“Careful.” I pointed a finger at him, at the same time felt a surge of guilt for what I just put into motion, the pain, the carnage. Grape Street was a notoriously violent street gang that needed a little extra attention. Justification for my sins.
He took his cell phone out of his suit coat pocket, then handed me the keys. “Here, you drive. And don’t you dare crash. I’d never be able to explain it.” We got into the car. I reached under the seat to let the seat back for my long legs and felt a crumpled paper bag with a pint bottle.
He dialed his phone. “This is Wicks. Put it out to everyone and I mean everyone. I want every swingin’ dick in Nickerson Gardens, who’s wearing purple, brought in. Now. I mean right now. Call in whoever you have to, to get it done. Call Century Station and tell them they’re about to be inundated with assholes. I’ll call the chief and get it cleared.” He snapped his phone shut, put it inside one breast pocket, and reached into the other side where he pulled out a silver flask. Robby never drank on the job. Things sure had changed in the three and half years I was gone; a year and a half to fight the case and two years of a four-year sentence in the joint.
He unscrewed the cap, tilted it back, and took a long slug. I didn’t know why I hadn’t smelled it on him until now. My partner, my friend had turned into a juicer. He pulled the flask down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. In the day, we drank quite a bit off duty, mostly beer to celebrate great accomplishments—crooks no longer prowling streets, put away for long stretches, bank robbers, murderers, some put down hard—but we never drank the hard stuff. The day be fore I surrendered for my stint, I got stinking-assed drunk on twelve-year-old bourbon and felt the shame of it the next day. Dad drilled it into me not to drink at all.
Robby looked over at me with genuine elation. As far as he knew, the key to his difficult case was on the table. All he had to do was reach out and touch it. I just didn’t know what it had to do with me or why I was being followed. Not for real, not that I wanted to give credence to anyway.
I felt worse.
Then I thought about what Ramon, the owner of Lucy’s, had said, that Robby was asking about me with the FBI standing right there beside him. That meant federal time. And that, I didn’t really want to think about. The Feebs, one of the crimes they investigated was kidnapping. Not that I looked at what I was doing as a crime; saving these kids wasn’t kidnapping, not morally it wasn’t. Other people would see it differently, especially since some of the kids were white. No, the guilt didn’t last very long.
Robby’s wide smile filled his entire face. He might make captain out of this. Hell, if he took me down, recovered the kids, and the murder suspect, he could make deputy chief. He handed me the flask. I sat entranced with his eyes. Would he turn on a friend? Especially the kind of friends we’d been. All that had obviously changed. I just couldn’t get my mind around it. I would never have turned on him, not for any enticement. Yet, in a way, I just had. My stomach rumbled. Soon I’d have his ulcer.
I didn’t smile back, couldn’t, but I could take the flask and drink from it to deaden some of the pain brought on by the loss of a friend. I tilted it back, not knowing what to expect. Vodka. The odorless drink of a drunk.
Two and a half years without a drop. The liquor burnt all the way down, warming my stomach, and seconds later my blood and lungs, rekindling that hint of shame. To drink right now dulled the senses. Not a smart move when so many people depended upon me. I breathed fire, took a breath, and another long slug, finishing the flask.
“Hey, hey, buddy, don’t Bogart the whole thing.” Robby took the flask, tipped it back empty in his mouth. “Not to worry.” He reached into the glove box and pulled out another one, then turned on the unit radio to channel 22. It immediately lit up with chatter.
“Jesus, listen to all that. We have unleashed a shit storm like those punks have never seen.”
I backed out. I drove under the speed limit. He probably thought it cautious. I needed the time to think.
“Pick it up, man, pick it up. Once our thugs hit the street, and the Crips figure out what’s going down, they’ll all go to ground, and we’ll have to dig ’em out with shovels. I wanna catch one or two ourselves, you know, like the old days. Here, take a right on Imperial. Come on, you haven’t been gone that long. You know the way.”
Some of his excitement came my way, contagious, infectious excitement I so dearly missed. The way it felt when we rode together and were close to uncovering someone’s hidey-hole.
At Alameda Avenue, not far from the Imperial Courts housing project, a couple of miles from Nickerson Gardens, a male black on a bike rode like hell right at us. He wore a white football jersey dyed purple with the name Montana on the back. The Grape Street Crips never ventured this far east. At least not alone. Something had spooked him. It was Gang Enforcement Team and Operation Safe Streets hitting Nickerson hard.
“There. There.” Robby pointed, as if I hadn’t spotted him. “Get over there and cut his ass off.”
I went across the lanes of traffic, the bike rider still looking back, not watching where he was going. I braked, thinking he would look up in time. He crashed into the side of Robby’s county ride and flipped over on his back onto the hood. His black bowler hat snugged down on his head stayed that way.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Robby jumped, dragged him off, put him facedown in a wrist-lock, and was taking out the cuffs before I got around the nose of the car to help. The crook gasped for air. I looked down the road toward Nickerson. It wouldn’t be long before Operation Safe Street interrogated a few and figured out my game. I didn’t have much time.
Robby picked the guy up. He was an OG, an Original Gangster, someone older than twenty-one, still alive, and not in prison. He tried to talk, but the words wouldn’t come, the air still had not returned to his lungs. I got a closer look. “I know you. You’re Jesse Cole’s nephew. I thought you moved to Rialto?”
“What’d I do?” The first words he could utter.
Robby laughed, “Well, obviously you’re driving that bike on the street without a light because you crashed right into the side of my hooptie.”
“Man, that ain’t right and you know it.”
“Why you ridin’ like that, lookin’ over your shoulder?”
“You know why. The sheriff’s in the hood ridin’ deep. Jackin’ all the homeboys for nuthin’. Nuthin’, man.”
Robby reached up and took a joint from behind the guy’s ear and put it behind his own. “Now we’re going to add a Primo to the charge.”
“Dey ain’t any rock in dere, it’s pure weed.”
“We’ll just send it to the lab and find out. Until then we’re going to put you on ice. Unless you want to make a deal.”
Even if the game was correct and Grape Street was at the bottom of it, Robby was moving too fast. Under normal circumstances, we’d have taken him in and put him in a cell, let him fester while we grabbed a cup of joe. Robby wanted this too badly.
“I ain’t got nuthin’.”
Someone on the radio said, “Ten-thirty-three.” The code for emergency traffic.
Robby yanked on the dude’s arm, “Come on, get him in the car.”
A panicked voice on the radio said, “My partner’s in foot pursuit, Nickerson Gardens, east side, south of 115th.” Deputies from all over came up on the air advising they were en route.
Robby yelled, “Come on, come on. Get his ass in the car we gotta get over there.”
We shoved the Crip in the back. I got in and put the pedal to the floor, burning rubber, leaving the Crip’s bike back in the street. He didn’t seem to care.
The deputy came back up on the air screaming, “Shots fired. Shots fired.”