Blueblood

by Matthew Iden

  “I’ve got a few more questions for you, thought it would be easier to catch you on the line than having you stick a gun in my face again.”

  “What do you need?”

  “We found some interesting things lately, chasing down some leads on Danny Garcia’s case. I thought you might be able to clear some things up for me.”

  Caldwell’s breath came heavy and labored over the phone. “Yeah? Like what?”

  “The primary thing is that it’s clear Danny liked to go hunting for scalps in his spare time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Busting dealers off the clock,” I said. “We found a cache of his down in Southeast. Not exactly a little getaway in the Hamptons. A cot, a kitchen, some guns. A med kit good enough for light combat. It looks like he used the pad to stage his side jobs.”

  Caldwell whistled low. “You’re shitting me.”

  “The thing is, Bob, it was too well-outfitted for a single guy. I mean, you can’t measure these things, but it didn’t look like he was doing this solo.”

  “You’re looking for someone who might’ve been running with him?” he asked.

  “Yes. Not to bust them, necessarily, though it would be nice if they left things like this to, you know, our legal system. But maybe the guys who knocked Danny off know who these other moonlighters are, you know? If they got it out of Danny before they killed him—and we know they broke half the bones in his body before he died—then there’s a good chance he might’ve given up a couple names. Names of guys they’re going to want to add to the list.”

  “Assuming there were others,” he said, his voice even.

  “Sure. But it’s safer to go with that than it is to throw our hands up and decide there wasn’t anyone else involved. Because if we’re wrong, then another cop might die.”

  “You know who did Danny?”

  “An out-of-towner from one of the Salvadoran maras is looking good for it. Chillo is his name.”

  “Never heard of him. Who ordered it?”

  “Felix Rodriguez. Heads up the MLA in these parts.”

  He swore. “That piece of shit?”

  “Looks like he did two of the others, too,” I said.

  “Who else?”

  “A beat cop named Witherspoon and an Arlington detective named Torres. In the Gangs unit.”

  “They knew Danny?”

  “No. Looks like they just got on Rodriguez’s hit list for sticking their noses in it too far. But I’m almost sure that Clay Johnson was mixed up in it.”

  “Clay Johnson? Who’s that?”

  “Rockville PD. Killed with the same M.O. as the others. I’m surprised you don’t remember him, Bob. I saw a picture from a barbeque years ago. It was of you, Danny, and Clay in the background.”

  “You know from when?” he asked. “I don’t keep track of all the parties I go to.”

  “This was at Danny’s,” I said. “Maybe ten years ago.”

  “I don’t know, Singer. Before he went undercover, Danny and me got together a lot. There were always other cops showing up. Friends of friends. After he got the nod to go undercover, he stopped calling unless it was about business. Guess he got into the role.”

  “So you don’t know Clay Johnson?”

  “Nope. Sorry.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to be the third guy on Danny’s team, would you?”

  He laughed, a coarse sound. “You gotta be kidding. You saw me, right? I’m an old white guy with a bum leg and a sixty-pound spare tire. I got thirty-five years in, Singer, and I’m a couple months from retiring. Why the hell would I be running around blowing dealers away after hours when I could be on my boat drinking beer?”

  “You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to pull a trigger or drive a car, Bob,” I said. “You just have to be willing.”

  His good humor drained away. “You can get fucked, Singer. Danny Garcia was a good cop, but if he wanted to waste his time capping punks who were going to get aced by their twenty-first birthday anyway by some other punk, then that was his business. I got the rest of my life to live and I can tell you the plan doesn’t include dragging ass around Southeast looking to get shot. I’m sorry about those other cops getting killed, but it sounds like you’d be better off running them into the ground instead of giving me a hard time. Now, you got anything else on your mind?”

  “That’s about it,” I said, but I only got half my sentence out before he hung up. I put the phone down carefully. It had been a while since someone had told me to get fucked. It was a refreshing twist to the normal, implicit “fuck you” I’d been getting from everyone else.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I was looking at ties at the downtown Macy’s.

  It had already been a long day, but I wanted to talk to Bloch. I’d called and he’d asked me to meet him at a noodle house downtown in the Penn Quarter. I told him I wouldn’t be able to stomach the smell, so we settled for meeting at Macy’s instead, where the odor of thirty kinds of perfume lingered in the air, even in the Men’s section. It wasn’t much of an improvement over the noodles.

  “Singer.”

  “Bloch,” I said, turning from a table of ties.

  He stood beside me and picked up a tie, rubbing the material between his thumb and finger. “Four-dollar coffees, seventy-dollar ties. I gotta get out of DC. I can’t afford this place.”

  “It’s the same everywhere,” I said. “They keep cops’ salaries a hair under the living wage. Keeps us hungry.”

  He snorted for my benefit and we started walking. Just two regular guys, meeting mid-afternoon in a department store to talk about multiple homicides, gangs, and drug raids.

  “You said you had something for me?”

  I hung back to make room for a trio of twenty-something girls to pass, their eyes glittering with the prospect of shopping. It was never a good idea to get between a predator and her prey. “Yeah.” I explained the Redskins jersey and the picture I’d seen at the Garcias’ house. “I’m no sports historian, but I don’t think there was a number 69 about the time that picture was taken. And, with Johnson’s reputation as a womanizer, it would fit his…ah, juvenile sense of humor. So, it’s not much, but it got me wondering if that was Johnson in the photo. When I asked Paul Garcia and Bob Caldwell point blank if they knew the other victims, though, they both said no.”

  “Maybe it was a chance thing. One cop passes another in the hall, says ‘Hey, I’m having a cookout at my place this weekend. Want to come over?’”

  “And he runs the grill? And happens to be one of the victims in a serial slaying of cops?”

  He made a face, impatient. “It’s strange. So what? It’s not against the law to lie. Doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy.”

  I looked at him. “You seem pretty eager to make excuses for a guy who begged me to look into this thing. What happened to doing the right thing?”

  “We are doing the right thing. Felix Rodriguez did this and we’re going to nail his ass to the wall. I appreciate what you’ve done for us, Singer, I really do. I couldn’t have gotten anywhere without your help on this. But Rodriguez is our man.”

  We’d walked all the way to Housewares. The row after row of convenient household goods, gleaming under soft fluorescent lighting, depressed me for some reason and I made a motion to turn us around. “You’re talking like this is a done deal.”

  “Not exactly. But I got some good news today. We got the warrants to hit Rodriguez at home. Full-on raid with complete multi-jurisdictional support. We’re going to clean up that shitbird’s nest and put him and Chillo and the rest of his homies away for twenty to life, times three.”

  “You can pin everything on him?”

  “Garcia, Torres, and Witherspoon for sure. If a murder weapon turns up that helps us out, then they might go down for Okonjo and Johnson, too. We’re taking this to federal court. They’ll stomp on them with both feet.”

  “Sounds nifty,” I said. “What are you thinking Johnson’s connection wa
s?”

  Bloch seemed uncomfortable for the first time. “I don’t know. I was hoping your trip to Rockville would let us tack that on top. Maybe he was dirty, like Torres. There’s a connection somewhere.”

  “But you’re going to go ahead with a raid.”

  He checked his watch. “Twenty-four hours from now.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “You can’t wait? If you’re right about Johnson, a little more work and we might dig up the evidence you need to tie that to Rodriguez. Make things airtight.”

  “Or Rodriguez might ditch the gun that shot them all,” Bloch said. “Or Chillo might be in a car heading back to Texas. No, I want to move now. We’ve got enough on him to hold him by the short and curlies as long as we need to. We’ll backfill the shaky stuff later or hit the jackpot when we tear his place apart.”

  “You mind if I keep digging in my spare time? I still think there’s a connection we’re missing.”

  We’d come full circle and found ourselves back in Menswear again. He straightened a crooked Sale sign. “Be my guest. But you might want to reserve a spot on your calendar for tomorrow night.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You want me to ride along on the raid?”

  “Really and truly,” Bloch said. “As an observer only, of course. But I thought you might want to see the object of your search up close and personal. I’ll even let you kick him in the nuts if you want. After I do, of course. What do you say?”

  My mouth went a little dry. Another chance to play cop a year after it had stopped being a job. “Sure.”

  “Great. I’ll let you know where the meet-up is. We’ll fit you with a vest. You can back me up on the briefing. Hell, I should let you run it.”

  “A raid,” I said, musing. “Maybe we’ll get some answers.”

  “We’ve already got them, Singer.”

  I kept my mouth shut and went back to looking at ties.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  For fifteen different reasons, my stomach was twisted into a tight knot that felt like everything from my throat to my navel was made up of a hard, oaken core. It was 4:03 a.m. and I’d been awake since three. I’d already had two cups of coffee and held a third in my hand. Cancer was possibly gnawing away at my lower intestine and, if it wasn’t doing the job, then the residual chemo drugs were. Which reminded me that I was putting off a surgery that might save my life in order to lock up someone to whom life was as cheap as it gets.

  But the main thing that had my guts in an uproar was that I was sitting in my car under a flickering sodium light in an empty Safeway parking lot in Culmore, half an hour away from taking part in a raid on one of the most violent gangs on the East Coast.

  I was early. Zero hour was 5:00 a.m. Everyone taking part in the bust would be arriving at the “neutral zone,” the parking lot, in the next few minutes for a final briefing before we kicked the doors down and made the collars. I passed the time emptying my mind. Taking increasingly smaller sips of coffee was my only ambition.

  Bloch pulled his blue Elantra into the lot at a quarter after four, parking next to me instead of stopping window-to-window. I got out, opened his passenger-side door and slid in. Bloch punched on a small dashboard light. He looked at me, grinning through the baggy lids and sallow complexion of someone pulling too much overtime.

  “This is it, Singer,” he said, holding up a folder. “One no-knock search warrant for 1803 Landsdowne Heights Apartments. By the power vested in me by Judge Carrie Peterson of the United States of America, I hereby proclaim we shall kick some ass.”

  “You went Federal? Didn’t shop it to the state?”

  Bloch’s smile turned upside down. “The local DA is a prick. He wanted six more months of surveillance, then a complete case review. We can’t wait that long. I’ve got a good thing going with the U.S. Attorney’s office, so…”

  I nodded. I’d been in Bloch’s position before. As the guy in charge of the investigation, you can shop the bigger cases around to different district attorneys and federal assistant U.S. attorneys—AUSAs—to try to get the best result. It was a balancing act between success and payoff. Sentencing often got more severe as you went from local to state, state to federal, but sentencing didn’t matter much if you couldn’t get the DA or an AUSA to take the case in the first place. So you knocked on doors until you found a prosecutor that was willing to play ball. An AUSA is giving you a hard time on getting a wire tap? No problem, go to a local DA and ask him to adopt the case at the local level. Looking for the harshest possible sentencing for a gang banger who’s killing cops? Go to the U.S. Attorney’s office and get the killer tried in federal court. Bloch was in a good position: he’d been blown off by the state DA—which might have a better chance of conviction—but he was tight with someone at the Federal level. It would be a harder conviction to get, but if he got it, the bad guys wouldn’t see daylight ever again.

  “Think you can wrap everything up in one go?” I asked.

  “You know Mike Gilmore, the AUSA over at the U.S. Attorney’s office? Says it’s a no-brainer pulling Hobbs Act on these shits.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I’m getting a warm, fuzzy feeling.”

  The Hobbs Act was the iron fist in the velvet glove of criminal prosecution. Actually, there was no velvet glove. It was a Federal act used specifically to crush “violent criminal enterprises” like gangs into smithereens. Prove that your perps had a habit of shooting people and disrupting businesses and you were on your way to a Hobbs Act violation. Sentencing was draconian. Less than a twenty-year stint was almost unheard of. And since it was a Federal charge, there was no parole. You get fifty years? You serve fifty years. Cops were known to burst into song and crooks who knew the system rolled over like puppies when an AUSA confirmed the Hobbs Act could be used on a case.

  Bloch grinned. “I know, makes you want to cry, doesn’t it? We’ve got so much to pin on Felix Rodriguez and his little MLA, he could get minimum sentencing and still be in lockup until the Second Coming.”

  I sipped my coffee, put it in a cup holder. “Who’s on the crew this morning?”

  “I made a couple of calls,” Bloch said. “We got eight, including you and me. I’ll introduce everybody when they show up. Arlington County PD has four, so they’ll be tactical lead. Guy named Chuck Rhee is one of them. Made a special appeal to be included.”

  “Gangs,” I said. “He’s a good guy to have.”

  “You know him?”

  “A little,” I hedged. “I know he wants to show Gangs isn’t made up of losers and crooks.”

  “He a cowboy?” Bloch asked, frowning.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so. Just has a chip on his shoulder. Small, but noticeable. Probably unhappy that Torres confirmed the Gangs stereotype.”

  “So, he’s your source?” Bloch said, smirking.

  I grimaced. “You were going to find out sooner or later.”

  Bloch waved a hand as if to say don’t sweat it. “I saw his file. All that mara experience he’s got, I’m glad to have him. As long as he doesn’t go apeshit when we get inside.”

  On cue, Rhee pulled into the lot in his souped-up Integra, with an Arlington PD cruiser and a white pickup in tow. Everyone parked together, bunching up near the lamppost. Bloch and I got out and walked to the front of his car. Rhee and a beefy, middle-aged guy got out of the Integra, while two white guys in their twenties emerged from the cruiser. A short, athletic-looking blond woman hopped out of the pickup and headed over to us. She had a pony tail coming out the back of a black, logo-less baseball cap. Everyone except Rhee, Bloch, and me were wearing paramilitary blue-and-black tactical BDUs and boots. Rhee, in designer jeans and a ripped t-shirt, could’ve just stepped out of a club, while Bloch and I had on khakis and sweatshirts and could’ve come from Wal-Mart.

  Expressions and body language matched the way I felt. A little nauseous from the early morning and too much caffeine. Keyed up, but under control. Excited, but keeping a lid on it. I nodded at Rhee. He grinned and nodd
ed back. Bloch introduced himself and then asked Rhee to do the intros for the Arlington group. The beefy guy was McDonald, the two twenty-somethings were Huston and Carlson. The blonde told everybody her name was Ramsey and that she was a U.S. Marshal.

  “I thought there were two of you coming,” Bloch said to her, looking down at a list. “Louis Chaco?”

  “Louis got appendicitis yesterday, late,” she said, pronouncing it “lou-ee” in a thick Southern accent. “He’s in the hospital getting his belly stitched up. Sorry, Lieutenant. I’m the only warm body.”

  I could tell it bothered Bloch, but didn’t say anything. He fished out a cigarette, lit it, and introduced me. When he got to the part about me being retired, Huston and Carlson exchanged a quick glance, but otherwise no one blinked. I sat on the hood of Bloch’s car as he opened his folder. He took out a set of photos. A trail of smoke from his cigarette followed his hand as he passed them around.

  “Okay, folks. Here’s our target. Landsdowne Heights, unit 206. Your average shit-hole garden apartment, it’s just missing the garden. Here’s a picture of the door to the building and the unit entry. There’s one stairwell, locked from the bottom up, halfway across the building. As long as we clear it on entry and keep our backs to it, we should be fine.”

  “I know those apartments,” Rhee said. “They all got balconies.”

  “They do. We need coverage. Anyone?”

  I was suddenly interested in my shoes. No one wants to be out of the action, watching a back door in case the bad guys make a run for it. But you also don’t split up cohesive teams. Chuck Rhee and the Arlington cops were the largest tactical group, so they would be the ones to go through the door. Bloch was the case agent in charge and I wasn’t even a licensed cop, so the obvious choice was Ramsey. Inevitably, the decision would seem sexist, with no consolation that the choice would’ve been the same if she’d been male.

  She knew it, but raised her hand anyway. “I’m it, I guess. Takes a woman to do it right.”

  Bloch nodded his thanks, smiling a little. He collected the first set of photos and handed out another. “Here are the personnel targets. Felix Rodriguez is our primary. Thirty-three years old, five-nine, one-thirty-five or forty. No visible tattoos. He actually has a mess of them, but they’re on his scalp, chest, and back. With his hair grown out and a long-sleeved shirt, he looks completely normal.”