Everyone in the room sat silently for the next several minutes taking in the information. Wolf then stood up indicating that the meeting had drawn to a close. Looking in Castillo’s direction, “you have a long couple of days ahead of you, and you need to start with those reports.”
Castillo was a bit confused regarding the long couple of days comment and looked to Inspector Talbot for clarification. Talbot, clearly sensing Castillo’s confusion “don’t worry Louie, I’ll fill you in.”
John Talbot was a rising star in the NYPD. At age forty-one, he was already a full Inspector, and assigned to what most would consider a choice position in the NYPD. As the Commanding Officer on the police department’s end of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, Talbot was on the fast track to becoming a chief. His position in the JTTF also gave him a federal security clearance a grade higher than the Police Commissioner of the NYPD had.
Talbot, along with Castillo stood up as Wolf exited the conference room followed by Balentine. Once the other two men had departed, Castillo looked up at Talbot, who stood six inches taller than Castillo. “Okay Inspector, why do I have a feeling that I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me?”
“Have a seat, Louie.”
Castillo reluctantly sat back down. Talbot removed his beige suit jacket and put it on the back of the chair before taking the seat next to Castillo. Once the room had cleared out of all of the other agents who had attended the meeting, Talbot began to explain. “Louie, we’ve been in almost hourly contact with the German police since you left Germany. It seems that the German police were giving the prisoner a bit of a hard time.”
Castillo studied his supervisor’s light brown eyes, trying to get a sense of where the conversation was headed. Castillo narrowed his eyes just a bit and tilted his head. “Okay, so what does that have to do with me?”
Talbot loosened the light brown tie from around his neck, undoing the top button thereafter. “What this guy told you has been run up the ladder—all the way to Washington. Everyone seems to be in agreement that this has to be considered a live threat, especially given the fact that there’s six hundred unaccounted for pounds of explosives out there.” Talbot shook his head. “New York and California, plus an unknown third location; if this information is accurate…” Talbot never bothered to finish the sentence as the implications were stronger than the spoken word in this instance. “Everyone has to do their part to make sure this doesn’t happen. It may be just a rumor, but we can’t take that chance.”
Castillo offered a smile. “Inspector, this is me you’re talking to. No need for the hard sell. You know that I’ll do anything that the job…and my country need me to do.” He paused momentarily before continuing. “Just tell me what my part in this is. That’s all that I ask.”
“Like I said, the German police haven’t exactly treated this guy too well since you guys left. He’s totally shut down on them. We need more information if it’s at all possible to extract from him. Washington’s position is that you and Balentine have already established a rapport with him, maybe seeing a friendly face—or at least one who hasn’t been beating on him, will help persuade him to talk. Balentine is going to stay behind and work directly with Deputy Director Wolf in case Washington has any questions that need to be answered about your interrogation. We’ve already squared things away with the German police. They’ve agreed to let you run the interrogation as long as they can sit in on it. I guess they want to make sure that we’re not trying to withhold any information from them.”
A quick range of emotions ran through Castillo’s head. He certainly didn’t want to go on another long trip, but at the same time, he was honored to have the top brass of the nation’s security look to him for help. In his mind, he felt that the trip would be a waste of time. He believed that he had already extracted as much information as the prisoner knew.
“Inspector, I’m speechless. Are you telling me that they’d rather send an NYPD detective rather than let the CIA take a shot at the guy?”
“Looks like you’ve made the big leagues, Louie,” retorted Talbot as he stood up and grabbed his jacket from the chair. “You’d better get busy transcribing the interrogation. Our flight leaves at five am.”
Castillo let out a sigh. “Our flight? Wait…did you say five am?” He shook his head. “Please tell me you’re kidding me, boss.”
“I wish I was, Louie. I wish I was.”
Castillo took off his glasses and set them on the desk in front of him as Inspector Talbot left him alone in the conference room. Castillo rubbed his eyes and momentarily put his head down on the desk. Castillo knew that the hardest part of the next two days would be happening right now. He picked up the phone which was affixed to the desk in front of him and dialed a number.
“Hi Sharon, remember when I said that I’d be home in a couple of hours…”
*
Timothy Keegan and his partner for the night, Andre Thomas, had walked their foot posts on Linden Boulevard nearly a dozen times during the four hours since they’d been dropped off. They each had their department radio blaring, for fear of missing a radio run on their post. It was a busy Friday night in the Six-Seven, and the radio was in a backlog. They were holding seventeen jobs waiting to be assigned, but there was nothing that Keegan or Thomas could do to help out, as they were on foot posts nowhere near where the jobs were.
The two officers continued to walk their beat looking to write their first ever parking summonses or maybe even make their first ever collar. The efforts had met with no luck right up until their meal hour which began at 2200 hours. At ten pm, and with the precinct still in a backlog, getting a ride back to the stationhouse for meal was out of the question. Sergeant Galvin had given the specific orders not to bother the sector cars for a ride if they were holding jobs in the precinct.
While Keegan was not a fan of fast food, with little other options, he and Thomas walked to a nearby fast food restaurant on Utica Avenue. The restaurant was about halfway full; mostly teenagers and some couples. The staff was similar to what Keegan figured most fast food chain restaurants would have working for them—teenagers and college students. Keegan glanced down at the white tiled floors, which in his opinion, was long overdue for a good mopping. They ordered their food and sat down at a booth looking out onto the drive thru window line. Keegan couldn’t believe the length of the line to eat what he considered less than desirable food.
As the two men ate their meals and shared stories of their academy days, Keegan glanced out of the window; the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood up. He pushed aside his fries and urgently grabbed for his memo book. “Holy shit, Andre! Read me off the license plate number of the green Lexus on the drive through window.”
Keegan’s heart began to pound as he compared the numbers Andre Thomas read to him to the one’s he’d written down in his memobook a day earlier. Keegan had recognized the plate number, and in his heart, he knew that it was the car taken in the gunpoint carjacking, but he wanted Thomas to read the plate number for verification.
Keegan shoved his food aside, grabbing his hat from the seat next to him as he began to explain. “That car was taken in a carjacking and it’s wanted for two other gunpoint robberies.”
Keegan began to run for the door with Thomas right behind him, although neither one knew exactly what they were going to do once they got outside. Keegan keyed his portable radio as he made his way towards the door, his voice cracking as he did so. “Six-Seven training post to central.”
*
Brooklyn’s sixty-seventh precinct was one of the busiest precincts in the city. It wasn’t unusual on such a hot summer night for the radio to be in a backlog of jobs. At the moment that Tim Keegan tried to make the first official radio transmission of his career, the precinct was currently holding over twenty radio runs waiting to be assigned. Seasoned officers had trouble getting through to the radio dispatcher at times on such nights. While rookies needed to learn how to become cops, they often s
ounded unnecessarily nervous on the radio. More often than not, the radio dispatcher would answer sector cars over the rookies when both were trying to transmit a message in an attempt to clear the screen of the pending jobs.
Tommy Galvin sat at the precinct desk entering an arrest in the command log when he heard one of his rookies trying to raise central. While he didn’t yet recognize his cop’s voices, he did note that the cop seemed to be nervous. Still, having been a cop for as long as Galvin had, he knew that many rookies sounded nervous until they became more comfortable speaking on the radio. To be on the safe side, Galvin grabbed his radio and tuned up the volume.
“Six-Seven training post to central!”
Galvin recognized the urgency in the cop’s voice and also noted that he sounded as if he was running. He quickly got up from the desk, snatched his radio and a set of car keys from the desk in front of him. Galvin jogged out to the parking lot as he then transmitted on the radio, “Six-Seven Training Sergeant to Central.” Before the dispatcher could acknowledge his transmission, Galvin continued. “See if one of my foot posts has an emergency message.”
*
Jamal Walters sat alone in the driver’s seat of the stolen Lexus. He’d taken the car at gunpoint less than a week ago and used it in the commission of several gunpoint robberies since. Walters, who had been paroled from prison six months earlier, had been robbing gas stations and fast food restaurants to sustain his heroin addiction.
As he sat on line of the drive through restaurant, Walters realized that his life had not been kind to him. He glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His bloodshot eyes and pocked marked face made him appear a lot older than his actual age of thirty-eight; his hair, nappy and unruly. Walters recognized that his life was once again spiraling out of control.
Up until two weeks ago, Walters hadn’t used heroin in seven years. The six to twelve year prison sentence for armed robbery had something to do with him getting clean, but still, he’d been proud of himself for avoiding temptation and staying clean once he’d been released—up until last Friday night anyway. A house party in Brownsville had taken his sobriety with one sniff from a two inch straw.
Walters looked down at the passenger seat. There were three envelopes of heroin and a hypodermic needle ready for use. On the floor were numerous empty envelopes which had fed his disease over the past five days and nights. Walters started to wonder if he would be able to pull himself out of the hole that he found himself sinking deeper into by the day. He knew that if he were to get caught, even just for possession of the heroin, he’d be going back to prison to serve the other five years which he owed to the state. If he got caught for the armed robberies, a life sentence was not out of the question. He decided that he wouldn’t go back to prison—no matter what the cost.
His life seemed worthless to him at this point. His wife and children had moved to South Carolina while he was in prison. They stopped writing to him years ago. The last correspondence that Walters had received from his wife was asking that upon his release from prison, that he leave the family alone. She requested a divorce which he agreed to; he even allowed another man to adopt his children.
There were still two cars ahead of Walters. He unfastened his seatbelt and stretched his legs out. He adjusted the nine millimeter handgun in his waistband to allow him access to the money in his front jeans pocket. He counted the money—nine dollars. This would be the last meal he’d be buying until he committed another robbery, he figured. He glanced back down at the heroin. At least his fix for tonight had already been procured.
Walters glanced up at the menu, contemplating his order, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw the two cops inside the restaurant. He noted that they got up from their seats and ran towards the door. Sensing the danger, Walters rammed the car in front of him as he tried to get off the line. His attempt had failed and interlocked the Lexus’ bumper with the SUV in front of him. With no other means of escape, Jamal Walters flung the door open and fled on foot.
*
When Timothy Keegan and Andre Thomas arrived at the drive through line they observed the driver side door of the Lexus wide open and the vehicle itself, pinned against an SUV. The driver of the SUV—a well dressed woman in her early thirties—pointed up Utica Avenue at the man fleeing on foot. Keegan and Thomas immediately set out on foot after the man, who had nearly a half block lead on them. As Keegan ran, he held his radio in his left hand and broadcast his first radio transmission. He continued to run as fast as he could but did not get a response from the dispatcher. He put the radio up to his mouth again when he heard Sergeant Galvin’s transmission; “Six-Seven training Sergeant to Central. See if one of my foot posts has an emergency message.”
Keegan responded; “Foot pursuit central! Male black, black t shirt, blue jeans shorts, white sneakers.” He tried to be as precise as he could by giving a detailed description of the male and his clothing. He put the radio back in its holder, confident that he’d given a clear description. Keegan ran as fast as he could and was making up quite a bit of ground. He was pulling away from his partner as quickly as he was gaining on the fleeing male.
Keegan had closed the gap to within about ten feet as the male made the corner of Church Avenue. It was apparent to Keegan that the male was starting to tire, and Keegan would have his hands on him in no time. What was not apparent to Keegan was that the man was reaching into his waistband for the nine millimeter as he reached the corner.
*
Sergeant Tommy Galvin repeatedly asked for the location of the foot pursuit with no response from the officer. Galvin was frustrated. With half of his footposts along Linden Boulevard, and the others along Nostrand Avenue, Galvin was forced to blindly choose which location to go in since the officer had failed to put a location over the air. As the two locations were in opposite directions, making the wrong decision could be costly.
Galvin’s heart was beating a bit faster as he raced towards Linden Boulevard. He picked up his radio to give direction to the cops in the field. “Central, show the training sergeant responding to the vicinity of Linden Boulevard to check on the footposts at that location. Have a sector respond to Nostrand Avenue to check on the footposts over there.”
“Six-Seven, Sector Adam, we’ll check the posts along Nostrand.”
Galvin could hear the sirens screaming in the background of the radio when anyone transmitted. As he got closer to Linden Boulevard, he could also hear them from the other responding units as well. When Galvin reached Linden, he saw two of his footposts holding their radios to their ears. He pulled up next to them and opened the window as they walked toward the location of Keegan and Thomas’s posts. “Where are the other two guys?”
Ken Williams was the first cop to respond. “We don’t know, Sarge. They just went to meal a little while ago.”
“Any idea where they were going for meal?”
“No, Sarge.”
Galvin shook his head. “Okay, get in. Let’s go find them.”
*
Jamal Walters had made a poor choice in his direction of flight. Had he fled on Linden Boulevard, there were many short residential blocks ahead where he could have fled into the backyards and hid from the police. Instead, however, he ran along Utica Avenue. The block—a very long one—was a commercial strip of attached storefronts. There was nowhere for Walters to hide. His only chance was to turn on to Church Avenue, but it seemed that his body was failing him. He could no longer run as quickly as he did in his youth, and he could hear the footsteps of the cop quickly closing in just as he reached the corner.
His life in shambles, and the almost certain return to a prison cell for a very long time as his destiny; Walters made a decision. He wouldn’t go back. He’d heard the term suicide by cop, and that was okay by him. He decided that the cop was going to catch him within a matter of moments so his only option for freedom would be to kill the cop. If he did and got away, that would be great. If the cop shot and killed him, that was also an ac
ceptable conclusion to what had become a tortured existence.
Walters, almost out of breath, slowed down just a bit. A feeling of calmness came over him as he was accepting of his fate, regardless of the outcome. He reached into his waistband and firmly gripped the handgun. He turned to face the oncoming cop, leveled the nine millimeter at the cops face and calmly pulled the trigger.
*
Timothy Keegan was probably in the best shape of his life. Utica Avenue was a long block and gave Keegan the ample that he needed to close the distance between the two of them. Keegan realized that he was now too close for the man to hide from him in any backyards once he had turned the next corner. While the chase was not over just yet, Keegan felt a sense of satisfaction as he believed his first arrest was imminent.
That feeling quickly vanished, as one of sheer terror took over, when the man spun around on Keegan with a gun in his hand. Keegan’s jaw suddenly tensed up; sensing the danger. There was little time to do anything more than react. The gun was brought directly up to Keegan’s eye level. Keegan shielded his face with his left arm and continued his charge.
Legacy and Redemption Page 5
