The Fence Part 5

"Everyone knows cops who won't get out of the car in pouring rain-and me and Mark would get out and just start walking the hallways of the projects and catch somebody with a pistol and drugs and stuff. So we were always aggressive. Something like this-a police officer shot-we gotta go give it 100 percent."

Rattigan and Freire pulled up to Walaik.u.m's behind another officer from their station-Ronnie Curtis, who'd also been at the car fire. Curtis ran into the restaurant first, dodging bystanders. Rattigan looked and could see the victim. "You could see his legs inside the front door, pointing out towards the sidewalk." Blood was everywhere. "It was one of those things," Rattigan said, "you knew right away somebody's gonna be dead."

Curtis was yelling on his radio, "Get us an ambulance down here! Get us an ambulance down here!" The urgency in his voice confirmed for Rattigan the seriousness of the victim's condition. He and Curtis had once worked together as emergency medical technicians. "It's pretty bad if Ronnie's saying that, because he's a pretty calm guy."

Rattigan was next to his cruiser when a car driven by a security guard pulled up. The driver said he'd seen the shooters take off in a gold Lexus and that he'd gotten a partial license plate number. Rattigan was on his radio right away.

"Bravo 101," he yelled. "Bravo 101."

The dispatcher replied, "The 101. Come in, 101."

Rattigan told the dispatcher what he had, and the dispatcher was immediately broadcasting on all channels. "7-6-2," he began. The plate number was actually incorrect, but that was what the guard had thought he'd seen. The car's model, however, was on the money: "Gold Lexus. Heading down Warren."

Other officers began pulling up. Rattigan yelled for Freire over by the restaurant's entrance. "We still believed it was an off-duty police officer shot because neither one of us made it in to see if we recognized him." The two climbed into their cruiser and sped off to search for the fleeing gold Lexus.

When Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio arrived, they found the scene chaotic and bystanders screaming, "He got shot, he got shot." Burgio saw the bloodied man on the ground and thought he recognized him. He would have bet money it was Craig Jones. He yelled this to Williams, but Williams looked and knew right away this was wrong; the victim was not Craig. Williams also knew the victim was not a cop. He called in the update, that the shooting victim at Walaik.u.m's was not an officer down.

The officers arriving at Walaik.u.m's faced a number of key tasks at hand-attend to the shooting victim, secure the crime scene, gather witness information, find out where the shooters went. Williams and Burgio did some of each, talking quickly to the owner and then a few bystanders. The police channels were crackling with calls to be on the lookout for a gold Lexus, and when Williams and Burgio caught wind a pursuit was in the making, they wanted in. They hopped into their cruiser, leaving the crime scene to the officers from the Roxbury district.

Mike c.o.x and Craig Jones had just pulled up to Walaik.u.m's, no more than a minute or so after they'd left the gang unit, when they heard the update about the victim. "So we knew right away there wasn't a policeman shot," Mike said. But they hadn't yet heard about the gold Lexus. They spotted other police cruisers and an ambulance. Craig headed toward the restaurant's entrance. Mike stayed outside. "We were trying to find out what kind of car the shooters were in."

Paramedics worked on Lyle Jackson, noting, in a report prepared later, Lyle was suffering from "multiple gunshot wounds," "a very serious loss of blood," and was "in a great deal of pain." They immobilized his neck and back, gave him oxygen, propped up his legs to get blood to his brain. The diagnosis was "acute, major trauma."

Lyle's mother, Mama Janet, arrived as they were putting Lyle into the ambulance. She'd run from her house with another son. She saw Lyle and called out his name. "He kind of looked at me," she said. "His eyes were closing. He looked at me and the tears started rolling down his cheeks." Lyle Jackson lasted six days before dying on January 31 at Boston City Hospital.

When he'd heard gunfire, s.m.u.t bolted to attention-suddenly feeling cold sober. He watched as people began screaming and running from Walaik.u.m's. The other three were back, "huffing and puffing." He yelled at Tiny to get going. "Pull off, pull off," he ordered. Marquis was in the front seat, and Boogie-Down was next to s.m.u.t in back. They drove a block down Blue Hill Avenue and turned right onto Warren Avenue. Within a few blocks they turned left onto a side street, avoiding any oncoming police cars.

s.m.u.t and the others yelled and swore at one another for taking the Little Greg dispute too far and shooting up Walaik.u.m's. They also quickly decided it would be best to split up, and the first idea was to get Marquis home because he lived close by. Tiny began winding away from Grove Hall toward Dudley Square on what s.m.u.t considered "back roads." They worked their way through a thicket of streets either intersecting or near Humboldt Avenue, the Roxbury boulevard known as the location of one of the city's most notorious murders, the 1988 shooting death of a twelve-year-old girl named Tiffany Moore. Humboldt and its side streets were on the north side of Franklin Park, originally the "crown jewel" of Frederick Law Olmsted's network of parks created throughout the city a century before. The 527 acres were now in the middle of the city's poorest section and, while featuring a golf course and a zoo, always seemed in need of an overhaul.

Being inside the Lexus was like being inside a bubble. s.m.u.t, Tiny, Marquis, and Boogie-Down had no idea of the size and scope of the police response to the initial report that an off-duty cop had been shot at Walaik.u.m's. They had no idea that throughout the city nearly every officer on duty was listening closely to the radio while those in the immediate area were either racing to Walaik.u.m's or looking for them. Ian Daley was among the latter. He'd left his paperwork behind at the station and, instead of racing to Walaik.u.m's, began cruising the outskirts trying to think where the shooters would go. He wasn't alone-Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio, Gary Ryan and Joe Teahan, and Jimmy Rattigan and Mark Freire were all driving around Roxbury looking for the Lexus.

s.m.u.t, Tiny, Marquis, and Boogie-Down did not know about any of this. Nor did they realize that when they made a turn onto Martin Luther King Boulevard they were spotted-almost simultaneously-by two security guards riding in their company car and by a Boston police officer in his patrol car. The security guards immediately began broadcasting their location over a radio frequency used solely by their company.

Mike c.o.x was standing outside Walaik.u.m's when a black man dressed in a dark uniform approached him. He was a security guard named Charles Bullard. Bullard excitedly began telling Mike that two guards from his company were following the car-the gold Lexus. Mike asked what he meant. "They're chasing the car?"

Bullard held up his radio and Mike listened to the voices talking about the Lexus. None of the police channels had yet broadcast information on the Lexus's whereabouts. Mike summoned Craig. They told Bullard to get into the backseat of their cruiser. Craig jumped in behind the wheel and Mike was on his radio.

"TK," he said.

"Okay, come in," the dispatcher said.

"One of those security officers is in the car with us," Mike said. "They seem to be chasing the car that did this shooting. He's got the radio with him and we're listening to this chase, trying to catch up to it."

Mike and Craig were at Walaik.u.m's for all of two minutes. They headed down Warren Avenue hoping to get a bead on the Lexus.

The first Boston police officer to see the Lexus was an officer from the Roxbury station named Dave McBride. McBride was driving down Martin Luther King Boulevard when he heard Jimmy Rattigan putting out a description of the "suspect vehicle," and there it was-the gold Lexus. The Lexus wasn't speeding, just motoring down the street. Behind the Lexus, McBride saw another car, the one with the two security guards in it. McBride did not activate his lights or siren, but he called in his location.

The first sighting by the Boston police brought a sudden focus to the manhunt. For some officers, it meant realizing they were nearby. For others, it meant they were way off track, like Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan. They'd raced into Dudley Square but then got all mixed up. Confused, they made turns that took them farther away from the action. It didn't help when they heard Dave McBride start "calling off" the Lexus's whereabouts. "We didn't know the streets," Kenny said. They couldn't make any sense of the information and took turns yelling out in frustration: "Where the f.u.c.k are they!"

Mike and Craig were not lost, but the moment they heard McBride reporting the Lexus's location, they knew they were off the mark. They'd gone up Warren Avenue toward the gang unit and Dudley Square, but the Lexus had now reversed direction and was working its way back south toward Franklin Park. With McBride reporting the Lexus's movement, Mike turned to Bullard and told him to turn off his radio. "His radio was still blaring and our radio has two different signals, and it was too confusing." Craig turned around so they could work their way toward Franklin Park.

It wasn't until Tiny approached a traffic light that he discovered the Boston police cruiser in the rearview mirror. He hadn't noticed the cruiser fall in behind him; it seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Tiny turned off his headlights, and he didn't stop at the light.

McBride watched the Lexus go dark and accelerate. It was time: He turned on his siren and blue lights. What had been a watch-and-wait s.h.i.+fted abruptly into an actual police pursuit. McBride was on his radio shouting out his location.

"We got a Lexus going down-uh-Crawford!"

Jimmy Rattigan and Mark Freire, listening to the frantic tone in McBride's voice, realized the Lexus was heading their way. They were on Humboldt Avenue. Crawford Street intersected Humboldt. The two were thinking they could cut off the Lexus. "We still thought a police officer was shot," Rattigan said.

Rattigan turned onto Crawford. He ignored the fact Crawford was a one-way street lined with parked cars. But he was forced to pay his full attention to what he saw coming his way, "This car just flying, I mean, it was moving." They had not expected to see the Lexus so quickly. "I'm like, holy s.h.i.+t!" Rattigan had a split second to make up his mind. "I'm either gonna let this guy hit me head-on, and they were going a lot faster than we were, or I gotta get out of the way."

Rattigan saw there was an opening between two parked vehicles. It wasn't a full s.p.a.ce, but maybe big enough to make it in. He turned sharply to the right to avoid the head-on collision, but the s.p.a.ce was too small and he crashed the cruiser into an empty van. The two cops were thrown around the front seat of their car as the air bag exploded. "The cruiser was destroyed," Rattigan said. He wrenched his neck, twisted his back, and suffered minor burns on his forearms from the air bag, but he didn't feel anything at first.

Instead, Rattigan leaned hard into his door trying to get it to open. It had buckled and wouldn't budge. The Lexus slowed to navigate past the crash. Rattigan looked over at the driver, who was not much more than an arm's length away. "We locked eyes," Rattigan said. "I'll never forget looking at that face. He didn't care."

While Rattigan was stuck in the car, Freire squirmed out of the pa.s.senger's side. He pulled a 9mm semiautomatic Glock handgun from his holster. "Mark was on him with his gun," Rattigan said. Freire aimed at the moving car. Rattigan could practically feel his partner's struggle over whether to shoot at Tiny Evans. The driver was behind the wheel of a getaway car. But Freire did not have enough to go on at that moment: who the driver was and his role, if any, in the shooting. Freire began grunting and growling, as if wrestling with his weapon. "Literally in seconds a thousand thoughts go through you mind," Rattigan said. "What do you do?"

And in those seconds, the Lexus rolled past them and began picking up speed.

Rattigan pushed his door open enough to be able to see the Lexus's taillights. Then he watched several Boston police cars go by while the security car stopped to help. Freire was standing over on the sidewalk. "He's screaming, 'f.u.c.k,'" said Rattigan, "and I'm like, 'f.u.c.k!'"

Rattigan slumped in his seat. He and his partner were out of the chase, done for the night. Adding insult to injury, Rattigan watched a resident come storming out of one of the apartment houses to complain about his van. The man even got a camera to photograph the damage.

He never asked about the officers' injuries.

Making its way past the crashed cruiser, the Lexus picked up speed as it continued down Crawford and turned right onto Elm Hill Avenue. Four blocks later, Tiny turned left onto Seaver Street, a wide, two-lane corridor bordering the northern side of Franklin Park.

The police chase was moving up a notch. While most officers by now knew a civilian, not an off-duty cop, was the shooting victim, they'd all just heard on channel 3 the frantic yelling, the radio static, the sudden radio silence, and then Mark Freire calling for an ambulance for him and his partner. The getaway car meant business.

"The suspects, these are murder suspects," Mike c.o.x said. "They're on the run. They're obviously scared. One cruiser down, and we're trying to figure out where the h.e.l.l they're going."

Tiny had exploited the crash to put a few blocks between his car and the nearest police vehicle. Indeed, McBride had fallen off the chase, as had the security company car. But Ian Daley was on Seaver Street driving alongside Franklin Park when he spotted the Lexus as it came down Elm Hill. Daley watched the Lexus turn onto Seaver Street and saw that it was alone.

Daley radioed in the Lexus's location. He was the first to call in the car's complete, correct license plate: 676 ZPP. Soon enough, police cars from all over were looking for ways to join what was developing into the largest and longest-lasting police chase anyone in the department remembered. Jimmy Burgio, for one, later said "only on TV" had he ever seen anything like it. Mostly Boston police officers partic.i.p.ated, but state troopers and officers from the city's housing police and the munic.i.p.al police, nicknamed "munies," also got involved.

The high-speed chase is one of the ultimate cop moments, carrying the hugest of rushes. But such chases also frequently get the better of the partic.i.p.ants. Or, as one police expert dryly put it: Officers involved in a pursuit too often "do not conduct themselves consistent with their training nor written directives." This chase was no different. Boston police rules requiring supervision of high-speed chases, particularly at their conclusion, were words on paper signifying little. It was Wild West time in Roxbury.

Ian Daley turned on his siren and lights. He saw the cars' occupants looking around. "You know, one head would pop up, another head would pop up, and one would go down." He pulled up behind the Lexus.

Daley wasn't the only one who saw the gold-colored car. Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio were approaching from the opposite direction. They'd made the right onto Seaver from Blue Hill Avenue and spotted the Lexus. Williams saw the Lexus's lights were turned off and that Daley's cruiser was behind it.

Williams thought he might be able to cut the Lexus off if he jumped the median. But he quickly decided not to-the concrete strip was eight inches or higher, and he'd more likely get hung up on it than make it over.

Instead, Williams s.h.i.+fted the cruiser into reverse and roared backward. Looking over his shoulder, he saw other cruisers, including a munie car. Williams had to slow down to navigate his way back to Blue Hill Avenue. The slow-down incensed the intensely compet.i.tive Burgio. When they almost collided with the munie car, he screamed out the window at two munic.i.p.al officers, "Get out of my chase!"

Tiny turned off Seaver Street onto Blue Hill Avenue, heading in the direction of Mattapan. Ian Daley followed, making the right turn onto Blue Hill. Williams, seeing an opening, jumped in behind Daley. Other cruisers fell in behind the two lead cars. Burgio saw cruisers behind him "as far as I could see."

Daley radioed in the new location-Blue Hill Avenue-a street so well-known it was like saying Broadway to a New Yorker. When they heard it, for example, Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan erupted with the click of recognition. "Now we know where to go," Kenny said. They'd been monitoring the chase feeling useless, but Kenny was now flooring the accelerator and hitting speeds of 90 mph as they raced up Columbia Road, which emptied onto Blue Hill Avenue at Franklin Park.

Richie Walker, meanwhile, listened to the progress of the chase and began thinking if it continued heading south in his direction, this might be something he'd want to join. Mike c.o.x and Craig Jones, for their part, turned onto Blue Hill knowing they were getting back on the right track. They saw no sign of the chase ahead of them, but headed down Blue Hill, playing catch-up.

Tiny drove down Blue Hill along the east side of Franklin Park, past the entrance to the zoo, where construction was scheduled to begin soon on a new exhibit to house a dozen African lions, marking the return of lions to the zoo after a twenty-five-year absence. Past the zoo at the first intersection, Tiny turned right onto American Legion Highway. The others bounced around inside. They were all rattled by the growing line of cruisers behind them. For his part, s.m.u.t decided he was going to have to direct their escape. Turning down American Legion Highway, he thought, was a bad move. Since it was straight and wide open, he figured no way they'd be able to outrun the police on it. What they needed to do was to get into the side streets.

Then they saw trouble-flas.h.i.+ng lights up ahead, where police were hastily setting up in a roadblock. Tiny braked. s.m.u.t was yelling at him to turn around. Tiny crossed the gra.s.sy median dividing American Legion Highway and began driving back toward Blue Hill Avenue. Behind them, Ian Daley copied Tiny's moves.

Farther back, Dave Williams watched the two cars slow down to execute the maneuver. He thought, "Okay, yeah, we got him." He began driving across the gra.s.sy median too and told Burgio to get ready. "We're going to ram this car." They snapped on their seat belts. Burgio opened his window to eliminate the possibility of shattered gla.s.s flying all over them. They braced for a collision.

But then the Lexus was gone. It had taken a right down a side street, Franklin Hill Avenue. "I was about to do it and it was like a black hole appeared," Williams said.

s.m.u.t had ordered Tiny to turn onto a street running along the south side of the Franklin Hill housing project. It was where s.m.u.t lived as a boy, and the Lexus was soon speeding past the actual building where his family's apartment was located.

Instead of the Lexus, Williams was bearing down on Ian Daley. The two cruisers skidded to avoid colliding. Daley turned right and Williams followed. Daley kept yelling out locations on the radio, "He went over the median here! He went over the median here!" Then, seconds later, he yelled, "Franklin Park project! Franklin Park project!"

The dispatcher called out the update: "Franklin Park project now. Looking for a gold Lexus. 676 ZPP."

Mike c.o.x and Craig Jones were making their way down Blue Hill Avenue trying to get their bearings. "We weren't really going fast," said Craig, "because we were listening to the transmissions."

When Mike heard that the Lexus had turned down American Legion Highway, he had a hunch. "They're probably going to Franklin Hill," he told Craig.

Mike was putting himself in s.m.u.t's mindset. He wanted to antic.i.p.ate the Lexus's next move. It was a game, of sorts, where the checkerboard was the streets of Roxbury. He and Craig did not want to follow the others and turn down American Legion Highway; instead, they wanted to make a calculated guess where the Lexus was going.

With that in mind, they picked up their pace. They turned off Blue Hill Avenue onto Harvard Street. The right turn took them past a red-brick building where for the past two years Boston Red Sox slugger Mo Vaughn ran a youth program for city teens who gathered after school to work on their homework and eat a catered meal.

They turned knowing that Franklin Hill Avenue, once it made its way through s.m.u.t's boyhood housing project, intersected Harvard Street. Mike was even thinking the shooting suspects might bail out. Projects were often where suspects looked to shake cops pursuing them.

Instead, within seconds of making the turn onto Harvard Street, Mike saw the gold Lexus. It was their first sighting of the night. The car was flying down Franklin Hill Avenue. "Literally kind of come off the ground and come down the hill," Mike said. He didn't see any police cars behind it, but he could see lights from the cruisers reflecting in the night sky.

Mike and Craig, and the Lexus were perpendicular to each other-Mike and Craig on Harvard, and the Lexus coming fast down Franklin Hill. "It came directly in-virtually right at us at the intersection," Mike said. The Lexus roared into the intersection, skidding onto Harvard.

Suddenly, said Mike, "we are side-by-side." He saw four black men inside the car. He and the driver exchanged looks, and Mike noticed the driver wore his hair in braids. The two cars drove parallel for a few seconds, and then the Lexus cut left.

"The car tried to ram us," Mike said.

Craig swerved into the oncoming lane. "It just barely missed us," Mike said. Craig had another worry-the weapons. "I was basically thinking that, you know, I don't want him to start shooting into our car." He jammed the brakes to slow the cruiser. The Lexus sped ahead of them. Craig then turned the steering wheel to the right, and the cruiser moved in behind the Lexus. The two cars were speeding down Harvard Street.

"Okay, we're the lead car," Craig yelled on the radio.

Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio did not seem happy about falling from second place behind the Lexus to third-as if someone cut in front of them in the lunch line at the school cafeteria. "The unmarked cruiser cuts right in," Williams noted later. Burgio was peeved; the way he heard Craig's broadcast was: "The real cops are in the lead now." The mistaken version played into his view of Craig as glory hound.

It was true, though. Mike and Craig had indeed become the first police car.

CHAPTER 8.

The Dead End The lineup at the very front was now established, and it stayed that way for the remainder of the chase. Behind the Lexus were Mike and Craig, then Ian Daley, and then Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio. In a pursuit, the lead police car customarily radioed in the route, and, for a few seconds, Mike and Ian Daley "stepped on each other," or talked at the same time. The radio transmissions were briefly confusing and clogged, until Daley went quiet and ceded the floor to Mike.

Behind the first three Boston police cars, the lineup changed as new cars joined the lengthening conga line and others fell off. Richie Walker, for example, did decide to abandon the Peugeot and head down toward Mattapan once he heard Mike c.o.x describing a winding route into that neighborhood. Eventually, Walker jumped in line behind Williams and Burgio, becoming the fourth police car. Likewise, Gary Ryan and Joe Teahan of the gang unit, who'd not been directly involved for much of the chase, eventually ended up among the first half-dozen police cars behind the gold Lexus.

Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan, meanwhile, were racing down Blue Hill Avenue, playing a hunch the Lexus was headed to Mattapan Square. Having grown up in Mattapan, Bobby directed Kenny to stick to Blue Hill as the fastest route, a nearly three-mile ride that took them up the avenue's hills with its faraway views of the Blue Hills in the town of Milton south of Boston, and then along flat, low-lying stretches past storefronts, hair salons, churches, and cash-checking stores. Nearing Mattapan Square, they pa.s.sed Simco's on the Bridge, the famous hot dog stand from the 1930s featuring the "World's Largest Hot Dogs," which was a favorite of s.m.u.t Brown's; his family's West Selden Street home was only a few blocks away.

It was a chase whose speed ebbed and flowed. "On major streets," said Mike, "certainly it was a high-speed chase. On small streets, it slowed down quite a bit." Burgio noted the oddity of the Lexus sometimes using its directional signal prior to making a turn. "Probably the most courteous kid I was ever behind," he said. Mike and Craig had a blue light flas.h.i.+ng on the dash, but it meant nothing to the men in the Lexus. In fact, several more times police cruisers came at the Lexus head-on, and each time the cruisers pulled aside to let the Lexus go.

The number of police vehicles kept increasing-ranging from twenty to forty, depending on the officer talking-as most cops still thought a fellow officer had been shot. Many spoke later with amazement at the number of cruisers. During one stretch, Dave Williams marveled at the scene: "You could look back in your mirror and all you can see is just a sea of blue.

"I said, 'Jimmy, d.a.m.n, look at that. You've never seen that before, you know what I mean?' It was like, you know, all you could see, as far as you could see looking back, was just blue lights, and we were just-just glowing."

Technically speaking, Mike and Craig, operating an unmarked cruiser, were not supposed to be the front car. Section seven of the police department's "Rule 301: Pursuit Driving" said: "Department policy shall be that marked units lead a pursuit, wherever practical. Therefore, unmarked units involved in a pursuit shall yield to a marked unit." The key word in the department's regulation seemed to be "practical." Craig later said they became the lead car along Harvard Street "not by choice," and that yielding would have been impractical. Their supervisor, Sergeant Ike Thomas, rejected as outrageous the notion that Mike and Craig should have pulled over or that he should have commanded them to do so. "In the middle of a twenty-minute pursuit it would have been extremely foolish on my part to interrupt a car chase that was involved in a very serious crime, to interrupt and say switch up and let a marked take the lead," he said.

But as the chase continued toward Mattapan Square, there was some jockeying in front. Twice Craig had to call off another cruiser that was either getting too close or trying to take over the lead. "Okay, we're the lead car; you better get away from us," Craig said, taking the radio from Mike to call out the warning.

Minutes later, he was on the radio again: "Get behind me. Don't hit me, please!"

In the Lexus, s.m.u.t was now the backseat driver, commanding Tiny to take this turn or that. To get off Harvard Street, he ordered Tiny to turn right, then right again and then another right, a zigzagging southerly route taking them deeper into Mattapan. This was s.m.u.t's turf, and he had begun to formulate a getaway plan in his mind. He knew about a dead-end street named Woodruff Way that bordered the east side of the former Boston Sanatorium, which most called the old Boston State Hospital. s.m.u.t knew the area well because West Selden Street bordered the opposite side of the wooded fifty-one acres of city land. He'd grown up riding bikes and cutting through the grounds. Woodruff Way was also one of a handful of streets that made up a housing project known as Morton Village and, as a dead end, was used by car thieves to dump stolen cars.

To get there, s.m.u.t needed to direct Tiny to the other side of Mattapan Square. But first there was a matter of the incriminating evidence in the car-the guns. While the Lexus was on Itasca Street approaching an intersection, Marquis opened his front window, c.o.c.ked his arm, and tossed out one of the semiautomatic handguns. The gun bounced along the asphalt and came to rest on the lawn of a corner house.

Mike saw the projectile and was all over it. "He threw something out on Itasca!" he yelled. "He threw something out on Itasca!" Listening was a police officer named Roy Frederick, who lived a few doors down from the intersection. Frederick was off duty and up late, glued to channel 3 and listening to the amazing chase. He immediately hustled outside, looked around his neighbor's lawn, and spotted the silver-plated 9mm Ruger. He called in that he'd recovered one of the suspects' weapons and stayed put to secure the scene.

Seconds later, Marquis got rid of the second gun. It hit a mini-van and then landed in the driveway of 235 Itasca Street. The Lexus had shed its weaponry, but once again, Mike called in the gun's location.

With s.m.u.t pointing the way, the Lexus kept winding its way toward Mattapan Square. During slowdowns that came with making a series of quick turns, Ian Daley thought the long line of cruisers resembled a "funeral procession."

Police cars were all over the place, trying to catch up or figure out a way to cut the Lexus off. Donald Caisey, driving the gang unit car carrying the unit's supervisor, Sergeant Thomas, never got in the conga line and was instead monitoring the radio, trying to stay close by. Then, in Mattapan, Caisey realized the Lexus was on the next street heading their way. He turned down the street, his siren blaring and lights flas.h.i.+ng. He turned the car sideways with the idea of forcing the oncoming car to stop. "We were in the middle of the street moving back and forth."

But the Lexus kept coming. "The vehicle never slowed." In Caisey's mind was the earlier near head-on crash on Crawford Street that ended with Rattigan smas.h.i.+ng into a parked van. The Lexus kept coming, "so I immediately pulled out of the way." The Lexus and the line of police cars following flew by.

Like Caisey, Gary Ryan and Joe Teahan kept working the perimeter, trying to outsmart the Lexus and antic.i.p.ate its route but without much success.

It was in this stretch of the Lexus cutting back and forth toward Mattapan Square that Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan joined the hunt. They'd roared into Mattapan and even drove past where Bobby grew up on Violante Street. The two officers were still under the impression the shooting victim was another officer, having missed the correction when it was broadcast. They raced up and down side streets; at one point they even found themselves in front of the Lexus, only to lose it when the Lexus turned down a side street; another time they found themselves a block away on a street parallel to the Lexus. Finally, they approached a main road and the Lexus drove past them. "Now we get into it," said Kenny. Not only were they into it, they entered toward the front of the line.

"We're heading toward Blue!" Mike called out.

"Headed toward Blue," the dispatcher relayed. "Be advised. That car is wanted for a shooting."

s.m.u.t had twisted the Lexus like a pretzel in and around the streets surrounding Mattapan Square, and the car was now back on Blue Hill Avenue. s.m.u.t's plan was for Tiny to shoot north a few blocks, cut east toward the Morton Village housing project, and barrel down to their final destination-Woodruff Way. s.m.u.t told the others they were going to a dead-end street encircled by a chain-link fence. He knew kids had cut a hole in the fence to make it easier to come and go. He wasn't sure if the hole was still there or had been repaired by city workers. But the point was to get past the fence and into the woods. "I told them to run towards the fence," s.m.u.t said.

It was the only way s.m.u.t could think of to shake the cops. Tiny and Marquis listened carefully. Marquis had no idea where they were at this point. s.m.u.t repeated the plan to help him out. Boogie-Down got it right away; he knew the Mattapan area. "Once we get there," Boogie-Down said, "we're all gonna get out of the car and try to get to the fence through an open-the fence is cut open. We was gonna make it through there, and cut through the woods and come out to the other side."

The Lexus took a series of rights-a right onto Norfolk Street, a right onto Morton Street. They drove past the intersection of s.m.u.t's West Selden Street and then took a right onto Woodmere Street. They'd entered the Morton Village housing project.

Every move the Lexus made, Mike radioed it in.