The Reckless

by David Putnam

  TWO DAYS LATER all four in our team met in the Riverside parking lot of the FBI office, all of us driving separate FBI-issued cars. We came together walking toward the front door to the building, no one saying a word. Now the whole team knew the game and what was expected of us: follow some kids around, watch them take a bank down, then we take them down without firing a shot. The last couple of days I imagined a hundred different scenarios—none of them ended well for the kids. Vile and morally bankrupt men have taken advantage of vulnerable children for decades … for centuries. I never thought I’d see it to this horrible degree so close to home.

  On the way to the top floor, Gibbs looked up to the corners of the elevator car. “You think they have this thing wired with video?”

  Coffman took the dead cigar out of his mouth. “You can bet on it.”

  Ned unbuckled his pants, turned around, and started to take them down.

  “Kiefer.”

  Ned stopped. “All right, Sarge, I gotcha.”

  I said, “Subtle. Real subtle and oh so professional.”

  The car stopped, the doors opened, and we spilled out into the vacant waiting area. The same clerk saw us through the ballistic glass, picked up the phone, and dialed. Eight forty-five—we were fifteen minutes late. Coffman said, “All right, let’s everyone make the best of this and smile. Ned, you keep your pants on and your smart mouth to yourself, you hear me? Let Bruno do all the talking for us.”

  Ned put his hand up to his chest. “Why, Sergeant Coffman, what you must think of me. I declare.”

  “Can it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The door opened with Jim Turner holding it. We shuffled past, no one saying a word this time. We’d won the first volley. The first part of their plan to humiliate us with the initial two cases hadn’t gone the way they intended. We’d won, and yet I still felt used and dirty. I wanted to get this next part over with and move on.

  Two days earlier in the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s parking lot when we turned over the Bogart Bandit, I cringed when Chelsea came up to me. She didn’t smile, nor rail at me. She came up close and in a lowered tone that only I could hear, simply said, “I asked you to go easy on him. I’m ashamed of you, Bruno.”

  Go easy on him? All we did was capture a serial bank robber, and she was giving me a problem over it? After the game they’d tossed us into, how could she have the nerve to talk to me that way? I was angry, but said nothing in response.

  For the next two days I did a slow burn. Her words continued to echo in my brain, along with her neutral expression, the look in her eyes. Today I felt differently. I wanted to see Chelsea again, but at the same time, I didn’t. Foolish. I shouldn’t be ashamed, not with what they’d planned for us right from the start.

  Turner escorted us to a door in that long hall of doors, the one marked “Operations One.” He opened it and went in. A large whiteboard on wheels filled one side of the small room. Our team moved in and sat in four of the ten chairs at the two tables. A huge blown-up photo of a BMA, a black male adult, covered one entire corner of the whiteboard.

  Ned leaned over to me. “I guess the more important you are, the bigger head they give you, huh?”

  I ignored him and continued to read and memorize the information: Locations Frequented. Types of Cars. Known Associates. A list of banks—a long list of banks, a hundred and twenty-three of them. I kept coming back to the blown-up photo. The man wore a beard interrupted on the right side of his face by a slash-like scar from his high cheekbone down to his chin. Someone went at this guy with a sharp knife. Too bad they didn’t hit him lower, in the throat. The beard did a good job covering, but you could still see the scar plain enough. He couldn’t rob banks himself. With an identifier like that, he’d get caught right away. Scratch that—the Bogart Bandit had a gold tooth right up front, and for a couple of years no one caught him.

  In the blown-up booking photo, this new suspect had dark eyes, almost black—angry eyes. Down below the description read: “Amos Leroy Gadd, BMA 47yrs. 6’-6”, 270 pounds.”

  Ned gave a low whistle and whispered, “Look at that big son of a bitch. It’s going to take a buffalo rifle to put his ass down.”

  I came out of my trance and smiled. “Or a BFR.”

  “BFR?”

  “A big fuckin’ rock.”

  He laughed at the reference to the rock he used on Willis Simpkins that night years ago when Simpkins danced and sparked blue balls of electricity in a front yard sprinkler from the Taser.

  Ned smiled, and his eyes warmed as he whispered, “Hey, Bruno, thanks for showin’ up.”

  Turner handed out the operation packages—a thick sheaf of papers held together by a clasp at the top. “Okay, I’m told you already know the M.O. of our target that we call The Pied Piper, Amos Gadd, so I won’t go into it. I won’t even make any suggestions in how to approach this investigation because it wouldn’t do any good anyway. Right? You’re going to do exactly what you want no matter what I say.”

  Ned said, “You got that right.”

  Turner scowled at Ned and said, “Go ahead and flip back to the mauve tab.”

  Ned said, “Mauve? Really?”

  Turner ignored him.

  I looked for Coffman to yank Ned’s chain, but Coffman was too angry over the box the FBI put us in—this bad dude Gadd that we couldn’t go at head-on—so he let Ned do his worst.

  I flipped the mauve tab and found color Xerox copies of US currency smudged with red dye—twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

  Turner said, “We first got onto this crew from a tip from Caesar’s Palace in Vegas. Casino security tumbled to this guy passing dye pack bank money.”

  Gibbs said, “All right, we’re goin’ ta Vegas.”

  I kept checking the side door waiting for Chelsea to join the briefing. Didn’t happen and wasn’t going to. For the last two days, she hadn’t returned any of my calls.

  Turner continued, “The background investigation shows that Gadd is a degenerate gambler and needs the bank jobs to fuel his disease.”

  “Disease?” Ned said. “Then isn’t he going to be protected under The American Disabilities Act? Can we legally arrest him? I don’t think we can.” He smiled and tried to keep from laughing at his own joke and couldn’t; a little snicker eked out.

  “In this packet,” Turner said, “you’ll find all the names of the coconspirators. To date, we have arrested three after the fact, and the cases were dismissed in juvenile court for lack of evidence. As you know, juvenile court is an entirely different animal—they overly favor the suspect. The rest of the names and photos are principals we’ve identified and have not yet made a case on.”

  I said, “You mean the children?”

  He paused, glaring at me. “That’s right, Detective Johnson. They are all under the age of eighteen, some of them just barely, but make no mistake, they are armed and they are extremely dangerous.” He smiled as his words closed in and sealed the door to our trap, ensnared by the FBI’s shady dealings and their total lack of fair play.

  His smugness made me angry. The entire setup made me angry. I stood and started for the door. The rest of the team followed.

  “I’m not done with the briefing.”

  I held the packet up over my head without turning around and kept walking. “Yes you are. We got all we need. You’ll have Amos Gadd in your federal lockup by the end of the week.”

  Turner raised his voice. “I’m going to enjoy watching you work this one, Johnson. By the end of the week, you’re talking out of the left side of your ass.”

  Ned stopped, turned around. “I got three hundred that says he does it.”

  Turner said nothing.

  Ned said, “Didn’t think so. No balls.”

   CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  WE SAT ON our butts in our cars for two full days before we finally caught sight of Gadd coming out of one of the houses listed in the operational packet, a house assigned to Gibbs to watch. Gibbs came up on the countywi
de frequency at ten thirty in the morning and told us. We hustled over to his location in Baldwin Hills as he moved in and out of traffic trying not to lose Gadd in a delicate one-man mobile surveillance. We caught up and eased back off Gadd so he wouldn’t hink up. You can do that with four cars, back off enough so the target doesn’t have a chance to make you. We followed him to an apartment in Cerritos on Lilac. He went in and came right back out with a tall, slim white girl on his arm who wore a feline dress that hugged and moved with her curves displaying a total absence of imperfections. He drove her in his sleek black Lincoln Continental to Gardenia, the Gardenia Card Club. He got out, hurried around, and opened the door for his girl. She swung her long, long legs out and stood on tall high heels that helped her come up as high as Gadd’s chin. She took his arm, and they headed for the card club door. In the brilliant sunlight, her white skin glowed bright against his chalky blackness.

  Ned, in his own car, came up on the radio, said, “I got this, I’ll go in and peep him.” Across the parking lot from me, Ned got out of his car just as Coffman said on the radio, “No, Ned, stand down. Let Bruno go in.”

  Ned closed his car door, pretending he hadn’t heard, and followed along at a good distance. Coffman must’ve forgot to un-key the mike, and said, “Goddamnit, Ned.”

  Coffman had a special place in his heart for Ned. How long could that last before Coffman took a large bite out of Ned’s ass?

  We waited out in the sweltering heat for three hours. Coffman came up on the radio. “One at a time, you two make a head call and get something to eat and drink. I’ll go after you two get back.”

  Gibbs said, “Sorry, Bruno, I gotta go first, I’m about to burst. I won’t be long, I promise.” His car, a new FBI-issued Ford Thunderbird, started up and he eased his way out of the parking lot.

  Four more hours passed. At six thirty, the sun started to drop toward the west behind the building, casting long shadows. The heat eased up a tad. Ned hustled out of the front doors headed for his car. Two minutes later, out popped Gadd and his girl, only this time, the girl walked behind him, trying to keep up, doing a shuffle-step in high heels, and not making a go of it. She tripped and almost fell. She hopped and pulled her shoes off—a big mistake, the asphalt hot as a frying pan. She ran faster.

  Coffman said on the radio, “Trouble in River City—looks like our boy was the big loser.”

  Ned got in his car and leaned over out of sight. He spoke into his radio, “Gadd’s pissed. He dropped his whole wad on Texas Hold ’Em, lost it all, maybe fifteen, twenty grand. At one point he was up almost thirty, then some punk Asian kid cleaned him. Made Gadd look like a real fool. I thought Gadd was going to rip his head off right there in the casino.”

  Gadd got in his car, started it, one foot on the accelerator, the other on the brake. He waited for his girl to catch up as the car surged in place again and again. This time, both shoes in one hand, she opened her own door and got in. Her door hadn’t closed before Gadd took off smoking the rear tires.

  We tailed him back toward Cerritos. Stopped at a red signal, I was two cars behind him. I could see that Gadd and the girl were arguing, using their hands to demonstrate their point. Their windows were open, but their unintelligible, muffled exchange barely made it back to me. When the signal turned green, Gadd leaned all the way across his girl’s lap, opened her door, and shoved her out. She fought to stay inside the car, but he brought his leg around and kicked her hard. She tumbled to the street, and he gunned the car. Forward momentum slammed the passenger door shut as the girl rolled onto the street’s grimy asphalt. The back tire just missed crushing her head.

  Ned came up on the radio. “I’ll see if the girl’s all right.” His car pulled out of the line of traffic as we continued on.

  Coffman came up: “No. Let her go. She’s okay. Ned? Ned? Stay with the surveillance. We can radio for paramedics.”

  I watched in my rearview as Ned blocked traffic with his car, got out, went up to the girl, and helped her to her feet. I lost sight of him. I tried to stay with Gadd as he raced his big Lincoln in and out of traffic. He still hadn’t made us. Anger alone fueled Gadd’s flight. We followed in and out of residential streets as he gradually slowed to the speed limit.

  Forty-five minutes later I picked up the radio mike. “Hey, look alive. This is the neighborhood where he solicits the kids to do his bank jobs.”

  Coffman said, “Yeah, I figured as much. Give him a lot of room here, boys.”

  Gadd turned off Alameda onto 101st Street westbound and then turned north into the Jordon Downs Housing Project. I said, “You two stay back and let me go in. You’ll be made in a second in there.”

  Coffman said, “Roger.”

  Gibbs just clicked his mike twice—the sign of acknowledgment.

  Gadd toured around looking for likely victims and settled on a group of boys playing hoops—none of them looked over sixteen. I found a spot and set up a decent distance away. Gadd parked next to the court, got out, took his shirt off, and jogged into the game holding up his hands, his lips moving asking them to throw him the ball. The kid with the ball froze and looked to his friends. A couple of them shrugged, so he tossed Gadd the ball. Gadd smiled big, drove to the basket, nimble on his feet, and executed a beautiful reverse slam dunk. The kids looked impressed. The maneuver impressed me, and I hated the dude even more. I couldn’t do that shot, and Gadd was twelve years older.

  The sun slowly drooped below the horizon turning the sky blood orange. People who lived in Jordan Downs recognized an intruder amongst them and came by close enough to clock the occupant in the white Toyota Camry, my FBI car. I could pull it off okay during the day, but after dark it would be an entirely different proposition. After dark, gang members came out in force and would take my presence as a personal affront. They’d come right up to my car, ask me once where I was from, and if I didn’t give the right answer, four or five of them would throw down and open up on me, riddle my car with bullets. I wouldn’t stand a chance.

  As expected in the ghetto, the gang members had torn down the street signs inside Jordan Downs and knocked out the streetlights. They’d arranged derelict cars in a tight formation to barricade the street should they want to detain anyone who ventured inside their territory. LAPD didn’t go in the projects after dark with anything less than eleven units, half their shift.

  Two hours later, Gadd, followed by all five boys, walked to his Lincoln. They all climbed in. Night had settled in by now, and Gadd drove them to Church’s Chicken on Century and bought them all dinner. This association, the smile, an arm around the shoulder, a pat on the back—friendly familiarity for the purpose of exploitation—made me sick to my stomach.

  He drove them home, making only two stops to drop off all five. We continued to follow Gadd over to a pad on 117th Street off Alabama, a two-story house red-tagged for demolition for the new 105 Freeway due to start construction. It had been due to start construction for the last twenty years. We sat on the house for another two hours. Every fifteen minutes Coffman tried to raise Ned—total lack of response. I started to worry about him and could only hope he didn’t fraternize with Gadd’s woman. Fraternize, that’s what the department called it. But he wouldn’t do that.

  At the end of two hours, Coffman came up on the radio and called it for the night. “Pick him up early right here, let’s say zero five thirty hours so we don’t miss him. Bruno, get with Ned and let him know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

   CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  JORDAN DOWNS WASN’T far from home, a few miles. I made it by nine thirty. I’d hoped I’d find Ned’s car parked out front. It wasn’t. My concern intensified. I headed for the door just as a Crown Victoria pulled to the curb behind my truck. My heart sped up. Chelsea maybe? Not Jim Turner. Please don’t let it be Jim Turner.

  The driver turned off the headlights and sat in the dark, hidden behind the window tint. I lifted my hands and shrugged. The driver’s door opened. The interior dome light illumina
ted Chelsea. My heart leapt into my throat. I knew I was a fool for feeling that way after the fix she’d purposely put us in. The way she was using us—using me.

  She eased her door closed, took two steps away from the car, and stopped. She had on a tee shirt with a country singer on the front, worn denim pants, and scuffed cowboy boots that clunked on the asphalt when she walked. She came around the front of the Crown Vic to the side, stepped back, leaned up against her car, and crossed her arms facing me.

  For a long a moment, we just stood there looking at each other. Then I moved toward her. I stopped inches away. Her scent rose off her hair, tropical shampoo, coconut, with a hint of pineapple. I slowly raised my hands, put them on her shoulders. She leaned in, put her head on my chest, but kept her folded arms between us. We stood there a long time. I didn’t know what she had in mind. I’d wait for her to give me a sign.

  I wanted to close my eyes and revel in her presence, but couldn’t, not in that neighborhood. I needed to keep a constant vigilance so no one could come up on me, on us. Still breathing her scent, I transported myself back through the years, to a time when we lay in my bed, hot and sweaty, content, everything right with the world. A time before everything got so damn complicated.

  I waited.

  She slowly moved her arms down and put them around me, her breasts now pressed against my chest. I pulled her in tighter. She raised her face to look up at me. I kissed her long and deep. I reached down, put my arm under her legs, and picked her up. She didn’t take her eyes from mine. I turned and carried her to the house.

  Once inside, I continued carrying her down the hall to my room, left the light off, and closed the door. The darkness enveloped us as I kissed her again, this time the kiss turning ravenous. I let her legs swing down. Her boots touched the floor. She tugged at my truck driver work shirt, couldn’t wait, pulled hard. The buttons popped and skittered around the room. She yanked it down from my shoulders and free from my arms. I lifted her tee shirt over her head and tossed it aside. She went up on tiptoes and kissed me again as she worked my belt buckle, her fingers getting in the way of each other. I moved her hands to do it myself. She reached back, unhooked her bra, let it drop to the floor. She undid her pants, shoved them down, and stepped out of them. I picked her up and tossed her on the bed. She let out a little yelp. I took a deep breath and crawled in on top of her.