By Theo Francis
Daily Record
PATERSON — It is barely dusk on a Monday evening
in September, and the customers trickle into the parking
lot by the Alexander Hamilton projects.
Some walk. Some ease their cars over speed bumps
toward a knot of young men in T-shirts and shorts
standing at one end. Others park at the corner, cutting
across a patch of dead grass on foot.
Three, then four, then five men are in the knot,
milling restlessly in front of the apartment buildings.
They watch each arrival, ignoring some, meeting others
part way.
The knot sometimes moves as one, four men running
across the parking lot to meet a pedestrian, lurching to
a stop in front of him, framed for watchers by parked
cars and scraggly brush.
8:02 p.m. The arrival is white, wears brown boots and
gray flannel over a white T-shirt. He looks from one to
the other of the young men in front of him. They talk. He
gives something to and then takes something from the one
on the left.
8:04 p.m. A tall man in a black shirt walks into the
lot, then a man in red shorts. A red truck with
Pennsylvania plates stops briefly, met by one of the men
from the knot.
The man in the gray flannel shirt walks haltingly,
then trots back over the dead grass and up the street.
The man in red shorts walks out. The truck drives off,
turning right, heading for Route 80. A man with dark
receding hair and a ponytail walks up to the knot.
8:05 p.m. The scene, watched from beside a Paterson
vice squad detective on surveillance duty, is a silent
ballet, punctuated by the detective’s voice
describing new arrivals into a radio. Scoop units —
unmarked cars and vice detectives parked nearby —
are poised to pull over the truck, to stop the man in
gray flannel and arrest him.
8:21 p.m. A man with a light-brown mustache arrives,
meets the knot, leaves after less than 30 seconds,
looking at something invisible in his hand. He drops it
in the intersection, bends over, searching, oblivious to
the cars. He leaves empty-handed. An hour from now, he
will be back to meet the knot again.
9:35 p.m. Some three dozen have visited the parking
lot. Police have arrested eight.
A slender girl walks uncertainly to the edge of the
parking lot, blond hair tied back with red cloth. She
looks around expectantly, arms crossed nervously.
The detective pauses, then says into his radio:
"You guys got room for one skinny little white
girl?"
They do not.
9:49 p.m. At the Frank X. Graves Public Safety Complex
on Broadway, five men are in the holding room, giving
detectives their names. Two teenagers are locked to a
pipe in the main room, waiting for their parents. A woman
with angry red needle marks running up her forearms
fidgets nearby in handcuffs.
The teenagers are 17, both from Montville. One is a
doctor’s son, one is from the upscale Lake Valhalla
section. Both are charged with buying nine pieces of
crack.
One of the Pennsylvanians is 22 and lived in Dover
until he was 15, when his family moved in part to get him
away from drugs. He sits sweating in a wooden chair, his
skin bright red beneath his crew cut.
He began using heroin two years ago, he says. He
sniffs two bags a day — and would have snorted two
just seconds after reaching Route 80 if the police
hadn’t stopped the truck and found the 13 glassine
folds of heroin he and his friend bought for $100.
Midnight. The teenagers have been picked up. The
adults are on their way to the Passaic County jail. The
detectives will be doing paperwork late, well into the
morning.
Back at the housing complex, the traffic hasn’t
let up.
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theo@theowire.com
