The New York City cop leans over the front seat, as the radio-car careens, screaming up Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn. He steadies the limp, bleeding body in the back. It's been 25 minutes. The blood is black, jellied in the center, dried on the edges. It coats his beard, face, Army fatigue jacket. Still, the man in the back knows he must stay awake. He struggles. He clings to consciousness. If I fall asleep, I'll die, he thinks. He hears the voice again. "It's a lie. It's all a lie." The blood is thick in his nose and throat. He's suffocating. He's so tired. Stay awake, he tells himself. Keep your eyes open. Just keep your eyes open. The cop in the front says something, but the man in the back can't hear over the sirens. He sees shadows in front and behind. The grotesque shapes seem to split and fall across his bloodied face. His eyes are heavy. Stay awake, he tells himself, again and again. Then, as if in one of those vaporous, just-before-waking dreams, the man in the back remembers: "Frank, why don't you take the money? Just take it, Frank."
FEBRUARY 3, 1971, 10:42 P.M. 778 Driggs Street, Brooklyn. Apartment 3-G. The emergency dispatcher gets a 1010 call from a civilian: investigate shots fired.
It seemed like a pretty routine heroin bust. Four cops from Brooklyn North get a tip that a drug deal is going down. So three officers—Gary Roteman, Arthur Cesare and Paul Halley—stay in a car out front. The fourth, Frank Serpico, watches from the roof. They're waiting for the informant's signal. Frank observes the buy in the hall outside apartment 3-G. When it's over, he follows them out and motions to his partners. They jump out; one of the kids has two bags of heroin.
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