up against the sub-freezing cold. s.m.u.t noticed Tiny walking quickly toward them. He could see Tiny was agitated, moving in a jerking motion. s.m.u.t opened the window, and Tiny was stuttering about Little Greg, saying Little Greg was up to no good. Tiny pointed to the far side of the Cortee's entrance, where s.m.u.t saw a group of Castlegate gang members. Tiny talked nonstop, explaining he and Marquis had noticed the group before they got to the Lexus. But when he couldn't pick out Little Greg, he got suspicious. Where was Little Greg? Where was he? Tiny believed Little Greg was out to get him and planning to do something.

Tiny had given Marquis the car keys and gone to find s.m.u.t and Boogie-Down, all the while looking over his shoulder. He wanted protection. He ordered Boogie-Down to give him his gun. Boogie-Down resisted, but Tiny was adamant. He needed the gun. Boogie-Down handed it over, and Tiny turned to head back toward the club.

He was maybe two car lengths away when s.m.u.t detected a car moving slowly past his from behind. s.m.u.t saw the flame of gunfire first. Then he heard the pop-pop of gunshots. Tiny jumped sideways behind a parked car. Tiny was not hit. One bullet struck the black Isuzu Rodeo in front of s.m.u.t's car, leaving a hole in the front door. The others went off into the night. Tiny stood up, gun raised high over his head, and he got off a few shots. The car sped up, driving past the club and up the street. s.m.u.t threw his Volkswagen into reverse. He backed into the intersection so he could turn the car around and drive away in the opposite direction. Tiny was running to the gold Lexus and jumped in so he and Marquis could follow.

Within seconds, the gang unit police radios exploded in noise. Voices collided.

"Shots fired! Shots fired!"

It sounded like the percussion section of an orchestra gone haywire.

"Shots fired! Right out front!"

Up on the hill, Mike and Craig exchanged looks of extreme frustration. "I'm like, Awww!" Mike said later. They'd just left the club and now the main event had started. This was the whole point of the night-guns and street gangs-and they weren't there.

They raced back and found the street crowded with people running in different directions. Some were jumping into cars while other cars were already pulling away, including the Volkswagen Fox and the gold Lexus. Mike saw the other guys from the unit looking around and trying to talk to people. Donald Caisey was there. The unit's supervisor, Sergeant Ike Thomas, was there. Teahan and his partner, Ryan.

"Everyone who was working in the gang unit that night," said Mike.

The gunshots also drew other officers working in the area. One was Richie Walker, the officer known for wearing his hair in braids, who worked out of the Mattapan station. Walker activated his siren and lights and immediately began heading toward the club. But on his way he saw a Peugeot speeding toward him and then turn abruptly down a side street. His partic.i.p.ation in the main event would have to wait. Walker chased the car and arrested the twenty-one-year-old driver. He found plastic bags in the front seat containing "vegetable matter," or marijuana. The suspect was taken in by another officer, and Walker stayed with the Peugeot to await a tow truck. While he waited, he monitored the radio for updates on the shootings at the Cortee's.

One officer who did make it to the club was Jimmy Burgio, who, like Dave Williams, worked in Dorchester out of the Ca11 station. Burgio was from Southie, a sports jock. He was crazy about ice hockey and made up for a lack of skating finesse with a bullet-hard slapshot launched from his muscular, husky frame. Burgio was starting his fifth year on the force and brought his compet.i.tiveness to the job. For example, he was extremely proud of the seven binders he'd filled with photos and intelligence about street gangs and criminals. He was wary, however, about sharing the intelligence-especially with the gang unit-for fear his enterprising work would get ripped off and he wouldn't get any credit.

He also viewed each night's s.h.i.+ft as a full contact sport between the good guys and the bad guys. He talked about police work in these terms-a high-stakes, hard-checking rivalry played out nightly. Some nights, he won. Some nights, the bad guys won. He got charged up looking ahead to work-each s.h.i.+ft being a compet.i.tion with the suspense of not knowing who was going to come out on top. He loved the cop life.

No surprise that, like Dave Williams, Jimmy Burgio was known as a "working cop." No surprise either that, like Williams, Burgio strayed from his a.s.signed patrol district when he heard the screaming voices on his radio about shots fired outside the Cortee's. Burgio raced to the scene. But once he saw plenty of police were already there he headed up the nearby hill to watch, taking up the overlook Mike and Craig had abandoned.

Burgio could see a combination of unmarked units used by the gang unit as well as marked cruisers. Blue lights flas.h.i.+ng. Cops in uniform and in street clothes milling about. Young people were scattering quickly into the night. Burgio recognized some of the cops. He knew the gang unit team of Joe Teahan and Gary Ryan. He was recently engaged but had once dated the woman who ended up marrying Ryan. He knew Donald Caisey from work. Burgio did not know Mike c.o.x, but he did know Mike's partner, Craig. He had little use for Craig, considering him "an arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.d," a glory hound.

When they got back to the Cortee's, Mike and Craig jumped from their cruiser to help the others canva.s.s the scene. Mike was wearing the three-quarter-length black parka he'd borrowed from his nephew over a black hooded sweats.h.i.+rt. He'd left the wool Oakland Raiders skullcap in the cruiser. It turned out the gunfire happened in a dead zone-a spot along the street where no officer saw what exactly happened. Mike and Craig tried talking to the patrons leaving the club, asking what they saw, who fired the shots. They studied faces, looking, said Craig, for "someone who looks suspicious." At one point, Mike spotted Dave Williams, and Dave spotted him. They knew each other pretty well and ate together sometimes at Carney Hospital. They exchanged a quick greeting.

No one was having any luck getting a lead on the shooters. The club's patrons were looking to avoid the police, not talk to them. "No victims came forward. No witnesses came forward," noted the spare police incident filed later about the shooting.

"Everybody just kind of got in their cars and left," Craig said later. Within minutes, the cops found themselves standing there looking at each other. It was quiet in an eerie sort of way.

The street was empty and the gang unit was empty-handed.

"We didn't get anybody," Mike said. "People were just pretty mad."

CHAPTER 7.

The Murder and the Chase On Wednesday, January 25, in Providence, Rhode Island, residents were abuzz about a videotape that captured a police officer kicking a black man on the ground during a disturbance at a rhythm and blues concert. The response by city leaders was swift and decisive. The Providence police chief suspended the officer without pay while the apparent police brutality was investigated, and he did not mince his outrage: "I'd like to fire him if everything is as it appears to be on that tape," the chief said.

On Wednesday, in Boston, the city's mayor, Tom Menino, was trumpeting new crime statistics showing a marked drop in homicides, aggravated a.s.saults, auto thefts, and burglaries. The eighty-five murders in 1994 represented a 13 percent decrease from the ninety-eight murders in 1993. The mayor called Boston a "safer city," although residents of Roxbury and Dorchester told reporters they still lived in fear.

Ironically, on that same day, Boston's police commissioner was finalizing disciplinary action in a tragic controversy hounding the department. The previous March a botched drug raid had resulted in the death of a retired minister. Using a no-knock warrant, heavily armed officers from the SWAT team and the drug unit barged into a fourth-floor apartment in Dorchester. The only person inside was the seventy-five-year-old Reverend Accelyne Williams. Officers chased the minister, wrestled him to the floor, and handcuffed him. The frail Williams suffered a heart attack and died. The stunning mistake made national headlines. The minister's widow sued the city for $18 million. Ending an internal investigation that fingered breakdowns in supervision, Commissioner Paul F. Evans was busy preparing for a press conference during which he would announce the suspension of a lieutenant and reprimands for two other supervisors.

Earlier that very morning, around two o'clock, after gunshots sent patrons of the Cortee's scattering into the night, either running on foot or riding in cars past onrus.h.i.+ng teams of gang unit and other Boston police officers, Lyle Jackson and his two friends headed over to Walaik.u.m's Burger.

To get there, Lyle's friend Stanley drove his Hyundai up Was.h.i.+ngton Street and came within a block of where Mike c.o.x and his family lived on Supple Road. Stanley continued on past a high school, past Castlegate Street, and past a fire station. Was.h.i.+ngton Street then emptied into the Grove Hall section of Roxbury. The three turned right onto Blue Hill Avenue, pa.s.sing the red-brick Muhammad's Mosque #11, the Boston headquarters for the Nation of Islam founded in 1954 by Malcolm X.

The drive was no more than a half-mile long. Walaik.u.m's was now practically in front of them, just a block up Blue Hill Avenue-451 Blue Hill Avenue-across the street from a hairdresser's, a fas.h.i.+on store, and a used-furniture shop. Walaik.u.m's was a hole-in-the-wall with a shabby storefront. On each side of the entrance, two air conditioners stuck out of the front wall. The neon sign hanging above the store was hokey-looking-three palm trees swayed into the squiggly letters spelling "Walaik.u.m." The door opened into a small room. Directly ahead was a counter where food orders were placed amid the racks of bread. To the left, four tiny tables and a bench were squeezed together, and, to the right, another counter where patrons could stand and eat. The only telephone was in the kitchen.

Lyle and his friends found the restaurant filled with other young people who'd piled out of the Cortee's. Lyle ordered chicken wings and a hamburger. He was a steady customer and recognized many of the faces in the crowd, but mostly by nicknames, like Flavor and Pooh. The atmosphere was charged and noisy. In the kitchen, owner Willie Wiggins worked furiously to turn out the orders. In the crowd, Lyle's hamburger accidentally got knocked to the floor. He went to the counter to order another. Everyone was still talking about the gunfire at the Cortee's. "You can't go out anymore," joked someone near Lyle. "It's getting like New York around here."

While many clubgoers resurfaced at Walaik.u.m's, the contingent of Boston police hung around outside the Cortee's, the sizzle gone from their night. The flat mood was apparent in the conversation on the police radio channel. "Okay," Craig Jones muttered in a monotone, "what's the game plan?" The gang unit supervisor, Sergeant Ike Thomas, replied, "The game plan? They took our ball and bat." There was radio silence-the equivalent of no comment. "Everybody into the base," commanded Thomas.

The gang unit and other police officers began clearing the scene.

Dave Williams, meanwhile, made his way back to the station in Dorchester, where he ran into Jimmy Burgio in the parking lot, pumping gas into his cruiser. They got to talking. Williams mentioned he was thinking about sitting on a house off Bowdoin Street, not far from the Cortee's, known for late night parties and trouble. "See what was going on," Williams said. Burgio was interested and agreed to ride along with him though they'd never teamed up before. Burgio left his cruiser in the lot and climbed into Williams's. They didn't bother telling their sergeant about their plan. Before driving back across the district, they swung by a Dunkin' Donuts for two coffees to go.

Elsewhere, Richie Walker was no longer torn about being tied up with a speeding car arrest and not ever making it to the Cortee's. He overheard the sour turn of events. Walker now sat with the Peugeot awaiting a tow truck so he could clear the scene, return to the station in Mattapan, and write up the paperwork on his arrest.

In yet another part of the city, Kenny Conley and his partner, Bobby Dwan, operated on a different radio channel and hadn't even heard about the failed mission at the nightclub. But they were coming off their own small setback-the fruitless hour-long stake-out of a building to catch a supposed drug s.h.i.+pment to apartment 3. The tip a worried tenant had given them proved to be nothing. It was 2:07 A.M. when they took off.

Within a minute of leaving, Kenny and Bobby overheard that another patrol car had stopped "suspicious persons" in the parking lot of a liquor store several blocks away. The radio chatter included mention of drugs and prost.i.tutes. It was no big deal, really, but Kenny turned the cruiser in the direction of Blanchard's. "We like to outnumber them," Bobby said, "so we swung over."

By 2:30 A.M., the dozen or so members of the gang unit had filed into their office in a nondescript building on Warren Street. "Lick our wounds, so to speak," said Mike c.o.x. The unit was not accustomed to coming up empty. "We were usually pretty successful, you know, working a Friday or Sat.u.r.day night and arresting two or three people for doing things," he said. "To work with that many of us together and not get anybody, and when you hear shots fired-it was more than frustrating."

The office was located upstairs in the two-story brick building with tinted gla.s.s. Warren Street ran north from Blue Hill Avenue in Grove Hall to Dudley Square, where the Roxbury police station known as Ba2 was located. The building was also about equidistant between Walaik.u.m's and Winthrop Street where Mike grew up.

Mike and the others talked a bit about what went wrong, but mainly began to "break down" for the night so they could head home. Some of the guys sat at desks, others were in the locker room or the bathroom cleaning up. They filed some paperwork. Before leaving, each would leave behind the keys to their unmarked cruisers.

It was pretty quiet, except for occasional crackle and buzz from the handheld radios they usually kept clipped to their belts. Most were turned to channel 3 because that was the channel covering Roxbury and Dorchester, the busiest areas in the city, crime-wise. The office had the feel of a losing team's locker room. There was no way around it: Hip-Hop Night had been a bust.

"What a waste of time," Mike said.

This much they knew.

What they didn't know was everything was about to change.

s.m.u.t and Boogie-Down were already standing at the bar when s.m.u.t heard Tiny and Marquis outside Conway's looking to be let in. s.m.u.t went to the door. He was thinking the shooter at the Cortee's must have been Little Greg even though he had not gotten a look inside the car. "Tiny had no beef with anyone else." s.m.u.t opened the door and Tiny rushed inside all hyped up.

I told you, I told you, Tiny said. Talking fast, he told s.m.u.t and the others he'd seen Little Greg in the front seat, next to the driver. I told you he was up to something, he said.

They all had a drink. s.m.u.t was feeling drunk-not staggering drunk, but a mellow, feel-good buzz. He wanted things to settle down. Most of all, he wanted to call it a night and get home to Indira. But his interests had to be melded with the crew he was with-that's just how it worked-and a roundabout conversation ensued as they debated a plan that would respect everyone's needs. In the end, they settled on a plan that seemed logical to them-at least for that hour of the night.

Tiny felt he needed to get Marquis home. But that meant driving all the way back up Blue Hill Avenue to get to where Marquis was staying near Dudley Square. s.m.u.t felt a similar obligation to Boogie-Down. "He'd been riding with me all night," s.m.u.t said. "He was my responsibility." Boogie-Down's destination was close to where they'd just been; his girlfriend's apartment was walking distance from the Cortee's.

But the last thing s.m.u.t wanted to do was to head back up Blue Hill Avenue, only to turn around and drive back down to get to Indira's. It was all so circular-so s.m.u.t had an idea. He suggested that since Tiny was going to be making a big loop to drive his younger brother home, he could take Boogie-Down too.

s.m.u.t and Tiny got into a little argument. Tiny didn't like the idea. He chided s.m.u.t, saying s.m.u.t was always trying to get out of giving rides home. He also played the birthday "card," reminding s.m.u.t it was his birthday. Tiny said if s.m.u.t wanted him to give Boogie-Down a ride home, s.m.u.t should ride along. You roll with me, he said.

The guilt trip worked. The foursome left Conway's. s.m.u.t followed Tiny to Tiny's mother's house, where he left his car and jumped into the back of the gold Lexus. Tiny took advantage of the pit stop to run inside to retrieve a silver 9mm Ruger semiautomatic pistol he had hidden there. With the added protection, they took off. s.m.u.t was riding in the backseat behind Tiny, and Boogie-Down was behind Marquis. There were now two handguns in the car: Tiny's silver Ruger and Boogie-Down's.

The ride actually went quickly. Few cars were on Blue Hill Avenue at two o'clock in the morning. s.m.u.t was slumped in the backseat, tired and boozy, and he slumped even further when Marquis announced he was hungry and wanted to go to New York Pizza. s.m.u.t was not interested in making any stops besides the mandatory dropoffs. He was glad when Tiny vetoed the pizza joint: too far out of the way. But then someone said Walaik.u.m's was up ahead and that it would be open.

Walaik.u.m's was also in the heart of that night's darkness-near the Cortee's, near Castlegate Street, and near where Little Greg lived around the corner.

"Dudes wasn't thinkin'," s.m.u.t said later.

Tiny slowed as he drove past the restaurant, made a U-turn, and parked a couple of car lengths from the entrance. The four climbed out of the car-the menacing-looking Boogie-Down in brown boots and hat, hunched in his tan jacket; the beefy Marquis, the tallest, in his black hoodie sweats.h.i.+rt; Tiny with his braids and gray sweats.h.i.+rt; and s.m.u.t, the shortest, in a brown leather jacket. They saw the restaurant was crowded-standing room only. When they got to the door, s.m.u.t muttered to himself, "Man, f.u.c.k this." Boogie-Down went ahead, Tiny and Marquis near him. s.m.u.t turned and figured he would just wait for the others to get some food.

s.m.u.t then noticed Tiny tensing up. Someone standing by the entrance had casually asked, "Waz up, Tiny, waz up, Marquis?" Tiny flipped out on the kid. What the f.u.c.k, saying my name out loud like that. What the f.u.c.k you thinking?

Tiny was hissing at the kid in a hushed, angry tone. s.m.u.t didn't understand why. The only thing he could think was Tiny was acting tough in front of Marquis. s.m.u.t stepped back toward the Lexus. Tiny began stuttering, and s.m.u.t saw his eyes darting between inside the restaurant and out. That's him, Tiny was saying excitedly. That's him. Tiny was indicating a husky black guy standing at the counter at the front of the line. That's him-Little Greg's driver, he was saying. Marquis pulled out one of the guns. Boogie-Down was already farther inside, heading toward the counter.

Several teenage girls by the door later said the first sound they heard was the ratcheting of a handgun's slide, as if it was jamming. The clicking sound made the girls jump off their stools, and their sudden, spastic movements rippled through the crowd. "He's packing! He's packing!" someone was shouting. Walaik.u.m's erupted in pandemonium. Patrons were diving onto the floor looking for cover behind the few tables and chairs. Those by the entrance rushed to escape outside.

The target was Lyle Jackson. Tiny had seen Lyle and thought Lyle was Little Greg's driver. But Tiny was mistaken, and Lyle, at the counter waiting for his food, turned to see two guns aimed at him. He scrambled to get away, knocking chairs aside and stumbling to the ground.

Some said they heard two or three gunshots. Others said it was five or six.

The first call to 911 was made at 2:39 A.M. and fifty seconds. "Can I get the policemen quick," said an unidentified male.

"What's the address?"

"451 Blue Hill Avenue. There's been a shooting up here. Hurry up."

Right away the call was broadcast over the Boston police channel 3. Hearing it, Mike c.o.x, Craig Jones, and the others in the gang unit froze in their tracks. The radios on their belts had exploded in a chorus with the initial shooting report. "The room goes quiet when there's a call like that," said gang unit supervisor Sergeant Ike Thomas. The location was just down from their office on Warren Avenue. No one in the unit spoke, said Thomas, as they all strained "to hear what else is going to happen."

In Walaik.u.m's, Lyle Jackson lay on the floor on his back, a pool of blood widening around him. He had three bullet holes in his chest, one on the left side and two on the right. His eyes were open, but he was disoriented. His skin paled and quickly turned cold. One girl put her jacket over him. His friend Marcello was by his side, urging him to hold on. "He was trying to talk to me. But I told him, 'Don't talk. Just fight it. Stay a little.'" Stanley ran to get Lyle's mother, who lived around the corner on Warren Avenue.

The second 911 call was made from a nearby pay phone one minute after the first-at 2:40 A.M. and fifty seconds. This caller was a security guard who'd worked at the Cortee's and knew a trick or two about jacking up the police response.

"I've got an officer down in Walaik.u.m's," he said, "Walaik.u.m's on Blue Hill Avenue."

The lie was tantamount to yelling fire in a crowded theater. In quick succession, a series of urgent calls went out over the police channel 3. "We have an officer down," the dispatcher said. Then the dispatcher said, "451 Blue Hill Avenue. Officer down," and a few seconds later repeated, "Officer down," but added: "There were shots fired."

In an instant, members of the gang unit were on their feet and heading down the stairs. "Everybody just ran out the door," said Gary Ryan. Ryan jumped behind the wheel of one unmarked cruiser while his partner, Joe Teahan, climbed into the pa.s.senger side. Don Caisey got behind the wheel of a car carrying Sergeant Thomas and another officer. Mike and Craig jumped into their cruiser. Craig was in the driver's seat. It was a moment when many different thoughts raced through Mike's mind. "I hope he's not hurt bad. I hope he's not shot. I hope I don't know him. I hope, you know, it's a mistake."

They were not the only ones responding. Police officers everywhere were on their way to Walaik.u.m's. The reason was a mixture of human nature and the solidarity of the cop world-a call about one of their own in trouble, said Mike, "would bring out more police officers than would normally come."

Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio, coffees in hand, were approaching the party house they'd decided to stake out when they heard the call. They got on the radio with the dispatcher, identifying their car and saying, "We're heading up." Initially there was confusion about the restaurant's name, with the dispatcher calling it the M & M Tavern, which was also on Blue Hill Avenue. Williams and Burgio overheard another officer jump on the radio and straighten the dispatcher out, saying the tavern was "all closed up." In short order, the dispatcher had the correct name. The key piece of information was the address: 451 Blue Hill Avenue. Burgio had never been to Walaik.u.m's before, but Williams knew where to go. "Everybody's coming, you know, there's a police officer shot," Williams said.

One of the officers who set off for Walaik.u.m's was Ian Daley. Daley, in his sixth year on the force, was born in England and moved to Boston when he was a toddler. He joined the force after graduating from college and had worked mostly in Roxbury in a one-man service car-the Bravo 431. He was at the police station in Dudley Square finis.h.i.+ng writing a report when he heard about the shooting. Daley immediately ran outside and got into his cruiser.

The call was now going out on every police channel, not just channel 3. Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan had just pulled out of the liquor store's parking lot, done with serving as backup in the handling of the "suspicious persons." They looked at each other. "You never know who it is," Bobby said. "Could be your brother, could be your friend." Kenny tried to get a fix on the shooting's location. Grove Hall was south from where they were-on the other side of Dudley Square. It was close by, but neither he nor Bobby was familiar with that area. Even so, Kenny got on the radio to report the Delta Ka1 was in the area and "going in." He activated the car's siren and blue lights. "We took off," Bobby said, "adrenaline pumped, you know, we're flying." The two hoped that by monitoring the dispatcher's play-by-play, they'd be able to get their bearings and pitch in.

Richie Walker, listening from his cruiser as he awaited a tow truck, knew exactly where Walaik.u.m's was located. But he decided against racing immediately toward the shooting scene. He adopted a wait-and-see strategy of monitoring the radio for any developments-particularly any news about the direction of the suspects' escape.

Given that Walaik.u.m's was in their district, officers from Roxbury were the first to arrive. Jimmy Rattigan and Mark Freire, partners in the Bravo 101 car, were only several blocks away dealing with a stolen car that had been torched. "It was still burning when we got there, and the fire department was coming," Rattigan said. The two were known on the street as Rocky and Bullwinkle. Rattigan was taller-topping six feet-and he weighed about 270 pounds. Freire was at most five-ten and weighed 190 pounds. They'd always worked in Roxbury and became a team shortly after Rattigan joined the force six years before. "We kinda hit it off, kinda policed the same style," Rattigan said. By that he meant they were pro-active. "We'd climb trees, we'd climb rooftops, we'd hide in bushes to catch these guys.