"The Cadet and the Surfer," by Michael Daley, ran in the December 1982, issue of New York Magazine. 

A pistol fired once, and a young man with blond hair and blue eyes crumpled to the sidewalk. As he slipped into unconsciousness, his girlfriend jumped out of the Mercedes and started to scream. Lights began to flick on in the tenements that line this block in Harlem. The girl kept screaming over the still form of Rick Rasmussen, of Westhampton Beach, Long Island, the former surfing champion of the United States.

A black Toyota roared up the block and disappeared around the comer. At the wheel was Vincent McCall, a 23-year-old from Harlem who had worked his way to an appointment to West Point. A chance encounter on this warm night in August had embroiled this cadet in a drug deal with a surfer from the Hamptons. Somehow, what began with the temptation of a few quick dollars had ended with the surfer sprawled on the pavement and the cadet speeding away from the scene of a shooting, checking his rearview mirror for the flashing lights of a police car.

The morning found Rick Rasmussen in the intensive-care unit at the Presbyterian Hospital. He was raised in a house with a swimming pool in the backyard and the ocean just down the road. He started surfing when he was eleven, and his entire life became focused on that moment when the wave catches the board and shoots it forward. At 19, he became a champion. A surfer named James Breslin says, “From New York to Florida, there was nobody who would challenge him. They'd see the way he rode the waves and they’d know who he was.” Then drugs joined this life of sun and sea. And now, at the age of 27, Rick Rasmussen lay in a hospital bed, his hands twitching and his knees jerking up to his chest as he swam through the darkness of a coma.

A few blocks away, Vincent McCall was sitting in his uncle’s apartment. He remembers that he clutched a Bible and prayed for Rick Rasmussen. Vincent also prayed for himself. He had come so far that it had seemed as if nothing could stop him. Then a final test had come, in the person of a young man with blond hair who wore a gold wristwatch and drove a Mercedes and had a beautiful girlfriend. Now, it seemed that Harlem might claim Vincent McCall after all. A champion of the streets had met a champion of the waves, and both tumbled toward ruin.

‘‘Things can happen so fast in just one night,” Vincent McCall says. “Nobody meant for this to happen. I was just coming from the movies and somebody made me an offer and I couldn’t say no.”

Vincent McCall was born on July 15, 1959, in the town of Lumberton, North Carolina. His father was a soldier who had gone to high school with Muhammad Ali, in Louisville, Kentucky. After Vincent’s birth, the father left the army. As there was no work in Lumberton, the father moved the family north. In Baltimore, he took a job at a Pantry Pride bakery. The family moved into an attached house on the edge of town. Vincent remembers capturing a praying mantis in a patch of woods near the house. He also remembers an hour-long fight he had in the fifth grade with another child. He came home battered and bleeding. Vincent says, “I had a hot bath and my father told me, 'You did good. If there’s a fight, don’t run away. That’s all I ask.’ ”

When Vincent was twelve, the father left his job at Pantry Pride and the family moved to New York. Soon after, the father and mother separated, and Vincent found himself living in a three-bedroom apartment on West 115th Street. There was no heat in the winter. On many days, there was no food. Vincent says, “I can remember for sure being hungry. I can remember going to sleep with nothing to eat. The first day I was there, I cried. I just hated the dirtiness. I felt shameful living in Harlem.” Whenever he could, Vincent escaped downtown by subway. He went to West 90th Street, and a boy there taught him to ride a unicycle. Sometimes he played hooky and strolled Fifth Avenue. He went into the F.A.O. Schwarz toy store to watch the electric trains. “I wanted to come downtown and I didn’t want people to know if I was from Harlem or Long Island,” Vincent says.

At the time, his block was controlled by a 16-year-old drug dealer named Robert Void. Vincent remembers that Void had amassed a fortune of some $500,000 that included an $11,000 car and $30,000 worth of rings. Vincent says, ”He had everything. He ruled with an iron hand. Whatever Robert said, that was it.”

One afternoon, Void turned to Vincent and ordered him to fetch two sodas from the corner store. Vincent stood silently and stared at Void. Vincent remembers, “I didn’t care if he was my idol. I wasn’t going to let him boss me."

For a moment, it seemed as if Vincent was going to meet the same fate as a number of other people who had defied Void. Then Vincent heard Void say, “Would you go to the store for me, 

" Void handed Vincent a $10 bill and told him to keep the change.

From then on, Vincent spent most of his free time with Void. He served as Void’s good-luck charm, and Void paid him $100 a week to stay out of trouble. Vincent entered Manhattan Vocational-Technical High School but seldom went more than three days a week. He says, “Nobody I knew was going to school. It didn’t seem to make a difference. You go to school, and you come back to Harlem.”

In April 1975, Vincent went with Void to a pool hall ofT Lenox Avenue. A man spilled some wine on Void. A fight erupted, and Void fell with a bullet in his stomach. A few days later, Vincent went into Trumbo’s Funeral Chapel for the memorial service. Vincent had a haircut like Void’s, and he moved as Void had moved. Vincent heard one of Void’s children point at him and say, “He looks like my daddy.” But Vincent says he was saved from sharing Void’s fate by a saying his mother had taught him: “If you lie, you can steal, and if you can steal, you can kill.”

When Vincent was 16, his parents reconciled. After a few weeks, the father loaded the family into his car and drove back to Lumberton. There he took a job at the Union Packaging Company. The mother worked as a domestic for a physician. The family moved into a house that had a lawn. Vincent remembers, “At first, me being from Harlem, a lot of parents were reluctant to let their children run around with me. They were afraid I’d corrupt them.” He enrolled at Lumberton High School, which he describes as “a high school just like a high school is supposed to be, like I’d always seen on TV.”

Vincent now hung out with one boy who wanted to be a doctor and another who wanted to be an engineer. Vincent says, “For some reason, I started studying. I just said, ‘I’m not in New York anymore. I’m not in that life anymore.’ I decided I’d try to make it.”

One of Vincent’s new friends was a member of the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps. Vincent remembers, “I saw him getting his uniform and stuff all starched down, and I liked it.” Vincent joined J.R.O.T.C. One of the leaders gave him a study guide by General Maxwell Taylor. Vincent says, “I’d go through it constantly. I was in the 10th grade and I’d never hardly studied at all. When I came home, the first thing I’d do was study. I even studied on weekends. My cousins said, ‘That boy’s crazy.’ ”

In his senior year, Vincent went to the annual J.R.O.T.C. dinner and found himself seated next to Representative Charles Rose, a Democrat from North Carolina. Rose and Vincent ate chicken and spoke about current events. Some three months later, Vincent received a letter reporting that Rose had nominated him for an appointment to the United States Military Academy, at West Point. Vincent ran out to play basketball with his friends. He remembers that he played very well.

“I was full of energy,” Vincent says. “I was joyous. West Point is a heck of a ways from 115th Street.”

The following year, Vincent entered an army-preparatory school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, to brush up on his language skills before entering the academy. He crossed the Hudson River to visit his old block in Harlem and discovered that the new ruler was a nineteen-year-old named Turtle. When Vincent walked up the block, he saw Turtle shooting craps. Turtle told Vincent that he owned a pool hall and planned to buy a McDonald’s franchise. Vincent said that he would soon be attending West Point.

On July 12, 1979, Vincent arrived by bus at West Point for registration, known there as “R-Day.” The first step of this ritual was to report to an upperclassman who wore a red sash. Vincent dropped his salute too early and made the mistake of calling himself “Cadet McCall” when he had not yet earned that distinction. Vincent says, “I was physically strong and I was mentally prepared, but when I had to report to the man in the red sash, I lost it. It was hard believing I was actually there.”

That summer, Vincent underwent basic training. In the fall, the academics began. Vincent took English, calculus, computer science, American history, military science, and German. Vincent says, “It was a whopper.” And when Vincent was not studying his textbooks, he was memorizing bits of trivia for the quizzes the upperclassmen constantly sprang. When asked how many lights were in Cullum Hall, Vincent said that he did not know and ran to count them. The next time he was asked he said, “Sir, 340 lights.” When asked for the standard West Point description of a cow, Vincent would say, "Sir, she walks, she talks, she’s full of chalk. The lactal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the nth degree.”

At the end of the day, Vincent would assemble with the other cadets on the cement apron in front of Washington Hall. Wearing white over gray, the cadets would salute as the bugle blew and the flag was lowered. Vincent says, “No matter what the days were like, I just looked at that and said, ‘Gee, I’m at West Point.’ At that time. West Point was just like the brochures.”

Wearing his gray dress uniform, Vincent went back to Harlem. He knew that tour buses were running through Harlem, and as he crossed West 123rd Street a load of sightseers passed. The bus came to a complete stop. Vincent says, “Everybody on the bus looked. That was the proudest moment in my life. I knew that when they toured Harlem they must think, ‘Oh, what a disgusting place.’ I wanted to show them that everybody in Harlem isn’t run-down and poor.” Flown to Fort Knox in a C-130 transport, Vincent underwent more combat training. He fired a Vulcan anti-aircraft gun at a drone plane. He engaged in war games, and he was taught never to drive a tank in a direct path and to use cover whenever he could. Vincent remembers, “My tank was pretty good. It was a long time before we were killed.”

At West Point, Vincent sat with a friend named Gerald Walker and watched some cadet boxing matches. Vincent remembers, “I said, 'Walker, I could take any of those guys right now'."

Vincent started training, and he entered the boxing competition. He battled his way to the finals, where he faced an ex-football player he describes as “a monster.”

In the first round, the ex-football player hit Vincent flush in the cheek. Vincent says, “I couldn’t believe the power. I didn’t want to get hit like that again.” Vincent spent most of the second round running backward.

A different Vincent came into the ring for the third round. Vincent says, “I was thinking of how many miles I had run and all I did to prepare. I knew I was faster than the guy. All of a sudden I was coming at him.” As he moved in, Vincent threw three quick jabs. Angered, the ex-football player threw a wild punch. Vincent pivoted and let go a hard right. The ex-football player went down. Then he got back up. "That scared me a little,” Vincent says.

They were battling on the ropes when the bell sounded, and Vincent was declared the winner. After the commandant presented him with a trophy, Vincent went down to the locker room and passed out. When he awoke, everybody had left and the gymnasium had been locked up. He banged on a door for 45 minutes until a security guard let him out. Vincent remembers, "I went right down to Eisenhower Hall, and I had my first beer in three months.”

As Vincent became a boxing champion, his friend Walker became a football star. Vincent and Walker began a game they called “jaking." The two would court the affections of the same girl and see who proved the more persuasive. One target was a female cadet. Vincent apparently won, and in the summer of his sophomore year, he was caught in the cadet’s room after taps. Vincent says, “There was a little bit of hanky-panky going on but, I’ll tell you, not as much as has gone on at West Point.” He was brought before the discipline board and given 55 demerits and 150 hours in his room.

In his junior year, Vincent again appeared before the board. Vincent says that the trouble began with his supervising officer. The officer, Vincent says, “wanted me to be subservient. I’m a subordinate, not a subservient person. I have to obey the orders, but I’m not an inferior.” Whatever the cause, the officer refused to accept Vincent’s excuses for several missed classes. The board hit Vincent again with 55 demerits and 150 hours in his room. He was told that this put him over the total demerits allowed in a six-month period.

A colonel summoned Vincent to his office and suggested that he abandon his career in the army. Vincent remembers, “He said, ‘I don’t think you can adapt to the army. Why don’t you go study phys-ed somewhere?’ ” Vincent says that the colonel then ordered him to fail a final exam, explaining that it is better to leave West Point for academic reasons than for rule infractions. Vincent had still not decided what to do when he sat down for the four-hour exam.

“You say, ‘Should I go ahead and pass or should I not?” Vincent says. “Then, time’s up and it’s decided for you.” Another officer learned that Vincent had intentionally failed and ordered him to retake the exam. This time, Vincent passed. Somebody recounted his demerits and reported that he had not surpassed the six-month limit. Somebody else insisted he had. Finally, the academy decided on a one-year suspension without pay, effective August 12.

In July, Vincent left West Point. He climbed into the black Toyota Celica he had purchased earlier that year with a bank loan. He drove to New York and moved into his uncle’s apartment, on Columbus Avenue. By then. Turtle had been shot to death while he sat in his blue BMW. Another friend, Ronald Carey, had died in a shoot-out. A friend named Johnny Hardy had been hit in the face with a shotgun blast on Mother’s Day and had died on Father’s Day.

The only friend of Vincent’s who was still alive was 23-year-old Robert Mendez. As boys, Mendez and Vincent had ridden unicycles together. Mendez had since worked as a carpenter and a building superintendent. When Vincent ran into him, Mendez didn’t have a regular job. Mendez still had the price of a movie ticket, though, and the two young men decided to head for Times Square and see 

Around midnight, Vincent and Robert came out of the theater and got back into the Toyota. They drove along West 43rd Street, past Xenon. Vincent says, “We saw all the people, and we said maybe we’ll go to Xenon someday.” As they neared the traffic light, Vincent glanced over and saw a young woman sitting in the passenger seat of a dark- brown Mercedes sedan. The young woman smiled, and Vincent remembers saying. “Robert, see, she’s looking.” Then the blond young man sitting next to the girl called to Vincent and Robert. Vincent heard Robert ask, “You got a problem?” The blond young man said something like, “No, nothing much.” There was a pause, and Vincent heard the man say, “You know anybody interested in getting some cocaine? I’ll make it worth your while.”

And so, Vincent McCall, the boxing champion, met Rick Rasmussen, the surfing champion. Rasmussen was the son of a Marine Corps pilot who left the military and settled in Westhampton Beach to fly for Grumman. In one local bar, his father achieved some renown by eating glass.

The mother's early memories of Rick include a catechism class in which a nun asked who had committed the first sin. The mother says that Rick looked up and said, “Not me, I didn’t do it.”

When Rick was eleven years old, his older sister saw a 

 movie and announced that she wanted to be a surfer. For Christmas, she was given a nine-foot-eleven-inch surfboard. Soon people became accustomed to seeing Rick and his sister carrying the huge board on their heads to the beach off Dune Road. The sister picked up a second board from the police chiefs daughter and gave the first one to Rick.

Even in winter, Rick rose before dawn and headed for the beach. His wetsuit was red and gold, the Marine Corps’ colors.

The mother remembers, "A lot of days, the school nurse would call up and ask, ‘How is Rick feeling?’ I would say, ‘Fine, isn’t he at school?’ Then I would go down to the beach, and he would be all alone in the water. He would come out with frost on his eyebrows.”

At Westhampton Beach High School, the only real enterprise Rick showed was in the language lab. There, he rewired the earphone system so he could exhort the class to buy chocolate bars from him. Rick’s sister says, "He didn’t care about school. He didn’t see how learning about the American Revolution was going to help him in his surfing career."

In 1974, Rick went to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, for the U.S. surfing championship. In the first heat, Rick caught a six-foot wave off the lighthouse. The wave broke to the left, and Rick slipped under the curl. Crouched in a roaring tunnel of water, he cut some 150 feet across the face of the wave. When he reappeared, the people on the beach gave him a standing ovation.

Making the finals, he went late into the night competing against Jim Cartland, of Melbourne Beach, Florida. The beach was lighted by jeep headlights, and when the contest was over, 19-year-old Rick Rasmussen was the new champion.

Returning to Long Island, Rick rented a barn in Quogue. He was now famous in surfing circles everywhere and known as “the Raz.” He started making Rasmussen surfboards. On each board was a logo reading clean and natural. He was into health foods, and whenever he went out to eat, he took his own herbal seasoning and a set of wooden utensils so he would not injure the enamel on his teeth. At an expensive French restaurant in Manhattan, he asked to check the label for preservatives before he would eat the ice cream.

In 1978, Rick headed for Bali. He and a girlfriend moved into a tree house and became known in the surf magazines as the “Swiss Family Rasmussen.” Then, on a Sunday night, the parents received the first hint that drugs were a part of Rick’s surfing life. A phone call from Bali informed them that he had been arrested for possession of narcotics. Rick told his parents that the police had mistaken a health-food seasoning in his bag for heroin. The father cabled $54,000 in “legal fees” and flew to Bali. During his three months in jail, Rick organized volleyball games and made money betting on Ping-Pong. When he came to trial, he was found not guilty.

“He said he was very popular in the jail,” the mother says.

Back on Long Island, Rick showed home movies of his life on Bali to a onetime surf-shop owner named Tony Caramanico. At that time, Caramanico lived in Montauk with Peter Beard, the photographer, and Cheryl Tiegs, the model. Caramanico had Rick bring the film over to the Beard house. It was seen by an ABC producer named Bob Nixon. Soon, Rick was headed back to Indonesia with a camera crew and Gregory Harrison, of the TV show 

In late 1980, Rick was living in Encinitas, California, with a 19-year-old woman named Jacquie Lewisy. On December 5, a man whom Jacquie describes as “hippie-looking” came to the door. The hippie said that he had been referred by a mutual friend and that he wanted to buy two kilograms of heroin. Jacquie recalls that he produced a briefcase containing $50,000. Rick declined.

A few months later, Rick returned to Westhampton. The hippie appeared and again spoke about heroin. Rick went to the mutual friend and asked about this fellow who had followed him from California. Jacquie remembers that the friend said, “Sure, he’s cool. Don’t worry.” The hippie came back. Rick said that he knew somebody who was coming in from Hawaii with a load of heroin.

On the night the deal was set, Rick went to a motel to meet the hippie. Jacquie was with him. Just before the exchange was to take place, she heard Rick say, “I’m not into this. I don’t want to be involved in it.” Canceling the deal, Rick and Jacquie left the room and went down the street for a drink. As they drove back past the motel, they saw a flock of police cars. Rick went back to the mutual friend. Again, he asked about the hippie. Again, he was told there was nothing to worry about.

“Rick figured the cops must have been trying to get [the hippie] and him,” Jacquie says.

On October 6 of last year, Rick went to a house in Remsenburg, where four ounces of almost pure heroin were to be exchanged for $60,000 cash and some Rolling Stones studio tapes he could use for a surfing film he was planning. The hippie identified himself as a police officer, and Rick was placed under arrest. He was held in lieu of $1 million bail. One of the people who visited him at the jail in Southampton remembers him saying, “Don’t tell my father.”

A few days later, the hippie-looking police officer offered to make another kind of deal with Rick. If Rick would agree to work as an informant, he would see to it that the sentencing judge received a recommendation of leniency. Rick agreed. The dealers he helped set up included a ring that was importing heroin from India.

“Rick kept working and working,” Jacquie says. “They kept saying, 'Why don’t you try this? Why don’t you try that?’ It was always something else.”

In early August, James Breslin went surfing off Dune Road and ran into Rick. The water was warm, but Rick was wearing a full wetsuit. The waves were a good six feet high, with an offshore wind sculpting the face and keeping the water glassy. Yet, after a few rides, Rick headed in. James says, “Before, he would have lasted eight or ten hours in the water. That was not the Raz I knew.” By then, Jacquie says, Rick had been promised probation in exchange for his cooperation. He began talking about building sailboards. Jacquie says, “He wasn’t going to have to go to jail. Everything was just coming together for us.”

On August 9, Rick drove Jacquie into the city to celebrate her twenty-first birthday. Her favorite food is sushi, and Rick took her to a Japanese restaurant on the East Side. During dinner, Rick said there was another reason he had come to Manhattan. Earlier in the day, he had received a threatening telephone call from a drug dealer. He had to move some cocaine by morning. With the hippie around, he could not do any dealing on Long Island. He had to take a chance and try to find a buyer in the city.

“In the restaurant, he kept saying, ‘I’m sorry I have to do this tonight,”’ Jacquie says.

At a little past midnight, Rick stopped Vincent McCall and Robert Mendez and asked them if they wanted to make some extra cash. Vincent and Robert said they would try to find a connection. Vincent gave Rick the telephone number of his uncle’s house and told him to call there later. Vincent says, “In New York, cocaine is a very liberal item. For celebrities and the wealthy, it’s like a drink. I could have used a few dollars. I figured I wouldn’t really be in the act. I wasn’t buying. Morally it didn’t seem wrong to me, and the dollar stood up in my mind. And I was just fascinated by the girl.”

Climbing into the black Toyota, Vincent and Robert drove uptown to the uncle’s apartment. They sat in the living room and Robert teased Vincent for being scared by one of the scenes in the movie. Vincent remembers, "Then we got on the subject of Richard Rasmussen and the girl. I said I didn’t think that guy was going to call, that he came out of Xenon talking out of his head, a little bit blasted, and playing big shot. Robert said the same thing. Robert said, 'I don’t think he’s serious'.”

A few minutes later, Rick called. Robert told him they would find a buyer and meet him at West 77th Street and Columbus Avenue. Then Robert called a radio-cab owner he knew named Frank Angel. Hanging up, Robert said that Frank was interested in buying a few grams. They went down to the street and met Frank. Vincent remembers, “Frank was questioning Robert how we know this guy wasn’t a cop, and Robert said it was logical, that cops don’t sell drugs, they buy drugs.”

At about 2:45 a.m., they drove down to West 77th Street in the Toyota. Frank followed in his cab. After a few minutes, the couple from the Hamptons appeared in the Mercedes. Rick huddled with the cab driver. Jacquie leaned against the Toyota and talked with Vincent. She said that she was from Long Island and told Vincent he should drive out sometime. Vincent said that he had lived down South and that he now went to West Point.

“I said, ‘I can’t see how people spend so much money on cocaine,’ ” Vincent remembers. “She said, 'They do it'.” Then Robert came back to the Toyota and said that Rick wanted to head uptown. Vincent remembers, “I complained that it was getting too complicated. He [Robert] said it shouldn’t take too long. I said. The guy could be trying a stickup or something.’ He said, ‘He seems all right. Besides, with the girl I don’t think he would try something like that'. ”

With Rick in the back seat, the cab pulled away from the curb and roared uptown. Jacquie followed in the Mercedes. Then came the black Toyota. The cab started running red lights and Jacquie hit the accelerator, fighting to keep up. She remembers, “I thought they were trying to lose me, I thought they were going to hurt the person I loved.” Driving behind the Mercedes, Vincent looked in his rearview mirror and saw a pair of headlights. Vincent says, “I still thought it might be a setup. I slowed down and let the car come up. It was just one guy, an older gentleman.”

At West 152nd Street and Riverside Drive, the cab pulled over. The other cars lined up behind it. Rick got out of the cab and walked over to the Mercedes. Jacquie remembers him saying, “Keep the car running.” Then Rick disappeared with Frank, the cab driver, into a doorway. “Frank told me that they got into the hallway and he told the guy he would take three and a half grams for now and if he liked it, he would get something else sometime,” Vincent says. "Frank said the guy really got upset about that and said, 'I only deal in big packages'. ”

When Rick and the cab driver returned to the street, they were still arguing. Rick apparently decided that he was about to be robbed. Jacquie had given Rick a gold Rolex for his birthday, and now she heard him say to the cab driver, “Don’t take my watch.” Then she heard Rick lower his voice and say to her, “Lock the door.” Rick ran around to the other side of the Mercedes. A figure circled around the rear of the car. Jacquie remembers that Rick raised his arm and said, “Just don’t shoot my girl.” Hearing a shot, Jacquie dived to the floor of the car. She looked up and saw a gun pointed at her. She put her hands over her face, waiting for a second shot. She heard a voice say, “Get the girl.” Then she heard a second voice say, “No, let’s just get out of here.”

After the cab drove away, Jacquie got out of the Mercedes. Rick was lying on the pavement with a three-inch hole next to his left eye. “I stood there screaming my head of and nobody would help,” Jacquie says. “I saw the lights flick on in the buildings, and I waited for people to come out, and nobody did.”

At 3:31 a.m., Jacquie called Rick’s mother. The mother raced to the Presbyterian Hospital. Holding her hand, a doctor led the mother into the intensive-care unit. Rick was in a coma. He lay on a blood-soaked bed with a towel over his head. The mother says, “I couldn’t fathom that was my son there.” A detective named Patrick Sweeney searched Rick’s pants and found a crumpled piece of paper bearing Vincent’s telephone number.

“Jacquie said she spoke to him [Vincent] and he was very polite and said something about going to a military academy,” the mother says.

At that moment, Vincent was lying awake in his uncle’s apartment. He had pulled his Toyota away from the curb and was driving down the block when he heard the shot. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw Rick collapse. That night, Vincent remembers, “I didn’t sleep. I said in my mind that the guy fell like all the life had left him, like his spirit had left his body and there was nothing left in him. I saw that fall again and again.”

Later that day, Robert Mendez came by the apartment. Vincent remembers Robert saying, “I saw a lot of blood, but I think he was just grazed. He’s probably praying just like we are, being thankful to God nobody got hurt.”

Two days later, Frank, the cab driver, came over. Vincent remembers that they decided to play “secret squirrel” and avoid being seen together.

On August 16, six days after the shooting, Vincent drove up to West Point to do some final paperwork.

There was some mix-up concerning his rifle, and Vincent was told to stay over. That night, he saw 

, in 3-D. In the morning he ate breakfast in the cadet mess hall. As he left, his brigade commander came up to shake his hand and wish him good luck.

Vincent joked that he would have to trade his Class of ’83 ring for a Class of ’84 ring.

Then Vincent got into his Toyota. As he came out of the gate, he saw a yellow car.

“I knew right away it was a detective’s car,” Vincent says.

On the way to the station-house, Vincent was told that he was only being sought as a witness. Vincent refused to identify the other two suspects. Vincent says, "One of the classes at West Point was Law 300, and the teacher said always get legal counsel before you say anything.” The detectives then decided to place Vincent under arrest

"People kept coming in and saying, ‘Is that the cadet?’,” Vincent says.

Early the next morning, Vincent was handcuffed and taken down to Central Booking. There he was placed in a pen with some 60 other inmates. Vincent says, "This point was the most scary for me. Just this big room with no seats. I didn’t talk to nobody. I just stood against the wall.”

After six hours, Vincent was fingerprinted and photographed. Then he was taken to see an assistant district attorney. Vincent remembers, "The D.A. said, 'Would you like a lawyer?' I said 'Yeah.' The D.A. walked out of the room. I figured I did the right thing."

That evening, he was taken back to the station house. He had not eaten in 28 hours, and he was allowed to order some food. He asked for three Cokes, two hero sandwiches, three packs of doughnuts, and three candy bars. In the morning, a transvestite charged with prostitution was placed in his cell. The transvestite wore a print dress, mascara, and lipstick. Vincent offered the transvestite half a sandwich and some candy.

“West Point teaches you some flexibility,” Vincent says.

Then Vincent was ferried back downtown. He was photographed again. A woman called out his name and identified herself as his Legal Aid attorney. Vincent remembers her saying, "You know you made the news today?” The lawyer then asked him how he could afford to buy a car. Vincent said that cadets are considered good credit risks. At the arraignment, Vincent was charged with robbery in the first and second degrees. He was released on his own recognizance, pending a hearing.

For sixteen days, the mother stood beside Rick at the hospital. She tried to help him out of a coma by playing Stevie Wonder tapes. On the sixth day, his right eye popped open. The mother says, “It was so blue and clear, it was like he was watching us.” Rick stayed in a coma.

A smell filled the room, and the mother knew that an infection had set in.

At 3:15 in the afternoon on August 26, the mother went out to put a coin in the parking meter, and when she returned Rick Rasmussen was dead. The funeral was held a few days later at the Immaculate Conception Church in Westhampton Beach. On the altar was a red-and-gold wreath fashioned in the shape of a surfboard.

The morning after Rick’s death, Vincent took the subway downtown for his court hearing.

Vincent says, "It seemed my whole life had fallen. I was thinking about prison. I thought of the manhood thing, of guys getting raped. I thought if I was going to lose my manhood it’d have to be a ten-to-one proposition because I could handle three-to-one if it came down to it.”

For three and a half hours, Vincent sat in the courtroom and watched other people who were charged with crimes parade before the judge. At 12:30 p.m., Vincent’s lawyer appeared and told him that all charges would be dropped if he agreed to testify against Robert and Frank. Vincent ducked out to get a hot dog from a street vendor.

He returned in a few minutes and sat down in a grand-jury room to tell a story he himself finds incredible. A grand jury indicted Robert and Frank for felony murder. They would later plead not guilty, saying they never planned for anybody to be robbed or hurt.

In the early evening, Vincent came out of the criminal court building. Up at West Point, the cadets were assembling. Here in lower Manhattan, Vincent crossed the street and caught the subway uptown, his future as a cadet uncertain now that his past was shadowed by the death of a blond surfer from Westhampton Beach.

"THE CADET AND THE SURFER," NEW YORK MAGAZINE (1982)

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