Homicide - A Year On The Killing Streets Part 1

Homicide_ A Year on the Killing Streets.

by David Simon.

ANTE MORTEM.

by Richard Price.

Jimmy Breslin once wrote of Damon Runyon, "He did what all good journalists do-he hung out." But in Homicide Homicide, his year-in-the-life chronicle of the Baltimore Police Department's Homicide Unit, David Simon didn't just hang out; he pitched a tent. As both a reporter and a dramatist Simon has always held the conviction that G.o.d is a first-rate novelist and to be there be there when He's strutting his stuff is not only legitimate but honorable, part and parcel of fighting the good fight. Simon is a great collector and interpreter of facts, but he's also junkie and his addiction is to bearing witness. when He's strutting his stuff is not only legitimate but honorable, part and parcel of fighting the good fight. Simon is a great collector and interpreter of facts, but he's also junkie and his addiction is to bearing witness.

I say this with authority (it takes one to know one), and the addiction plays itself out like this: whatever we see out on the street-with the police, with the corner boys, with people who are just trying to survive with their families intact in a world sewn with every kind of land mine-only whets our desire to see more, to hang and to hang and to hang with whoever will have us in an endless quest for some kind of urban Ur-Truth. Our bedside prayer: Please, Lord, just one more day, one more night, let me see something, hear something that will be the key, the golden metaphor for all of it, which, as any degenerate gambler knows, is in the very next roll of the dice. Truth is right around the next corner, in the next bit of throwaway street commentary, the next radio call, the next hand-to-hand drug transaction, the next unfurling of crime scene tape, as the beast that is Baltimore, is New York, is urban America, like some insatiable Sphinx whose riddles aren't even intelligible, continues to gobble up one benighted soul after another.

Or maybe it's just our inability to meet deadlines ....

I first met Simon on April 29, 1992, the night of the Rodney King riots. We had both just published Big Books: Simon's was the book in your hands; mine was a novel, Clockers. We were brought together by our mutual editor, John Sterling. The moment was almost comical: "David this is Richard; Richard, David. You guys should be friends-you have so much in common." And so of course the first thing we did was make a beeline over the river to Jersey City, one of the hot spots that night, where we were met by Larry Mullane, a Hudson County Homicide detective and my ace Virgil for the previous three years of my writing life. David's father had grown up in JC, the Mullanes and Simons had likely crossed paths over the generations, and so it went. The JC riots themselves proved elusive, perpetually around the corner but offstage, and my main recollection of that night is Simon's compulsion to be there be there, which for me was like running into my long-lost Siamese twin.

Our second encounter was a few years later when, in the aftermath of the Susan Smith horror in South Carolina, I was on something of a Medea tour laying the groundwork for my novel Freedomland Freedomland. There had been a vaguely similar tragedy in Baltimore: the white mother of two biracial girls had torched her rowhouse while her young daughters were asleep. Her alleged motive was to clear any obstacles from the path of true love with her new boyfriend, who she said was less than thrilled about her two kids (a suggestion he later denied).

Working the phones, David hooked me up with whatever princ.i.p.als were available to be interviewed-the arresting detectives, the mother's boyfriend, the thrice-bereaved grandmother, the Arab who owned the corner store across the street where the mother had fled, ostensibly to call 911. (Her first call, the store owner said, was to her mother, her c to report the fire.) Journalistically, the story was past its expiration date, but Simon, in his willingness to get me me the story, reverted to work mode. It was the first time I ever had to keep pace with a street reporter both mentally and physically; in addition to securing all the interviews, this also involved unsuccessfully trying to jive and con our way past the uniform still guarding the crime scene; shrugging off the straight-arm and working an end run; circling around and scaling backyard fences until we found ourselves inside the blackened rowhouse; and climbing what was left of the stairs to enter the small bedroom where the two girls died of smoke inhalation. At last we were there, and it was like standing inside the gut of a translucent tiger, the two of us staring everywhere-walls, ceiling, floor-at the charred striations left by the flames. A devastating little chip of h.e.l.l. the story, reverted to work mode. It was the first time I ever had to keep pace with a street reporter both mentally and physically; in addition to securing all the interviews, this also involved unsuccessfully trying to jive and con our way past the uniform still guarding the crime scene; shrugging off the straight-arm and working an end run; circling around and scaling backyard fences until we found ourselves inside the blackened rowhouse; and climbing what was left of the stairs to enter the small bedroom where the two girls died of smoke inhalation. At last we were there, and it was like standing inside the gut of a translucent tiger, the two of us staring everywhere-walls, ceiling, floor-at the charred striations left by the flames. A devastating little chip of h.e.l.l.

But let's go back to that first night in Jersey City. At one point during the evening there were rumors that the rioters were stringing piano wire across the streets to decapitate motorcycle cops, and Larry Mullane, an exmotorcycle cop himself, abruptly had to leave us. We found ourselves alone in an unmarked police car (an oxymoron if there ever was one), with me behind the wheel and Simon in the pa.s.senger seat. Mullane's advice to us was, "Keep it moving-and if anybody comes up on you, just try to look p.i.s.sed off and floor it." That's basically what we did, which brings me to a question that has always plagued me: Are writers like us, writers who are obsessed with chronicling in fact and fiction the minutiae of life in the urban trenches of America, writers who are dependent in large part on the n.o.blesse of the cops to see what we have to see, are we (oh s.h.i.+t ... ) police buffs?

And the answer I've come to believe is: No more than we are criminal buffs or civilian buffs. But for whoever allows us to walk a mile in their shoes, on either side of the law, we do feel an unavoidable empathy-in essence we become "embedded." But it's not as sinister as it sounds as long as your Thank You mantra goes something like this: As a chronicler I will honor you with the faithful reporting of what I see and hear while a guest in the house of your life. As for how you come off, you dig your own grave or build your own monument by being who you are, so good luck and thanks for your time.

Simon writes with great thoroughness and clarity about the impossibility of the job of homicide investigator. For the murder police in the field, it's not only the body lying before them that has to be dealt with but also what they carry on their backs, which is the entire hierarchy of bosses who answer to bosses-the weight of bureaucratic self-preservation. Despite the overpopularization of CSI CSI-style forensic advances, at times it must seem like the only reliable science for these investigators at the bottom of the food chain is the physics of careerism, which simply and reliably states that once a murder hits the papers or touches any kind of political nerve, the s.h.i.+t will always roll downhill. The best of them-those who more often than not, under great if superfluous pressure, turn the red names on the board to black-are left with an air of world-weariness and well-earned elitist pride.

Homicide is a day-in, day-out journal, an intermingling of the mundane and the biblically heinous, and Simon's eagerness and avidity to absorb, to digest, to is a day-in, day-out journal, an intermingling of the mundane and the biblically heinous, and Simon's eagerness and avidity to absorb, to digest, to be there be there and convey the world before his eyes to the universe beyond, runs through every page. There is a love for everything he witnesses, an implicit belief in the beauty of simply stating that whatever he sees playing itself out in real time is "The Truth" of a world-this is how it is, this is how it works, this is what people say, how they act, act out, dissociate, justify, where they come up short, transcend themselves, survive, go under. and convey the world before his eyes to the universe beyond, runs through every page. There is a love for everything he witnesses, an implicit belief in the beauty of simply stating that whatever he sees playing itself out in real time is "The Truth" of a world-this is how it is, this is how it works, this is what people say, how they act, act out, dissociate, justify, where they come up short, transcend themselves, survive, go under.

Simon also exhibits a knack for keying in on the enormity of little things: the quality of mild surprise in the half-closed eyes of the freshly dead, the ineffable poetry of a throwaway non sequitur, the physical ballet of aimlessness on the corners, the unconscious dance of rage and boredom and joy. He doc.u.ments the gestures, the rueful misnomers, the way the eyes cut, the mouth tightens. He records the unexpected civilities between adversaries, the gallows humor that allegedly saves one's sanity or humanity or whatever the excuse is for making jokes at the expense of the recently murdered, the breathtaking stupidity that propels most homicidal actions, the survival strategies adopted by people living in the most dire circ.u.mstances in order simply to make it through one more day. He captures how the streets themselves are a narcotic for the cops as well as the street soldiers (and the occasional writer), everyone jacked for the next predictable yet unexpected bit of drama that will put both sides in motion and send the innocents caught in the middle dropping for cover beneath the bedroom window or huddling in the supposedly bulletproof bathtub-the family that ducks together stays together. And time after time he hammers home the fact that there's very little Black and White out there, and a h.e.l.l of a lot of Gray.

Homicide is a war story, and the theater of engagement stretches from the devastated rowhouses of East and West Baltimore to the halls of the state legislature in Annapolis. It reveals with no small irony how survival games on the streets mirror survival games in city hall, how all who engage in the drug war live and die by the numbers-kilos, ounces, grams, pills, profits for one side; crimes, arrests, solve rates, and budget cuts for the other. The book is a realpolitik examination of a munic.i.p.ality in the midst of a slow-motion riot, but through the steadfastness of Simon's presence is a war story, and the theater of engagement stretches from the devastated rowhouses of East and West Baltimore to the halls of the state legislature in Annapolis. It reveals with no small irony how survival games on the streets mirror survival games in city hall, how all who engage in the drug war live and die by the numbers-kilos, ounces, grams, pills, profits for one side; crimes, arrests, solve rates, and budget cuts for the other. The book is a realpolitik examination of a munic.i.p.ality in the midst of a slow-motion riot, but through the steadfastness of Simon's presence Homicide Homicide offers us the patterns hidden within the chaos. Baltimore, in fact, is Chaos Theory incarnate. offers us the patterns hidden within the chaos. Baltimore, in fact, is Chaos Theory incarnate.

With the success of the television adaptation of this book, Simon has been able to branch out into drama-the brilliant six-part miniseries based on his follow-up book, The Corner The Corner (co-written with Ed Burns), and the Russian novel of an HBO series, (co-written with Ed Burns), and the Russian novel of an HBO series, The Wire The Wire. With these later projects he gets to kick out the jams a little, to nudge and mastermind the truth into a slightly artificial shapeliness to heighten the big-ticket social issues. But even with the creative freedom of fiction, his work remains an exaltation of nuance, a continuing exploration of how the smallest external act can create the greatest internal revolution-in the life of a single marginalized person or in the spiritual and political biorhythm of a major American city.

All of which is to say that if Edith Wharton came back from the dead, developed a bent for munic.i.p.al power brokers, cops, crackheads and reportage, and didn't really care what she wore to the office, she'd probably look a little something like David Simon.

ONE.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 19.

Pulling one hand from the warmth of a pocket, Jay Landsman squats down to grab the dead man's chin, pus.h.i.+ng the head to one side until the wound becomes visible as a small, ovate hole, oozing red and white.

"Here's your problem," he said. "He's got a slow leak."

"A leak?" says Pellegrini, picking up on it.

"A slow one."

"You can fix those."

"Sure you can," Landsman agrees. "They got these home repair kits now ..."

"Like with tires."

"Just like with tires," Landsman says. "Comes with a patch and everything else you need. Now a bigger wound, like from a thirty-eight, you're gonna have to get a new head. This one you could fix."

Landsman looks up, his face the very picture of earnest concern.

Sweet Jesus, thinks Tom Pellegrini, nothing like working murders with a mental case. One in the morning, heart of the ghetto, half a dozen uniforms watching their breath freeze over another dead man-what better time and place for some vintage Landsman, delivered in perfect deadpan until even the s.h.i.+ft commander is laughing hard in the blue strobe of the emergency lights. Not that a Western District midnight s.h.i.+ft is the world's toughest audience; you don't ride a radio car for any length of time in Sector 1 or 2 without cultivating a diseased sense of humor.

"Anyone know this guy?" asks Landsman. "Anyone get to talk to him?"

"f.u.c.k no," says a uniform. "He was ten-seven when we got here."

Ten-seven. The police communication code for "out of service" artlessly applied to a human life. Beautiful. Pellegrini smiles, content in the knowledge that nothing in this world can come between a cop and his att.i.tude.

"Anyone go through his pockets?" asks Landsman.

"Not yet."

"Where the f.u.c.k are his pockets?"

"He's wearing pants underneath the sweatsuit."

Pellegrini watches Landsman straddle the body, one foot on either side of the dead man's waist, and begin tugging violently at the sweatpants. The awkward effort jerks the body a few inches across the sidewalk, leaving a thin film of matted blood and brain matter where the head wound sc.r.a.pes the pavement. Landsman forces a meaty hand inside a front pocket.

"Watch for needles," says a uniform.

"Hey," says Landsman. "Anyone in this crowd gets AIDS, no one's gonna believe it came from a f.u.c.king needle."

The sergeant pulls his hand from the dead man's right front pocket, causing perhaps a dollar in change to fall to the sidewalk.

"No wallet in front. I'm gonna wait and let the ME roll him. Somebody's called the ME, right?"

"Should be on the way," says a second uniform, taking notes for the top sheet of an incident report. "How many times is he hit?"

Landsman points to the head wound, then lifts a shoulder blade to reveal a ragged hole in the upper back of the dead man's leather jacket.

"Once in the head, once in the back." Landsman pauses, and Pellegrini watches him go deadpan once again. "It could be more."

The uniform puts pen to paper.

"There is a possibility," says Landsman, doing his best to look professorial, "a good possibility, he was shot twice through the same bullethole."

"No s.h.i.+t," says the uniform, believing.

A mental case. They give him a gun, a badge and sergeant's stripes, and deal him out into the streets of Baltimore, a city with more than its share of violence, filth and despair. Then they surround him with a chorus of blue-jacketed straight men and let him play the role of the lone, wayward joker that somehow slipped into the deck. Jay Landsman, of the sidelong smile and pockmarked face, who tells the mothers of wanted men that all the commotion is nothing to be upset about, just a routine murder warrant. Landsman, who leaves empty liquor bottles in the other sergeants' desks and never fails to turn out the men's room light when a ranking officer is indisposed. Landsman, who rides a headquarters elevator with the police commissioner and leaves complaining that some sonofab.i.t.c.h stole his wallet. Jay Landsman, who as a Southwestern patrolman parked his radio car at Edmondson and Hilton, then used a Quaker Oatmeal box covered in aluminum foil as a radar gun.

"I'm just giving you a warning this time," he would tell grateful motorists. "Remember, only you can prevent forest fires."

And now, but for the fact that Landsman can no longer keep a straight face, there might well be an incident report tracked to Central Records in the departmental mail, complaint number 88-7A37548, indicating that said victim appeared to be shot once in the head and twice in the back through the same bullethole.

"No, hey, I'm joking," he says finally. "We won't know anything for sure until the autopsy tomorrow."

He looks at Pellegrini.

"Hey, Phyllis, I'm gonna let the ME roll him."

Pellegrini manages a half-smile. He's been Phyllis to his squad sergeant ever since that long afternoon at Rikers Island in New York, when a jail matron refused to honor a writ and release a female prisoner into the custody of two male detectives from Baltimore; the regulations required a policewoman for the escort. After a sufficient amount of debate, Landsman grabbed Tom Pellegrini, a thick-framed Italian born to Allegheny coal miner stock, and pushed him forward.

"Meet Phyllis Pellegrini," Landsman said, signing for the prisoner. "She's my partner."

"How do you do?" Pellegrini said with no hesitation.

"You're not a woman," said the matron.

"But I used to be."

With the blue strobe glancing off his pale face, Tom Pellegrini moves a step closer to take stock of what half an hour earlier had been a twenty-six-year-old street dealer. The dead man is sprawled on his back, legs in the gutter, arms partly extended, head facing north near the side door of a corner rowhouse. Dark brown eyes are fixed under half-lids in that expression of vague recognition so common to the newly and suddenly departed. It is not a look of horror, consternation, or even distress. More often than not, the last visage of a murdered man resembles that of a fl.u.s.tered schoolchild to whom the logic of a simple equation has just been revealed.

"If you're okay here," says Pellegrini, "I'm gonna go across the street."

"What's up?"

"Well ..."

Landsman moves closer and Pellegrini lowers his voice, as if the spoken suggestion that there may be a witness to this murder would be an embarra.s.sing display of optimism.

"There's a woman who went into a house across the street. Someone told one of the first officers she was outside when the shooting started."

"She saw it?"

"Well, supposedly she told people it was three black males in dark clothes. They ran north after the shots."

It isn't much, and Pellegrini can read his sergeant's mind: three yos wearing black, a description that narrows the list to about half the f.u.c.king city. Landsman nods vaguely and Pellegrini begins making his way across Gold Street, stepping carefully around the patches of ice that cover much of the intersection. It is early morning now, half past two, and the temperature is well below freezing. A bracing wind catches the detective in the center of the street, cutting through his overcoat. On the other side of Etting, the locals have gathered to mark the event, younger men and teenagers signifying, scoping the unexpected entertainment, each one straining to catch a glimpse of the dead man's face across the street. Jokes are exchanged and stories whispered, but even the youngest knows to avert his eyes and fall silent at a first question from a uniform. There is no good reason to do otherwise, because in a half hour the dead man will be laid out on a table for one at the ME's chop shop on Penn Street, the Western men will be stirring coffee at the Monroe Street 7-Eleven and the dealers will be selling blue-topped caps again at this G.o.dforsaken crossroads of Gold and Etting. Nothing said now is going to change any of that.

The crowd watches Pellegrini cross the street, eyef.u.c.king him in a way that only the west side corner boys can as he walks to a painted stone stoop and hits a wood door with a rapid, three-beat motion. Waiting for a response, the detective watches a battered Buick roll west on Gold, idling slowly toward and then past him. Brake lights flash for a moment as the car approaches the blue strobes on the other side of the street. Pellegrini turns to watch the Buick roll a few blocks farther west to the Brunt Street corners, where a small coterie of runners and touts have resumed work, selling heroin and cocaine a respectful distance from the murder scene. The Buick shows its taillights again, and a lone figure slips from one corner and leans into the driver's window. Business is business, and the Gold Street market waits for no man, certainly not the dead dealer across the street.

Pellegrini knocks again and steps close to the door, listening for movement inside. From upstairs comes a m.u.f.fled sound. The detective exhales slowly and raps again, bringing a young girl to a second-floor window in the next rowhouse.

"Hey there," Pellegrini says, "police department."

"Uh-huh."

"Do you know if Katherine Thompson lives next door?"

"Yeah, she do."

"Is she home now?"

"Guess so."

Heavy pounding on the door is answered at last by a light from upstairs, where a frame window is suddenly and violently wrenched upward. A heavyset, middle-aged woman-fully dressed, the detective notes-pushes head and shoulders across the sill and stares down at Pellegrini.

"Who the h.e.l.l is knocking on my door this late?"

"Mrs. Thompson?"

"Yeah."

"Police."

"Poh-leece?"

Jesus Christ, Pellegrini thinks, what else would a white man in a trenchcoat be doing on Gold Street after midnight? He pulls the s.h.i.+eld and holds it toward the window.

"Could I talk to you for a moment?"

"No, you can't," she says, expelling the words in a singsong, slow enough and loud enough to reach the crowd across the street. "I got nothing to say to you. People be trying to sleep and you knocking on my door this late."

"You were asleep?"

"I ain't got to say what I was."

"I need to talk with you about the shooting."

"Well, I ain't got a d.a.m.n thing to say to you."

"Someone died ..."

"I know it."

"We're investigating it."

"So?"

Tom Pellegrini suppresses an almost overwhelming desire to see this woman dragged into a police wagon and bounced over every pothole between here and headquarters. Instead, he looks hard at the woman's face and speaks his last words in a laconic tone that betrays only weariness.