Heroes Christopher Hoban and Michael Buczek. ***by Frank Hickey*** In 1988, New York City is unbelievably dangerous. Killers smash previous records, slaughtering 1842 victims. Chris Hoban, 26, is a cop working undercover at a Harlem drug buy. He doesn't speak Spanish. The Latino drug dealers tell him to sample their cocaine. The Department forbids cops taking drugs on a buy unless their life is in danger. Hoban refuses. The dealers search him, find his gun and kill him. My sister is a TV reporter. She hears the reports over the news radio. She knows that I live three minutes walk away from the murder scene. My Harlem neighborhood is only seven percent white. Everyone lives in fear, black, white and Latino. So, she believes that the victim is me, a District Attorney's Detective Investigator, with gun and badge. With her camera crew, she races to the crime scene. She wonders how she will tell our parents if I am dead. She turns sad at hearing about the murder but relieved that I am still alive. Her TV van drives her to Hoban's family, in a safer Irish Brooklyn neighborhood, 14 miles away. Less than three hours later, Michael Buczek, 26, a cop in uniform but not wearing a ballistic vest, stops two drug suspects uptown. They run. Buczek chases. One turns, firing a fatal shot into Buczek's chest. So, two cops die on the same day. My sister visits the grieving Hoban family. She still feels the adrenaline dump from being scared that I was dead. But she is a pro and is recovering. As she leaves, the dead cop's father shocks her. "Please say hello to your father for me," Mr. Hoban says. My sister stops dead. "You know my father?" she asks. "Yes," he answers. "For years. We both read scripture at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan". ***Frank Hickey Frank became a cop. Somehow. He writes the Dancing Max Royster crime novels about the world's only ballroom dancing detective at frankhickey.net