“I know you — you a DT,” one tall kid yelled out, using the uptown street name for detectives. “I seen you lock up dudes in Taft Houses last year, after that pimp got whacked. Who dead?”

Mike waved him off and speed-dialed the veteran lieutenant in charge of the Homicide Squad, Ray Peterson. “How about that backup you promised, Loo? Northeast corner of 114th Street and Powell Boulevard.”

This stretch of Seventh Avenue that spiked into Harlem, north of Central Park, had been renamed Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in honor of the pastor turned politician, the first black congressman from New York.

“What did he say?” I asked Mike as he flipped his phone shut.

“Should be lights and sirens any minute now.”

“Who’s the shorty, man?” The kid with the big voice was pushing through the crowd, referring to me — despite my five-foot-ten-inch frame — with another street term used by many teens in Harlem to tag their women. When that question failed to get Mike’s attention, a string of curse words followed.

“Yo, keep it sweet. This is sacred ground, don’t you know that?” Mike pointed over our heads to the large white wooden sign that appeared to have been added to the limestone façade of the old building more recently. I knew it read MOUNT NEBOH BAPTIST CHURCH, though I wasn’t sure how visible the lettering was in the early morning darkness. “And the shorty is my sister. So keep it sweet.”

I suppressed a smile at Mike’s form of crowd control. It was less controversial to claim me as kin than announce to the agitated onlookers that I was the prosecutor in charge of the Sex Crimes Unit in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

“Chapman!” the uniformed cop shouted again. “I asked if you got a plan.”

I could see the revolving red lights as a fleet of squad cars approached from both directions on the boulevard.

“Here comes your mob management, guys,” Mike said. “They’ll help you clear the sidewalk.”