The Basement

by Tom Clarke

  “Danny get your ass down here!” I yelled.

  Danny moved with a purpose drawing his handgun from his duty holster as he hustled down the stairs.

  “Cover Keith” I said as Danny moved off the stairs, his duty weapon at the ready.

  Without saying a word Danny moved in behind Keith, pulled his handgun into his body and put his left hand on Keith’s left shoulder and squeezed. Keith stepped into the small room, sweeping from left-to-right, moving along the wall as he cleared the room with his handgun.

  As Keith finished his movement through the room he stepped out, announcing clear with the tone of someone who had been well trained and was now running on muscle memory.

  “Keith move up the stairs, Danny you cover, I’m right behind” I said. As Keith moved up the stairs, his handgun covering his path, Danny held his position at the bottom while I took a cover position off-set from him and still pointing into the darkness.

  When Keith reached the half-way point he stopped, cleared his corner, and then started moving up again. Danny then started moving up the stairs behind Keith and I moved up to take Danny’s position.

  When Danny was about half-way up, he too stopped and cleared his corner, then continued moving the rest of the way up. As Danny continued moving forward I quickly followed.

  When I reached the half-way point of the stair case I looked back behind me and there in the darkness was the figure, now with a little more defined mass, looking back at me. I stopped for just a second and starred at the figure as it stood up from a crouching position into an almost erect standing one.

  As my gaze was fixed, looking back into the darkness, the figure came just a little more into focus, and then smiled at me. I had looked straight into the eyes of plenty of evil men during my time as a Police Officer, this was different. I felt almost like a victim waiting for my attacker. I turned and continued moving up the stairs, as I stepped into the main floor I had an overwhelming feeling of dread. A feeling that had I had not fully experienced since I was a child.

  As I stepped back into the kitchen area Danny grabbed me, “Jim what the hell just happened?” “Where’s Keith?” I replied as I had to focus on the task of re-holstering my handgun.

  Danny looked at me, seeing that I was pretty shaken he said, “He’s outside. Look, take a breath bro, were good, place is secure.” As I looked back at my friend I realized that I still had a grip on my holstered handgun. “Breath dude” Danny said, “Come one lets go get Keith.”

  Keith was outside walking in a circle around our car, “What the fuck was that!” Keith yelled. “I mean, you saw that shit, right? What the fuck was that!”

  I walked over and grabbed Keith by the shoulder “I don’t know brother, calm down. Take a breath, slow down, were okay.”

  As Keith started to compose himself I turned to Danny, “Danny what the hell is rolling around in that basement?”

  With a look of surprise on his face Danny replied, “Jim wait, you guys saw something down there?”

  “Your God damn right we did” Keith barked back.

  “Okay Keith, take a breath brother, Danny what the hell was that?” I asked in a more controlled tone of voice.

  “I don’t know Jim, but I was down there yesterday and thought I saw something. I didn’t want to say anything, you know, I don’t want anyone thinking I’m on the sauce.” Danny leaned against his patrol car, ran his hands through his hair and said, “I can’t believe you guys saw it too.”

  “Saw it” I said, “I damn near shot the fucking thing full of holes!”

  “Okay, what do we do now?” Danny asked.

  “Did you get the VARDA set up?” I asked.

  Danny looked at me, shook his head and replied, “Yeah Jim I did.”

  I looked at Danny and Keith and said, “Then we don’t do, or say, a damn thing! Let’s take a breath and clear out of here.” Danny and Keith both nodded in agreement.

  After taking a few more minutes to collect our thoughts Keith, Danny, and I went our separate ways. It was odd to me, often after cops are involved in a stressful event there is a lot of joking and laughing. It is a coping mechanism for dealing with the stress, there was none of that. Danny never spoke of that incident; oddly enough the VARDA never went off, however items kept disappearing.

  As we were driving out of the driveway Keith put a hand on his forehead and said, “Jimmy I need a drink.”

  “Me too bro, let me call Rick and see if we can get the rest of the day off.”

  I called Rick who gave us the rest of the afternoon off. About two-hours later Keith and I were sitting at one of our safe bars (a bar where no one knows who we really area, but somewhere we do not do any work, some place we can go and unwind) having a few beers and an early dinner.

  “Keith my brother” I said as I took a drink from my beer, “I have never seen, or even heard of some shit like we witnessed earlier.”

  “I know that’s right” Keith replied, “you got some good moves Jimmy, I will give you that…Danny too. I am damn glad he was there. Do you think he will tell anyone about that?” Keith asked.

  “Danny?” I replied with a sarcastic tone of voice, “no way! That guys a vault, besides if people start to think he’s seeing shit in a basement with a couple of undercovers they are liable to drug test him, then kick him right off SWAT and banish him to traffic.”

  We both started laughing as we finished our beers. “Bro I’m going to call it an early night, can I drop you off at your shack?” I asked Keith.

  Keith and I left the bar, I dropped him off and then headed home for a well-deserved night-cap complimented with some TV watching from the comfort of my recliner.

  As I was sitting there clicking through the channels and sipping on some Scotch I started looking through the pictures on my cell phone that I had taken in the basement at Hollow Crest.

  The “King” and the “LWFFLW” I got, sort of, the King part I was still having a hard time putting together. I know that traditional street gangs like the Bloods and such will graffiti what’s known as a “call out or role call” which is a list of the street monikers for their members. Biker groups did not do that, they also did not engage in too much graffiti unless it was inside a club house or somewhere they got together.

  Kind of like a bunch of teenage taggers beautifying a skate park where they hang out at. Besides if it was some sort of a call out then why just the one name…why just King?

  The Lone Wolves had been a half-ass club in the area for several years, in the realm of motorcycle gangs they were at the bottom of the barrel. They would show up at motorcycle runs and events from time to time, start bar fights they could never finish, and peddle a little bad dope. Beyond that historically they were pretty lame, a bunch of drugged out followers, even their name was pathetically unoriginal.

  Then a little less than a year ago they had a new cat come into power as the club president, some guy using the moniker of Lone Wolf Ripper. Ripper was from out of town, in fact no one is sure where he’s from. Shortly after taking over the LW’s they started getting their act together, criminally speaking of course.

  Before the LW’s were holding steady at about 4 or 5 members, now our best estimates were that they were between 10 and 15 strong with several prospects.

  I had never met Ripper and the LW members that I had interacted with did not, and would not, talk about him. I had a pretty good “relationship” with Jeff the bouncer at Rockets, we would tip a few back and even he would not talk about the guy, and Jeff was not even a patched member, he was just a hang-around.

  I turned my attention to the carvings on the wall of the basement, what did they mean? It almost looked as though they were there before the graffiti. The first thing that popped into my mind was some sort of devil or occult worship. Bikers had been known to play around with that stuff but it was more done in an effort to shock the conscious of the public, kind of like wearing a swastika patch.

  They kind of had their own take on religion, som
e of them anyway, I mean I had seen video surveillance of biker weddings where instead of a bible they used a motorcycle manual.

  Some of the markings inside the circle looked familiar to me but I just could not place them. The majority just made no sense. They seemed to be a combination of symbols and letters from something that looked almost Latin. They ran along the inside of the circle in a spiral pattern working their way towards the center with a symbol in the center. The entire thing was pretty big, almost five-feet top to bottom and another five-feet side to side.

  The more that I studied the picture of the circle I started to notice that the circle itself looked pretty damn good, the line was pretty straight, whoever scratched that must have had a pretty steady hand. As I sat there admiring the handy work of whoever had made the carving in the wall the Scotch started to kick in and I was off to bed.

  3. Desie

  The next day started just like any other work day for me, up, coffee, shower, feed the dogs and then head to the office. When I arrived at the office I found Keith was already there. “Hey bro what brings you in this early?” I asked as I poured myself a coffee.

  “Ahh shit Jimmy I couldn’t sleep last night to save my life. I kept having these weird dreams, like someone was watching me while I slept. You sleep okay?”

  “Yeah man I slept like a rock” I replied, raising my coffee cup in a toast to Keith, “but then again I also self-medicated with some McGregor.”

  I patted Keith on the shoulder and said, “You should grow up, quit drinking that light beer and switch to Scotch like the rest of the adults.”

  Before Keith could answer I said, “Hey, listen, I never did hear from Desie or King yesterday. What do you say we call her up and set up a deal for this afternoon?”

  “Sounds good to me” Keith replied with a sense of renewed energy. “I’ll give Stevie and Darrel a call, see if there available.”

  “Thanks man” I replied through a drink of my coffee. “I’ll go chat with Rick as soon as he’s done with his Monday morning conference call.”

  Just about that time Becky yelled, “Jim, Ricks off the phone.” As usual she had been quietly listening in on our conversation.

  I walked into Rick’s office and took a seat across from his desk. “Hey boss, what’s going on?”

  “You tell me Jimmy” Rick replied rocking back in his chair, “did you hear from Desie or King yesterday?”

  “No, but Keith and I were kicking around the idea of calling her and trying to set something up for this afternoon if your cool with it.”

  Rick smiled, “Sounds good, make sure that you get Stevie and Darrel involved if their available.”

  Rick knew that I would have already done that but he was just flexing his supervisor muscle a little bit, sort of going through the motions. “Yeah, Keith’s calling them right now. I thought just for fun I would call her dumb ass before noon, wake her up for a change. God knows she’s called me at 1 or 2 in the morning enough times.”

  Rick smirked and nodded in appreciation, “Let me know when you talk to her so we can start seeing about lining up some cover for you.”

  “Will do boss.” I got up and walked out of Rick’s office and back to my own cave which was almost directly across the hall from his.

  It was a little after 10am, I chuckled to myself about the prospects of waking Desie up, I think I would call her and when she answered pretend like we had a bad connection, keep saying hello, swear, and then hang up. I would give her about 20 minutes to get back to sleep and then do the same thing again. As I smiled to myself I was reminded of what a grizzled old veteran had told me many years ago, “It’s the little things that keep you going.”

  I got up and shut my office door, the signal to the other agents in the office that I was making a recorded phone call. The week prior I had applied for and been given a search warrant by the local District Court Judge to record and seize as evidence conversations with Desie and any as-of-yet unidentified co-conspirators so all I needed to do was make the call.

  I started my call by prefacing the recording, “Todays date is the 14th of July 2014, the time is approximately 10:30am.”

  “This will be a recorded phone call between Agent Richards and suspect Desiere Parker regarding the undercover purchase of dangerous drugs from Parker by Agent Richards. This call is being recorded pursuant to search warrant 14-134 signed in District Court the 10th of July 2014.”

  I then dialed Desies phone number, it rang once and she answered, “Hello JT, it’s good to hear from you.”

  I had just been caught totally off-guard by Desie. The fact that she had actually answered the phone at what would be early morning for her, and that she sounded awake and alert threw me off my game. Like an awkward school boy calling a girl for the first time I said, “Uh…hey Desie, what’s the good word beautiful?”

  She didn’t miss a beat in her response, “You tell me JT.”

  “Well that last batch I got from you went right off the shelves. If your good I would like to get some more this afternoon.”

  “I am” Desie replied in an almost business-like response. “Do you want just the same or can I throw in something a little special for you?”

  My rattling caused by Desie answering the phone was suddenly replaced with the thoughts of moving up the food chain with this case, “Well now, what did you have in mind Desie?”

  Desie replied, again in an almost business-like manner, “Well JT, you’ve been such a good customer, and a good friend, I will have your usual but I can also grab some windows, if you’re interested? Of course, these will be at a reduced rate, just for you.”

  “Well that depends, how clear is it?” I said trying to play along but knowing full well that I was going to take Deise up on her offer of cheap Methamphetamine.

  “It’s top notch JT, I got it from King last night” Desie replied. “I will bring you a ball for say $250. If you like it, well King says that he can get you as much as you want.”

  “Right on!” I said trying hard to contain my enthusiasm. “How about 3 in the parking lot of Rockets? And just to make sure were talking about $750 for the entire package, right?”

  “Sounds good baby, see you there.” Desie then hung up the phone.

  “The following phone call between Agent Richards and suspect Desiere Parker was in regard to the purchase of approximately 3.5 grams of Methamphetamine and 100 Ecstasy pills from Parker by Agent Richards for $750 US Currency.”

  I turned off my recorder and sat back in my chair. A smile spread across my face as I started thinking about the implications of the call I had just recorded. Not only did we now have Desie in the bucket, but she also implicated King. Coupled with the intel we saw regarding King’s involvement with the LW’s we may be able to shit-can the entire crew. My smile just grew.

  I walked back to Rick’s office, stuck my head in his door and said, “Hey Rick, we are on for 3pm in the parking lot of Rocket’s, she is going to bring 100 Superman’s and a ball of meth.”

  Rick looked up, smiled and said, “Meth, nice, how much?”

  “$750 for the whole package, but that’s not the best part” I said with the smile still on my face. “She says that she got the meth from King last night and if we like it he can, in her words, get us as much as we want.”

  “Really!” Rick said sitting up in his chair. “Did you get that on tape?” Rick asked.

  “You know I did” I replied, “who do we have to play?” Rick looked down at the schedule on his desk and replied, “Dave and Mike are available, Keith, and it looks like Stevie and Darrel are going to be here too.” Dave and Mike were the other two agents in our office, they had been in training class and just got back last night.

  “Good stuff” I replied. “I’ll start working on the ops plan, have it on your desk in a few.”

  I walked out of Ricks office and over to Keith’s, “Yeah Jimmy, how is it looking?” Keith asked.

  “Good, we are on for 3 in the parking lot of Rocket’s, Des
ie is gonna bring the Superman’s and a ball of meth she got from King last night” I replied.

  “Good stuff Jimmy” Keith replied with a big smile on his face. “What time do you want to brief?”

  “Let’s brief at 1:30 here” I said wanting to make sure that we had plenty of time to get everything set up.

  Keith replied that he would get in touch with the other agents and let them know what was going on and that we would be briefing at our office at 1:30.

  After talking with Keith, I sat down and started working on the operations plan for the upcoming deal.

  As I sat in front of the computer in my office typing out the Ops plan I started to think about the phone conversation I had just had just had with Desie. As I got past the excitement of moving this case forward and nabbing some good offenders something about her voice was just not right. It was almost as though she was expecting me to call and was reading off a script. I could not put my finger on it, but something in her voice was just…off.