It had been that easy.
The 87th Precinct territory was divided into eight sectors, and a radio motor patrol car was assigned to each sector. The patrol sergeant had a car and driver of his own, which brought the total to nine cars in use at any given time. In addition, there were six so-called standby cars. These six were often pressed into service because police cars—like police stations—took a hell of a beating in any given twenty-four-hour period, and there were a great many breakdowns on the road. A team of officers would often be driving one car at nine in the morning and a different car at eleven.
No differentiation was made between the standby cars and the ones they often replaced. In the jargon of the precinct they were all called ‘the junk.’ Cops would pile into the junk when their tour of duty started and would drop off the junk when the tour ended. The junk was both singular and plural. One patrol car was the junk. Six patrol cars were the junk. A hundred patrol cars would have been the junk. Whenever a car broke down, it was called ‘the fuckin’ junk.’ To listen to the motorized cops of the Eight-Seven, you’d have thought they were narcotics dealers. Only one of the cars had ever had a name. This had been the favorite car in the precinct, an old workhorse that rarely broke down. The cops called her Sadie. Eventually Sadie’s motor gave out, and the city decided it was cheaper to replace her than to repair her. The cops of the Eighty-seventh held a small ceremony for Sadie when she died. She still remained their favorite.
As a matter of practice all the junk in the precinct—the regularly assigned cars and the standby cars—was used on a more or less rotating basis. There were also several unmarked sedans, which the detectives drove, but these were not considered part of the junk. The junk had white door panels with the city’s seal and the number of the precinct painted on them, black fenders, a black hood, and a white roof with a row of lights on it. The unmarked detectives’ cars were always parked in the lot behind the station house. The junk was parked either there or in front of the station, angled into the curb.
There were seven cars parked in the lot behind the station house when Gopher got to work—the six standby cars and the sergeant’s car. It took him literally three minutes to wire each of the cars. By seven twenty-two, when dawn came, he had already wired four of them. By seven-forty, when the cars on the midnight-to-eight tour began drifting in, he had finished wiring the remaining three and was waiting to do only two more. As soon as a pair of patrolmen left a car to go into the station house, Gopher threw up the hood. Between the grille and the radiator he planted a box containing a plastic bag of black powder and a live-pound charge of dynamite. He attached a ground wire to the chassis. He unplugged the connector wire he knew would be there, and loosely twisted the cleaned ends of both wires. The wires ran into the plastic bag of black powder. The dynamite fuse ran into that same plastic bag.
By seven forty-five, when the cars began pulling out for the eight-to-four tour, Gopher was packing his tools in the truck.
He wished the relief cop at the gate a Happy New Year, got into the truck and drove off.
* * * *
The first explosion did not come until the four-to-midnight tour was almost a half hour old.
The patrolmen assigned to Charlie Two had checked out the car at ten minutes to four. The patrol sergeant, who was a pain in the ass when it came to the junk, came out to look over the vehicle for dents or scratches, jotting down even the slightest mark for comparison when the car was checked in again at eleven forty-five that night. The sergeant’s name was Preuss, but the patrolmen called him ‘Priss’ behind his back. Charlie Two left the precinct at five minutes to four. At four-fifteen, after a single run at the sector, they decided to stop for some coffee. The shotgun cop got back into the car at four twenty-two, a container of coffee in each hand.
‘Starting to get dark,’ he said.
The driver reached for the container of coffee with his right hand and the light switch with his left hand. He pulled the light switch. The plug-in connector wire Gopher had removed from the right front head light and twisted into his ground wire was suddenly alive with current from the 12-volt battery. The loosely twisted wires lying in the plastic bag of black powder shorted and sparked, the powder flashed, the fuse flared, and the dynamite went up an instant later.
That was at 4:23 p.m.
* * * *
Al 4:27 p.m., nineteen minutes before sunset, the patrolmen riding Boy One saw a man running up Culver Avenue in Sector Two. Patrolmen were normally assigned to the same sector on each of their tours, on the theory that familiarity bred better crime prevention. If a patrolman spotted something that looked unusual to him—a grocery store closed when it was supposed to be open, a snatch of hookers standing on the wrong corner—he immediately checked it out. A running man was always suspicious. If you were a runner in this city, you were supposed to be wearing a track suit and running shoes. Everyone else walked fast, but they rarely ran. A running man in ordinary clothing was usually running away from something.
The patrolman riding shotgun in Boy One said, ‘Up ahead, Frank.’
‘I see him,’ the driver said.
The time was 4:28 p.m.
The driver eased the car over into the curbside lane. The man was still running.
‘In one hell of a hurry,’ the shotgun cop said.
They kept watching him.
‘He’s just trying to catch that bus on the corner,’ the driver said.
‘Yeah,’ the shotgun cop said.
The man got on the bus. The bus pulled away from the curb.
‘Getting dark,’ the shotgun cop said. ‘Better put on the ...’
The driver was already reaching for the light switch.
An instant later, Boy One exploded.
* * * *
Preuss, the patrol sergeant, looked at his digital watch as he came out of the station house and started for his car, his driver immediately behind him. The time was 4:31 p.m. The watch also told him that this was Monday, January 2. Watches could tell you almost anything these days. Preuss knew somebody who had an alarm clock, when it went off, you said ‘Stop’ to it, and it let you sleep for another four minutes.
As Preuss got into the car, he was thinking one explosion could be an accident, two explosions were a conspiracy. He had dreaded a conspiracy ever since he’d made sergeant. He knew that the cops in this city wouldn’t stand a fuckin’ chance if all the bad guys got together and decided to wipe them out.
The driver put the key into the ignition switch and turned it.
The engine roared into life.
And because it was rapidly becoming dark, he reached for the light switch.
* * * *
By 4:38 p.m. six of the eight cars on patrol were out of service. The remaining two cars all received an urgently radioed 10-02—report to your command. The Bomb Squad was already on its way to the 87th Precinct.
Neither of them made it back safely to the station house.
Sunset was at 4:46 p.m.
By then nine cars—the eight on patrol and the sergeant’s car—had gone up.