The Basement

by Tom Clarke

  “Get your ass in the driver seat” I said to Keith, “Broom-Hilda pumped me full of JD, you’re driving.” Keith, still laughing, got in and we left the parking lot, headed straight to Starbucks and laughing all the way about the grand experiment revolving around the concept of gravity that we all know and love.

  After getting our so richly deserved large black coffees, Keith and I returned to our office to lock up the pills we had gotten from our friend Desie.

  The parking lot we pulled into was the main parking area for a very average looking, un-assuming single floor building located in an industrial park, surrounded by other very un-assuming looking industrial buildings. One of the buildings was occupied by a general contractor’s office, another by a business supply store and a few that were sitting empty.

  Unless you knew that it was there a person would never guess that this slice of high rent, lowest government bidder built, heaven was the home of the local state and federal drug enforcement task force. The location of our building was pretty good, all things considered.

  We were just minutes from the international airport and about 10 minutes from the local state trooper detachment headquarters building.

  Being that we tried to keep the same hours as our clientele we did not spend much time around our office when the other buildings tenants were working. There were no residential areas nearby so the only real evening and nighttime traffic were folks coming to and from the airport. This added in our quest to remain at the top of the tactical food chain when it came to knowing who was coming and going in our area.

  If you did not belong there after hours and you managed to get our attention, all it took was a phone call to the state trooper dispatch and a marked patrol unit would come over and find out why you were just hanging out around an industrial park when nothing there was open.

  On more than one occasion our quest to roust suspicious interlopers led to the contact of some very embarrassed kids just looking to explore their feelings for each other. The uniformed state troopers that would respond to our calls for assistance in such matters knew very well which building was ours. They also knew that we often were watching them from the other side of the mirrored front windows of that building as they proceeded with their contacts. It was this knowledge that often earned us the single finger salute from our uniformed brothers, done on the sly of course and usually from across the parking lot.

  The inside of the building was just about as far from similar as the un-assuming outside.

  Once you made your way through the front doors there was no mistaking the fact that you were in a law enforcement office. The main door which required a code, or to have someone buzz you in, opened into a reception area where the administrative secretary Becky had her desk. Becky was a woman in her early 50’s, who had been working as administrative support for most of her career, and would be the first one to tell you that she was just an over paid baby-sitter, and lord knows we needed one.

  The sergeant was in charge, but we all knew who really ran the office, and that was Becky….sergeant included.

  The rest of the reception area included a soda machine, couple of very comfortable couches, an American flag, and large placard of the state seal. Mixed in with all of this were the obligatory framed pictures of police officers engaged in various tasks and heroic poses.

  From there the offices of the various investigators were accessed, as well as the evidence processing room, weapons locker, kitchen, and bathroom complete with copies of High Times for some light morning reading. In the greater scheme of offices, it was not a bad place to hang your hat.

  As Keith put away the covert recording equipment I had been using that night, I started photographing and then field testing a sample from the pills we had purchased from Desie.

  The NIK field test kit, a small plastic container inside of which were three glass vials of liquid chemicals which would turn various colors when combined with certain types of drugs confirmed what I had already known. Desie had committed the felony crime of distribution of controlled substances, namely methylenedioxy-n-methylamphetamine, a very long and hard to pronounce word for the street drug known as MDMA or Ecstasy. This was frowned on by the state criminal justice system.

  “Well how did it test?” inquiring about the results of the NIK test Keith asked as he walked into the evidence processing room. “Brother, we have hooked ourselves into a nefarious master criminal” I replied. “Based on these results it is my duty as a police officer to tell you that your girlfriend Desie has committed a felony.”

  Keith just laughed and said, “I knew that bitch was no good!”

  The rest of the night at our office was spent booking the freshly purchased evidence in and then doing the preliminary paperwork including suspect face sheets, evidence forms and last, but not least, the nightly money vouchers for all the cash Keith and I had spent. The actual narrative of the report would be done the next day when we were not burning the midnight oil.

  As I was putting the finishing touches on my money voucher Keith came into my office with two cups of re-heated day-old coffee.

  Next to firefighters no one makes better coffee, especially re-heated coffee, than police officers.

  “Hey bro how are we going to play this if King does want to get down?” Keith asked as he took a drink from his cup.

  “Just like anything else” I replied. “If that knuckle dragger King is connected like we think he is then we may be able to get some real traction out of this case.”

  “You know I was talking with my friend Stevie over at the DEA the other day” Keith said as he took another sip, frowned, and set his cup down. “They are kinda interested in his dumb ass too.”

  “Well if we can get them on board then maybe we can spend some real money” I replied. “I know the boss loves it when he gets meat on the table and doesn’t have to pay for it. Listen why don’t you give Stevie a call tomorrow and tell him what we got cooking with Desie, let’s see about getting together and compare some notes.”

  “Sounds like one hell of a good idea” Keith replied. “You want to meet here or over at their office?”

  “Let’s meet here” I replied. “Their office is just a little to public, and they don’t have any beer in their fridge.” Keith just laughed and said that he would make it happen. With that we finished up and then called it a night.

  The next day started pretty much as they all do. I got up, put on a pot of coffee, and fed my dogs before they decided to take up arms against me and feed themselves.

  The coffee at home was the shining part of my day. Office coffee is usually bought in bulk and cheap. Home coffee is nothing that needs to be messed around with. If you’re going to do it, do it right and the best time to do it right is first thing in the morning. There is no reason whatsoever to start the day off on a bad foot by drinking bad coffee at your crib. It does nothing but put you in the fast-lane for a karmatic bitch slap of galactic proportions.

  After coffee and feeding time at the zoo was over I had breakfast, showered, and gathered myself for another fun filled day of pretending to be the very thing that I had spent so many years going after and putting in jail…..a drug dealer.

  I glanced over at a picture of myself taken many years prior, I was in uniform and standing next to a marked police car. Short hair, no beard, shined boots and some cool ass dark aviator style sunglasses.

  I then looked in the mirror, long hair in a ponytail, beard, jeans, plaid shirt and jean jacket with the arms cut off. Man, I have come a long way from that buzz cut recruit, no wonder I get followed by loss-prevention in stores I thought.

  Standing there looking at that picture, it was hard to suppress the memories and feelings of what it had been like to graduate from the Police Academy, and then my first day out of the Field Training Program out working as a patrol officer by myself.

  I remember feeling good, righteous, feeling as though I was standing for something….something good.

  The smile on my face
started to spread as I remembered back to my first traffic-stop and how nervous I was. I was still in the field training program and was so nervous that when I walked up to the car I told the driver who I was and that I had pulled him over for having a front head light out. The driver said “Oh, okay…sorry. I will get that fixed as soon as I get home.” My stupid rookie ass then said, “Okay then, you have a nice day.” As I looked back at my field training officer with the swelling sense of pride at pulling off my first traffic stop I noticed that his hands were in the air and he was mouthing the immortal words, “WHAT THE FUCK!”

  It was at that moment that I realized that I had not asked for a driver’s license, vehicle registration, or insurance. Occurring almost simultaneously as my stunning realization was the driver starting to pull away with me standing there in the street.

  I hauled off and hit the top of the driver’s car before it could pull from the stop. The driver stopped, rolled his window down and looked at me, asking why I had stopped him from leaving.

  I said “Sir, I’m sorry, I’m new at this and you are my very first traffic stop. I totally forgot to ask you for your driver’s license and vehicle registration.” To which the driver responded “Wow, you really are new” and then handed over his documents.

  As I sheepishly got back into the patrol car with my field training officer (FTO) I could not help but notice the stern scowl on his face melt away and be replaced with out and out laughter. I can only imagine the thoughts running through the mind of the driver I had just stopped, as he looked into his rear view mirror, and saw the two officers who had stopped him sitting in their patrol car laughing hysterically. My law enforcement career, off to a good start.

  The smile on my face faded as I looked back into the mirror and realized that I was going to be late to meet Keith at the office.

  It was 9am when I came rolling into the back-parking lot of our building. Many people think that 9am is way too early for a narcotics agent to be showing up for work but the reality of it is that next to Homicide cops, Special Investigations (narcotics) work the most hours. During the daylight hours we always parked in the back of the building, next to a shed, and inside a secured fenced area. No sense in putting our cars on display for someone to see.

  I walked in through the back door, as I headed to my office I heard Becky yell “Jim is that you?”

  Jim…my real name, JT was my adopted “bad guy” name. “Yes ma’am” I replied. “Before you start yelling I put last night’s vouchers in your basket…now please be gentle, it’s early”.

  “Yes, Jimmy I saw that…thank you. Keith and Agent Oso are in the conference room with Rick waiting for you” Becky replied in a motherly tone of voice.

  “Okay, thanks Beck” was my reply as I made a bee line for the coffee maker.

  Agent Steve Oso from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he was a half-way decent guy and a good worker. He had been trying for some time now, unsuccessfully, to get himself assigned to our task-force. The DEA used to have an agent assigned but then had a couple of agents leave and due to budget cuts had no one to replace them and their task-force seat went up in smoke. Stevie was trying to change that.

  As I walked into the conference room I saw Keith sitting there wearing the same shirt he had worn last night. Sitting next to Keith was Stevie (DEA Agent Oso), next to Stevie was Darrel Wilcoks a Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

  Next to Darrel him was Rick Roberts the sergeant of our merry band of crime fighters.

  “Stevie, how’s life bro?” I said as I took a seat trying not to spill my coffee.

  “Good Jimmy, nice to see you cleaned up” Stevie said with a smile on his face.

  “Yeah…you know what to do with yourself fed” I replied as the room chuckled a bit. “Darrel, man I heard that you transferred to Seattle, what are you doing here?”

  “Hey Jim, nice to see you too, yeah I went to Seattle but it was only a temporary thing, I got back last week.” I was glad to see Darrel, he and I had done some work in the past; he was a friend of mine and a no-shit good guy to have around. He looked like us, talked like us, he even road motorcycles like us.

  Stevie on the other hand, a great worker and a better case agent, but not an undercover guy.

  He looked like someone had slapped a goatee onto a well-groomed college student.

  Rick however appeared to have just stepped out of the patrol car, he was clean cut, shaven, and never hung over, or at least he was better at hiding it than the rest of us. Rick had been with the State Troopers for 15-years; he was the team leader for their tactical team and had been running the drug task-force for the past two-years. Before that he had no drug experience.

  To the great pleasure, and relief of everyone in the unit, Rick came in on day one, sat us down, and asked us to take him to drug school. He then went out and got himself educated by attending conferences and task-force commander seminars, all of which oddly seemed to be held in Vegas. None the less he was working on getting himself up to speed. Rick turned out to be the leader who would, instead of finding reasons not to do things, would ask us what we needed to make it happen.

  Stevie started the meeting, “So, Jimmy, Keith tells me that you guys had some good luck with Desie and may have finagled a meeting with King last night.”

  “Yeah, things went pretty good” I replied. “We got some Superman’s from her. She told me that she had gotten them from King and that he wanted to chat with us, she wasn’t sure about what, but thought that he may be looking to get into business with us”.

  “How many did you guys get?” asked Darrel, who now had a real sense of interest in his voice.

  “100” Keith replied as he took a big sip from his coffee. “The one that Jimmy tested popped hot with the NIK kit, we didn’t see any reason to test any more of them.”

  “Nice” replied Darrel, “did you guys run a wire?”

  “Yeah, we weren’t transmitting, both Jimmy and I had recorders going so we got the deal on tape.”

  Both Darrel and Rick smiled and nodded their heads. Rick especially, as our supervisor he knew that we had things well in hand when it came to running an investigation. To hear his crew say that they had taken the time to get a search warrant, and then record the contact seizing that good evidence, in the presence of Agents from other outfits well that just made him smile.

  Stevie sat back in his chair, took a swig from stainless steel coffee mug and stated, “DEA is up on some phones out east, two-weeks ago King’s number started showing up. The case out there has been running for about eight months and this is first time that assholes number has shown up. The case agent out there called me yesterday morning asking if I could coordinate some surveillance on King, so you can imagine my surprise when Keith called me this morning and gave me the news.”

  “What sort of a case is it they got out east?” asked Rick.

  “Oddly enough it is E (Ecstasy) from Canada” replied Stevie. Again, a smile spread across Rick’s face.

  Darrel then asked “Jimmy, what do you know about King’s motorcycle gang connections?”

  And there it was, the reason why Darrel was sitting there, he knew that King had been a hang-around with the Lone Wolves, a 1% motorcycle gang. He also knew that I had been involved with two previous Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (OMG) undercover operations in years past and that I rode a Harley. I could smell his crafty ATF-ass angling for a case a mile away.

  Before I could answer Rick chimed in, “We know that he used to be a hang-around LW and that he still associates with them from time to time, but beyond that not a lot.”

  Darrel then produced some surveillance photos, “We have an open case against the LW. I know that some of their folks are running guns they get from residential burglaries.”

  “We also think that there might be at least one, probably more, dirty gun-shop involved with these assholes.”

  Darrel handed me and Keith a couple of the surveillance photo
s, “Take a look at this and tell me who you see.”

  As I gazed at the grainy black and white photo one face stood out form the rest, “Well that guy in the center-that’s King” I replied, “the guy to his right is Jeff from the club where we met Desie, I don’t know those other two jokers.”

  “HOLY SHIT!” chirped Keith pointing at the picture Darrel had given him., “is that King wearing a full patch?”

  “No way” I said, “give me that photo, oh man that is King! Wait, Keith look at him again, he looks….different.”

  “Yeah, he does” Keith replied, “not quite so beat down looking.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Darrel who took the photo back and was looking at it inquisitively.

  “Brother the last time we saw King he had a hard time standing up straight and just had that dead to the world look about him” I replied.

  “Yeah, the look of a man who has done way too much dope and spent too much time bent over junk cars” said Keith.

  I reached over and took the photo back from Darrel, “This guy is definitely King, but he looks, I don’t know, with it. He looks alert, aware of his surroundings.”