The Fence - Dick Lehr [58]
But then the Lexus was gone. It had taken a right down a side street, Franklin Hill Avenue. “I was about to do it and it was like a black hole appeared,” Williams said.
Smut had ordered Tiny to turn onto a street running along the south side of the Franklin Hill housing project. It was where Smut lived as a boy, and the Lexus was soon speeding past the actual building where his family’s apartment was located.
Instead of the Lexus, Williams was bearing down on Ian Daley. The two cruisers skidded to avoid colliding. Daley turned right and Williams followed. Daley kept yelling out locations on the radio, “He went over the median here! He went over the median here!” Then, seconds later, he yelled, “Franklin Park project! Franklin Park project!”
The dispatcher called out the update: “Franklin Park project now. Looking for a gold Lexus. 676 ZPP.”
Mike Cox and Craig Jones were making their way down Blue Hill Avenue trying to get their bearings. “We weren’t really going fast,” said Craig, “because we were listening to the transmissions.”
When Mike heard that the Lexus had turned down American Legion Highway, he had a hunch. “They’re probably going to Franklin Hill,” he told Craig.
Mike was putting himself in Smut’s mindset. He wanted to anticipate the Lexus’s next move. It was a game, of sorts, where the checkerboard was the streets of Roxbury. He and Craig did not want to follow the others and turn down American Legion Highway; instead, they wanted to make a calculated guess where the Lexus was going.
With that in mind, they picked up their pace. They turned off Blue Hill Avenue onto Harvard Street. The right turn took them past a red-brick building where for the past two years Boston Red Sox slugger Mo Vaughn ran a youth program for city teens who gathered after school to work on their homework and eat a catered meal.
They turned knowing that Franklin Hill Avenue, once it made its way through Smut’s boyhood housing project, intersected Harvard Street. Mike was even thinking the shooting suspects might bail out. Projects were often where suspects looked to shake cops pursuing them.
Instead, within seconds of making the turn onto Harvard Street, Mike saw the gold Lexus. It was their first sighting of the night. The car was flying down Franklin Hill Avenue. “Literally kind of come off the ground and come down the hill,” Mike said. He didn’t see any police cars behind it, but he could see lights from the cruisers reflecting in the night sky.
Mike and Craig, and the Lexus were perpendicular to each other—Mike and Craig on Harvard, and the Lexus coming fast down Franklin Hill. “It came directly in—virtually right at us at the intersection,” Mike said. The Lexus roared into the intersection, skidding onto Harvard.
Suddenly, said Mike, “we are side-by-side.” He saw four black men inside the car. He and the driver exchanged looks, and Mike noticed the driver wore his hair in braids. The two cars drove parallel for a few seconds, and then the Lexus cut left.
“The car tried to ram us,” Mike said.
Craig swerved into the oncoming lane. “It just barely missed us,” Mike said. Craig had another worry—the weapons. “I was basically thinking that, you know, I don’t want him to start shooting into our car.” He jammed the brakes to slow the cruiser. The Lexus sped ahead of them. Craig then turned the steering wheel to the right, and the cruiser moved in behind the Lexus. The two cars were speeding down Harvard Street.
“Okay, we’re the lead car,” Craig yelled on the radio.
Dave Williams and Jimmy Burgio did not seem happy about falling from second place behind the Lexus to third—as if someone cut in front of them in the lunch line at the school cafeteria. “The unmarked cruiser cuts right in,” Williams noted later. Burgio was peeved; the way he heard Craig’s broadcast was: “The real cops are in the lead now.” The mistaken version played into his view of Craig as glory hound.
It was true, though. Mike and Craig had indeed become the first police car.
CHAPTER 8
The Dead End
The lineup at the very front was