St. Petersburg Times
May 2, 1993
By Anne V. Hull
Times Staff Writer
It was just the two of them, father and son, living in a tiny apartment where the only luster was a gold picture frame that held the boy's school photo.
Their neighborhood stole the young. The father clutched his son fiercely.
"I don't want you making the same mistakes I did," he said, the voice of a thousand fathers.
On July 4, 1992, at exactly six minutes before midnight, the son stepped from his father's shadow. "I just wanted to be known," he would later say.
For his coldblooded debut, he picked a police officer whose back was turned.
The sound she heard from the gun would reverberate for months.
Click.
It was the same sound the key in the lock makes as the father comes home now to the empty apartment, greeted by the boy in the golden frame.
A file at the Hillsborough County Courthouse Annex contains all the information pertinent to the case, but no hint of all the things that were lost on Independence Day.
Officer Lisa Bishop's secret to guarding a sleeping city was pretzels. The crunching kept her awake. She'd pull into a convenience store on Nebraska, say hey to the prostitutes near the pay phone and buy herself a large bag of Rold Gold for the long night ahead. Her shift was from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Four nights a week, Lisa clocked in for duty at the Tampa police station on the frayed outskirts of downtown. In uniform she was petite and muscular, like a beautiful action-figure doll, with piercing green eyes and size 4 steel-toe boots. She kept her hair back in a French braid. Even under a streetlight, her skin seemed carved in pearl.
Her beauty was a curse when she joined the force. She knew what the other officers were thinking: paper doll with a 9mm. Don't break a nail, honey.
After three years of working midnights, her walk got a little tougher and her language a little saltier. Schooled by one too many mean nights, Lisa developed a habit for watching hands. She lost count of all the traffic stops where the driver had a sawed-off shotgun on the floorboard and an outstanding arrest warrant in the computer.
"Take your hands out of your pockets," she'd shout. "Don't get squirrelly on me, and we'll both go home tonight."
Lisa, 30, wasn't unshakable by any stretch. Her biggest fear was rounding a darkened corner. Well, Bishop, she'd tell herself, somebody's gotta check behind that building. The hair still rose on the back of her neck.
Funny that she worked nights. As a child, the dark frightened her. Her mother would send her to the corner store at dusk, and she'd run all the way home to beat the falling light. As a cop, she grew to like the night. She drove along the deserted back roads of the Port of Tampa, where the warehouses and giant ships dwarfed her police car. To keep her company, the FM radio was usually turned down low to a country station, her ears perked for a Dwight Yoakam song.
Lisa did not come from a family of cops, never dreamed of being a police officer. She was a varsity cheerleader and star gymnast in high school before entering the University of South Florida. College lasted only a year.
"In my haste, I withdrew to go out and tackle the world," Lisa said. "I ended up working the mall."
She became pregnant when she was 21 and single. Her daughter, Morgan, was born with her mother's same startling green eyes. For years, Lisa bounced from job to job, "bored to tears with my life." She was 27 and struggling to pay the bills when a firefighter friend suggested she put her athletic skills and sense of adventure to use. Apply to the Tampa Police Academy, he said. Lisa had never handled a weapon before.
She was among 28 cadets who were sworn in with the Tampa Police Department on Oct. 1, 1989. She was issued a badge, a gun and a midnight shift.
Lisa got married the same year she became a cop. Her new career did not always complement her new marriage. "I found something in my life I enjoy," Lisa told Mike, her husband, over his objections. She learned to do what a lot of cops did: She stopped talking about work. All the images of her 10-hour shift -- the way a wife's broken jaw hung down, the nightgown worn by a molested child, the beer bottle imbedded in a dashboard of a crumpled car -- were filed away in some remote place in Lisa's mind and summed up in one word when her husband asked how the night went:
"Fine."
Her worry revealed itself in other ways. The first thing she did when she arrived home at dawn was strip off her bulletproof vest so she could hold her two young children.
Morgan was 7, and Cody, her new son, was 18 months old.
The Fourth of July was a 93-degree scorcher, with strips of clouds rolled out against blue sky. By early evening, as Lisa buttoned her police uniform, she thought how nice it would be to have a beer and watch the fireworks with the kids. Maybe next year.
As Lisa kissed everyone goodbye, she barely heard her brother-in-law call out to her. The minute he said it, he wished he could take it back.
"Don't get shot."
And she was gone.
Three times a day, a different shift of police officers gathered for roll call in the windowless squad room of District 2. For 20 minutes, a sergeant reviewed the recent tragedies and outstanding warrants before releasing the class of fidgety officers to the streets. On the Fourth of July, the officers were warned to keep their riot helmets ready and be on the alert for flying missiles and gunshots.
Lisa left the station by 9:30 p.m. and drove the short distance into Oscar 8, the zone she patrolled just northeast of I-4 and Ybor City. She and her partner drove in separate cars but answered calls together. One always followed the other for backup. At 10:49, while finishing a domestic dispute complaint, Lisa's radio squawked: Signal 41 -- shots fired -- at 2003 Cano Court in Ponce de Leon public housing project.
Lisa, who was writing on her clipboard as she stood outside, looked over to Teresa Greiner, her partner. "Wanna go ahead and take it? We're right here," she said, reaching for the radio holstered in her belt to let dispatch know they would respond.
Ponce is usually patrolled by a special squad of Tampa police officers known as the X-ray squad. But if X-ray is busy or off-duty, uniform officers -- such as Lisa -- frequently respond to calls there.
Ponce has the highest crime rate of all public housing projects in Tampa. An 8-foot steel fence wraps around the 700 apartments, laid out in flat rows like grimy military barracks. Poverty, drugs and violence have made the neighborhood feel like a bombed-out combat zone. Cigarettes go for a quarter apiece at the corner convenience store, where everything is sold in small quantities that hint of a day-to-day survival.
Some cops in the department avoided taking calls in Ponce. The neighborhood frightened them. Or worse, it didn't seem worth saving. But not Lisa. She jumped at the chance. She always remembered the advice of one of her early mentors: You gotta chill, and the people will respect you. Don't come on all macho or defensive.
As Lisa drove through the streets, the sound of firecrackers and gunshots ricocheted around the treeless, hollow courtyards. Glass flakes glimmered on the sidewalk from a streetlight that had been used for target practice. So many people out tonight, Lisa thought, I bet one of every three is armed.
By 11 p.m., the police had responded to 24 calls to the Ponce area. Among the complaints were car thefts, several domestic disputes, two aggravated assaults and possession of drugs. Lisa's call was nearly the last of the day.
"What's goin' on?" she asked, walking up to the resident who had called the police. The woman told Lisa that a young man threw ignited bottle rockets underneath her boyfriend's parked car, then pumped it full of bullets, just for kicks. He ran when the police were called, but not before threatening some of the neighbors with the gun.
As Lisa listened and took notes on her clipboard, someone shouted, "There he goes."
Lisa looked up and glimpsed a figure cutting through a row of buildings. She bolted. Sprinting through the darkness, dodging the wire clotheslines that hung in back of most apartments, she reached for her radio and gave out an alert.
Other officers captured the suspect a block away. Lisa and her partner walked back to finish the investigation.
As they rounded a corner, they used their flashlights to illuminate the sidewalk. Passing a group of teenagers, one of the officers shone the powerful beam in a young man's face. Police flashlights are a familiar form of intimidation to many residents here, especially young men, who often find themselves in a spotlight for no apparent reason.
"I'll kick your ass," the young man yelled. Someone else in the group called one of the officers a whore and a b----.
This is bulls---, Lisa thought. She spun around to face the group.
"Look," she said, walking toward the teenagers, "you can say all you want, but I'll have more units down here than you can shake a stick at. Don't bother with it. Just go on about your business."
Back at Cano Court, Lisa needed to interview a few of the residents who witnessed the suspect shoot at the parked car. Her partner returned to the sector office to finish the report on the captured suspect.
That left Lisa alone on Cano Court.
She could have radioed for backup. Most officers considered it too risky to be alone in Ponce, particularly on a night as unpredictable as the Fourth of July. Lisa didn't.
Though it was nearly midnight, many residents were still on their porches or hanging out on cars, escaping the stultifying heat of the poorly ventilated apartments. Clouds of sulfur from firecrackers drifted through the humid air. Lisa began interviewing William Merrell, one of the people who had had a gun pointed at him. He was still jittery.
Lisa scribbled Merrell's statement, using the hood of her police car to steady her notepad. Merrell stood next to her.
Maybe it was the way Lisa was leaning over. Maybe it was her skin color. Perhaps it was because she was alone, without another officer to cover her. Maybe she had angered a group of boys by shining her flashlight in their eyes earlier in the night.
But there was no way Lisa could have seen it coming.
In an instant, someone forced her down over the hood of the car. A hard object was pressed to the back of her skull, just below her right ear, next to her hair ribbon. Metal to bone: She knew it was a gun. She froze.
"Don't move," the voice behind her ordered.
Maybe it was some other sort of weapon at her head, a lead pipe or something. But a voice in the distance confirmed what she feared.
"He's got a gun."
The car hood underneath her hand was warm and chalky. It was the only sensation she felt. The rest of the world shut down. Lisa held very still.
If I move he's gonna kill me, Lisa thought.
And then she heard the metallic sound.
Click.
Suddenly, a struggle erupted behind her. The pressure at her skull was gone. She could move. Lift yourself up, she ordered herself. Lift up.
In one sweeping glance, like a movie camera panning a scene, Lisa saw Merrell standing next to her with a terrified look on his face. Just beyond him, someone in a brightly colored outfit was running through a tunnel of screaming neighbors on the sidewalk.
She felt a flash of recognition. She had seen the outfit earlier in the night.
Lisa ran to the back of her car and crouched low for cover. She kept one hand on her holstered weapon and used the other to raise her corporal on the radio. She couldn't see the gunman. Most of the neighbors had fled into their apartments. She was out there alone.
Feeling exposed, she made the 15-yard dash into Merrell's apartment. Inside the small, neat apartment, Lisa was shaking. Merrell was just as panicked. He wondered why Lisa had come into his home. He feared she would draw the gunman inside. Watching her tremble, Merrell could not ask her to leave.
Lisa's corporal screeched up 30 seconds later. Lisa flew out the screen door to meet him.
"Somebody just put a gun to my head," she told him.
"Okay, just hang on," he said, and hurried out to the sidewalk.
Merrell followed Lisa outside. "Did you see a gun?" she asked him.
"Hell, yeah," he said. "I slapped it out of his hand."
Lisa suddenly realized what happened. This stranger had reached out and grabbed the gunman's hand, risking his own life.
"Thank you," she said, stunned. "You saved my life." She hugged him tightly. He could feel her shaking.
Lisa walked over to her corporal. He was bent over a gun on the sidewalk in front of 2005 Cano Court. The gunman must have dropped it as he ran away. Lisa stared at the pistol. Then she looked up at her corporal.
"Oh, my God, Jay, my kids, my kids," she said, beginning to unravel. "What the f--- am I doing out here? My kids."
Her corporal, a burly man with a silver crew cut, put his arm around her tightly and guided her back toward his police car. There was little time for comforting.
"It's okay. It's okay," he said, easing her into the front seat of his car. "Is he still around? Is anybody still around? Tell me what happened, quickly."
Lisa could not give a description of the gunman, only that he wore brightly colored clothes with a bold pattern.
The corporal hurried to the sidewalk to keep an eye on the gun. Police units were everywhere, sirens wailing, lights flashing. The neighbors stood on the sidewalks and their porches. Some disappeared inside their apartments, not wanting to be interviewed as witnesses.
An officer looked at the gun. It was a scrappy, black Colt .25-caliber semiautomatic. He slid the magazine out of the gun. It was empty. Next, he checked the chamber, the small compartment where the bullet rests when ready to fire.
He pulled the slide of the gun back, so he could see inside the slender chamber.
There was a bullet.
Lisa was driven downtown. She could give little detail of the assault. It had all happened behind her. One thing she was positive of was the click she heard from the gun at her head. It had sounded to her like a dry fire, as if the trigger was pulled but the gun did not discharge.
Near dawn, Lisa left the police station and drove home. It was Sunday, and the roads were so deserted they reminded her of the ending of a Clint Eastwood movie, when he walks out of town alone. The adrenaline of the night had worn off. She felt empty and alone, wanting only to be held.
At home, she looked in on her kids and walked numbly into her bedroom. Michael was in bed, sleeping. He rarely woke up when she came home.
Lisa stood by the dresser and stripped off her gear. Moving in slow motion, she took her radio from her belt and set it in the charger. She unholstered her gun. Michael stirred at the noise and sat up in bed. Something wasn't right. He saw his wife standing at the dresser, gazing blankly at him.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Someone tried to kill me tonight," Lisa answered.
Finally, she felt safe enough to cry.
Officer Gilberto Mercado heard the details at roll call the next afternoon: Someone had crept up behind a police officer last night and placed a loaded gun to her head, execution-style. According to the report, the gunman pulled the trigger but the gun misfired.
Happy Fourth of July.
Gil drove his marked cruiser by the faded pastel buildings of Ponce de Leon. The sun drummed down on the broken sidewalks. Gil wiped sweat from his brow. Bulletproof vests weren't made for Florida summers.
He thought about last night. No mystery how the suspect got a gun. Guns were everywhere. Hell, he'd arrested a 12-year-old with a semiautomatic tucked in the waistband of his Ninja Turtle underwear.
But putting a loaded weapon to a police officer's head? Maybe the walls really were crumbling.
If the suspect was hiding here, Gil and the X-ray squad had the best chance of finding him.
The X-ray squad patrols two neighboring public housing projects - Ponce de Leon and College Hill Homes. The Tampa Police Department created the special unit in 1986 as a last-ditch effort to save the neighborhood from street-level drug dealers and "shootings that were as common as passing transit buses," according to one captain. Residents complained that police officers were rude - at times even physically brutal -- and rarely came into the neighborhood unless there was trouble.
The TPD decided to give the two housing projects their own small police force -- a handpicked and racially mixed group of 16 officers, called the X squad.
Over the years, the name grew into X-ray. It was a good name. X-ray hinted of a mysterious, special way of seeing things.
To outsiders, even to other police officers in the city, Ponce and College Hill must all look the same: 1,410 residential units stacked side by side like concrete boxes. Best seen through the rolled-up windows of a passing car.
But to Officer Gil Mercado, each apartment has a story, a life behind the screen door that hangs by a loose hinge.
At 31, Gil is a stocky man with thick forearms and the shoulders of a linebacker. He's been on X-ray almost two years. His skin is the color of light coffee, his eyes a shimmering green. Rods of silver streak through his close-cropped hair. He is constantly at war with a 5-pound spread around his middle. Too many plates of palomilla and black beans.
Gil kept a picture of his son on his key ring. "That's my heart, right there," Gil liked to say, tapping the small photo. Before his wife left for work each morning, she would take the baby from the crib and lay him next to her husband, so the two Gils could wake up together.
Gil could be brooding or sunny, depending on his mood, but never volatile. Fair. Patient. Not the type to go ballistic with a nightstick. He had earned the respect of many residents in College Hill and Ponce. A hard thing to do if you are a cop.
Gil knew what it was like to live in poverty. He grew up in a New Jersey housing project. He was a 16-year-old street fighter when a high school teacher saw promise and intelligence behind the bloody nose and helped him get a football scholarship. It was his ticket out.
All it takes is one helping hand, is Gil's theory. He stretched his hand out to many residents in College Hill and Ponce.
"You can't be a good officer just taking people to jail and putting them down," Gil said. He was a good listener, but he chastised himself for preaching too much.
One day, walking the beat in Ponce, he saw a teen mother he knew, pregnant with her third child. "You need to close those legs and go back to school," he scolded.
"Tell her, Gil," said the girl's friend, in playful agreement.
He later brought the woman a sack of diapers.
Gil never fooled himself into thinking he was a hero here. Old memories run deep. Too many residents remember Melvin Hair, a mentally retarded man who died in 1987 in a police choke hold outside his home in College Hill.
Some residents feared the police more than crime itself. A man was pulled over on a minor traffic violation one night, and as the X-ray officer approached the car window, the driver raised his trembling hands in the air and begged, "Don't shoot, don't shoot."
"Man," the officer said, later walking back to his police car, "someone must have f----- with him."
There was no denying the everyday tensions here. Everyone -- cops and residents -- was on guard.
When riots broke out in Los Angeles in 1992 after the Rodney King verdict, College Hill had its own disturbance. X-ray officers in riot gear were on a sidewalk when bullets whizzed by their heads and into a bus stop sign. For months afterward, the officers stopped to touch the jagged holes left by the slugs.
But no bullets came as close as the one intended for Lisa Bishop on the Fourth of July.
Gil wanted to find who did it. He and Lisa graduated from the police academy together.
On the day after the Fourth of July, the temperature creeped up into the mid-90s, soaking Gil's dark blue polo shirt. The words X-RAY and POLICE were stenciled on the back. A wall of cool air hit him as he walked into the Sector E office, a police substation squarely on the dividing line of Ponce de Leon and College Hill. This is home base for X-ray, complete with lockers, bad coffee, a typewriter, file cabinets and a holding cell.
Inside the sector office, Gil's corporal, Chuck Blount, was flipping through a giant spiral notebook of information on people in the neighborhood who have been arrested or are suspected of criminal activity. A yearbook for offenders. "Courts female rockheads" are the words listed under one man's mug shot, describing his penchant for romancing crack addicts.
The most solid lead Gil and Chuck had to go on was a description read at roll call. Police had canvassed the neighborhood until dawn, interviewing witnesses. This was the composite they came up with: Suspect is a B/M, 16-17 years old, 5'9", 145 lbs., med bld, dark complexion, nickname of 'Eugene' who lives with his father in College Hill. He is driving a full-size Bronco, drk blue w/white panels.
Gil and Chuck tossed names out. Who was bad enough to put a gun to a cop's head? Who had a street name of Eugene? In this neighborhood, lots of young people had nicknames. The two officers came up with a list of possibilities, most of them long shots. They walked outside into the heat and began the hunt.
Riding together, they cruised down each block of Ponce and College Hill. It's a small area, less than a square mile total, but dense with people.
A sleeping bag was rolled out on a second-story roof where someone slept at night to stay cool. Children played makeshift tetherball by stringing a bag of garbage to the top of a pole. Teenage boys with gold teeth and Malcolm X hats pedaled small bikes to nowhere. Because of the holiday weekend, several block parties were humming, with music and cold drinks flowing. When the breeze blew right, like today, it was easy to get a whiff from Caldonia Red Bar-B-Q, a tiny, pink, hot shack where Mr. Caldonia worked his cleaver over a small rack in two seconds flat, good to go.
Gil had the windows in the police car rolled down. He always patrolled that way, to hear things and talk to residents. He drove by 2003 Cano Court, where Lisa Bishop was attacked. He could still see chalk on the sidewalk where the crime scene had been paced off. Everything else looked normal. Almost peaceful, in soft sunlight.
Gil and Chuck passed Cano Court and continued their search. While it was still daylight, they would ride the streets in search of Broncos. After dark, they'd start knocking on doors, making a few surprise visits.
By Sunday afternoon, William Merrell was tired and agitated. He hadn't slept all night. He didn't even undress for bed. In the morning, a detective had been by to interview him. One neighbor teased him sourly about being a hero. Merrell knew what the neighbor really meant -- he had helped the enemy.
Another neighbor commended his bravery. "You saved that police lady's life," the man said.
Merrell didn't feel courageous. He felt low. And he was afraid. Merrell wanted out of this dangerous place. The event last night only crystallized how life here had disintegrated.
The apartment Merrell and his girlfriend shared was an oasis. Silk flowers were arranged in a vase on a coffee table. Framed paintings of Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X hung over the color TV set. A mesh basket of fresh fruit was in the center of the kitchen table.
But no matter how nice they made the place, Merrell could not escape the gunshots at night or the violence outside his front door. He had to move away from here.
A wiry man with light skin and a close beard, Merrell lived 24 of his 30 years in Ponce de Leon. He moved here with his mother when he was 3. The trim landscape and quiet nights of his childhood vanished long ago.
Under the Housing Act of 1937, Congress directed all states to create low-income housing for urban residents. Ponce de Leon, one of the first properties the Tampa Housing Authority built, opened in 1941. It was occupied by white and Hispanic residents. College Hill was completed in 1945 and occupied by black residents.
Both were beacons of hope. Many older residents remember air that was fragrant with mango and lemon. "We used to suck the nectar out of the hibiscus," said one woman, 42, who spent her childhood in College Hill. "It was like heaven to us."
Public housing originally was conceived as temporary low-income shelter. But over the years, it evolved into a permanent community for the poor. The annual family income of Tampa's public housing residents is less than $5,000 a year. Less than 14 percent of the residents are employed. Nearly 80 percent are black.
Some residents, particularly older ones, will never leave public housing. Despite the crime and physical decay of their neighborhood, it is home.
But others, like William Merrell, are trying to get out.
Each morning, Merrell waited by the phone to hear if he was needed at work that day. He had a part-time job as a truck driver and was hoping to get on full time. His girlfriend took care of their three small children. They paid $105 a month for their three-bedroom apartment in Ponce. Merrell felt caught in a trap. He could never quite save enough for his family to leave.
Merrell thought about it. People were saying he had saved the life of a police officer. He acted instinctively when he reached out and slapped the gun away. He risked his life for a stranger. But maybe he could turn his act of valor into a new start for his family.
Maybe the police would give him some sort of reward. He would ask.
Lisa Bishop's phone was ringing by late afternoon, mostly cops who heard through the grapevine what happened. One of the callers was an officer who used to be on her squad. She considered him a mentor, a "policeman's policeman." He listened as Lisa recounted the sequence of events, the way she held still when the gun was pressed to her head.
"I thought if I moved he would have killed me," she told him.
The officer was supportive, until the end of the conversation. "Lisa," he said, "the next time, think, If you don't move, he's gonna kill you."
Another officer told Lisa the same.
"Kick, elbow, do something," the officer said.
Others called, offering their support and outrage. "You should have pumped his ass full of lead," a fellow officer told her.
Lisa couldn't shake those words. They ate at her. She sensed the criticism. There was nothing at the academy that had prepared her for that moment in Ponce. What happened last night was all about guts.
She didn't feel guilty for not taking a shot at the suspect. She could have accidentally hit a bystander. For all she knew, the weapon against her head could have been a toy gun. And she wasn't 100 percent sure the man running away from her was the gunman. It had all happened behind her back.
On the hood of that car, she thought, it was just me and him. That was my chance.
She wondered whether the gunman specifically targeted her. Had she angered anyone lately? Were there any outstanding vendettas against her? Hundreds. No one liked getting arrested. She arrested a 12-year-old who shot a man over a $ 10 rock of cocaine, and the boy was furious at Lisa for interfering with his business deals.
Maybe the gunman didn't care which cop he took down, and Lisa was just the unlucky one.
She didn't tell her kids what happened. What would she say to Morgan? Someone tried to kill Mommy last night? Morgan thought Mommy gave people speeding tickets. Lisa wasn't about to tell her differently. "I'm her Rock of Gibraltar," Lisa said. All those years as a single parent, it was just the two of them.
Lisa's sergeant called to tell her to take the night off, but she needed to work.
In a few hours, she would be back on the street. Where would the gunman be?
Around 7:30 p.m., Gil and Chuck were cruising through College Hill when they noticed a faded black Bronco with white panels parked on the side of the street. The two officers had pulled over Broncos and Blazers all afternoon, but after running the tags and and checking the driver's identification, they kept coming up empty.
They could see a young man sitting on the passenger side. The windows were rolled down. Chuck parked the police cruiser behind the Bronco so that it could not escape. Coolly the officers walked up to the car. The Bronco had a temporary tag, which made it impossible to check against the computer. Many cars in the projects had paper tags or no tags. License plates and adhesive expiration stickers were always being ripped off from cars and used on uninspected or stolen vehicles.
"This your car?" Chuck asked the passenger.
"No," said the young man, who was about 16 and had his hair styled in a fade.
Gil hoisted himself up on the hood of the car so he could read the vehicle identification number stamped near the dashboard.
"Who's it belong to?" Chuck asked, watching the kid's hands.
"Eugene," he said, unfazed.
Chuck, wearing dark Ray-Bans, flashed his eyes at Gil when he heard the name Eugene. Feeling the rush of a catch, they knew the gunman had to be close by.
Just then, a strapping man in his early 30s walked toward the truck. He had been playing dominoes on a card table with some other men when he saw the officers around the Bronco.
"What's the problem with the truck?" the man asked.
"Is it yours?" Chuck asked.
"It is, but my son is driving it," the man said. "Why?"
"Do you have a son named Eugene?" Gil asked.
"Yeah," he answered. "Why?"
Gil knew this man. He was well known in the neighborhood. His name was Carl Williams.
Years ago, Carl served time in prison. When he got out, he scrubbed floors and earned his money the hard way. Now he was raising a teenage son by himself. He was best known for coaching Little League baseball teams. He coached Dwight Gooden and Gary Sheffield when they were after-school phenoms. All the young athletes in the projects knew Carl Williams. The X-ray squad even played softball against his teams.
"We need to get to Eugene as soon as possible," Gil told him.
Carl, 33, was courteous but asked why they wanted his son.
"I can't explain right now," Gil said. "It's about an incident that occurred last night. We just want to talk to him about it."
Carl sensed the finality in Gil's tone. He said he would find his son.
Carl thought Eugene was at his grandmother's apartment, a short distance from the truck. With the officers following, Carl walked to the apartment and checked inside. No sign of Eugene.
By foot, he led the officers to his own apartment, in another part of College Hill. Eugene was not there, either. Carl and the officers returned to the Bronco. Several other police units had arrived. Some officers were going through the truck. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalks and under the mossy oak trees.
Gil could see the worry on Carl's face. Raising a child in this neighborhood was not easy. Gil couldn't remember the last time he dealt with a father. This was the land of mothers, grandmothers and aunts. It was the land of tired women.
Again, Carl asked, what did Eugene do?
A sergeant pulled him aside. He told Carl that someone tried to shoot a police officer and his son matched a description of the suspect.
Carl couldn't believe it. He was sure the police had Eugene mixed up with someone else. Trying to shoot a police officer? That wasn't Gene.
"If you want your son alive," Gil told Carl, "you bring me your son. We need to take him in."
Carl didn't take Gil's warning as a threat; he took it as good advice. All he could think about was the police drawing their guns on Eugene in a case of mistaken identity. Carl had to hurry.
"I'll bring him to you," Carl said. "Give me 10 minutes."
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