Start Shooting (10 page)

Officer Hahn buckles her seat belt. “How’d dinner work out with your brother?”

“All good. New plan. Latin Kings are a go. We’re meeting by the train tracks.”

She nods, less than excited. Her right hand removes a plastic sack from a rugby kit bag she threw in our Crown Vic—the sack contains the wire and harness she’ll be wearing. “Had a hot dog with Lopez. She told me we’re a go.” Little blond smile. “Guess some of the boys decided to talk to her.”

I make a G with my right hand. “I’m smarter.”

Hahn pops me her version of the FBI gang sign. “ ‘Always and forever, homes; blood in, blood out.’ ”

I turn left at the next corner, make my new team member forty-sixty undercover like Ruben says, but stay with the I Love This Gang moment: “ ‘We da G; we die under those colors.’ ”

She laughs. “Been shot once, that was plenty.”

“Me, too. BB gun. Hurt like a son of a bitch.”

Hahn smiles big and turns away, hiding the grin in her window.

“What? All of a sudden you’ll hate putting me in Marion?”

She stays with the window, laughing now, and nods.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not guilty of anything the feds could care about.”

She turns back, still smiling. “What? Ruben and you go to confession?”

Sergeant Buff Anderson, T-shirt, jeans, and body armor, stands between four Crown Vics and the Burlington Northern tracks. His posture is street-boss confident, but there’s concern in his face that his tone matches. “The girls make the first buy.” He thumbs over his shoulder at the red Toyota Vice probably lent us. “Lopez drives the beater. Hahn buys. We four-way the corner—Vargas and Cowin from the west; me and Jewboy coming east; Candy and Romero on Ashland from the bridge; Gonzalez and Fez down from the Jewel.”

Good plan; makes sense and should; Buff knows how to organize a
gunfight, be it in the jungle or the city. The girls doing the buy is stupid and dangerous, and I’m sure he hates it, but our new commander wants her girls in the gang crimes and TAC units with street victories as their pedigree, not affirmative action.

“This is the commander’s mission.” Buff looks at the girls. “Her choice to put you in the buy car.” Five-second pause. “Assuming you ain’t feds,
Do. Not. Die
. Am I clear?”

Hahn smiles, Lopez doesn’t, the adrenaline apparent in their faces.

Buff checks both his pistols, then looks directly at the girls again. “The Kings are stone killers; this corner’s hot. Iraq hot. Am I clear?” Buff waits for the girls to nod; he doesn’t have to wonder about us. “All of you who checked shotguns, I want ’em chambered and in the front seat. These assholes go live on the girls, come at ’em all the way. We’ll worry about our Olympic image tomorrow.”

Lopez finds no solace in her über-Olympic value. “If it’s that bad we should have marines.”

Buff continues. “Nothing on you two that says La Raza. No Spanish, you’re white chicks from the burbs.”

Lopez straightens, looking at her hands, then Buff.

“I’m not the commander. If you’re calling in sick, do it now.”

Lopez glances at Hahn, who shakes her head. Lopez strips her vest and belt to become a dope-buying civilian, pulls her Glock, checks it, and slides it into her waistband. She frowns at me … like her situation is somehow my fault, then glances at Hahn again.

Hahn says,
“Girls Gone Wild.”

Jewboy grins big, “ ’Ats the spirit.” He points at Lopez’s chest. “Now that we’re working together you could flash me, you know, team spirit and stuff … sort of.”

Lopez keeps her shirt on. Hahn strips her vest and belt, hands both to me, and asks for help taping up her wire. Lopez watches. Again, I get the odd flash I’m in some kind of spiderweb three-way with these two strangers.

Over Hahn’s head I tell Lopez, “Tonight’s the King’s first weekend on your corner; big money changing hands Friday and Saturday. Whoever’s out there will be shooters.”

Lopez nods. Hahn inhales deep, winks, and walks toward the red Toyota. Buff hands her the money and says, “Same as before. When
Hahn or Lopez says ‘Wait, we ain’t right,’ I repeat, ‘Wait, we ain’t right,’ all cars roll. Clear?”

All of us nod.

“Check your radios.” Buff watches till we’re done, then taps the muscular dystrophy pin he wears for luck his daughter didn’t get. “Do. Not. Hesitate. Chicago may need the Olympics, but none of Gang Team 1269 dies today.”

Jason makes the turn onto Twenty-first Street, lip curled under his teeth. “Got a bad feeling.”

“Imagine that.”

“Yeah,
imagine that
. All of a sudden we can’t work the ghetto without chicks? And they do a double buy on day one? In the middle of a gang war? It’s like they gotta get in with us so fast that suicide’s worth it.”

“Ate dinner with Jewboy, huh?”

“Yeah, but—”

“He still think Jimmy Hoffa shot JFK?”

Jason looks at me instead of the windshield. I reach for the 12-gauge, half rack the pump, then check the rest of the tube—six rounds total, lots of damage if the Latin Kings make me use it. Our car quiets into silent preparation, the personal inventory when you’re driving toward a gunfight instead of away. Five cars, ten cops, all well armed. And yet we’re the underdog. What’s that say about America? The big gangs in the ghetto districts outnumber us twelve to one and have better guns. They don’t have rules of engagement, we do. Their shooters hit the pipe to stay crazy, and fire till they run out of bullets.

Twenty-first Street darkens.

To break the silence I say, “If IAD has anything other than the
Herald
’s bullshit on Coleen Brennan and the Duprees, I gotta believe I’ll see those cards Monday morning when I’m under IAD’s lights. Whatever I hear should help us piece together where this train with the commander, Hahn, and Lopez is headed.”

Jason’s eyes cut to me and Monday, then back to the threats directly ahead of us. “Feels wrong. Buff feels it, too; I can tell.”

“Call in sick.”

“Fuck you.” Jason focuses on something in the middle distance. “And fuck the commander. Her two FBI agents. And Operation Hammer.”

“Go to the Cub game. Call in a beef; nobody has to work with strangers who fall out of the sky.”

“But you will?” Jason frowns for real and pushes his radio at me. “Only if everybody agrees. This is stupid, but I ain’t leaving you guys short.”

“Guess we’re going to work, then.”

We stop in the dark two blocks west, one car alone on the war’s Friday-night front line, Jason and I sifting shadows and shapes for Latin King lookouts or La Raza gunships neither of us see. Used to be bangers didn’t murder policemen in their cars; crack changed that. The radio’s back in Jason’s lap, the girls’ voices talking to his jeans.

Lopez: “Approaching southeast corner of Ashland and Twenty-first.”

Hahn: “Four males, Hispanic, eighteen to twenty-five; T-shirts, caps, baggies. Black and gold. Pulling up.”

Black and gold are the colors of the Latin Kings. Jason draws his 9-millimeter and slides it under his leg. We’re too far away, but as close as we can creep and not get made. “This is fucked up, Bobby. I say call it off.”

Hahn: “Got twenty dollars, wanna holler.”

Hispanic male: “That right?”

Hahn: “Yeah.”

Male: “Don’ see it.”

Shuffle noise.

Lopez: “Hey, man, why three guys to do—”

ROAR OF AN AUTOMATIC.

Jason slams the gas and me into the seat. I grab the radio, flipping the frequency: “Ten-one! Ten-one! Officer down, Ashland and Twenty-first. Gang Team 1269 on the scene.” Both feet press hard into floorboard. The radio drops, I two-hand the shotgun, and we’re airborne over the first intersection; Jason rockets the next block, makes the intersection at Ashland, and slams the brakes. Four males fire flame and roar into the Toyota’s windows and windshield.

Jason skid-stops sideways and we’re out of the car. Two shooters have their backs to us both slamming new magazines. A third shooter catapults
backward from the Toyota. The fourth turns to run, leaps into the street, and Buff’s front bumper smashes him into the pavement. I level the 12-gauge and fire twice. The nearest shooter goes down; the other turns mid-intersection, spraying us full-auto with a converted Tec-9. Bullets bang the fender. Our windshield explodes; I duck; Jason’s hit, stumbles up aiming his pistol. Our southbound car screams into the intersection. The last shooter standing spins too late and is crushed at forty miles per hour.

I spin toward the Toyota. Hahn is standing, but crumpled over her fender. She aims her pistol down at Shooter Three pancaked on her sidewalk. Both fire. Hahn twists away, fires again, and goes down. Sirens careen in from three directions. I fan for targets in the flashing lights. Shadows. Adrenaline. Instinct. Doors pop on the arriving cars; body armor floods the intersection; ten more cops rush into our perimeter.

I twist one-eighty for my partner, then three-sixty. “Jason!”

No answer.

Nine minutes since the shooting stopped; the air’s still adrenaline and death.

Radios crackle. Lights strobe the pavement blue-red-and-white. Armed men and EMTs move in and out of staccato 8 mm reality. Four TAC cars are stopped at odd angles, doors open. Shell casings and glass shards litter the intersection.

Mouth dry; pulse at one-twenty and coming down.

More beat cars roll in to block the side streets. Gas and oil and blood puddles glare in the crisscross of headlights. Officer Lopez is dead behind the wheel of the Toyota. Two Latin King shooters are dead from Crown Vic bumpers, both bodies splattered into the intersection. The gangster I shot is being placed in the nearest ambulance with two EMTs feverishly attempting to keep him from bleeding to death. Hahn hit the shooter on her sidewalk at least twice but he’s conscious and breathing as his EMTs stretcher him past me. Same with Hahn, thankfully.

How
she is a survivor is one of those mysteries that can happen; the
bullets go everywhere you’re not. All but one—a .38 ricocheted, then hit her second gun. The .38 didn’t break her hip, but bruised her so badly she couldn’t stand. Hahn is loaded into her ambulance, windshield pieces buried in her face and arms; her eyes remain locked on Lopez’s lifeless body.

Jason is bleeding but not bad. Buff is about to tell him a second time to get his ass to the hospital but has to turn to more uniforms piling out of their cars. “No, back it up to Paulina, nothing eastbound past Paulina.” Buff walks the uniforms west, pointing at where he wants them.

Radios bark that Homicide is on the way in, as are the crime-scene techs. Jason spits a glass fragment. “Shit, that hurts.”

I’m still trying to figure what happened, what I just saw. The radio squawks inside our car. The call tape won’t sound like a dope buy that went bad; this was an execution; the Kings were waiting for that red Toyota. And until a few minutes ago I was supposed to be driving it.

“Officer Vargas?”

I turn to a white male in a sport coat. He introduces himself as an investigator from OPS and asks what happened. OPS is the Office of Professional Standards—any officer-involved shooting is investigated by OPS. Our commander is for sure on her way, same for the street deputy—he’s a deputy superintendent and the highest-ranking policeman on duty when Superintendent Jesse Smith isn’t. I start to answer the OPS investigator and four Homicide dicks screech to a stop in two cars; my brother Ruben is one of them. He runs to me instead of walking to Officer Lopez dead in the Toyota. “We cool, buey?” Ruben prods my vest and squeezes one shoulder.

“Yeah.”

Ruben nods a professional acknowledgment to the OPS investigator, then back to me. “Sure you’re okay?”

“Fine.”

“Remember what I told you at dinner.” Ruben scans the scene. “Three dead, two dying gonna make the Olympic village major-unhappy.”

I nod again; he does the same, turns, and walks toward Lopez. I will see Ruben again tonight when the officer-involved interviews start at ADD, the Area 4 Detective Division. If my shooter dies, I’ll be under the lights all night and be offered days with pay, pending the investigation’s
outcome. If he lives, I’ll only be at ADD half the night, till OPS and Homicide and the ASAs and the street deputy and finally our commander all are satisfied that what we did passes all the best second-guess tests modern man can devise. Then I can type reports till my fingers go numb.

The OPS investigator separates me from Jason and asks me what I heard, saw, and what I did. He writes it down, asks to hear it again and follows his notes while I repeat my answer, then confirms: “Shooters One and Two on your side of the Toyota were both firing?”

“Yeah. The Tec-9s. Both were firing at Lopez. I shot Shooter One; he went down. I shot Shooter Two as he sprayed us. Fez’s car caught him.”

Ten feet away, Jason picks at the glass in his cheek and tells the flashing lights, “Motherfuckers blew up my car.”

The OPS investigator focuses on Jason, then the 9-millimeter magazines by the bodies, and asks me, “Both shooters had reloaded and had commenced firing?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure?”

Frown. “Compared to what?”

He stares, but for some reason doesn’t press it. “And you have no explanation for the firepower present or any precondition for its use?”

“Like I told you, no way they light up the Toyota if they know we’re cops. But they knew something, expected some kind of car-bomb, big move, and they knew it was that exact car. Maybe not the people in it, but the Toyota for sure.”

“Who else knew about the Toyota?”

“Don’t know.” I glance at Jason who can’t hear us. “Probably on loan from Vice.”

“Who else knew the details of the mission? Day, time, location?”

“Don’t know. Came straight from the commander and at the last minute.”

“Last minute?”

“We heard it was a go thirty minutes before we rallied. Like it could’ve been part of an Operation Hammer or something.”

Buff steps between me and the investigator. Using one arm and both eyes, Buff hugs me hard. “Good job, Bobby. Did everything you could.”
Buff doesn’t bitch about the gunfight. He turns to Jason still picking at the glass in his face. “Good job, Jason, damn good. Now go to the hospital.”