The Payback Game

by Nathan Gottlieb

  At this, Green leaned slightly forward.

  “Earl’s first choice,” Boff said, “is to take his chances at trial. The other choice? Finger Eddie Galvani and the Hells Angels for the Quebec Gold operation. Should he take option two, as he almost certainly will, then the D.A. told Earl that in exchange for his cooperation, he’ll put him into the Witness Protection Program. Earl told the D.A. he needed time to think it over, but it was pretty clear to us that he was going to take the second choice.”

  Green tilted his bottle of Bud straight up and drained what was left.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Boff asked.

  “Fuck you. I’m listening.”

  Boff nodded. “Tomorrow, the D.A. and I are meeting with Earl at a bar called Brooklyn Social on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens. At that meeting, Earl will agree to help the prosecutor by ratting out Galvani and all of the Hells Angels who’ve been part of the smuggling and distribution. Including you, my friend.”

  Green held his empty bottle up high to signal for the bartender to bring him another beer. Then he looked at Boff. “Why the fuck are you telling me this crap?”

  “I’m telling you because my client, who hired me to find Doyle’s killer, will be extremely upset if Earl goes free. And so will I. Because Earl sent someone to try and kill me. It sickens me that the D.A. has offered him a get-out-of-jail-free card. A piece of crap like him should be punished.”

  When the bartender brought Green his fresh beer, the biker let it sit on the table without touching it. It was obvious to Boff that Green was taking his time to process everything he was hearing.

  Again the biker leaned forward. He lowered his voice and asked, “Just what is it you think I can do for you?”

  Boff also leaned forward. “Here’s the deal,” he replied. “I told Earl the meeting at Brooklyn Social tomorrow was set for four o’clock. But I told the D.A. it was at five. Meaning, I’ll have a one-hour window alone with Earl.”

  He paused to let Green digest that.

  Then Boff said, “I think you and I can work something out that’ll be mutually beneficial.”

  Chapter 47

  When Boff went to bed that night, he didn’t take off his wrist watch. Instead, he set its alarm for seven o’clock and put it on vibrate so he wouldn’t wake his wife.

  Jenny fell asleep quickly, but he lay awake, thinking about the day ahead.

  Damiano had called him a vigilante. He didn’t see it that way. To him, there were different forms of justice, and he was merely pursuing one of them. He had left the DEA after losing all respect for law enforcement, and he didn’t feel any different now. As a private investigator, he had gotten countless felons acquitted who were guilty as sin. The system was a joke. Taken in that light, all he was doing now was making sure true justice was served. No way was he going to take a chance that the D.A.’s office would screw up the trial and get outsmarted by a sharp defense lawyer.

  Unable to sleep, he got quietly out of bed, walked into the kitchen, poured a glass of his favorite wine, and took it into the living room, where he sat in his favorite easy chair and thought about the Earl Bassett situation some more.

  Nicky Doyle had given the guy a job when nobody else would touch him. So how did Bassett show his gratitude? By stealing money from a charity for underprivileged kids and funneling cash meant to build a camp into a drug operation. Along the way, Bassett had had Maloney and Doyle killed. “And he would have murdered me, too,” he muttered, “if I hadn’t been wearing Kevlar.” Just thinking that a stray bullet might have hit his son made him furious. Jail was too good for Bassett.

  If all went according to plan tomorrow, he’d be properly punished.

  ***

  At eight-fifteen the next morning, all the raid vehicles were double parked in a line on Nostrand Avenue, just around the corner from Gates, the block where Reggie Bassett’s headquarters was. Damiano had brought twelve cops in three cars, a couple of police vans with wooden barricades, and an armored SWAT vehicle. Baumgartner and three of his investigators were there in another car to witness the raid. Schlosberg had brought six agents and two unmarked DEA vehicles. Boff was sitting in his ex-partner’s car. Although he wasn’t planning to put himself in harm’s way, he was wearing his Kevlar, just in case.

  The first thing Damiano did was dispatch one of her cars to the rear of Bassett’s buildings to lock down the dealer’s escape route.

  While they waited for the raid to start, Schlosberg turned to Boff. “Frank, what do you expect Reggie Bassett to do?”

  “It’s hard to tell. I don’t see him surrendering without a fight, so you can probably count on it getting messy. How messy? I’m not sure. But at some point, it’s likely Bassett will try to escape. Other than that, anything is liable to happen.”

  After glancing at his watch, Schlosberg got out of his vehicle, as did Damiano, Baumgartner, and the SWAT team leader, a rangy, military-looking type named McPherson. The four of them huddled together a few minutes, going over both strategy and tactics one final time. Then they returned to their vehicles.

  At eight-twenty five, Damiano sent one of the police vans down Gates to the end of the block. Uniformed cops stepped out of the van and put up wooden barriers to seal off that end of the street to traffic. Five minutes later, the armored SWAT vehicle drove to the head of the line and turned onto Gates, followed by Damiano’s crew, Schlosberg’s, and Baumgartner’s team. When the last vehicle was on Gates, the cops in the second van put up barriers to lock down that end of the street.

  The SWAT vehicle stopped in the middle of the street two buildings away from Bassett’s buildings. Damiano and her team pulled up about twenty feet behind the SWAT vehicle, and Schlosberg and Baumgartner lined up behind her.

  Now the back door of the SWAT vehicle opened and out stepped two snipers carrying scoped rifles. They sprinted across the street from Bassett’s buildings, scrambled up a fire escape, stepped onto the roof, and positioned themselves at the edge, pointing their rifles at the drug dealer’s brownstones.

  As soon as she saw they were in place, Damiano climbed out of her car. She was carrying a bullhorn. She ran in a crouch to the rear of the SWAT vehicle for cover, then shouted through the horn:

  “REGGIE BASSETT. I HAVE A SEARCH WARRANT FOR YOUR HOUSE. YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY POLICE. OPEN THE FRONT DOOR WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD. YOU’VE GOT THIRTY SECONDS.”

  Damiano got her reply in less than thirty seconds when Bassett’s shooters opened fire from the top windows of both buildings.

  Boff looked at Schlosberg. “I guess they’re not going to go quietly,” he said.

  McPherson stepped out of the SWAT vehicle. He, too, was carrying a weapon.

  Boff was watching carefully. “He’s probably asking Damiano for permission to breach,” he told Schlosberg. “First, though, he’ll want to take out the shooters on the top floors.”

  McPherson looked up at his snipers and gave them hand signals. Then he stepped a few feet away from the SWAT car so he was visible to Bassett’s shooters. After aiming a quick burst of automatic fire at the top windows, he hustled back behind his vehicle just as Bassett’s shooters let fly with their own hail of bullets.

  The SWAT snipers opened fire at the same time and hit two of Bassett’s men, who fell out of the open windows and landed on a small plot of grass in front of the brownstone. Neither one moved.

  “Marty,” Boff said, “I think SWAT’s going to breach any minute now.”

  Sure enough, McPherson opened the back door of the armored vehicle and ten more men stepped out. Two of them were carrying ballistic shields. Another had a breaching ram.

  “And now the fun begins,” Schlosberg said. “I hope the goddam Quebec Gold doesn’t end up in flames.”

  “Relax, Marty. Those are rifles they’re carrying, not flame throwers. As soon as they clear the house, your men can go in and confiscate the drugs.” He rubbed his head. “The only thing that bothers me is I have a feeling Reggie Bassett might throw us a cu
rve.”

  “Like what?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  The two SWAT members with the ballistic shields lined up side by side in the street, the man with the breaching ram right behind them. The rest of the team, including McPherson, crowded in tight formation behind them. Then, on McPherson’s signal, the team moved in a crouched trot toward the house. As they moved, something came flying out the top window of the boarded-up building.

  “GRENADE,” McPherson shouted.

  His men dropped down in the street behind the men holding the ballistic shields as the grenade landed in the grass next to the brownstone’s stairs and exploded, gouging off a huge chunk of the steps.

  “FALL BACK,” McPherson ordered.

  As they retreated behind the armored vehicle, two more grenades were lobbed out the window. This time, the grenades hit the sidewalk, exploded, and ripped through two parked cars, setting them both on fire.

  “Frank, this must be the curve you were talking about,” Schlosberg said.

  “Perhaps.”

  McPherson opened the back door of his armored vehicle and stepped inside. He came right back out holding what Boff recognized as two tear gas launchers. The SWAT leader handed the launchers to two of his men, who fired them through the windows where the grenades had been tossed. Smoke started billowing out.

  Seconds after that, the men with the tear gas launchers fired a series of rounds, first through the ground floor windows of the main building, then the second floor windows, and finally though the ones on the top floor. More smoke poured out of this building.

  Boff turned to his ex-partner. “They’ll try to breach again any minute now,” he said.

  After slipping on gas masks, the SWAT team waited for a signal from McPherson. Before he could give it, however, they heard shots coming from behind the buildings.

  “Frank,” Schlosberg said, “it sounds like they’re trying to escape the back way.”

  Boff called Damiano. “Find out if your men by the fence got Bassett. Put your cell on speaker so I can hear.”

  Holding her phone in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other, Damiano used the portable, two-way radio to call her team by the fence.

  Give me a sitrep, she said.

  Four bad guys down, three surrendering. We’re going to need a couple ambulances.

  Do any of them look like Bassett?

  I dunno. Maybe. It’s really hard to get an ID from an old mug shot.

  Roger that.

  Damiano got back on the cell. You heard, Boff. Bassett could still be in there. We’ll find out soon enough, though. SWAT is ready to breach.

  This time, when the SWAT team trotted toward the buildings, they weren’t shot at and no grenades came flying out the windows. The team crashed through the front door. Seconds later, Boff recognized the concussive sound of stun grenades. Then it sounded like heavy fire was being exchanged.

  “It’ll be over soon,” Boff said.

  But he still had a nagging feeling the drug dealer had something up his sleeve. He didn’t think they would find Reggie Bassett inside the building or among the men in the backyard. So where else could he possibly be?

  Then it hit him. He took a quick glance at Bassett’s mug shot and then looked more closely at the rooftops of the two brownstones. At first he saw nothing. Then he spotted someone running in a crouch on the roof of the main building. The guy crossed onto the roof of the second building, then leaped to a third. If that was Reggie Bassett, Boff realized, all he had to do was clear five more buildings and he’d be on the last roof at the end of the street. From there, he could easily climb down the fire escape and get away.

  He called Damiano. “Somebody’s running the roofs! Tell the snipers!”

  Damiano hung up, moved to the driver’s side of the armored vehicle, raised her gun straight up in the air, and fired off several shots to catch the snipers’ attention. When they looked down at her, she tapped a finger on one eye, and then pointed at the rooftops on Bassett’s side of the street.

  Whoever the runner was, he was nearly at the end of the block when the snipers opened fire. They nailed him in mid-leap to the last building. He fell on the rooftop and didn’t move. Damiano looked up at the snipers and gave them a thumbs up.

  At this point, Schlosberg turned to his agents in the backseat. “As soon as they clear the building,” he said, “we go in.”

  The shooting inside Bassett’s building stopped a few minutes later, and shortly thereafter, McPherson and four cops from his SWAT team left the building with three cuffed perps.

  Boff turned to his ex-partner. “It looks like it’s safe for you to go in.”

  “Probably. But I think I’ll wait a few more minutes till all the damn gas clears out.”

  When smoke was no longer coming through the windows, Schlosberg, Boff, and the DEA agents stepped out of their cars. So did the assistant D.A. and his investigators. They all walked over to where Damiano was standing by the SWAT vehicle with McPherson and the cuffed prisoners. The detective ordered three of her men to climb the fire escape of the building where the runner had gone down and check if it was Bassett.

  At the same time, Schlosberg turned to the SWAT team leader. “We’re ready to confiscate the drugs,” he said. “Boff thinks they’re stashed in the basement of the boarded-up building and that there’s probably a heavy-duty door connecting the two basements. It’ll probably need breaching.”

  With a nod, McPherson got on his walkie-talkie. “This is team leader. DEA is coming in now. They might need the ram.”

  Damiano turned to three of her men. “Go in with them,” she said.

  As the cops led the agents and Baumgartner’s team into the building, Damiano got a call on her walkie-talkie from one of her men on the roof where the runner had fallen.

  This mutt is DOA.

  “Is it Bassett?”

  He looks a lot like the mug shot, but we’ll need to print him to know for sure. But I think we’re good.

  She turned to Boff. “Nice spot on Bassett running the roofs,” she said.

  Boff merely nodded. His mind was already focused on the final moves in his deadly endgame.

  Chapter 48

  As Schlosberg’s and Baumgartner’s teams entered the main brownstone, Damiano called for ambulances and a prisoner transport van to cart all the cuffed perps away. About ten minutes later, the DEA agents walked out of the building carrying large bricks of Quebec Gold, which they piled on the sidewalk.

  It took three trips for them to remove all the marijuana from the house. They filled the trunks of their cars with as much of it as they could, then loaded the rest into an agency van Schlosberg had called headquarters for.

  The cops Damiano had ordered onto the roof to retrieve the dead body of the runner had tied a rope around it and were lowering it to the ground. A minute later, the runner was stuffed into a body bag and brought over to Damiano, who unzipped it so she could see the face. Boff leaned in to take a look, too.

  “What do you think?” Damiano asked. “Is it Bassett?”

  Before replying, Boff studied the mug shot again, especially key facial features. Then he looked at the body. Everything seemed to match except the nose, which was thicker and a bit crooked. He figured the “nose job” was probably a souvenir from prison.

  “I’d say yes,” he finally said. “But I guess only the prints will tell.”

  The detective frowned. “I don’t want to leave here unless we’re damn close to a hundred percent sure it’s him.” She walked over to one of the cuffed perps and pointed a finger at one. “You! Come with me.” To make sure he understood, she grabbed the perp’s shirt and dragged him over to the body bag. “Is that Bassett?” she asked.

  Seeing the face, the guy grimaced. Then he nodded. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  Damiano got up in the perp’s face. “Listen good, shitbird. If I find out you’re lying to me, things are going to get real ugly for you. So once again, is that him?”

/>   Before relying, the perp backed up a step. “Like I said, that be him. I done worked with the dude for years.” Then a slight smile creased his face. “But see, lady, you know, if you want to be, like, totally sure, you gots to unzip his fly. Reggie’s got a schlong on him the size of a horse.”

  Damiano shot the guy a dirty look, passed on the penis check, and turned to a member of her team.

  “Take these perps to the transport, along with the body bags,” she ordered.

  The action over, Damiano’s men were starting to put up crime-scene tape. Boff could hear sirens heading their way. After a few minutes, a pair of CSI Hummer H2 vehicles turned onto the street and sped toward them, followed close behind by three fire engines and two ambulances.

  Damiano grabbed Boff by the arm. “Follow me.” She led him far enough away so nobody could hear her. “What about Earl?” she asked. “What happens to him now?”

  Boff said nothing.

  “Boff, give me a hint for chrissake.”

  “It’s best you don’t know.”

  Looking ready to kill, but knowing she wouldn’t get anything out of him, Damiano turned away and walked back to her men. Boff got back in Schlosberg’s car and waited for his ex-partner.

  The whole operation from beginning to end had taken about an hour and a half. That left Boff with plenty of time to kill before his four o’clock meeting with Earl Bassett. As Schlosberg drove him back to where his car was parked outside the gym, Boff thought through everything he had planned for his grand finale. He was looking for potential curveballs like the one Reggie Bassett had tried to throw them. Earl might bring a gun, for example, but Boff doubted he would shoot him in a bar.

  The Hells Angels, though, might be another matter. They were capable of anything. This worried him. His plan was to meet with Bassett alone, but he knew the smart move would be to bring backup. Reluctantly, he took out his cell and called Wallachi.