Chapter 1: Coffee and Pound Cake

Friday, July 21, 2017

I wasn’t supposed to be working the night shift, but Sergeant Castle was on vacation and there was an opening for a patrol sergeant that I had been tapped to fill. It had been hot and muggy all day long, in the nineties with about one-hundred percent humidity, and the possibility of a thunderstorm or tornado to liven things up. Instead of laying around at home in the air conditioning, or maybe down at the dock where I could drink beer and float on an inner tube, I was driving around in a TRV with the windows rolled down because the AC had crapped out. I sure hoped Castle was enjoying his stay, wherever he was. Maybe he could visit Hawaii and the volcano gods could make one explode.

“Dispatch to One-Six-Three.”

“One-Six-Three to Dispatch, go ahead.”

“Dispatch to One-Six-Three, respond to civil disturbance, 378 Deckard Street. Be advised uniformed units are on site and on the way to assist. Supervisor is requested.”

“One-Six-Three to Dispatch, say type of disturbance.”

“Dispatch to One-Six-Three, no details available.”

“One-Six-Three to Dispatch, heading out, ETA five minutes or less.”

I had been running radar on South Matucket when the call came in, so I was only a few miles away from Deckard. I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was wrong on D-Street. Deckard was almost exclusively African-American and was definitely what you could call the low-rent district. At one time that description had applied to Bleecker Street but in the last few years that area had been getting spruced up. Property values were rising and some of the tenements had been either torn down or were being rebuilt. Gentrification, they called it. Those businesses which had been there all along, like Foster’s Bar-B-Q, now found themselves with new customers. I had gone to school with the owners of Foster’s and they told me they had been able to raise their prices. They told me that when I complained about the price of the last order of chicken and ribs I had bought. Progress, I was told.

D-Street, on the other hand, was where everybody priced out of Bleecker ended up going, along with any individuals who didn’t appreciate the increased police presence in the now-nicer areas of Bleecker. The Three-Hundred block of Deckard was also the home turf of the D-Street Treys, the local gang. They weren’t quite as murderous as the Crips and Bloods in Los Angeles, but they ran drugs and hookers and protection rackets in the poor neighborhoods. Whatever was going on at 378 Deckard was smack in the middle of Trey territory, and for some reason that address was very familiar.

There was a large and surly-looking crowd standing on the street, most of whom were carrying beer bottles. The address was for a shotgun shack in the middle of a row of shotgun shacks. A shotgun shack is a single-family home, long and narrow, with all the rooms in a row, so named because you could fire a shotgun in through the front door and have the blast go straight through to the back door. They were usually rather decrepit, but this one was neat and clean, and the yard was well-taken care of. A short fence went around the yard. Paul Six-One was parked in front of it and I could hear sirens as other units approached. I got out and locked my vehicle. There were a lot of angry faces around me, and some nasty words, but nobody was getting violent. Yet.

“One-Six-Three to Dispatch, hold off on any more units. Keep them back three blocks, minimum.” Time for some conflict de-escalation!

I looked around and realized where I was and whose house this was. The home belonged to Mrs. Hallie Johnson, ‘Nanny’ Hallie, grandmother of Montrose Johnson, number one in the pecking order of the D-Street Treys. Nanny was standing on her porch, looking in through the front door, and looking angry. Around me people were pressing in and yelling at me about police brutality and their rights and working themselves into a frenzy.

I had first met Nanny about five years ago, when I was still working the night shift, and I was handed an arrest warrant for Montrose and sent there to grab him. According to the paperwork on Montrose he was bigger than my brother Jack and had a record as long as my arm. The beef that day had been that he had put another gang member through the front window of the Piggly Wiggly when said gang member tried to knife him. I sympathized with Montrose on that, but the store manager wasn’t as understanding. He had video and swore out a complaint...

***

Friday, June 22, 2012

I drove to the address on the paperwork, 378 Deckard, and was surprised when I got there. It was a small oasis of tranquility and cleanliness in a desert of hopelessness. I parked and went through the gate to the front door and knocked. A tiny black woman who must have been older than God came to the door. She opened the door and said, “Hello.”

“Hello. I’m Officer Reaper with the Matucket Police Department. I’m looking for Montrose Johnson and this is the address I have for him. Does he live here?”

“No, not really. Montrose is my grandson. He uses my address for some things. I’ve asked him not to, but sometimes that boy forgets.” I nodded in understanding. It was quite common for criminals to use addresses of their relatives; like now, we often ended up spinning our wheels looking for them. “What’s he done, officer?”

“I just have some witness papers for him. I need to take him down to the station, so we can sort it out. Would you know where I can find him?” I asked.

“Why don’t you come in and maybe I can find out,” she answered.

That would be a major improvement over my other option, which was to kick in the door and execute a hostile search. “Yes, ma’am, thank you.” I held the door for her and followed her inside.

The house was an official shotgun shack, with a living room or parlor, then a kitchen, and then a bedroom at the rear, with a door leading to the back yard. A steep staircase in the living room led to what was probably a small bedroom or attic upstairs. Mrs. Johnson led me into the kitchen and sat me down at a small table. “Would you like some coffee, Officer Reaper?”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you.”

Well damn if she didn’t pour me a cup of coffee and set it and some cream and sugar on the table. “I also have some fresh pound cake, if you’d like.”

I smiled at her. “Only if you sit and join me, Mrs. Johnson.”

She poured herself some coffee and cut a couple of pieces off the end of a fresh-baked pound cake and set them on plates. “I made this this morning,” she told me. “I hope you like it.”

“Ma’am, I’m a police officer. We live on coffee and pastries. I think it’s in the manual somewhere!”

“So, why do you need to see Montrose again?” Mrs. Johnson wanted more information, but I stuck with the witness paperwork story, that Montrose had seen a window break at the Piggly Wiggly and we had a few questions for him. She wouldn’t be happy to have me slap the cuffs on him in her living room.

After five minutes, the telephone rang, a wall-mounted type in the kitchen. She answered it and said, “Montrose, I’m so glad you called. Officer Reaper would like to talk to you.” She turned to me and said, “It’s Montrose.” She turned back to the phone and said, “Where are you, Montrose? ... Alright, I’ll put him on.” She held the phone out to me and said, “Montrose would like to speak with you.”

Montrose probably knew I was in the neighborhood before his grandmother did. I took the phone from her and said, “Hello, Mister Johnson? My name is Senior Patrolman Reaper and I’d like to speak to you about the broken window you saw at the Piggly Wiggly.”

“Is that the story you spun for Nanny?” Montrose had a very deep voice.

“Yes, it is. Now, if you tell me where you are, I can come to you, if that would be more convenient,” I told him.