I stood in front of them for a second. When I didn’t say anything, B-Dog put a toothpick in his mouth and said, “Help you?”
“I was looking for the Three Stooges, but you guys will do in a pinch,” I said, then pointed at each one. “Moe, Larry, and Curly.”
“Cop,” Ruffy said to no one in particular. Tyrone tried to stare me into the sidewalk.
No reason to deny it. “Guy got killed around here, not too long ago. I’m looking into it.”
“People get offed all the time,” B-Dog said. “Don’t make it our bidness.”
“Yeah, but this guy was a policeman,” I said. “A cop you knew. You boys grew up around here. You knew Officer Witherspoon. You called him T.”
They didn’t say anything.
“He used to give you rides from the pool in the summer, take you home when he caught you out on the streets and promised not to tell your parents. His wife taught you in elementary school. Their son’s just a few years younger than you.”
They still didn’t say anything. Ruffy fixed me with a slack stare, B-Dog focused on something over my shoulder. Tyrone continued to try to disintegrate me with his eyes.
“The way I heard it, T watched out for the neighborhood. And when he didn’t like something, he took it personally. He probably wouldn’t turn a blind eye to what you’re doing now, but if he could cut you a break, he would.”
“T was all right,” Ruffy said.
“Shut up,” B-Dog said to Ruffy. He looked at me. “Fuck is it to you?”
“The thing is,” I said. “He was looking into something going on around here. Something that was rocking the neighborhood. Something that would’ve concerned you three. A lot. Like a source outside the, ah, family, shall we say?”
“Man, you don’t know what the fuck you talking about,” B-Dog said. “’S a quick way to get yo ass kicked.”
“I don’t know, B-Dog. I’ve been watching you and scoring deals three or four times an hour might seem good to some, but you’re used to doing a lot more than that, right? You guys losing ground to someone, maybe?”
“Man, shut yo mouth. We ain’t losing shit.”
“Your real name is Bertrand, isn’t it? I mean, no one’s actually named B-Dog. Then again, no one’s really named Bertrand, either, are they?”
B-Dog had decided that, cop or not, he wasn’t going to be dissed. He jerked his chin towards me. “Tyrone, shut this silly muthafucka up.”
Tyrone started to unwrap the two ham hocks he disguised as arms so he could open his personal can of whoop-ass on me. Which he would’ve, no doubt about it. Hell, I know a couple of tricks, but they won’t do much for a fist backed by a twenty-two-inch bicep. But he’d only gotten his arms half undone when I slapped him with the lipstick-sized stun gun I’d been palming while I talked to them. Somewhat ineffective through clothing, just fine for exposed flesh. Like the kind sprouting out of Tyrone’s Lakers jersey.
A strangled howl erupted from him as something like 200,000 volts went rocketing through his system and then he hit the ground to do the jitterbug. I stepped back and slid my hand down towards my hip. A SIG is a handy bargaining tool when trying to dissuade two gangbangers from jumping you. The next move was theirs, within reason.
Ruffy didn’t take long to make up his mind. He took off across the park, fast, looking like a two-legged spider. It had probably been his M.O. since he was a kid. B-Dog, on the other hand, figured out after a moment that, if I was using a stun gun, I probably wasn’t a cop. He pulled a clasp knife from a back pocket and moved in.
I’d made a big mistake. I should’ve stepped back and drawn my SIG as soon as I’d lit Tyrone up with the stun gun. Instead, my good-cop training had taken over and I had waited to see if something would develop. In the academy, they call it waiting for the “threat of imminent danger.” On the street, they call it stupid.
But another thing the academy teaches is not to rely on your gun for everything. When cops across the country were found with a hand on the butt of their holstered gun, but dead from a stab wound they probably could’ve stopped if their hands had been free, there was a shift in training. Use your brain first, your gun second. In this case, if I’d gone for my gun, B-Dog would’ve opened me up like a birthday present.
So, I gave up on my gun, and just in time. B-Dog came in, swinging the knife in quick half-moons. His technique was wild, trying for a lucky cut rather than working deliberately towards getting me into a position where he could end it. He aimed high, towards my face, hoping I’d flinch. I swatted his arm away two or three times. This gave him the idea that I was afraid, so he moved a little closer. I surprised him when I did, too.
B-Dog was used to intimidating junkies and street punks. It didn’t look like he’d ever heard of an arm-bar. But I introduced him to the concept by wrapping my arm through his, grabbing it on the other side, and squeezing. He hollered and tried yanking his arm away, but wouldn’t let go of the knife. I squeezed more. He said, “Shit” and the knife dropped to the ground. I let up on the pressure, which he thought meant I was disengaging, so he pulled away.
But what I was really doing was giving myself room to swing a knee. Which I did at the same time that I yanked his arm and shoulder towards the ground. I wasn’t twenty anymore and cancer does lousy things to your stamina, so I needed to end this quickly. My kneecap connected just above the bridge of his nose. It didn’t feel like much on my end, but his body went slack, and suddenly I was holding a B-Dog-sized bag of Jell-O. The whole thing had taken maybe fifteen seconds.
I dragged him deeper into the park and propped him up against an old playground horse, the kind with the giant spring underneath. He bobbed and bounced as I held him in place. With my free hand, I took my gun out and kept it down by my side, out of sight of the street. No more tactical mistakes. Ruffy might decide to come back and Tyrone wasn’t going to stay on the ground forever.
I shook B-Dog. When he started to squirm and swear, I showed him my gun. Somehow, his hat had stayed on through our little tussle, though it was skewed at a angle and now looked like a cooking pot on his head. He quieted down, but his eyes flicked left and right, looking for a way out. I shook him some more.
“Fuck you want, man?” His tone, so cocksure on the corner, was plaintive and wheedling now.
“I asked you some questions earlier, Bertrand,” I said. “You can probably guess I’m still interested in hearing the answers.”
“Like what?”
“A local cop gets beaten and shot to death. Street business is down. Something bad in the ’hood is about to happen. You’re in the middle of it and you’re going to tell me what it is.”
“That all you want?”
“That’s it. Some information,” I said. “It shouldn’t be this freaking hard.”
B-Dog licked his lips and glanced down. Half of his shirt was balled in my fist. I’d shook him with every other word as I spoke. I let go and took a half-step back, but kept my gun out. Give and take. If I let him pick his dignity back up off the ground, maybe he’d talk. B-Dog straightened his hat and glanced out at the street, but he didn’t move off the horse.
“Three, four months ago, some Spic muthafuckas start driving through the ’hood. Every day, they come through, driving slow, checkin’ out the park. The street. Never cause no trouble. Just watchin’. But that mean they lookin’ for an opening. They gonna close us down or take a cut.”
“What do you mean, Spics? Mexicans? Cubans? Salvadoran?”
“I don’ fucking know. Spics, man.”
“How would a Hispanic gang take a cut in a black neighborhood?” I asked. “Would that ever happen?”
He shrugged. “Crackheads buy from anybody that got product.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tyrone getting to his feet. He stood and shook his head like a bull moose, then looked around. He spotted us in the park and started to move our way. I turned a little in place so he could see the gun about the same time B-Dog put a hand out. Tyrone stopped and watched us from a distance.
I turned back to B-Dog. “You know who they were? Which gang?”
“Fuck if I know. One of them Spic gangs. Logan Circle, Woodbridge, Bowie. They everywhere, man.”
“What then?”
“My boy Tone tell us, get ready for a war.”
“Tone is your boss,” I said.
A head tilt. Maybe yes, maybe no. B-Dog didn’t want to think he had a boss, even though he was the one that stood on a street twelve hours a day dealing crack. “Tone get an idea and he tell T about the Spics. Tell him if he don’t want a war in his ’hood, maybe he should do something about it.”
“It warms my heart to see citizens cooperating with local law enforcement,” I said. “So, Tone sicced Witherspoon on these other guys, hoping he’d do his job for him.”
B-Dog said nothing.
“Did it work? You guys didn’t look like you were ready for a war when I showed up, you don’t mind me saying.”
“Things was tense for a while. Dudes stop coming ’round. Maybe a month ago, Tone say all clear and we go back to dealin’.”
“Who killed T, then?”
Shrugging seemed to form a large part of B-Dog’s repertoire. “Spics, man. He put the squeeze on them and they took him out.”
“That matter to you?”
Shrug. “We didn’t off him. And he be after us if he wasn’t on them.”
“Sentimental, too,” I said. “So what’s happening now?”
“Bidness as usual. We see any more dudes, we s’pose to tell Tone.”
“And that hasn’t happened?”
“Nope,” B-Dog said.
“Why is business so slow?”
“Man, I look like I got an MBA? Fuck if I know. Maybe the crackheads still scared there gonna be a war.” B-Dog was getting some of his swagger back now that his eyes weren’t streaming anymore. He glanced out at the street again. “We done yet?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But you’ve been very helpful.”
He reached up and rubbed his forehead. It was puffy and swelling. “Man, you ain’t a cop, what the fuck are you?”
I thought about it. “That is a really good question, Bertrand.”
i.
It was his favorite thing to do, playing the scenes over and over in his mind, rolling them back and forth. Watching himself in his mind’s eye from a distance, like a camera in a movie. He liked remembering how things went down, how he’d acted, how cool he was during it all. Each time he killed, it was a little different, but they all spooled out in his mind like an action flick and he loved sitting there and letting them play.
This one, though. It had been too easy. Disappointing.
The lock had been no problem. Torres thought he was a bad motherfucker and had only locked the knob. There were no roommates and it was still early on a Saturday morning, no random visitors to worry about. Nosing around the apartment carefully and quietly, he’d found Torres passed out on the floor with half a case of beer cans lying next to him, on the coffee table, and on top of the TV that was still playing its sports channel wrap-up show. The cop had on camo shorts and an ash-gray tank top that showed off the Superman tattoo high on his shoulder, glowing against the pale skin. Belly down, his face turned to the left. A thin line of drool hung from his lower lip and beaded on the rug, quivering in time with his snores.
Looking down at Torres, he wondered if he should wake him up, let him know what was going to happen and why. No. That wasn’t why he was here. He had a purpose—a mission—and it didn’t require any explanations. The piece of shit could go to his grave wondering why he’d been snuffed. Just then, Torres groaned and rolled onto his side, revealing a short, snub-nosed .38 tucked in his waistband. Decision made. This was no time for talk.
Using a pillow to muffle the sounds, he knelt next to Torres and put two shots in the side of the cop’s head. The body jerked with each one, then was still, lying just like it had ten seconds before. Tossing the pillow aside, he listened intently for five minutes. Ten. Nothing.
He reached into the backpack he’d brought and pulled out rubber gloves and a set of rain gear he’d picked up at a thrift store. He slid on a pair of safety glasses, but just then the sports show started their baseball segment. He liked baseball, so he sat on the couch and watched a few minutes of the coverage.
He swore when they announced the Rangers had beaten the Angels. He didn’t care about the Angels. He just hated the Rangers. Blood from Torres’s head seeped into the carpet as he watched and he moved his foot to keep it from getting on his shoe.
At a commercial break, bored, he got up and prowled around the apartment. A set of high school football trophies took up space on a dresser in the bedroom, sitting beneath framed medals and ribbons from other past glories. The biggest trophy had a marble base. He picked it up and bounced it in his hand a few times. It had a nice heft to it, so he took it and went back to the living room.
He turned the AC down to its lowest setting, then kicked the beer cans out of the way. Torres lay almost exactly as he’d found him. If you ignored the little holes. He planted his feet carefully, like a batter. Tilting his head first to the left, then to the right, he chose his spot carefully, then raised the trophy in both hands. He looked over his shoulder, winked at an imaginary camera, then brought the trophy down as hard as he could.
Chapter Nine
Over the next twenty-four hours, I sat in my office with my phone and let my fingers do the walking. I might not have anyone who’d be my best man if I decided to get married again, God forbid, but thirty-plus years as a homicide cop in the same town gives you contacts. And it was time to use some of them.
I’d thought about my next steps carefully and decided what I needed was an introduction. The delay made me anxious and I once again had the feeling that time was slipping past me but, while meeting with Libney Garcia and Florence Witherspoon had been easy enough to arrange, at some point I was going to have to talk to the cops that these guys worked with. And while I didn’t mind cold-calling the different forces and departments and seeing how it went, I’d waste a lot less time if someone could vouch for me
before
I got there. So, I opened my little black book and started calling the captains, lieutenants, sergeants, beat cops, and DAs I knew from back in the day. I left hearty voice mail messages reminding them who I was and what great times we had and could they call me back about a very vaguely worded case I was working on, please? I wrapped up with a call to Bloch to let him know what I was doing and that I hadn’t used his name or the words “HIDTA” in any of my messages.