Start Shooting (5 page)

“I’m thirteen, for chrissake. I’m supposed to know library books make me a murder suspect? I’m still too young to buy cigarettes.”

Buff looks away—thirty-two years on the job, balls like cantaloupes—then back, a move that says we’re good. “But still, you should’ve—”

“
Should’ve what?
The Homicide dicks don’t ask me, why would I say something? I’m
thirteen;
they’re Irish, lynch-mob mad, hunting someone who murdered one of their teenage girls.”

Jewboy’s giant arm loops my shoulder. Buff smoothes arctic white hair, piercing blue eyes leveled on mine. Buff has three children of his own, one with muscular dystrophy, and works a second job six days a week to pay her medical bills. “Shoulda said about the books.”

“Books.”
Jewboy stabs his rolled-up
Herald
into his heart and the body armor covering it. “Always got me, too. What’s your brother say?”

“Ruben told Tracy Moens to fuck off six months back when the Duprees filed the lawsuit. I heard she braced him an hour ago at Area 4, wanted his reaction to ‘MONSTER’; had a cameraman and that ex-cop/investigator from Texas with her acting like he’s some kind of avenging angel.”

My partner, Jason Cowin, rests one meaty forearm on his automatic, turning to movement in the containers while he speaks. “Ruben Vargas ain’t someone I’d accuse
in person
of anything this ugly. Even IAD would’ve called first.”

Buff frowns. Then spits to his side. “IAD called you yet?”

“Woke up this morning to: ‘Hello, Officer Vargas, you have an appointment with the Internal Affairs Division Monday morning at 0800.’ ”

Jewboy’s hand mauls the
Herald
. “Nope. Still don’t see it. Three days before depositions and the newspaper has to call Bobby a child molester?”

“Stop saying that, okay?”

“Makes no sense, you’re not that Kennedy guy.”

Buff squints, not following Jewboy’s logic. Nor am I.

Jewboy shakes his head at stupid. “Kennedy’s cousin? Michael Skakel? The neighbor; he’s fifteen jacking off in the tree.” Jewboy uses his free hand to show us how.

Jason turns back from the containers, laughing. “Can you imagine your
alibi
is you’re in a tree with your dick out? Fuck the
Herald
’s ex-cop from Texas; we get us Mark Fuhrman; he busted Skakel thirty years after the murder when no one else could,
or would.
” Jason adds gangsta. “ ’Cause Skakel a
playah
, he a
Kennedy.
”

Jewboy blinks twice, then grins big. “I got it. We’ll chip in, hire Fuhrman to Rodney King the
Herald
 … and their goons.” He nods at Buff to agree, problem solved.

Buff slowly rubs his temples. “Fuhrman worked O.J., not Rodney King.”

“Fuckin’ Kennedys,” says Jason. “Bunch of no-drivin’ Chappaquiddick motherfuckers.” Jason sticks his chest out, throws me and Jewboy a Latin Kings sign.
“Black and gold, never fold.”

I don’t laugh. “Coleen Brennan was as nice as any person knows how to be and two shitheads took turns murdering her. Nothing,
not a goddamn thing
about that’s funny.”

Jason and Buff lean back from my tone. Jason says, “Don’t go off on us, Bobby, gotta be the police … like in thirty minutes.” Three Crown Vics arrive in tandem followed by a red, beat-to-death Toyota. The cars park facing the container stacks and the river beyond. The car engines die. This is the rest of our team.

For today’s first adventure we have ten instead of eight; Jewboy is back from vacation plus two new kids whose first day with us is today, chicks from uniform we heard about three days ago. Rumor has it, the mayor and his Olympians are prepping a version of LAPD’s Operation Hammer, when Chief Gates marshaled a thousand anti-gang cops into South Central and made 1,500 arrests in one weekend.

Two girls get out of the second Crown Vic; the larger one is Hispanic and butched up a bit beyond what I’d recommend for making friends today. I haven’t met her, but her name is Officer Lopez. The other one is Officer Hahn, a five-foot-six blonde who I’ve heard hasn’t said boo since she arrived at 12 the day she was reassigned. She closes her door, leans the back pockets of her jeans against the front fender, and thumbs at her nails. Officer Hahn has bruises on her face that have been there awhile and color on her knuckles that matches—gotta be deep South Side; probably a cop father or brother or both. The T-shirt under her vest covers half her bicep and none of a taut, veined forearm.

Jason stares, reading for the threat all cops feel with forced partnerships, then asks the butched-up Officer Lopez: “What’s your name, dear?”

Officer Lopez drops her chin. “It ain’t
dear
.”

“Oh.” Jason smiles, but without his normal mirth. “Let’s start over. Do you ah, fuck boys or girls?
Ma’am?
”

Lopez’s brown skin reddens. From the fender, the five-foot-six
Officer Hahn says, “We fuck bun-boys. In weightlifter shirts and MTV pants.”

Jason looks at his shirt and pants.

Pedigree or not, Officer Hahn doesn’t want to start a fistfight with Jason Cowin. Throw on Jason first and your skirt won’t matter till you get to the hospital. I chin at her bruises, hoping to ease her back a bit. “Fighting with the milkman?”

Her eyes cut to mine, steady, silent.

I can’t help but smile; she has a bit of presence she probably earned; might even live through the whole day. “You don’t say much; been on the job long?”

“Nineteen.”

Nineteen means Officer Hahn would’ve gone through the academy the same year that ghetto legend Patti Black and I did. “Which class? A, B …?”

“With Tom Duncan and Sister Rose.”

“Julietta Rose? Father Dave’s little sister?”

Officer Hahn nods.

My stomach sinks. “How Julietta doing? Haven’t seen her. She went FBI right out of the academy.”

FBI
hangs like a bomb. Eight sets of eyes bore in on Hahn.

I watch Lopez’s reaction, then back to Officer Hahn. “Where were you ladies before 12?”

Hahn makes a G with her left hand.

Six groans, one silence (our sergeant), and me:
“You’re FBI?”

“Was, went with Julietta. Then with the DEA in ’97.”

“Knew it.” Jason glares at Hahn. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Working.”

“Not with us, you ain’t.” Jason cuts to Lopez. “We get a new commander—a lawyer in the middle of a gang war. Then we get ‘MONSTER’ in the
Herald
. Then we get you and Hahn.” Jason points at Lopez’s face. “No chance you two walked away from cush DEA jobs to become gang cops. And you ain’t here to save the Olympics. That leaves Dupree.”

I look at Buff. He shrugs, but makes a point of looking at Jewboy’s
Herald
, Buff’s way of saying
watch your ass
. Jewboy steps up to Officer Hahn, literally twice her size. “Bobby Vargas is my best friend.” She
doesn’t respond. Jewboy crowds her till there’s no space between them. “Bobby didn’t do anything this paper says.”

Hahn raises her eyes to Jewboy’s; the rest of her stays on the fender. “If you’re considering putting those hands on me, fat ass, I recommend you don’t.”

Jason bumps Jewboy aside, taking his place. “Fuck with my friends, sistah, and the G won’t save you from
this
fat ass, I kid you fucking not.”

Buff forces his body between Jason and Officer Hahn. “Enough.” With his back to Jason, Buff points all ten of us to his Crown Vic’s faded hood. On it, he spreads a pencil diagram, then taps a seriously hot intersection with one finger. “We’re doing the Latin Kings, Ashland and Twenty-first, the corner they took from La Raza last week.”

Three dead, all La Raza. The second month of an escalating turf/dope war between twenty thousand Latin Kings and a thousand La Raza. The mayor and his Olympic financiers want the gang war shut down
now
, by any means necessary. Other than the selection of our new commander, our bosses are obliging. Buff points across a neighborhood where a shiny white, multimillion-dollar Olympic facility will obliterate a square block of ethnic rubble and the problems that go with it.

“None of these Latin Kings from north of Union Park know us, but be careful. They’re wide-eye three-sixty all the time.”

We all nod, the adrenaline coming.

“Two teams, five cars, Jewboy and I are the third car on each buy. We split the new officers—Lopez with Vargas, Hahn with Cowin.”

“Fuck that.” Jason spits on the gravel. “I ain’t riding with no FBI plant. Not to a Cub game, and for damn sure, not into a Latin Kings’ gunfight.”

Buff stops. “You’re the sergeant now? Maybe you’re the commander?”

“Shit, Buff, even if Hahn ain’t a plant, she’s a goddamn rookie policing a ghetto gun—”

“I wanna be Crystal. Fucking. Clear.” Buff’s eyes are ice. “We are having no gunfight.”

Jason spits again. “ ’Cause shooting back is bad pub for the Olympics?”

Buff stares Jason silent, then continues. “Vargas and Lopez go first, Lopez on the window. They pull up in the red beater, Lopez cops for
ten or twenty.” Buff hands her a wad of crumpled bills that he’s probably xeroxed for the float.
Float
is when you intend to let the department’s money go and don’t immediately make the arrest/recovery. The G has high-tech budget to mark money. We use xerox copies.

Buff focuses on Lopez. “You’re from the burbs; when the rock’s in your hand—say ‘Hell-o dreamland.’ Everybody got that?” Buff waits for everyone to say so, then continues. “We do
not
bust the corner on this buy. An hour later when the Kings know the watch is changing, Hahn takes Vargas’s place. She and Lopez will roll up in the beater, Hahn on the window. Hahn cops for twenty.” Buff hands Hahn her money for the second buy. “When you have the dope in hand, you say, ‘Wait, we ain’t right.’ Then we light ’em up from four sides; max arrest numbers.”

Jason says, “
Excuse me?
We’re doin’ this twice? On the same corner, the same day? With two rookies?”

“Want to call the commander, tell her that her plan sucks?”

“
She
wrote this?”

Buff nods. Jason rolls his eyes. Buff finishes with: “We do this textbook, no deviations. Officers Lopez and Hahn are wired—”

“Oops.” Jewboy steps back.

Hahn smiles an inch. Before Jason can go ballistic, Buff says, “Their wires aren’t live.”

I smile at Hahn—girl’s got balls, gotta give her that. Or a death wish. I ask her, “You, ah, done this before? Walked in first?”

She nods.

“How’d you do?”

Hahn lifts her shirt, exposing a bullet scar an inch left of her lung. She has a second gun and the wire taped to her skin.

“Where?”

“Miami.” Hahn pulls her Glock, half racks the slide, then holsters it. Buff turns to me. “Can I continue?”

“Sure, sorry.” I wink at Hahn, an “ex” federal agent who offered those sins to us when she didn’t have to. She checks her second gun, then lowers her shirt. Normally I do better with the girls. Could be she’s thinking about going in first, backed by a bunch of misogynist strangers who don’t trust their new commander or see the Olympics as a good reason to die.

Buff points two fingers at Hahn and Lopez. “Your wires are to be live
before
the buy, dialed into our radios. The narcotics guys kinda forget this. And although they catch shit, they don’t blow cases or spend the day with IAD for saying something on tape they wish they hadn’t.”

Buff’s cell phone dances on the hood of his car.

“Anderson.” He listens, then straightens—blinks at me and nods, turning away. “Ten-four, Anderson out.” He flips the phone shut. “The buys are off for today. Gimme some numbers instead, but not on Ashland.
Tomorrow
we pop the Latin Kings.”

Jason chins at Buff’s phone for an explanation.

“Menstrual cramps, news cycle, who knows.” Buff tells him: “Take Lopez in her car; she’s your partner for the rest of today. Roll Ashland to Western, and shut the fuck up about her and Hahn being rookies. They aren’t.” Buff nods me toward the red beater. “Hahn takes the Toyota back to the lot. Put Hahn in your car, and don’t get her killed.”

Jason grabs Jewboy’s shoulder. “Fuck this, Jewboy, we get us six frosties and some cheerleaders at the Cub game, let these idiots work with ghosts.”

Buff shakes his head at a Cubs exit that won’t happen, but not at “ghosts.”

My copy of the
Herald
slides into Officer Hahn’s blue jeans as I turn left onto Ashland Avenue. She glances at the two-column header that has Coleen Brennan’s name in it. Hahn and I are in my Crown Vic about to make a pass on the Latin Kings’ corner we’ll hit tomorrow.

Hahn picks up the paper. “Why do they call Tracy Moens the Pink Panther?”

“Red hair, major body, street PhD—Brenda Starr if you read the comics.”

“That’d be a good-looking woman.”

“If she catches up with me and you’re there, be careful. Ms. Moens has teeth and isn’t shy about using them.”

Ashland Avenue begins to populate as we pass St. Pius V at Nineteenth. Hahn eyes the bangers but asks about the
Herald
. “Worried?”

I cut to her. Stare before answering. “Insulted.”

Her eyes drop to the paper I’m sure she’s already read. “Twenty-nine years, long time.”

“Rape a child to death and help the state execute a retarded guy. Might not want to let two policemen walk around your city after they did that.”

“You’re guilty?”

“Define ‘guilty.’ ”

Officer Hahn shifts ever so slightly into her door, adding distance and reaction time, then raises her shirt, showing me that the wire she was wearing is now in her locker, waiting for tomorrow’s raid. Like I’m stupid enough to tell her anything under any circumstances.

“What I am is angry. And what it is, is none of your business. Okay?”

She looks out her window at tomorrow’s corner. “Mak-ing con-ver-sa-tion. Mind if I drive tomorrow?”

“Not the commander’s plan. She wants her girls making the buys.”

Hahn braces one gym shoe into the dash. “Good to be queen.” Her Converse All Stars have yellow laces. She nods at the
Herald
’s headline. “Know much about Furukawa?”