Jason stares, reading for the threat all cops feel with forced partnerships, then asks the butched-up Officer Lopez: “What’s your name, dear?”
Officer Lopez drops her chin. “It ain’t dear.”
“Oh.” Jason smiles, but without his normal mirth. “Let’s start over. Do you ah, fuck boys or girls? Ma’am?”
Lopez’s brown skin reddens. From the fender, the five-foot-six Officer Hahn says, “We fuck bun-boys. In weightlifter shirts and MTV pants.”
Jason looks at his shirt and pants.
Pedigree or not, Officer Hahn doesn’t want to start a fistfight with Jason Cowin. Throw on Jason first and your skirt won’t matter till you get to the hospital. I chin at her bruises, hoping to ease her back a bit. “Fighting with the milkman?”
Her eyes cut to mine, steady, silent.
I can’t help but smile; she has a bit of presence she probably earned; might even live through the whole day. “You don’t say much; been on the job long?”
“Nineteen.”
Nineteen means Officer Hahn would’ve gone through the academy the same year that ghetto legend Patti Black and I did. “Which class? A, B …?”
“With Tom Duncan and Sister Rose.”
“Julietta Rose? Father Dave’s little sister?”
Officer Hahn nods.
My stomach sinks. “How Julietta doing? Haven’t seen her. She went FBI right out of the academy.”
FBI hangs like a bomb. Eight sets of eyes bore in on Hahn.
I watch Lopez’s reaction, then back to Officer Hahn. “Where were you ladies before 12?”
Hahn makes a G with her left hand.
Six groans, one silence (our sergeant), and me: “You’re FBI?”
“Was, went with Julietta. Then with the DEA in ’97.”
“Knew it.” Jason glares at Hahn. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Working.”
“Not with us, you ain’t.” Jason cuts to Lopez. “We get a new commander—a lawyer in the middle of a gang war. Then we get ‘MONSTER’ in the Herald. Then we get you and Hahn.” Jason points at Lopez’s face. “No chance you two walked away from cush DEA jobs to become gang cops. And you ain’t here to save the Olympics. That leaves Dupree.”
I look at Buff. He shrugs, but makes a point of looking at Jewboy’s Herald, Buff’s way of saying watch your ass. Jewboy steps up to Officer Hahn, literally twice her size. “Bobby Vargas is my best friend.” She doesn’t respond. Jewboy crowds her till there’s no space between them. “Bobby didn’t do anything this paper says.”
Hahn raises her eyes to Jewboy’s; the rest of her stays on the fender. “If you’re considering putting those hands on me, fat ass, I recommend you don’t.”
Jason bumps Jewboy aside, taking his place. “Fuck with my friends, sistah, and the G won’t save you from this fat ass, I kid you fucking not.”
Buff forces his body between Jason and Officer Hahn. “Enough.” With his back to Jason, Buff points all ten of us to his Crown Vic’s faded hood. On it, he spreads a pencil diagram, then taps a seriously hot intersection with one finger. “We’re doing the Latin Kings, Ashland and Twenty-first, the corner they took from La Raza last week.”
Three dead, all La Raza. The second month of an escalating turf/dope war between twenty thousand Latin Kings and a thousand La Raza. The mayor and his Olympic financiers want the gang war shut down now, by any means necessary. Other than the selection of our new commander, our bosses are obliging. Buff points across a neighborhood where a shiny white, multimillion-dollar Olympic facility will obliterate a square block of ethnic rubble and the problems that go with it.
“None of these Latin Kings from north of Union Park know us, but be careful. They’re wide-eye three-sixty all the time.”
We all nod, the adrenaline coming.
“Two teams, five cars, Jewboy and I are the third car on each buy. We split the new officers—Lopez with Vargas, Hahn with Cowin.”
“Fuck that.” Jason spits on the gravel. “I ain’t riding with no FBI plant. Not to a Cub game, and for damn sure, not into a Latin Kings’ gunfight.”
Buff stops. “You’re the sergeant now? Maybe you’re the commander?”
“Shit, Buff, even if Hahn ain’t a plant, she’s a goddamn rookie policing a ghetto gun—”
“I wanna be Crystal. Fucking. Clear.” Buff’s eyes are ice. “We are having no gunfight.”
Jason spits again. “ ’Cause shooting back is bad pub for the Olympics?”
Buff stares Jason silent, then continues. “Vargas and Lopez go first, Lopez on the window. They pull up in the red beater, Lopez cops for ten or twenty.” Buff hands her a wad of crumpled bills that he’s probably xeroxed for the float. Float is when you intend to let the department’s money go and don’t immediately make the arrest/recovery. The G has high-tech budget to mark money. We use xerox copies.
Buff focuses on Lopez. “You’re from the burbs; when the rock’s in your hand—say ‘Hell-o dreamland.’ Everybody got that?” Buff waits for everyone to say so, then continues. “We do not bust the corner on this buy. An hour later when the Kings know the watch is changing, Hahn takes Vargas’s place. She and Lopez will roll up in the beater, Hahn on the window. Hahn cops for twenty.” Buff hands Hahn her money for the second buy. “When you have the dope in hand, you say, ‘Wait, we ain’t right.’ Then we light ’em up from four sides; max arrest numbers.”
Jason says, “Excuse me? We’re doin’ this twice? On the same corner, the same day? With two rookies?”
“Want to call the commander, tell her that her plan sucks?”
“She wrote this?”
Buff nods. Jason rolls his eyes. Buff finishes with: “We do this textbook, no deviations. Officers Lopez and Hahn are wired—”
“Oops.” Jewboy steps back.
Hahn smiles an inch. Before Jason can go ballistic, Buff says, “Their wires aren’t live.”
I smile at Hahn—girl’s got balls, gotta give her that. Or a death wish. I ask her, “You, ah, done this before? Walked in first?”
She nods.
“How’d you do?”
Hahn lifts her shirt, exposing a bullet scar an inch left of her lung. She has a second gun and the wire taped to her skin.
“Where?”
“Miami.” Hahn pulls her Glock, half racks the slide, then holsters it. Buff turns to me. “Can I continue?”
“Sure, sorry.” I wink at Hahn, an “ex” federal agent who offered those sins to us when she didn’t have to. She checks her second gun, then lowers her shirt. Normally I do better with the girls. Could be she’s thinking about going in first, backed by a bunch of misogynist strangers who don’t trust their new commander or see the Olympics as a good reason to die.
Buff points two fingers at Hahn and Lopez. “Your wires are to be live before the buy, dialed into our radios. The narcotics guys kinda forget this. And although they catch shit, they don’t blow cases or spend the day with IAD for saying something on tape they wish they hadn’t.”
Buff’s cell phone dances on the hood of his car.
“Anderson.” He listens, then straightens—blinks at me and nods, turning away. “Ten-four, Anderson out.” He flips the phone shut. “The buys are off for today. Gimme some numbers instead, but not on Ashland. Tomorrow we pop the Latin Kings.”
Jason chins at Buff’s phone for an explanation.
“Menstrual cramps, news cycle, who knows.” Buff tells him: “Take Lopez in her car; she’s your partner for the rest of today. Roll Ashland to Western, and shut the fuck up about her and Hahn being rookies. They aren’t.” Buff nods me toward the red beater. “Hahn takes the Toyota back to the lot. Put Hahn in your car, and don’t get her killed.”
Jason grabs Jewboy’s shoulder. “Fuck this, Jewboy, we get us six frosties and some cheerleaders at the Cub game, let these idiots work with ghosts.”
Buff shakes his head at a Cubs exit that won’t happen, but not at “ghosts.”
FRIDAY, 4:00 PM
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My copy of the Herald slides into Officer Hahn’s blue jeans as I turn left onto Ashland Avenue. She glances at the two-column header that has Coleen Brennan’s name in it. Hahn and I are in my Crown Vic about to make a pass on the Latin Kings’ corner we’ll hit tomorrow.
Hahn picks up the paper. “Why do they call Tracy Moens the Pink Panther?”
“Red hair, major body, street PhD—Brenda Starr if you read the comics.”
“That’d be a good-looking woman.”
“If she catches up with me and you’re there, be careful. Ms. Moens has teeth and isn’t shy about using them.”
Ashland Avenue begins to populate as we pass St. Pius V at Nineteenth. Hahn eyes the bangers but asks about the Herald. “Worried?”
I cut to her. Stare before answering. “Insulted.”
Her eyes drop to the paper I’m sure she’s already read. “Twenty-nine years, long time.”
“Rape a child to death and help the state execute a retarded guy. Might not want to let two policemen walk around your city after they did that.”
“You’re guilty?”
“Define ‘guilty.’ ”
Officer Hahn shifts ever so slightly into her door, adding distance and reaction time, then raises her shirt, showing me that the wire she was wearing is now in her locker, waiting for tomorrow’s raid. Like I’m stupid enough to tell her anything under any circumstances.
“What I am is angry. And what it is, is none of your business. Okay?”
She looks out her window at tomorrow’s corner. “Mak-ing con-ver-sa-tion. Mind if I drive tomorrow?”
“Not the commander’s plan. She wants her girls making the buys.”
Hahn braces one gym shoe into the dash. “Good to be queen.” Her Converse All Stars have yellow laces. She nods at the Herald’s headline. “Know much about Furukawa?”
Headshake.
“Funny, a Japanese-controlled company backing a U.S. city against Tokyo …”
Hadn’t thought of that. “Makes sense to somebody big or Furukawa wouldn’t be doing it.” I drive us a block east on Twenty-first Street toward Dvorak Park, slowing into the intersection to take the bump. “You never answered Jason: boys or girls?”
“That some of his business? Or yours?”
I glance. “Just making conversation.”
Hahn studies the corner as we pass. “Girls, in the odd year a special one shows up; one of the reasons I’m no longer an FBI agent.”
“So it’s true; only J. Edgar could go both ways?”
Frown. “And we all have helicopters in our pockets.”
Her verb is present tense. If I was undercover I’d be a ton more careful. Undercover cops die for much lesser mistakes. First, she offers that she was G, now she reinforces it. Makes no sense if working here matters.
“How long were you in?”
“Five years, nine months, sixteen days.”
“Liked it, huh.”
“All I ever wanted to do.”
“Would you go back?”
“On the next plane.”
“Any way they’d let you?”
Headshake. “Someone would have to admit a mistake, and that doesn’t happen. I wanted to be a fed more than I wanted to win a sexual discrimination lawsuit, so I retired, went with the DEA.”
“You stop bin Laden midair and the FBI wouldn’t let you back?”
She thinks about it and tightens the knot on her shoe. “Yeah, they probably would. They’d say I was undercover the whole time, the whole girlfriend thing part of my story.”
“Like now? Playing a part …”
“Real similar.” She pulls out what appears to be breath freshener and spritzes. “Except there’s no federal statute on murder. So if you and your brother did rape that little girl to death, it isn’t our business.”
“You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”
She pockets the breath freshener. “Never hurts to make a good first impression. Even with assholes.”
“ ‘Our’ as opposed to ‘their.’ Present tense as opposed to past.”
“What’s the diff? You’ll think whatever you want anyway.”
Pause. “Yeah, but I might be nicer, until I can let one of these bangers cap you. Speaking of which—” Five La Raza soldiers are on the corner at Racine.
Behind us a voice yells: “Five-O! Five-O!”
The five gangsters don’t move when they see us. I jerk the wheel to block the corner. Three drift to run; Hahn’s out before me, pistol aimed, and yells: “POLICE.”
Three shorties run between buildings.
I aim at the two adults on my left, “Get your ass back here,” and fastscan for their gunmen—shorties like Little Paul carrying the weight till it’s needed.
Hahn yells behind her two-handed Glock. “Show me hands. Now.”
Ten dangling palms open up flat to us. I herd the three back to our car, glancing ground for the rock they either spit or dropped. I don’t know Hahn, so I glance her, too. She’s braced, like she means it.
A La Raza tests her with Spanish.
She insults him back, saying his dick better stay in his pants if he wants to use it tonight.
I scan again for gunmen I don’t see. No visible gunmen doesn’t mean they aren’t aiming at us right now. Or this corner’s gunmen could be these very guys, their guns hidden in loose building bricks, or trash, or the wheel wells of parked cars. Open-air drug markets have systems, all variants on the same theme: profit and survival.
I scan for the cameras. Whoever has a video camera or cell-phone camera has it on—neighbors and gangsters hoping for that Rodney King money.
I tell the gangsters, “On the car,” then chin at Hahn. “Search these bitches.”
She balks. “We calling in?”
She means for help since it’s five against two not counting the windows. I show her my SIG. She frowns, holsters her weapon, and tugs Gangster One farther up the fender by his belt, then gently kicks his feet apart. I remind the other four, “Gentlemen, do not take your hands off the car. Clean or no, if you get lucky and I don’t shoot you, you’ll go to lockup, spend tonight fending off dirty brown dicks.”
Hahn pats down Gangster One but doesn’t shove her hand down the back of his jeans. Butt crack is a suitcase for rock. My pal Patti Black would’ve had the guy naked. Hahn gets to Gangster Two—a shirtless six footer with prison muscles and recent neck tats of the old Twenty-Treys; she pats him, pulls a roll of bills from his front pocket and tosses the money on the roof. Wind blows the wad apart. He’s maybe twenty-five, twenty-seven, out-of-place older; I make him a serious felon, want to search his ride but don’t see one that fits him. Hahn keeps patting, strips a gold watch and heavy neck chain, then moves up the car to stand behind Gangster Three. His head turns and he eyes her over the shoulder strap of his wifebeater. Instantly, Hahn’s arm extends her torso away from his back. She says, “Wassup, homes?” Her other hand has gripped her pistol.
He stiffens, decides not to do whatever he had in mind, then focuses straight ahead at the car roof not her. She slaps his ass, half cotton jockeys, half jeans. “Too tight, my man. You get it or I get it.”
No response.
Hahn makes sure I’m paying attention, then steps forward and strips Gangster Three’s jeans to his ankles. “If it’s rock, homes, you’re jail-ready, you know that. If it’s reefer, no biggie … unless you make me put my white-girl fingers up your ass. Make me do that, then you’re on the bus.”
His head and eyes go left to his homeys, then right; deciding.
“One hand, pull it out slow, and drop it.”
He does.
One dime bag of ghetto-shit ditch-weed.
“That ass better be loose, homes. Not holding anything else up there, are we?”
Slight headshake. “Nada.”
Hahn squeezes his glute muscle; her other hand is again gripped on her pistol. She one-fingers the waistband of his jockeys, peers over the edge, then allows the waistband to
snap back.
Other than their IDs and change spread on the car, Gangster Four and Gangster Five aren’t holding, either. That means the rock is on the ground or they swallowed it or this was a community-service project we’ve wrongfully accosted.
We run all five sets of IDs and none have warrants, a surprise. Four have court dates pending, the charges range from possession to attempted murder. Attempted murder is Gangster Two, the convict with the heavy-gold accessories and the old-school Twenty-Trey neck tats someone inked recently. I nod Hahn back; she draws her weapon and I move around the car to stand behind him.
“Turn around.”
He does.
“Where’s your ride?”
He answers in Spanish.
“English, asshole. That’s the last time I’m telling you.”
“No ride.”
“Where you from?”
“Here.”
“Fuck you. I’m from here. You’re from elsewhere.”
He gives me the stare.
“Street name?”
“Cop Killa.”
I stare, maybe just shoot him now, general principles. “Attempted murder’s pretty heavy. Where’d you catch the case?”
“Morseland. Say I did a bomb.”
Morseland is a bar in Rogers Park, way north where I live, almost to Evanston. “You the Unabomber, huh? Danny Vacco bond you out? You somebody special? That shit on your neck?”
The eyes go empty, back to nowhere.
I lean in under his face and squirrel him up straight. “Hey, bitch, I’m talking to you.”
His head flattens on the corded, Twenty-Trey neck. He eyes me sideways, silently saying the old-school mantra: Wide ’n’ tall, got it all.
“Oh. So you the bad motherfucker riding these youngsters? Want nine cars here, we search every inch of Danny’s corner? His whole fucking neighborhood?”
The flat nostrils widen, raising the tattoo under his eye, two tears for prison murders.
“That what you want?”
Cop Killa thinks about it; probably knows I can’t get nine cars. “No. I don’ see him.”
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