Drug Lord- Part I

by Patrick Logan

  Mike tried to chastise the man but couldn’t speak: his mouth filled with blood and he spat a thick wad onto the mat at his feet. He could see flecks of white in it — teeth.

  “You start running your mouth and we’re both dead,” he finally managed.

  To his dismay, Dalton didn’t reply; the fat bastard just blubbered and whimpered some more.

  Mike turned his head to the window and realized that even though they’d been in the car for close to ten minutes, they were still in Tremont. In fact, it seemed as if they were going in circles.

  “Hey,” he shouted at the driver. “Where are you taking us?”

  When she didn’t answer, Mike rattled the metal cage that separated the front seats from the rear with his knees.

  “Hey! I asked you something! Where are you taking us?”

  The woman still didn’t answer.

  What the fuck is going on?

  His radar, which had been on high alert ever since the debacle with Leroy Walker, now chimed incessantly.

  Something’s not right here… none of this is right…

  Just as Pontiac was going to shout once more, the driver slammed on the brakes and he was launched forward. His swollen face pressed between the cage like mozzarella through chicken wire.

  “Fuck!” he said, blood now running from his nose and mouth. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “What’s happening, Mike?” Dalton asked from his right.

  The woman suddenly turned around and looked Pontiac directly in the eyes. Then she pushed something through the cage, which landed on the seat between him and Dalton.

  “Ken Smith sends his regards,” was all she said before stepping out of the car. Then she pulled Dalton’s door open a couple of inches and left it like that before turning and starting to run.

  Ken Smith sends his regards? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

  Mike’s eyes fell on one of the objects that the driver had pushed through the cage.

  It was a set of handcuffs keys.

  He still had no clue what was happening but knew that he didn’t have much time. Pontiac managed to shift his body so that he could grab the keys with his hand. It was difficult to unlock the first cuff without being able to see, but eventually, he managed. The second was easier.

  Mike would have left Dalton to rot. Since the beginning, the fat fuck had been a hindrance. But the woman from IA had opened Dalton’s door and not his; climbing over top of the big man would have been next to impossible.

  “Turn the fuck around,” he hissed.

  Dalton, still whimpering, shifted his large hips. Just as Mike inserted the key into his right cuff the rear window shattered.

  Both men immediately ducked. Another shot followed the first, this one embedded itself in the back of the seat in front of them.

  “Shit!” Mike screamed. He tried to make his body as flat as possible, but when a barrage of gunfire erupted just outside the car, he knew that there was no chance to avoid it all.

  A bullet pierced his right shoulder and a second hit him somewhere in the back. Pain blossomed from each of the points of impact, but Mike somehow managed to flatten himself even further.

  In total, Mike counted at least fifteen shots before there was a break in the action, but there could have easily been twice that number.

  Wheezing heavily and grinding his molars against the pain, Mike managed to lift his head.

  And that’s when he saw his partner: Pete Dalton had been shot at least seven times. The man’s thick upper torso was riddled with holes, but the fatal wound was most likely the one that had hit him in the side of the neck.

  “Fuck,” Mike cursed as he tried to shove away from the man.

  Only his efforts were futile: he couldn’t move his legs.

  The bullet that had struck him in the back had severed his spinal cord.

  Tears began to run down Mike’s cheeks, tears that became a sob when he heard the door being pulled wide.

  Even though he couldn’t feel someone grab his legs, he conceded that that was what had happened. Pain shot up his arms as he was flipped onto his back.

  “You,” he managed to gasp.

  Even though his assailant was wearing a bandanna covering the lower half of his face, Mike thought he recognized the man. And even if he hadn’t, when the bandanna was pulled down to reveal a gold incisor, there was no confusion.

  “Yeah, me,” Chris said as he stared down at Mike. But then, when he scanned the back of the car, the smile slid off his face. “Where’s the kid?”

  When Mike didn’t answer, Chris pressed a thumb against the bullet hole in his shoulder. Mike cried out, and the man repeated his query.

  “Where the fuck is the kid?”

  “The kid?” Mike hissed. “What kid?”

  Another figure, this one much bigger than Chris, appeared.

  “Chris, finish it… we need to get outta here,” BT said, glancing over his shoulder.

  As Mike helplessly watched on, Chris reached into his pants and pulled out another gun, this one wrapped in a towel. Then he grabbed Mike’s left hand and forced the gun into it. Mike had so little strength left that after Chris turned the pistol toward the front seats, he had to squeeze the trigger for him.

  Three shots, three bullet holes in the fabric, and Chris tossed the gun to the ground.

  “That nigga Leroy not here?” BT asked.

  Through tunnelling vision, Mike saw Chris shake his head.

  “Well, we can’t wait no more. We gotta jet.”

  Chris looked down at Mike’s body one last time and then offered him his patented smirk.

  “You thought—”

  He stopped speaking when the sound of a siren pierced the air. The expression on his face as he glanced at BT was one of sheer horror.

  “Put your gun down and hands up!” a voice bellowed over a loudspeaker.

  “We were set up,” Chris growled. “Those motherfuckers set us up!”

  BT turned, pistol in hand, and once again the afternoon erupted into a war zone.

  This time, Mike couldn’t count all the shots; there were just too many of them. When Chris’s limp body collapsed on top of him, his eyes wide, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, Mike was grateful that he no longer had any feeling in his lower half.

  As his world faded into nothingness, it was Officer Michael Pontiac’s turn to smile one final time.

  Chapter 65

  “You sure this is the place?” Sergeant Yasiv asked as he stared across at the brick building.

  Screech looked down at the sheet of paper in his hands.

  “Yeah, this is the place,” he confirmed. “See the tires over there? It used to be a tire place, apparently. Doesn’t look like much now, though.”

  That was an understatement; it looked like an abandoned warehouse. And, so far as Screech could tell, it was identical to every other building on the block.

  Yasiv nodded and then checked to see that his gun was loaded. Then he glanced over at Screech and suggested that he do the same.

  Screech wasn’t comfortable with guns; he’d never fired one in his entire life. When he first started working with Drake, the man had given him one and provided a brief primer on how to use it. Yasiv had gone over it all again before they’d left the shop, but now, weighing it in his hand, it felt incredibly foreign to him.

  That’s because you’re a behind the scenes guy.

  Screech cleared his throat and checked that there was a round in the chamber.

  Were; you were a behind the scenes guy. It’s time to man up, put on your big boy pants and get your hands dirty.

  Yasiv nodded at him and turned to the back seat.

  “Leroy, you stay here,” he instructed. Then he pointed at the dash. “If you hear anything, if anything goes wrong, pick up the receiver and press this button. When someone answers, tell them that there’s been a 187 on a cop, and then give the address. Got it?”

  Leroy nodded, but apparently he lacked the
enthusiasm and confidence that Yasiv required.

  “Say it back to me.”

  “Press the button and tell the person that there’s been a 187 on a cop and then give the address.”

  “Good,” Yasiv said. “We’re only here for recon, to see if there’s anything to the connection that you guys found. Not gonna be longer than ten, twenty minutes.”

  Leroy nodded again, but there was something about the kid’s demeanor that Screech found unnerving. Sure, his face was bruised and battered, but he thought it was more than that.

  He was just a kid… a kid who’d lost his brother and had been through hell at the hands of some street thugs and two corrupt cops.

  “It’ll be okay,” Screech assured him. “We’ll get the guys who killed your brother, kid.”

  Yasiv opened the door and stepped out.

  “Let’s go, Screech. I want to get back to the station and interview Pontiac and Dalton before anyone else gets to them. Let’s get this over with.”

  Screech followed the man outside and then hurried across the sidewalk. The front of the building was boarded up, and it didn’t look as if the plywood that sealed the entrance had been removed for some time.

  Screech’s first thought was that Yasiv was going to knock or even tear this down, but the man shook his head and then pointed down the side of the building with two fingers.

  He stayed close to the wall and followed Yasiv to the end. He tried to keep the small 9mm handgun out in front of him like the sergeant had shown him, but it just seemed so damn heavy.

  It felt like a cinder block.

  Yasiv peeked around the corner, and then pulled back quickly.

  “It’s clear,” he whispered over his shoulder.

  Without waiting for a reply, Yasiv stepped out into the open.

  Screech took a deep breath and followed.

  The bricks were in worse shape on the back of the building; they were crumbling so badly in some spots that he could literally see inside the dark building. They made it to the other side without incident and Screech started to think that this was going to be a bust, that the links they’d found were just a coincidence, or that someone had simply messed up the addresses.

  But instead of disappointment, Screech felt relief.

  He was better suited behind a computer screen, not out in the field like an emaciated Rambo.

  Yasiv leaned around the corner, but this time when he pulled back, he didn’t say ‘all clear’.

  This time, the sergeant said, “One man, strapped,” and Screech’s heart skipped a beat.

  Chapter 66

  Drake pressed play on the archaic TV and VCR combo and waited for the static to clear. The first thing that appeared was an image of Dr. Mark Kruk’s face. And then he backed away, taking a seat in a chair that Drake recognized. The doctor sat there silently, almost unmoving, for a good 2 to 3 minutes before there was a knock on the door.

  Then a smile appeared on Dr. Kruk’s face and he stood and made his way to the door.

  Dr. Mark Kruk shook hands with the man who entered. The patient’s face was out of the initial frame, but after exchanging pleasantries, Dr. Kruk gestured at the chairs and they both sat.

  Drake’s breath caught in his throat. He’d never met the man when he was alive, but he recognized him from the scene in the drug house. The man had been lying on his stomach, his hands and feet bound, a butterfly drawn in blood on his back.

  It was chilling watching Thomas Alexander Smith, one of Ken Smith’s two sons, speaking openly to the man who would later take his life.

  “Is that him?” Hanna asked quietly, appearing at his side.

  Drake just nodded as he continued to stare at the screen.

  If Thomas had any premonitions regarding his eventual demise, it didn’t show in his face. The man’s eyes were wide but clear.

  “I’m sure of it now, Doc. I wasn’t sure before, but now I’m absolutely positive,” he began without any preamble.

  It was clear that this was a continuation of a previous discussion, of another session, and Drake made a mental note to grab the preceding tape before they left the garage.

  In the video, Dr. Kruk crossed his legs and looked down at a notepad on his lap.

  “Sometimes when we have issues with a family member, especially when it comes to one of our parents, we project our feelings onto them. Sometimes, the evidence of wrong doing that seems so compelling, isn’t really as strong as we think. For highly charged emotional matters, we often fall prey to extreme confirmation bias.”

  Thomas Smith nodded.

  “I’m aware of confirmation bias, Doc. But that’s not… that’s not the case here. I heard him speaking to his right-hand man, to Raul.”

  Just the mention of the imp’s name caused Drake to breathe more rapidly.

  You’re going down with him, you creepy bastard. Raul, you’re going down with Ken Smith.

  “Go on,” Dr. Mark Kruk encouraged.

  “I saw them… I saw them talking about a shipment coming in from Colombia. They were saying how this was going to be the largest shipment to date, and how this would put them over the edge, that they would now run the largest cartel in New York City. They said something about how they were going to undercut everyone else, sell a better product at a cheaper price. ‘We’re going to knock off the existing guys’, were my dad’s exact words. I don’t know who they were referring to, but it was clear that they were going to kill him.”

  Judging by the expression on his face, Thomas considered this a haunting revelation. Dr. Kruk, however, remained unfazed.

  “You really think that your father is capable of murder?”

  Thomas’s answer was immediate.

  “Oh, I know he is, Doc. I know, because he has admitted to killing before. When I was younger, he spoke about the time he spent in Colombia… something about helping some US government agency or group doing a survey there. I’m pretty sure that’s where he met Raul, too. He said that there was this militant group who had kidnapped a bunch of locals, forced them into making heroin in the jungle. He said he had to ‘knock them off’ — he used the same words.” Thomas paused to take a deep, shuddering breath. “Why is he doing this, Doc? Why would he get messed up in this sort of thing? I mean, I don’t know how much my dad is worth, but it’s gotta be up there, eight, maybe nine figures. Why would he do this?”

  “Power,” Dr. Kruk blurted.

  Drake heard the word in stereo: from the TV and from Dr. Kruk, who was standing not 15 feet away, still rummaging through one of the boxes.

  He leaned forward and pressed the pause button.

  “What the fuck you doing over there, Kruk?”

  The doctor looked over at him, a smile on his face — a nearly identical smile to the one that was frozen on the video.

  “There’s something else you need, Drake. Just keep watching, you’ll see.”

  Drake frowned and pressed play.

  “Yeah, power… I guess. I think that’s what it’s all about with him. What it’s always been about. But this… this is taking it too far.”

  Dr. Mark Kruk appeared to think this over for a moment.

  “And how do you feel about this, exactly? How does this pursuit of power make you feel?”

  Drake knew little about how these sessions were supposed to go, but there was something clearly off with this discussion.

  The man had just admitted to overhearing his father plan a murder, yet Dr. Kruk was only focused on the idea of ‘power’.

  “It’s not for me. I mean, I’m not naive; I know that it’s his money that enables myself, Clarissa, and Thomas Jr. to live the life we do. But I don’t need it… I don’t need any of it. To be honest, I think I would be a happier man today if he just spent more time with me as a kid, instead of just trying to maximize revenue… and power.”

  Dr. Kruk scribbled something before replying.

  “Do you think that perhaps your lack of motivation for power — a clear difference between you and y
our father, and your brother Wesley as per our previous discussions, has put in rife between your relationship? Perhaps this is why you believe that your father is capable of these horrible deeds, of the unimaginable. I will stress again that often times a strong confirmation bias is at play when our emotions are fraught. For instance, how can you be so certain that your father and his partner weren’t just discussing a business proposition and your mind filled in the blanks?”