Against the Law

by Against the Law (epub)

  “I don’t smoke,” Joe said, trying to be polite. He didn’t want to say that those things looked ridiculous to him and they stunk. Every time he saw someone hit one, he had an urge to slap it out of his mouth.

  “It ain’t smoke,” Reggie explained. “It’s flavored steam with nicotine in it. And now CBD. And soon THC. All legal. That CBD stuff? We sell it in chocolate, oil, body lotion. White folks buy it for their fucking dogs! Soon it will be in their kids’ milk. And when they legalize weed, like any minute now, we are poised to dominate that shit. That’s what I told Alonzo, let them have the dope, dude. Let somebody else get shot up or blown up over this raggedy ass strip of dirt.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Joe conceded. “Times change. There will probably be a Starbucks in that building soon. But addiction is addiction. There will always be dope.”

  “King Heroin. You sound like my brother.” Reggie lowered his voice in imitation of Alonzo: “Change the names but the game remains . . .” He shook his head. “Yeah, he’s old school like you. But now he’s in a coma.” He lapsed into silence as they turned a corner. They passed another bodega, a flat tire repair place, and a corner restaurant whose sign read Chinese-Burger-Chicken-Donuts. Reggie went on. “I say be more like your man, Gio. Now that’s a cat I’d like to just study for a minute.”

  “I’ll recommend you for an internship,” Joe said.

  “I worked for the man,” Juno piped in, taking his face from the camera.

  “Word?” Reggie regarded his skinny young seatmate with new interest.

  “Yeah.” He chose his words carefully, glancing at Joe up front. “I mean he’s cool and he pays right but, all due respect, he ain’t exactly some softy running a start-up, like riding a scooter around the conference room and shit. New suit and an MBA but you can’t hide those cold-as-fuck shark eyes. Give me the willies.”

  Reggie sighed. “Guess that’s why him and my bro are friends. Even stone killers get lonesome sometimes, need someone to talk to.”

  Juno cleared his throat, and when Reggie glanced over, he nodded his head toward the back of Joe’s head. Reggie hastily added: “Not that being a stone killer is automatically a bad thing.” But Joe’s mind was elsewhere.

  “You get what you need Juno?” he asked.

  “Yes sir.”

  He pulled out his phone. “Okay, then let’s get going. I need you, Cash, Liam, and Josh all together to explain what we’re going to do. I’ll call Yelena. And stop if you see a Salvation Army on the way. I need some clothes.”

  They met in the back room at Club Rendezvous. It was convenient, safe, and—crowded and loud as it was—a random assortment of criminals wandering in one at a time drew no special notice. They just walked by past Sunny, the enormous African bouncer who was on duty when Joe was off, and who got that name because of the wide, gold-capped grin he gave the world—and also past the discreet extra muscle Gio had added since the attacks, a silent white guy in a suit, with a gun under the table—then crossed the busy room full of patrons, around the stage where the dancers played, and down the rear hall toward the restrooms, the dressing rooms, and the manager’s office door. The manager, a pot-bellied, white-bearded dude they called Santa politely pointed them all to the couch and chairs, then got up from his desk and left, shutting the door behind him. Liam and Josh were next to each other on the couch, self-consciously keeping a few inches apart, which no one else noticed. Juno was at the end of the couch, arranging the street photos he’d printed on the coffee table. Cash sat backward on a kitchen chair, leaning it forward on two legs to see the pictures. Yelena curled in the armchair. Joe rolled the manager’s desk chair out and sat.

  “Thanks for getting here so quick,” Joe told them. “I don’t have to explain why.”

  “Take out these bastards before they get us,” Liam said.

  “That’s the goal, yeah,” Joe said. “But the first step is identifying them. So tonight we follow the dope, see where it takes us, and learn as much as we can.”

  “Recon,” Josh said, “like the army.”

  “Or like cops,” Cash added.

  “Funny you should mention that,” Joe said. “We’re going to need two cars. One I don’t care, as long as it’s clean enough not to get you pulled over. The other one, we need a Chevy Impala, like an unmarked cop car.”

  “Done,” Cash said, nodding.

  “And you two clean-cut, handsome young fellows,” Joe said to Josh and Liam, “try to look like cops look when they’re trying not to look like cops.”

  Liam laughed. “You’re just saying that because I’m Irish.”

  “Well white anyway,” Juno pointed out.

  “You mean I have to shave?” Josh asked. Since leaving the military he had made a point to grow out his hair and beard.

  Joe shrugged. “Well the mustache is good. Just trim it and tuck your hair up under a cap or something. Think Serpico.”

  Josh frowned. “You mean the sign?”

  “That’s Scorpio,” Cash told him. “Serpico is an old movie with Al Pacino playing a cop. Pretty good though.”

  “Don’t worry, Joe. We get it,” Liam told him.

  “Juno, you know what I need from you. The cars will be parked here and here.” He pointed to the spots on the photos, then stood and went to the manager’s desk. “And does this printer do color copies?”

  “Shitty ones,” Juno told him.

  “Good,” he said, pulling out a twenty-dollar bill. “Make me four shitty copies of this, both sides.”

  “And what about me?” Yelena asked, after listening to all this in silence.

  “You are going to be my guardian angel, perched right here.” He leaned over and tapped a photo. “But first I need your help with makeup and costume. And I need a clean syringe.”

  A couple hours later, Juno and Cash were sitting in the Chinese-Burger-Chicken-Donut place, with a selection of those items on the table between them.

  “The problem with this kind of place,” Juno was saying as he fiddled with his phone. “The donuts taste like chicken. The chicken tastes like an old burger. The burgers taste like stale donuts.”

  “And the Chinese food just tastes like shit,” Cash agreed. “It’s cause they use the same oil for everything.”

  “That’s what comes from trying to give people everything they want. You end up not wanting any of it.”

  Cash sat up, his head tilting slightly toward the window. “Check the Benz.”

  Juno turned casually, still holding his phone. Sure enough, a black Benz had stopped up the block, in front of the vacant lot that backed onto the White Angel cop spot. A kid slipped like a rat from a crack in the corrugated metal fence. He ran to the car and a hand came out, passing him a black plastic bag. He scurried back and disappeared. The car rolled.

  “Get it?” Cash asked.

  “Got it,” Juno said. The high-quality lens he’d used to replace the one on his phone’s camera had captured the car and its license. “Let’s dip.” They stood, leaving their plates untouched. “All this talk about food is making me hungry.”

  Meanwhile, Yelena was in Joe’s room, doing his makeup. First she skillfully used blush, powder, and pencil to do the opposite of what they were sold to do: make him look worse—paler and with dark circles under his eyes. She even used some of the stage makeup she’d bought to add a sore to the corner of his mouth.

  “Perfect,” she said, showing him in her hand mirror. “Now I won’t worry about the other girls kissing you.”

  He laughed, trying to get used to the odd feeling of it. “Now what other girl would do my makeup and then hit me when I asked her?”

  “Hit you?” Yelena gave him a searching look. “For real?”

  “Yeah, here . . .” He held out his arm and pointed to the crook of his elbow.

  “How hard?”

  “Hard enough to bruise.”

  She shrugged. “If you say so . . .” and gave him a walloping slap.

  “Good,” he said. “Again
. A bit harder.”

  She laughed and gave him a couple more.

  “Ow, good, that stung . . .” he said, wrapping a belt around his bicep as he watched the redness swell on his skin. “Though you could pretend to enjoy it less. Now hand me the needle.”

  At that she frowned, watching as Joe broke the seal on the fresh syringe (Cash had obtained it from a diabetic neighbor). He found a vein and expertly eased it in, then pulled back, drawing a little blood, then booting it back in. He pulled it out, then repeated the process a couple times.

  “You’re very good at that. Too good,” Yelena told him.

  “Some things you don’t forget,” he said with a grin, but she was no longer in the mood to laugh. In fact, he was pretty creeped out himself. He had butterflies in his stomach, an edgy, empty feeling that had nothing to do with missing lunch. A little blood remained around the punctures and he let it dry.

  22

  JUNO AND CASH WERE in a car Cash had provided, stolen but with legit plates, feasting on jerk chicken from a takeout place Juno knew. They were parked around the block from the cop spot, with a receiver on the dash. Liam and Josh were in a black Impala, likewise borrowed, parked over a block the other way. Yelena was on the roof of the warehouse, overlooking the dope operation, with a sniper’s rifle. It was dusk.

  “Clear here,” she said into the little mic attached to her earpiece.

  “All quiet,” Juno said. “Last time the re-up took a few hours, but they’ve been hopping since it started to get dark. Expect we’ll see them soon now.”

  Liam checked in too. “Couple of hookers gave us the stink eye,” he said. “So I guess we look like real cops. Otherwise quiet here too.” His stomach grumbled. “Quiet and hungry. Wish we had some of that chicken.”

  “I know you do,” Juno answered. “That’s where all the cops in the neighborhood go.”

  Forty minutes later, the black Benz pulled up at a traffic light down the street. Juno got on the line: “Showtime.”

  “Standing by,” Liam said as Josh started the engine.

  “I’m ready,” Yelena said, pressing her eye to the scope.

  Joe came shuffling into view. He was wearing clothes he’d bought at the Salvation Army, then had Cash drive over a few times: a polyester print shirt from the ’80s with missing buttons and a tear at the elbow, worn pants from an ancient suit, his oldest pair of Converse. He had a ball cap pulled down low, one of Gladys’s cigarettes behind his ear and dirty nails. He joined the line, standing behind a bent, bald man who looked seventy-five but might have been forty in dope years. The touts moved up and down, calling to the other passersby.

  “Yo White Angel here! On the money!”

  “Boy and girl! Boy and girl!”

  A dark-skinned guy in his late teens, with a sleeveless undershirt, baggy jeans, and a heavy gold chain was working the door. The bent man went inside and then came back out, shuffling quickly off the other way. The door guy looked Joe over.

  “You new around here?”

  Joe nodded, avoiding eye contact, and shuffled his feet. “I heard your stuff was on the money.”

  The guy looked him over suspiciously. “Got tracks?” he asked.

  Joe nodded again and, darting a glance up and down, rolled his left sleeve up then quickly down. The guy saw his marks, and also noted with distaste the blood-stained syringe poking out from his trouser pocket.

  “Okay, make it quick,” he said, tapping the door three times. “Cop and go.”

  “Thanks,” Joe muttered, stepping by him as the door unlocked and opened from within. Another even younger guy stood in the vestibule, wearing a Nets jersey and jeans cut so low you could see the red briefs encasing most of his ass.

  “What you need?”

  “Dope. A bundle.”

  “Where’s your money?”

  Joe held out his folded bills and flipped the corners quickly. Five twenties. With a nod, the dealer opened one of the apartment mailboxes set in the wall behind him and pulled out a small bundle of ten sealed baggies, bound with a rubber band. He handed them to Joe and took the money. Then, just as Joe was turning to leave, he put out a hand to hold him.

  “Hey, this money’s no good!”

  Joe grabbed the dealer’s hand and bent it behind his back until he howled, banging on the door. “Help! This dope fiend’s ripping us off.” As the door opened, Joe pushed him toward it while grabbing the waist of the dealer’s low-riding jeans. With a quick jerk he pulled them down around the ankles.

  “What the fuck?” the dealer yelped, and as the door guy came in, he shouted “His money’s fake,” stumbling over his pants and falling on the floor. The door guy reached over him and grabbed Joe’s wrist. Joe pulled out his syringe and jabbed it deep into the meat of the door guy’s arm.

  “Ah! Shit! My God!” the door guy yelled in horror as he realized what it was. Joe left it poking out and ran, sprinting down the hall toward the rear of the building.

  “Re-up’s there,” Juno said now, over the earpieces. “One guard by the back door and the runner.”

  Joe came tearing out the back door, surprising the guard, another teen, who was standing there, gun out, watching the other way, as the runner, a twelve-year-old kid, darted through weeds that were taller than him, toward the hole in the fence. Joe grabbed the guard’s gun by the barrel, twisting it away while he tripped the teenager and dumped him on the ground. Pointing the gun, he ran toward the runner, who stared at him in shock.

  “Out of the way,” he yelled.

  The kid promptly stepped aside, still watching in amazement as the guard and both of the door guys came out after Joe. As he ran, Joe popped the clip from the gun and then tossed the separate pieces into the deep weeds.

  “Get that junkie! Get him!”

  Joe felt them gaining as he reached the hole in the fence and slipped through, tearing the ass of his pants.

  At first, Donna had been thrilled to be invited on the stakeout. Detailed to the NYPD Major Case Unit as FBI liaison, she felt like she was on a field trip, or away at camp. After their preliminary peek into the heroin operation known as White Angel, they’d decided that the East New York location was the busiest, most-longstanding, and most likely to yield usable information, so they’d rigged up a realistically-crappy-looking delivery van with their high-tech equipment and parked it on the corner while the dope dealers grinded up the block. But the excitement wore off after the first six hours of total boredom, and when Fusco, who’d promised to bring food, surprised her and Parks with a load of inedible junk from the Chinese-Burger-Chicken-Donut place, which immediately stunk up the van, she began to wish she were back in her nice, clean, air-conditioned office.

  She supposed that was why, lulled into a stupor, she took a minute to recognize Joe. She was actually in the middle of a yawn, or trying to yawn without breathing in too deep, as yet another scuzzy junkie crept up to the tenement door where they sold the dope. But something about his profile caught her eye, and she looked closer. And there he was: Joe Brody, always popping up in her life at the worst moments, like fate. Her first thought was that he was using, strung out, and to her surprise she felt . . . compassion. A desire to help rushed up in her, to save him from himself. He was a veteran after all, and even as a criminal, he had done more to serve and protect his fellow citizens than most of the cops and Federal agents Donna knew. Not to mention saving her career as well. But there was more to it, she knew. She had feelings about Joe, though she wasn’t entirely sure what those feelings were; fear and distrust were as present as fascination or admiration, and moral horror mingled with physical attraction as she watched him on the screen. But then she took in his odd clothing; even his walk was different. Was he in costume or something? Was he a junkie or was he playing a junkie?

  “Hey try to zoom in on that guy. The white customer.”

  “Why?” Parks asked. “You know him?”

  “Maybe. He looks familiar.” In fact, Donna, knew very well she couldn’t say how s
he knew him, since he’d disposed of the body of terrorist Heather Kaan after Donna put a bullet in her. Fusco leaned in and took a look too.

  “Just another junkie. Probably seen his mug shot or something.” He finished a donut that smelled like a cheeseburger and wiped his hands on his pants. “He ain’t going to lead us to the kingpin. That’s for sure.”

  Donna couldn’t argue with that, so she sat tight and just watched as Joe went in the door to cop. Then something weird happened—they heard yelling and banging from inside. The outside man, the door guy, ran into the building, and a beat later, the lookouts came rushing over too.

  “Shit,” Donna said. “Something’s happening. We’ve got to move in.”

  “Move in on what with what?” Fusco asked. “This is just a low-key stakeout. It’s not like we’ve got a SWAT team standing by.”

  “We don’t even know what’s happening,” Parks added. “Or if it pertains to our case.”

  Donna nodded. She knew they were right—or rather they would have been right, if it were anybody but Joe. She had no idea what he was up to, but her complex feelings were suddenly a lot simpler: fury. He was up to something and she was pissed. Seconds passed by. “What’s behind this building?” she asked.

  Fusco shrugged. “A vacant lot full of dog shit, cat shit, and probably human shit too, if you’re lucky.”

  “I’m going to check it out,” she said as she made for the door. “Keep rolling!”

  But as soon as he had recognized Joe, right after Donna had, Fusco had surreptitiously kicked the cable out of its socket and disconnected the camera’s live feed from the recorder.