by Brad Thor
CHAPTER 15
CHICAGO
FRIDAY
When John Vaughan met Paul Davidson at a health food restaurant under the “L” tracks in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, he thought he had the wrong guy. Davidson was a barrel-chested man in his late forties who looked more like a narcotics officer or a Hell’s Angel than a cop from Public Vehicles. He had long hair pulled back in a ponytail, a goatee, and even an earring.
Vaughan, who had dropped off his daughter at school and bypassed the Starbucks in order to get to this meeting on time, hadn’t been expecting this.
“We’ve only got one type of coffee,” said the waitress after he had joined Davidson at the table. “But I’ve got tons of teas. I can bring over the box if you want to choose.”
“No thanks,” said Vaughan. “Just coffee, please.”
“Anything to eat?”
“Their turkey sausage is off the hook,” replied Davidson.
Vaughan shook his head. He hated health food.
Davidson rattled off an order that sounded like it was straight from a craft services table for some Hollywood movie. Vegan this and tofu that. It was disgusting.
“Why do you eat that stuff?” asked Vaughan.
“Because I’m too stubborn to go on Lipitor.”
“I’d rather take a bullet.”
“No you wouldn’t. Trust me. It’s not fun.”
“You’ve been shot?” asked Vaughan.
“I didn’t move to the Public Vehicles Division for the action.”
“When did it happen?”
“Four years ago. I was a patrol officer. My partner and I were doing a traffic stop. Some thug pulled a gun, and my partner and I both got capped. I took it through the shoulder and my partner got a round in the leg. I shot the offender in the head and killed him.”
“So you decided to hang it up being a patrol officer?”
“No. My wife decided. No mas patrol.”
“How did you wind up at Public Vehicles?” asked Vaughan.
“Due to my heroism and valor, blah, blah, blah, the department let me have my pick. There was a slot at Public Vehicles and the rest is home-by-six-every-night history.”
Vaughan was amazed by how the man downplayed what had happened. “Is your partner still a patrol officer?”
Davidson laughed. “He is and he’s been shot two more times since then. I’m glad I got away from him. The guy’s a bullet magnet.”
Vaughan laughed. “Listen, I’m sorry again for bothering you on vacation.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll let you pay for breakfast and we’ll call it even.”
“I was going to offer to pay anyway.”
“In that case, I’ll think of something else.”
Wiseass, thought Vaughan. “You’ve already got something for me?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I only called you the day before yesterday.”
“I can hold on to it for a day or two if it’d make you appreciate it more.”
“No. What have you got?”
Davidson pulled a blue notebook from his jacket pocket and set it on the table. “Are you familiar with how the cab system works in Chicago? I don’t want to bore you with a bunch of stuff you already know.”
“I know the basics. You’ve got the actual cab owner who purchases a license to operate from the city office of Consumer Services. It’s also called a medallion. You can’t legally operate a cab without one. Usually, the medallions are worth more than the cabs themselves.”
“Correct.”
“Each cab is required to have a meter. The meter is turned on when a fare gets in. The meter has set rates, et cetera.”
“Exactly. Drivers then lease the cab for a short period of time from the owner. The most common lease is for a week for about six hundred bucks. Owners, whether it’s a small-time guy with a handful of cabs or a big conglomerate like Yellow, also do weekend leases for about two hundred bucks if they’ve got extra vehicles sitting around not making them any money. That’s the surface material. When it starts to get interesting is when you get beneath that.
“Like gas stations and mini-marts, cabs are a popular entry job for immigrants. In Chicago, the taxi subculture is composed of three predominant cartels: the Middle Easterners, the Pakistanis, and the East Africans.”
“What about the Russians?” asked Vaughan.
“The Russians and Eastern Europeans own a lot of cabs, but I’m talking about drivers. The Eastern Europeans are more into the limo business.”
“You know all of this from being in Public Vehicles?”
“I know it because I have initiative. Public Vehicles may be a safe place to work, but it’s frickin’ boring. After a year of wanting to put a gun in my mouth, and I’m kidding by the way, I decided to get out on the street. I got my sergeant to approve a sting operation I wanted to run on gypsy cabs at the airport. I was busting these guys left, right, and center. You should have seen it. I’d pop the glove box and they’d have ten grand in cash and a stack of food stamps. It really pissed me off.
“I wanted to learn more, so I started building a network of informants. When I caught a guy I thought could be useful, I’d let him go.”
“Which meant he owed you.”
“That’s right,” said Davidson. “I started visiting the pool parking lot where they all wait and got to know as many drivers as I could. I became friendly with a lot of them and learned what restaurants they hung out at and started eating in those places and so on and so forth. What really surprised me was that nobody was doing this. Not the CPD, not the FBI, nobody. I mean before 9/11 I could understand them overlooking these guys, but not doing it afterward was nuts. Nevertheless, that’s the way it was and still is. I’m it.”
“How does this play into Alison Taylor’s case?”
“I put the word out to all of my informants. I wanted to know if they’d heard of anything that fit with our case. Was anyone suddenly out sick? Was anyone suddenly remorseful or guilty? That kind of stuff.
“I pumped my contacts at the cab restaurants, the roach coaches, the hummus stands, the hookah bars; everywhere. I even spent the last two nights cruising the neighborhoods most of these guys live in, looking for cabs with damage.”
“How’d you do?”
“I struck out,” replied Davidson. “I didn’t get anything.”
“So?”
“So I reached out to another driver I know. He’s not a regular informant, but I let him slide on something a ways back and he owed me.
“I wanted to put myself in the shoes of the guy we’re looking for, so I called him up and laid out the scenario for him. I asked if he had been involved in a hit-and-run, what would be going through his mind.”
“I would assume, getting caught by the cops,” said Vaughan.
Davidson shook his head. “Not quite. According to this driver, he’d be more afraid of his owner learning that the cab had been in an accident.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup. And to prevent the owner from finding out, the guy we’re looking for would need to get the cab repaired as quickly as possible. Enter the Triple P.”
“What’s the Triple P?”
“Piss, paint, and pray,” replied Davidson, as the waitress set his breakfast down on the table. “It’s an under-the-radar taxicab mechanic and body shop. They’re all over the city and fix damaged cabs while drivers wait. And they’re fast too. The Muslim ones have little prayer rooms in them and the joke is that as soon as you’ve taken a piss and said your prayers, the paint on your cab would be just about dry.”
Vaughan was fascinated.
“If you’re a Middle Eastern driver, you go to one of the Triple P’s owned and run by a Middle Easterner. If you’re Pakistani, you go to a Pakistani operation. If you’re East African, you go to an East African one, yada, yada, yada.”
“How come I haven’t heard about these places before?”
“Like I said, they’re un
der the radar. They operate around the clock, only deal in cash, and don’t advertise. They do business only within their own ethnic group.”
“And you think the driver who hit Alison Taylor used one of these body shops to repair the damage to his cab?”
“According to my source, there was a Pakistani driver who brought his vehicle into a particular shop on the night in question. He was shaken up and was dumb enough to blab about clipping some woman. He wanted to get his cab repaired as soon as possible and was willing to pay extra for it.”
“This is fantastic,” said Vaughan. “When can we pay a visit to the shop?”
“Right after we’re done with breakfast.”
CHAPTER 16
They left Vaughan’s Crown Vic at the restaurant and drove Davidson’s Bronco to the Crescent Garage and Body Shop. Outside, several cabs were double-parked along the street. Men dressed in the traditional salwar kameez—long, cotton tunics over loose-fitting trousers that stop just above the ankles—stood in front talking. Many had long beards without mustaches and almost all of them were wearing sandals. Vaughan couldn’t tell if he was in Chicago or Karachi.
As the two police officers walked up, the men ceased their conversations and stared at them. Davidson had purposely left his jacket in his truck and all eyes fell to the shield clipped to his belt and the large pistol he wore on his hip. For his part, Vaughan didn’t flash anything. He didn’t need to. They all could tell he was also a cop.
With the overhead door down, they accessed the garage via a standard entrance next to it. There were four hydraulic lifts: two on each side. In the far corner was a makeshift painting bay. Tool chests lined the walls and there were fenders, bumpers, mirrors, body panels, and other parts stacked everywhere. At the far end, another overhead door led to a small lot crammed with beat-up taxis out back. The garage was lit with sputtering fluorescents hung from the ceiling.
The first thing Davidson noticed when he walked in was a man attaching a medallion to the hood of a freshly painted taxicab. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
If there was one thing Davidson had learned from dealing with the cab communities it was that their cultures only respected strength. If you showed any weakness whatsoever, you were screwed. You had to get in their face from the get-go, project power, and never let them forget who was in charge.
All of them came from countries where the police were famous for abusing their power. They carried with them a deeply ingrained fear of law enforcement that Davidson used to his advantage. It wasn’t any different from how he handled the inner-city thugs he’d been dealing with his whole career as a cop.
“Are you deaf?” he said. “I asked you what you’re doing with that medallion?”
“Nothing,” replied the mechanic as he stepped away from the cab and set his drill down.
“It doesn’t look like nothing to me.” Turning to Vaughan he said, “Get his name, his ID, all of his information.”
“Why?” asked the mechanic.
“Why? You know damn well that only the office of Consumer Services can touch a taxi medallion. You’re in a lot of trouble.”
The mechanic was about to speak when an old man with a long gray beard came out of the office yelling in Urdu. He was followed by another man who looked to be in his late twenties.
“Who’s in charge here?” demanded Davidson.
The old man walked up to him, still yelling in Urdu until the younger man put a hand on his arm and pulled him back.
“My father doesn’t speak English,” said the younger Pakistani man.
“That’s okay,” replied Davidson. “I’m sure the court will provide an interpreter for him.”
“The court? What are you talking about?”
“What’s your name?”
“I am Jamal and this is my father, Fahad Bashir. I still don’t understand what you are talking about, though.”
“I’m talking about four cabs double-parked outside,” said Davidson as he wrote down the two men’s names. “I’m talking about your mechanic over here affixing a city of Chicago medallion to the hood of that cab. And that’s just for starters. Tell your father he can send all of his employees home. He can tell the customers to beat it too. You’re going to be closed down.”
“Closed down? Sir, please. There must be something we can do. We can’t afford to be closed down.”
“Well, you should have thought of that before you helped cover up a hit-and-run accident.”
“Cover up?”
Jamal’s English was perfect, and Davidson figured he was probably first-generation American. “When you help destroy evidence of a crime, we call that a cover-up.”
“What crime? Sir, please. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Though he had all of the details committed to memory, Davidson flipped back several pages in his notebook and recounted the facts. “On Friday, June 9, in the early morning hours, a Yellow taxicab was involved in a hit-and-run accident. Shortly thereafter, the cab was brought here for repairs. You fixed it.”
“We fix many cabs that have been in accidents. That’s what we do.” The young man stopped and translated for his father, who was demanding to be filled in.
After communicating briefly with his father, Jamal turned back to Davidson. “We don’t ask our customers how their damage happened. We simply repair the vehicles. Even if a customer told us how the damage had been committed, why would we suspect that they had not done the right thing and alerted the police?”
“I don’t like being messed with,” said Davidson, bypassing the young man’s excellent point. “We’ll hash this out in court. In the meantime, you’re going to be shut down.”
The older Pakistani man said something to his son and gestured toward the office area.
Vaughan came back from collecting the mechanic’s personal information and stood next to Davidson.
“We keep very good records,” stated Jamal. “My father doesn’t want any trouble. If you come to the office with me, we’ll see what we can do.”
The old man bowed his head and gestured toward the office, encouraging the policemen to follow his son.
The office reminded Vaughan of many he had seen while in Iraq. There were prayer rugs in the corner and the walls were relatively unadorned save for a Pakistani airline calendar that looked as if it was ten years out of date. He looked up at the stained acoustic ceiling tiles above the room’s three desks and figured it had to suck being in here when it rained. In fact it probably sucked being here at any time. He could only imagine the toxic mold that was growing up in the ceiling.
Jamal was looking through a filing cabinet when his father returned with three mugs and a small dish of sweets. Vaughan didn’t have to look inside the cups to know what was being served—tea.
The old man gestured to a threadbare couch fronted by a nicked-up coffee table and two mismatched chairs. Davidson nodded for Vaughan to sit down. Both of the officers knew that nothing got done in the Muslim world without tea.
As Jamal continued to look through his files, the other men sat and took tea.
Finally, the young man said, “I can’t find it.”
“Can’t find what?” replied Davidson, the tone of his voice indicating that he wasn’t happy.
“Our logbook. We keep one with all of the details of the repairs we do. I can’t find it.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious,” said Jamal, who then spoke several words to his father. Once the old man responded, Jamal pointed at one of the desks and said, “The other man who works here. He keeps the logbook.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ali Masud.”
Davidson wrote it down. “Where is he now?”
Jamal shrugged.
“Do you have a phone number for him?”
“Yes.”
“Call him.”
The young man removed his cell phone and dialed. Moments later, he began speaking. He chatted for l
ess than a minute and then hung up.
Davidson looked at him. “So? Does he have the logbook?”
Jamal put his palms up and smiled. His head bobbed as if he had just been given the answer to a profound riddle. “Ali Masud took the logbook home with him last night.”
“And?”
“And he’s coming in to work in about three hours and will bring the book back.”
Davidson stood and said, “Then we’ll be back in two, and if that book isn’t here, I’m not only going to have you closed down, I’m going to arrest you and your father for obstruction of justice. Is that clear?”
Jamal nodded as Vaughan stood, and the two officers left the garage.
Out on the sidewalk Davidson asked, “What do you think?”
“I think he’s lying.”
“I do too.”
“So what do we do?”
Davidson fished his keys out of his pocket as they approached the Bronco. “We give him the two hours and if he dicks us around, we go to plan B.”
“What’s plan B?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
CHAPTER 17
At the appointed hour, Vaughan and Davidson returned to the Crescent Garage and Body Shop and were shown into the office. Jamal sat behind one of the desks with a red spiral notebook in front of him. Sitting on the couch were his father and another Pakistani man who they assumed was Ali Masud. Jamal never bothered to introduce him.
“Is that it?” said Davidson as he approached the desk.
“As promised.”
Davidson flipped open the cover to the first page and noticed that it was damp. “What happened?”
“Ali Masud regrettably spilled some tea on it. You can still read all the information.”
Davidson’s BS detector was fast approaching the red zone. Quietly, he turned the moist pages. The handwriting was meticulous and listed each cab number, the date, what work was done, and the dollar amount. “This is your handwriting?” he asked the man sitting next to the old man on the couch.
“It’s his,” answered Jamal.
“Am I talking to you?” asked Davidson.
