There I was on the rope ladder, climbing out of a duct with who knew how much in uncut diamonds and three cops staring at me.
I said `motherfuck, motherfuck, motherfuck' under my breath.
`Man, ain't you a beauty,' said one of the policemen as he holstered his pistol.
I looked at myself. I was blacker than my darkest African ancestor.
`What's your name, kid?'
I turned cool pro hood and didn't say a word. Inside, though, I was terrified of what was to come. This was big trouble. This was what had happened to Kenny.
They took me to the Midtown Precinct and cuffed me to a chair along side one of many desks in a large room on the second floor. Try as I could, I couldn't figure out how they knew to wait for me.
A detective with a gold badge sat down in front of me and looked me over with a look of disgust. `Somebody wash this kid up. Look at him. The inside of his mouth's black.'
Two uniforms took me into the cop lavatory and gave me a cup. "Rinse it out, kid.' I sipped water which immediately tasted like socks that hadn't been washed for a week. I spit it out in a spray. I went through three cups of water and the horrible taste wouldn't go away, but I wasn't going to say a thing.
They took me back. The detective looked at me and shook his head. `I said clean him up. Look at the chair. He's dirtying up the entire place. I can't see his goddam face for Christ sake. Throw him in a shower. Find him something to wear. Bag the clothes he's wearing.'
The two cops took me to a shower room and said, `Strip and go wash yourself'.
I stared at them like I had no idea what they were saying. That was to be my strategy. No English. The cop took the hint and indicated taking off my clothes and showering in there. I was more than ready. Even considering the situation, it was perhaps the most welcome shower of my life. The water flowed off black. The soap turned black. I washed three times, my hair five. The policemen didn't try to rush me. They saw how filthy I was. I was brought the clean clothes that had been in the suitcase in the janitor's closet. My mouth still tasted like a dirty laundry.
As I was led back into the office, the detective who'd sent me to the shower was arguing with a man in a suit.
`He's a juvenile. Only his parents can see him and that's when I'm through with him.'
The suited man saw me. The detective noticed and began pushing the man toward the door.
`Ramon, no diga nada hasta llega tu mama! Ella llegar pronto para llevar te a casa.' The white lawyer, speaking pasable Spanish, had told me to say nothing until my mother came to pick me up. And, I guessed, I wasn't to speak English. I was ahead of them.
Good morning and goodbye, counselor,' said the detective, now angry, I got work to do. So out!' He used his large body to force the man out the door.
I was handcuffed to the same chair as before. It was dirty.
Hoolihan had sent a lawyer. That meant he'd been watching and saw them take me away. There were too many cops for him to have done anything. Now, he had to use his connections, and fast.
When she found out, my mother was going to be worse on me than the cops.
Ramon, is it,' said the smiling detective as he sat. What's your last name, Ramon?'
I looked at him like I had no idea what he was talking about.
`Don't try to bullshit a bullshitter, kid. I know goddam well you speaka da English so don't waste my time. What's you last name?'
Silence, blank stare.
Look, Ramon, or is it Ray?' He paused in thought. Ray, is it.'
He stood suddenly and walked quickly over to the only other person in the room at the time, another suited man at a typewriter. He leaned over his desk and said something. The other man looked back and me and smiled.
`Fucking eh!' I could see him say.
Both came back to me. `You're Ray Hoolihan's half and half bastard, ain't cha? said the first cop. 'Boy, do we have a party now', said the second. 'Better call Mulvaney.'
The second detective snapped up a chair from an adjacent desk and swung it around so he sat on it backwards, his hands folded on the back.
`Now, boy, you're gonna make my life easier and your life freer and tell me everything, capiche?'
I stared at him, trying to look unconcerned but nearing panic inside. They knew who I was. They wanted me to give up my biological father in exchange for my freedom. I knew what happened to snitches. The story of Georgie's father made that clear. He'd given up a fellow Westie to get out of jail, and a day later, well before he could testify, he was shot dead in the entry door of his building, in front of the entire neighborhood. It was a message that all understood. I understood it. There was no way I was going to tell them anything. Now was the time to be Bogart, the tough guy. I was going to reform school. Why didn't I run away from the house on Forty Sixth?
The two cops glared at me. `Have it your way kid. Them big boys at the Detention Center gonna love your sweet ass. They ain't gonna give a flying fuck who your old man is.'
They stood and adjusted their pants. After a moment, the first cop asked, `You're sure this is how you want it?'
I maintained my blank stare and settled back in the chair, knowing I'd be in it for a while. The second cop tightened the cuff on my wrist. It hurt.
Mother came flying in half an hour later. She smacked me hard on the side of the head and said angrily in Spanish but in hushed tones, `You little son-of-a-bitch. You're just like your fucking father. What did you do this time, huh?'
I answered in Spanish. `Get me out of here and I'll tell you later. I can't talk in front of these guys.'
An obviously Latino cop rushed in and up to us. He didn't say a word, just listened. Mother looked at him and apparently realizing he spoke Spanish asked in English, `When can I take my son home?'
`Not until he's spoken to the detectives,' he answered in Spanish.
Mother looked at me. I shook my head.
`I want a lawyer with him,' she insisted.
`He's a juvenile, Miss Molina, he's not allowed one. Just tell him to talk to the detectives and everything will be okay.'
I shook my head again. Mother spat at me.
I was shocked. I had never seen her direct such hatred at me. I could only look at her. My mind was devoid of words. She turned and marched out.
The Latino cop said, Madre mia.' To the detectives he said, Poor kid.'
The detectives didn't see it that way, especially a third man in an overcoat who came in behind the Latino cop. To them, it opened a window of vulnerability.
The new cop took off his overcoat deliberately and tossed it across an empty desk. He took the chair my first interrogator had left facing me.
'Well, well. Young Ray Hoolihan. I hear you're a tough kid, and smart like your old man. Now we'll see how smart you really are. Well, you're not that smart. That trash can full of duct dust was a dead giveaway.'
It took all my self control not to scream when he told me that. The plan was stupid from the start. Nobody thought about how I was supposed to get rid of all that dust.
`My name's Detective Mulvaney. Right now, I'd say, I'm your best friend, your only friend. We all just saw that your mother doesn't want anything more to do with you. And you can bet your father has hightailed it far away. Now, I suspect none of this was your idea. They just stuck you in there and told you to do it and bring the jewels home to papa. They stayed safely out of the way so if something happened, like it did, like it usually does, they could walk away with no worries. You'd do the time and they'd just go rob somebody else. Fuck you. Case closed.
'So here you sit, all alone, with us the only ones can save your little brown ass. Don't go thinking about that lawyer was here. You are a juvenile, laddie. You got no rights. A judge can send you up the river 'til you're eighteen and, considering what you got messed up in, that's what he'll probably do, unless, you decide to help yourself and tell us who is really responsible for your predicament, one Ray Hoolihan.'
I was still pissed off at the 'little brown ass' remark and only barely caught what he said after. Fucking white racist cop.
He went on like that for about ten minutes, trying to break me, make me cry. They were stupid. A friendly arm around the shoulder at that time, some understanding with a boy crushed by the completely unexpected hatred of his mother and anger at being dragged into such a poorly designed plan probably would have gotten them everything they wanted. I was weak, vulnerable. They drove me away, out of that cold room into another world that just took a few minutes to form. It was a world of hardened criminals who would suffer all the prison time they threw his way before collaborating with such hateful people. It was a world I knew having grown up on Forty-Eighth Street in the middle of Hell's Kitchen, surrounded by every kind of hardass that existed. I shut my interrogators out. Their voices were unintelligible rumblings that couldn't enter my conscious. I kept reminding myself that anything they did to me could not last forever. It had to end. Never say never, nothing is forever.
I dropped my head and let the sleep I needed take over.
Some hours later, I was roused out of the chair and taken to another building where a man behind a desk, apparently a juvenile judge, ordered me sent to a juvenile detention center in the Bronx. The hearing took three minutes at the most. Detective Mulvaney led me to a waiting room where several teenage boys sat, two in cuffs like me. He stopped me in the door and let me look inside. Then he dragged me to a nearby large room, probably a courtroom, and sat me on a wood bench.
'Look kid. You don't seem to realize what's happening here. This whole thing's falling on little you. We got you coming out of a duct from the jeweler's work room with the jewels. You're caught cold 'n' simple. You don't cooperate and you're locked up until you're eighteen. You got that? You don't see the street until you're eighteen years old. All those years of fun with your buddies go poof! Eight years living with maggots like them in the waitin' room. No girl friends to the school dance. No girl friends, period. By the time these animals get through with you, you're not even gonna like girls. You gonna be a faggot looking for muscle boys. That what you want? Eight years locked up and come out a fairy queen while your old man drives around free as a bird? He put you up to this. What kind a father puts a little kid like you into a situation like this? Huh? You think he gives two shits about you right now? That piece of garbage is having breakfast with the wife and you're goin' to hell in a handbasket. The only way you can save yourself is by talking to me, telling me everything. He won't be able to do anything to you because he's gonna be in the can where he can't hurt you or anybody ever again. You're gonna be safe with your mama in some nice place a long way from New York City.'
I hardly heard what he was saying. My mind was still back on me coming out of reform school a faggot. The stupid cop! I already was a faggot. I liked it when Roy fucked me and I liked sucking boy cocks. Big fucking deal. I could protect myself. They might get to me once but they would never do it again.
Anyway, never say never, nothing is forever. John had it right. Do what they wanted, they couldn't keep me forever. I'd get out one day. All this would end.
I maintained my silence, not even looking at the cop.
'You ain't listening to a word I say, are you? Well, fuck you then!'
He took me gruffly by the arm back to the waiting room door.
`See those animals in there? That's your future. Living in cages with that. When you decide you want out, you tell one of the counselors you wanna talk to Mulvaney. Got that, Mulvaney. They all know me.' He pushed me into the room.
As I sat on the bench, it occurred to me that Kenny had been in this very room, that he had been through all the same crap and went to the same place I was going. Since no one else had been arrested after he went to the upstate reformatory, he had refused, like me, to give up anyone else. Maybe I could learn more of his fate from kids in the detention center.
Half an hour later, a man with a clipboard opened the door and called out names, none of them mine. Maybe I wasn't going after all. Was someone there to get me out? The other three boys went to the door where they were handcuffed together by two cops.
'Hey, you, Gonzalez. Get over here.'
I looked around. There was no one else in the room. The man was looking at me.
'Get you ass over here, Gonzalez. You deaf?'
'A mi no me llamo Gonzalez,' I said coldly.
'I don't understand that shit,' he said angrily as he approached me. He grabbed me by the collar and yanked me up, popping the top button off my shirt. One of the others snatched my arm and slapped a handcuff on my wrist, attaching me to the third teenager. They took us to a waiting van.
After a perhaps a half hour, bumpy ride, we were led through the double doors and into the main corridor of the juvenile detention facility.