I Kill Rich People: New Edition Released 11/27/14

by Mike Bogin

“Al, is that why you brought me into this? Why you arranged to get me this FBI ID, so I’d go against my own department’s policy to leak information for you?” Owen tried to modulate his voice. In another hour he would be meeting Tremaine to photograph more shoes. Tremaine did not need to know about this conversation with the FBI.

  “That’s not why,” Al disagreed. Owen could tell that Al was being sincere, but the reply was still not an answer.

  “Then why me? What makes me so special? I’m not getting it.” He was talking with Al more than he was with Intel Division. Why was he violating protocol for this old guy?

  Al put down his ever-present coffee and reached into the outer pocket of his J.C. Penney jacket. He retrieved something that he slid toward Owen: a bronze coin stamped with a triangle, with a circle inside the triangle and the number 15. Around the triangle was written “One Day at a Time.” Owen stared at the coin without touching it.

  “It doesn’t bite. Turn it over,” Al said.

  On the backside of the coin was written “God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the Difference.” Just what Al had said days ago. Beneath these words, along the rim, the coin read, “Eamonn. 212-378-4036.”

  Owen stared at the coin and back at Al. That was their telephone number, the number they always had.

  “Your dad was my sponsor,” Al explained.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Why would you? That’s why it’s called Alcoholics Anonymous. You were still in grade school when I met your dad. Owen, when you were coming in to the Bureau and I saw your face and your name. You look like him, not later, but when he was young and strong.”

  Owen pictured Eamonn at the end, when he no longer recognized his own son. He had looked just like Yeats’ “tattered coat upon a stick,” all skin and bones and the racing, confused eyes that didn’t recognize his own flesh and blood. Owen choked up. “Al, I have to go. I’ll call you.”

  He pressed the bronze coin into Al’s wrinkled palm and headed toward the exit, using thumb and forefinger to wipe away his tears.

  * * * * *

  Tremaine was licking cupcake icing off the corner of his mouth when Owen opened the passenger-side door and sat down in the car. “This is bullshit,” Tremaine said by way of greeting. “We chasing after pixie dust.” Dansk was wasting their time while those NSA fucks were doing real investigation right under their noses.

  “O, I got two first cousins working 911 dispatch,” Tremaine explained. “Anything unusual gets called in, we’re gonna know about it.” He passed the word, too, how there were two round-trip excursion tickets to Foxwoods Casino for the person who came up with what he wanted. “If NSA cordons a street or enters a building within my five boroughs, I’m gonna hear.”

  Tremaine handed Owen one of the two coffees he had waiting. “Whatcha think?”

  “We’ll be picking up the ‘unable to locate’ files and chasing more shoes,” Owen answered.

  “Shit. I know that. What you think of the coffee?”

  “More ghetto, sweet as candy.” Owen took another sip and shifted his eyes up at Tremaine’s big smile. Tee was getting his usual enjoyment out of nothing at all.

  “That’s Irish ghetto, O O O,” Tremaine teased with flourish. “Irish Cream today.”

  “Do you have some problem with blackness?” Owen parried.

  “Baby, I can be black and celebrate the diversity, too. It’s a rainbow world, my red-headed brother.”

  “Idiot.”

  “Don’t be hating.”

  Owen rolled his eyes and nodded for Tremaine to drive. The man could make fun out of anything. He watched Project Runway with Callie and they would walk the catwalk through the front room pretending they were models. Tremaine even pulled up his pant legs so he could show off his feet as he hit points and turns. Liam couldn’t watch. Casey loved it.

  Eight- and ten-hour shifts spent with Tremaine across six years was more waking time than he and Callie spent together. Lots of times, Tremaine’s gregarious personality made Owen feel that he was boring compared to his partner. Tremaine could see two pigeons on a ledge and suddenly they were betting lunch on which one would fly away first. Tremaine usually won, too, which was irritating!

  Tremaine had no wife, no kids, no fucking mortgages. Twelve years older than Owen, but he acted ten years younger. He had never wanted to be anybody’s daddy. Tremaine never even had to clean up his own place because nobody ever went there. He was always reminding Owen about where Liam got his hyper-responsible behavior; like his dad, another Eagle Scout in the making.

  Through all the joking, the one thing Owen knew, right down to his core, was that Tremaine had his back. Always.

  “Would you just get me plain American black coffee, just once?”

  “No such thing as American coffee,” Tremaine countered before getting out of the car. “Excepting for the little portion grown in Hawaii, coffee is almost all imported.”

  “Where do you come up with that stuff?” Owen failed to see what the hell his coffee preferences had to do with anything.

  Tremaine blew steam off his cup. “What did you think of those contractors that were coming in when we were heading out of The Bunker?”

  “Is that who they were? I had other things on my mind.”

  “SWAT deployed on a HVAC guy yesterday. He went up onto a rooftop, which makes sense if you’re servicing air conditioning units. SWAT showed up and when he didn’t follow their orders to lie down, they called in for a fire authorization. Turned out he was wearing earbuds with his music cranked up. He didn’t know SWAT was even there.”

  Owen turned to Tremaine, who never ceased to surprise him. “How do you know about that?”

  “Pays to know people in the know, if you know what I’m meaning you should know, O.” Tremaine was always the first to hear the scuttlebutt. He was plugged in. Everywhere from dispatch to the precincts, Tremaine always knew somebody.

  “But my point, O, it that SWAT didn’t deploy off a suspicious person report. I’ll bet you they were deployed from the drones. I’d bet money that’s who those contractors are; installation techs. They’re putting in a Ground Control Station in The Bunker. I heard we’ll be flying our own drones soon.”

  “Cool,” Owen responded. “That must be twisting up the panties over at NSA.” He wondered what they looked like and if he could get to see one.

  “Bet on that. Those NSA pricks don’t get to monopolize unmanned aircraft forever.”

  Tremaine Googled images of drones and held them up so that Owen could see the screen. The first several appeared to be huge, as big as small airplanes. Others looked more like helicopters, and some were no bigger than a radio-controlled toy airplane.

  “That little bastard can read the label in your shirt collar from five thousand feet,” Tremaine pointed out. “What do you think

  about that?” His voice conveyed that he wasn’t one hundred percent on board with the idea.

  “What?”

  “Does it worry you? Invisible eyes?”

  “More tools for law enforcement. The bad guys are the ones who should be worried.”

  “Let’s say they tie the surveillance together with the facial recognition. Throw in GPS-tracking of your cell phone, your car computer. In a couple years, somebody could have a data-record of every move you make, every day. You don’t care about that, O?

  What about your computer records? Do you care if somebody knows about everywhere you go on the internet? Every time you open up a porn site, there’s a record with your name on it?”

  Owen sipped at the coffee. He cared more about the annoying flavoring.

  “T, if it makes us safer, big fucking deal. I’m for it. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  Fou
r hours later, they were parked on a Brooklyn street, eating plantain fries and jerk chicken with their fingers, when Ahmed Escari came out the front door of his building. He lived above a halal butcher shop. Escari was wearing Nike trainers. Both of the cops spotted the swoosh and scrambled to get food boxes off their laps, sucking their fingers and grabbing for napkins.

  Escari looked to be six feet tall and weighing about one-hundred-eighty pounds. From his athletic stride, he appeared ready to step right onto a soccer field. He was already to the end of the block before Tremaine had the camera up. No chance for the photo. That was why they shouldn’t both eat at the same time.

  Escari was clean-shaven in the file photo. He now wore a thick beard that seemed to frame his entire face, leaving dark, expressive eyes as his dominant feature.

  Tremaine handed the camera to Owen, who followed Escari’s movement down the crowded sidewalk while Tremaine watched traffic for the opportunity to pull out safely to follow. Escari had turned the corner when they cleared the curb. Owen jumped out of the moving car, camera in hand, as Escari’s feet descended toward the subway station at Astoria Boulevard. Tremaine pulled the car halfway onto the sidewalk with the emergency flashers on and the NYPD hanger on their mirror before running after them like a pulling guard tearing down the offensive line.

  Escari had a subway pass. Owen jumped the turnstile, photographing with one hand in the general direction of Escari’s feet. Good-size feet.

  Tremaine made it down just in time to watch a subway train close the doors and head into the tunnels. Owen and Escari were nowhere in sight.

  Owen had boarded the train one car behind Escari, keeping his eyes glued onto the back of Escari’s head. His left hand held the camera. His right swept backwards along his belt. He could feel the pressure of his service weapon in the waist holster, but touching it there was reassuring. Everything about his situation sucked. A crowded subway train. A person of interest, only not even a suspect. No arrest warrant, no probable cause to apprehend. But the thought kept cycling through Owen’s brain that if Escari was bad, he was facing a multiple-homicide killer on his own, alone without backup.

  The assignment was not to apprehend, just to photograph those shoes. Owen drew a deep breath and touched his Glock 9mm a second time. He would have to chamber a round, which meant dropping the camera. He could pull the Glock now, take care of the safety and slide. Be ready. That might save his life, other lives, if Escari made him and drew a weapon. But forty people were squeezed around him. If he pulled his weapon and prepared, people would see that and lose it, leaving Escari with dozens of commuters, men, women, and children between them. No good.

  Despite the noisy wheels rolling down the tracks, the rumbles and creaks, Owen could hear only his heartbeat. The door between the cars would not open without him having to press his shoulder into it. Owen saw that Escari didn’t turn back to look. If he took the photo, Owen realized that he could not transmit the photo without the address, which was in the laptop and the laptop was back with Tremaine inside the car.

  Escari was standing, holding onto the upper bar. Owen pressed his way through the aisle toward Escari until they were within point-blank range of one another. Escari’s left hand reached into his jacket. Owen’s right hand swept behind his belt. Draw, he thought. Thumb the safety, drop the cell phone, slide and fire. No good. The shooter would never have his safety on. Fuck!

  Escari’s hand came out with his own cell phone, which he thumbed while reading text messages. Owen reached toward the floor without looking, shooting photo after photo in the direction of Escari’s Nikes. The train slowed to a lurching stop, with more passengers departing than boarding. A seat opened near Escari, who lunged toward it in time.

  Between stations, Owen turned his back on Escari, keeping an eye on him from the reflections that showed sporadically at the train rushed along. He had several clear photos of the Nikes. The best of these he tried to text to Tremaine. No fucking signal. Next stop 5th and 59th. Jesus. They had passed half a dozen stops. He could recall only one.

  Signal strength returned. Tremaine received the photo instantly, and then tried to figure out how to relay it through his phone. After a minute, he pulled the address from the laptop and hoped when he hit Send that it would work. It came back within one minute with a message. Unauthorized Sender. Tremaine had no choice. He had to call in the situation and get a tech to receive and log in the photo. Tremaine checked the screen again. The caption read “5th and 59th.” In two stops they would pass right under Midtown North, and then head south to South Ferry and back under the river again.

  “Don’t tell me they’re busy. You get them unbusy! This is Tremaine Bull. I need someone who can walk me through this right now!” Why the hell wasn’t his phone authorized to begin with?

  Owen glanced at Escari. A rigid line bulged beneath his sweatshirt. What the fuck was Tremaine doing?

  Escari stood up just before the City Hall stop, then casually stepped out onto the platform and scanned the station before moving toward the exit stairs. Owen allowed him to get sixty, seventy feet ahead with a dozen commuters between them, keeping his eye on the cell phone as he followed.

  Once outside the station, Escari walked south to the rear entrance to City Hall. Owen was ten feet behind when Escari paused before the metal detector manned by two uniforms. Owen dropped his gold shield over his belt so that if he had to draw his weapon the Uniforms could see he was a cop. His right hand came up behind his waist to grip the Glock as Escari reached into his pockets. Escari emptied his pockets of cell phone, wallet, keys, a DVD case, and sunglasses, and walked through the metal detector. After his grip came off the Glock, Owen needed to stretch and flex his fingers to get the blood moving through them again.

  Escari rounded the corner past the elevators. Owen exchanged waves with the Uniforms, passed the Glock around the detector gate along with handcuffs and a canister of mace, let them check his ID, and then moved through as his phone signaled a text.

  Size thirteen. Escari works for Parks and Rec. Low priority.

  After the sustained adrenalin pumping through his system suddenly shut down, Owen made his way across the first-floor lobby, light-headed and a little faint. When he dropped into a seat on a bench outside the parking section, he needed to remind himself to breathe. He had to close his eyes and concentrate, like a seasick passenger hoping not to puke.

  When he re-opened his eyes, he stood cautiously, legs spread wide to keep balanced. He looked down at his cell and tried calling Tremaine, but he could not stand and scroll to Tremaine’s phone number at the same time. He had to sit to make the call.

  “Well, that was a waste of time,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Where you be?”

  Owen sucked in a deep breath, having to control his voice before resuming. More than anything else, he wanted to curl up and go to sleep. If the bench were longer, he could have gone to sleep right there.

  “City Hall,” he said, having to clear his throat before he could continue. “When can you pick me up?”

  “I’m still in Astoria. Be there in thirty-five minutes. You OK?”

  Owen drew in another deep breath. “Yeah. I’m good.” He didn’t talk about how scared he had been. The fear embarrassed him. But, scared or not, he’d done the job.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Saturday, July 28

  In an hour-long police drama, the cops live, eat, and breathe whatever case they are on until the bad guy is behind bars or dead. In real life, long hours mean overtime pay, deep drains on resources, and strains on families already subject to high divorce rates. If the red line doesn’t go across the case board inside forty-eight hours, you’re running a marathon, not a sprint.

  The call from Al Hurwitz awakened Owen and Callie both before 7 a.m. “Get to the west parking lot at Flushing Meadows. Five minutes. I’ll be coming in a ’copte
r. Looks like the shooter hit again.”

  Owen jumped into the pants that he had left on the floor, grabbing shoes, socks, and a clean shirt before he headed to the car, running his tongue across his wooly teeth without taking the time to brush. No shower. Unshaven. Callie offered to get up to make some coffee, but Owen was out the door without answering, taking three stairs at a time.

  He was onto Roosevelt and could see the Parkway in front of him inside four minutes. Two helicopters were moving overhead in his direction while he drove across the empty parking lot at fifty miles an hour. The first of the two ’copters continued east while the trailing copter seemed to be aiming directly for Owen’s car. A moment later, Owen found himself instinctively crouching low beneath the moving blades as he headed toward the side door that slid open to meet him. Major Gonzalez, the sniper instructor, leaned out and pointed to a small step welded onto the tubular landing skids before locking wrists to pull Owen on board and into the seat next to Al Hurwitz. The pilot watched from his forward cab while Gonzalez slammed the sliding door shut again. Owen flopped into a middle seat and pushed his arms through the shoulder belts. The helicopter lifted off, giving Owen the feeling that his stomach was still on the tarmac just as he was snapping in. They were sixty feet up before Owen noticed the set of headphones that Gonzalez was trying to hand him. He opened them wide and moved them over his ears, shifting until he felt them securely in place. The deafening roar was reduced to a guttural growl.

  His entire time on the force, from cadet to lieutenant, Owen had never been aboard a helicopter. He kept thinking this is so cool and wished that he wasn’t showing it so clearly by smiling from ear to ear. He leaned to the left to see if he could see his street, but the ’copter banked to the right before straightening out in fast flight north and eastward at four hundred feet. Owen recognized Throgs Neck Bridge and saw the water beneath them as they flew over the tip of Kings and up past Sand Point before bearing down on Oyster Bay in a fast descent.