Chapter 20
I COULD SEE the blue flashing lights a couple of blocks before I pulled up to the address Juliana had given me for the free health clinic, almost in the shadow of Mount Sinai Queens. The sight of police activity right where my daughter had called me from was alarming.
I parked the car and tried to gather my wits as I jumped out and approached a tall, young uniformed officer. Maggie trailed behind me.
A second officer from another cruiser stood off to the side with a white man in his early forties. The man was disheveled, with his shirt half out of his pants, blood running from his nose and from a cut over his right eye.
Juliana stood with Rob Trilling’s five Pakistani roommates—Sylvia, Sabiha, Ayesha, Katie, and Fareeha—on the other side of the young patrolman’s car. The women all looked fine from a distance.
Before going to them, I approached the patrol officer cautiously. I pulled out my police ID and said, “I’m Mike Bennett. My daughter Juliana is standing with that group of women over there. I just want to find out what’s going on.”
The young Black man’s smile threw me off. It wasn’t a greeting or a polite gesture. It was a broad, bright smile. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” the young patrolman asked.
I took a closer look at him. There was something about him that seemed familiar.
The patrol officer chuckled. “To be fair, I was probably only eight or ten years old the last time you saw me. I’m—”
I was able to finish it. “Scott Sharp.” I reached out and shook his hand. “I saw your dad at a funeral not long ago.”
“Lou Sanvos’s funeral?”
“That’s right. It was like having the old gang together for a minute. I guess that happens at most funerals for retired cops.”
Officer Sharp smiled again. “They had me working traffic that day. They wanted all the senior guys to be available for the funeral. I’m a rookie, only been on about seven months now.”
“I’d like to catch up more, but I need to make sure my daughter”—I nodded to Juliana—“and her friends aren’t in trouble.”
The way Scott Sharp hesitated made me a little nervous. He said, “It seems to have all started when that guy over there pinched the bottom of one of the girls.”
Suddenly I was incensed. “Then what happened?”
“Her friends all turned on the man. You can see the results for yourself.”
I turned to look again at the forty-something balding man wearing an oversized, padded winter coat. It might’ve been what saved him from a rougher beating. I noticed that he also had the beginnings of a black eye, and the pocket on his thick jacket was ripped.
I said, “Does anyone want to press charges?”
“That’s why we’re here. The guy is really pissed he got beat up by some women, and he denies that he pinched anyone. Three of the women, including your daughter, say that they saw him do it.”
“You want me to see if I can resolve this?”
The look on the patrolman’s face told me everything. Scott said, “The guy’s name is Ronald Pittman. He’s got one arrest for some kind of an assault seven years ago, but there’s no court outcome on the sheet. He claims the charges were dropped.”
I checked in with Juliana, who assured me everyone was fine but confirmed that Pittman had harassed Ayesha and the others had come to her defense. Now they just wanted to go home.
I walked over to Ronald Pittman and the other patrol officer, who acknowledged me with a nod. I noticed Pittman had scratches around his face and was holding his side like he had a cracked rib.
Pittman said, “You the detective coming to investigate these animals for assault?”
I replied, “I’m looking into a sexual assault followed by a fight.”
The man looked outraged. He snarled, “Those savages attacked me.”
I didn’t care for Pittman’s tone or words at all. But I got ahold of myself and in a relatively calm voice said, “Think about what you did. Consider this a learning experience.”
“What I’m learning is that the NYPD will always side with the immigrant. I’d like to talk to someone in charge.”
I said, “Okay, I think we’ve wasted enough time.
” I handed him my business card. “I’ll be happy to talk to you about this, but there are several witnesses who say that you instigated the whole thing.
Are you trying to claim that these young women here are a gang who planned to attack anyone who walked by? ”
Pittman growled like a frustrated dog. He stared down at my business card, then at me, and said, “This isn’t over.”