Elijah Book

On Monday January 6th, 1992, the same morning that ground was broken on the new extension to the Interborough Rapid Transit Line into Sheepshead Bay, in Bedford Stuyvesant, Elijah Book was promoted to Field Supervisor for the 44th Precinct of the New York Police Department. Book was the kind of cop who only joined the force because his was a world of crooks and some of those crooks wore badges. Wearing a badge got you respect and a count split. Elijah Book was in the room when Wayne Smalls kicked the door in twenty years earlier.
Book thought Freedom Bob Mandela was about the biggest girl he’d ever known. But every rookie cop needed his own rung on the count split-and-big ladder, so Book sunk a hook into brother Bob, who in turn delivered fat envelopes to Book every week without fail. And when brother Bob became Mayor Bob and tried to flex his new mayoral muscle and climb out of Book’s pocket, Book threw Tammy Fischer, a hooker, off a roof and shot Wayne Smalls the legend dead.
Investigations into either of those murders could, eventually, bring a City Marshall with a fistful of subpoenas to the Mayor’s door. But the Marshall never came. And Mayor Bob renewed his longtime friendship with Elijah Book by pinning a sergeant’s badge on him and signing the new subway extension legislation. It was the smart thing to do. You see, Mayor Bob, Elijah Book, and Terry Smalls had all learned years ago -- the first rule of the jungle was survival.
Category: Concrete Jungle
Category: Characters