Mirror Image

by Ice-T

  “Okay, then what?”

  “Then the nigga’s gonna get clipped. I’ll have a car tailing you, and when he gets out, then … ya know.”

  Mick was silent on the other end of the line. Casey heard cars going past on the street. He knew Mick was past being pissed, and was probably thinking about his soon-to-be-devastated sister. No matter what happened, Casey knew Mick was destined to lose big-time today—it was just a matter of what it was gonna be: his freedom or his sister’s happiness. The silence on the other end told him Mick was coming to grips with that.

  Mick’s voice was low when he finally replied. “My sister’s gonna be fucked up over this, man. This dumb muthafucka’s only been married to her for less than six months.”

  “Mick, he’s sellin’ you out to save his ass, he’s a sucka. Believe me, it’s just a matter of time before he does your sister low, too. If you pass on this meet, they gonna pressure him to pull together another one or they’ll have him plant some shit on you. The bottom line is they got an in to you, and they gonna use that to take you down.” Casey knew Mick was working overtime to figure something out, but the clock was ticking, and there was only one way this could go down.

  “Do they have kids, Mick?”

  “Nah, I mean she does, but … not with him.”

  “That’s good. Look, brotha, the ball’s in your court. I’m sorry to be the guy who’s bringin’ this to you, but I wasn’t about to let you get put in the cross. If you got a different fix or just wanna handle this yo’self, then that’s cool. But the time to make that decision is right now.”

  Champa walked in the room, and Casey held up his free hand so he knew not to speak.

  There was a long silence again before Mick replied. “You know what, dawg, I got this. It’s my mess, I’ma clean it up my own self.”

  “Okay, I feel ya. Do you need anything from me?”

  “Yeah, I need your man here to take two of my guys and keep ’em busy for a couple hours.”

  “Okay, done.”

  The next thing Casey heard was Mick issuing orders to his men. “A’ight, you two niggas are rollin’ with Shin right now. Champa’s dumb ass got himself in some lightweight drama, and he needs some backup. Whatever he says goes, I don’t wanna hear from you until he says he done with you.”

  In the background, Casey could hear talking, but couldn’t make out what was happening. He heard a couple of doors slamming and a car pulling away.

  Shin got on the phone and said, “Hey, Crush … him and JJ just bounced.”

  “Okay, take those two guys to Urban Victory and have them wait in the lobby and don’t tell ’em shit. After you do that, run down to the deli next to the hotel and wait for Al. While you’re there, eat a slow lunch and tag up the detectives we don’t got already.”

  “Bet.”

  Casey hung up and looked at Champ and said, “What’s the latest?”

  “The cops’ll be at the Harlem Central Hotel at eleven A.M. They already got the room bugged and wired.”

  “Okay, I’ma send Al down there now. There’s a deli next to the hotel he can lay up in and hijack these guys’ phones.”

  “What about Mick?”

  “He said he was gonna handle it.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “No idea, but he had two of his guys jump in Shin’s ride. He’s taking them to the office now.” Casey walked into the main room and told Al that he was gonna be stationed at the deli next to the hotel and to tag up as many cops as possible.

  For the next two hours, Champa and Casey monitored the correspondence and conversations of the detectives on the sting operation. In that time, Al P., Shin, and Champa hijacked all the cops’ phones except for two, bringing their total to twelve detectives out of the twenty-three they’d targeted.

  Casey could tell by the conversation that the pigs were hyped about landing a big fish. In going through the e-mails, he also found out, to his relief, that they’d been unsuccessful in placing a bug in Mick’s place. Listening to the conversations of the detectives gave Casey a lot of insight to the protocols and politics of the department. It was obvious there were two groups in the OCCB: those that were old-school buddies of Fordham’s, and those that weren’t. Fordham’s inner circle got preferential work hours and seemed to get all the glory as well.

  When noon rolled around and Mick didn’t show, the cops kept their cool and waited. When it hit twelve thirty, one of the detectives called JJ’s phone and got his voice mail. At 2 P.M., after repeated calls to JJ’s phone and no sign of Mick showing up, the disappointed cops called it a day.

  After they’d left, Casey rang Shin and told him to go back to Urban Victory and pick up the two dudes and drop them at Mick’s house, then come to Jacob’s with Al P. The cops surmised that somehow Mick had found out about the sting, probably because JJ had spilled the beans. They knew he had a habit and wasn’t particularly dependable. They really couldn’t do anything, as they didn’t have any hard evidence, so they just put two officers on JJ’s house and waited for him to get home.

  For the rest of the day, the computers pulled information from the twelve detectives’ cells and organized it. Based on that intel, it seemed like Casey was not on the OCCB radar. The Garcia brothers, Sean E Sean, and Big Rich were also not talked about.

  The one person’s name that did come up was Alek Petrosian. They suspected him to be involved in the restaurant shooting and had taken him in for questioning. Petrosian had lawyered up and denied that he was involved in any way. He said that his men had taken his car to get it washed and must have stopped to eat when everything went down. There were no witnesses that were willing to look at a lineup, and as far as physical evidence, all they had were dead bodies and bullet shells that had no prints on them. It didn’t seem like the cops had really pressed Petrosian, which seemed strange. They could have kept him overnight, given that his car was there, but they didn’t. There was even an e-mail from Fordham to the arresting detective saying that based on what he’d read, he didn’t think Petrosian was at the scene and to cut him loose. Casey had too much info he needed to get through to ponder that, and just filed it in the back of his head.

  * * *

  Around 5 P.M., Casey was burnt out from looking at the bright computer screens. He took one last look at the monitors from a distance, watching the red and green dots of the detectives they were bugging. He cross-checked it with the map program on his phone and found it matched perfectly. The next stage of the plan was to get the rest of the detectives and, most important, Fordham’s phone bugged, that way they’d have a complete picture of everything going down at the OCCB.

  Telling Jacob to alert him if anything interesting popped up, Casey rose and started for the door. On the way, he got a text from Shin that he and Al were around the corner. He told Champa and Jacob he was goin’ out and asked Champa to step outside with him. Downstairs, they waited in Casey’s Escalade for Shin’s G-Wagen to show up.

  “So, what’s your best guess on Mick right now, Crush?”

  Casey’d been pondering that same question on and off all day, and couldn’t be 100 percent sure about any answer. He tilted his seat back a bit. “Well, he had the opportunity for me to handle it right in front of him … but he declined. That makes me think he was hesitant to do what he knew had to be done.”

  “You think he gave JJ a second chance?”

  “It’s possible, but I doubt it. I’m sure he did the math over and over and came out with the same answer every time. It’s tough, you know, the nigga’s his brother-in-law and all, but Mick’s always been about the business first, you know that.”

  “True dat, I’m just hopin’ JJ didn’t get wise and get the jump on him.”

  “We’ll know soon enough. I’m not gonna reach out to him till tomorrow, when shit has calmed down some. Here’s Shin.”

  Casey flashed his lights and saw both him and Al P. get out of the G-Wagen and approach Casey’s car window. He rolled the window down as they wal
ked up. “Good work today, you got a total of twelve. I want you to work with Jacob and hunt the other ten down tonight and tomorrow. Once we get all of ’em, we’ll target Fordham, and when we have him, we’ll be good to go.”

  The guys nodded. Casey told Al to go upstairs and get to work on that with Jacob, then instructed Shin to get in the back of his ride. Shin hopped in and the guys twisted around to talk with him.

  “Did you see Mick or JJ’s ride at his crib?”

  “Nah, nothing. You haven’t heard from him?”

  “Nope … how’d he look when you left him?” Champa asked.

  “Like he’d been sucker-punched … afterwards, his boys that I took to the office was asking me twenty questions.”

  “And you said?”

  “Shit … I tol’ ’em if there was something worth knowing, then they’d know it and to hang tight till then.”

  “Mick’ll be all right, he’s a double OG—the man’s been through his fair share of heavy shit. I’ve seen the nigga take two nine-millimeter slugs in the chest and kept swingin’, it was like they was givin’ him fuckin’ vitamins.”

  “No shit?” Shin asked.

  “Yeah, so don’t worry about him. He will handle this shit, and when he’s ready, he’ll pop up and you won’t even know anything went down. Okay, I’m out, I got a meeting with Petrosian tomorrow. Shin, I need you to monitor the airwaves and gather as much info as possible and report back to Champa and me on what you find out. I want you and Al P. on the street ASAP, taggin’ the rest of the people we didn’t get today.”

  Casey brought his Escalade to life while the guys got out and started walking to the building. He called Champa, who walked back to Casey’s open window. “I know you been preoccupied, but when am I gonna hear the next report on that car job?”

  “Tomorrow night, all the pieces are coming together nicely.”

  “Okay, that’s good, we need to keep all these plates spinnin’. I’m out, brotha.”

  Casey looked in his rearview and pulled into traffic, taking twenty minutes to get home. When he got there, Mick was sitting in front of his building in his not-so-inconspicuous black-on-black Mercedes Benz S500. Casey was glad to see the man, but a bit pissed that he’d parked right in front of his crib. If anyone was following him, they’d make the connection and bring heat down on him. He pulled up to Mick and rolled his passenger window down.

  “Hey, follow me into the garage and park next to me—it’s too public out here.”

  Casey pressed a button on his visor, and the parking gate lifted and Mick followed him into the underground garage. When Mick got out, he gave Casey a fist bump and said, “Don’t worry, I was careful not to be followed.”

  “Yeah, okay, let’s keep it light till we get to my crib.”

  The men rode the elevator up. When it reached the lobby, the doors opened on a very frail, old white woman struggling with three bags of groceries. Both men instinctively stepped to her to help her with her bags.

  “Oh, aren’t you sweet! Thank you, boys.”

  She pressed the button for the twelfth floor. When the doors opened, the guys followed her to her door, took the groceries to her kitchen, and put the bags on the counter. As they were leaving, she stopped them and pulled out an impressive roll of money. Peeling off two dollars, she pressed a dollar bill into Casey’s and Mick’s palms. “I always believe in rewarding good service.”

  The guys thanked her politely, walked out into the hall, and pressed the up key to head to Casey’s crib. Once the elevator doors had closed, Mick cracked, “If she only knew she’d just let a couple rattlesnakes into her apartment, she’da been guardin’ that money a helluva lot more closely.”

  Casey grunted in agreement as the elevator doors opened; he liked that his neighbors were totally clueless about his past and his present. He put the key in his door, and the men went in and sat down in the living room. Casey tossed his keys on the side table and offered Mick a drink.

  “Yeah, give me a double shot of whatever you got.”

  Casey walked to the bar and cracked open a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, the smoky smell of the scotch filling his nose as he poured two glasses. Taking the bottle back with him, he handed one to Mick, sat down, and waited for him to speak.

  Mick drained his glass in two swallows, and Casey gave him another shot. Mick leaned back into the couch and looked at the ceiling. “I owe you one, Case.”

  “Come on, man, homeys don’t keep score like that.”

  “Just the same, I’d be on my way to servin’ life or dead in a shoot-out if you hadn’t tugged my coat today.”

  Casey dropped a shoulder. “That’s what this alliance is all about: makin’ paper and watchin’ each other’s back.”

  Mick sat silent for a minute, took another tug at his drink, then finished it off. Casey grabbed the bottle and gave him another, and then Mick recounted what happened after he left Shin.

  “When I got back in the car, JJ was jittery as hell. He starts in on me right away, asking a lotta questions. I gave him a line about how Champa had fucked up some deal and there were some people hot with him and he needed a bunch of niggas nearby to make sure he was covered if shit went off. JJ seemed like he bought it, but the cat was still acting strange. I had him drive me around the corner to the bank and played everything out like the meeting was still goin’ down. After that I told him drive to the Harlem Central Hotel. We talked about the deal on the way, and I asked him straight up was he sure this was the right maneuver? Did he really think these guys were cool, ’cause it wasn’t too late to back out.”

  Mick stared at Casey for a long moment. “And the nigga looked me dead in my eyes and told me he knew these guys was cool. ’Sides, how would I look if I put my brother-in-law in a cross?” Mick was wringing his hands and shaking his head. “I couldn’t believe that muthafacka had the balls to go there. Shit, it took everything I had not to pull my gat and put a cap in his fuckin’ face right then and there. The only reason I had him around was ’cause my sister had begged me to give him a job and make sure the chump-ass didn’t go back to usin’.”

  Mick took another slug of Johnnie Walker Black. “I had him pull a detour and take me to 157th and Malcolm X. JJ asked me where we were goin’, and I said I wanted to pick up an AK ’cause I liked the idea of takin’ the dope rather than payin’ for it. I told him that both of us were gonna go in blazin’ and jack that shit, old-school-gangsta style. Of course, he got real jumpy at that. He was beggin’ and pleadin’ with me not to shoot up the place. ‘Please, Mick, that’s not a good look, come on, man, let’s just handle it businesslike, come on, big homey.’ I kept winding that muthafucka up for a few, but finally I let him convince me to do the deal as planned. I told him he needed to chill out, then I baited the fool and asked if he wanted a little something for his nerves. He tried to play it off like he was clean and shit, but quickly agreed it was probably a good idea. I told him to drive by one of my dealers to score some China White. We pulled up to the spot, and dig this—I had his ass wait in the car and told him to ‘keep a lookout for the cops’—what a fuckin’ joke. I went in and scored a half gram of pure heroin.”

  Casey knew if a junkie shot pure heroin, he’d OD in less than five minutes.

  “When I came back to the car, the dumbass already had his rig out, ready to go. I told him to chill out and had him drive around the corner and park in an alley next to a slum building.” Mick described how JJ put the H in a dirty spoon with some water and heated it with a lighter so the shit melted cleanly. Then he got out a Q-tip, took the cotton off and put it in the spoon, then carefully stuck his needle into the cotton and pulled the plunger back.

  Mick leaned forward and held his head in his hands and didn’t look at Casey as he continued. “By now, the muthafucka was shakin’ all over, he was jonesin’ for that hit so bad. He tied some rubber around his arm and tried to make a vein pop, but that didn’t work, so he tried the back of his hand, but had no luck. He tried the othe
r arm and struck out there, too. This shit’s goin’ on for twenty minutes. During all this, I see his phone light up, and from the caller ID, I knew it was my sister. JJ just ignored that shit and went about his treasure hunt. He finally found a vein in his foot and stuck it in. He pulled back the plunger so a little trickle of blood invaded the mixture, and then slowly pushed that shit into his vein.

  “I gotta be honest, man—at the last minute, I was tempted to smack it out of the nigga’s hand and beat the shit out of him and ask him how he could do this to my sister. But I knew all I was doing by givin’ him this hot shot was speeding up time. It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ with that muthafucka, but ‘when’ he’d OD. Within thirty seconds of banging the H, he nodded out, then his face turned gray and his lips turned blue, and five minutes later he was stone dead. I made sure I left no prints on anything, dumped his ass in the alley, and took off.”

  Both men sat there in silence for a minute. Casey looked at Mick as he stared off into space. “That’s some heavy shit, Mick. Does your sister know yet?”

  “Not yet, I figure the cops or someone will find him soon. She called me a few hours ago, asking me where he was at, and I told her he’d come by earlier, then split. I said I was pissed at him for not handlin’ his business right and when I saw him again, we was gonna have words. She knows he’s had problems and suspected that he might be using again, so this’ll be a shock, but not a surprise. It’s just so fucked up—the only reason I took him in was ’cause she asked me to, guess she figured her big brother could help keep his ass outta trouble.”

  Mick let out a long exhale; Casey knew his homey was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Once his sister found out, she’d be destroyed, and while Mick would be there for her, he’d also have to live every day of the rest of his life knowing that he’d been part of the cause of the pain she was feeling.

  “Like I said, it’s a fucked-up situation, man, and you did what you had to do. When he put you in the cross like that, he chose himself over you and his wife. Dope makes people do fucked-up shit, this ain’t news to us, man.”