And as fast as it had begun, the wild drive was over. The lights and sirens were extinguished and the black-and-white’s roll was reduced to a crawl. Once again the air filled with the sounds of distant fireworks. As Lucky negotiated a right turn onto Laurel, the radio-car’s windows filled with a forbidding stretch of real estate. The federal housing project otherwise known as the New Wilmington Gardens.
Under daylight hours, the NWG, as it was sometimes called, could have been mistaken for any other apartment complex occupying ten suburban acres. Plain. Unremarkable. The five two-story buildings were faced with taupe rough stucco. Apartments sported small balconies or patios; most of the upstairs units were outfitted with small dishes for satellite TV. On first glance, the locale appeared a rather decent place to live, especially when compared to similar classes of residences in a city as economically depressed as Compton.
Then came night when what looked palatable by day would morph into an unwelcome specter. The landscape bore little to no lighting but for what bled from the mostly shaded apartment windows.
The buildings appeared ghostly, unwelcome, and purposefully removed from the sidewalk. The perimeter of the property was defended by a ten-foot wrought iron fence ornamented with spiked finials—a first defense against intruders.
The cinematic nature of the moment was unmissed by Atom Blum, his eyeballs acting as a 3D camera logging the visuals into his organic memory.
“Damn,” he said aloud. “What’s this place?”
“Housing project,” answered Shia.
She had only heard about the New Wilmington Gardens. It was famous amongst sheriffs working South Los Angeles County and often referenced during Academy classes dealing with gangs and rivalries. At the start the new century, the NWG had served as backdrop for countless shootouts over turf and dominance in South Compton. Despite having never lain eyes on the property, Shia couldn’t help but feel as if she knew it front to back. Or rather, inch by bloody inch.
“They added a guard booth?” she remarked as if in the middle of a conversation.
“Been here?” asked Lucky.
“Nope.” Shia let her eyes fall on the complex’s best-illuminated feature, a reinforced sliding gate with an armed guard occupying the hut. “Feel like I know it after all the stories. Academy, you know? Last thing I heard is it’s just a den. Users only. Nobody grinds over it no more… Kinda makes you wonder what the guard booth’s for.”
“Lookin’ for a lady with a pink whistle. All we’re here for,” reminded Lucky.
Lucky nosed the black-and-white into the narrow chute for entering vehicles. If there was any question to the make, model, or affiliation of the Sheriff’s radio unit, all mystery was vanquished under flood lamps serving as an early warning for residents with a view.
“Mystery solved,” mock-called Shia, her voice dipping a full octave lower into a mocking, ghetto mode. “The Po-Po be in da house.”
With barely a nod from the uniformed gate guard, semi-obscured behind a tinted, inch-thick pane of bullet-resistant laminate, the gate rattled open.
“There some kinda spooky story that goes with this place?” asked Atom.
“Yeah and it goes like this,” warned Lucky. “Whatever happens, stay the hell in the car.”
“Like what’s gonna happen?” Atom’s face was the picture of anticipation, pressed up against the rear passenger window like that of an eight-year-old boy only steps from his first run at Disneyland.
“Nothing’s gonna happen,” replied Lucky. “I’m gonna talk to a lady with a whistle. Then we ease out the way we came in.”
As the black-and-white crept down the single, snaking drive which divided the complex, Atom was noting cellphone lights igniting on and behind about half the balconies and windows.
“Jeeeezus,” said the director. “Who they all calling?”
“Lookouts warning the dealers,” answered Shia.
The first sixty yards of driveway was an easy hook to the right around the northernmost building, sixteen units upstairs and down. Next, the blacktop path arced back left before emptying east into a generous parking lot surrounded by a trifecta of buildings. The units faced each other in a horseshoe shape.
“Behind us,” eased Shia off her glance into her side mirror.
Lucky checked his rearview. A young male in a black hoodie was trailing them, performing lazy s-curves on a bright neon yellow bicycle thirty yards to the black-and-white’s rear.
The parking lot came into view. What Lucky saw there didn’t make him instantly tap the brakes, but he did remove his foot from the accelerator in hopes that the slowed crawl of the vehicle would sync up with the hyper calculations his brain was crunching.
“What the hell is that supposed to be?” asked Atom.
Lucky didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t know. He just wanted the next words that passed his lips to be direct, understood in their urgency, and followed to perfection. Otherwise, he, his still-wet trainee, and their ride-along were all about to be very dead.
34
For the record, Frosty had thought it was a bad idea. Not that he’d voiced an actual protest or assembled some kind of written or recorded document to later prove his official dissent. His only option had been to make a mental deposit into his own private complaint box.
Below him, what had begun as poor judgment on Julius’s part was about to turn into a train wreck—an irreconcilable error with consequences beyond normal comprehension. Yet there Frosty lay on the tar and paper rooftop of what NWG residents and frequenters called The Trip—or less confusing, Building Number 3. Frosty was prone beside a Chinese-built AK-47 rifle, peering down over the bracket of apartment buildings that flanked the parking lot.
His orders from Julius were simple enough. As that tattooed Reaper was lured into the New Wilmington Gardens, assassinate him with a pair of clean gunshots to the head. The boss’s rationale was plain. Any cop who ventured into the NWG knew the risk and that he would be making himself into a target. Nobody would question motive. As far as residents were concerned, cops were the enemy of everything—from the simple sale of narcotics to the survival of young black men from sea to shining sea. Whatever investigation followed was sure to turn cold from sheer lack of witnesses. That’s because nobody inside the NWG was dumb enough to talk to the authorities, let alone have the gonads to testify in the white man’s court.
But kill a cop? What biz interest would that be for?
Had Frosty asked Julius, he was sure as hell certain Julius wouldn’t bother with an answer. So Frosty shifted his thinking to his own plans: a plot of property below some power lines; a below-market lease from Julius’s connections with the Department of Water Power; and all the time in the world to watch his garden grow. The greenery. The trees.
Julius got his plan. An’ I got mine.
Frosty’s aspirations were directly linked to his following through for the boss. And if that meant whipping a mean-hot bullet through the melon of one tattooed sheriff’s deputy?
So be it. And whatever calamity comes with.
Calamity was a good word. For Frosty it had biblical-like connotations. Someone with military knowhow might have called what was forming below Frosty something even more descriptive. A clusterfuck. Were the murder plot to unfold as Julius pictured it, the black-and-white bearing the former Lennox Reaper would nose up to the building opposite Frosty. The target would step out and—pop pop—a pair of high-velocity hollow-points would greet the Reaper’s skull and he’d drop like a bag of planting soil.
Frosty preferred to make his own murder plans. If a homie needed to get smoked, then he was good for it. As long as things went down his way and on his schedule. But for some unknown reason, Julius was prepared to force whatever issue he had with the Reaper. And Frosty was the assigned hammer for the job.
An ocean breeze kicked up from the west. The spent sulfur from all the illegal fireworks unleashed over the skies of Carson and Torrance crossed Frosty’s nostrils. The sneeze the st
ink summoned was quietly relieved into the crook of the gunman’s arm before he returned his eyes to the problem below.
Crips on fuckin’ Crips.
Some kind of post-midnight summit was in full bloom. The NWG parking lot was crammed with bangin’ rides and the bad boys who rode them. Hummers to refurbished Impalas and just about every model of over-waxed ghetto buggy in between. It was no car show. It was a gathering of, by Frosty’s best guess, the Wilmington Blocc Crips and from North Long Beach, some ten Ghost City Crips, rival sets engaged in some kind of illicit exchange of weapons or drugs. Centered amongst the vehicles were a spanked-up BMW and a Plymouth Road Runner, trunk lids open as the final points of the deal were brokered.
Frosty’s cellphone buzzed with a text from Lil Rod.
5-0 + 2
The plus two informed Frosty that there were two additional deputy sheriffs with the five-oh—the Reaper in the black-and-white.
“Shit,” breathed Frosty before inching forward on the rooftop and shouldering the AK-47. Using his left elbow like a monopod, he tilted the muzzle downward and sighted in on the scene below.
Wonder if this is how that Oswald biz-natch felt before he popped that black man’s homie, JFK?
During a six-month sting in juvenile detention, Frosty had attempted to read a book on the Kennedy assassination. The politics failed to kindle much interest. He did, though, enjoy the descriptions of the killing itself. By his measure, Oswald’s angle from the Texas School Book Depository’s sixth-floor window wasn’t much harder than the shot he was about to pull off.
In his periphery, Frosty read the headlights of the black-and-white. The car was slowing, most certainly because whoever was behind the wheel had just caught a couple of eyeballs full of gansta bling. Dead below, those Crip-blue skullies turned their unified faces in the intruder’s direction. Frosty tensed, realizing that not only was Julius’s plan about to unravel, but the Reaper in the black-and-white might never even enter Frosty’s kill-zone.
Click! Without thinking, Frosty’s right index flicked off the safety selector and returned to the trigger guard. He shimmied twenty-five degrees right in hopes of improving his aspect. If providence had anything to do with anything, Frosty would get his shots off before all hell broke loose.
He pressed his cheek to the stock and aimed his dominant right eye down the barrel. The sight picture was plain and, in the mass of car headlights, easily illuminated. Of the three occupants in the car, the Reaper was an easy spot. Julius’s description had been simple. White. Buzzed head. Crooked nose. Seated next to the target was a female deputy with black features. The figure in the rear seat was hardest to make out. The best Frosty could clock was a white man with sandy hair.
Sights on da tat-man.
Frosty’s index finger caressed the trigger’s flat curved edge. Then came a smooth, cleansing breath followed by an even slower release. When he felt most of the air had evacuated from his lungs, he was at his most still. All that was left was for him to gently pull on the trigger until the release surprised him. The firing pin struck the primer of the 7.62 mm cartridge. The rifle bucked. And away the bullet spun.
Before he’d fully braked the black-and-white, Lucky was beginning the first move of his planned, three-point-turn. He smiled and waved out the open window in an attempt to appeal to the nearest Crips, letting them know with a simple gesture that no harm was intended. Clearly, Lucky and his crew had stumbled on to some kind of transaction where a lone black-and-white was wholly unwelcome and completely vulnerable.
Shia, eyes scanning from one Crip blue identifier to the next, recognized the rules had changed.
“Just turning around,” announced Lucky, loud enough for any ears within fifty feet of the radio unit to hear. Through the windshield, he clocked four Crips within stoning distance, their lower bodies blocked behind the open doors of their shiny ghetto rides, each ostensibly concealing a weapon that was surely cocked and ready to rock.
Meanwhile, as Lucky clicked the branch shifter into reverse, he coolly freed both his out-of-policy SIG .45s, placing the service pistol onto his lap and tucking the ankle piece’s muzzle under his left thigh. Shia followed with her own 9mm, revealing visible shudders as she gripped it with both hands and held it between her knees.
“Hey back there,” rapped Lucky on the screen. “Need you to promise me something. No matter what happens, get on the floor and do not—AND I MEAN DO NOT—leave the vehicle. Am I understood?”
“What the hell’s going on?” pressed Atom.
“Shut the fuck up and tell me you heard my instructions!” said Lucky.
“Yeah yeah, sure,” responded the boy wonder, utterly clueless about the depth of danger. “But what—”
The first bullet soared through the open driver’s window and punched a hole through the top of Lucky’s left trapezius, two and a quarter inches above his Kevlar vest and missing his jugular by three. The projectile then spiraled downward, somewhat slowed, and splintered the plastic from the screen before punching like a heavyweight’s fist into Atom Blum’s store-bought body armor. The slug failed to penetrate, but it landed like a mule kick.
Lucky pressed on the accelerator, sending the black-and-white spinning onto the sunburnt patch of grass. Simultaneously, with his right hand, he raised his pistol, aimed it through the front windshield, and unleashed five quick self-defense shots in the direction of the nearest Crips. The windshield spider-webbed with each successive trigger pull.
The Crips, in unified resistance, dove for cover or brandished weapons and returned an undisciplined spray of fire. In typical gang reply, they shot in retreat and without regard for conserving ammunition. Thus, the tremendous volley of hot lead smacked everything from Building 5 to palm trees to satellite dishes and on occasion, the sheriff’s radio unit. The skin of the vehicle sounded with a loud metallic pung with each bullet strike.
Shia found herself shoved down onto the car seat by Lucky. Her right hand found her radio key and, without having to think about it, she began broadcasting.
“SHOTS FIRED, SHOTS FIRED!” she radioed. “UNIT 780—NEW WILMINGTON GARDENS—OFFICERS NEED ASSISTANCE!”
As her fingers continued depressing the mic, the overwhelming staccato sounds of gunfire were making it out over the radio waves to every deputy tuned to the channel.
“Shotgun!” barked Lucky.
With her face hovering over the electronic switches, she keyed the quick two-finger unlock code. Behind her, the shotgun released and fell into Lucky’s hands. He wasted no time jamming the barrel through a hole in the windshield, jacking out the dummy round, and while steering forward with his left hand, pulling the trigger on the first round of buckshot. The shotgun roared at the crowd of Crips huddled around their cars.
“PUMP ME!” ordered Lucky.
Shia reached upwards, gripped the shotgun’s fore-stock, slid it forward to jack out the spent shell, then reversed directions to re-arm the chamber. BOOM! The shotgun spoke once more.
“I’M HIT, I’M HIT!” Atom was screaming from the rear bench.
“Just stay down!” Lucky barked.
From Frosty’s perspective, it was as if his single rifle shot had sparked a Fourth of July conflagration like none other. Below him, hell had been unleashed in the form of trading gunfire. The Reaper, who he’d barely missed with his one and only trigger pull, had been quick to return fire at an already electrified gathering of gangbangers. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the parking lot had erupted. Each and every paranoia-infected member of those ready-to-rumble Crips had filled his hands with a weapon and begun blasting in the direction of the retreating black-and-white. Seconds seemed like eons—the air full of sparks, exploding stucco dust and flying safety glass. Some spinning shards carried far enough to bite Frosty’s cheek.
The black-and-white reversed direction. Its rear wheels spun on the soft sod before gaining traction and wheeling into a left to right arc across a phalanx of firing Crips. Out of the corner of his eye, F
rosty caught a glimpse of Lil Rod abandoning his neon yellow bike for cover behind a children’s swing-set and playhouse.
Jeeeeezus.
They’re all dead, decided Frosty. Julius’s bad idea had just turned into something irreversibly calamitous. The Frostman was witnessing at least a dozen or more Crips assassinating a car full of deputies.
A mother-fucking Fourth of July massacre.
“No no no,” said Frosty at the noise below, his voice soft as a whisper.
One cop killed inside the New Wilmington Gardens was maybe worth two or three nights on the local news. A black-and-white full, cut up by two entire gang sets? That was full-on CNN. Or a wall-to-wall Fox News event. Frosty knew because his dear Gran’nana lived her nearly every non-church-going hour tuned to one of the three twenty-four hour cable news networks. Both his mind and eyes flicked to the windows overlooking the debacle. Camera phones were sure to be turned on, recording the massacre in grainy video, only minutes from an upload to the Internet.
Time to bounce.
Frosty rolled away from the roof’s edge, found his feet and a scrambling exit. He needed to be gone—and fast—and witnessed far away from the bloodbath, with the AK-47 hidden away until it could be properly destroyed.
Shia had heard stories from cops who had survived gunfights. She recalled a lecture at the Academy from a beefy, charming, former deputy named Robert Rangel, who after being shot and nearly killed, had written a book, The Red Dot Club, on the subject. Amidst his own terrifying recollection he’d included accounts from other surviving cops—both Sheriffs and LAPD. One of the common denominators that bound the tales was how each survivor’s memories couldn’t help but replay the scenes in the slowest of slow motions. Five seconds of flying bullets somehow morphed into hours of mental playback.
Such was Shia’s horrifying experience.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 80
