Southern Cross (4 page)

“Shhhhhhhhh!” she said.

“What do they mean, Weed?” Mr. Pretty lowered his scornful voice.

Weed did the best he could.

“Med
is what you feel when someone disses you. And
paced
is what we use in art class,” he guessed.

Officer Fling was guessing, too. He had gone to the
next layer control,
then hit function 3 for
thematic display,
and selected
remove
to get rid of the latest pie, and brought up
priority one, two and three calls
for fourth precinct, which was not what anyone was interested in at the moment.

Hammer flipped on the overhead lights. The presentation was never supposed to run over an hour and it was well past the limit. She was discouraged and frustrated and determined not to let it show.

“I realize we’re all new at this,” she said reasonably. “I understand that things don’t happen overnight. We’re going to leave computer mapping until Friday morning at seven hundred hours, by which time I’m sure we will be well versed in it?”

No one responded.

“Officer Fling?” she said.

His hands were lifeless on the keyboard. He looked dejected and defeated.

“Do you think you will be able to make this work by Friday’s COMSTAT presentation?” Hammer persisted.

“No, ma’am.” Fling was honest about it.

The door opened and West returned to the room and took her seat.

“Okay, Officer Fling, that’s fair enough,” Hammer said in a positive tone. “Is there anybody else who might want to learn how to work this program? It’s really very user-friendly. The point was not to design it for programmers and engineers, but for police.”

No one spoke.

“Officer Brazil, help me out here,” Hammer said.

“Sure,” he said dubiously.

“Maybe for now you’d better pitch in,” Hammer said. “Deputy Chief West? You’re also very familiar with the software. See if the two of you can’t work to get this thing up and running. I expect smooth sailing by our next COMSTAT presentation.”

“Who’s willing to learn?” West asked, looking around the table. “Come on guys, show some guts.”

Lieutenant Audrey Ponzi raised her hand. Captain Cloud’s hand went up next, and Officer Fling decided to give it another try.

“Excellent,” Hammer said. “Major Hanger? If you’ll resume with your presentation. We’ll proceed without the computer. And we really need to wind this up.”

Hanger hastily looked through his notes and took a nervous sip of coffee.

“Nothing much has changed since our last meeting,” he began. “We got the same rash of petit larcenies from autos, mostly Jeeps, broken into for their airbags.”

“CABBAGES,” Fling interjected.

All eyes turned toward Captain Cloud, who had come up with Car Air Bag Breaking And Enterings and its acronym CABBAE, which the media had immediately mistaken for CABBAGE, or CABBAGES, and continued to do so, despite the police department’s numerous corrections.

“Anyway,” Hanger resumed, “we suspect most of the stolen airbags are ending up at two body shops recently opened by Russians. Possibly the same clan of Russians
who opened the kiosk at the farmer’s market last summer, on Seventeenth Street directly across from Havana ’59. Selling cabbages, the kind you make slaw with, which has done nothing but add to the confusion.” He glared at Cloud.

“But the CABBAGES might be related because the Russians possibly are,” Fling figured.

“We’re thinking that,” Hanger said.

“Let’s get back to the airbags,” Hammer said.

“Well, the MO remains the same in these most recent petit larcenies.” Hanger avoided using the term CABBAGE. “Owner returns to his vehicle, finds a window smashed, the airbags gone. These same cars go in to one of the Russian body shops to get the airbags replaced and ironically the stolen airbags installed to replace the ones stolen could be the very ones stolen out of the vehicle in question. So you’re really paying for the same airbags twice, thinking you’re getting new ones for three hundred bucks apiece, when in fact you’re getting stolen ones. It’s gotten to be a pretty big racket all over the world.”

“But if you’re getting your same airbags back, they’re really not secondhand because they were never owned by a second person,” said Fling. “Does that . . . ?”

“What are we doing about this situation?” Hammer raised her voice.

“We’re coordinating with investigations to get an undercover guy in at least one of the body shops,” Hanger replied.

“Are the airbags traceable?” Hammer asked.

“Not unless they start putting VINs on them,” Hanger said, referring to the Vehicle Identification Numbers that were etched on the edge of all driver’s doors. “I was thinking maybe we could get some kind of grant to help out. Maybe NIJ would be interested.”

“To help out in what way?” Hammer frowned.

“To do a study on the usefulness of ABINs.”

“ABINs?”

“That’s what we could call them,” Hanger explained. “Air Bag Identification Numbers. Thing is, if your same
stolen airbags are put back in your vehicle, then for sure the ABINs are going to match.”

“True.”

“That would make it pretty easy.”

Hanger nodded. “Not only could we start making cases here, but I’m pretty sure a lot of these stolen airbags are going overseas. So if we developed a system of ABINs, we could get Interpol involved, too. It might bring us some recognition.”

“I see.” Hammer fought a growing sense of hopelessness. “Anything else?”

“Two more stolen Saturns. We got a pattern going on.”

“How many so far?”

“Twelve General Motors cars stolen in the past month.”

“Any breaks?” Hammer asked.

“It appears several kids are involved. We think they bought master keys for Saturns from some kid named Beeper, supposedly in the area of Swansboro Elementary School on Midlothian Turnpike.”

“Gang-related?” Hammer asked.

“Can’t say for sure,” Hanger answered.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, all we got to go on is this one snitch who’s lied to us before.”

Hammer jumped ahead. “We just had another ATM robbery, I’m sorry to say. I’m going to let Deputy Chief West give the details.”

“Victim is an Asian male, age twenty-two.” West looked at her notes. “Pulled up to the Crestar ATM at 5802 Patterson. Nobody else was there. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, says duct tape was suddenly slapped over his eyes, a gun jammed into his back. A male, he couldn’t tell race, demanded money. By the time the victim removed the tape, the perp was long gone.”

“The duct tape is different,” Hammer said.

“Absolutely,” West said.

“That makes six ATM robberies,” Hammer said. “Four on Southside, two in the West End. An average of one per week since early February.”

“Let me just say that I’m extremely concerned about this latest one, assuming it’s related,” West spoke up. “Let’s just go through it. We have the first four ATMs late night or early morning when it’s dark. There’s a male-female team. She diverts by asking the victim where the nearest post office, pay phone, whatever, is. The male appears, opens his jacket just enough to show the handle of a gun and says,
I want the money you took out of the machine.
Maybe the gun’s real, maybe it’s not. The perp takes the money and runs.

“Then we have a fifth ATM in Church Hill. Again, when it’s dark out, but this time the male perp actually displays the gun. He gets into the victim’s car, turns out the interior light so the victim can’t see his face. Threatens if the victim ever tries to help cops ID him, he knows the guy’s plate number and will find him and kill him. Then he forces the victim to drive several blocks. The perp jumps out with the money. Now we’ve got an ATM in the West End, and this time it’s daylight. I’m seeing a possible pattern of escalation here. An escalation that could end in violence.”

“We got anything more on these cases?” Cloud asked.

“Not anything helpful. Some of the victims think the female perp’s black, some think he is, and vice versa. Age unknown, assumed to be juveniles. No sign of a vehicle, if they use one,” West replied. “Bottom line is we don’t know.”

“And bank tapes?”

“Of no use.”

“Why not?” Hammer asked.

“In the first one, all you see is the back of her and it was dark,” West said. “On the next four you don’t see anything at all.”

“And the cameras were functioning?”

“Nothing wrong with them.”

“And the one this morning?”

“Seems fine.”

“Anybody have anything even remotely similar going on in other parts of the city?” Hammer then asked.

No one did.

“What about third precinct? We haven’t heard from you, Captain Webber,” Hammer pushed ahead.

“Some Russians opened up an antique store on Chamberlayne, near Azalea Mall,” Webber said. “They haven’t done anything illegal yet.”

“Any reason to think they will?” Hammer inquired.

“Well, it’s just this Russian thing going on.”

“How do we know they aren’t gypsies?” burglary detective Linton Bean asked.

“Can gypsies be Russian?”

“Seems to me they can be anything as long as they drift around and con people.”

“Yeah, but the ones we’ve had coming through here are mostly Romanian, Irish, English and Scotch. The Travelers. Well, that’s what they call themselves. They get real pissed if we call them gypsies.”

“How ’bout if we just call them tramps and thieves?”

“I’ve never heard of Russian gypsies.”

“My sister went over to Italy last year and said they have gypsies over there.”

“I know for a fact they got Hispanic ones in Florida.”

“See, that’s the whole thing,” said Detective Bean. “There’s no such country as ‘Gypsy.’ You can be from anywhere and be a gypsy, including Russia . . .”

“What are we doing about this problem?” Hammer interrupted.

“Stepping up patrols in neighborhoods like Windsor Farms, where you have mostly older people with money,” said Bean. “Maybe forming a task force.”

“Do it,” Hammer said, glancing at her watch and conscious of the time. “Lieutenant Noble is commander for a day in second precinct. What do you have to report?”

“This week we arrested a domestic violence recidivist,” said Noble, who spoke the proper police language and was resented by all.

“Very good,” Hammer said.

“We’re also doing warrant sweeps but so far haven’t surfaced the suspect in the stairwell rapes,” Noble added.
“And if it’s all right, Chief Hammer, I have a comment to make.”

“Please,” Hammer said.

“I’m not so sure it was a good idea to piss off all the citizens with this gang crap Brazil wrote about for the Sunday paper.”

“It wasn’t crap,” Brazil said.

“Name one gang,” Noble challenged him.

“It’s all a matter of semantics,” Brazil answered. “It depends on how you label
gangs.”

Hammer agreed. “Juveniles are committing the worst crimes. They mentor each other, influence each other, form packs, gangs. We have them here and need to identify them.”

“Most of the kids that go in schools and blow everybody away aren’t in gangs. They’re loners,” Noble argued.

“Let’s look at Jonesboro,” West countered. “A fourteen-year-old recruits an eleven-year-old to pull the fire alarm, right? So what would happen if you had four, five, six kids involved? Maybe twenty kids and teachers would have died.”

“She’s got a point.”

“Got to admit, it makes you think.”

“You’d have to call in the damn National Guard.”

“Kids are scary. They don’t have any boundaries. They think killing’s a game,” West added.

“It’s true. There’s no concept of consequences.”

“What happens if you get some charismatic gang leader and he really organizes? Imagine,” Brazil said.

Insights and arguments were volleyed back and forth as Hammer deliberated over how to broach the next subject.

“Recent intelligence,” she began, “indicates that two white males may be planning a hate crime, the robbery and murder of a black woman possibly named Loraine. The males may go by the names or aliases of Bubba and Smudge.”

No one spoke for a moment, faces perplexed.

Then, “You don’t mind my asking, Chief, where’d this come from?”

Hammer looked to West for help.

“We’re really not at liberty to reveal the source at this time,” West said. “You just need to be aware, keep your eyes and ears open.”

“If there’s nothing further?” Hammer said.

There wasn’t.

“Then I do have two commendations to present and I believe both people are here.” Hammer smiled. “Communications Officer Patty Passman and Officer Rhoad?”

They came forward. Hammer handed each a certificate and shook hands. Applause was weak.