he
woman smiles at the trick question. “I don’t know what your plans
are, Hon, but I’m not, no.”
“So what’re you doing here?”
“Just waitin’ for my boyfriend.”
“Well, how about you wait for him without the little parade, okay? Anything else is against the law, we both know that, right?”
It strikes her as another trick question. “I figure you have that uniform you should know it. And I sure do.”
“That’s good. We’re going to be following you today.”
“That’s great, Hon. Nobody’s gonna rip me off today.”
The woman gets a final slurp out of her drink and drops the paper cup neatly into a sidewalk garbage can. When the patrol car doesn’t budge, she sighs dramatically and heads off more purposively. There will be no business this morning.
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| Cantore and Buonocore on the roof of a vertical patrol. | |
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Photo by John Tracy/Daily News |
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| P.O. Mark DiPilato and Sgt. Scott Nicholls talk to reporters about saving six people from a fire on Jersey Street in New Brighton. | |
An extended radio silence gives the cops time to carry out a standing vertical on a day-care center. Because the center is attached to a school, there have been numerous reports of students smoking up the hallways between classes, and not only with tobacco. Buonocore and Cantore trudge the five floors to the roof without finding anything but an odd Marlboro filter. “Even that shouldn’t be there,” Cantore nods. “But the way things go in some of these places, that’s even a good sign, that there’s nothing worse. But it just isn’t right to have these pre-schoolers walking out of their room to see these people doing grass, whatever.”
Buonocore’s conversational tact is needed on the next call. A landlord has claimed being threatened by one of his tenants for demanding the monthly rent. The complainant is waiting on the sidewalk in front of a two-family home that is recessed from the street behind a small jungle of trees and plants. He is a 40-year-old man with a crewcut from another age and a watch chain he has been sentenced to twirling ever since inheriting it from his grandfather. “I’m a nice guy,” he assures the cops as soon as they pull up. “I try to go the extra mile. But some people just don’t appreciate it.”
The story isn’t War and Peace, but it has its comic sides. The landlord’s a realtor who recently bought the house intending to move into the downstairs floor. He then discovered the upstairs tenants were using the garage as a laundromat. He asked them to take back their washing machine. Their answer was to change the locks on the garage. He asked them if they would stop running up and down the stairs at all hours of the night. Their answer was to saw off the banister. He asked them if they could cough up the two months of rent they owed. Their answer was to sue him for not cleaning up the leaves in the circular entrance.
Buonocore is all sympathy. He owns a home himself and knows all about the agita tenants can cause the most well-meaning of landlords. That’s why there are landlord-tenant courts, right? The realtor couldn’t agree more. That’s why he and the tenants have begun their own battle in a courtroom. Okay, Buonocore assures the man, he’s done the right thing. But now what about these so-called threats? That’s the only thing that would interest a cop. Is he ready to file charges the tenants threatened him with bodily harm? Come to think of it, the realtor isn’t really all that sure his most recent back-and-forth with the tenants could be construed that seriously. Buonocore couldn’t shrug more helplessly. See, there’s the problem, he confides to the man. Unless there was an out-and-out threat and unless the man’s willing to say there was on an official form, there’s really nothing the police can do.
The realtor sees the light. “So you’re saying I should just make their attitude more of my court case?”
“Absolutely.”
“And just the fact that I called you two here today, that can’t hurt my case, right?”
“Can’t hurt,” Buonocore agrees. “And if we should ever be called, we’d say exactly what we’re saying to you right now.”
The realtor isn’t sure that’s the hearty endorsement he wanted, but he takes down the badge numbers anyway.
“Why do I think he’s done something like this before?” Cantore asks, as they drive away.
Buonocore has no doubt why. “Because he’s had cops as a backup plan before. First you buy the place, you change a few bathroom faucets, you kick out the tenants, and you get new ones at three times the rent. Now we’re going to be witnesses to him saying he intended living there. I wonder how many other places he intended living in after he bought them.”
With one exception, the rest of the tour is without incident. The exception is a call to an elementary school where a student has reportedly attacked a teacher. Cantore is mildly surprised they have gotten through the tour with that single call since if there is one thing the 120 isn’t short on, it’s schools. (The district includes 37 grammar schools, four junior highs, eight high schools, and two colleges.) The source of the trouble turns out to be an 11-year-old girl who stopped taking medication for emotional problems and fired an eraser at a teacher for questioning her attention in class. When the mother shows up, she admits she hadn’t been supervising the medication. The teacher at the wrong end of the eraser agrees to go off with the girl to St. Vincent’s Hospital to consult with doctors.
When Buonocore gets back to the station house, he finds an old problem waiting: the elderly man from the car accident. “Anything new?” the man asks, jumping up from a reception seat at sight of the cop.
Buonocore’s “no” seems to cover more than one subject.
— Donald Dewey’s latest non-fiction book, The Black Prince, is being published in February 2004.
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