Altered States (4 page)

There are only two gangs in New Meadows worth knowing about. The first, Scrips, is a gang of primarily African-American members, which originally formed in Southern California as a splinter from the infamous LA gang, Crips. The gang grew and spread quickly. Within a few years of forming dozens of sets popped up in Southern California and eventually in the major cities of Nevada. In New Meadows, Scrips control the streets on the North side of the Strip. The South side of the Strip is owned by the only other gang worth worrying about in New Meadows: the notorious Hispanic street gang, Sanguins.

Tensions between the gangs are constantly high, and gang-related killings in the city are not uncommon. But over recent weeks there had been a conspicuous leap in attacks and the newspapers had been quick to mark this as the beginnings of turf war.

Mila assessed the facts offered to her by Conner. ‘So what’s troubling you?’ she asked referring to the two killings. She was experienced enough to know that members of opposing gangs being killed by the same gun was not such an unlikely scenario. Assaults and killings within a gang were commonplace as a show of power and punishment when a member breaks the rules.

Also, competition between members of the same gang is very high. They are all vying for power and promotion. The kind of member that might pop off a member of a rival gang to earn some kudos, may just as likely kill a rival member of his own gang to remove the competition.

‘What’s troubling me,’ Conner responded, ‘is that neither of the killings seemed like an inside job. Both of them were drive-bys for a start.’

‘Okay. Well maybe the guy who did the shooting last week was sensible enough to dump the weapon back on the black market and it ended up in the hands of the other side.’

Conner shook his head. ‘Firepower is an important and expensive commodity. If guns do move around it would be within the gang. Besides, it would be quite a coincidence that the gun happened to be used the following week in a similar shooting.’

‘Similar?’

‘Yeah. The MO for the two crimes is virtually identical: fairly covert drive-by shooting; single shooter; single target. And, in fact, it’s this MO that’s troubling me the most.’

‘Go on’

‘Drive-bys are about making a statement to a rival gang.
Killing
anyone is almost secondary. It’s about making a scene. Shed-load of shooters; lots of bangs; lots of screeching of tyres; and lots of people lying on the floor afterwards, perforated or otherwise. The murder I witnessed was too slick, too clinical. The fact that I’m sitting here now, covered in bagel crumbs, is testament to that.’ He paused to brush some crumbs off his lap. ‘In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would say it was very much like a hit job.’

After another frustrating morning of exploring dead-end avenues, Conner spotted the familiar cocky gait of an assistant DA striding down the corridor outside the office. Dickens was his name and he might just represent Conner’s last hope of gleaning some information about the Bigby arrest. Conner surged into the corridor with last-hope powered momentum.

‘Hey, Dickie,’ he called after the imposing figure.

Dickens turned around. He was four inches taller than Conner and about twenty pounds lighter. And his Thursday-suit was an order of magnitude more expensive than Conner’s best suit would be when he got around to owning one.

‘Mr Alvisa. Haven’t seen you move this fast for a while.
Must
be important.’

‘Always keen to see you, that’s all,’ Conner said with a wink as he motioned Dickens to one side of the corridor.

Cops and DAs share a special kind of relationship. No respect is present on either side of the equation but both are acutely aware of how much they depend on each other. The status quo is maintained with them both floating around in an atmosphere of mutual cooperative loathing.

‘So, I know two things about the Burch hearing and that’s all. One, I won’t be the prosecuting attorney because they’re bringing in a federal prosecutor from DC.’

‘Figures.’ That was expected but still a blow. It meant that the chances of blagging a look at the case notes just dropped from unlikely to non-existent. ‘And the second thing?’

‘That around –’ he glanced at his watch ‘– two hours ago ... Jackson Burch was bailed out onto the street.’

‘What? You’re kidding?’ Conner hadn’t even considered this as a possibility. ‘You got the details?’

‘Of course,’ Dickens said with an overplayed twang of sarcasm. ‘I actively memorize all details of the court’s proceedings just in case I can be of service to you.’

‘Thanks. Appreciate it,’ Conner concluded sarcastically and walked away to go look up the information himself.

A few moments later he was back at his desk studying the details of Bigby’s bailer and bail-bondsman. A few minutes after that he concluded that whoever the bailer was he had used fake ID. No surprises there, which left only one course of action. He stood up purposefully, grabbing essentials from his desk.

‘Nothing, other than I’ve had federal heavies on my case giving me the same warning. I believe them. You should too. They don’t want us messing around in this.’

‘Sure.’

Conner nodded slowly and walked out. He didn’t want to commit further because that would mean either lying or disobeying. The truth was that he was too personally invested in Bigby to drop out now, but he was damned if he was going to investigate on his own time. Cops in the movies may do their best work whilst suspended but he was rather fond of the pay cheque.

Conner tried his best not to curse his bad fortune regarding the Bigby release. He knew that such things just came with the territory of undercover investigation. With sensitive operations you can’t go around shouting about them. You can’t put little Post-it notes on people’s desks – like in City Hall – saying ‘If you know anything about this man please give Detective Alvisa a call on 555–etc.’ Hence, things can happen outside one’s sphere of knowledge. Like this.

In an ideal world Conner would have tailed Bigby from when the guy had been released. But Conner was a few hours behind the curve for that to be an option, so his only next shot was trying to figure out who bailed Bigby out. Presumably, bailer and bailee would be meeting up at some point and that would lead him back to Bigby.

As he walked along the street, he mulled over the scenario. The federal heavies come waltzing in; arrest a guy with some cock-and-bull murder story; slap gagging orders left, right and centre, like it’s some issue of national security; and then? Then they grant the guy
bail
. Bail is virtually unheard of in murder cases and this was clearly no ordinary murder case. When did everything stop making sense?

When Conner arrived at the bail-bondsman’s establishment he found the front office empty. He stepped in and looked around the shabby room. On a desk there was a computer screen showing a half-completed game of solitaire. Then he heard distant raised voices from the back of the building. He un-holstered his gun and made his way quickly but cautiously down a dimly-lit corridor. At the end was a closed office door. The din of voices was louder but he could make out no figures through the obfuscated glass in the door. He placed one hand on the handle and held his gun in readiness. Slowly, he turned the handle and held it for a moment to wait for a reaction. There was none. In a swift motion he swung the door away from himself and brought both hands to his gun. The room was empty. It was a boardroom of some kind with an oval desk in the centre. On the desk was an open briefcase with piles of dollar bills spewing from it, some of them onto the floor.

The raucous voices had now evolved into the unmistakable sounds of a man being repeatedly punched. Adjoining the office was a small kitchen area leading to the back yard. That was where the beating was taking place. Conner judged that only two people were involved and started to move quickly. By the time he was outside the larger and uglier of the two men was wielding a metal bar.

‘Police!’ Conner screamed. ‘Drop it. Now!’

The bar-wielder stood motionless for a while, assessing the situation, slowly arriving at the inevitability of each of the possible outcomes. Eventually, he dropped his arm to his side, and then the bar to the floor. Whilst the big man was growing accustomed to the new balance of power, Conner called-in for uniformed back-up and a paramedic. As he did so, the guy on the floor spoke up weakly.

‘No,’ he rasped, ‘I don’t want to press charges.’

‘I don’t care,’ Conner replied. He quickly assessed the man’s physical condition. ‘You need medical attention. And this guy needs to calm down. So, either way, both of you are getting some flashy-light action. Now, anyone care to tell me what the hell’s going on here?’

Silence.

Silent submissive cowering from one; silent seething anger from the other.

‘I’m not very happy about this, I’ll have you know,’ Conner pointed out to break the silence. ‘I’m not supposed to be here. I only came for a quiet little chat and now I’m going to have to file a bloody report about it.’ The two remained motionless. ‘Well, this is nice. Whilst we’re sharing, you might like to know that I came here to ask about a man called Jackson Burch.’

‘Great.’ Conner rolled his eyes. He had to wait a while for the uniformed guys to turn up. He used these moments to arrive at the conclusion that there was no way his chief would not find out he was here, disobeying his orders. He figured that as he was already in deep enough shit it wouldn’t make much difference if he kept digging. So he took a ride to the hospital with the battered guy – one Kent Bradshaw, who was employed as a clerk at the bail-bondman’s office. The man doing the beating was his boss, and the altercation was over the bailing of Bigby. Apparently, the man who had bailed him had handed over a case of hundred-dollar bills that later on turned out to be a case of
one
-dollar bills. The case had only five thousand dollars in it when it should have had five-
hundred
thousand dollars.

‘That’s not a mistake you make easily,’ Conner pointed out to the clerk.

‘I know that. Especially when you know this is the result.’ He pointed to his tumescent features. ‘I can’t explain it. I sat there and I counted every single note.’

‘No chance of the case being switched?’

‘No, I put the case straight in the safe afterwards. Besides, the notes in the case were the actual ones I counted because I marked the top note of each deck as I went through. It just defies logic. He must have been some kind of magician or something – I don’t know.’

Conner didn’t dare to wish that the office had CCTV. By the state of the establishment it was quite remarkable that even the walls managed to perform their intended function, let alone any complicated surveillance equipment doing so. Besides, he knew this kind of outfit was designed to service a certain class of clientele, those who did not like their picture being taken.