The Fence - Dick Lehr [59]
Behind the first three Boston police cars, the lineup changed as new cars joined the lengthening conga line and others fell off. Richie Walker, for example, did decide to abandon the Peugeot and head down toward Mattapan once he heard Mike Cox describing a winding route into that neighborhood. Eventually, Walker jumped in line behind Williams and Burgio, becoming the fourth police car. Likewise, Gary Ryan and Joe Teahan of the gang unit, who’d not been directly involved for much of the chase, eventually ended up among the first half-dozen police cars behind the gold Lexus.
Kenny Conley and Bobby Dwan, meanwhile, were racing down Blue Hill Avenue, playing a hunch the Lexus was headed to Mattapan Square. Having grown up in Mattapan, Bobby directed Kenny to stick to Blue Hill as the fastest route, a nearly three-mile ride that took them up the avenue’s hills with its faraway views of the Blue Hills in the town of Milton south of Boston, and then along flat, low-lying stretches past storefronts, hair salons, churches, and cash-checking stores. Nearing Mattapan Square, they passed Simco’s on the Bridge, the famous hot dog stand from the 1930s featuring the “World’s Largest Hot Dogs,” which was a favorite of Smut Brown’s; his family’s West Selden Street home was only a few blocks away.
It was a chase whose speed ebbed and flowed. “On major streets,” said Mike, “certainly it was a high-speed chase. On small streets, it slowed down quite a bit.” Burgio noted the oddity of the Lexus sometimes using its directional signal prior to making a turn. “Probably the most courteous kid I was ever behind,” he said. Mike and Craig had a blue light flashing on the dash, but it meant nothing to the men in the Lexus. In fact, several more times police cruisers came at the Lexus head-on, and each time the cruisers pulled aside to let the Lexus go.
The number of police vehicles kept increasing—ranging from twenty to forty, depending on the officer talking—as most cops still thought a fellow officer had been shot. Many spoke later with amazement at the number of cruisers. During one stretch, Dave Williams marveled at the scene: “You could look back in your mirror and all you can see is just a sea of blue.
“I said, ‘Jimmy, damn, look at that. You’ve never seen that before, you know what I mean?’ It was like, you know, all you could see, as far as you could see looking back, was just blue lights, and we were just—just glowing.”
Technically speaking, Mike and Craig, operating an unmarked cruiser, were not supposed to be the front car. Section seven of the police department’s “Rule 301: Pursuit Driving” said: “Department policy shall be that marked units lead a pursuit, wherever practical. Therefore, unmarked units involved in a pursuit shall yield to a marked unit.” The key word in the department’s regulation seemed to be “practical.” Craig later said they became the lead car along Harvard Street “not by choice,” and that yielding would have been impractical. Their supervisor, Sergeant Ike Thomas, rejected as outrageous the notion that Mike and Craig should have pulled over or that he should have commanded them to do so. “In the middle of a twenty-minute pursuit it would have been extremely foolish on my part to interrupt a car chase that was involved in a very serious crime, to interrupt and say switch up and let a marked take the lead,” he said.
But as the chase continued toward Mattapan Square, there was some jockeying in front. Twice Craig had to call off another cruiser that was either getting too close or trying to take over the lead. “Okay, we’re the lead car; you better get away from us,” Craig said,