He gave the two black men the Cop Look. The Cop Look had a simple message: I rule… me and the golden badge gleaming against the dark blue of my T-shirt and the revolver in the holster on my belt… check it out… This is our style, the style of we who rule… all the while using the Cop Look like a ray.
The two black men reacted the way small-timers at this, the bottom-most link in the drug chain, the neighborhood retailer, always reacted: If we move, they’ll think we’ve got something to hide. All we have to do is be cool. The skinny one slumped back slightly in his wooden chair, staring all the while at the Sergeant, who was right in front of him, no more than three feet away. The bigger one was still leaning back against the front wall. There was a barred window between him and the front door.
The Sergeant was already talking to the one in the chair: “Whatta you guys doing out here?”
Silence… Then the small man narrowed his eyes in what was no doubt intended as a cool expression in the face of a threat, and said, “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” said the Sergeant. “You got a job?”
Silence… narrowed eyes… “I got laid off.”
“Laid off from what?”
Silence… still more of a slump back into the chair… narrowed eyes… very cool… “From where I was working.”
The Sergeant cocked his head slightly, stuck his tongue into his cheek for a moment, and indulged in a favorite form of cop mockery, namely, repeating some evasive roach’s own words, deadpan: “You got laid off from working… where you were working.” Now the Sergeant just stared at him with his head still cocked. Then he said, “We received some complaints…” He motioned with his head in a slight arc, as if to suggest the complaints came from the neighborhood. “They say you’re doing some work… here.”
Nestor saw the big one edging ever so slowly toward the barred window, which also meant toward the door, which remained slightly ajar. The Sergeant must have noticed it, too, out of the corner of his eye, because he turned his head slightly toward Nestor and said out of the side of his mouth, “Manténla abierta.”
Those two words instantly lit up an entire network of deductions… and Nestor was expected to comprehend it all instantly. First, every Cuban cop knew that speaking Spanish to each other in front of black people in Overtown or Liberty City made them paranoid… followed by infuriated. In the insusurro campaign, all Latin cops, and especially Cuban, were told not to do it unless it was absolutely necessary. So the Sergeant’s very choice of language was an alarm. Manténla abierta meant keep it open. What was it that was open? Only one thing of any obvious importance: the front door—toward which the big man was edging. And why was that important? Not merely to make it easier to enter the house and search it—but also to make it legal. They had no search warrant. They could enter legally only if one of two situations arose. One was, if they were invited in. This occurred surprisingly often. If a cop said, “Mind if we look around?” the amateur sinner was likely to say to himself, “If I say ‘Yes, I do mind,’ they’ll take that as a sign of guilt.” So the sinner says, “No, I don’t mind,” even when he knows the evidence the cops are looking for is right out in the open. The other legal way was “in hot pursuit.” If a suspect ran through a door into his house to elude the cops, the cops could follow him through the door into the house… in hot pursuit—but only if the door was open. If it was closed, the cops couldn’t force it open, couldn’t break in—without a warrant. “Manténla abierta”—two words only. “Nestor, don’t let that big cózzucca close that front door.” Cózzucca was the way many Latins, even those fluent in English, pronounced “cocksucker.” Cózzucca was the way the Sergeant himself pronounced it. Nestor heard him. He had said it aloud two minutes ago. Cózzucca lit up in the great chain of cop logic.
“So why don’t you tell me what kind of work you do here.”
Silence. All that turned on in the one second before the skinny one said, “I ’unno. Ain’t no work. I’m just sitting here.”
“Just sitting here?” asked the Sergeant. “What if I told you some cózzucca just gave you five dollars for