Mirror Image

by Ice-T

  On the ride home, a troubling thought crossed Casey’s mind: What if Hans’s Asian connection decided he didn’t want the cars or didn’t come up with the right scratch, then what? Casey would be stuck with twelve mostly one-of-a-kind high-end sports cars. Getting rid of ’em would be a bitch ’cause they were hot, expensive, and problematic to transport. The only thing Casey could think of was to make Hans’s connection pay a 50 percent deposit now and demand the rest when they handed over the cars.

  Casey broke it down to Champa and Shin, both of whom agreed with his logic. He then called Hans to set up the arrangement. Hans picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been waiting for Casey’s call.

  “Hallo, Casey, how are you, man?”

  “I’m good, Hans. I’m callin’ to see if you and your lady would like to have dinner tonight or this weekend with Carla and myself.”

  “Absolutely, let me talk to Sabrina, she is right here.” Casey heard muffled voices; then Hans jumped back on the phone. “Okay, I guess we have a school thing tonight, but Saturday is good, what time and where?”

  “Let’s say Casa de Honduras at eight P.M.?”

  “That is perfect—Sabrina and I love that place and I haven’t seen the Garcias in a while.”

  Casey hung up the phone and dialed Carla as well as the Garcia brothers, to let them know the plan. At some point during the evening, Casey would find a private moment and broach the subject with Hans. Getting five million in a few days was gonna be a task, so a lot was riding on Hans and the strength of his connection.

  The guys pulled up to Kimchi’s and got out of Shin’s G-Wagen. Casey recapped what he needed from Champa, and he agreed to have the intel to him by Monday at the latest. Casey knew he would be hustlin’ all weekend to make that happen.

  * * *

  The next evening, Carla met Casey at his place in a short white miniskirt and a sexy, off-the-shoulder top, ready to go to dinner. Flawless as always.

  On their way to the restaurant, Casey told Carla he’d need her to distract Hans’s wife and go to the ladies’ room so Hans and he could have a private conversation. She knew not to ask questions and just smiled and said, “Okay, baby.”

  They pulled up to the restaurant, which was packed, and squeezed through the crowd to the front, where Big E was directing traffic.

  “Fam! What’s up, baby?”

  “What up, E? You got a table, we got Hans and his wife meeting us.”

  E leaned in close to Casey and asked if he wanted to use the private room in the back or was the main room cool. Casey told him the private room would definitely be preferred. Hans and his wife showed up right after, and E led them all back through the bustle of the crowded restaurant.

  The private room was off to one side of the kitchen, and was strictly for VIPs, which was whoever Mama Garcia felt was deserving. It was small, about ten by ten, and had a single, round table in the middle. On the walls were pictures of the Garcia family through the years, lit by an ornate chandelier.

  Before sitting down, Carla took a look at the photos and started laughing. “Baby, is this you?” Carla pointed to a picture of Big E and Mama Garcia, both looking much thinner, Hen Gee in a Kango, an older man, and Casey with a mustache.

  Casey inspected the picture with everyone else and laughed. “That’s old school, fo sho. We took that picture at Mr. and Mrs. Garcia’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party. That’s Mr. Garcia—rest in peace—standing next to me.”

  After everyone had their look at the photo, they all sat down. A waiter walked in with an ice bucket and opened a bottle of Perrier-Jouët Champagne, 1999 vintage. Hans held up the glass and looked at Casey and Carla. “If I may, a toast: To Crush Casey, a man who knows too many of my secrets to be anything but my friend!”

  The whole table laughed because it was both funny and true. The rest of the evening was spent telling old stories and having the ladies getting acquainted. Hans’s wife was sophisticated, educated, and obviously very dedicated and in love with her husband.

  After the main course, Casey gave Carla’s leg a squeeze and she asked Sabrina if she wanted to join her in the ladies’ room. The girls got up, and once they were gone, Casey got down to business with Hans.

  “I need to talk to you about this job—we’re fine-tunin’ everything and it’s all lookin’ good, there’s just one last thing that needs handlin’,” Casey said.

  “A deposit?”

  “Exactly, can you get five mil from your guy before we pull this heist? The last thing I want is to have a buyer that knows I’m in a spot and then tries to get clever.”

  “I spoke to him a couple days ago and told him that this situation may arise. I vouched for you, and he said he would send the money via courier to me.”

  “And—?

  “And nothing has shown up and he is not returning my calls.”

  “Okay, so you think he’s gonna go left, I need to know by— Hold up.”

  Casey heard the girls coming back; he also saw Big E and waved him in. “Hey, brotha, do me a favor and keep the ladies occupied in the kitchen for a few minutes?”

  “No sweat.” E walked out and told the ladies that he had desserts he needed them to puruse. The women happily followed in his huge wake.

  Hans leaned in and replied in a low voice, “There could be a lot of reasons—last time I spoke, he said he had some problems with the government over there, but it did not sound serious. The bottom line is that I know he really wants those cars.”

  “Are you sayin’ I should roll the dice?”

  “I cannot tell you that for sure—I know this guy and think he is straight up, but as we both know, shit happens.” Hans pulled out his BlackBerry. “Tell you what, let me text him right now and tell him I need to know when the money will be here and if it is not here by—what?—Tuesday P.M., then it is a no-go?”

  “That’s too late for me, Hans. I need to call in the crew and set this job up so that it goes smooth. Also, if I call off the job at the last minute, I’ma look like an amateur.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. So then, what is the deadline, Monday P.M.?”

  “Well, if it’s Monday night, it might as well be Tuesday nine A.M., but no later than that.”

  Hans started to text as the girls came in with Hen and Big E. “I hope y’all still got your appetites, as these ladies are ’bout to load you up,” Hen said.

  “Bring it, man, I’m ready. So where’s Mom at?” asked Casey.

  “Her arthritis was kickin’ up, so she went home a couple hours ago. She’ll be fine, she just needs to take the meds, thas all.”

  A waiter walked in with a huge tray of desserts, and Casey, Hans, and the ladies dived in. Hans covertly slid his phone over for Casey to approve the message; Casey read it and nodded.

  * * *

  On the ride home, Carla was curled up on her seat, a big smile on her face as she watched Casey navigate the late-evening traffic.

  “What you smiling ’bout, baby?” he asked.

  “I was thinking about my conversation I had with Sabrina when we were in the ladies’ room.”

  “She seems real cool, and a good fit for Hans.”

  “Yeah, she’s whip-smart. In the bathroom, she told me that she knew the first moment they met that he was the guy for her. She thought that her dad might trip, so she let it be known that he was gonna be her future husband, no matter what.”

  “Wow, that’s big. You know her pops is crazy rich, right?”

  “She didn’t speak on that directly, but I could tell. I’ve seen enough sophisticated ladies at the hotel to know she came from money.” Carla paused and said, “She also said she could tell that you and I were a perfect fit.” Carla giggled when she said that.

  Casey smiled and gazed back at her. “Like I said, a smart lady.”

  * * *

  Casey didn’t hear from Hans on Sunday, which was a bad sign. On Monday morning, he reached out to get a status report, kicking it around his crib until it was time to
leave for his meeting with Lomax, which he wasn’t looking forward to. He knew the PO was gonna give him shit ’cause Petrosian was still breathing. Someone like Lomax was clueless as to how the streets worked. He thought that just because he dealt with cons all day that he had an understanding of how they operated. But unless you’re in it, you don’t know shit. It reminded Casey of sports broadcasters that spoke with such authority about a game they’d never played.

  Eleven thirty A.M. rolled around, and there was still no word from Hans. Annoyed, he went downstairs to catch a cab to the parole office.

  On the street, Casey eyed a late-model sedan idling at the curb and guessed it was a gypsy cab. He put his two fingers in his mouth and whistled to get the driver’s attention. He hated taking the regular cabs because their backseats felt like a cell—also, he didn’t care for the constantly blaring TVs they all seemed to have nowadays. The car pulled up and Casey got in the back and was instantly hit by the overpowering smell of air freshener.

  He gave the driver the address and sat back for what he knew would be a twenty-minute drive. Casey could tell the guy was Haitian from the flag hanging off his rearview mirror. In his mid-fifties, he also had a slight accent and was missing a few teeth from his grille. As they drove, Casey noticed the driver kept looking at him in the rearview.

  “What is it, dude, why you eyeballin’ me?”

  The cabbie gave him a semi toothless grin and replied, “Because I’m rememberin’ Crush Casey from back in de day when I worked at Casa de Honduras.”

  Casey looked harder at the dude for a second, but still couldn’t place the face. “You worked for the Garcia family doin’ what?”

  “I was a waiter dere for a few years, till Mama Garcia fired me because she said I was eatin’ too much.”

  Casey laughed at this, knowing the guy was for real. Mama Garcia was temperamental at best with her employees. On more than one occasion, Hen had run after an employee to get ’em to come back because she’d fired ’em on a whim. “I was actually there Saturday night. So what’s your name and how long you been driving?”

  “Webster, I’ve been driving for about eight years.”

  “Wow, that’s a minute—I’m impressed you still breathing. I know a lotta you guys run into serious drama in this game.”

  “Mon, you ain’t kiddin’! Get this—I got robbed at the end of my shift two weeks ago by some bitch who was pregnant! She pulled out a piece and held it to the back of my neck and told my ass to ‘pay or get sprayed’!”

  “Damn, how much she take you for?”

  “Eighty bucks, and she stole the car!”

  “That’s not a lot of scratch. How much you make a day on average?”

  “Shit, on a good day, maybe a hundred bucks—on a bad day, twenty-five. I work twelve hours a day, six days a week. It’s fucked up, but I don’ have a lotta options.”

  “So how many times you been robbed?”

  “Since I started doing this, five times. I thought about installing a bulletproof partition, but I can’t afford the three hundred fifty dollars. The time before that pregnant bitch was different, though. This dude pulled a knife on me and I slammed on the brakes, he fell off balance and I jump out the car and radioed in an emergency. The sonofabitch gets out to run and I grab a brick and hit him in da head. He falls to the ground and then we start to tussle. Two minutes later, seven other drivers show up with bats and block off the street so the cops can’t get in. Maaaahn, dat shit was crazy.”

  “That’s no joke, did he survive?”

  “Yah, he was fucked up fo sho, but he lived. The cops busted his ass for assault and for the weed he was carrying. We all got took in, but got off ’cause they couldn’t build a case with no witness willing to come forward.”

  The Lincoln Town Car pulled up to Casey’s destination and he got out. The driver said the fare was twenty-two bones and Casey laced him with a hundred-dollar bill. The Haitian cheered up at that and thanked him profusely. Casey took his card and said he’d call him when he needed another ride. He knew if he ever did call, the dude would be there quick fast and no questions would be asked.

  Casey walked into the main lobby of the Bronx County Hall of Justice, went through the metal detector, then took the elevator to the fourth floor. The ten-story building housed a bunch of Criminal Court rooms, the Department of Corrections and Probation, the District Attorney, and Lomax.

  Casey walked into the lobby of the probation office and sat and waited with all the other cons. An hour later, he was called to see Lomax. When he finally saw him, the PO was sitting on his bloated ass behind his desk, unwrapping his regular corned beef sandwich. Lomax was always eating something. He ran through the standard interview, then told Casey to close the door.

  “So, how you enjoying your life of leisure, Mr. Casey?”

  Casey knew that was a question that was not meant to be answered, and just sat there with no emotion on his face.

  “One of your fellow criminals, Alek Petrosian, got into a bit of a dustup at a local café last week. A restaurant and his Rolls got shot up, along with quite a few innocent bystanders, but he claimed he wasn’t at the scene. Now, what do you think about that?” Lomax tossed an eight-by-ten of the crime scene in front of Casey.

  “I would say he’s lucky that the impatient person who ordered the hit enlisted incompetent people.”

  Lomax glared at Casey as he swallowed a bite of his sandwich. “Well, if his ‘luck’ doesn’t run out ASAP, some other people are gonna regret it.”

  Lomax pulled out two more eight-by-tens; this time it was a photo of two white guys. “He’s suspected of killing these two cops, as well as these characters late last night.”

  Casey looked at the second photo and recognized the shot-up bodies of Ernesto and Rodrigo from Big Rich’s crew. Shit! Casey’s mind raced. He was pretty certain Rich didn’t know about this yet; otherwise, he would have gotten a call. He also wasn’t sure any of these murders could even be pinned on Petrosian. Rodrigo and Ernesto were always steppin’ on someone’s toes, and as far as the dead cops—well, who gave a shit? Casey’s hunch was this was Lomax’s way of trying to stir the pot and manipulate the situation.

  “So he’s suspected of all this, but you don’t know for sure. Sounds like a lot of guessin’ goin’ on. Who knows, maybe this cat’s only local for a minute and is gonna be on the move soon.”

  Lomax’s flushed face grew even redder as he stuffed it with the sandwich. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow. “He’s responsible for fifty percent of the heroin coming into this city—he’s not plannin’ on leaving town! He needs to be stopped, and if he’s not, there will be repercussions, I guarantee you that—”

  In the middle of his tirade, he really started sweating profusely, then clutched his chest and gasped for breath. Casey stood and watched the man struggle, at first thinking that he was choking, but then realizing he was probably having a heart attack.

  He opened the office door and called for help, and the tiny room quickly filled with officers. One of the officers shouted for someone to call 911, while Lomax flopped around like a fish out of water. Another slammed Casey against the wall and cuffed him and started screaming at him for an explanation. Casey kept cool and denied doing anything wrong, but it didn’t seem to be convincing the cops. One of them told Lomax that help was on the way and asked him if he had been attacked. Through his gasps, Lomax said no. Casey breathed a sigh of relief at that, but they still kept him gaffled up in metal bracelets.

  The paramedics rushed in and started tending to him. Lomax’s face was as pale as a sheet, his lips were dry, and he was still gasping for air. One of the paramedics, a short white woman with a tremendously big ass, screamed that Lomax was choking. She grabbed his seat cushion, tucked it under his head, and flipped him on his left side. A clear fluid ran out of his mouth. She turned to one of the officers and asked if he had epilepsy. The cop raised his hands as if to say he didn’t know as she flipped Lomax on his back. With the help of her
partner, she put him on a gurney and quickly wheeled him out. As they did, Casey could hear the cons celebrating and clapping in the lobby when he passed by.

  The remaining officer drilled Casey with a bunch of questions, but he just dummied up; he had nothing to say to them. One minute Lomax was interviewing him; the next minute he started convulsing. Reluctant but satisfied, the officer took off the cuffs, telling another one it was more likely Lomax was a victim of that shit he ate every day from that greasy spoon deli. He turned back to Casey and told him to beat it, which he gladly did.

  Casey went through the waiting rooms and didn’t wait for an elevator, just jogged the four flights of stairs down to the lobby. He hit the street and turned left, but immediately heard a quick horn blast and looked up.

  “You need a ride?” Petrosian was sitting in the back of his Benz with a smile on his face as one of his goons opened the door.

  Casey looked at him sideways, wondering what the fuck this guy’s game was. “What the fuck you doing here? Did you follow me?”

  Petrosian held up both hands. “Hey, man, this ain’t no drama. I’m just here to make your day. You told me yourself you’d be here, remember? I figured you were always game to talk business. If I’m wrong, I’ll bounce.”

  Casey didn’t like what he was seeing. First, all the Lomax drama, and now this muthafucka pops up, all smiles outta the blue. Petrosian must have known he wasn’t packin’ if he’d just walked out of the Bronx Parole Board office. It smelled like he was gonna be another casualty like his PO.

  “I want to talk to you about that job, but not on the street in front of Cop Central.” Casey wanted to wring his neck, but stayed cool. He’d rolled the dice, kickin’ it solo with Petrosian in the past, but those days were over. “So get out of the car and walk with me.”