Uncle Janice (6 page)

“So you take ambitious cops, you put them in a stressful job, and then you hang boards on the wall. Listen, I don’t mean to put my mistakes on anybody else. I’m responsible for the errors I’ve made. I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. You hear the politicians on TV: ‘Mistakes were made.’ As if, like, mistakes happen without people. Listen, you have to take responsibility. And so for a couple of years there in Firearms I was self-medicating my anxieties with alcohol. While working. While at work. And you know there are other people’s lives at stake there with a thing like that.

“Anyway. One day, me and my partner, Isaac Caspars, you know the name, we split a bottle of … what’s the one, tastes like cough syrup? Jägermeister. We split a bottle of that, and normally that’d be fine, we were drinking so much back then, but sometimes it’s your day and sometimes it isn’t, and I got really, really wasted. But we both have three hours before our shift ends, so he hustles me through the office toward the cot room in the back so I can sleep it off. This is over at the Manhattan rumpus. Our captain is a guy named Landry who’s this teetotaling Born Again, and while there’s not a captain in the universe who likes his cops getting drunk on the job, this guy is going to be particularly hostile to the idea. So I’m having to go hide out in the cot room.

“I don’t even know how many hours later I wake up with my feet in Caspars’s hands. Maybe you all don’t know this about me, but I’m a little weird about my feet. Like I wear flip-flops in the shower, my
own
shower. And socks to bed and all that. I’m surprised I’d even taken my shoes off in the cot room, but there they are across the room, still knotted, like I must’ve kicked them off in my sleep. So that’s a surprise. And Caspars, who knows about my foot thing, he’s kneading my arches.

“ ‘Get the f off me,’ I tell him, except I don’t say
f
, I use the actual cuss word, which as you know is not something I like to do.

“And then Hart sticks his head into the room. The very same. Sergeant Hart, except he wasn’t a sergeant back then, he was just starting out as an investigator with Firearms. We’ve known each now, oh my goodness, like forever. He came out of Queens Narcotics like I had, and transferred back when I did, too. Nothing intentional like he was following me or something, but sometimes you’ll just go your whole career linked up to somebody. He’s my shadow, and I’m his, and it could be a lot worse, let me tell you. Anyway, he sticks his head into the room and he says, ‘Did you tell him yet?’

“And Caspars looks at me and he says, ‘Guess who called?’

“Actually, what he said, he tells Hart that I’m grouchy. Then he asks me who called.

“I guess ‘Nene Singleton,’ who was this kid at the Ravenswood projects in Queens, this guppy we’d been trying to hook for
months
. And
Caspars goes, ‘See, you don’t
have
to be a detective to figure that sort of stuff out, but it helps,’ which was a favorite line of his. He goes, ‘And guess what Nene’s got?’

“It’s around midnight now. Something like that. And I
am
grouchy. I’ve just been woken up by a man touching my feet and I’m in that headache zone between drunk and hungover. I don’t really feel like playing, so I go, ‘Why don’t you just tell me?’

“And he says, ‘Our boy Nene just called because he’s got an AK-47 he wants to sell.’

“From the doorway, Hart says, ‘An AK-47,’ like that’s all he needs to say, because really that is all he needs to say.

“You guys ever see one of those things? You ever
hear
one of those things? We’re talking about a gas-operated, rotating-belt, Kevlar-piercing, fully
and
semiautomatic assault rifle that fires six hundred rounds per minute with a maximum range of four football fields. On top of that? It’s moron-proof. Ridiculously reliable, almost no maintenance required. And what am
I
thinking about? I’m thinking about holding up that big bad mama for a Polaroid that’ll go on the board.

“Nene, though, he wants to make the sale that night, and our captain won’t approve it. We’re in his office, you’ve never seen such a clean office, Bible quotes on the walls, me and Hart and Caspars giving the pitch. I’ve got a cup of coffee to help sober me up, but of course I spill it on the floor.

“ ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Landry asks, and Caspars tells him I’ve got the flu, but I’m getting better every second.

“So after we give Landry the pitch, he tells us there’s not enough time to set up all the stuff we have to set up: put together an op plan, order the cameras, put together all the scenarios, scout the location, set up surveillance, look for countersurveillance, note all the one-way and dead-end streets in the neighborhood,
distribute
the op plan, hold the TAC meeting, all of it. He wants us to stall Nene until tomorrow, but Caspars tells him that Nene insisted it’s tonight or never. He’s got alternative options otherwise, Nene’s exact words according to Caspars. Alternative options.

“We let that hang in the air a bit.

“Landry shakes his head and says sorry. ‘There’s not enough time. It’s just too dangerous.’

“And I go, ‘It’s dangerous not to make this buy.’

“My breath must’ve still smelled like Jäger, because he points to me and says, ‘What is this drunk fool doing in my office? Whose buy is this anyway?’

“Caspars tells him it’s his buy, but he wanted me along because Nene usually rolls deep and if he brings a friend, I’d be there to like even out the numbers.

“But that’s just more ammo for Landry. He rattles off all the problems: not enough time, the possibility Nene will bring a friend, Nene’s youth, by which he means his stupidity. ‘It’s too many variables,’ he tells us.

“Hart can’t say anything because all of Landry’s objections are safety-related and it’s the undercovers with their necks in the noose, not him. So I take it upon myself to say, ‘Listen. What if we can get the op plan put together in time?’ And what if we let Landry pick the location? And what if—because clearly he’s not sending a drunk onto the set as an uncle—what if I run surveillance and Caspars partners up with this new undercover we had named Debbie Barnes, who was great, just a pro’s pro. She could pose as Caspars’s girlfriend and hopefully soften the mood a bit, make it a little less testosteroney. And what if we don’t buy this AK and somebody else does?

“Now, Landry, to his credit, before he was Born Again, he was an AA twelve-stepper, and before that an atheist, and before that an agnostic, and before that a Catholic. So in other words, the guy is willing to change his mind. He goes out onto the rumpus to see if Barnes is even still around, and when he comes back into his office he’s visibly relieved because she’d signed out half an hour ago.

“But I’ve already called her on her cell. And I’ve got her turning around, making the next available U-turn by promising her that
she’ll
get to be the primary. And what does that mean? That means the buy will go up on the buy board, directly under her name.

“For the next couple of hours we’ve got investigators mapping routes to the nearest hospital just in case. Hart and I, we’re putting together the op plan. I’m writing the scenarios, all the ways it can go. Well, of course, not
all
the ways it can go. Really just three ways, because that’s all the space I have on the form. Just a drop in the bucket, really, in terms of possible futures. Hart is putting together a Nene packet with photos of all his known pals, plus anyone we have in the computer who lives in Ravenswood, more photos than we could possibly go through in the time allotted. Barnes is getting mic’d. Caspars is in Landry’s office, talking on the phone with Nene, setting up the buy for tonight. It’s going to go off outside Nene’s apartment building in Ravenswood, just a simple hand-to-hand on the street. Caspars wants him to bring the gun in a duffel bag of some sort, so it’ll be concealed, of course, but also so the AK will be harder for Nene to pull out in case something goes wrong. Nene says, ‘I’m not trying to give away bags for free here.’ Tacks on another thirty dollars for the duffel, which puts us at seven hundred and eighty dollars. Does that not sound like a lot? For an AK-frickin’-47? Well, it’s not, right? But
that’s
how many guns are on the street. That’s open-market competition driving down prices on an
assault
weapon. Anyway, so now we gotta get the money, copy it, get the cars, get the cameras, and race over to the set, eating red lights the whole way.

“And then it’s that old story. The life of a cop? Hurry up and wait. We’re all just sitting around. Waiting on Caspars and Barnes to decide to show up. It’s four o’clock in the morning and me and Hart are slouched down in a Toyota Camry with tinted windows. Parked outside Nene’s Ravenswood residence. Nene’s up in his apartment, waiting on Caspars and Barnes himself. Across the street there are two more detectives in a yellow taxi. Around the corner, within kel frequency range, not that it matters since we couldn’t find a single working mic, are Landry and two more detectives in the command car. My phone keeps vibrating. It’s my wife—I was married at the time—wanting to know if I’m still alive, but I can’t answer because I don’t want the glow of the cell phone lighting up the car. Of course I could’ve called her before I left for the set, but that’s only about one of maybe four million reasons why I got divorced.

“At the time, though, all I’m thinking is at least I don’t have to pee. Then I have to pee. Then I’m wondering if I have enough time to run to Dunkin’ Donuts and use their bathroom, not that I ever would, not that it was even open probably, but I just wanted to torture myself with the possibility. Hart, meanwhile, is blowing his nose into this disgusting handkerchief because he gets sick when he’s nervous. I don’t know if you knew that. The whole car reeks of the cough drops and Alto ids he keeps popping. He’s blaming me for giving him the flu, and I’m apologizing, even though we both know I never really had the flu, but that’s what happens on surveillance. You start to lose your mind.

“Finally we see Caspars and Barnes drive past us in a gray Pathfinder. The ghost car’s right behind them. Caspars parks the Pathfinder in front of a hydrant about thirty yards away from the Ravenswood entrance, exactly as he was supposed to. So far, so good. All three of my op-plan scenarios started just like this, with the uncles putting some distance between themselves and the entrance. It’s like I always tell you: make the fishies swim to you.

“Caspars gets out of the car with the engine still running and he comes over to Barnes’s side, the street side, so the detectives in the cab can get some good pictures of him on his cell phone. He’s calling Nene and the idea here is that he gets Nene to come down with the AK in his bag or whatever, walk the thirty yards to the car, complete the sale out in the open, that’s scenario one, or in the car, that’s scenario two, and when Nene’s walking the thirty yards back, we all grab him before he reaches his building.

“After Caspars gets off the phone, he reaches into the open passenger window and comes out with a cig, Barnes’s, I guess. He takes a drag, something I’ve never seen him do in my life. Different partners, different vices, I guess. Barnes’s hand is dangling outside the window and she’s wearing what looks like an enormous purple cocktail ring, big as a plum. Before he slides the cigarette back between her fingers, he bends over and gives the ring a big kiss. I don’t know. I’m glad they’re relaxed and having fun, but my hands are shaking like they straight got banged with a hammer. I show them to Hart. I go, ‘Look at this,’ and he says, ‘Tell me about it,’ then blows his nose into the hankie.

“Nene comes out a little later with a buddy, just as we knew he would. They’re both dressed all in white. White sneakers, white denim shorts. This is February, mind you. White T-shirts. White do-rags under white Yankees caps. In the dark, from a parked car, they looked identical, except Nene’s got his tube socks pulled all the way up like he’s worried Caspars is going to kick him one in the shins. And the friend’s a little bit taller, too. Me and Hart, we’re flipping through photos fast as possible so we can radio a name to Landry, but we don’t recognize the kid. The good news? Nene and the kid don’t recognize us, either. Don’t even look for us, like they’ve got nothing to worry about, no reason at all to keep an eye out for police, because, the bad news, they’ve come out of the building empty-handed.

“Nene pats his chest, like, ‘My bad, my bad.’ We don’t need to hear him to know what he’s saying. We’ve heard it literally a thousand times before. ‘My bad, the AK was supposed to be here like hours ago, but we just gotta go pick it up, take a quick drive, no problem, my bad, my bad.’

“Listen. If black-market gun-sellers were organized and responsible, they wouldn’t be black-market gun-sellers.

“The problem, though, is that only scenario three had anticipated Nene showing up without the gun. If that happened, the uncle was advised to cancel the buy and pursue it another time. Nothing wrong with punting. But of course, as always, all real-time decisions remain at the uncle’s discretion.

“While Caspars’s thinking about what he’s going to do, Nene moves past him to see who’s sitting in the Pathfinder’s front seat. He leans his head in through the window, like maybe he’s kissing Barnes on the cheek, even though they’ve never met before, and then he pulls his head out laughing, cracking up at something she said. She was pretty charming. Caspars meanwhile is giving Nene’s friend one of those macho upward chin tilts. That was a little unusual because normally when Caspars met somebody new on a buy he’d step forward and give whoever it was like this big double-handed handshake. It was his shtick to act super corny. He wanted people to think, No police department in the world would hire a guy this fake to work undercover. He’d act like he was running for office, slapping backs and cracking jokes and talking crazy loud, horsing
around, but in a real buddy-buddy way, like with the ring, kissing Barnes’s ring, but he gave Nene’s friend just the chin tilt, without smiling, like he was in the mood to intimidate. That pleased me, but my hands were still shaking. I kept telling myself, ‘Take it easy, take it easy. If these kids had violence on the brain, they wouldn’t have dressed all in white.’