Chasers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “This was in our sector or somewhere else?” asked a young cop with a face out of a high school yearbook.

  “No, up in the East Bronx,” Ramoni said, his shoulders tossing a who-gives-a-shit shrug. “Dominican turf and, as you will soon learn, those bastards like to play fair and share about as much as two homeless mutts do over an empty can of Seven Up. Anyways, we had set up shop, with me posing as a buyer for a heavy pocket user living in some ass-pimple town upstate, working this half-breed and his crew one dead worm at a time. Made like the dog was part and package of the price of me doing business, sweating down a heavy-vig gambling loan. We started our run with small buys, couple of bags a week—nothing that would make Chin raise an eyebrow. It was moving at a nice, downstream pace, each day me getting closer to the Chin man, connecting the dots on where he got his dope and who it was asking him to wax the lower floors. We were about a week, maybe two, from a middle-of-the-paper bust.”

  “He got wise he was being played by a hidden badge?” one of the cops asked.

  “Or some stool toss a finger at you?” a voice from the middle of the bar shouted. “You know, caught your act from some other job?”

  Ramoni sipped from a fresh bottle of beer and shook his head. “You guys need to get your ass out of the movies and into the real deal,” he said. “That shit you’re talking works for Hollywood, not the Heights. No, it was Buttercup that moved our closing date up. She smelled out that the Chin hated middlemen and dogs and was always on the look-see to rid his eyesight of both.”

  “How’d she manage that?” the cop closest to Ramoni asked. He was a beefy Irish kid with an easy smile and a wrestler’s upper body.

  “She pulled off the first rule of undercover work and made it happen on her end of the court,” Ramoni said. “She was a smart enough cop to make sure the guy we were looking to tag felt comfortable in her company. In no time flat, that fuckin’ Chin was so taken with Buttercup you’d think he had nursed her off his own tits. And that’s no mean task, given the Chinese history with dogs.”

  “What history’s that?”

  “The history that tells you they fuckin’ eat them,” Ramoni said. “Think of that next time you lay down a five-spot for the Hunan special. At any rate, Buttercup winds up so tight with Chin it’s like they’re going steady. She’s with him more than she’s with me, taking meetings, running errands, and planning out jobs, including the one where it’s mapped for us to take the slugs that send us both to the end of the conga line.”

  “When did you get a whiff of what was going down?” the beefy Irish cop asked.

  “Not till the day of,” Ramoni said. “We’re in the back of some wok-and-rolls grease spill, trading laundered cash for cut cocaine—me, Chin, Buttercup here, and two other guys I never seen before. But she had. There she is walking around the room, tail wagging, breath coming out heavier than cloud cover, acting for all the tea in China like she’s the night manager or some shit. But whenever she crosses over in front of the two new guys, both standing up against a stained wall—you couldn’t wash the dried fat off with acid—she turns her head to me and barks. And you gotta understand one thing. The only time an undercover dog barks in a situation such as the one I just laid out is if there’s about to be a show of guns. Based on her level of agitation, I took a hunch that I had less than two minutes to work out a solution. I figured Chin I could take down and out, no problem. You didn’t exactly think of Bruce Lee when the fucker made a move your way—more like Stagger Lee, if you get my drift. But the two up against that wall, well, they for certain posed a problem. They no doubt came in the room heavy, that was for one. They were also to my left, which meant that I had to move like Lethal Weapon Mel Gibson to maybe even have a better than fair chance at bringing them both down to knee level. And that was without knowing if or if not Chin had extra artillery stashed behind one of the curtains or under the slop sink. I thought, Here is where I die, in some sinkhole of a Chinese restaurant, my last breath a lungful of oil thick enough to stain shoes.”

  “Could you have made a reach for backup?” one cop asked, shoving aside three empty bottles and leaning in closer, both elbows on the wood.

  “How, exactly?” Ramoni asked. “Tossing a veggie roll out through the cracked window? I had nothing on me but my crotch gun and my ankle gun—neither one easy to get to, mind you that. No, if it wasn’t for my lady friend sleeping by my feet here, this is one story would have been told you back in the Police Academy—as a way of not going into an undercover op.”

  “So, what’d she do?” the beefy Irish cop asked. “Christ, this is better than the movie I took my girl to see the other night. From now on, fuck going to the shows. I’ll take her here—she’ll get a better story and I’ll save some dough.”

  “And you still won’t get laid end of the night,” another cop said. “That’s the part never changes.”

  “Let me tell you what Buttercup did,” Ramoni said, the cold flow of the beer and the cliff-hanger tale helping to hold the attention of the cops leaning on the wood. “She waited. And she waited. And she waited, like she was ticking off the seconds in her head, timing it down to match me move for move. She stayed breath-mint close to the two shooters, even let the fuckers pet her, they felt like it. They started to follow her around the room, leaving their assigned slots, their eyes more on her than on me, where they should have been every inch of the trip. Meantime, Chin, thinking his back’s covered, is as relaxed as if he were sipping a Jack straight up at a Club Med pool. He’s looking down, elbows on a small poker table filled with cash and bags of dope, thinking for sure he was going to clean up on both ends. Gave me the time I needed to cut to the quick.”

  “How did you signal the dog?” the bartender, an overweight fellow in a starched white shirt, asked.

  “This dog you don’t signal,” Ramoni said. “She signals you. Lets me know when it’s time to pull my piece and start the fireworks.”

  “You pulling at it, or you telling me straight?” the bartender said, sliding two more cold ones across the bar.

  “Learned long ago never to bullshit the man pouring my drinks,” Ramoni said. “There’s no upside to the exchange.”

  “So, how then?”

  “Simple as a front-seat stop-and-blow,” Ramoni said. “Buttercup eyeballs me one last time, turns, and locks her jaw around the shooter standing furthest away from me. Doofus-looking badass sporting a blind man’s haircut. She takes a chunk out of his thigh big as a Christmas ham and rips at it like she hadn’t been fed for three months. Guy lets out a scream loud enough to crack paint. I reach down, pull the .38 from my ankle holster, and peg two at the second guy, one close to me, gun already in his shooting hand. Plant both in his chest plate, and he drops like a tree branch in a storm. First guy is doing some fucking dance around the room, Buttercup chewing on his skin and clothes, going at him as if the dealer had a Ben Benson steak bone jammed in his pants. That now brings it down to me and my pal Chin, and he’s sitting there as stunned as if he just took one between the eyes with a baseball bat—woulda shit his pants if I just pointed the gun his way. Within seconds, I got total control of the room—from the two shooters to Chin and the dope and all the cash. The only noise in the place at this time was the shot guy on the floor moaning, clutching his chest, eyes bugged out wide, and the other nimrod on his hands and knees begging me not to let Buttercup eat any more of his ass. And that, my drunken friends, is what’s called a prime-time takedown. And all because I have me a partner who knew how to read a situation and react like a top-tier pro.”

  “You got the collar and a letter from borough command, no doubt, for a bust that size,” the beefy young cop said. “What’d the dog get from all that action?”

  “Grilled skirt steak and a chew toy,” Ramoni said, leaning down and giving Buttercup a soft pat on the head. “And she was as happy as a pig in slop to get it, especially since skirt steak is her favorite meal on the whole planet.”

  “Other than maybe a drug deale
r’s thigh,” the bartender said with a full nicotine laugh.

  The tall man’s heavy steps brought Buttercup to full attention, her head still resting against the tenement wall, her eyes staring down at the dark green cement floor, following the shadow as it made its way toward the door of apartment 4F. Steve Ramoni lowered himself to the floor, eye level with Buttercup. He gave a quick glance down the hall, spotted the dealer, decked out in tight jeans and a red shirt loud enough to belt out a tune. He had a .9 millimeter handgun in each hand and a gold shield hanging on a chain around his neck. He glanced across at Buttercup, gave her a soft nudge with his shoulder, and threw her a wide smile. The dog tilted her head, leaned it over, and licked the right side of his face.

  “Just a few seconds more,” Ramoni whispered to Buttercup. “Soon as that door swings open, you move and go. Me and Frankie will be right behind. And remember, no bark—just bite.”

  Ramoni looked away and heard the lock snaps and the chains being unleashed from the inside of apartment 4F. He saw the tall man tense, resting his hand against his lower spine, feeling for the handle grip on a.357 revolver. He heard the cheap wood door creak and saw a thin shaft of light slip out of the opening, the stale odor of low-end grass seeping through. He looked at Buttercup and nodded. The bullmastiff rose to her feet, turned the tight corner, and charged down the narrow hallway.

  A cop primed to nail another bust.

  9

  Boomer was on his third lap around the Central Park running track, enjoying the heat of the morning sun warm on his back and neck. He gazed out at the city’s landscape through a chain-link fence, ignoring the sharp pain shooting up and down his right leg like a pinball in a machine. It was part of a physical fitness ritual he had adhered to since the afternoon of his first day at the Police Academy. That morning, the young cadets were given a speech by a silver-haired retired cop with tree-trunk biceps and a chest that looked as if it were chiseled from stone. His name was Vince Dowd, and even Boomer, with his inexperienced ears, was quick to understand that he was in the presence of a department legend, a gold-shield homicide detective with more than twenty years of active service and enough medals and commendations to fill a U-Haul. Dowd spoke in a clear voice, his body language matching the power of his words. He gave a talk that filled Boomer simultaneously with passion and dread, as he took in a speech that was cupboard-crammed with the dangers faced by an unprepared cop on the streets. One of the pure essentials preached by Detective Dowd was always to be prepared for any given situation at any given time. That meant physically as well as mentally. “An out-of-shape cop might as well stay home and pop a cold beer,” Boomer recalled Dowd telling them. “Save the medical examiner and the body-bag boys time and trouble, because if he hits the streets like that he’ll be found dead on those streets. You go out there looking like you’re not ready for a tussle, then count on being taken out. That’s the clear and simple of it. You don’t care, they will take the dare.”

  Boomer dedicated himself to cop work.

  He maintained a physical workout routine that rivaled that of a professional athlete. In addition to the daily five-mile rain-snow-or-shine runs, he lifted weights four days a week; took boxing and martial-arts classes; meditated and practiced yoga; and ate only one meal a day (chicken, fish, or pasta in a plain red sauce, with a vegetable side dish). When it came to the mental part of the job, Boomer’s stance was even more aggressive. He read all the books dealing with the history and intricacies of organized crime, from as-told-to clip-and-paste bios to sociological studies and page-turner novels. He studied weapons and tactics, spending hours in three-credit night classes at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice or at mind-numbing Police Department–sponsored weekend seminars. He watched documentaries that dealt with police work and even took lessons from the shoot-’em-ups he paid to see in movie theaters, figuring he could learn much about what not to do and maybe even pick up a few usable tips on the edgy attitude that was sure to come his way from the street skells he would be going against face-to-face.

  “Keep it in the back of your mind and never lose it,” Detective Dowd told Boomer late one night as the two sat in a back booth of an empty downtown diner, each drinking more than his fair share of bad coffee. “Nine out of ten, hands to the ground, a wanna-be gangster picks up his street tics from what he’s seen either on TV or in the movies. The lingo, the body bops, the tough hood-in-the-hood stance all come out of some movie you need to have seen. Give you an example. The Godfather hit theaters sometime in the early 1970s. Monster hit. Everybody from me and you to the corner pimp paid or swayed their way in to see it. Within a month of the movie earning money, there was a gang in Detroit and a second one in Brooklyn calling themselves ‘The Godfathers.’ Another gang, Hispanic crew up in the Bronx, tagged their group ‘Sonny’s Boys.’ They’re not rocket launchers, is all I’m trying to get across to you. They’re crooks. Beat them at their own game and you’ll always come out at the long end of the stick.”

  Boomer made it his business to know his business.

  He learned to separate the neighborhood players both by routine and skill sets. The drug business didn’t begin its day until late afternoon, when the runners and dealers took to the streets, which left the morning free to the numbers action, car boosters looking for a quick sale, and payback send-offs. Most of the organized mob crews kept to a standard schedule. The Italians did their daily business inside social clubs, with the windows either heavily shaded or painted black. On cool spring or fall days, they preferred to sit outside, gathered around small tables large enough to hold espresso cups and sambuca bottles. The Hispanic gangs mingled at the local bodegas, while black outfits spread their action inside the neon lights of after-hours night spots, booming background music blasting out any attempt at a wiretap. In those early years, as Boomer rose up the PD ranks—from beat patrol in Harlem to plains-clothes work in Brooklyn and undercover stings in Queens, until he hit the main event and was pinned with a detective’s tin, rotating between homicide and narcotics—it seemed a simple task to decipher good from bad. The arrival of crack cocaine, coupled with the emergence of street gangs and the influx of ruthless gangsters from Colombia and Russia, forced the criminal leagues to toss out the rule books and ply their trade free of any of the time-honored traditions. What had once been so clear and organized that an aggressive cop could follow ongoing criminal activity with a flow chart was now a chaotic crime scene, and that left the terrain wide open for new crews to enter the fray and dominate the street action, amassing fortunes in less time than it took to buy a Manhattan co-op. As the dollars mounted, so did the dead bodies, leaving behind ravaged and ruined families and a city that would never again be the same. The Wild West had arrived in New York, and it gave no indication of leaving anytime soon.

  Boomer slowed his run to a fast walk, body washed down in sweat, aches and pains slapping at his legs and lungs, his body rebelling somewhat against a daily habit it was no longer fully equipped to handle. He leaned against a rusty fence, breathing heavy and gazing up at a cloudless sky.

  “I keep telling you the treadmill would be a better idea.” Dead-Eye was standing next to him, two cold protein shakes in his hands, his sweatshirt drenched through with sweat. “You go at your own pace and stop when you feel the need. Keep going at it this way, one day or the next you’re bound to fall flat.”

  “Remember Augie Petrocelli? That undercover working out of the two-eight?” Boomer asked, taking one of the shakes from Dead-Eye. “Took to a street chase like he was in the middle of a gold-medal run?”

  Dead-Eye sipped his drink and nodded. “Worked with him on a few jobs back when I was on the Black Liberation Task Force. Good cop, even better when there was some heat coming his way. What about him?”

  “He retired about five, maybe six years ago,” Boomer said. “Took a large chunk of his savings and borrowed against his pension and invested in a gym upstate, less than a mile from his house.”

  “I can just tell th
is is not going to be a happily-ever-after tale,” Dead-Eye said.

  “Bet your ass it’s not,” Boomer said, finishing off the protein shake with one long swallow. “In less than a year’s time, he was flat broke—on the balls of his ass, fighting three court cases, and there was a lien on his pension. All because of that damn gym he threw his money at.”

  “And this has what to do with you going into one and using a treadmill?” Dead-Eye asked.

  “The reason Augie found himself in such a hole is that one of the regulars in the gym sued his ass,” Boomer said. “Did a scream-and-shout that his right leg was all fucked-up because the treadmills in the place weren’t up to standards. Got himself one of those let-my-heart-bleed-for-you outfits to argue his case and a bent-eared judge to believe it, and there you have the sad tale.”

  “That the case, feel free to scratch it off your to-do list,” Dead-Eye said. “It was only a throw-out idea on my part, nothing more.”

  Boomer and Dead-Eye moved off the running track and slow-walked up a steep hill, the shade from the surrounding trees cooling the sweat on their backs and necks. They were both still on the safe side of forty, but they moved with the gait and groans of older men. Two ex-cops who had suffered too many wounds in too short a period of time. Boomer cleared the hill and sat on a park bench facing the touch-the-cloud coops that lined Central Park West, his hands resting flat on his legs. Dead-Eye stood, stretching out the kinks in his lower back, and looked down at his friend. “Don’t grow shy on me now, Boom,” he said with a hint of a smile.