Brooklyn Supreme

Reuland Robert Reuland

Description

A hard-edged literary thriller about a racially charged police shooting, by one of "crime fiction's most gifted writers" (George Pelecanos)-now in paperbackNo one knows better than Will Way that it's not so easy to get out of Brooklyn. Seeking escape, Will finds possible upward mobility in a relationship with Regine Pomeroy, the daughter of Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Henry K. Pomeroy. But Regine is a troubled young woman, and one day Will is called upon by her father to fix a situation that proves beyond fixing. Two decades later, Will has returned to the borough and, like many of his peers, joined the NYPD. Now it's his job to get beat cops out of trouble-cops like Georgina Lee, an inexperienced officer who shot and killed an African American teenager after he robbed a bodega. But when it turns out the perpetrator might not have been armed, Lee's case becomes a publicity firestorm. Several men vying for higher office in Brooklyn use it to further their ambitions, and Will finds himself caught not only in the bureaucracy of the NYPD and Brooklyn politics, but also in his deeply confused conscience. As he tries to unravel so many different versions of the truth, Will's past catches up with him; his distant father and Regine Pomeroy reenter his life, and her father tries to capitalize on the case for political gain. As lines are drawn across the city, Will must make decisions he never expected he would have to make, whose outcomes will cost him dearly. Brooklyn Supreme is a clear-eyed exploration of the fault lines of class, gender, and race in America, and a stunning portrayal of Brooklyn's justice system. A standout crime novel by a writer with an undeniable gift, Brooklyn Supreme is a gritty and gut-wrenching read.

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 23 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647001186
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

This edition first published in hardcover in 2021 by
The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS
195 Broadway, 9th floor
New York, NY 10007
www.overlookpress.com
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [e-mail] or the address above.
Copyright 2021 Robert Reuland
Cover 2021 Abrams
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934844
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5065-6
eISBN: 978-1-64700-118-6
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
This book is for my daughter Emma, with love
GEORGINA
ONE
Police Officer Georgina Reed killed a man. A boy, really. She gave me her story in a stationhouse basement. She really didn t know who I was or why she had to tell me, so she lied. She was scared. She had just seen her future rearranged in the time it took a single nine-millimeter hollowpoint bullet to find its target on a Brooklyn street corner, so the best she could do was to make it all sound perfectly reasonable.
After, I was still in Bushwick, idling at a green light and not realizing it was green until behind me came the first car horn, then the second and the third, each of them sounding indifferently urgent and far away with my windows closed and my mind stuck in the 83 basement, where Georgina Reed-too young for this, barely a cop-told me her story on a metal folding chair. She lied, of course, but by the time I learned the truth I no longer cared so much and just wanted to sleep. On the night of, however, idling at the green light, I wanted to know. I wanted to know what had gone down on that street corner because it was my job to know the truth and if necessary to hide it.
Across the street, traffic moved in the opposite direction, a blur of light in my periphery, and I heard the car horns. In my mirror I could see nothing definite. The rain on the glass broke the headlights and taillights behind me into a thousand pieces colored brilliant red and white. I wound down my window and all the noise sounded closer but still empty. I made a gesture with my hand and the cars pulled around and I was alone again and it was quiet.
This is where it happened, Broadway and Putnam, the scene of the crime. Maybe. Not my call. I m not in the finger-pointing business. And who knows, I told myself, maybe it did go down just like she said-that she had to drop the kid, that she had no choice, but I didn t think so. Ask me, Georgina Reed was too quick on the draw. Besides, I was thinking, something s fucked with her whole story. There was an earnestness about her, in her need to be believed, and nothing betrays a lie like the urgency to make it credible. So, I was at Putnam Avenue and Broadway after leaving Georgina Reed in the basement of the stationhouse a few short blocks north after she d said what she wanted to say, shaking my hand goodbye with her short cold fingers, her moist dark eyes suggesting hope that I could help her, if only I might believe her.
Already after midnight when I walked out of the stationhouse into the rain, I should ve just gone home. Home anyway was not home but a few rooms in an apartment building, more hotel than home. I left the 83 and started my car and stayed there with the engine running thinking, now what? The possibilities were endless. I could ve called Garrity and awaked him, given him the news, ruined his night. I could also have gone to see Kat. She might have been awake, I thought, and even if she wasn t she wouldn t have minded. She would ve sat up in bed and held me and smelled like sleep. Or I could have gone somewhere quiet and pretended to drink it all away, doing a halfway decent imitation of my former self on an anonymous barstool.
Instead I ended up here, at the scene of the whatever. I wanted to know. Funny now to think there was a time when I wanted the truth. Even then I knew there were no answers for me on this street corner, yet I wanted to know anyway. I drove down these familiar Bushwick streets from the 83 house. I was thinking about Georgina s story and what I should do with it. I was thinking of that when I found myself idling at a green light on the corner where it happened. I double-parked and killed the engine. The wipers made the scene intermittently clear, then obscure, then clear. It was like her story.
Police Officer Georgina Reed told me the most plausible lie one could imagine. She was on patrol, she said between carefully measured breaths, working an four-by-twelve, in uniform, in a radio marked patrol car, with her regular partner, Police Officer Gordon Holtz. Holtz I knew from my time in uniform when I was assigned to this same command. Reed, however, was a new face. Not a rookie, she was nevertheless altogether new. Everything about her was newly issued: the black leather of her work belt, her holster, still a shiny black, not yet worn dull from years of getting into patrol cars, of getting out again, of running up unlit stairways of housing projects. The polyester material of her navy-blue uniform, too, was still fresh, still factory-creased, buttoned tight over her Kevlar vest, tight against a small body that was not fat exactly but full. Under the vest and uniform and whatever feminine thing Georgina Reed wore beneath it all I imagined she smelled of fear and scented deodorant.
Eight hours later Kat would ask me about Georgina Reed in the bright light of morning. By then the television had it, but only enough to fill thirty seconds before commercials. Things hadn t gotten warm yet. For now there were no signs, no marches, no flowers, no patrol cars overturned and burned, no impromptu assassinations, no lives thrown onto the pyre, no microwave ovens looted through the broken windows of discount appliance stores on Atlantic Avenue. That would all come later. For now Georgina Reed was interesting only because Georgina was not George, and the lede began, Last night in Brooklyn a policewoman shot and killed . . . . Later they would broadcast her service picture, Georgina against a green background, her skin bleached light in the flash. She might have been anything in that photograph, even a police officer. What s she look like? Kat would ask before that, meaning Is she black or is she white? because Americans can t talk about race even when they talk about race.
Look like? I would say.
You know-pretty? Kat would respond, still unable to pose the question.
Is Georgina Reed pretty? I hadn t noticed, so-no, she wasn t-at least she wasn t pretty under the scalding fluorescent lights of a stationhouse basement, trying to explain in very precise language how she may have killed a boy but didn t murder him. In another context Georgina Reed might ve been pretty, who knows. I just listened. On the job I m cool as a priest, receiving confessions with bland indifference. Authority is a great disguise. You can hide all of yourself inside.
But yeah, I suppose Georgina Reed was black, or black enough to make a difference. In person Georgina Reed was the color of coffee, two milks, her dark hair pinned flat, her nose somewhat aquiline yet narrow as an Episcopalian s. When later I wanted to know the answer for certain, I pulled her service record-a very thin service record-in the captain s office upstairs. She was twenty-three, I found, a Navy veteran, born in Pennsylvania, five feet five inches tall, one hundred fifty-three pounds, and the box Georgina Reed had checked was Afro-American, not White, not Non-White Hispanic, nor yet Other. None of that mattered when we sat on metal folding chairs in the 83 basement, the two of us facing each other, our bodies in the same arrangement of parts, feet spread, knees splayed, both of us leaning in. She told me her story as if she were on the stand, duly making eye contact to prove the truth was in her, pausing occasionally to take my temperature, waiting for me to call bullshit or just tell her to go on.
Go on, I d said.
We were in the car, Donny-Police Officer Holtz-and me.
When did the call come over?
Like six thirty-wait, um, she answered, rolling slightly to pull a pristine leather-bound memo book from her right rear pocket. Short, I noted, her femur half the length of mine. She d been seated when I came down, waiting for me, and hadn t stood when I told her I was her union trustee. While she accepted me as friendly her face showed she didn t believe I was the cavalry. I had insisted no one talk to her before me, so she d been sitting in the basement an hour alone before I arrived. An hour is a hell of a long time to be alone at such a moment so, cavalry or no, her eyes showed that for the moment I d do.
Ah, eighteen thirty-seven, she continued, military time, copspeak, favoring me as a member of the tribe, no matter what else she may have thought. Radio run over central, ten-thirty, robbery of a bodega, corner of Broadway and Gates. We got a description, two male blacks, teens or early twenties, one real big, the other light skin and small.
I see that a minute? I asked her, leaning over her memo book, which she had on her knee, the stiff unblemished leather cover turned back on itself. As I moved in, however, she stiffened and nearly pulled it away. In the same instant she said, in a compliant tone, Sure. She was all divided up that way inside, wanting to share what she wanted to hide. Her handwriting on the ruled oblong page was like a letter from you