Street Justice

by Vito Zuppardo

  “Logan,” Bowie said in a whisper. “Wanted me to shake him up.”

  Mario pulled his hands away. In poor judgment, Bowie took a swing at Mario. He missed, Mario didn’t. Three solid hits, one to the face, the stomach, and the back of the head, sent Bowie down to the floor.

  “This one is for Zack,” he said and added a swift kick to the ribs.

  Mario called dispatch. Minutes later, cops cleared the floor of the ladies and arrested Bowie. Paramedics saw to the other guy, who hadn’t moved since Howard laid into him.

  Mario could have gone to Bee’s Computer Shop and quickly arrested Logan, but that would have been too easy on him. Howard stayed in the car. Mario took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts before entering.

  “Hi,” he told the woman at the front counter. A flash of his badge got him access to the back room where Logan was alone, bent over a computer.

  “I don’t want trouble.” Mario strolled in, giving computer boy false confidence. He jumped at the opportunity.

  “Give me my damn money.” His eyes lit like fire. “Give me Zack’s password and all will be fine.”

  “I’ll take you to Zack. He’ll return your money. Just don’t hurt him again.”

  “Yeah, man,” Logan said. “I just want my money, or next time it won’t be just a bump on his head.”

  With the car’s tinted windows, Logan didn’t see Howard in the back seat. It was too late once they pulled off.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Just a friend.” Mario continued the act. “Zack is waiting, he wants this over.”

  “Yeah,” Logan said, “We’ll call it a misunderstanding.”

  “Call it what you will.” Mario turned the car into Big Gabe’s Car Wash.

  “What the hell, you’re getting your car washed?” Logan was pulled from the car by both arms and carried to the house at the rear of the car wash.

  Big Gabe leaned against the fence and gave a nod of his head as he held the gate open. In the shotgun house, Logan sat at the kitchen table. Ten minutes earlier, he was an arrogant shit who’d pulled off some cybercrimes that netted him six figures quickly. No telling how much money he’d continue to take from defenseless people, if he hadn’t ripped off a cop.

  “Scared?” Mario asked. “Because you should be.”

  Mario roamed the floor like a preacher on a Sunday morning. He rattled on about legal justice for what Logan had done. Return of some money, a reasonable attorney, he’d walk. Still enough cash left to live on for the next ten years.

  Logan tried to speak. Mario held his hand up, cut him off, and continued walking almost in a circle. Howard stood in the corner with a grin. It made Logan more nervous than Mario’s unpredictable waltzing around.

  “Gangs prefer street justice over a court of law. Guilty, a gang would take you out, usually within twenty-four hours. In court, you might get off, short sentence, or get out early, because you’re so good in prison. Street justice wants an eye for an eye.”

  Mario sat across from Logan at the table. “Taking an old man’s money, then ordering an attack on him, makes my friend, Zack, nervous.”

  “He took all my money,” Logan shouted. “A hell of a lot more than I took from him.”

  “True.” Mario smiled, not the least interested. “You got physical. Zack Nelson will live in fear every time he walks to a barbershop or a drugstore. Sitting alone on a park bench, he’ll always ask—am I safe?”

  Logan wasn’t a small guy, but no match for two cops. He eyeballed the screen door a few times and was at the right angle to make a dash. One thing he knew for sure, he was twenty years younger and a hell of a lot faster on foot.

  Mario leaned against the stove, putting him and Howard farther away from the exit. Logan peeked at the unlocked screen door again. Mario picked up on it the first time. He gave Logan all the opportunity needed to make a run.

  Mario pounded the table. His fist rattled the loose legs. “I’ve had enough of talk. I think it’s time to kick some ass.”

  Before Mario got all the words out, Logan hit the screen door with both arms. The door hinges broke, and Logan was gone. Within seconds, he was thrown headfirst back into the house. He ran into a six-foot, eight-inch tree trunk—Big Gabe. “Where the hell are you going?”

  Mario picked Logan up from the floor and landed a punch straight into his stomach. This time Big Gabe stepped aside and Logan hit the ground face down, gasping for breath. “It’s not quite street justice, but it’ll have to do.”

  Howard cuffed Logan. “You’re under arrest, asshole.”

  Chapter 25

  An attorney for Logan Taylor stood in front of a judge and said the money transfers were a misunderstanding between Logan and his clients. The real crime was the beating Logan took during the arrest. He demanded justice and for his client to be released.

  Howard watched from the back of the courtroom. The DA’s office had its top attorney on the case. The entire hearing didn’t last fifteen minutes.

  Mario raised his head from a pile of paperwork scattered across his desk, “Was Pamela on her game?”

  “Absolutely,” Howard said, taking a seat.

  The district attorney’s office was represented by Pamela Jones, an up-and-coming attorney. With a few years under her belt, graduating with top honors from Loyola University, she quickly became Mario’s favorite prosecuting attorney. Not because he was an alumnus of Loyola, so he tried to make people believe.

  Pamela had interviewed the two police officers, Mario and Howard, separately and came away with the same understanding. If Logan hadn’t resisted arrest and run, he wouldn’t have run smack into a tree. Any cuts and bruises were from his own stupidity, an unsuccessful escape.

  A judge of thirty years on the bench agreed the issues were wire fraud, computer hacking, and outright taking advantage of people for monetary gain. Adding the assault on Zack Nelson would put Logan behind bars for a long time.

  Logan said he would give up all the money to save his ass. The judge didn’t fall for his generosity. Howard chuckled. “Still could get five to eight years.”

  Mario looked back at the folder in front of him. “Creep deserves every minute.”

  Mario thumbed through Olivia’s final report in Leon and Barry’s file. They both had a bullet to the forehead. His question was how did two people get shot, six feet apart? Were there two shooters?

  In Leon’s folder were crime scene photos. There was also a picture of a metal tray at the morgue showing the possessions found in his pockets. A cell phone, some change, three one-dollar bills, and a dirty handkerchief. The phone, a throwaway, had sixty minutes left, and the only calls made were to the same number, four times, since purchased two days ago.

  Mario checked with Olivia and found that the calls were traced to another disposable phone. Her crew found where the phone was purchased and looked at the video footage showing everyone in and out of the convenience store in the last three days.

  Olivia had Mario and Howard come down to her office to view the film. She’d reviewed the tape twice and recognized no one who bought one of the six phones over the last three days. One person the face recognition program picked up had a felony charge. Further checking showed the man had served his time for tax evasion and was released from prison a year earlier. He was flagged but not considered a suspect, due to the violent nature of the current crime they were investigating.

  Mario picked up lunch, and he and Howard headed to the police forensic building on Broad. Olivia ate a quarter of an Italian muffuletta and swore she had gained ten pounds hanging with these two detectives.

  “Do you guy’s eat—salads, once in a while?”

  Mario pointed out the carrots, onions, and olives on the sandwich.

  “Yeah!” Olivia shot back. “Olive salad, drenched in olive oil, salami, provolone, and who knows what else?”

  Mario grinned. “But, it’s good.”

  “Damn you, Mario,” she said and took the last bite of the sandwich.


  During lunch, her assistant had edited the film. A short tape was made of only the six people of interest. Olivia and the two detectives gathered over a computer screen while the assistant flipped through the screenshots. The third one was the man Olivia said was ruled out. Howard asked to zoom in on the fourth picture, the guy had a hat on—Howard noticed something. “I could swear that guy is Kory Barnes. Look at the nose, chin, lips.”

  “The mayor’s assistant?” Olivia asked. A nod of heads between Mario and Howard confirmed her question.

  Olivia gave a confused grin. “How would Leon know Kory? They come from two different parts of the world. One with political ambitions and the other is—”

  “Their world is connected,” Mario said. “Kory works for Wallace, and Leon is Wallace’s half-brother. My guess is if it’s him, he bought the phone for the mayor.”

  It took a while for Olivia to be brought up to speed on the case. With another piece to the puzzle confirmed, Leon had talked to whoever had the phone purchased from the convenience store. Number one suspect was Wallace; number two Kory. The question was why.

  Mario carried Leon’s folder with him and spread the contents on a desk. He had a question about the toothpick that had been found. Olivia pulled a stack of snapshots taken at the scene. Halfway through the pile, a photograph of Leon surfaced. A different angle showed a toothpick near his hair on the grass.

  “Son of a bitch, Olivia,” Mario shouted. A reaction he regretted, then he spoke at a whisper. “Did you think this might be important to tell me?”

  “Yes, detective, that’s why it’s on the third page of my report.” She pointed. “You read my report like you look through girly magazines.” Olivia hated when Mario flew off the handle. He was usually wrong, and this time was no different. She hurried to the coffee room; he followed.

  “And what does that mean?”

  She jumped in his face. “Means just like your girly magazines, you went straight to the pictures. Not once reading what supported the photos.”

  Howard laughed. “She’s got you there, brother. You always go to the centerfold first.”

  Mario flipped through two pages of small print. A number described each picture. On the third page, which Mario hadn’t gotten around to reading, the text described the toothpick. It was inconclusive. The wood was too small for a fingerprint to be lifted. Saliva in the hair failed to match anyone in the police database.

  Mario’s head lifted, his face beet red, embarrassed, he pointed at the last line on the description. It read that the depth of the spit embedded into Leon’s hair was forcefully driven.

  “That was taken from the coroner’s report,” Olivia said.

  Mario and Howard’s eyes locked; they both came to the same conclusion. Mario said it first. “This is personal, the killer knew Leon and had a vendetta.”

  Howard added, “To kill someone and then spit on the body—that’s the final ‘screw you.’”

  Mario turned his attitude down and apologized twice for jumping on Olivia. Said he’d make it up with dinner that night. She rolled her eyes.

  “You Italians. Everything is built around food.”

  Mario went into a stare, his eyes glazed. “Oh, my god!”

  The report stated the saliva failed to match anyone in the police database. Mario suggested that Olivia ask her friend at military intelligence for another favor.

  Chapter 26

  Glenn Macy first met Mario DeLuca at Loyola University. They were never friends in school, only had one journalism class mutually, and gave a casual nod when seated near each other at a lecture. After college, Mario went on to the police academy and worked his way through the ranks quickly. Glenn took the first job offered from the Times-Picayune newspaper as a reporter.

  Twenty years passed before their paths crossed again. Mario’s name bugged Glenn until he hunted down an old dusty graduation photo album and found Mario’s picture. It wasn’t until a year ago that circumstances brought them together. Mario kept Glenn out of a report that would have revealed he and Roxy Blum were lovers—a situation Glenn had been working up the courage to tell his wife of fifteen years. Roxy testified in a case that allowed Mario to close it and get national media attention for solving a twenty-year-old bank robbery.

  Since then, they’d stayed close, had lunches, and Mario took Olivia on a date to Roxy’s nightclub. He was a talented, gay man, lead singer in a transvestite group. Many people said he was much prettier as a woman than as a man.

  Mario knocked lightly on the front door of Roxy’s Esplanade Avenue home. At eight in the morning, Roxy would be asleep and Glenn probably getting ready for work. He was right. Glenn opened the door in a whisper and met Mario on the porch.

  He had been on the receiving end of many exclusives stories from Mario, and to date everyone proved 100 percent accurate. The exclusives gained his newspaper, the Big Easy Voice, publicity, and subscriptions had doubled over the last year. Big city media outlets published the same article days later—old news didn’t sell newspapers.

  A press conference at city hall in two hours would prove Mario’s tip. He gave Glenn another exclusive story that other news outlets would envy. This tip would set off an explosion like a bomb. Mario detailed the story and suggested Glenn have newspapers ready for distribution. Glenn’s eyes showed worriment, but he trusted his source and didn’t hesitate to agree.

  Mario had another stop before the press conference and would need every bit of an hour before heading to city hall. He arrived at Dumaine Street, then parked like every other time in a no parking zone in front of Riverside Inn. Howard and Zack sat at a table alone. His friends understood it was official police business. Mario and Howard had hashed the situation over so much, they questioned if they were overreacting. Bringing in a third opinion from a veteran detective like Zack might help.

  Over coffee, they confidentially explained the mayor’s assistance in buying a prepaid cell phone, the toothpick near Leon’s hair, and Roberto Ferrari wanting Mario dead.

  The seventy-two-year-old retired detective still had a sharp mind. Sometimes, former cops can look at a case differently and bring positive results. They could tell when Zack was on his A game. His eyes went side to side, like wheels in his brain moved them while combing through the facts. He questioned Kory Barnes’s background, and Howard assured him that Kory was squeaky clean, not even a speeding ticket.

  Zack focused on Jay, the only living homeless guy of the three. Pushing hard might get him talking. He knew where the photos had been kept and why Leon held on to them. Jay could have jumped the gun, tried to blackmail Leon or the mayor. To hit the mayor up for the money, he had to have Leon out the way. Barry might have been in the way and caught a bullet too. When Zack got on a roll, the words spewed.

  As for Roberto, Zack’s feelings aligned with the detectives. If a mob boss wants someone dead, they’d better get a running start and not stop until they got to some undeveloped country. Even then, it would only be a matter of time before they were found and killed.

  Howard laid out a plan he’d thought about ever since he returned from New Jersey. With Michael dead, there were no family members to retaliate if Roberto was killed. Next in line was Bobby G. Most would think that if something happened to Roberto, it would be Bobby’s doing to become the new boss of bosses. Either way, Mario would be long forgotten and the person hired for the hit would take the money and run and not finish the job.

  This wag-the-dog approach had been used by many. Some said wars were begun to get the heat off the heads of governments. Too much lousy publicity about an official, and the government invaded some country. Then the next morning, the news was full of war history and why the United States had to take down some poor, defenseless country. If Roberto were dead, Bobby would have too much on his plate within his own organization to worry about Mario.

  Zack knocked off the cobwebs from one of his old stories and talked about his run-in with a criminal. A well-connected guy wanted Zack, a detective
close to charging him with murder, out of his life and would do whatever it took. One failed attempt prompted Zack not to wait for the second try. On Wednesday nights, Zack knew that the guy ate alone at his favorite restaurant. Zack followed him to a dimly lit parking lot. When the guy went into the restaurant, Zack parked next to his car and waited. When the thug returned, Zack stood between the two vehicles and surprised him. It didn’t take much to provoke the guy to the point he reached for his gun. Zack already had a stun gun in his hand and zapped him to the ground. With gloves, Zack slipped on a thin, plastic poncho and pulled the thug’s gun from his coat. The man, barely awake, saw his own pistol pointed at his chin; then Zack discharged the weapon. With the body limp, his finger was placed on the trigger.

  The thug was still alive when Zack walked to a dumpster and placed the gloves and the poncho in a box and set it on fire. Checking the criminal, he was hardly breathing, but alive. Zack waited until he took his last breath, then called 911, identified himself as Detective Zack Nelson, and told them to send police and a firetruck.

  Mario and Howard were stunned that the man they’d known for a few years had dropped an incredible story on them.

  “Were you charged with anything?” Mario asked.

  “The evidence backed my story. A second attempt to kill me resulted in the man pulling his gun recklessly and he ‘accidentally’ shot himself. I did my part and called nine one one, once I was sure he was dead.”

  Zack showed no remorse, even thirty years later. There was nothing the police could do to protect him. It would have ended with one of them dead. Zack chose to live.

  “Street justice was around long before I was a cop,” Zack said. “Now and then, it’s justified.”

  A waiter placed a fresh carafe of coffee on the table. They were all ready for another round of caffeine.

  The table went silent for a minute. Zack looked exhausted from reliving his past. Mario’s thoughts bounced around his head like a metallic ball in a pinball machine.