by Jason Trevor
◆◆◆
Jefe was jolted out of an awkward and uncomfortable state of half-sleep by the door opening. Sergeant Sims strolled in, looking leisurely and refreshed, carrying a paper cup of coffee. The room wasn’t mortar and concrete with a mirror on the wall, like the ones on the TV. It was just a tiny room, maybe ten feet by eight feet, with a rickety table pushed with its narrow end against one of the short walls, and a chair on each side of it. A small camera was perched conspicuously on the ceiling in a corner, and some messy manila files were piled on the end of the desk against the wall.
“Gabe! Good morning!” he chirped.
“Why did you keep me in here all night? I’m tired! Where did you go?”
“You smell bad and you’re dirty from working in your chop shop all day. I didn’t want to sit in here and smell you or look at your dirty face. It was a long day, so I went home and got some rest,”
“So you left me here all night? That stupid uniform came in here and kept bothering me! I didn’t get no sleep at all!”
“I told him to do that. Sleep deprivation loosens lips,”
“It ain’t a chop shop. I told you, we recycle cars,”
“Yeah. I don’t care. I care about the silver Chevy we found. That was stolen and the owner was shot to death. If you don’t want to go up for it, tell me who brought it to you. I’m not going to waste time here with you. Tell me that and I’ll talk to the auto theft detective and the DA about working with you on the grand theft auto charge. Be a dumbass and I’ll go talk to Oscar instead. He’s a puss. He’ll roll right over on you,”
Jefe leaned across the desk toward Sergeant Sims. “Lawyer,”
“Door number two it is,” Cody sprung up and walked out, headed toward the room holding Oscar, whose night had not been any better.
◆◆◆
After rolling through a drive-through branch of his bank on Highway 6 to deposit a substantial check, Joe hit the freeway headed back home. Once he was in a steady flow of traffic, he tapped a name on the screen in his Escalade.
“Green Staffing,” came the voice over his truck’s speakers.
“Greenie, it’s Joe,”
“Hey dude, you need some help?”
“Customer signed off on the project this morning and cut a check on the spot. Work starts Monday. I need four guys with rack-to-jack experience and one who can deploy E900’s, twenty of them,”
“Shoot me the address. I’ll have them on the site at 9 AM,”
“7 AM. $20 for the cable guys and $30 for the installer,”
“You’re killing me,”
“No problem. I can call Keystaff. They’ve been spamming my email for months,”
“Fine! Twenty and thirty. 7 AM Monday. Net ten.”
“Net sixty,”
“Net thirty, and that’s the best I can do at those prices,”
“Fine. I need some hardware too,” The line went silent for a few seconds.
“Noon at Shaker’s Coffee on Yale,”
“I’ll be there,”
◆◆◆
Oscar’s eyes were bloodshot and he was more angry than tired, but he was not so dumb as to take on a cop. Cody plunked down into the chair across from him.
“Tough night?”
“Your desk cop is a culo grosero. I keep telling him I’m fine and he still comes back all night and wakes me up!”
“I’m sorry about that! He should have given you some peace and quiet to rest. I’ll talk to him, but there’s something more important. I think Jefe is going to roll on you,”
“Si? No way!”
“Yep. He’s gonna take a ride and let you go down for the stolen silver Chevy and the owner getting shot,”
“Tonterías! He bought the truck! I just cut it up!”
“Okay, okay! I get it. He’s lying, but I gotta have something to go on. Who did he buy it from?”
“Same as ever! Biggie and his friends brought it,”
“Great! Who is Biggie?”
Oscar’s eyes flashed suddenly. He realized what he had just done. “Besa mi culo. Abogado,”
“Got it. Thanks for your help!” Cody marched out the door, coffee in tow and digging his cell phone out of a coat pocket.
◆◆◆
Greenie jumped up from a corner table and waved across the busy coffee shop at Joe when he walked in. Joe smirked at Greenie’s natty attire; polished deck shoes, pleated gray business slacks, a knit sweater vest over a white business shirt that contrasted his dark brown skin starkly, a blue power tie, and his usual high-and-tight haircut with very out-of-place, enormous grey sideburns.
“You look sharp today, wing tips and all!” Greenie teased.
“Well, even Green Berets need someone to look up to. That’s why the Air Force has special forces,”
“Whatever,” They shook hands and sat down. “Why do you need more hardware? You already own a damned arsenal. Woe be the sonofabitch who comes into your house uninvited,”
“I need clean hardware. Lots of it. No names attached. Unlimited budget. Full auto AR-15’s or AK’s. Some exploding targets. Hell, get me a minigun if you can,”
“Good God, are you going to war? Why on Earth would you want an M134?”
“I don’t know yet. Does it matter?”
“Not really. You get caught with this stuff and I don’t know you, same as ever,”
“Greenie? Greenie who? Who the hell is Greenie? I found this stuff in a crawl space in one of my investment properties!”
“You’re pretty smart, for a TACP,”
“Yes, I am,”
◆◆◆
With his cell phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder, Cody scribbled notes about Joe into his tiny spiral while looking at his computer screen. A disembodied voice came onto the line in his ear.
“Gang unit, Sharon here,”
“Hey, it’s Sims in homicide. Who can I talk to about activity in Third Ward?”
“Try Le. He’s in the office for now. Headed back to the beat in an hour or so is what he told me,”
“The Chinese guy?”
“Vietnamese”
“Whatever. I wouldn’t trade jobs with him. Tell him to stick around for lunch and I’ll buy. I’m on my way there,”
“I’ll pass it on,”
“Thanks!” He tossed the phone on the desk and his eyes widened as he read Joe Danton’s FBI file on the screen. This guy was a bonafide American hero, and quite possibly also a complete head case. A couple of redacted documents especially caught his attention. He quickly scribbled one more note in his spiral on the page of notes about Joe: “Balkans?” Then he rushed to the elevator, tapping on the Uber Eats app on his phone as he walked.
◆◆◆
Johnny Le was leaning on his desk, debating where to get lunch, when he got a text message from his desk sergeant: “Sims from homicide wants 2 talk. Headed down now. Buying lunch,”
“Cool!” he murmured to himself just as he saw the elevator door open in the lobby and a cheap suit push through the glass door and stride past the desk sergeant with a nod.
“Sims?” he asked as the man walked up.
“Yeah. We met at the police ball last year. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. So, what’s up with the suit? Do they get issued to homicide guys once you get promoted off of the beat?” Le was wearing black combat boots, bloused old-fashioned jungle BDU pants, and a tattered leather vest over body armor with a brown tee shirt. A single long, skinny black braid dangled onto his right shoulder past an earring under his dark fauxhawk.
“$200 off-the-rack. I’m saving my money for a trailer on the beach,” They both laughed. “Arturo’s Deli okay with you? It should be here pretty quick,”
“That works. What can I do for you?” He slid into his desk chair and motioned for Cody to pull a chair from the adjacent desk, which he did.
“You work Third Ward?”
“Every night,”
“Midtown?”
“They overla
p a lot, yeah,”
“I’ve got a lead on an alias, ‘Biggie’ on the shooting in Midtown two nights ago. Who is he?”
“He’s a fence and the bean counter for the Blood Brothers. Small crew, but brutal. He’s about a buck-and-a-quarter soaking wet with a hard-on, five and a half feet, wireframe glasses like the ones they give Gold Card patients at LBJ, and Blood Brothers ink on his neck like the rest of them. He’s probably not your shooter. Did a chop shop roll on him as the seller?”
“Yeah. Any chance he’ll give up the shooter?” A delivery driver appeared and dropped a pair of plastic sacks onto the desk. Le tipped him a five and thanked him as he scurried back toward the door.
“Snitches are bitches who get stitches,” moaned Le, shaking his head and unwrapping the sandwich Cody gave him. “You probably won’t even talk to him. The blood brothers will shoot you in the face before you get a word out, just for being white. Won’t even matter if they’ve seen your shield,”
“I think they may need protecting,”
Le nearly choked on his sandwich. “There’s about ten of them on the street right now, not including the ones in the can. They eat, sleep, and shit together. Nobody even gets close,”
“A friend of the vic is acting froggy. I think he may be going vigilante. If he is, they need to be afraid. Let me tell you about this guy,” Detective Sims pulled out his trusty spiral again and flipped a few pages to his notes about Joe.
◆◆◆
Joe sighed as he stared into a screen on a desk in his office. The recorder from the ice cream shop was up and running, but the machine was password protected. The NUUO factory default password had been changed. He was going to have to rip the hard drive out. Shutting the machine down, he grabbed some tools from arm’s length away, feeling pangs of dread about what he was about to watch. Joe knew full well that what he was going to watch could activate a section of his brain that he preferred to keep dormant. It was like a recovering alcoholic watching someone take a drink, but it had to be done.
Once one of the hard drives was loose and in his hand, he strode over to his big desk, sat, and slapped the drive into an external drive dock adjacent to one of his monitors, then got to work on it.
Moments later the footage from two nights before was cued up and playing. He watched a few cars cruise through the intersection. A couple stopped at the light when it was red. A few ran red lights. This was a quiet street at night. There was so little traffic that it shouldn’t take much time, or be very hard, to identify Foster’s truck. Then it appeared; a familiar silver Chevy Silverado with a black toolbox on the bed. It rolled up to the light and stopped. He could make out Foster’s silhouette in the window. The screen on the dash lit up from a phone call and Foster moved to answer it. As he was talking, a Monte Carlo pulled up behind with its lights off. Foster was on the phone and didn’t even see it.
“C’mon man, look in your mirror!” pleaded Joe, as if he didn’t know what was going to happen. He felt helpless and weak.
The cab of the truck went dark again as Foster ended the call. Poor Ellie, thought Joe. He hoped it was a happy conversation and not a lover’s quarrel. That was the last time she and Foster would ever speak.
The red glow on Foster’s windshield turned green. His brake lights went off and the truck started to inch forward, but then jerked to a halt as the lights of an off-camera car pulled into his path from the cross street.
Joe got tunnel vision on the screen. This was it.
The Monte Carlo’s headlights came on and both doors opened. Two bodies got out and walked up to either side of Foster’s truck.
“He never had a chance,” Joe raged to himself.
Then he watched in furious pain as the nearest person yanked on the door handle fruitlessly, smashed the window, and pointed a gun at Foster. There was a brief exchange of words.
“God, I hope you weren’t trying to be a hero, Foster!”
He watched Foster being dragged out through the broken window. He watched the person coldly, callously, and unflinchingly shoot Foster in the head twice, then jump in the truck and tear away. It felt like steam was coming out of Joe’s collar.
He scrolled back to a good view of the person who shot Foster, and with a few clicks of the mouse, had a perfect picture of his height, clothes, face, jewelry, gold teeth, and a tattoo of two scripted letter b’s with an angled 3 wedged in between them on his neck. Although never much of a fan of classical literature, Joe founding himself remembering a famous line from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.
“Cry Havoc,” he croaked past the lump of emotion in his throat. “and let slip the dogs of war!”
Chapter 5
The cell phone sitting on Joe’s desk rang and shook him out of a trance. He grabbed it and glimpsed at the screen. It was a blocked number. Those irritated him. He didn’t need a new mortgage, credit card machine, siding, or a dumpster. He answered it anyway.
“This is Joe, how can I help you?”
“Mr. Danton, this is Detective Sims, HPD. Do you remember me?”
“Of course. I met you at Ellie and Foster’s house. Do you have any leads on Foster’s murder?” Joe secretly wondered if the detective knew what he had been doing. He would have to tread lightly, as he had committed a felony of his own, only days ago. This could be an opportunity to glean some useful information if he played his cards right, though.
“We’ve learned a little, yes. I was wondering if you had a few minutes for some questions,”
“I’m not sure how helpful I can be, but I’ll do anything I can. Foster was a good customer and a good friend,”
“First, I need to let you know that this conversation is being recorded, and I need to Mirandize you,”
“Mirandize me? Am I a suspect?” Joe was incredulous. He could easily see himself as a person of interest in what he had meticulously crafted into an unrelated investigation. Surely, they didn’t think he was directly involved in Foster’s death. “I thought it was a random carjacking,”
“I’m pretty sure it was. The Miranda rights are just a matter of procedure, in case our conversation later bears fruit in the case,”
“OK, then. Read me my rights,” He tried not to giggle.
“Thanks for understanding. You have the right to refrain from answering any questions or making any statements. Anything you choose to say can be used in court, including in a cause against you. You have the right to legal counsel and representation. If you desire legal counsel or representation and cannot afford it, a lawyer will be provided to you at our expense. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”
“Yes,” Procedure or not, this sounded like an intimidation maneuver to Joe. After all, who hadn’t watched a police procedural on TV and seen what happens after a Miranda recitation? The part that upset Joe is that it was working a little, even on him, and he took pride in being difficult to intimidate.
“OK, great. With the formalities dispensed, we can just have a conversation, right?”
“OK, but you have to know that the ‘procedure’ automatically creates tension and puts people’s guard up, right?”
“I wish there were a better way, but what if you help me catch Foster’s killer, and then your statement is ruled inadmissible?”
Joe was pretty sure that only mattered if his fifth or sixth amendment rights were violated, but he kept quiet. No sense escalating the tension by tipping his hand. Better to play it cool and act naïve. Detective Sims went on.
“What was the nature of your relationship with Foster Shayne?”
“He was referred to me by one of my other customers about ten years ago. I cut him some good deals, did some good work for him, we got to be friends. Fast forward, I go to his kids’ birthday parties and buy him and his wife dinner on their anniversary every year,”
“Have you had any disagreements with him?”
“Only over pricing once in a while,”
“Lately?”
“Not less than a year or
two ago. We almost always saw eye to eye on my prices,”
“Do you think anyone else had disagreements with him?”
“He was a stand-up, honest, and friendly guy. He didn’t have many competitors in town or any enemies that I can think of. Sometimes his clients were too demanding and too slow to pay. I have a few of those types of customers, myself. He didn’t have much of a personal life outside of his wife and kids. He worked almost around the clock,” These questions didn’t sound like they were springing from a random carjacking.
“Do you often eat ice cream for breakfast?” Joe reeled and wasn’t sure he had heard the detective correctly.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The morning after Mr. Shayne’s death, when you left his house, you told his widow that you were going for ice cream. If you had scheduled a meeting with him that morning, I would think you had slotted more than the five minutes that you were there before you hurried out, saying you wanted ice cream,”
“You got me!” Joe laughed. “You and El told me that it happened at the light where that new ice cream shop is, and I wanted to see the crime scene,”
“So you never got your ice cream?” Joe could tell that he was prying to see if Joe had visited the shop.
“No, they weren’t open yet, but the guy sold me a cup of coffee anyway,”
“Did you get the clerk’s name?”
“Nah. I didn’t actually want ice cream for breakfast, you know. I was just looking for coffee. I only ducked in and back out. He was a bulky older guy. Maybe ten years older than me. Thinning salt and pepper hair. Apron. That’s about all I noticed about him. Is he a suspect or something?”
“I doubt it. It’s just that he had some really sleek cameras that might have recorded the crime,”
“Well, that’s great! Did they?”
“Don’t know. The night after the shooting the shop was burglarized and they took his camera recorder,”
