Buddy Boys by Mike McAlary Read Free Book Online Page A

from robbery to burglary, answering radio calls of “shots fired,” and “ten-thirteen—officer needs assistance,” Henry had changed his mind. He wanted to work here. He watched in amazement as Caufield and his partner rushed into a building after hearing gunshots, kicked down a door, and finally emerged from an apartment with a black man in handcuffs.
    â€œIs it always like this?” Henry asked, staring at a loaded .357 magnum the officers had taken off the gunman.
    â€œNo,” Caufield said. “Most of the time it’s busy.”
    Henry settled back into the deep Checker cab seat and smiled.
    â€œFuck the garbage truck,” he thought.
    Having passed an entrance examination for the department in 1970, Henry Winter was finally told to report to the New York City Police Academy for a physical in June 1974.
    Along with half a million other suburban commuters, he rode the Long Island Railroad to work, pushing and shoving his way onto the train each morning for the ride into Penn Station, then boarding a bus for the ride to the Police Academy, nestled between Second and Third Avenues on East 20th Street. He was happy and nervous. Soon the same Henry Winter who had pretended to be Joe Friday as a kid would be pulling his very own .38 and telling real bad guys to freeze. He would be a New York City cop—a member of a department known throughout the world as the Finest. He could hardly contain his excitement. His father, the same Henry H. Winter who left the city for the suburbs twenty-two years earlier, was already telling the fathers of Nassau County cops he drank with in a local bar, “Your sons aren’t real cops. Not like my son Henry, anyway. He’s a city cop.”
    In July, Henry invited Betsy out for dinner at the Lincoln Inn in Rockville Centre, Long Island. It was the first restaurant he had ever been to where someone parked your car. Betsy was similarly impressed. She ordered chicken cordon bleu. Henry got the veal. Over appetizers, he popped the question: Would she be interested in becoming a cop’s wife? By the time a waiter rolled the dessert cart over to the table, the couple had agreed on a May 1975 wedding.
    From the start, Henry liked the military atmosphere and the feeling of confederacy at the academy. But it wasn’t too long before he spotted a way to circumvent certain rules and regulations. All recruits, he noted, were given three yellow “gig cards.” They were to be carried at all times in a uniform shirt pocket. If a recruit with dull shoes or a stained uniform was spotted by a supervisor, he had to surrender a gig card. If he lost all three cards, he got a reprimand from the captain. Repeat offenders faced expulsion.
    Although Henry Winter lost twelve gig cards during his four-month stay in the academy, he was never disciplined. He and the other recruits always seemed to have enough gig cards, even though they often weren’t in the right names.
    In October, Henry graduated from the Police Academy. There was no official ceremony, just a party at an East Side Italian restaurant. He was assigned to the 25th Precinct, a Spanish Harlem command housed on East 119th Street. The day before leaving, the class watched a training film that included a message from a member of the department’s Internal Affairs Division, the unit which polices the police.
    â€œDon’t ever forget that we’re out there watching,” said an IAD investigator.
    As the film ended and the lights came on in the auditorium, a sergeant stood at the podium, scanning the faces of recruits.
    â€œThere are a few of you out there who won’t make it as cops,” he said, holding up a pair of handcuffs. “Some of you will wind up being arrested.”
    The words meant nothing to Henry. He had the gun and he had the silver badge. He was the good guy and had a blue uniform to prove it. That night, he went home and had one of the most powerful dreams