by Mark Dawson
“So?” he pressed.
Carter laughed. “Listen to you,” he said. “Two days ago you wouldn’t have said boo to a goose, now you want us to rip off a card game.”
Rhodes shrugged. “I been thinking about what you said. About meat eaters and grass eaters. Maybe I don’t want to be a grass eater no more.”
“Good for you, kid.”
“You interested?”
“Let me think about it.”
85
Polanski watched as the four people filed into the conference room. It was the same room where he had met Harris seven hours earlier; the same coffee pot, refreshed with a new brew, had been left on the table. Harris had moved quickly. Polanski had been given his own desk, together with a new phone and laptop. His old phone had been taken away to be checked over by the techs, and, in an abundance of caution, one of the junior detectives had been assigned to go through the district attorney’s records to see whether a wiretap on Polanski’s number had been authorised. Haynes and Harris were also arranging for the IAB office in Brooklyn to be subjected to a covert bug sweep carried out by a Manhattan counter-intelligence outfit that Harris had used for a similar purpose during a previous investigation. Polanski had been taken aback by the speed and diligence with which she, and the rest of the office, worked. Their professionalism made the standards he was used to in Brooklyn look slapdash and second-rate by comparison, and it gave him another jolt of confidence that things were finally moving in the right direction.
The two women and two men took seats around the table. Polanski gave them a moment to settle and then spoke.
“All right then,” he began. “Let’s get started. Introductions, first, I think. I’m Aleksander Polanski. I’m working out of this office for the next two weeks, but I’m based in IAB up in Brooklyn.”
The blonde woman to Polanski’s right spoke next. “Detective Michelle Walker. Narcotics Gang Unit.”
There was an older black man to Walker’s right. “Detective Jarvis Moore. Just moved across to the HIT.”
“HIT?” Polanski queried.
“Heroin Interdiction Team,” Moore clarified.
“I’m Detective Alice Walsh,” said the middle-aged woman to the right of Moore. “Narcotics.”
“And I’m Assistant District Attorney Mark Mantegna,” said the man in the suit next to Walsh. “I work in the trial division. I’ll co-ordinate the prosecution. It’s your case, Detective, but we want to make sure it gets done right. Anything you need, you come to me. Search and arrest warrants, you want to tap a phone—whatever it is, just ask.”
They were easy-going and reassuring with their confidence. Polanski stood and poured cups of coffee for each of them.
“What have you got for us?” Mantegna said. “The boss said you’re looking at corrupt cops down in Brooklyn?”
“Corrupt cops on the payroll of one of the bigger drug gangs down there.”
“Carlos Acosta,” Walker said. “We’ve looked at him before. He’s a bad man.”
“Who you want us to look at?” Moore asked.
Polanski had spent the afternoon after returning from Coney Island putting together a list of information on Landon Shepard. He had compiled it and printed it out; there was enough to fill two sheets. He passed the dossiers to Walker; she took one and passed it on.
“His name is Landon Shepard,” he said. “Born in Ozone Park, Queens, in 1961, then moved to Rosedale. Joined the NYPD in 1986 as a twenty-five-year-old rookie. Went through the academy, did well enough to graduate but not well enough to avoid being assigned to the Seven Five as a patrol officer. He’s always worked the street, never been interested in making detective as far as I can work out. Retired from the police a month ago. Doesn’t seem to have another job to go to.”
“Where does he live?”
“He’s got a place in Port Washington, up on the water.”
“We’ll have a look at it,” Walsh said. “Get an idea of his outgoings.”
“And we can check with his bank if we think he can’t afford his lifestyle,” Mantegna offered.
Walker had flipped the page and was pointing to a picture of Bobby Carter. “Who’s the other guy?”
“Bobby Carter. Used to be Shepard’s partner. They rode together for seven years. They’re close. Best men at each other’s weddings. Carter is godfather to one of Shepard’s kids. They’re tight.”
“But it’s Shepard we’re going after first?” Mantegna said.
Polanski nodded. “There was a murder at Euclid Avenue station on Sunday night. I was working an informant, a guy who worked as Acosta’s bagman, said he was responsible for paying Acosta’s friendly cops their monthly fees. He said he had recorded evidence that would nail one of the cops and we’d just agreed on the deal for him to bring it to me. He was on his way to the safe house when he was killed.”
“What a coincidence,” Walker said.
“He had his throat cut in the restroom. The thing is, there was a witness. A thirteen-year-old kid saw two guys outside. He’s identified Shepard as one of them. He didn’t get a good look at the other one, but, if you ask me to put my neck on the line, I’m pretty confident we’ll find out it’s Carter.”
“So we put Shepard under surveillance first?” Walsh said.
“I think so.”
“Does he know what you look like?”
“We have to assume he does. Acosta’s been following me. That’s why I’m here and not in Brooklyn.”
“I’ll have a word with Harris and see if we can add another body to the detail. We get four of us who can rotate the surveillance—that ought to be plenty for what this is. When do you want to get started?”
“As soon as we can. Tonight?”
“No time like the present,” Walsh said, and the others nodded their agreement.
“There’s one other thing,” Polanski said. “The witness needs to be moved out of the area before he’ll give us a statement.”
“The boss mentioned that,” Mantegna said. “It’s him and his old man, right? We got them a place in Middletown. It’s just been cleared—we can get them there tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Polanski said. “That was fast.”
“You’re in the big leagues now, Detective. We don’t mess around.”
86
Carter had been thinking about Rhodes’s proposal all shift. He was ready to go for it, but he knew that he would need backup. The kid was as green as they came, and he wasn’t prepared to bust a joint he didn’t know without someone he trusted having his back. And, more than that, he wanted to have it checked to make sure that it was kosher. Carter knew his weaknesses, and impatience was one of them. He wanted to hurry Rhodes along so that he could get him to a place where he could trust him with what life could really be like on the street, and going through with an idea that he had brought up himself was the best way he could think of. But, saying that, he didn’t want his enthusiasm to colour his judgment. Shepard had a litany of his own faults, but impatience was not one of them. Carter wanted Shepard to sign off on it before he committed.
They were outside the Happy Wok on Pitkin. Carter said he would go in and get coffees for them both. He got out of the car and went inside. The restaurant was owned by Acosta’s cousin. Carter went up to the counter, ordered a box of noodles, said that he was a friend of Carlos and that he needed to make a phone call. The owner grunted and pointed to a phone on the end of the counter. Carter nodded his thanks, picked up the receiver and called Shepard.
“It’s me,” Carter said. “You wanna make a score?”
“You have to ask? What is it?”
“It’s the rookie. He’s put an opportunity our way.”
“The rookie?”
“I know. Says he wants to play in the majors.”
“And you trust him?”
“I checked him out the day after he started. Everything he said, I went over it. He said he worked the subway and he did. I spoke to an instructor I know at the academy. He c
ame back clean.”
“You think it’s beyond Internal Affairs to put someone in the car with you?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. I know they could do that. But this guy? No fucking way. He’d have to be de Niro and Brando all rolled into one, and, trust me, he ain’t. I’m not getting bad vibes off him.”
“What do you need?”
“He says there’s a card game at the subway yard in Gravesend. There’s a garage off Stillwell, next to the yard. End of West Thirteenth. The owner's related to one of the union guys from the subway. I’m not doing it without backup. If we think it’s worth a look, we can kick the door down and roll them.”
“How much are we talking about?”
“He thinks a few thousand.”
“You think it’s worth the aggravation?”
Carter had considered that. In the old days, when he and Shep had gotten their start, a few thousand would have been a big payday. They had graduated since then, and, normally, the idea of driving all the way over there and taking the risk—however small—of busting a small-time game would have been one that they would have quickly dismissed. But there was more to this than just the take. Rhodes had surprised Carter with the proposal. He had expected to have to bring the rookie along slowly, gradually exposing him to the full range of opportunities that he would be able to take advantage of; going in and busting up a card game was a sudden escalation, and, better, it was one that Rhodes had suggested himself. It would accelerate the process. Carter didn’t like having to constrain what he could and couldn’t say and do when he was in the car. He wanted a partner who would be just like Shepard. Maybe the kid could be that for him.
“It’s not gonna be a big score,” Carter said into the phone. “But it’s a chance to blood the kid. I don’t want to turn him down.”
Shepard laughed. “What is it? You think he’s gonna take my place? You’re gonna make me jealous.”
“You’re the one who retired.”
“You got me. What time does it start?”
“Kid didn’t say. But it’s eight fifteen now. Gonna be around this time if it’s happening.”
Carter heard Shepard’s long exhalation. He imagined him on his couch, a beer at hand and quite happy to stay where he was all night.
“Come on, Shep. I can’t do it with him on my own. I need you.”
Another sigh. “Fuck it,” Shep said at last. “On my way. I’ll see you there.”
87
Polanski sat down at his new desk and reviewed the progress that had been made. It was half past eight in the evening and things had moved with a speed that was both unfamiliar and exhilarating. All the frustration and impediments that Polanski had suffered through before taking the case to the special prosecutor had vanished. Assistant District Attorney Mantegna had quickly made the decision that it would be wise to put a tap on Landon Shepard’s phone, and, within an hour of their afternoon meeting coming to a close, he had reached out to colleagues in the Bureau of Crime Investigation who supervised electronic surveillance in the Five Counties. The senior investigator from the BCI who was assigned the case had gone to work with similar alacrity, working on an affidavit with the district attorney’s office and the captain of his troop. Everything was fast-tracked: it was decided that there was no need to pass the application to Division Headquarters for review, so the DA had submitted the application to a judge, who had quickly granted the court order. Mantegna was now liaising with Shepard’s service provider, Sprint, to execute the order and install the tap on his phone. He had come across to Polanski’s desk and told him that the work would be done by ten at the latest.
Walker, Moore and Walsh had gone out to begin surveillance. They had taken three cars and were en route to Port Washington. Walker had called to report that they had just crossed the East River on the Throgs Neck Bridge and that they were around forty minutes away from the house given the weather conditions and the state of the roads.
Polanski looked down at the pile of papers on his desk and decided that he could take a moment.
He picked up the phone on his desk and dialled the number for his mother-in-law’s house.
“Hello?” It was Laura. “Aleks?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s me.”
“Thank God,” his wife said. “I’ve been worried sick. What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Everything is fine,” he said, gazing out of the window and onto the stupendous Manhattan vista beyond. “You sound worried.”
“You think? After what happened this morning?”
“I know,” he said. “You don’t need to worry. I know it’s easy for me to say that, but it’s true. You can relax. Everything is under control.”
“All right,” Laura said after a moment’s pause.
“Are you okay? You and the kids?”
“We’re good. Mother was surprised to see us, but she’s made such a fuss of the kids they haven’t had a moment to worry.”
“Good,” he said.
“You haven’t said what’s going on. You gotta tell me what’s happening.”
“I can’t. You’ll have to trust me, baby. I’m going to be staying out here for a day or two. There’s been a big development in the case I was working. I think it’s coming to an end. I just gotta make it happen.”
“You in Brooklyn?”
“No. I’m sorry. I can’t say anything else.”
“How long is this going to take? How long do we have to stay here?”
Polanski looked out at the vista, east across the river toward Brooklyn, and imagined Shepard and Carter and the net that neither of them would be able to see, the net that was slowly closing around them.
“It won’t be long,” he told her. “Two days. Three at the outside. We’re nearly there.”
88
Carter could see the subway yard from the Belt Parkway. It was vast, an expanse of open space that contained dozens of lines of track and hundreds of subway trains and cars. The train cars, many crested with snow, stretched away like long silver fingers.
Rhodes turned off at Exit 6N and looped around to Stillwell Avenue and the industrial zone that lay between it and the subway yard. They drove on for another fifty yards until they reached the end of West Thirteenth Street. There was a scrapyard ahead of them, a company that serviced school buses to the left, and a tall mesh fence that demarked the yard to the right.
Carter told Rhodes to kill the lights and roll up to the side of the road ahead of Shepard’s Honda. The parking spaces were all taken by yellow school buses, so Shepard had parked in front of them.
Carter did up his jacket, got out of the squad car and walked back to the Honda. Rhodes came, too. Carter got into the front and Rhodes, at Carter’s insistence, got into the back.
“All right?” Carter asked.
Shepard was smoking a cigar, tapping the ash out of a narrow gap in the window. “All good.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Ten minutes.”
Carter turned to look at Rhodes. “Where’s the game?”
Rhodes reached across and pointed between the front seats. “Over there.”
Carter followed his gesture. There was a building between the garage and the scrapyard. The door was next to a dumpster and a pile of discarded tyres. There was a closed up-and-over roller door that would have been big enough to get a bus inside, and the door was next to that.
“Through there?” Carter said.
“Yeah. You go through and cross the garage. There’s a big office at the back. They clear the shit out of the way and set the table up in there. You got privacy. No one knows about it.”
“Apart from us,” Carter said. “How many players?”
“Ten? Never saw more than that.”
Carter looked over to make sure Shepard was paying attention. “So this is how we do it. We go in, say we’ve had a complaint that there’s an illegal game going on and that they’re gonna need to shut it down. We say we should probably make a
rrests, but that maybe we won’t need to do that if we get treated right. The usual. You want to add anything, Shep?”
“Nah,” he said. “I’m good. It’ll be easy. You go in first and flash your badge. I’ll back you up.”
“Rookie?”
The kid looked nervous. That wasn’t surprising. This was a step up from liberating money and drugs from a small-time dealer or accepting free refreshments from business owners. There would be witnesses tonight, and they would be outnumbered. Carter knew that it wouldn’t matter. They had their badges and uniforms and guns. No one would be stupid enough to go against them.
“Hey,” Carter said. “Rhodes? We good?”
“I’m good, Bobby,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
Carter led the way with Rhodes and Shepard behind him. The garage was a great spot for a game of cards when you didn’t want to be disturbed. It was at the end of the street, the entrance almost hidden behind the buses that had been lined up outside it. There was no reason for anyone to come down this way after dark, and especially not on a night like this. He slipped into the gap between two buses and walked on, unfastening the restraining strap on his holster and resting his hand on the butt of the pistol. He didn’t think that he would need to take the Glock out—leaving his hand there to draw attention to it was usually more than enough—but he wasn’t going to take chances. He glanced back at Shepard and Rhodes. His ex-partner had a hungry glint in his eye, the same expression that Carter had seen on dozens of previous occasions. The rookie was nervous, falling back a little so that they were in single file: Carter, Shepard, then Rhodes.
“You all right, rook?” he hissed.
Rhodes nodded. Carter let it ride.
The door was closed, but, as he put his hand on the handle and pressed down, he felt the mechanism work and knew that it was unlocked. He pushed gently, opening the door slowly and quietly. It was dark inside. He paused so that his eyes could adjust to the gloom. A little light from outside leaked through the door, enough for him to see that the garage offered a wide space, with two darker slots on the ground that he took to be service pits, and large benches and lockers on the periphery. He could hear the sound of music and followed it across the room to another door, slightly ajar, with light seeping around the edges.
